00:00 

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 239, "How to Own Your Own." 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. 

00:21 

Well, hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast today, so glad to have you with me. Alright, to start off with today, I have two Mastermind groups that are going to be starting on February 1st. If you love to just talk about this kind of stuff and discuss it and dive a little bit deeper, a Mastermind is for you. So the first one I have going on is called "Healing and Moving Forward After Divorce." So if you've gone through a divorce, you're kind of struggling with moving forward, we're going to discuss that in depth for 6 weeks, an hour a week, and these will be Tuesday nights. Check that out because it's going to be really great. I've got some good content for that. The other one that I'm doing is called "Better Relationships" and in that one we're going to be talking about the things that keep us from having better relationships, things like one-upping and one downing, not being honest, people pleasing, passive-aggressive behavior, owning your own. Maybe some perfectionism or expectations. I haven't got that last class really, really down, but we're going to be talking about the things that keep us from having the kinds of relationships that we want, the things that we are unaware that we're doing. And so we're going to really try and increase our awareness so that we can step into better relationships and show up the way that we want to, because honestly, that's all we have control over, is how we show up. So we're going to talk about that. These should be really great. I'm excited for them. They're both six weeks long. If you're interested in checking them out, you can go to the website, tanyahale.com. Up at the top, there's a tab that says "Masterminds" and on that there is information for what you need to know to get signed up and to join us for that time. So we start on February 1st, we end on March 8th. It will be every, oh I said Tuesday night, it's actually Wednesday night. We have every Wednesday night for six weeks. Okay, so that's going to do it. Here we go, we are going to move into the podcast today. 

02:22 

Today we are talking about how to own your own. Okay, so this is a topic that I have, we talked about in, when my husband, Sione and I did the our "Relationship Rules" episode, I've had several people ask me for clarification and more information about the "owning your own" principle that I teach. So for me, owning my own is a way of communicating with people in a way that allows us to address tough issues and decrease the possibility of the other person getting defensive. Now to be clear, we don't have any control over how the other person shows up, but we do have control over what we put in their circumstance line, right? What they have to deal with because our actions, what we choose to do become the other person's circumstance. And then they get to start their own journey of how they think about what we're doing and how they feel about it. So we're going to start off today backing up a bit and going back to the thought model. Some of you who may be newer may not be super familiar with it. If you are, this will be a great review. 

03:29 

Okay, so the thought model is a tool that is taught at the Life Coach School, one of the places that I certified as a Life Coach. And it's an amazing way to start connecting with our thoughts and realizing how much control we actually have over what we experience in life. And this has been probably one of the biggest blessings for me is I no longer feel like it's just like a crapshoot, like whatever happens happens and I have no control over things. Now I feel very in control of my life. So the thought model consists of five parts: a circumstance, which is something that happens, a thought that we have about the circumstance, and then those thoughts create feelings. Feelings is the third one. Those feelings generate actions, and then those actions create the end result in our life. So we're going to start at the top of that and we're going to work down through the first three of those pretty heavily because that's what we rely on when we do the on your own. 

04:28 

So the circumstance is a fact of what actually happened. In this line, when we're identifying this, we want to be really careful to just put facts and not opinions. And this can be a tricky concept because when it comes to our thoughts, we haven't generally been taught how to question them. We just accept them as facts when in all reality, they may not be facts and they may not even be true. So saying something like, "he got angry," guess what? That's not a fact. It's a thought or what we might sometimes call an opinion and here's why. Because whatever behaviors he engaged in that you interpreted as angry, someone else may interpret as excited. So here's an example. When I taught middle school, one day I had some personal stuff going on and I was just really in my head about it between classes when students were coming and going and because I wasn't as outgoing and talkative as I usually was in that between class time period, I had a student after class started ask if I was mad at them and I was like, "no, I'm not mad, why?" And she says, "well, you just look like you're really angry," and they had interpreted my more ponderous self as being angry, when in fact I wasn't angry at all. I was just preoccupied in my head with trying to figure this situation out. So if a student had told someone I was angry, it wouldn't have been a fact. It would have been a thought or an opinion. 

