00:00 

Hey there, and welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 136, "How Coaching Helps." 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 

Hello there, my sweet friends. Welcome to the podcast. I'm so happy to have you here with me today. We are just going to jump right in. My week has been really busy with a lot of coaching, coaching of my coach coaching me, and a lot of self coaching, and I wanted to walk you through the process today of what I've been going through so that you can see how working with a life coach helps. I know that for a lot of people, a lot of y'all probably, the concept of working with a life coach is a new one. You may have been listening to this for a while, but you may be, "yeah, I'm not quite sure what it would be like to work with a coach, why it would be really important, how it would help me." So I'm going to walk you through my own process today, just so you can see how it has been working for me and how it's been helping me so much in my own personal growth. 

01:19 

So often when I tell people that I'm a life coach, and then when I mention that I work with a life coach, so many of them are surprised. It's like they have this idea that as a life coach I should have it all worked out and know exactly how to manage everything. But one thing I've learned very clearly is that my ability to coach others and my ability to manage my life and my mind the way that I want to are two completely different skillsets. So when I find myself spinning in mind drama, it actually doesn't have anything to do with my ability to help others recognize and get out of their own mind drama. So two very different things. Of course I'm a human, right, and I'm going to have all of my own things to work through and I am working through them and that is the process that to me is so brilliant and amazing and what I want to share with you today. So this is like the same concept as a doctor having their own doctor or a marriage and family therapist having their own therapist for their own marriage troubles or a psychologist going to another psychologist for mental health concerns. All of these people can be highly skilled in their craft and yet we just don't see our own stuff. We don't see our own brains very clearly at all. 

02:36 

So one reason for this is because we are with our brains every day, all day. Everything in there can seem totally normal for us. Of course that's what we think. Is there another way to think? We don't have another frame of reference of what is normal and what is not because for us it's all normal because it's what's always been there. It's what is right and very often has been right for most of our lives. And because it's so normal, we don't even see it anymore. It's like that stack of books that has been on your nightstand for so long that you haven't really seen them for months, if not years, right? It's still sitting there, but our brain now looks past it every time our eyes land on it because it isn't relevant to what we need to survive at this time. So for these reasons I love working with my own life coach. Do I do self-coaching the way that I've taught you to? Absolutely. I do regular thought downloads and really strive to see the thoughts that are going on in my head. But very often I don't even know what to start looking for until after I've worked with my coach and she's given me a heads up as to what's going on in my my own head. Or we'll work on something. I'll work on it during the week. I'll bring back my new position and my new perspective of where I am. We'll work on it. I'll go back and work on it again. It's just this process of continual clarification. 

04:08 

So as I mentioned before today, I want to share with you a bit of a personal coaching situation that I'm currently working through so that you can see the value for me in working with my life coach and how she's helped me to see what's going on in my own head so that I can become more aware. So I recently had an experience where I was in the same room with someone who was telling another person about an experience that they had had and they were being very open with their conversation. It's not like they were worried about me hearing so I wasn't eavesdropping. But here's the piece for me that has given me an opportunity for self-awareness and a need to work with my coach. As I was listening to this conversation I was stepping into a very judgmental space and I could see myself doing it and I could feel the self-righteousness building inside my chest and I was struggling really hard to keep it in check. Now I really don't want to be a self-righteous judge-y person but sometimes I am and this was one of those times when I was. And try as I might to curb it, it was strong and I was having a hard time managing it. Like we talked about last week I kept asking myself "I wonder why? Why am I being so judge-y? Why is it that I'm feeling self-righteousness?" And I just felt like I couldn't nail it down. I felt as though I was stuck in this place and I couldn't tap into myself enough to figure out what was behind me being so judge-y and self-righteous. 

05:48 

So last week I took it to my coaching session with my coach. I love working with her because I can tell her all the ugly horrible thoughts going on in my head. I just put it all out there. Every thought that I had about this person and what they were doing and what I thought about it and she doesn't judge me and all that. She just gathers all of my thoughts so that she can help me see them and I love that in the training. She's trained in the same way that I am. That's one thing that we're really trained to do, is to not be judge-y in that situation as a coach, to stand back, and just create space for you to see all of your own thoughts. So it's always amazing to me that things I will say out loud to her I don't even hear but she does. And when she repeats them to me I'm always surprised. Or she'll help me combine several thoughts that I have going on and see what they're creating when they're all hooked together, or she questions my thoughts and helps me understand what's behind them. 

