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Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 219, "The Truth About the Struggle." 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. Welcome to the podcast today I just love doing this so much. I'm so grateful to have this platform to be able to share with you information that is rocking my world and creating in me a person that interacts in the way that I want to so much more. I'm grateful that the things that I'm learning I'm able to share with you. And I promise you this content is stuff that I am implementing into my own life to create really what I want. A lot of this has brought me so much personal awareness over the years and so many things that I am now able to implement into my new marriage that is just creating something unbelievable to me. It's a completely different world for me and I just am so wanting to share this information that that is changing my life. Coaching is a brilliant, brilliant platform for personal growth and I use this with my clients, I use these concepts. I learn concepts from my own coach when I work with her every week and I just love coaching. I think it is just such a terrific way to step into a better version, to see things that we're not seeing, to create the life that we really feel driven to have, and yet we sometimes just don't know. And we don't know what we don't know! So this is why we come to places like podcasts, right? Because this is how we can find it. 

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So with that, I'm gonna say that a couple of you have left me reviews this month. Thank you so much and got received several last month. The thing is about reviews, they're kind of hard to come by when you're a podcaster because a lot of people don't want to take the time to do that. And yet this information, what I'm sharing, I know that it's so useful. I know that it's so helpful. And if you will take a minute and just write a review, super easy to do, it helps other people that you will never know find this content because it pops this up on the suggested list for them. So that's a great way that you can share without even really having to go out of your comfort zone. You don't even have to have your own name on there. You can create something different. So just when you pull up my podcast and it gives you some options, scroll down to the bottom and it will talk about reviews. And then you can just take a couple of minutes, write a review and be done with it. And then every time I bring this up, you can feel good about yourself, knowing that you have already done your good deed. 

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Alright, we're gonna jump in today. The truth about the struggle. Okay, and this is not gonna be mind-blowing information for most of you, but it's always such a good reminder to help balance ourselves out when we're in the struggle. So here we go. When I was younger, I used to believe that if I was doing things right, living my life righteously, that my life would be easy, and that I wouldn't have any really difficult challenges. And I honestly, I know, I know, but I honestly thought that if I was doing it all right, that I would be happy all of the time. Okay, serious, where did this stuff come from? I don't know. I don't know where it came from, but I really believed it, and you can imagine the habit that this created in my previous marriage. It kept me in a place of constant disillusionment, of unrealistic expectations for both him and me, and also for us, and it kept me in a bit of a victim mentality with regards to my marriage. 

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So here is the truth about the struggle: not only is it meant to be a part of our daily life, but it's a very important element to our growth and progression. Okay, there's this book that I used to read with my eighth graders called "Okay For Now." Such a great book if you haven't read it. I cried and I laughed and it's just so good. But in this book, there's a teenage boy, and he 

is being taught by an artist how to draw. And the artist tells this main character, he's a boy, says, "all movement relies on tension." Now, although he was talking about a painting technique, I believe the exact same concept applies to our lives. Think about it for a minute. All movement relies on tension. Movement, growth, progression in our lives is dependent upon the tension that life naturally provides. Okay, think about a bow and an arrow. An arrow can only be shot far distances if the bow is pulled backwards and a lot of tension is created. A rubber band is only useful if tension has been created first. So here's one definition of tension: "inner striving, unrest or imbalance." Unrest or imbalance? Brilliant! Because in seeking to then find the rest and the balance to settle that down for us, we figure out things that are keeping us from the rest and balance and we learn how to resolve them. This is the key, the learning to resolve them, the learning to come into a place of acceptance. 

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I think about when I take my kayak out onto the lake. Now, my kayak needs tension to move along the water. First of all, it needs buoyancy, which creates friction between the boat and the water. It needs to be able to float on top of the water. It needs wind, helps it to move, paddles help it to move, waves and the current help it to move. Right? These things like the kayak and the rubber band and the bow and arrow, they're really solid physical examples of how tension is necessary, not 

only for movement, but to fulfill the measure of their creation. But when we look at our own lives, sometimes this can be very difficult and we resist the tension. Our natural man seeks for ease and comfort. It really resists this inner tension. But remember that our primitive brain is always seeking for three things. One: to avoid pain. Two: to seek out pleasure. And three: to conserve energy. Tension does none of these. No wonder our primitive brain creates so much resistance to struggle. 

