00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 165, "I Would Never Act That Way." 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. 

00:19 

Alright, hello there, my friends, how you doing? So glad to have you here with me today. Thank you for showing up. I just want to encourage you, I did this last week, but when you hear things, whether it be this podcast or another podcast or you read something that touches your heart, that helps you see the world in a better and a more enlightened way, and when somebody comes to mind, will you share it with them, please? We need so much goodness in this world and it helps to share. It helps to share good things when you find them and good things when they touch your heart. I know that some of you are not big sharers. I always kind of have been a big sharer. I've always been somebody who, when I see something or hear something that I love, I love to share it with people. I know that not everybody's like that, but I would just like to encourage you to step into that a little bit. It might be a little bit uncomfortable, but I really feel that God can direct us to share information that we encounter with people who need it. There's so much good information out there. If you're like me, I've got about 20 podcasts that I follow on a fairly regular basis and I share stuff from them all the time. I think they're great. So that being said, welcome to the podcast. If you're new, glad to have you here. I hope that you do find some things here that are helpful for you and that help to impact your life in a way that it gives you information that you can make decisions that will take you to the place that you really want to be. 

01:54 

Alright, so we're gonna jump in today with episode number 164, "I Would Never Act That Way." Now, the reason that this has come up for me is because it seems like in the last few weeks I've talked to some people who are wanting to vent about some of these difficult people that we talked about a few weeks ago and they go on, and one phrase that it seems like I hear quite often is "I would never act that way." Alright, and I would imagine that you've heard that as well. You may have even said it. And you know what, it sounds so lovely right? Like, "I'm the standard of how we should all act and I would never act that way so nobody else should," right? It's incomprehensible to us because what? Because our behavior is always the right way, because we never make a mistake, because the way that we see the world is the only way to see it. I think it sounds lovely, but when we stand back and look at it, we go, "oh yeah, that sounds a little bit ridiculous," right? 

03:00 

But this is the other thing, when we make a statement like that, like "I would never act that way. I would never do that," we step into a very judgmental, self-righteous place. Now, I'm calling me out and I'm calling out you if this is you as well. This is judgmental and it is self-righteous. When we say "I would never do something," that's basically saying "I do it right and other people do it wrong." And sometimes we hear the phrase, like, you know, "people just don't do that." Well, my friends, I'm here to tell you that apparently people do because that person just did. Right? Again, it's a judge-y place that we use to appease our own discomfort. Our discomfort over not being able to manage our minds around their behaviors. They do something. We start getting all judge-y and self-righteous. We feel uncomfortable and we want them to change that discomfort that we feel about our own behaviors. When we become judge-y this way, we are putting ourselves in a one-up position. The underlying message is that "we are better than they are because," and then fill in the blanks, right? We often couch it in between phrases like, "well, who does that?" Which I've used, I will tell you. And "I just don't get it." And things like, "how can they not see..." whatever? We use these phrases that sound a little bit softer, but guess what? They're not. They're still judge-y. They're still self-righteous. 

04:38 

Okay? So I just want to tell you that this is very human behavior. If you don't ever do this, I would be like, "wow, you need to be my life coach," but then maybe if you were my life coach, you wouldn't understand why I do these things, right? But this is very human behavior. Our human brain constantly compares us to other people. in order to keep us safe in a tribal place, right? It wants to keep us in the tribe because that's where it's safe, that's where we're gonna have protection. So our brain is always looking to make sure that our behavior toes the line of what everybody else is doing and what's happening. So it's always comparing and that's fine. Our brain is gonna do what our brain does, but what we wanna do is become aware of  when our brain is doing it. And then we can just go, "oh, oh, oh, I see. Yeah, no, I don't wanna go that direction," and just redirect our brain. Your brain is always gonna come up with crap that you just don't believe at all. Or things that you don't want to do, or things you don't wanna say. Your brain's always gonna come up with it. And very often we'd redirect our brain just because our brain comes up with an idea does not mean that it's right and that we have to follow it. Right? 

05:51 

So let's look at how we show up when we have these kinds of thoughts. So let's say the circumstance is someone does something specific. I'm going to leave that a little bit vague, although if we were coaching, I would pull it in exactly to what the person did. But then we have the thought that says, "I would never do that." The feeling can be like a one-up or a superior or something like that. Our actions, we start to make more judgments. We look down on them. We may start to gossip. The result is that we act in ways that we most likely don't want to. So we say that "I would never act the way that they're acting," but then we start acting ways that we don't want to act. Our thoughts always create our reaction, our results. Right? So we have to start looking at...it sounds nice to go, "I would never do that. That's a horrible behavior." But it creates in us showing up in ways that we don't necessarily want to show up. 

