00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 121, "Self-Certain." 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. 

00:22 

Hey there, welcome to the podcast today. This is Tanya. Happy to have you with me. I hope that you are living your best life ever, right? And that doesn't mean that everything is always great and wonderful and amazing, but it does mean that we are managing our minds through it and we are coming out resilient and strong, and in the end we walk out a better person than we went in of all these situations. And that is my hope and my dream for you and that's what I am working to help you accomplish in your own life. And I hope that you are finding that. 

00:58 

So today we're going to be talking about being self-certain. So being self-certain may be a new concept for y'all, at least the wording of it. And I'm going to get to share it with you today because I believe that being certain in ourselves is a very powerful place to be. We are living in a world right now where we talk a lot about uncertainty. There is so much uncertainty in the world between being in the middle of a worldwide COVID pandemic to so much civil unrest throughout the world to presidential elections in the United States that are seemingly polarizing people like never before. 

01:41 

So to be uncertain means to be filled with doubt, maybe even some skepticism, suspicion, or having reservations and all of these circumstances create uncertainty. But isn't it funny that we feel as though we have any certainty in our lives at all? Because really, nothing about tomorrow is guaranteed. And yet we go about our lives making plans and preparing for things in the future because we feel certain that they're going to happen. And we should. But if there's anything that this pandemic has taught us, it's that our future really isn't certain at all. My sisters and nieces and I were pretty certain that we were going to go on a cruise this last June. We had paid for the cruise. We had paid for our flights. We had gotten an Airbnb for the night before we boarded the ship. We were pretty convinced, pretty certain that we were going. But just like so many of you, it turns out that we didn't end up going after all. We were certain and yet it didn't happen. In so many things in life, we just cannot be certain. 

02:52 

The reason we can't be certain is because there are circumstances that come about that we have zero control over. In all of our lives we had no control over the circumstance of the COVID pandemic. And that changed a lot of plans that people were certain were going to happen. Marriages were postponed, trips were canceled, family reunions were rescheduled, jobs were lost, jobs were gained, kids were home, work circumstances changed drastically for some of us. And we tend to have this idea that we can plan them. But as any mid-lifer can attest, it doesn't really happen that way. I don't know one person my age who feels as though their life has turned out how they thought it would when they were younger and single. I know that I would have never thought in a million years that I would have gotten divorced. I've always been a fixer and someone who didn't like to quit, right? So it never even crossed my mind that I would be an option. 

03:56 

I have friends who have lost spouses or children to death. That definitely wasn't on a plan for their life. Children leave the church. Children get involved with drugs or alcohol or other addictive substances. Teenagers may have an unplanned pregnancy. You might even have a pregnancy that produces triplets. We may get into a serious car accident. Our best friend might have an affair with our husband. There is just no end to the circumstances that may come up in our life. And these circumstances, we don't have any control over them. This is the uncertainty in life. We are uncertain of what circumstances are going to come into our lives. We have no control over the circumstances we will encounter. And this is always 100% true. 

04:42 

So let me ask you this. If you've been with me for a while, you will know the answer. What do we have control over? We have control over every line in the thought model, with the exception of the circumstance line. We have control over our thoughts  regarding the circumstance, we have control over the feelings that those thoughts create, and the actions brought about by our thoughts, and ultimately the results in our lives. And this is exactly why we can have self certainty. Because though we can't control the circumstances, we can learn to control ourselves within the circumstance. I can learn to be certain that I will respond in ways that align with my values at least most of the time, right? I'm not perfect, you are not perfect, none of us are always going to make decisions that align with our values all the time. But we can know that we're going to do it most of the time, right? When difficult circumstances come into our lives, we can be certain, be self-certain because of the person we are and what we know about ourselves. 

