00:00 

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 199, "The Power to Be." 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. Hello there, my friends. Welcome to podcast number 199. I have to say I'm totally floored. That next one is going to be 200. That's probably not a big deal to you, but it is a huge deal to me. I have proven to myself that I can do something amazing like this and it's just built so much trust and so much self-respect in who I am, knowing that I have been able to show up every single week for three years and every week. 200 podcasts. In fact, the first six months I did two podcasts a week because I really wanted to get some content out there so that I seemed more credible. So, yeah, 200 podcasts next week. Kind of exciting. 

01:20 

And I just realized as I was sitting here getting ready to press record that I've got a limited single digit number of podcasts to record from this office that I'm sitting in. This summer I will be moving to Indiana. So exciting changes coming up for me. If you are a person of mine here in Utah and you want to get together for a little lunch or breakfast before I leave, get in touch with me. Let's do it before I go. If you are a friend from Indiana and you want to get together for a lunch or breakfast when I get there, let me know and we will plan it. This is one of the great things about having a coaching business like this, is that I can coach from anywhere in the world. And I love it, because all my coaching is done over Zoom and my podcast obviously, just I put it out there. So yeah, big changes coming for me and exciting changes. And this week I leave to go on, well, this will be, by the time this comes out, I'll be back. But for me, this week I'm leaving on my honeymoon this week and it should be really fun and really sweet, just nice to get away. It's my spring break at school. And I just have seven weeks of school left to teach before I am done being a middle school teacher and moving on to coaching full-time. And I'm super excited to be coaching full-time and I know I'm gonna cry like a baby when I say goodbye to teaching and when I say goodbye to those kids because...I do love them. Oh, I love those little eighth graders. Those 13, 14 year old ornery stinkers. They are my favorite people in the world. Besides my husband and my kids and I just, I love teaching school a lot. But I'm also excited to be moving on to coaching full-time and doing that. So yeah, a lot of changes for me coming up. 

03:17 

So I love what I have prepared for you today. We are calling this one "The Power to Be." There is so much power in who we choose to be. So little kids often are asked what they want to be when they grow up. And it's like "a fireman" or "wanna be a football player," "I wanna be a ballerina," right? They have all these things. And I always find it interesting that in middle school, in Utah anyway, there's the curriculum that the counselors in our school have to go through, pulling aside these eighth graders, 13 and 14 year olds, and kinda pressuring them a little bit to start making some career path decisions. "What do you wanna be?" These kids don't have any idea. Can I just tell you that? They don't even know who they are, let alone what they wanna be when they grow up. And I think there's a very, very few who have an idea of what they want to be. But most of them, they just wanna survive a day in middle school. But we're always pushing people to figure out what do you want to be. And I'm sure that there is some use for this, right? I'm sure that there's a reason they do that in middle school. I don't know what it is, but I'm sure there's a reason. And at some point in our lives, we do need to make some career decisions. I'm not saying that we don't need to do that. 

04:40 

But I think a much more powerful question than "what we want to be" is "who we want to be." Because this question addresses something very different. We will take on many, many roles, wear many hats throughout our lives. We will be a daughter, maybe a sister, a wife, a mother, an aunt, and we may be a chemist, or a teacher, or a lawyer, or a stocker at the local grocery store. But the common thread that's going to run through any of those roles that we have is who we are. And who we really are goes much deeper than what we are doing on the outside, the roles that we are choosing to take on. Who we really are comes from inside of us. What attributes have I developed? What characteristics do I embody? How do I show up in relationships and in tough decisions and with myself? The more I focus on who I want to be, the more grounded and fulfilled I am in my life because this deeper fulfillment is obtained from the inside out, not from the outside in. 

05:58 

So though many of us are very used to making to-do lists, I want you this week to start thinking about making a to-be list. Here are some ideas: I want to be loving, compassionate, interested in others, curious, open, patient, aware, kind, passionate, affectionate, determined, strong, forgiving, attentive. Oh, we could just make go on with this list forever, right? What are the things that you really want to be? Let's start to figure this out, and then we can figure out how that person shows up in the world. Who we show up as is far, far more important than what we show up as. I truly believe that when we find the who, then the "what" and the "how" take care of themselves. 

