00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 178, "The Importance of I." 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. 

00:20 

Alright. Good morning. Morning for me. How's your day coming? It's good to have you here with me. Thank you so much for being here. I just have been thinking this morning about how much I love this podcast and how much I appreciate you being here with me every week, and the opportunity that I have to share concepts that are life-changing to me and that I hope are life-changing for you, that I hope are moving you into a better space and more awareness of your life and helping you think more about the kind of person that you want to be, how you want to show up, and a space of love for yourself as well, not a space of beating yourself up for not doing it perfectly or doing it right, but a space of, "oh, look, of course, I'm not going to do it right. I'm human after all." I'm doing what is humanly possible, but I also see that there's room to improve and I want to move into this space because I want to experience life as a person who is, I don't know, more compassionate, more kind, more aware, less judgmental." I hope that that's what you're finding here and I guess this is what I'm finding here and this is what I'm hoping to share. 

01:24 

Alright, so today I wanted to start off with sharing with you a review from a client that I just finished with. Client work is some of my favorite. I love the podcast. I love working with my clients and this particular client was such a joy to work with. Shout out to Caroline. So this is what she has to say. She said, "I'm very grateful for Tanya's ability to sift through the context noise to hone in on an issue with laser focus and clarity. Tanya's words were a balm to my soul. Investing in myself has been the greatest gift ever. I feel empowered to enter the second half of my life with much more freedom to love, rather than be bogged down by expectations and disappointment. We broke down scenarios and analyzed what thought processes led to particular outcomes and how to look at the same scenario from a different lens. Tanya was completely attentive, brilliantly insightful, and successful in her observations and coaching. I looked forward to each session, feeling as if I were conversing with a friend over a cup of coffee. Thank you, Tanya, for your giftedness in speaking into my life. I am hopeful to be the best wife, mom, daughter, and co-worker. You're like a flashlight helping expose patterns and habits, but also teaching new ways to think, which will serve me better." 

02:36 

So Caroline, thank you, if you're listening, for sending that, I appreciate those kind kind words, and it was a pleasure and an honor to work with you. Absolutely. This is the power of coaching, right? It empowers us. It gives us the insight and the awareness that we need to be able to move into the kind of person that we really want to be. This is what I have to offer you. This is what I hope that this podcast offers you. And this is what I hope" that as you get into a point where you're ready to really step into this at a deeper level and in a quicker pace, that you will get in touch with me and let's work together and let's get you in the space that you really want to be in. 

03:16 

Okay, so today we are going to be talking about the importance of I, meaning I, me, right? So it's interesting to me that growing up as a woman in the world that we do, there's so much social pressure that we should never be selfish, that we should never want to take the spotlight. And I think oftentimes, sometimes especially in a Christian community, this is taken to the extreme, that we should never think of ourself, that there should be no self-care, no focusing on our wants or needs, and always focused on others. And we see this a lot of times with women, they get to this middle-aged space and they're like, "whoa, I don't even know what my favorite food is because I've been cooking food for everybody else for 30 years. I don't even know what I like to do on Saturdays because I haven't had a Saturday night to myself for 30 years." And I'm working with a client right now who's just...she's in the process of getting divorced and she's like, "listen, I don't even know what I like to do."And I get that, right? We have put ourselves on the back burner for so long that we don't even know who we are. We don't know what we like. We don't know what drives us and what fuels us and what we're passionate about. And it's a challenging place to be for sure. And I love being able to work with my clients to help them learn how to step into this space better. 

04:40 

But I think that this "selfish" concept, like "if I do anything for myself, it's selfish," I do not feel like this is a healthy space for us to be. Self-care is really vital to our emotional health and our emotional health bleeds into our physical health, our spiritual health, our mental health. And I think that this is the one space where the "I" is so important. In fact, even Christ taught self-love when He taught that we should love others as we love ourselves. When we love someone, we care for them. We consider their wants and needs. We seek to meet their wants and needs. And so when we care, when we love for ourselves, we need to care for ourselves. We need to consider our own wants and needs. We need to seek to meet our wants and needs. I am all over this. And I just think that this is such a valuable, valuable understanding for us to step into. And I just, I want to start off with that today. 