05:54 

For example, what do I know about myself? What am I certain of? Here's some things: I know that I am strong both physically and emotionally, and to me this means that I can engage with difficult circumstances and not "fall apart," right? I know I can get through tough things. I know that because I've done it in the past and I know it because I'm doing it in the present, and I have complete confidence that I can do it in the future. I'm self-certain. Here's another thing. I know that I am smart and capable of learning anything I set my mind to. And to me this means that I may encounter things that I have to learn to progress my business or a relationship or my life, and I know I have not only the mental capacity to learn what I need to but also the mental strength to figure it out and not quit. 

06:49 

Another thing: I know that I'm a hard worker and I'm dependable. To me this means that when I make a decision to do something, I will get it done. When I decided to start this podcast, I really decided that every week I would be putting out a new episode and that was the end of it in my mind. I know this about myself and it made me self-certain that once I started, I wouldn't just quit on a whim when it got difficult. I knew that I was all in. I also know that I'm a problem-solver. I'm a fixer. I know that when tough things come up that I work to figure them out. I don't quit easily and I love the thrill of figuring something out. I know about myself that I love coaching and I know that I'm good at it. Because I know this about myself, I'm not afraid to put my skills out there to help other people. Get me on a call with anyone and I can help them see their mind more clearly and help them gain more clarity of their situation. I am certain of it. 

07:56 

I am also certain that I know that I'm independent. My mother raised me that way and I'm so thankful for it. During a lot of tough marriage years, it kept me from drowning. And since I've been divorced, it has helped me move forward without hesitation. I know that I can do anything by myself if I need to. Something else: I know I'm certain that God loves me and that my worth is non-negotiable. These certainties give me a lot of courage and strength to keep me moving forward when things get tough. And I love that in the last year or so, these two concepts have deepened within me and I feel so much more grounded because of that greater depth. I know that I am deeply spiritual and that I listen to the Spirit. I am really learning to trust God more and more. And I've spent most of my life realizing that I was following the Spirit in prior decisions. I may not have always realized it at the time, but looking back I see that I have. And that makes me self-certain that I will continue to do this in the future. 

09:06 

Alright, so those are just some examples, but aren't those great? I loved coming up with that list and realizing what I am self-certain about. And this is why I know that when tough circumstances come into my life that I will be okay. That's not saying I won't have tough days or weeks, or that I won't get whiny or complain or make mistakes, but it is saying that at the end of the day I know I am certain that I will come out on top. I'm certain of it, right? And because I'm certain of it I can let go of a lot of the worry and stress and anxiety that could plague me if I was less certain in these areas. 

09:47 

Now obviously every person, every one of us is in a different place in what we are certain about in our own lives. I would highly encourage you to sit down and make your own self certainty list. This list doesn't mean that we think we do it perfectly all of the time, because obviously we won't. But it does mean that we have created enough pattern behaviors in our lives that we are pretty darn certain how the story will end, even if we don't know how we're going to get there to that ending. I would even suggest you make a list of things you would like to be certain about and then start looking for evidence in your life of how you have done these things because there will be evidence. When you tell your brain to start looking for it, your brain will start finding it. And sometimes the voices of self uncertainty can be pretty loud in our brains but shush them down for a bit and let the evidences of your self certainty be heard, because they are there. 

10:50 

So how do we get to this point of developing these certainties about ourselves? Once you started looking for them, we get to start building on them and even creating them if we don't feel they already exist. So where do all of these beliefs about ourselves come from? They just come from our brain. They come from our us deciding to think something enough times that our brain decides to believe them. Let's say that I decide that I'm beautiful. Who gets to decide if that's true or not? Me and really just me. And if I tell myself enough times that I'm beautiful, then I will start to believe it. When I create a thought such as this and I start to believe it, then it will create feelings of confidence or feelings of being self-assured. And when I feel confident, then it changes how I behave. I will speak up more. I will engage with others more. I will smile more. And this will all create a more beautiful me. It's a thought model in work, right? This is how we create more self certainty in our lives. We choose to think what we want to think about ourselves. 

