00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 211, "Why We Do This Work." 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. How you doing? Alright, what do you think of all those greatest hits? Good stuff, right? I sometimes go back and listen to previous podcasts and I'm always like, "oh yeah, good stuff." I'm so glad I get to share this information with you because it has changed my life and I hope that it is impacting your life in a really, really positive way as well. So I would suggest if you like those, there are so many good ones back there. Go back and look at the list and see what you can find that intrigues you and maybe even just find one that you're just like, "I don't know, I'll just listen to one," and just see what you can find. There's some great stuff so I would invite you to look at past podcasts and this is going to give you a little update for me. 

01:07 

One reason I did the greatest hits was because I pretty much took the month of June off of coaching. I finished my school year and on June 3rd I think, and my last school year. I'm not going back. I'm going to be coaching full time from this point on which is super exciting for me, which also means that I now have some daytime openings available which is fabulous. So if you would like to snag one of those because now I'm available to coach in the daytime, let's get in touch. And you can go to my website, tanyahale.com. You can sign up for that free consult there. Also, I finished school and immediately, like two days later, went on a trip down to Peru and I got to do the five day Machu Picchu hike, which I am so glad I did it once in my life. I'm in pretty good shape. I work out. I work out. But I'll tell you what, day two busted my butt. I got to the top and started crying. I could not believe that I accomplished that. It was one of the hardest physical things I think I've probably ever done in my life, in the top five for sure. We climbed over 3,000 vertical feet in four hours. It was just so hard. And then too, you're at almost 14,000 feet. The oxygen is thinner than we're used to. It was incredible. Every time you would stop, you would look and you would go, "this is the vista of a lifetime." And then you would... you know, climb another 30 feet before you stop and catch your breath and turn around and go, "oh wait, no, now this is the vista of a lifetime." It was so beautiful and there are Incan sites that you can't get to other than doing the hike and it was spectacular. And then I went straight from there to Indiana where I now live. So I've moved from Utah to Indiana to be with my husband and again I get to do this business online and all my Zoom clients are over Zoom and so I'm just, you know, living the dream, my friends. 

03:40 

And I will tell you that the work that I have done over the years has helped to create this. And so I've been thinking a little bit about why we do this work. Like what's the purpose of all of this, because sometimes this work is hard and especially this week I've had several consults with some potential clients and one thing I've let them know is this, that these coaching sessions that you are investing time and money in, they are not a time to show up and complain. It's not a time for you to just spin an unnecessary drama or to blame somebody else. When you work with me or with another coach, this is the time to get to work. It is time to be proactive about moving forward and solving problems. It's time to make decisions and to create something different. This is the time to take responsibility for everything within your scope so that you can be empowered in your own life. I've had clients in the past who have just wanted to complain and spin and blame. And I'll say that now I'm much better at vetting my clients so that that doesn't happen so much. And I want you to understand one thing. We all need some space to complain and spin and blame sometimes. Absolutely we do. When a circumstance happens and it throws us off of balance and we don't know what's going on and things are hard, we all need that and it can be so helpful to have someone to hear our story and to validate how right we are and how wrong the other person is. It can feel really good to vent and to rant for a bit when our emotions are high and uncomfortable and it absolutely feels good to blame someone else for all the difficult things happening in our lives. And that's why we have friends. We have friends because that's who will listen to us and that's who will validate us and that's who will tell us that we're right and the other person's wrong. It's not why you have a coach. 

05:52 

And blaming and spinning, it only feels good for a little bit. And then it starts to feel a very different kind of uncomfortable.  We can start to feel like we're being smothered. We can start to feel like things are hopeless and that there's no way out. And it can feel as though we have no power to change our lives and that everyone else is controlling our lives. And this is when we start to spin and to mope and give up. And I think we all kind of have a sense of when that is. Like when something difficult we're going through, we absolutely need time to just wrap our heads around it sometimes. But then we hit a point where that starts to feel uncomfortable. And sometimes when we're in this space of moping and giving up hope, making a decision sometimes can feel like we're determining the future of all the people on the planet or that our eternal destiny hinges on this one decision. And I know that that sounds a little bit dramatic, but I think you all know that feeling. We get paralyzed and just feel like we can't move. We can't make any sense of any of it. And this is when the complaining and the spinning and the blaming start to take their toll. This is when we start to feel a lot of what we call "indulgent emotions." 