07:36 

Okay, here's a second definition of tension I want to share with you: "a balance maintained in an artistic work between opposing forces or elements. The act or action of stretching." Now, this goes back to the book where the artist was teaching the idea, but what if the artistic world is our life. A balance maintained in our lives between opposing forces or elements, the act or action of stretching, all things in this life have attention of opposing forces, of opposition. There's light, there's day, there's dark, there's night, there's happy, there's sad, love, fear, hot, cold. Everything has an opposite. And our brain has a natural tendency to think of opposites as one of them being good and the other one being bad. But that, my friends, is not the case. Which would you say is better, day or night? Right? Like neither one is better than the other. The days are great for accomplishing, the nights are great for rejuvenating. What's better, hot or cold? Depends on what we want, right? What's better, the beginning or the end? We have these opposites and they are not an opposite of good and bad. They are an opposite of balance. Right? We tend to look at things like fear, excitement, hope, courage. These all are different forms of tension that propel us forward in life. 

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There's a verse in the Book of Mormon in a book called Second Nephi, and the chapter is 2, verse 11, and it talks about opposition. And it says in that verse that all things must need to be a compound into one. This tension of opposites is the compound. These opposites are the compounding of two opposite things. Good comes balanced out with bad. Nothing is entirely one or the other. For example, if you've been listening, you know that I just got married in March and in June I moved from Utah where all my children live to Indianapolis to live with my husband. So where there's happiness in marrying Sione, there's also a lot of sadness in leaving my children and my friends and my home of 18 years. It's this balance, right? There's so much happiness, but there's also so much sadness. With growing this business, there is the struggle to learn things that I never knew. Marketing, advertising, how to talk to people about investing in coaching. All these things have created a lot of frustration for me over the years in figuring out how to do this. But it has absolutely been balanced out with the good. the joy of figuring these things out. As I have watched my business grow, as I have watched my podcast grow, and as I'm figuring things out, that just is so thrilling and so amazing to me that me, a person who was a stay at home mom for a lot of years, who was a teacher of middle school kids, is growing my own business. I'm an entrepreneur. That's just amazing to me! Like, what's going on here? So I have the struggle to learn all the things that I need to learn to be an entrepreneur, but it's also balanced out with the joy of when I figure things out. And both sides are important for us to be able to grow. 

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And it is so important that we learn to accept and look for this compound of things in our lives. Seeing this compound helps us to better understand our experiences. Because God is in our sorrow, our anger, our disappointment, and our annoyance. As sure as he is in our joy, our happiness, our successes, and our satisfaction. It is super important to come to understand ourselves, our weaknesses, things that are holding us back, and also important to understand our strengths, the things that will propel us forward. Because that compound, that tension, is what actually moves us forward, the tension between our weaknesses and our strengths. Coming to know ourselves is a step toward becoming more like God. And as we learn to lean into this compound, to the opposition, we become a more full, a more complete person. Leaning in creates the momentum to push us forward. Think of the visual of that. Leaning into something will create the momentum to push us forward. Because we come to understand ourselves better, and we are able to create this greater intimacy with ourselves, and with God, and with other people, as we step into that understanding. 

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But understanding this compound, understanding the opposites, understanding ourselves better, does not make the opposition or the struggle go away. But changing our thoughts about the opposition opens us up to greater understanding. This is why we're having this discussion about the truth, about the struggle, about the tension, about the compound. And I want you to understand one thing that I think is fascinating that one of my coach friends pointed out to me a few weeks ago. We have opposition in life everywhere, even in our thoughts. you think about the conversations that we have between our primitive brain and our prefrontal cortex brain. 

