00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 200! "My Most Life-Changing, Life Coaching Lessons." 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. 

00:24 

Alright. Hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast. I know if you listened to that first part, you heard 200 exclamation point! Like, really? 200 podcasts? Can I tell you? I am so proud of myself for showing up for this and for creating all of this amazing content. I love sharing it with you so much and just really proud of what I've been able to create here. I read a quote today from a lady named Stacy Bayman that was so good. She says, "confidence is what happens on the outside when self-trust is happening on the inside." I think three years of podcasting every single week has created a lot of self-trust in me and a lot of confidence in me that I have got this, like, I can do coaching and not only that, but I show up for my clients, I work with them, I help them create great shifts in their life and it's created a lot of confidence for me and I just love the space that I'm in right now. But anyway, 200 podcasts to celebrate today. I just wanted to do something a little different than I've done before. I want to talk about my most life-changing life coach lessons, so the things that I have learned and that I have taught you that have created the biggest shift for me, I guess I should say shifts because it's a constant ebb and flow of moving and understanding and not and constantly seeing things differently. 

02:06 

And I will say that, oh, in the last three years, since I found this work, everything has changed for me. And I am such a completely different person. And I am so grateful for the Atonement that has allowed me to become aware of the things that I need to change to see how I can make those adjustments and those nudges and giving me the power to make those and to leave the past in the past. I was talking with Sione, my husband, about this just this morning, about how we are both testaments to the Atonement and the fact that we can change and that we can grow, because I probably would not have wanted to marry this Sione five years ago. And I can promise you that he would not have wanted to marry the Tanya five years ago. But because of the growth and the progress, and the things that we have been learning and doing and changing, we have become very different people in the process. And so I wanted to talk to you about some of those that have made the biggest impact on my life and that I feel have changed me the most. 

03:17 

So I want to start by first of all talking about love, so episode number 92, 93 somewhere around there I did an episode called "Clean Love." When I think about life coaching, this has probably been the most impactful concept for me. Clean love and unconditional love I think are cousins, but I've I'd always heard about unconditional love in my life and I just thought that that just means that you love people no matter What? But but I started to think a little bit more about that and I looked at my own experience and I came up with this idea that I call "clean love." I haven't necessarily heard of it elsewhere, but it's not to say that it doesn't exist elsewhere, but for me unconditional love is just "I love you regardless of who you are, where you come from, what you do," all of that stuff. And almost all of the pre-love kind of stuff, like "I love you going into it," but for me I identified what I call "clean love" as "I am loving without an agenda. I'm not loving thinking that you're going to love me back or that you're going to behave in a certain way when I love you, or that I'm going to say 'I love you' and you say you love me back." Clean love to me just means that I completely choose to love you with zero expectation of getting anything back, of you responding in any, not having any expectations that you're going to respond anyway. I am just loving just to love. 

04:56 

And this has been a huge huge, huge game player with my children as I learned to love them with more of a clean love. And as I've dated, and especially with Sione now at this point in my life, it has been such a huge piece of my being able to step into this space of really learning to love in a way that I never have before. And it's a beautiful, amazing, even overwhelming concept for me, one that has had probably the biggest impact on the person that I am. Because I have realized through this process as well that love is a choice. It's not something that I feel from somebody else or that somebody else even feels for me. And I think sometimes we think that it is. But the feelings that we have in our bodies. Those vibrations in our bodies, those feelings, those are created by our thoughts. If I feel love for you, the love that I have does not jump from my body into yours. You literally do not feel my love. What happens is that I then feel loving, and so I act in loving ways and my actions move over into your circumstance line. And in your circumstance, you may see a loving action that I do and then you have a thought that says, "Oh, she loves me." And then that creates in you a feeling of gratitude, a feeling of overwhelm, a feeling of love itself, right? So all of the love that I create is not because other people give it to me. It's because I choose to create it with my thoughts. Love is a choice. It's not something given to me by someone else. And as I've moved into these concepts, I literally am able to love my children and my spouse and other people, friends in a way that I never knew how to before. Such a huge concept. 

