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Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 257, "Other People's Agency." 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.

00:18

Alright. Hi there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast today. I am so glad to have you here. Thank you for taking time out of your life to join me and to engage in this content. It's pretty amazing stuff when I look at where my life was 10 years ago, when I was still married and still in my previous marriage and still really, really struggling to just wrap my head around what was going on. I just didn't even know. I just kept thinking, "I don't know what's wrong here. Something's wrong and I can't figure it out." I thought that I was being all this great, wonderful person and as I look back with the experience and the insight that I have now, I realized that I really was a mess in a lot of ways, but I had no idea at the time. If that's the kind of place that you are in where you're just like, "I don't know how to fix this." This is what this information can do for you, and this is what working with a coach can do. We can stay in this space of," I don't know what to do," for a really long time and it never gets better. But what if you could get it together in the next three months? What if working with me for three months helped you to figure out what was going on and how to show up and how to start creating the kind of relationship you want? I promise you it is so worth the time and the effort. We feel so disconnected sometimes and we feel so helpless and a little bit victim mentality. Mental-ish, mental-ish. You know what I mean? We feel like a victim and these are the skills and the tools that can help you. So if you've thought about coaching, this would be a great time to get on and just come to a free console. We can talk about coaching, how it fits, I can give you all the information about it.

02:13

Okay, also for those of you who have shared a review with me on Apple or on Spotify, thank you so much. That really helps other people to find this. This content is so valuable, so important, and you being able to share this with other people will make a difference in their lives. They don't have to hire me, they don't have to do anything, but listening to the content is so helpful. It can help clean stuff up and help you see what's going on. And it's a great way for you to help other people by leaving a review or by sharing podcasts that you've loved with people in your life. It's a great, great way. Okay, I just I feel so strongly about what I share here. Because I've seen the impact that it's made in my life and the relationship that I am creating now in my current marriage is mind-boggling to me. Mind-boggling with how good it is and how amazing it is. And we all have the capacity to create something like this. It's just it's amazing and I just want to help people figure this out because it's so important.

03:29

Meanwhile, we are going to get started today. So today we are talking about other people's agency. And this is a podcast topic that has been on my mind for a long time because agency is such an important topic to understand, because it is so vital to the work that we are doing here. And the reason it's so vital is because the vast majority of the work we do is based around stepping into our own agency and allowing other people to step into theirs. So let's start off with some basic definitions about agency. So agency in the dictionary is defined as "the capacity, condition, or state of acting or exerting power." I think often when we speak about agency, we talk about it as being a person's ability to choose for themselves, to power up in their own life. Right? To act for themselves.

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So I want to take a really big step back and look at our pre-earth life existence. Now, if you are a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as I am, you will be up to speed. If you are not a member of this church, you're gonna learn a little bit of LDS doctrine today. I promise you it's not scary or freaky and or anything But I think you will find it very interesting in the context of our discussion about agency today. So LDS doctrine teaches of a pre-earth life where we lived as spirits with God, and while in this existence God presented us with a plan to come to earth so that we could get a body. And while here with this body, we could learn and grow through our experiences so that we could continue to progress and to become more like God. And a huge part of this plan was agency. It was the concept that we would have the ability to choose for ourselves the paths that we wanted to walk, that we would get to choose to follow God or not to follow God. And because of our agency in this plan, we would make choices that would necessitate a Savior, Jesus Christ, to atone for the sins each of us would engage in while here on the earth. And Jesus Christ is the one who stepped forward to offer himself as this Savior. And then there was Satan (or Lucifer) who also stepped forward with an alternate plan to ensure that everyone would return to God's presence, and he would do this by taking away our agency and forcing us to make the choices that would ensure our return. And when God chose Jesus Christ to fulfill His plan rather than switching to Satan's plan, Satan was angry and he took his followers and he left to come here to the earth as spirits, never to have the ability to gain a body and participate in God's plan of exaltation or returning back to live with Him. So central to God's plan is the role of Jesus Christ, a savior to pay the price for our sins so we can be cleansed and returned to God's presence. But also very important in God's Plan of Salvation for us is agency.

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Agency is the whole reason that a savior is necessary in the first place, because without agency there would be no deviating from the choices that would have us return to God. But there would also never be any struggle or growth. It is in our agency that we grow and progress and develop as humans and as children of God. So I believe that agency is the unsung hero in God's Plan of Salvation. We just don't talk about how important it is enough because without it we would not grow. We would not progress. We would not learn how to become a more loving, compassionate Christlike person. Without agency we would not develop the strength and the conviction necessary to truly choose to become a follower of Christ. And it is in the choosing that we become better versions of ourself. It is in the struggle of us choosing which course to take that our character is forged and strengthened. So I also believe that it is in the struggle of learning how to allow others to choose, where we honor and respect their agency, that we also become better versions of ourselves.