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Okay, here's an example that goes on for me sometimes in the morning. My alarm goes off at 4:40ish in the morning and I have an option. Right? Well, this is the conversation that goes on in my head: "Okay, time to get up. Oh, but this bed is so cozy. It's so comfortable. Let's just take just a few more minutes. Well, but I've committed to go exercise. I'm gonna go exercise at the gym this morning. Oh, but we can do it later. How about if we just do yoga a little bit later and don't go to the gym? Okay, but I love the workouts at the gym because they really push me. They really make me more strong. But we can do that tomorrow. Let's just do yoga today. That way we can get an extra half hour of sleep." You know, right? Like who else has these conversations in their head? You? Oh, huh? Yeah, because that's what happens. We have these two brains going on. There is opposition even in our thoughts Okay, I want you to realize this is part of the plan for our lives and there is opposition even in the Atonement of Christ. The most painful experience in history brought about the most beautiful results. This is a place where our mistakes can become our triumphs. Do you see the compound here? Do you see the the tension? Here's another one: our godly sorrow creates intimacy with God. Oh, so amazing. We have to make mistakes to access the beauty of the Atonement and this allows us to use this opposition to move forward. This tension, this opposition of life...this is vital to God's plan for us. And yes, it can require blood and sweat and tears to move through this tension. 

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Last June I took a trip to Machu Picchu, Peru and I will tell you this was one of the most physically demanding experiences I've probably ever engaged it in my life beyond high school sports where the coaches just run you into the ground. Right? But I promise you it just never seemed to end. And as we were going up four hours of climbing 3,000 vertical feet while between 10,000 and 14,000 feet in that space...as we were going up, it was so hard. And first of all, the oxygen is so thin and we're not used to that. And we would walk 25, 30 steps and have to stop and take a breath and breathe and just let our muscles, because we're not getting enough oxygen in our lungs, so our muscles are not getting enough oxygen. So your muscles are more depleted, your lungs are hurting and we would stop and we would turn around and look at the vista and we would go, "oh my gosh," and we were taking pictures and we're like, "this is amazing." And we would catch our breath, walk another 20, 30 feet up these stairs, turn around and go, "oh no, now this is the vista. This is what I've been waiting for." And then we would catch our breath, walk another 30 steps, turn around and go, "no, now this, right?" Every vista was more important, more impressive than the last. And I will tell you, though, that that struggle was so hard that when I got to the top of Dead Woman's Pass during day two. Now it wasn't because I'm a dead woman. It's because the profile of the mountain looks like a dead woman. But when I got to the top of that on day two, after that 3,000 vertical feet climb, I actually began to cry. I was so overcome with gratitude for having made it, mixed with so much pride about my accomplishment and so much gratitude that it was over. And so proud of myself for not quitting. This is the thing about struggle and opposition. It moves us into growth. I became a different person at the top of Dead Woman's Pass than I was four hours before. Because I realized some things about myself. I saw some strength. I saw the ability to push through tough stuff. 

18:48 

So another challenge that I have gone through was my many years of a difficult marriage that finally ended in divorce. Blood, sweat, and tears? Absolutely. Divorce was, without a doubt, the biggest challenge of my life. But it has also created my greatest growth. It has given me the opportunity to act and to not be acted upon. Learning to see those opportunities to do that. Being acted upon is a choice. It is allowing others to dictate our spiritual and our emotional well-being. We may not choose our circumstances, but we always choose our response. And this has been one of the biggest lessons for me in my divorce and through that struggle. So here's something that I'm going to say, and I want you to pull out your paper and write this down because this thing I'm going to tell you right here is going to change your life: we are not responsible because we're to blame, sometimes. Sometimes we're responsible because we're the only ones who can fix it. Let me say that one more time. We're not responsible because we're to blame, but because we're the only ones who can fix it. 