12:03 

I know that can sound a little bit woo-woo, but it is absolutely true. Thoughts become things. Beliefs become behaviors. This is why we can live with self certainty in an uncertain world. Because we are certain in our ability to manage our minds and ourselves in any circumstance that we encounter. Circumstances will come and go. Some will be easy, some will be more difficult. But through them all, we get to choose what we think about ourselves in relation to them. The more we learn to manage our thoughts, the more we will respond the way we would like to during these uncertain times. And we learn to manage our thoughts better when we learn to be aware of our thoughts. 

12:50 

How do we learn to be aware of our thoughts? First, we have to start paying attention. I know for me I have started doing thought downloads and writing a lot and also working with a coach in order to be more aware of what is really going on in my brain. If you recall from previous podcasts, scientists estimate that we have about 60,000 thoughts a day and 95 percent of those thoughts are subconscious or unconscious thoughts. Meaning we aren't even aware that they're going on. This means that only about 3,000 thoughts a day are conscious ones. And 57,000 thoughts are going on behind the scenes and we're not aware of them. That's a heck of a lot of thoughts. And without many unconscious thoughts impacting our lives, there's a lot to discover about ourselves. A seemingly endless supply of thoughts, right? 57,000 thoughts a day. 

13:44 

So learning to pay attention to thoughts that are impacting our feelings and our first big step. And that happens most easily through working with a coach and self-coaching through thought downloads. So the more we become aware of our thoughts, the more we can start to understand why we do the things we do, why we feel the way we feel, and why our lives are the way that they are. And if we decide that those behaviors, those feelings, and results are not serving us, we can choose to start implementing new thoughts into our lives that serve us better. I believe that when circumstances are certain, it can be easy to be self-certain. When our children behave how they "should" behave, it is easy to predict my behaviors as well. When your spouse does all the "right" things, it's easy to be loving and kind like we want to be. When everyone we meet is kind in line at the store or on the road, it is easy for us to be kind and polite in return. 

14:50 

But when a circumstance is uncertain, this is when the rubber meets the road. This is where we get a true sense of who we are underneath all of the niceties. This is when we really see what we are made of. It's all of these amazing challenges that we get to work through that help us to gain more and more self certainty. The more we think the way we want to think, the more we feel the way we want to feel and the more we behave the way we want to behave, the more self-certain we will be that we will do it again in the future. And we get to create all of that by what we think. By learning to be aware of what is going on in our brain and managing it to create whatever we want, we can become more and more self-certain. 

15:45 

Working through this process can be daunting but you do not have to do it alone, right? This is what I do as your life coach. I help you learn to become aware of, and manage, your thoughts. I help you see what is going on inside your brain so you can decide which of those thoughts is serving you and which of your thoughts is not serving you. I can help you create self certainty. And growing up is the bomb. Love this process, this middle-age thing, don't you love it? It's like taking an old life and a new life, and middle-age is like the bridge between those. Everything that we knew about parenting and about our relationships and about life completely changes in middle-age as we move into the next big phase of our lives. I think it's amazing and such a beautiful, beautiful, engaging time. I hope you're loving it. 

16:42 

If you're not, give me a call, let's chat, because I can help you learn to love this time in your life. Alright, you can contact me at tanyahale.com to book a free 30 minute coaching session to get you started. I can coach you, I can answer questions, we can do whatever you want. Okay, but it's free to you because I would love to help you in this process of growing up into middle-age and loving it. 

17:09 

Alright, if I can ask one thing, if you feel this podcast is adding value to your life, please subscribe so you don't ever miss an episode. Leave me a review if you have not yet. I would love to have some reviews that will help other people be able to find the podcast as well. And go ahead and share this with your family and friends who you feel can benefit from this content. It's going to do it for me today, my friends. I wish you all the best, and I will talk to you next week. Bye. 

17:40 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for the podcast. 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.