05:40 

But I'm going to talk today a little bit about another place that I've recently discovered that the "I" is so vital. And this is in our thought line. So if we take a look at the thought model, so I've taught this before and this was this is a process that was clarified by Brooke Castillo, who is the founder of The Life Coach School, which is where I got my Life Coach certification. So the thought model starts off with a circumstance, circumstance being neutral, and then we have thoughts about the circumstance. So there's our thought line right there. What thought do I think about my circumstance? Thoughts create our feelings, feelings create our actions, and actions create our results. So we have a t line, which is our thought line, and f line, feelings line, a line actions, and our results line. Okay, so we have this model and the C would be the C line. Okay, so we have this thought model. So our thoughts create our feelings, which create our actions, which then create the results in our lives. 

06:41 

So it's a very powerful, powerful way to self reflect. To see more clearly what we're creating with our thoughts and to start to be more intentional about what we want to create, because it all starts with our thoughts. And this is a super, super powerful concept to really tap into. And it's interesting to me that a lot of people that I work with are like, "yeah, I kind of knew this," but that this work really helps bring it to the forefront. And this is a concept that has been taught by philosophers, like, as far back as we can go. And this power of our thoughts...and here's some thoughts, some examples that I've given you, and some of the names I don't know how to say, so I'm either going to slaughter them or I may even spell them because I don't want to like completely be horrible with this. But here's some ideas. Here's some thoughts that philosophers over the years have taught about our thoughts. Here we go. 

07:40 

"You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength." Marcus Aurelius. 

07:46 

Another one from him: "The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts." 

07:54 

And one more from him: "Our life is what our thoughts make it." 

07:59 

Here's a thought from Victor Frankel: "Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, only by lack of meaning and purpose." 

08:08 

Here's another thought by Santosh Calwar: "We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking." 

08:17 

Socrates said, "an unexamined life is not worth living." 

08:23 

René Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." 

08:27 

Aristotle, "the energy of the mind is the essence of life." 

08:32 

Voltaire, "no problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking." 

08:38 

Here's one that many of us are familiar with, but it's an unknown source. "Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny." Again, that starts with thoughts and it ends up with the results, right? What the last thing we want. 

08:57 

Thomas Sasi, "clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence." 

09:04 

Luther Burbank, "it is well for people who think to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean." 

09:11 

Joseph Jobert, "misery is almost always the result of thinking." 

09:17 

Buddha, "what we think, we become." 

09:22 

Mahatma Gandhi, "a man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes." 

09:29 

Neil Donald Walsh, "and we're seeing a higher level of consciousness and many more opportunities for people to challenge their present ways of thinking and move into a grander and larger experience of who they really are." 

09:42 

Alan Alda, remember mash, right? "Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won't come in." 

09:54 

George Bernard Shaw, "few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an intentional reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week,." Kind of funny. 

10:04 

William Shakespeare, "it is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so." 

10:10 

Tony Robbins, "it's not the events that shape my life that determine how I feel and act but rather, it's the way I interpret and evaluate my life experiences." So again, our thoughts, right? 

10:23 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "life consists in what a man is thinking of all day." 

10:29 

And William James, "man can alter his life by altering his thinking." 

10:35 

Alright, so as I was going through that, I'm thinking, "oh, maybe a bit of an overkill but they're so good." And I want you to understand that this concept that our thoughts create everything, that this has been a theme throughout the ages. Great philosophers have understood the power of our thoughts for a long time. They really are the gateway to our greatness. So that brings me to the inside about the importance of "I" in our thoughts. So in my thought line of my thought model, it can be so easy to put a thought about someone else. And I have taught this to you. And I'm grateful that I've taught it to you and I'm glad because I think I've taught you some good things. But I want to reach into a deeper level here of understanding that I've been stepping into lately that's been making a big difference for me. 