06:04 

So here's an easy way to look at it. If you could record it and play it back and everyone in the world would agree to it, it's probably a fact. "The weather is horrible" is a thought. "It is raining right now" is a fact. We could record it raining and everyone would recognize it as such. But some people would think that the rain was amazing rather than horrible. That's how we know that that's a thought. So this example makes it seem really easy, but it can be a little bit more difficult sometimes. We might think after an interaction with someone that they are just so rude. That would be a thought, not a fact. Can you identify why? Okay, because rude is subjective. Some people might think that the other person is just an introvert or maybe they're being assertive. So when you identify your circumstance, really hone in on the actual facts. Clean that up. This can take some work, but it's so worth figuring out, especially when you want to use the on your own because it's the first step in the process. So circumstances, facts, they happen. And guess what? They are neither good nor bad positive nor negative. They are just facts. They are neutral. Now I sometimes get some pushback on this, but I want you to really try and step into this and see this. If your spouse said, "you are fat." That is not good or bad. It's neutral. What makes it seem loaded is the thought that we have about that fact. We know it's a fact because if we recorded it, we could play it back and prove exactly what was said. We know that it's neutral because some people would think it was a bad thing to say and other people would think it was a good thing to say. It's neutral actually. 

08:13 

Once a circumstance happens, then we have a thought about it. This is when our opinions come into play. Let's say the circumstance is you get on the scale in the morning and the scale says 165. See how factual that is? It's not saying I'm overweight, it's not saying I'm underweight, it's not saying I'm losing weight, it's not saying I'm gaining weight. It just says 165. We could have the thought, "Oh, that's horrible." Or we could have the thought, "that's awesome." We need to identify our thoughts about the circumstance. Learning to identify the thoughts can be difficult for many of us because we haven't been trained ourselves to look for our thoughts. Mostly we've lived our lives without questioning our thoughts at all. So when our brain says, "you can't figure this out," or "you're ridiculous," or "you're dumb," or "you look horrible today," or "you're worthless," we just believe it. In fact, very often we don't even recognize that we're having the thought. It comes and it plays out in our feelings and our actions, and we don't even stop to look for it and identify it. But our thoughts create our feelings, and sometimes our thoughts can be difficult to identify. 

09:41 

So because we're generally more aware of our feelings about things, sometimes it can be really helpful to skip the thought for now and go first to the feeling line. The feeling line comes after the thought. We have a circumstance, a thought, a feeling. But if we identify the circumstance and then we skip down to the feeling line, we can say, "okay, so what is the feeling that I'm having?" So let's go back to the previous example I just used. If the scale says 165, you might feel shame. What is the thought about the scale saying 165 that makes me feel shame? The thought might be, "I'm such a loser. I have no control. I should be able to lose weight." Or guess what? The scale says 165 and we may feel excited. We may feel excited because the thought about that 165 is, "I'm exactly where I want to be. I'm doing so good," right? So we have different thoughts about the circumstance. And those thoughts create different feelings. So if we go to the feeling first, then we can ask ourselves what thought about this circumstance makes me feel this feeling? For example, what thought about my husband rolling his eyes and walking out of the room makes me feel angry? We might identify such thoughts as, "he should stay here and work this out with me." Or maybe you feel dismissed. Then we would identify a thought such as, "he doesn't care about how I'm feeling." So learning to identify the circumstance, the thought and the feeling is the crux of owning your own. It's part of the thought model, but that's what owning your own is all about. 

11:38 

So just for reference, the last two parts of the thought model are actions and results. So all of our actions are fueled by our feelings. Okay. When I feel dismissed, how do I show up? How does that show up in my actions and my behaviors? I might engage, I might disengage emotionally. I might physically leave the room. I might stop talking. I might start to cry, right? We want to identify the actions. And then those actions create the end results that we see in our lives. Okay. So if my feeling is dismissed and I feel myself accusing the other person or yelling or getting passive aggressive or blaming, those actions create the result of a more dysfunctional relationship, right? Okay. 