07:15 

And another concept within the idea of love is that is the concept of lovability. I am lovable. And if someone doesn't love me, that says nothing about me, it says something about their ability to love. If I don't love someone, it has nothing to do with their lovability. It has to do with me choosing not to love me, not moving into that loving space. So I think love, and this concept of clean love, mostly has been probably, first and foremost, the biggest concept that has impacted my life and that has me showing up much more the kind of person that I want to be. 

08:09 

The second one that I want to share with you is a concept of accepting other people. I did a podcast, I don't have numbers on these, I think I may just reshare these podcasts in the next few weeks, but the other concept is one called "The Right Path." And I remember sitting in a Relief Society class once and remembering, praying for my children that they would be able to find the right path. And I felt very clearly the Holy Ghost say, "hmm, that's a little bit judge-y." And I was like, wait a minute, but that's loving and that's kind. Right? It's loving that I would want them to find the right path. And I just kept thinking "that's judge-y." And as I sat there, the Spirit taught me that when I think that my children are on the wrong path, then I'm judging them. And when I feel judge-y in my heart, I show up judge-y. I make underhanded comments. I don't accept them the way they are, like, all of these things. And so I learned at that point that, that my children get to take whatever path they want. And who am I to say that the path that they are on is not the exact path that they need to be on? And so I've learned to step back and just say, "help my children learn whatever lessons are available to them on whatever path they are on." Because, at this point, I believe that whatever path they're on is the right path for them, that the lessons that they will learn there are the exact lessons that they need to learn to become the people that God needs them to be and that they need to be. And so learning to stand back in from the idea that there is a right path. 

10:05 

In fact in the last few years I had a little, I've shared this before, but I'll share it again. This idea where I saw Christ in the center, like a sphere, and then all of these paths leading to him, an infinite number of paths coming to Christ around this 360 degree sphere. And I saw that in realizing that every one of those paths was leading to Jesus Christ. And just because a path was on the opposite side of the sphere than me doesn't mean that it wasn't leading them to Christ and I found that as I have stood back and really started to implement that thought into my life, that I have no idea what anybody else's path is. I don't know where they need to be. I don't know what they need to learn. I don't know why they need to be on that path, but I can just learn to love them regardless of what path they're on. And I can learn to accept them. That has made a huge, huge impact for me to be able to accept other people's choices and allowing them the space to make their own choices, accepting their path as their path. It's not my job to dictate what path they should be on or how fast they should move on it, or if they should step over onto another path. That's none of my business. My business is my path. My business is mining my own business, you know, and taking care of my path and my path says, "I want to choose to be loving. I want to choose to be accepting. I want to choose to just be the kind of person that I want to be." And that is the lesson that I have to learn on my path. And my path is the only one that I need to worry about. 

11:59 

Anyway, so I think another piece of that that kind of comes around is also this acceptance of my own path. My own path isn't perfect and other people could very easily be standing by in judgment of my path. But I get to walk my path. My path has lessons for me and learning to accept my path and know my path and choose to stay facing the direction I want to on my path, that is my business and that is a space where I want to be. 

12:36 

Alright, another one of the most life changing lessons that I've learned over the last several years has been to learn to let go of judging other people. And this kind of goes along with the previous one. But I've really started to learn how to step out of having opinions about other people. I used to have them all the time and I thought my opinions mattered. And I've learned  that, you know what, my opinions don't matter in anybody else's life. All people, I think, are doing the best that they know how. Sometimes people just don't have the tools to make a different choice or to do something healthier. But I really think that nobody's, well, I can't say nobody, but the vast majority of people are not out there trying to ruin their lives or the lives of the people around them. They just, from their perspective and from what they see and from the tools that they have and their experiences, they're making the best choices they know how. And sometimes, you know, sometimes they're choices that make life more difficult for them. And what I get to offer in that is not a space of judgment, but rather a space of compassion for other people. And really learning to just let people make their choices and stop judging, stop having opinions where it's none of my business. 