11:28 

So let me give you a couple of scenarios. So the first circumstance, let's say your elderly widowed neighbor yells at your grandchild who runs on his lawn. I can have a thought. I will choose to move into a place that says, "oh, he's just an old man doing the best that he can." It's a good thought, right? It keeps me from getting angry. It keeps me from feeling resentful. It moves me into a better space. Here's another circumstance: the lady at the checkout snaps at you for forgetting the water on the bottom of your cart. I can think, "she's having a rough day." Again, that keeps me from moving into this space of emotional hijacking, right, where I get all upset. Here's another circumstance: your bishop said something insensitive during your interview. My thought can be "well, he's just not trained in counseling." Right? :He's doing the best he can" kind of a concept again. 

12:26 

So what I want to point out is that these do bring us to a better space They help us to feel more compassion for the person in the circumstance line and this is a good thing it helps us to stay out of this space of creating all of this drama in our lives. And that's what I want to do for my life, I want to create a space where I feel like I'm more in control. And I have used these kinds of thoughts more times than I can count to manage my feelings and my actions in situations that can seem challenging to me. And I've taught you to use these types of thoughts. But today, like I said, I want to teach you a deeper level of thinking here that can propel you into an even more powerful space. 

13:08 

Okay, all of these thoughts that I gave you in those examples are about the other person. "He is doing..." "she is having..." "he's not trained..." They all start off with he/she/it whatever, right? So they're putting us in a place where our thought is all focused on the other person. And although choosing my thoughts about them can give me a degree of empowerment, for sure, this is kind of the insight that I've gained lately, I still end up with a little bit of victim mentality because these thoughts leave me at the mercy of their behavior. It can be easy for me to put myself in a little bit of victim mode because my thought is all about them and it doesn't address how I am going to choose to engage. Okay. So here's what I want to offer you. By starting your thought with "I" instead of she or he or they or it, you can step into a deeper, more engaging level of empowerment. Okay? 

14:16 

So let me give you those same scenarios and give you an example of what that looks like. So circumstance, your elderly widowed neighbor yells at your grandchild who runs on his lawn. The previous thought was "he's just an old man doing the best that he can." Good thought, right? Good thought that keeps me out of the drama. But listen to this other thought I want to offer you. "I can be kind even when he is struggling to be kind." Notice that the shift moves to my engagement. "I can be kind even when he's struggling to be kind," right? I'm still giving him grace. I'm still giving him space to struggle, but my focus becomes then on how do I want to engage in this circumstance? 

15:03 

Let's look at the second circumstance. The lady at this checkout snaps at you for forgetting the water on the bottom of your cart. Previous thought: "she is having a rough day." Again, good thought creates space for her to be human. But here's a deeper level thought: "I can be patient when others are having a rough day." Again, the focus is on me, not in a selfish way, but in a way that helps me show up more the kind of person that I want to be. I want to be patient. I want to be empathetic when others are struggling. 

15:41 

Third circumstance, your bishop says something insensitive during your interview thought he's not trained in counseling, right? True. Bishops are not trained in counseling. They're spiritual leaders. They're not trained to do all of these other things. And that does create a good space for me, right? That I can stand back and go, "listen, I don't need to get offended because of this." But here's my new thought: "I am grateful that my bishop takes time for me even though he's not been training counseling and I know that he's doing the best that he can." So here's what the difference is. When I think that he's doing the best he can, my feelings might be resigned to put up with it and then my action could be to just not say anything and to let it slide, right? 