07:30 

So indulgent emotions, think about indulgence, we think about, I always think of like cheesecake. It tastes delicious and it's wonderful at the moment, but there really isn't a lot of nutritional benefit. There's just a lot of calories, but it does taste delicious, right? So it's indulgent because it feels like we're doing, like it's doing something good for us. But long term, it actually does not have any benefits. And indulging emotions, that's what they do. They make us feel like we're doing something productive, but they are actually restricting our progress and our movement. They shut down creativity and problem solving. So if we want to step into creativity and problem solving, we have to stop blaming and complaining. Because whether you're working through these concepts alone or with a coach, it is imperative that we are aware of how we're showing up and that we take care to create a place of movement. And this requires effort. I'd even say it requires work. I would call that "effort work." Okay, the definition of work is "to exert oneself physically or mentally, especially in sustained effort for a purpose." Alright, so if we're going to exert ourselves mentally for a purpose, I know for me it always helps if I am clear on my purpose. 

09:00 

Doing this work of getting ourselves into a healthier emotional place, a place where we're more aware of our faults and our weaknesses, where we're learning to manage our minds and emotions, where we are learning to show up in our behaviors the way that we really want to. It is hard enough work that if we're not clear on why we're doing it. If we're not clear on our purpose, then it will be hard to sustain and to create long-lasting changes. So let's get clear on some reasons why we don't want to do this work. 

09:35 

First and foremost, we don't want to do it because our worth depends on it. Because, truth be told, our worth as a person has nothing to do with this work. This work will not change your worth. Our worth was set the day we were born and it does not change ever. We will die with the same amount of worth that we are born worth, regardless of our choices and decisions, regardless of the path we've chosen to take. It doesn't matter whether or how many times you've been married, whether you've had children or how many you've had, it doesn't matter the size of your house or your bank account. It doesn't matter whether you can accompany somebody on the piano or if you can sing beautifully at church. It doesn't matter what job you have. It doesn't matter if you consider yourself a model citizen in the community or if you're currently in prison. It doesn't matter if you run marathons and eat super healthy or if you struggle with exercise and healthy eating and you weigh more than the body mass index suggests that you should. None of that matters to your worth. Your worth will be great from the day you are born until the day you die. It will never change and it has never changed. And if you don't recognize your worth, it doesn't make any difference on your worth. Your worth is still great, even if you don't feel like it, or even if you don't believe it. So we don't do this work because we believe it will increase our worth as a person. It will not. 

11:16 

We also don't do this work because we think it will make us better than, or more important than, other people. Again, our importance in this world is independent of anything else, anybody else. It's not determined by how we measure up to other people, because in reality, there is absolutely no way we can compare ourselves to anyone. There's no way for us to measure the differences in people's life's experiences that have given them the viewpoint that they have in life. There's no way to really compare whether someone is measuring up to their potential or not. We don't even know what a person's potential is besides "great." We can't compare because we have no way of knowing what one phrase that person heard when they were three or four that altered the course of their self-belief for either good or bad. We have no way to compare any element of how and why a person lives the way they do, with how and why another person lives the way they do. My capacity to do this work cannot be measured against any other person's capacity because first, we have no idea what that capacity is, and second, we also have no idea what would bring or not bring a person to this work. What experiences have  they had? 

12:40 

I don't even think that we can say that this type of work is the right thing for anyone to do. I personally feel that it's right for me based on my experiences and the insight that I have into myself. But although I feel everyone can benefit from this work, who am I to judge whether this is what another person's path needs or not? So then, what is the purpose behind all of this work? Why would I want to have self-discoveries that bring me to tears when I recognize the hurt and the pain that I've caused other people? Why would I want to invest time and money to work with a coach to help me discover these personal insights that bring me to tears and that hurt? Why would I want to constantly be scrutinizing it and evaluating my thoughts and my feelings and my actions? Why would I invest the energy on recognizing patterns of behavior and working so hard to create new ones? Why would I want to struggle and hurt and persevere through coaching sessions that show me thoughts and beliefs that are decades old? Why do all of that? Why do this work? 