14:08 

And this is a place of really letting go of "shoulds", thinking that people "should" do things different. People "should" do it this way. They "should" do it that way. I was always really big on that. And I'm really good at this point of dropping the word "should" out of my vocabulary and not holding people to ideas of how I think they should be living. Do I still do it? Absolutely. Good heavens, I'm a human. I'll probably do that for the rest of my life. I think judging is one of my biggies that I'm always going to have to keep an eye on and always going to have to really monitor and make sure that that I'm not going crazy there, but I am learning how to focus on me and how I show up and not focus on others and how they show up. People can say and do whatever they want. They can put whatever they want in my circumstance line and I get to just choose to show up the way that I want to and stop judging others for how they're showing up. 

15:18 

So the next one was a concept of 100% responsibility. I think it's such a natural man tendency to want to point fingers and to blame other people and to say that they are the reason that this is happening. They're the reason that I'm behaving this way. They're the reason I feel sad. They're the reason I feel angry. And all I see that that has done for me when I am in that space of blame is to make me a victim, to make me feel powerless like I don't have any control over how I feel or how I act because of what the other person has done. And so stepping into this space of 100% responsibility means that I have been learning to look for my responsibility in situations. 

16:07 

Now this doesn't mean that I condone other people's behavior or that I don't think that other people should be accountable for their actions. But what it does mean is that I get to choose my response to any circumstance that comes up in my life. I get to choose how I want to behave and I am responsible for how I behave. So the behavior comes from feelings which comes from thoughts. So I am responsible for my thoughts that are creating the rest of my model. I am responsible for all of that. And as I have learned more so to step into that space of 100% responsibility, I have felt so much more empowered. I felt so much more compassion as well in my heart and I just feel like it's made me such a better, more Christlike person when I started taking a hundred percent responsibility. Okay, this is way more emotional than I was planning, but here you go. 

17:23 

The next concept that has really impacted me has been in the area of communication and relationships. One of the first things I really started learning was about boundaries and I realized I started to understand how important boundaries are to healthy relationships. And I had some huge huge ahas when I was first learning about boundaries in understanding that I used to think that having no boundaries was keeping the peace. But what I realized is that we may not have been fighting outwardly, but inwardly I was angry and resentful and hurting. And by learning to set boundaries, I was able to start seeing all of that in a different light. Part of that was also learning to be heard and learning to be seen. I used to be so angry in my previous marriage that I wasn't heard and I wasn't seen, but you know what? I wasn't speaking up and I wasn't standing up. Of course I wasn't being heard and seen. I didn't have the skills to know how to communicate in the way that would help me to be heard and seen. 

18:41 

Part of this as well has been learning to have tough conversations. This concept that I talked about just several weeks ago about no back burner issues in my relationship with Sione, nothing goes on the back burner. And we talk about all of it, even if it seems trivial, because there's no way to really figure out where's the line between what's trivial and what's important. And so nothing is trivial. We just put it all out there and learning...it was hard for me to have those conversations. And this last year, as I talked about last week with my 90 Day relationships, these were the kinds of conversations that I really learned how to step into. And it has changed me. It's changed my confidence level. It's changed my ability to love. I feel like  I can love so much more deeply, because I've learned to have those tough conversations. And I feel like the intimacy in my relationship, especially with Sione, that I'm able to step into, because we have those tough conversations, because I am able to see and hear him at a level that he needs and he's able to see and hear me at a level that I need. And because of that, we can step into greater intimacy. And it's been a brilliant, brilliant opportunity, an experience for me to learn how to have these, what I would consider, tough conversations, things that I spent years not talking about because I was afraid that it would create contention. 