06:53 

And when I had this coaching session with her it was such a great session. She really helped me to see how the judge-y thoughts I was having were based in my thoughts of right and wrong. They were in a space where I was feeling that I was on higher moral ground and she really helped me to discover the thoughts I was having that made me feel like I was right and the other person was wrong. And this created a space for us to talk pretty deeply about what it means for me to put myself on higher moral ground and how that actually creates the opposite of what I really want to create in my life, and I'm showing up exactly the opposite of how I want to show up in my life. And so this led into discovery about my religious beliefs and why I want to have them and then why I actually have them. I don't want the religious beliefs that I hold dear so that I can be on higher moral ground and stand around and judge other people. I want them so that I can become a more loving, accepting, Christlike person. And this coaching session really gave me a lot to think about with regards to my motives for living the gospel. 

08:11 

So, a few days later, and several thought downloads later, I took this information from my coaching session and what I had been building on and was able to use it to create even greater self-awareness. And I want to read parts of this thought download that I did so that you can see the process more clearly. So, starting my own thought model right now, I wrote, "I'm realizing that so much of my living the gospel is founded in fear. Fear that I won't make it to the Celestial Kingdom, that I'll be punished, that God will be disappointed, that I'm not doing it right, that I'm not good enough. I tend to be very stringent with living the Gospel because I've been afraid that I'll fall away and lose all the good in my life. And this living from a place of fear creates self-righteousness, which then makes me very judge-y. This is not the person I want to be, but it seems it's almost inevitable when I'm basing the foundation of my life in fear rather than love. I've always been so honed in on the belief that there is a right and a wrong, blessings for the right and punishments for the wrong. This is strong in me. I see how often I do things a certain way because I've been told or it's been implied that it was the right way to do it. I see how often I make decisions as a way to avoid punishment. I've always been very drawn to these concepts. 

09:36 

"So, I feel my relationship with God and Christ and my observance to Gospel principles has often been based on avoiding punishment than on truly developing a loving relationship with God and Christ. I do love them, but I believe my love for them is kept at a more shallow level because there is so much fear interspersed within our relationship. The fear has kept me from loving deeper and more cleanly and unconditionally. I think this fear has also kept me from embracing my own self worth, worth that it is truly unconditional as well. And this keeps me from fully embracing myself, my potential, and my calling. It holds me back. I think the big piece for me to walk away with here is that as I really learn to love God and not be scared of God and the punishments, that my own self-worth and belief will increase as well. I will let go of my self-righteous thoughts and behaviors and stop judging myself and others so much. When I truly learn to love God, then I can truly learn to love God, others, and myself more fully. So how do I let go of the fear? Well I start by looking at it. Start seeking to understand it. Start getting really curious about it. Bring it into the light and I bet I'll start to see that so many of the underlying thoughts and beliefs that are creating the fear are things I actually don't even believe anymore." 

11:07 

And then I created a list of thoughts that were leading me to this place of fear. So here's a list of thoughts: "God won't love me if I break the commandments. I'll never get to the Celestial Kingdom if I'm not always doing my best. God will be disappointed in me. I'll never truly be happy if I'm not living the commandments. It's easy to slip into inactivity or apostasy. I have to be an example for others. It's my responsibility to set the example. If I'm not setting the example, other people won't make it. People depend on me to set the example. God depends on me to set the example. Eternity is a long time, don't mess it up. Christ will have died in vain if I don't make it. I have been given too much to waste it." 

12:01 

What was that? I didn't write that in my thoughts, but I read through those and I'm just like, "what, what is that?" I don't even believe that anymore. I mean, I've grown so much in the past few years that I read through those and I'm like, "I don't even know where those come from," right? But they're thoughts that are in my head. 

