00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 102, "The New Normal." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:21 

Hello there, my friends, thank you for joining me today. How you doing? How you holding up with all of this COVID pandemic stuff? I mean we're coming out on the other side. I know that Utah has gone from an orange to a yellow and we're all super excited about that and about what that has to offer for us. I think that we've had so many opportunities here to learn, not just about life, but to learn about ourselves and to take a good look at our mental health and to see how we're doing with our mental health. Are we handling this? Well, are we being resilient? Or are we struggling to find that resilience and struggling to find a place that feels comfortable with all of this change? 

01:08 

Alright, so we're gonna start today though kind of along this line. We're gonna be talking about what's called "the new normal." So here's something about life that I know: I know that change is normal. Every day is an opportunity for us to experience change, and we do. No day is exactly like the one before and every day something is different. It always cracks me up when people say they hate change because most people really love change at some level. I think we get these little phrases, we hear people say "oh, I hate change" and we think "oh, that's a good phrase. I'm gonna use that one," and we all start using this phrase that really means nothing and really doesn't mean what we are. And I want to talk about this today because when we start getting into this place of saying we hate change, just because there's some uncomfortable parts about it, we're creating something very different. 

02:09 

So for the most part, people really do enjoy change. We love the variety of foods that we get to eat and most people, me included, don't love a peanut butter sandwich every single day for lunch, right? Most of us want to mix it up a little bit and most of us want to have different conversations with the people that we love. If we all convened at home in the evening and had the exact same conversation every night, we would get so bored with it. We love the diversity of having new things to chat about and taking a trip to somewhere we haven't been before. And that's not to say we don't love the food we ate yesterday or the discussion we had yesterday, or the trip we took last year. But the vast majority of us love to mix it up a bit. They say that variety is the spice of life, and yet so many people consistently and constantly tell themselves that they hate change. So let's take that thought and let's put it in a thought model, shall we? Let's see what we create in our lives when we think the thought that we hate change. 

03:13 

So the circumstance of our thought model is going to be any new circumstance. So let's say working from home with the COVID-19 pandemic, right, just because that's current right now. If your thought is "I hate change," the feeling you're going to create is resistance, right? There's lots of feelings you could create, but that's one that I'm gonna pull out because that's the first one that shows up for me when I say that I hate something. So the feeling that I have is resistance. My actions that resistance creates then is that I don't engage, I hold back, I get a bad attitude. And the ultimate result is that I don't change. The whole situation is unsuccessful and change doesn't happen or change is miserable. No wonder I can start believing that I hate change. I created that with my thought. Because here's the deal:.what we think, we create. It's that simple and that complicated at the same time. When we really come to understand that what we think is what gets created, we can feel a lot of empowerment. When it gets difficult is when we don't take the time to figure out what our thoughts are that we're having. And this can be really tough. 

04:31 

And one reason is that so many of our thoughts come so quickly or unconsciously that we're not fully aware of them before  they have already created feelings and actions. But the first thing we have to come to understand is that our thoughts are creating our experience with every situation we encounter. When we start taking responsibility for that, for our thoughts, then we can start moving in the direction that we want to. 

05:01 

So let's head back to this concept of "a new normal." There's so much talk right now about the "new normal" that we're moving into after this pandemic, and it's become a catchphrase that a lot of us are like, "okay, stop already with the 'new normal,'" but I want to talk about the amazingness that this can be. Okay, this phrase really intrigues me and the reason is that really when we think about it, every single day is a new normal. Every day we are having new experiences and needing to make adjustments to our lives. Sometimes there are seemingly big adjustments and sometimes they're much smaller, but we're constantly making course adjustments and that is the nature of life. That is actually what's normal. Change is normal. Like having things happen to us all the time, that is normal. 