16:26 

So when my neighbors, when the old neighbor next door yells at a grandchild, I might just kind of like inwardly roll my eyes and go, "well, he's doing the best that he can." And then I would just kind of like ignore it, go in my house, do whatever, right? And just let it slide. But when I think that "I can be kind even when he's struggling to be kind." The feeling that is  created for me is more like a feeling of compassion. And then my action would be go over to talk to him and offer some kindness, to chat with him about how he's doing, to chat with him about his ill wife or his children that live far away. Or he might tell me all of his new his latest surgeries and health problems, right? That's all good. When I start off by thinking I can be kind even if he's struggling to be, then I get to show up in that kind person that I want to be. 

17:23 

Second scenario, when I think "she is having a rough day," I might feel empathy because I know what it's like to have a rough day. And then I might smile politely and I might take a deep breath. And generally, I just kind of get out of there, right? I just leave without saying too much. But when I think the thought, "I am patient when others are having a rough day, I'm loving to others when they're having a rough day," I will feel more patience and kindness. And then I will even take a minute to offer sincere thanks for her service. "You know what? Thank you for doing this job for me. I appreciate you being here." Or I may compliment her on her holiday themed nails, right? I may find some way to reach out and connect a little bit. When I connect with the idea that I am patient, I am loving, I am kind, it makes such a difference on how I then, on my feeling and on my, then my action that comes from that. 

18:25 

So in the example with the bishop, when I think he's not trained in counseling, I can just feel resigned for me. That's the feeling that kind of comes up, right? And then my actions are resigned, I hold back, I just do my thing. I leave and I kind of just might have thoughts in the course of, well, you know what? I don't know, whatever, right? We move into this space. But when I think instead, "I'm grateful that my bishop makes time for me. You know, maybe he's not been training counseling, but that's okay. I know he's a wonderful spiritual counselor." Okay. Then I do feel gratitude for him. And before I leave, I can offer sincere gratitude for his time because I am grateful for the spiritual counsel that he did offer. The reason I love putting "I" statements into my thought line is because it impacts more heavily my own behaviors. "I can show grace to her or to him. I want to be a good listener. I want to be empathetic. I will give them the space to work through their struggle. I will offer compassion to this person." These are all examples of thoughts that we can think that start with the "I". 

19:40 

This is why the "I" is so important, because it impacts how I show up more directly. So for me, this is like gold. This has me showing up the way that I really want to, compassionate, kind, service oriented, empathetic, right? Am I really good at it yet? I'm not quite yet, right? I'm working on it, but this is a deeper level of thought work that is helping me to really step into the person that I really desire to be. And that's what this work is all about. Really seeing me seeing my thoughts and seeing how these thoughts play out into my life. And I found that when my thoughts were focused on others, that I was doing better, that I was showing up more, you know, more the kind of person that I wanted to be. I wasn't letting that internal drama create about, "oh my gosh, can you believe that that checker at the grocery store," right? And I may have come home and talked to my neighbors or my friends about, "oh, I had this checker today who was so bad," right? I may have gone into that even though at the time I kind of kept my cool. But I'm finding that as I'm moving more into this space, as I've started beginning my thoughts with "I," the feelings created are more empowering and they create behaviors that help me step into more responsibility for who I am being and how I am being choosing my thought carefully, starting it with "I" is making a huge difference for me in how I'm showing up. 

21:22 

This is really, really powerful stuff. Okay. And it's thinking that takes a lot of awareness and slowing down our processes. So the way that I have been able to move into slowing this down, 'cause you know life moves really fast. We don't always have time to say, "oh, the checker just said this. So let me process for a minute how I want to respond." We don't always do that. 

That starts coming the more we practice it after the fact, the more we analyze our situations and look what was going on. And then we get up, start getting better ideas in our head of how we want to respond the next time, something like that comes up and then we're better primed. We're better prepared so that the next time a checker is rough, you know, it says some rough things or the next time somebody at the store does something, we're prepared. Right? We've thought about it. We've thought about how we want to show up. So we want, what I do is thought models. 