06:49 

And here's the one thing about having these kinds of expectations of other people, and that's what these are. When we think "I would never do that," we are expecting them to act a different way. When we start saying they should, or they shouldn't do this, that's putting on expectations. And so here's what we want to say about expectations. They only bring us suffering. We are only punishing ourselves when we have expectations of other people. Here's why we cannot control the people, nor do we want to. Other people are going to keep being themselves no matter what. Guess what they're not good at? They're not good at being us. So when we say, "well, I would never do that," of course, they're not you. They're not me. They're not us. Right. And if they change their behavior, they're not going to change just to avoid our wrath. Is that what we want? For them to be dishonest about who they are and what they want just to make us happy? Because then they become very unhappy and dissatisfied about life, and is that really what we want? Do we want people not showing up as themselves? True connection comes into a relationship when both parties get to show up exactly as they are without the judgment of the other person and when they both accept the other person for who they are without expectation. That's when we create true, intimate connection and freedom in our lives. This is when we can really start to enjoy our lives when we let go of the expectations of other people of trying to control all the people. 

08:42 

Unconditional clean love means that we accept them as they are not as our expectations think that they should be. If we say that we love a person and yet we are constantly unhappy with who they are and what they do and and how they show up, I don't know that we really love them. We love a pretend version of them that we've created in our brain and that's not really them. If we love someone, we love them as is, all the broken bits, all the imperfect bits. We love them for that. 

09:22 

Now, can we make requests of people? Absolutely. But requests without expectations that they will conform. Right? If I make a request that I want something done, I have to let go of all the expectations that they're going to do it, and how I want. A request is just that. It's saying, "Hey, I would love it if you would do this." Ask them, "Hey, will you do this" Whatever. Right? But we cannot ask that with an expectation that they will conform. Will people sometimes make choices that will make us angry? Absolutely. Will people make choices that will sometimes make us sad? Absolutely. But we don't need to suffer when we add anger that they are not complying to our sadness or our request. Right? This doesn't mean we don't care about decisions that people we love may make that will bring them pain. But we have to allow them to make their own decision outside of our expectations. And when we accept their adultness and embrace who they are, who they're choosing to be, to include the choices they decide to make, then we can find a much more peaceful place. And guess what? Side benefits? So will they. 

10:54 

Now this isn't saying that we have to abandon our beliefs, and we definitely can set appropriate boundaries, but it is important that we clean up our judgment about them. This is the space in our lives where we really learn to value agency. You know that piece of God's plan that's so important, that the war in heaven was fought over? Yeah, yeah, that exact agency, that allows people to make their own choices, to walk their own paths, to learn their unique life lessons. Embracing another person's agency means letting go of our expectations for how they should behave, what they should be doing, how they should be feeling. We can learn to come from a place of love and acceptance when we learn to put away our manual.  Maybe we should even burn our manual. 

11:50 

Remember, oh, it's probably been about two or three months ago...I did a podcast on the manual. I don't have the number of that right now, but it's just a couple months back. So a manual is basically a book of rules or guidelines that we have for another person for how they should behave. And it seems like it would be so nice if all the people would read our manual and behave exactly how we expect them to. We think that sounds really nice, right? People would always act the way that we think they should act. They would always say the things that we think they should say. They would always do the things. We think that would be really nice until we have no connection with them because guess what? If they're following our manual, they're not really being them. If it's our manual and not theirs, if they are changing who they really are to appease you, they're not really being them and we cannot connect with someone who is not being them. If they're being the person that we want them to be, then they're not being the person that they want to be. 

12:59 

And I just need to say there's absolutely no upside to having expectations of other people. I know a lot of people will say, "well, if you don't have expectations, then they're not going to do what they're supposed to do." Who says what they're supposed to do? Who makes up that rule? You just made up that rule, right? You just made up the rule of how you think they're supposed to act. And that's not your job. That's not my job. It's not any of our job to decide how someone else is supposed to act. When we step into this space of expectation, we show up judge-y and self-righteous and they don't get to show up at all. Not as themselves, anyway. Expectations are really great at creating judgment, resentment, suffering, disconnection, and this is not exactly the recipe be for a healthy and an intimate relationship, my friends. 