05:55 

But let's talk about normal a little bit and really what our mind seems to think that is. Because what may seem completely normal for me may seem completely abnormal to you. So I have a sister in California and we visit each other a few times a year. So we stay at each other's houses for a week or so at a time. And we have very different ways of doing things. One of us likes to keep the dishes clean in the dishwasher and leave the dirty dishes in the sink and then load them all at once. And the other one of us likes to immediately unload the clean dishes and then load them as they get dirty. So which of these is normal? It depends on whose house we're at, right? Neither is good or bad. Neither is better or worse. It's just different. And what's normal for me isn't normal for her. So what is "normal?" It's completely subjective. It may be normal for one person to shower every day and completely normal for another person to shower every other day. 

06:51 

So first of all, let's embrace the understanding that everyone's normal is completely different. And learning not to judge but rather to just accept and embrace and love others is one of the first big things that we are working with here. 

07:08 

So now that we've talked about "normal," let's talk about "new." Who doesn't love new, right? A new car, a new house, a new outfit, a new baby, a new friend. Obviously I'm talking all about good stuff, but there's so much to adore about things that are new. New things give us a different perspective on life. I remember when I went from driving a minivan to driving my little Subaru Outback. It felt so different and it was fun and it was exciting. I was closer to the ground and things looked very different from that angle and they felt very different because it was closer to the ground. I could take corners a little bit faster, and I felt I could maneuver it easier. I loved the new car. It completely changed my perspective and my experience while driving. Wearing a new outfit for me just makes me feel a little bit fancy, right? I'm the kind of person who loves the variety of wearing something different all the time and mixing it up with a new shirt or cute new boots. It's just fun for me to get to work with something different in my wardrobe. 

08:14 

So "normal" is great because it feels comfortable, and "new" is great because it's fun and exciting. But somehow when we put those two words together and say the "new normal," we get all uncomfortable, as if things are horrible and getting worse. The "new normal," it sounds so daunting, doesn't I think? Especially the way that we've been using it lately with the pandemic and coming out of it. It's kind of like somehow we think that everything that is wonderful and great is now going to be miserable and uncomfortable all of the time with this "new normal." 

08:54 

But guess what? That's just a thought. It's 100% just a thought. I think this is what it comes down to: when we have time to plan and prepare and we think it's something we want, we love and embrace change and think of the new normal as an amazing and wonderful thing. Think about a couple getting married or expecting their first baby. Talk about a new normal, right? In both of those situations everything possible is changing. Everything in life is different than it was before and yet we look forward to it. We even decide to make those changes on purpose. We don't hate change in those situations. We embrace change. We plan for change. We look forward to change and we're excited for change. 

09:39 

See it's all in what we think about what the change is. It's not the circumstance. It's what we think about the circumstance. If we were anticipating getting to work from home for several months, we could get excited about it. We could look forward to having more time to ourselves to sleep or to read or to exercise because we're not going to have to commute anymore. We would think how great it would be to be in pajama bottoms all day because no one would see us below the waist. We would love that we could still eat lunch and then have time for a walk before we needed to be working again. 

10:13 

But when change comes unanticipated and quickly, we tend to freak out. And this is what our primitive brain does: it freaks out when things are unexpected, even if those things are great, right? Because remember, our primitive brain does three major things for us and it's what we call the "motivational triad." These things are is that it wants to help us avoid pain. The second thing it wants to help us seek pleasure. And the third thing is it wants to conserve energy. Now, these three things can be amazing and these three things can be detrimental. Amazing because our primitive brain protects us and automates things so that we have energy to devote to other things and it keeps us alert for real danger. But detrimental because it can put us in mindless mode where we really don't think about our thoughts and our feelings and our actions, and also because it creates danger where there really isn't danger. 

11:17 

So when a situation like COVID pandemic occurs our primitive brain freaks out, thinks "danger" everywhere we go and every new change tends to feel like a serious challenge. Now I'm not saying that the COVID hasn't been dangerous, I've talked about all the effects of the pandemic and of being confined to our homes, right? We get so much resistance from our brain because It wants things to be easy. It doesn't want to have to invest energy in creating new processes, right? So thank you, primitive brain, for being so efficient, but no thank you. Having to work from home is not a dangerous situation. Different, yes. Unexpected, yes. Requiring adjustments, yes. As a teacher, I have felt that and I've experienced that, right? But it's not horrible and dangerous. 