12:22 

Okay, so now continuing on with my thought download. Interesting thing, my current understanding of God and His love for me and all of His children doesn't support any of these statements. These are all outdated, antiquated thoughts that may have served me at one time, but they no longer do. Or maybe they've actually never served me. Maybe they've kept me from truly developing the relationship that I desire with God. All they do is cut off connection between God and me and others and me. They put me into a place of hierarchy with others. They create disconnect. If I want to feel connection with God, here are thoughts I believe will help create that: "God always loves me even when I'm human. In fact, He loves me because I'm human. God created me to be human. He knows I will always make mistakes. I don't have to be perfect to make it to the Celestial Kingdom. God is never disappointed in me. He's always loving and supporting and accepting and encouraging. I can make mistakes and still be happy and still get to the Celestial Kingdom. Getting to the Celestial Kingdom is built on a foundation of mistakes. If I keep trying, I will never slip into inactivity or apostasy. I don't have to be an example. I just get to be me living the gospel. My responsibility is to learn to live the gospel from a place of love for God. Other people are responsible for their own relationship with God. I'm not responsible for other people making it back to God. I depend on God. He doesn't depend on me. God has given me an eternity to progress and figure it out. Because of Christ, I can make it. Nothing is ever wasted if I learn from it." 

14:22 

Then I continued with one last paragraph. "I have allowed fearful thoughts to hold me back from true submission. Fear keeps me from trusting God fully and wholly. Fearful thoughts create hierarchy. Loving thoughts create equality. Fearful thoughts create self-righteousness. Loving thoughts create acceptance." 

14:46 

Okay, and that was the end of my thought download. This is why thought downloads are so valuable. Now, I'm not saying that all of those new thoughts that I created are doctrinally correct. I'm not saying that they're all true. But they were thoughts that I wrote down that were like "how do I want to create connection with God? How do I want to feel toward God?" And those were thoughts that I was able to come up with that helped me to feel more connected with God. So that was my thought download I learned some very insightful things about myself. But my favorite part of this exercise was actually writing down those two lists of the thoughts that caused me to feel fear. Because I was blown away by the thoughts going on in my head and just thinking "what is that? I don't even believe those anymore," right? And then writing thoughts that I actually believe now that are based in love. 

15:48 

But here's what happens those old fear-based thoughts have been sitting in my brain for so long that I didn't even acknowledge them anymore, much like the stack of books on our nightstand, right? But even though they weren't being acknowledged. They were still running the show, taking up space in the back of my brain, and they were creating feelings of fear and self-righteousness. When I pulled them out and looked at them, I saw very clearly that they are not thoughts I believe anymore or that I want even. It's like looking at that stack of books and realizing that you're not interested in reading them anymore, or you've already read them all. I've moved past those thoughts; those thoughts are not serving me. They're not helping me to step into the better version of myself that I want to step into. They're taking up space in my brain that can be so better utilized with the new thoughts. 

16:42 

But had I not worked with my coach and then followed up with self-coaching and thought downloads, I would have never  discovered this treasure trove of information of what's going on in my head. And how can I start weeding out thoughts if I don't know that they're there? It's been such an insightful week for me, a week of great self awareness for me and I feel a huge shift in how I am viewing God and myself and my experience with the world. And, you know, maybe that was a little bit vulnerable to share that. I don't know. But seeing my progress, I wanted you to be able to see how coaching played into that. Coaching with my coach and also the self-coaching. Now had I not done the self-coaching I could have just taken where I was back to my coach and probably had would have gotten to a lot of the same places, but doing the self-coaching in between allows me to kind of speed up the process, and I love that. 

17:44 

So I want to share one more coaching experience that I've had in the last few months, and I think I have shared it or made reference to it, but it was also a very powerful coaching experience for me. I'm going to start off by saying that I was never a person who grew up wanting to start my own business someday. I didn't have entrepreneurial dreams, and I've never had a sales job where I've learned basic selling techniques and mindset, and putting myself out there as a salesperson always seemed so risky, right? It didn't ever seem like anything that felt comfortable or something that I was even interested in. So while working with my life coach Bex several months ago, she was coaching me on my business and some of the things that hold me back, reasons why I don't make more offers to coach people, that sort of thing, and I just very matter-of-factly mentioned that I've never been a risk taker. Even when I was a teenager, I was never the sort of person to take risks and push the boundaries. It's just how I am. It was a fact, and I love that Bex pulled that thought out, that thought that I considered to be a complete fact for my whole life, 52, almost 53 years, right? And she asked me to look at it and question it. 