07:00 

The thing I love about this approach is that it focuses on our relationship with ourselves. It's about finding an amazing space within us that feels good about us, that feels in alignment with who we really are, with what our values are. That appreciates who we are, that connects us with who we are. Since I've been immersed in life coaching, I have really learned to be in touch 

with the kind of person I really want to be, with the "who." And what I've found is that by focusing on these attributes, it has impacted every facet of my life. One of my biggest ahas was when I started connecting with the idea of what I call "clean love." Learning how to love without any expectation about how the other person would respond. So just thinking about this concept just brings me to tears. When I'm in this space of clean love, I am loving because I want to be loving, because I really enjoy the feeling of loving, not because I have expectations that I'm going to get something from it. And my relationship with my children has really shifted based on this concept of who I want to be here. My being a good mother shifted into a "who" which is being loving. And then my relationships shifted as well. And I became much more loving of them. I became much more accepting of them being themselves of walking their own path and having their own journey of letting go, of thinking that they should do things the way that I had always envisioned for them and allowing them the free agency to create their own life experiences. 

08:56 

A short time ago I came across the scripture in The Book of Mormon. It's in the book of Mosiah, chapter 4 verse 13. This is King Benjamin and he's speaking to his people about how to be more Christlike. And this is what he says: "And ye will not have a mind to injure one another, but to live peaceably, and to render to every man according to that which is his due." I 

love every part of this scripture in the context of how I want to show up. I will not have a mind to injure one another. To me this means that by seeking to control my child's behavior to pressure or push or manipulate or intimidate them to do what I want them to do, I am injuring them. A Christlike person will not have a mind to injure them. When I do those things, I'm not 

living peaceably, which is the next part of this scripture, but I'm creating a lot of contention between us. I'm not accepting them for who they are and the journey that they are choosing to take. And the last line that says, or the last phrase that says, "To render to every man according to that which is his due." To me that means that I offer my children their agency. Okay, so not that they need me offering it to them, because God has already given their agency to them, but I am respecting their agency to choose their path. I am honoring them as a person who gets to make their own decisions. I am accepting them as a sovereign person, as an adult who is my equal, and I'm creating a space where they can feel safe and accepted, where they know they are loved regardless of how they show up. They don't feel they need to earn my love, and they definitely don't feel like they need to lie to me to appease me. They know that they are loved exactly as they are, exactly how they show up. By focusing on my "who I want to be," which is loving, I have been able to show up in the how of mother more the kind of mom that I really want to be. And it has changed my relationships with my children. I now have a much more honest and open discussions with my children about religion, about activities that they're engaging in, about their thoughts and their feelings about things. And as I've mentioned before, I have one child who doesn't want to engage much with me. And I also love how I'm showing up for him. I'm creating an amazing, loving relationship with him in my mind and in my heart, a space that will be open and accepting whenever he is ready to engage. 

11:41 

So here's how we go about being who we want to be. Let's say you want to be more accepting because you realize you have some judgmental tendencies, which, join the club, my friends. I don't know that there's many very many of us who don't have judgmental tendencies, right? But let's take a different look at this. So "accepting" can go into two places if we put it in a thought model. It could go either in the feeling line, like "I'm feeling accepting" or it could go in the action line in that "I accept them," and it will create similar results. What we want to do though is get accepting into our thought model. So let's put it in both. Let's put it into models, in the different places and we'll just see how it plays out. So if we put it in the feeling line first, let's say we have a thought, "I respect their agency to make their own decisions for their life." Speaking about our children, right? Then feeling could be "I feel accepting of them," action line "because I feel accepting." Then I listen to them. I value their opinion. I don't berate or seek to manipulate. I seek to understand their point of view. I get curious. The result line then, what those actions create, is that I do accept them. 

13:04 

Okay, so let's put accepting in the action line and you're going to see that this is pretty, pretty similar. So if the thought is "I respect their agency to make their own decisions for their lives," the feeling could be that "I just really respect them." And then in the action line, "because I respect them, then I accept them." And then all the other same kinds of actions we just talked about, I listen to them. I value their opinion. I don't berate or seek to manipulate them. I seek to understand their point of view and get curious. And the result line: I accept them and their choices and I respect them and their choices. 

13:39 

So part of this concept of being is that we are not relying on our circumstance line to dictate who we want to be or how we're going to show up. Life and people can put anything they want into our circumstance line. And we still get to be empowered by what we choose to think about it. Now, when we look at the thought model, the circumstance, the thought, the feeling, the action, the result...the circumstance line is the only line that we don't have control other over. Other people can put things in our circumstance line, and life can. There can be a hurricane or there can be an earthquake. Somebody in your life, you could lose your job. You could get hit by a car when you're driving down the road. Your child could say you're the worst mother in the world, right? We cannot control the circumstance line, but we get to control our thoughts, our feelings, our actions, and the result which a lot of people are like, "what? The result?" Yeah, absolutely. We get to control the result of our life. And it all starts with how we think about it. Who we are makes a huge difference in how we think about those circumstances. So when we talk about "who do we want to be," that person, that being impacts how we think. We are choosing in advance who to be because of the thoughts we are creating surrounding our circumstances. Circumstances are going to come and go. And some are easier to navigate around than others, but all of them give us the opportunity to choose what we want to think about them. And what we choose to think is determined by who we are choosing to be. Circumstances do not determine this for us. 