12:14 

If we were told in January to expect to start working from home in March, we would have prepared and it wouldn't have seemed so crazy or felt so uncomfortable. But having it sprung on us like it was, for example, we left school on Friday, thinking we were coming back on Monday, and then we didn't, right? So our primitive brain freaks out and makes us think that it's horrible. But it's not, it's just new and different and unexpected. Things that our primitive brain doesn't even like. And what can happen to so many of us is that we just keep repeating these thoughts that this is a horrible thing. We nurture them and we pet them and we feed them yummy treats and we get very comfortable with the thought that this is a horrible thing. So when we think about the aspects of this continuing on, our brain continues to freak out. But really this kind of change is just a part of life. It happens to everyone at some point or another. It just usually doesn't happen to everyone at the same time, right? 

13:22 

When my dad's cancer blew up and he got sick enough that he couldn't live on his own anymore, we made a decision and we had him move from Idaho to my home in Utah in a matter of six or seven hours. Life changed drastically. We got a daughter completely moved out of a bedroom. My dad packed up and driven to my home in one afternoon and an evening. It all happened quickly. It was a major life change. And so many of you, if not all of you, have also had a huge life change happen quickly as well. And our primitive brain can freak out a little bit. But here's the deal: if we can recognize that the emotion of freaking out is coming from a thought, not the circumstance, we realize we don't have to freak out at all. Even if things did happen quickly and everything changed in our lives in a matter of hours, like meant for many of us it did with this COVID, we can learn to change our disaster thoughts into opportunity thoughts. Then we don't get so freaked out about the changes happening around us. 

14:30 

But that takes our prefrontal cortex stepping in and creating thoughts on purpose rather than letting our primitive brain think all the thoughts that it wants to have. Okay? And this takes work and intention, especially if your primitive brain is so very good at thinking disaster thoughts. But when we realize that our freaking out about this new normal is optional, that we can think of it as an opportunity instead of a disaster, then we can start to feel empowered instead of feeling like a victim. I see so many people around me who are freaking out still about this "new normal," right? All they can see is that it's going to be a disaster and that life on the other side is going to be horrible. Not just now, but like way in the future. They can't see anything positive coming from this. 

15:23 

But what if instead we start to think of this as an amazing opportunity? The week before we got out of school, I watched the  movie "Hidden Figures" with my study skills classes at school. And one thing that I love about that movie is that times are changing and the women learn to see the opportunity and to change with what's going on. All of the human computers, all of the women down in that office who worked and did all the computing, they're being replaced with machine computers. And these people had to adjust. All of the women working in the computing department of NASA had to start adjusting their skills to keep up with the advancement of technology. And this pandemic is doing the same thing to us, but not just to one department at a time...to the whole company at the same time, right? 

16:15 

So the whole world is having to go through this shift all at once rather than just like little individual peoples. So not just to some people in our society, as a family member gets ill or passes away or receives a mental illness diagnosis or they get laid off their job, this is happening to everyone in the world at the same time. And this is what makes this seem so extra huge and like such a disaster. Whereas generally we have to situations in onesies and twosies, now it's everyone at the same time making major life adjustments. Whereas societal progress generally happens slowly, this time it's happening very quickly and to every department at the same time. It's not like companies have been implementing working at home safely for the last year and then they slowly implemented in. This happened over a constant change both big and small in a short time period. Progress through change, right? And isn't it amazing to see and experience progress that might have taken five years to implement through a careful business plan were implemented over a weekend and many people are finding that things are actually working better now than they were before. 

17:41 

So this new normal, if we choose to see the opportunities that come through the challenges, rather than looking for the disasters, we will see some amazing things. Like dolphins in the canals of Venice, right? Like the Himalayas, which haven't been visible because of pollution for many, many years. Like companies saving thousands and thousands of dollars on supplies and electricity and space they realize they don't really need. Like families cutting their automotive costs because no one is commuting. Like parents and children spending time playing games and going for bike rides and learning to cook food together. Will there be challenges with the changes? For sure, but there will always, always also be opportunities. 