20:25 

So along with that learning how to address the conflict...conflict, again, if you remember from a couple weeks ago conflict being two different opinions, learning how to address this in ways that produce connection instead of contention. Such an important concept for me because it does produce deeper connection, deeper intimacy and another piece of this communication relationships area that has changed me so much is learning to listen. And my coach training really has put me in a place where I listen so much better. I think I didn't used to be a good listener at all. And then after the coach training, I would often have people tell me what a good listener I was and I was like, "Whoa, that's new." That's a skill that I've learned. And learning to listen, be curious, learning to ask questions, is such a valuable, valuable tool in communicating with other people and in strengthening and building healthy relationships. And these skills have really changed how I've been able to show up with my children, with my friends, with my clients, and now with my husband and just so, so grateful for that these skills as well. 

21:49 

And then just last I just want to talk about coaching as a whole, you know, some of the things that I am such a proponent of life coaching. When I was talking with Sione just a little bit earlier this afternoon, he didn't really know that much about life coaching before we started dating. And today, the comment that he made was that life coaching is not just to get you out of a bad place, but to get you to a good place. It was so brilliant. I went over to my desk and I wrote that down because I was like, "you know what, that's what coaching does". It can help you get you out of a bad place. Absolutely. It can help you move forward. But it can help you move even from a neutral space to a good place or from a good place to a better place. Just the awareness that it creates for us. Coaching is so brilliant that way. I don't think I will ever spend time in my life without a life coach because of the awareness that it creates of my thoughts and of what those thoughts are creating, and helping me see things that I am not capable of seeing on my own, not because I'm not smart, but because none of us see our own stuff very well. We're too entrenched in the thick of what's going on. 

23:13 

I will say that coaching, this space, I feel so much more at peace with how I view the world. I thought I was in a pretty good place before, but as I look back at my growth over the last three years, I'm in such a more peaceful place because of the things that I talked about earlier. I'm not judging as much. I'm loving deeper. I'm accepting people for who they are. I'm allowing people this space to be themselves and to walk their path the way that they are choosing to walk it and not to have opinions on that, but just to love and support them and and to realize that my job is just to love people and to focus on living my own life the best that I can. And those are really the things that I feel are most important. And through this process I feel like I have developed a much tighter relationship with God and with Christ and I feel like I'm much more receptive to the promptings of the Holy Ghost. The thought work that I do and how I manage that, I think is a huge part of promptings from the Holy Ghost and how I've learned to tap into that at a level that I never have before. I find that through the coaching process that I am much more self-reflective seeing my behavior, seeing my thoughts, seeing my feelings, and I'm learning to control what I can control, which is me and only me, and letting go of the rest, allowing people the space to be who they are, how they are. 

24:57 

And a piece of that as well, of this being more self-reflective, is really learning to be more in touch with my feelings. I spent a lot of years turning off my feelings because it was a protective mechanism for me. And then after I got divorced, that was not serving me anymore. It may have served me pretty well at the time that I was using it because it kept me from being a blubbering, bawling mess all day long when I was raising kids, which I did not want to be as a mother, but I also turned off emotions and became a little bit emotionless. And so in the last couple of years, really learning to start tapping into my emotions and feeling them more. I remember going sometimes 9, 10, 12 months with my kids without crying. And now I feel like I'm just crying all the time. And I love the space of being able to feel the emotion and feeling so full sometimes that it just has nowhere to go but out my eyes. And I think that that's a huge thing. I feel much more connected to myself. I feel much more connected to other people. I'm grateful that coaching has given me that gift. 

26:20 

Another thing that coaching has given me is being more aware of my thoughts. My brain tells me lies all the time. Our primitive brains just do. They just tell us lies. And our primitive brain doesn't have this right/wrong, good/bad filter on it. It just is like, "oh, I've seen this idea somewhere. Let's try this." And it just puts stuff out there. I believed for a long time that I was not a risk taker. I believed for a long time that I was not lovable. And these were beliefs that my brain wanted me to believe, but they weren't true. And not only were they not true, but they weren't serving me. They weren't helping me to show up the best version of myself. And so, and those are ideas. Another belief that I had was that I had to be perfect in order to be loved. And those are all three concepts that came up for me when I was working with my life coach. Beliefs that when I got them out of my brain, I was like, "whoa." And I was floored by what I saw that I was believing. And being able to change out those beliefs for ones that do serve me now, I know absolutely I'm a risk taker, which is serving me well in my business and which also served me really well in this last year with my 90 Day relationships. You know, the belief that I wasn't lovable. Absolutely I'm lovable. If someone can't love me, that's how they're choosing to show up. But me as a person, I am lovable, as is everybody else. 