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We may not choose our circumstances, but we always get to choose our response. Taking responsibility for our circumstance, for our situation, for our response to it. This is the key to our growth. This is the lesson for us to learn. Taking responsibility is choosing to act for ourselves, choosing to allow other people's actions to determine our course, this keeps us stagnant. Blaming others is allowing others to act upon us. It's so important that we learn to use our God-given agency to act for our best good. Use the tension, the opposition, to act with power and with intention, and create what we want to create. For example, we can choose to forgive, and in that forgiveness, we move forward. Jeffrey R. Holland has a really great quote I wanna share with you. He says, "the tests of life are tailored for our own best interests, and all will face the burdens best suited to their own mortal experience. In the end, we will realize that God is merciful as well as just, and that all the rules are fair. We can be reassured that our challenges will be the ones we needed, and conquering them will bring blessings we could have received in no other way." I love that because it's such a great reminder that God knows my struggle. In fact, He hand-picked this struggle for me, because there are blessings for me, there are insights, there is growth that will be available in no other way. So when I learn to pay attention, I can learn to recognize challenges and struggles earlier on in the process, and before I unintentionally grow them into something bigger and more painful than they need to be. Does that make sense to you? If we can catch the struggle earlier, if we can catch our thinking processes earlier and not let ourselves go into victim mode, into, "oh, this is horrible, this is so hard," but move in intentionally asking ourselves, "what's there to learn here? How can I grow here?" That is a great place for us to be. 

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But here's the thing, I want us to remember, challenges are temporary. The struggle is temporary. They will come and they will go. But there is something permanent about these struggles. And it is the person that we become in response to them. And this starts with how we choose to think about the struggle. When we're not aware, it is very easy to begin doubling down on the challenge. For example, the challenge is going to create its own discomfort. Okay, there's level one of difficulty, of challenge, of struggle. It's going to hurt. It's going to be painful. Okay, it's going to be uncomfortable. But we add additional discomfort when we resist or fight against the challenge, when we obsess about it, when we are constantly seeing how it's ruining our lives, when we ruminate on that, when we make ourselves miserable because we're having a challenge. 

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Oftentimes I see this in clients when they explain a challenge with another person. I get to work with a lot of people who are working in the midst of their divorce or right after their divorce or still struggling to get in a good place emotionally with their divorce. And for these people it can be so easy to see their ex-spouse as the villain, as the cause of all the bad going on in their life, with regards to this particular challenge. And whether we're talking about a divorce or another challenge with your adult children, or a challenge with your boss, whatever, it doesn't matter, it can be so easy to see the other person as a villain. And it is absolutely true that other people can create circumstances in our lives that are challenging. But how I choose to respond to that challenge is the real clincher here. When I start blaming and pointing fingers and I make another person the villain, then there has to be a victim, and that is me. I become the victim and I when I start moving into victim mode, I start doubling down on the original struggle. 

25:16 

Yes, circumstances bring challenges for sure. That is a fact of life. But how we respond to those challenges to those circumstances makes all the difference. When we see them as horrible things that are ruining our lives, we create more discomfort than the original challenge. For example, let's put this in a thought model. Okay, so circumstance: let's say my husband filed for divorce. You could have any circumstance in there that you are working through, okay? Not all of my clients are divorce clients, for sure, but this is one that I put in here. So circumstance: my husband filed for divorce. Thought: "my husband is making my life miserable." Feeling that that thought creates: disempowered. "It's my husband's fault that I'm miserable." So my actions: I start to blame, I start to accuse, I rally the troops, I tell everyone about how horrible he is, and the result is that I make my life miserable. I become a victim to my circumstance. I have doubled down on the miserable, on the challenge, on the difficulty. I'm not saying divorce isn't hard. I 100% get that it is. What I'm saying is that how we think about it can create additional feelings to the original discomfort. 

26:43 

In the example I just shared, the struggle of the divorce is magnified by the disempowerment that comes from blaming and accusing and seeing ourselves as a victim. Okay, or the struggle for the divorce could be magnified by continually beating ourselves up for mistakes we made along the way. Do you see how we're doubling down on the discomfort? Right, the discomfort is there, the divorce is hard, but we double down by blaming ourselves, by beating ourselves up, by blaming the other person, by becoming a victim. 

27:23 

Okay, so here's what an example could look like when we are not doubling down on the challenge, when we are moving into learning and growth mode instead. Okay, circumstance: my husband filed for divorce. Though: "this is tough, but I know I can figure it out." The feeling: maybe hopeful? The action then from that feeling is: I'll make stronger decisions. I'll take responsibility for what I can. I will do everything I can to figure it out. The result: I do figure it out. I step into a stronger version of me. I become more empowered because I realize that I am in control of me and my experience here. 