18:33 

A friend pointed out to me the other day that in a year we'll probably all be reminiscing about the COVID time and how we wish we could go back to when things were slower and easier and we spent more time with the people we love. Funny, right? I totally laughed, but it is so true. Often we get so caught up in the disaster that we don't see the opportunity until after it has already passed us by. Wouldn't it be amazing to train your brain to start seeing the opportunity now? To learn how to appreciate better the challenges when they are happening rather than only afterwards, if at all? 

19:11 

So here's the deal. We are happy when we are growing. We are growing when we're progressing. We're progressing when we're going through challenges. And if we really want to live our most fulfilling lives, it will serve us well to learn to see the opportunities in this new normal rather than dreading the disasters. There's so much contentment to be found in embracing the change rather than resisting. 

19:40 

So remember the model that we did at the beginning about change. Let's take another look at it and see what happens. So the old model that we have was the circumstance was any new circumstances and we were using, like, working from home with the COVID-19 pandemic, right? The thought was, "I hate change." The feeling that created was resistance. The action that comes from that resistance is we don't engage, we hold back, we have a bad attitude. And then the result is that we don't change. And the whole situation is unsuccessful. The change doesn't happen or we're miserable through the whole time, right? No wonder we hate change. We reinforce that thought that "I hate change." But what if we learn, rather than just to so quickly spout off the phrase, "I hate change" like so many of us do, what if we started to change that thought? 

20:34 

Let's look at that in a new thought model and see what happens. So again, the circumstance of working at home with COVID all of a sudden, right? The thought is "change is kind of exciting." The feeling for me that that creates is curiosity, like how is this gonna be exciting? What's gonna happen? So my action line is gonna be, I'm just gonna start asking questions. I'm going to engage in what's happening and I'm gonna start looking for opportunity. And the result is that I'm going to find new opportunities and experiences. Change is going to be exciting because I'm going to see all the wonderful benefits that are  coming from it. Changing our thoughts changes our whole experience, I promise you. 

21:19 

Now it's a lot more, oftentimes a lot more complicated than just changing a thought because that old thought of "I hate change" is so ingrained. It's that path in the forest, right? That just has been walked so many times that now it's totally easy and we can walk it with our eyes closed. Your primitive brain is going to immediately go to "I hate change, I hate change." And it's gonna do it before you're even aware of it. So getting to a new place where we could exchange out that thought with change is exciting, it takes some work and it takes some effort but it will come with time. We just have to be consistent and persistent, right? 

22:02 

So what about this new normal will be amazing for you? What in your life has improved and will be better and different in your future? Thinking that change is exciting helps us to go to that place and helps us to create that place. Whereas thinking that change is horrible, that we hate change, it doesn't create that place that we have to look forward to, right? If you have found yourself stuck in resisting the new and exciting normal, I can help you to identify those thoughts that are keeping you stuck. And I can help you to recognize thoughts you're having that will help you to move forward into opportunity. That's part of what I do as a life coach. I help you learn to manage your thoughts so that you can have a better life experience. I help you learn how to manage them by helping you see them. Very often we just don't even see our thoughts first, right? So I help you see them and then I help you manage them. I don't help you to be more worthy. That's not possible because your worth is unchanging and always has been. But your ability to embrace that worthiness and to manage your mind around the experiences you encounter is a huge piece of experiencing life the way that you want to. 

23:26 

So there you have it, my friends. Let's see this "new normal" as an amazing opportunity for growth and progress and a better life. If you need some help with this, contact me and let's get to work. The investment of time and money and effort that you make in your life is so worth it. I promise you that because you are worth it and having a better life experience is up to you. It's your choice. So I say bring on the new normal. We've all learned things through this that can change us for the better if we choose. Okay, I love growing up. Love it. And I hope that you are enjoying the process as well because there's a lot to love. Okay, my friends, that's going to do it for us this week. Have a great week and I'll talk to you next Monday. Bye. 

24:20 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale .com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.