12:34 

So when we're talking about owning your own, we want to focus in on the circumstance, the thought and the feeling. And it goes like this: When you're going to (name the circumstance), when this happens, I feel (name the emotion) because I'm thinking (and name the thought that creates that emotion). So here are some helpful concepts, concepts when working with this sentence framework. Right? So we can call this a sentence framework in education. We would call it scaffolding, right? Just something to help support the way that we're going. So here we go. So first, make sure your circumstance is a fact. You wouldn't say "when you get mad at me" because maybe he's mad. Maybe he's not. We don't know, right? Instead, we would say "when you raise your voice and call me stupid," "when you roll your eyes and walk out of the room," whatever, right? We're pinpointing the exact facts. Remember, if we could record it, what would we see? Okay. So instead of "when you are irresponsible," we would say "when you don't wash the dishes after making a snack," and notice what we're doing here is we're completely taking out the blaming piece. We don't say "you are so irresponsible," or "you make me feel like you're mad." We get really clear on the exact facts of the situation. "When you don't wash the dishes after making a snack." Okay, super important as this sets the tone for the rest of the sentence. We don't want to be blaming or accusing. We just want to be stating the facts. Because when we blame or accuse, what does the other person do? Bam, walls up, stop listening, start protecting. So once we identify the situation when this happens, then we want to identify the feeling. 

14:33 

So here's the place where we can get a little bit mixed up as well. Because I've noticed that in the last several years there's been a lot of talk about using "I Feel" statements. And guess what? That's great. But the problem that I've noticed is that some people are using them to attack the other person. Instead of saying, "I feel (here's my emotion), they might say, "I feel that you're being lazy," or "I feel that you are overreacting," "I feel that you are too sensitive." The purpose of the "I Feel" statement isn't to blame the other person or call them out. It is to identify your own feeling. And a feeling will almost always be one word, not a phrase or a sentence or a paragraph. I feel angry. I feel frustrated. I feel loved, disconnected, unsettled, happy, unseen, hurt, overwhelmed, compassion, one word. Okay? So when this happens, "I feel (one word emotion because I'm thinking)." Okay? So now we need to identify the thought that creates that feeling. "I feel disconnected because I'm thinking that you don't care about what I'm going through." "I feel angry because I'm thinking you expect me to clean up after you." "I feel overwhelmed because I'm thinking that I'm picking up so much of the extra work at home while you're playing video games." 

16:10 

What this does is bring the circumstance back to your experience. I'm thinking, I'm feeling. This is why we say owning your own. You're owning your own thoughts, you're owning your own feelings. It does not blame or accuse the other person. Generally, there's not going to be much to argue with when you share your own thoughts and feelings. This is my experience. Who can argue with your experience? Well, might you be married to someone, you know, or be trying to work through a problem with someone who will want to argue? Possibly, but then you can just clarify, "listen, I'm not blaming you, I'm just trying to share with you what experience I'm having here." Because remember, as soon as we start to blame or accuse, defensive walls will most likely come up, arrows will be shot back across their wall, and then our defenses come up and we start to shoot arrows, and then nothing productive is happening, we're just fighting and protecting ourselves. And the purpose of learning to communicate better is to bring greater understanding of the other person and their experience. So we own our own by sharing our experience with the circumstance, and then we move into really seeking to understand the other person's point of view. We do this by getting curious and asking lots of questions. Okay, but be careful here, we're not asking questions to corner them, or to manipulate them into seeing our point of view. We're not trying to gather ammunition. We start asking questions so that we can genuinely understand their point of view. Because when we really understand where the other person is coming from, what thoughts and feelings they're having, we can have a lot more compassion for them. 