13:55 

But here's the really, really good news about this. I get to show up however I want. Regardless of how anyone else shows up, I still get to choose to be loving and kind and accepting, regardless of their choices. So I get to decide "who do I really want to be." This is my focus. Who do I want to be? Not "who do I really want them to be?" And we do that a lot. I think we do that more than we realize. I would love for you to start paying attention and seeing how often you have expectations of other people. If you're like me, you'll be surprised at how often that comes up. But this is the thing. Who do I want to be? This is what I can control. And tell me this, when was the last time an expectation caused the other person to change their behavior for good and to do it with love in their hearts? Right? That just doesn't happen, right? They cause us to change into the person we don't want to be when other people have expectations of us, right? Or when we have expectations, it causes them to change into the person they don't want to be. If we can get to the point that we accept that other people get to make their own choices with zero expectation from us, then guess what? Then we don't suffer. The only person we should ever have expectations of is ourself. Because the focus is on us, on what we can control. Me. I can control me. Expectations of others only creates pain. 

15:47 

Now, the only exceptions to expectations is if you are a parent still of younger children that you are responsible for. Or if you're a boss. Or for example, I'm a teacher of a middle school. I can have expectations of the children, the students that I teach, right? But in my personal life, outside of that, all expectations do is keep me from showing up the way that I really want to show up, which is loving and kind and compassionate and accepting. 

16:25 

And what we're doing here on earth, our purpose is not to learn how to control other people. We're not here to force our expectations on other people. We are here to learn to manage our own lives, our own thoughts and behaviors. And one of the best tools we have for learning this for ourselves is learning to drop our expectations of other people. Isn't that a fascinating piece of how this life works? We want so desperately to get other people to behave, when what is really important is that we learn to behave. It's probably very true that you would never act the way that that person is acting or you would never say what that person would say. And that's the point of our whole experience here. We are all different and we all act from our own perceptions and experiences and beliefs. 

17:22 

We all see the world from our own perspective and we make decisions based on this. Learning to accept and believe that others are doing the best they know how, making the best decisions they can to progress, and sometimes not even to progress, sometimes just to cope and survive. This is one of the most liberating beliefs that we can embrace. Dropping our expectation that others should act like us will drop your suffering level. If you allow it, it will allow you to focus your attention  on your behavior, which is the only behavior you can control. Because guess what? You are so good at being you and other people are really crappy at being you. They're really bad at doing it your way, at seeing the world from your perspective. 

18:14 

So, my friend, back off, get out of their business, learn to accept and love and appreciate the people who are in your life for the people that they are, not the person that you have created in your brain or the person that you expect them to be. And start creating the connection and the relationships and the intimacy that you desire and that you crave with other people. This is an awesome part of what we get to do in life: learn to let go of expectations of anybody but ourselves. Learn to embrace other people for who they are, for the choices they make and for how they choose to show up. This is an amazing part of growing up, is learning to move into this space. 

19:04 

Okay, if you think that coaching might be a great option for you, one-on-one coaching, you can get on my website, tanyahale.com, and you can sign up for a free 30 minute consult where we can talk about how coaching can be a really, really great option for you. And we can see if it's a good fit. I'm telling you what, I'm not a super hard sell. I will tell you all the things and I will be honest with you and I will help you see what's going on. That's my job as a coach. My job as a coach is not to make you like me; it's to help you see things that you need to see. And the only way sometimes that we can grow is to start seeing things that we haven't seen before, because I can promise you a lot of you have expectations of other people that you don't even see that you're not even aware of. I can promise you that because I have them and my coach points them out to me. 

19:55 

And here's the deal. You've got another 30, 40, 50 good years in you, my friend. With that much time, wouldn't it be great to become more aware of these kinds of patterns of behavior, get them brought to the forefront of your mind now, so that you can start creating the relationships you want? Wouldn't it be sad to wait until you were 75 to decide to strengthen the relationships in the way that you want and then end up with five or 10 great years of a relationship when you could have 30, or 40, or even 50? Okay, my friend, life is good. Life is great. Growing up is amazing. And I hope that this was helpful for you today. So that's going to do it for me. We'll talk to you later. Bye. 

20:44 

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 tanyhale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!