15:36 

Do you remember, I think it was Conference six months ago, General Conference for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There was a talk about the trajectory of our lives. Where we start off in life, our circumstances don't impact who we have the power to be. It's the choices we make within those circumstances. We could start off in extremely affluent circumstances, or we could start off in extremely poor circumstances. It doesn't matter in life where we start. What matters is where we go from where we start, the trajectory that we choose to take. It's the choices that we make within those circumstances. We get to be 100% responsible for what we become. And herein lies our power: regardless of our circumstances, we get to choose. We get to decide who we want to be, thereby determining how we show up, what we accomplish, and how we connect. No one else and nothing else gets to decide this for us. When we are clear on who we want to be, our power to become the "what" and the "how" increases exponentially. When we seek to be who we want, when we study and learn about what that looks like and determine for ourselves what that person would think like, then we can be that person. And when we become that person, we create the results in our lives that we really want to create. 

17:15 

But it doesn't start with a to-do list. A to-do list is an A-line list. We would call that an action line list. Right? In the thought model, we have the action line. To-do list is all the things that we do. What does it look like? When we start there, trying to impact our lives and trying to become something different, we often just end up white-knuckling our behaviors to get things done, to do things. We're having to force ourselves to do them. We're pushing against our nature and we become out of alignment with who we really are because it hasn't started with our thought line. Better is to start with a to-be list. This is a t line, a thought line list, intentional thoughts about who we want to be, about how we want to be. When we move through life from this space, when we become that loving, compassionate, interested in others, curious, open, patient, aware, kind, passionate, affectionate, determined, strong, forgiving, attentive person, then the action lines come naturally. We don't have to white knuckle our behavior. We don't have to push against our nature because acting the way we want to has become our nature. 

18:39 

This is one of the beautiful parts of the thought work that I teach you. Once we manage our thoughts, our actions come more naturally and effortlessly, and our feelings do as well, because our thoughts produce our feelings, our feelings produce our actions, and our actions become the results in our lives. Our actions are a natural byproduct of our thoughts via our  feelings that are created by our thoughts. Becoming clear on who we want to be is an amazing place to start or to continue your journey of self-development, of progress, and growth. What would you put on your to be list for today? How do you want to show up? And what thoughts will create you showing up that way? Figure that out. Focus on creating those thoughts and you'll find you feel so much better about how you're interacting with others and you'll feel so much better at the end of the day. Be who you want to be and you will find the power in you. Growing up is amazing. This middle-aged growing up gig, seriously, I can't not get enough of it. I love it so much. 

20:05 

Here's the deal, my friends. I would love to help you. I can help you. I am a good life coach. I can help you get clear on how to be who you want to be. I can help you notice patterns of behavior that are holding you back. That's what I'm trained to do. It's what I'm good at. And patterns of behavior that you're not going to be noticing yourself, I can help you see them. I can help you understand them. I don't tell you what to do when I work with you as your coach. I help you see your thoughts. I help you see what you're creating, and then you get to choose how to move forward with that and how to start creating what you really want to create. Coaching is one of the most powerful things I've ever experienced in my life. I think that it has brought me closer to God. It has helped me be more in tune with the Spirit. It has helped me become more Christlike. And it has helped me work through a lot of stuff in my life that I didn't get. And now I feel so good about how I am showing up in life. Am I perfect? No, absolutely not. And do I always show up the way I want to know? Do I always manage my thoughts? No, but am I in a much, much better space than I've ever been before in my entire life? That's an abso-freakin'-LUTELY I am. I am in such a better space, and this is what I have to offer you: moving into this space. 

21:44 

And can you listen to all my podcasts and work through this on your own? I have no doubt that you could. But if you can move through it in three months or six months as opposed to five years or six years, it is so worth the investment. It is so worth putting the energy and the time into working with me and working with a coach because that means you get an extra four and a half, five years of living the way you want to, of stepping into what you want to. And why struggle the next five, 10, 15 years when you could really figure some stuff out now? And enjoy those next five, 10, 20 years. Coaching can do that. I promise you it's such a brilliant, brilliant opportunity. So if you want to set up a free consult with me and we can talk about whether you're a good fit for coaching or not, you can go to my website, tanyahale.com. You can book a free 30 minute consult and we can chat all about what coaching is and how it can help you and you can decide if it's if it's a space that you want to move into. Okay, that my friends is going to do it for today. The power to be you have it all within you. I promise you that. Wish you all the best and I will talk with you next time. Bye. 

23:16 

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!