18:02 

So after you shared your, "when I feel, I'm thinking" statement, you're owning your own, here's something else that I found is really helpful so that the other person can understand that I'm not blaming them. I will often say something like, "I know I may be completely wrong about this, but this is what my brain is thinking." Or I might say, "now that I've said it out loud, I can see that the thought probably isn't true, but it's what my brain has been telling me and it's caused me a lot of angst." Right. What we're doing here is letting them know that we're aware that our brain tells us things all the time that aren't true. We're aware that we might be wrong and that just because we're thinking it doesn't necessarily mean that we believe it, but also we're clarifying why we're having the experience we're having. Why am I feeling this way? Oh, because I'm thinking this. So maybe the other person you're working with responds with, "oh, come on, you know I don't see you as the maid around here." Okay. Not everybody we're going to be doing this with is going to understand these processes. That's okay. They don't need to because we do. Right? We can implement them. We get to recognize that, oh, we don't want defenses up. I want to keep them down. Okay. 

19:21 

So the next step is to move into really trying to understand their point of view by asking them to share their own point of view of the situation. This might sound something like, "will you help me understand what's going on for you when this happens?" Or "will you help me to understand what I'm missing?" Or maybe even, "What are your thoughts around this circumstance?What's your experience around this circumstance? What are you thinking and feeling?" And keep asking questions until you really understand where they're coming from. Again, we're not seeking to interrogate them. We're not trying to put them on the spot or shame them or convince them or gather ammunition. We are honestly seeking to understand their point of view, why they respond the way they do, why they say the things they do. When we move into this space, it can create an opportunity for some pretty vulnerable discussions as we learn to open up more about our feelings and our thoughts and our processing of events. Because this process requires some vulnerability for sure. When we share our feelings of insecurity or our feelings of worthlessness or our fears, if that's not something you're used to doing in this particular relationship, it can feel very difficult to move into. Vulnerability is something that we often want the other person to engage in, but we don't want to move into it ourselves. But to create the emotional connections we want in our relationships, vulnerability has to be a thing. We have to be willing to show our soft underbelly. And generally, the more intimate we want the relationship to be, the more vulnerability we need to step into. So if you're using this with someone you work with, less vulnerability is appropriate. If you're using this with a spouse, more vulnerability is vital if you want to create greater intimacy, greater connection, greater closeness. 

21:30 

So here's something to consider if you're doing this work with a spouse. It can be fairly easy to be a good roommate. You follow the basic rules, you keep out of each other's way, you engage when necessary, you might go to a movie or out to dinner and have a great chat, you might enjoy cooking dinner together, and guess what, none of this requires any vulnerability. And you can manage your mind around most things in this relationship. You can do thought work all day long and keep this relationship afloat, but it will be superficial. Right? But if you really want to have a deep intimate connection, it requires vulnerability. It requires learning to monitor your thoughts and behavior so that you're aware of what they are. And then also having the tough discussions, owning your own in that discussion, talking about the things that are difficult. Okay? If we're just managing our mind around stuff, we're having a pretty superficial experience. It's the first step because we have to manage our mind. But if we want something deeper, we have to do something else. We have to show up authentically and honestly. We have to risk being hurt. It requires that we are willing to be known for all the good and also for all the bad that we feel and that we have inside of us. And it requires that we are willing to know our spouse for all of their good and their bad as well. And when we know it, when we know their bad, we accept it. We accept them for where they are in life and the path and the journey that they are on. This space of knowing and being known is a pretty vulnerable space. 