28:08 

Okay, now, whether it be divorce or another struggle that you're thinking of, keeping this mindset and this thought model, it can be really tough to do when things first happen, for sure, especially when the circumstance is new, when it's raw, when it's big, we sometimes need a moment to process, to catch our breath and even to wallow for a bit. But before too long, we will start to feel uncomfortable in the wallowing, in the stagnancy of not doing anything, of not moving forward. Okay, but this is also what I want you to understand: your primitive brain will resist movement because it kind of likes to stay in this space. It knows that moving forward can be really hard because we start stepping into that tension we talked about before. And I have to be honest, for me, there is something a tiny bit satisfying about feeling like a victim. Am I alone in that? Probably not, right? It's like I deserve people to have compassion and pity for me. And guess what? Maybe I do. Maybe the circumstance you're going through does deserve people's compassion and pity. But staying there starts to feel very uncomfortable and very horrible after a while. And it's really important that after catching our breath, I want you to think of times that you've been running or pushing yourself really hard and you need a minute to stop. You put your hands on your knees, you bend over, you catch your breath. After we do that, figuratively in life, it is important that we get moving again. And that happens when we change our thoughts about the challenge, about the struggle. When we start to look for the lessons rather than being bogged down by the annoyances and the pain and the frustrations. When we intentionally start to choose thoughts that move us forward rather than keeping us stuck or thoughts that double down on the struggle. 

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When we finally decide we want to feel better. Choosing to stay stuck layers difficult emotion on the already anticipated difficult emotion. It's that doubling down. In our example, going through a divorce is usually a painful, difficult experience emotionally. But our blaming, our accusing, our complaining, our focusing on how that shouldn't be happening to us, it layers on an additional layer of difficult emotion. It might layer self pity or contempt or anger on top of the hurt. And it keeps us from moving through the original hurt and moving into understanding of what there is to learn from the challenge. We get buried in the overwhelming difficult emotions and then we feel stuck. So learning to embrace the struggle for what it is, an opportunity for tension, for greater growth will keep us from feeling stuck. It doesn't mean it's going to be easy, but it does mean there will be movement. 

31:29 

All movement relies on tension. And movement means growth. you and growth brings greater happiness and satisfaction in life. That, my friends, is the truth about the struggle. I'm not saying the struggle is easy, and I'm not saying we become Pollyanna and we just go, "oh, this is great, this is lovely," but we do not need to double down. And when we see it for what it is, we step into a stronger, more capable version of ourselves. And that, my friends, is brilliant. That is the beauty of growing up. We have so many more experiences to draw upon, so much more knowledge, so much more wisdom to apply so that we can grow in this middle-aged stage in ways that we have never been capable of before, that have never been available to us before. And I love growing up into a stronger emotional, emotionally resilient version of myself. And I'm so glad that you're joining me on this journey. Thank you my friends. If you need some help in your own journey, coaching is such a brilliant, brilliant option. 

32:59 

I am so humbled and so overwhelmed with the work that I'm able to do with my clients right now. One-on-one is a brilliant opportunity to work in a way that you haven't before. I have a client who has been in someone's membership for a couple of years and going through a divorce she contacted me and our last session she said," you know what, I've learned the membership has been amazing but this one-on-one has pushed me and given me insight in a way that I was never getting in the membership." Memberships are great and they're amazing and they're spectacular but I want you to realize that there is a space in one-on-one coaching that you will move quicker and deeper than is available to you with just one-on-one work. So think about it. It is yes an investment in time, an investment in energy, and yes an investment in money but so worth, so worth the investment to see things and grow and become something you haven't been before. Promise you. It's an amazing, 

amazing experience. So thank you so much for joining me today. It's been my pleasure to be here and I'm honored that you have joined me. Thank you so much. Have a terrific, terrific week and I will see you next time. Bye. 

34:27 

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.