22:17 

Now I've talked about them before. I've done a podcast on thought models. I didn't look it up. So I don't know which number it is, but you can look back and find thought models. Um, this helps. So what a thought model is, is I will take a situation after the fact and I will write it down and I will pick out all the pieces. I will say, "okay, what was the circumstance? What was the neutral fact?" And then what was my, a lot of times I'll go down to the feeling line and I'll say, "well, what was my  feeling about it? Well, I was irritated. Well, I was empathetic. Well, I was..." whatever. And then I'll say, "well, what thought about that circumstance was creating that feeling?" And then I pick out the thought and then I see that that, that, that feeling moved into actions and I can see how those actions created like my overall result. 

23:01 

Okay. So the more that I have done this with circumstances that have been tough or that I've struggled with or even good ones, the more I've been able to see the patterns of my thoughts and how my thoughts are playing out. And that's kind of a piece of how this deeper level of thought came to me, was I was seeing that even though I was having good thoughts, like "he's doing the best that he can," I still wasn't quite showing up the way that I wanted to. I wasn't reaching out with empathy and kindness in, at the level that was important to me to start doing. And so then I started working through this and listening to podcasts, and something one day kind of clicked with me and I went, "oh, wait a minute. I can see how when I think 'he's doing the best that he can,' it still leaves me a little bit powerless, which kind of puts me in, gives me an element of victim mode. It doesn't step me into responsibility for how I choose to behave." 

23:59 

So I noticed that the more thought models I do on how I'm living, what I'm creating, the more awareness I create about how I'm showing up and about how I want to show up. And then I start showing up more often how I want because once I put those ideas in my brain of, "this would be a way that I want to think in this situation. This would be a way that I want to feel the more I start doing that than the more easily that shows up spur the moment when I don't have time to sit and think about it." So consistent thought work is the key to creating the life that I want to live from day to day, as well as creating my future life. And I want to offer that it's going to be the same thing for you, my friends, learning how to consistently think about your thoughts after the fact, look at situations, think about your thoughts, see what your thoughts created by putting it in the thought model and then make decisions. Am I happy with how this model showed up? I will say that before I was pretty happy with my models. But as I have shifted into this, I'm moving into a space where I'm like, "oh, I'm like really happy with my models when I show up that way." 

25:13 

Okay. So learning to adjust and learning to create what we want, you get to do this. Going back to the quote that Socrates said that I already shared with you today, he says, "the unexamined life is not worth living." We want to move into a life that we feel so much more happy with, so much more proud of that we just are really finding joy in the way that we're showing up. That doesn't mean we're going to be perfect ever, right? But the more we examine our life, the more we examine the life that is created by our thoughts, the more we have a life that we just adore and that we find great joy and satisfaction in. And this, my friends, is this stage of middle life that is so worth growing up into. 

26:15 

I think we are at a stage where this all comes together for us, where we have the experiences and the insight and the wisdom to help us move into this this greater version of ourselves that we want to. Growing up is pretty darn awesome. I love being in this space and I'm grateful to have you here working with me. Okay? We are coming up on the holidays. This is a perfect time to gift yourself the gift of coaching. Coaching will help you see how you're showing up. I can help you through this process. I can help you learn how to do thought models that are going to make a difference for the rest of your life. This is a deal. It is an investment in time and money and energy. Absolutely. But if you make the investment now, you get to spend the next 20, 30, 40 years reaping the benefits of this investment, living in a way that helps you find greater satisfaction, showing up more the way that you want to, healthier, stronger relationships with others, with God and with yourself. 

27:29 

This is what I have to offer you and I hope that you'll take me up on it. You can go to tanyahale.com. You can book a free 20- 30 minute consult and we can chat about coaching. I can answer all your questions and we can get you on my calendar where we can start moving you forward. And this time of year is the perfect time because sometimes there's drama around the holidays and then we've got the new year coming and the new year is just such a natural place for us to want to step into something different. And this kind of thought work will help you do that. Okay, my friends, that is going to do it for me today. I wish you all the best. Have an amazing week and I will talk to you next Monday. Bye. 

28:14 

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.