23:23 

I would say that my first marriage never even approached this place. Neither of us knew how to open up and be vulnerable with each other. In fact, I would dare say that it was never even a thing. It was not even anything that we knew we should be trying to do. And when we saw something we didn't like, we found it way too easy to blame and accuse rather than accept and possibly have a great discussion about. My first Mr. 90 days, which was about two years ago was my first experience really working to step into this type of acceptance and love. And I was terrified to let him see my underbelly. Having some of those vulnerable conversations felt like my insides were going to crawl right outside of my body sometimes. And I remember the first time that I really opened up. I did it because I was really starting to understand the importance of vulnerability, the importance of opening up. And I knew I needed to do it if I was going to grow and become more the person I wanted to and have the relationship I wanted, but I was sitting on the sofa fighting the urge to completely shut down. I was swimming in shame. It was one of the hardest discussions I had ever had, but I couraged up and I did it because I knew that I could not become the person I wanted to be and learn how to have the kind of relationship I wanted to have without figuring out how to be vulnerable and making peace with it. And yet this allowing myself to be known turned out to be amazing and even liberating to realize that I could be loved and accepted even with all of my flaws was a huge, huge "aha" for me. I had spent 24 years of marriage thinking that I had to be perfect if I was going to be loved. Now, did my ex -husband tell me that? No. And I don't know where that thought came from. Maybe it was interactions with him. Maybe it was just stuff from before. I really don't know, but I thought that I had to be perfect to be loved. 

25:41 

But I also realized in this experience with my first Mr. 90 Days that for me to learn how to love and accept him for all of his flaws was necessary. This was a new experience for me and I'm so grateful to him for the practice that he gave me in learning how to be vulnerable, learning how to accept him for who he was. And now after just a few years of practice, it comes much easier. Although I'll be honest, sometimes I still have to courage up and just step into it because I value the relationship and I know that this vulnerability is what is required for me to have the relationship that I want to have for us. I guess to have the relationship that we both want to have. So when we're learning to own our own, we have to be willing to be known. We have to be willing to show our true selves and be vulnerable. And we have to be willing to extend the same to the other person. 

26:43 

Our natural tendency as humans is to protect, to hide. And this includes our tendencies to want to be manipulative or passive aggressive, to intimidate and one up ourselves. These things come so natural for us as humans. It's just what we do. It can be super easy for us to make assumptions about why they're behaving the way they are. We create these stories in our head, right? And we have to be on the lookout for these things. We have to intentionally choose to show up open and honest and really seeking to understand and see the other person and to accept them where they are and for who they are. We make way too many assumptions and we don't seek for understanding as much as we could. We work so hard to prove ourselves right, even when we're not. And being able to identify your own feelings and your own thoughts about a circumstance can help to clarify for us whether that's a true thought or not. 

27:52 

Okay, so hopefully this has been helpful for understanding better how to own your own. Absolutely. I wish you all the best in learning how to implement better communication tools into your relationships. As humans, we crave emotional connection with others. And yet we often sabotage ourselves in creating this by how we show up because we give into the fear. Because we're just scared spitless. Alright, owning your own can help you communicate better by understanding yourself and the other person better. It's an amazing tool. I love it and I love teaching it to my clients and I love that I get to teach it to you here on the podcast. I hope this really, really helps. This is a space of growing up that's just not available to us when we're younger. We don't have the experience, we don't have the wisdom, but guess what? Middle-age, here we are, my friends. We understand things that we never have before. If we want that intimate partnership, it requires that we step into vulnerability. It requires that we learn to start having these difficult experiences or these difficult discussions and owning your own can help you do that in a healthier way. 

29:14 

You want some personal help from me, you can go to tanyahale.com, you can click on the "free consultation" button and you can sign up for a free consultation. So I am completely booked at this point, but I'm constantly moving people in and out. Like last week, I graduated two clients. This week I graduated one and those spots have gotten filled already. But I'm always moving people in and out because clients get to the point where they're like, "okay, I'm doing pretty darn good. I feel like I want to go out and do this on my own." And that's my goal, is to help you get to that point. So I'm constantly moving people in and out. If you want to work with me, you may need to wait a couple of weeks until I have an opening, but usually openings are happening within two or three weeks at this point. Okay, my friends, that's going to do it for us today. I hope this was helpful. This is good stuff and it can be hard stuff, but it is so valuable if we want that intimacy, if we want that connection. You've got this. I know you can do it. And I guess that's going to do it for me today. Have a great, great week and I'll see you next time. Bye. 

30:27 

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.