19:02 

And at first, I started telling her all the evidence I had in my life of how I was not a risk taker. And she stopped me, and she helped me consider that the statement, "I'm not a risk taker," was a thought and not a circumstance or a fact. And I was a little bit taken aback, but once I started looking at it as a thought, rather than a fact, my entire perspective changed. All of a sudden, I could start to see all of these different places and times in my life where I have been a risk taker. In fact, I was sharing this experience with my best friend from high school a few weeks ago and she was shocked. She kind of laughed a little bit and she said that she had always considered me one of the people she knows who takes a lot of risks. Fascinating, right? I've been living with this belief my whole life that I didn't take risks when actually I've been taking a lot of risks. I can't help but wonder how things in my life would be different had I spent 50 plus years believing I was a risk taker. 

20:16 

Now I'm definitely not beating myself up about it, but it's so intriguing to me to consider how I might have engaged with the world differently if I believed in my ability and my desire to take risks. And now I find that embracing this new thought that" I am a risk taker," I find I'm having huge shifts in how I approach my business and also online dating, by the way. But that's a story for another day. But when I think of myself as a risk taker, I feel much more courageous and then I act in courageous ways and I do things that were scary to me before. And when my actions change, so do my results. I will say that because of this one shift in thinking, I am starting to see results in my business that have eluded me when I believed that I was not a risk taker. But notice the thought "I'm a risk taker" makes me feel courageous. Then I act in courageous ways, right, I do things that that I didn't do before. And then my results start changing. So you see the whole thought model working out right there. 

21:28 

So there's two recent experiences that I've had with coaching that have completely shifted my perspective and how I'm engaging with the world. They are helping me to show up more the person that I want to show up with and this is the power of coaching. It can help you see things that you are creating with your own thoughts that are not what you want to create. It has helped me see thoughts that I didn't even know existed, that were holding me back from becoming the person I really want to be. This is how coaching can help you if you're feeling stuck, like you don't know how to move forward, like you've moved into a life of insecurity or insignificance. Coaching can help you identify the thoughts that are keeping you stuck. It can help you see things from a new perspective and get you moving again. Coaching really is one of my favorite things in life. I love coaching you and I love getting coached. 

22:24 

As mentioned at the beginning, those are two very different skill sets. As a life coach I will always be working through my own stuff, my own thoughts. I'm a human and that's what humans do. But even though I'm not perfect as a human, I do  have a skill set that can help me to help you work through your own stuff as well, your own thoughts that are holding you back and keeping you stuck, just as my coach is a human working through all of her stuff. She still has a great skill set and ability to help me. 

22:56 

So I want to invite you today to set up a free consult with me. I would love to hear where you are and help you understand how coaching can help you move forward. It's definitely a commitment and an investment in time and energy and money, but from my own experience I will tell you it is an investment worth making and I know that I am worth investing in. My life is of value and moving into this better more self-aware space has been worth every investment I have made in life coaching. And yes, I will tell you, I have invested a lot of time and energy and money in life coaching over the past five years. And I will also tell you I don't regret one minute nor one penny of it. It has moved me forward at a pace that I would not have moved forward at without this. It's given me insight to move deeper into who I am and what I want to create. So now I would love for you to join me on this path of self-awareness and growth. I can help you get the results you feel are eluding me right now. Are you in? Okay, if so, set up your free consult at tanyahale.com and let's get to work, shall we? This middle-age life thing...it can be so amazing when we get out of stock and start moving forward. This is the brilliance of middle-age we have so much to bring to the table once we get out of stuck. 

24:35 

Okay, it's gonna do it, my friends. If you are enjoying this podcast please share it with people, and all your friends, all your family, you know, all the people that you love and that you feel could benefit from it. If you have not yet subscribed, do that. And if you haven't left me a review, I would love to have one of those as well in my cache of reviews from you. So that's gonna do it. I wish you all the best this week. I pray for all good things to come to you and I pray that your ability to be more self-aware will increase and help you progress. Okay have an awesome week and I'll see you next time. Ciao. 

25:17 

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!