28:12 

So yeah, I love working with a life coach. I love the insights that I gain and the growth that I gain as I identify thoughts and feelings and beliefs that hold me back, that keep me from becoming my best self. And I feel like I'm on this incredible growth path in my life. And I'm just so incredibly grateful for what life coaching has done for me, not just my being a life coach, but being the recipient of coaching. It has changed me. It has changed my life. I love it so much. It's helping me show up my best self and I still have a long way to go but coaching will be there the whole way for me. I'm such a fan and that's why I do what I do. That's why I record these podcasts and create content for you and that's why I am available as a life coach doing currently one-on-one coaching sessions, because it's just such a valuable tool. 

29:24 

So this is all part of my growing up process and I hope that you are experiencing your own middle-age puberty, your own growing up process, where things are changing and evolving for you at this amazing time in life where we have all of this experience and all of this wisdom. And all of a sudden it just feels like these puzzle pieces are all coming together to start creating a picture that we can see and that we can understand and this is the brilliance of middle-age. I love, love this age 

of life so much. And I hope you do too. I hope that you love growing up. 

30:01 

So here we go, my friends. If you feel that it is time for you to really start moving into some of these concepts to really up level your game and to move maybe from a bad place into a better place and from that better place into an even better place, from a good place to a great place... this is what coaching has to offer. This is what we can do together. You and I. And I do have a couple of openings right now in my coaching schedule. But only a couple. I'm getting pretty booked at this point, which is also an amazing thing to me. I'm so grateful for the clients that I'm able to help and grateful for being able to be a part of their growth process. I love that so much. But if you would like to talk with me to see if coaching is a good fit for you, you can go to tanyahale.com. You can book a free 30 minute consult. We can talk about all things coaching. I can tell you how it works. You can decide if I'm a good fit for you and I can decide if you're a good fit for me, if I can help you make some decisions. Are you ready to move into the work that this is going to be? Because it is work and if you're going to be paying money and expending time and energy to do this, I want you to see progress in your life. But that's going to require that you show up ready to do the work. And so the consult is a great time for us to kind of vet each other out and to see if we're a good fit and go from there. So I would love to help you if you're ready for this game. We can do it. Game on, right? Okay. Thank you for being with me. Thank you for joining me. 200. It's a big milestone for me. And I'm very proud of what I've been able to accomplish here. And I thank you for being a part of this. Maybe you'll never work with me. Maybe you will never work with me one-on-one. But I am so thankful for you being here. 

32:11 

And I would love to offer that if this is helping you, share it with people in your life and have conversations about it and discuss it. As you do that, you will learn and understand more about how these concepts apply in your life and you will grow and develop even more. I can promise you that. So if you are benefiting from this, you can help me out by sharing it. One of the best ways you can do it is to share it on social media, if you're there. You can go to my Facebook page, Tanya Hale LDS Life Coaching, and on there you can find all of my podcasts and you can share them from there just right on social media. Or you can share it, you can copy the link from your podcast on your Apple or on your whatever else you've got, whatever the  other one is, the Google or the Samsung or whatever. You can copy it there and share it and I would love for you to do that and to help other people to experience the growth and the progress that can happen with life coaching. 

33:15 

Okay, that's going to do it for me my friends. Thank you again for being here. I adore you and I'm so, so grateful to be in this space with you. Wish you all the best. I'll see you next week. Bye. 

33:27 

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.