14:04 

For me, I do it because it feels so darn good. It feels amazing to feel stuck or stagnant in some area and then figure out the thoughts that are holding me back and then change those thoughts and start moving forward again. It feels amazing to me to finally see patterns of behavior that are dysfunctional and hurtful and be able to make adjustments and create new healthier functional patterns of behavior. It is incredible to me to be able to create a marriage relationship that is light years different than the one I created in the past. It feels so good to have relationships with my children that are built on honesty and forgiveness, where my clean love is able to accept them for exactly who they are. It feels so peaceful to feel love and compassion and grace for myself, and then also be able to extend love and compassion and grace to others in a way that I've never been capable of before. It feels so good to replace self-doubt and confusion with confidence and clarity. It's amazing to me that I can feel emotional pain and still show up with love and kindness and don't feel the necessity to lash out and hurt others. In a nutshell, I do this work because of the kind of experience that I want to have in the world because of the kind of person that I want to be in the world. I want the experience of being loving and kind most of the time. Would be great if it could be all the time, but come on, we're all humans. 

16:04 

I want to be able to extend compassion to those who may say or do unkind things, or for whom I don't even understand what's going on with them. I want to love and believe in myself to the point where I can accomplish anything I decide I want to do. I want to learn to love like I've never loved before, and give love like people have never received before. I want to accept people for who they are, regardless of what they bring to the table, and stop being judge-y about things that are none of my business. I want to let other people have whatever opinions they want to have, and not feel threatened by those opinions, but rather learn to step into curiosity and fascination with the their point of view. I want to become the best version of me that is humanly possible. I want to create a different experience for myself than I used to live ten years ago, and this is why I do the work. I'm pretty sure it won't make me perfect because that's not the point and it's actually not even possible. But what it does do is increase my awareness, which increases my capacity to understand myself and my behaviors, and that increases my ability to change and move forward. And I change and move forward because I want to experience life differently than I have in the past, because unless I change some element, I will recreate what I've created in the past. And I don't want what I had in the past. This work allows me to create something different. 

17:48 

But it doesn't make me more valuable as a person. It doesn't make me more valuable than any other person. It just changes my experience. It allows me to feel more love, more compassion, more acceptance. It allows me to give more love and compassion and acceptance. And it teaches me how to show up more the kind of person that I really want to be, regardless of what circumstances come my way. This, my friends, is why we do the work. Because then we get to start experiencing life on our terms and not on anyone else's. I don't often get to control the circumstances in my life, but I do get to learn to control my responses to the circumstances in my life. And that changes my experience with my life. And it makes me just feel better. That's why I do the work. And so this is where we get to ask, why do you do the work? I did not do this work before I started growing up into middle age, and I love it so much. 

19:07 

Okay, if you would like some help doing this work, this is what I do. I help you do this, and I'm good at it. And if you want to work with me, you can go to tanyahale.com. You can sign up for a free 30 minute consultation where we can talk about this work and what it's going to entail for you and how you can get started working with me. It's a great, amazing process. I love  my clients so much. I love getting to work with them. And when I have experiences weekly, I see them have these ahas into their own behavior and into their own thoughts and they're able to see themselves clearly and make adjustments that are going to help them have more of the kind of experience that they want to have. Sometimes I get off calls with my clients and I just start to cry because I'm so touched and honored to be a part of their transformation and a part of them creating something different for themselves. 

20:30 

I just love this work so much. I love it for myself and I absolutely love it for my clients. I don't get emotional on my client calls, because that's not my job. My job is to stay outside the emotional realm so that I can see clearly what I need to see, but I will tell you that sometimes I get off calls and I cry because then I can let the emotion come in a little bit and I just love it. I love helping people and I appreciate you being here because even if you never call me, and even if we never work one on-one, I'm so honored to be a part of your progression and your change. So thank you for joining me here. 

21:24 

If this content is impacting your life, if it's helping you, I would love to invite you to share this with someone who could also use this work and and who wants to have these kinds of experiences. Not everybody does, but you know people that do. If you're this kind of a person, you probably have people in your life who are also this kind of person? Please share this. And if you will rate and review it then that helps other people that you don't know also find this content. So if you'll just take five minutes to go on to either Apple or Spotify and rate and review this, that would be really great to help other people and I guess that's gonna do it. Thank you so much for joining me. Have a really, really terrific day and I will catch you here next week. Bye. 

22:20 

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.