07:53

And God has set the perfect example for us in how to honor and respect agency, by allowing the blessings and the consequences of our choices without stepping in to manipulate or try to control how we use our agency. In fact, God honors our agency so much that He even allows my agency to impact yours negatively sometimes. Hence the age old question of "why does God allow people to hurt other people?" Because He values agency that much. Now this isn't to say that God doesn't care about results or about what happens after this life and whether we get to continue to live and grow, because I believe He cares infinitely. Just that probably, even for reasons we can't fully comprehend in this life, agency is so vital that God allows agency to play out without dictating the end result. And when I think about it, it seems to me that some of my greatest growth, as well as the bulk of my growth, has come at the hands of other people's agency. When other people make choices that impact me in any way, I am put in a place where I need to learn to become more like God, more like Christ, and I need to learn to honor their agency.

09:20

And I see this so much as I get to manage my mind around my adult children and also as I work with clients around the choices of their adult children. These are interesting dynamics, to be sure, because when these people come into our worlds, they are helpless and they wouldn't survive without us doing almost everything for them. And then as they grow, this dynamic slowly starts to shift, where we go from having 100% responsibility and them having zero that starts to shift, shift, shift, shift, shift, right? It slowly shifts to give them more and more decisions over their own lives, their own agency and their own ability to choose until as adults, we finally let go of the reins completely and they have 100% responsibility for their lives and now we have zero. And we just get to stand back in awe or frustration or confusion, like whatever the case may be. We watch our children step 100% into their agency and start making their own choices. And this is when things get really interesting for us because this is an amazing place to better learn how to respect and honor other people's agency...because really there are times when all of us wish we could hijack our adult children's agency and make them do what we prefer, what we think would be a better choice. And yet I think that this is such a vital part of our learning and growing to be more like our Father in Heaven. We have to learn how to respect our children...respect and honor other people's agency as God does, even when it hurts us, even when it hurts other people, or even when it hurts the person making the decision.

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And this goes far, far beyond adult children. That is just an easy example that many of us can connect with because these adults in our lives trek out on their own path. And often it's a path we didn't anticipate, we didn't want for them, we still don't want for them, and heaven knows we love them and we want them to have these great amazing lives. But who are we to know what will make their life great? How do we know that this one decision they are making now, that is causing us so much angst, isn't the exact decision they need to make to learn what they need to learn so they can become the person they have the possibility of becoming? We don't know that. And all we can do is trust in God to turn their agency into the best learning experience for both them and us.

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And here's another interesting piece to the puzzle. Instinctively, most of us want to control, or at the very least, have some say in how other people choose to walk their paths. And this is where we start using phrases that contain the word "should." They should show up a certain way. They should care about their finances. They should treat other people with kindness. They shouldn't be using drugs or alcohol or whatever. They should go to college. They should marry a person I approve of, etc, etc. And all of this well-meaning control is wreaking so much havoc in our lives and in our relationships. It leaves us feeling frustrated and angry, sometimes even resentful when they don't make the choices that we think they should. And when we feel those ways, it shows up in our actions in destructive ways as well. We start overstepping boundaries. We start manipulating and even gaslighting. We make small digs where we can with passive aggressive statements. We talk about them behind their backs, not only in our heads, but also out loud to others. And then all of those actions, those things we just mentioned, they go into, if we're going back to our children, they go back into their circumstance line. And then our children get to see that behavior and then they start creating their own thought models around us telling them what to do.

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And it doesn't usually go very well from there. This is when they start to pull back, emotionally disengaging, even digging in their heels, and sometimes sticking to a questionable decision just to prove they can, to try and prove us wrong, to try and stand their ground. And then those actions go into our circumstance line and around we go. Because then we start having thoughts about their actions and we create all this stuff, right? When we can learn to accept their agency, really step back and honor their decisions, we will feel better. Notice I didn't say "love" their decisions, right? This doesn't mean that we don't care about the results, that we don't care about these people in our lives. It doesn't mean that we write them off and wash our hands of them and say, "fine, I'm done," right? Of course we care about them. That is why we start trying to control their agency in the first place. Our primitive brain thinks that if they behave the way we think they should, that their lives would be better. And guess what? We would feel better too. Of course it would feel better to us. But this is where we sometimes start asking other people to manage their behavior, so that we don't have to manage ours. Because if you're behaving nicely, I don't have to manage my mind around you saying mean things. Right? So we try and get other people to manage their behavior, but agency is really all about us. It's about us stepping into our own agency and being responsible for our own behaviors, our feelings, and our thoughts. And it's about us honoring and respecting the agency of others to behave the way that they want and make the decisions that they want. And again, this doesn't mean that we don't care about their outcomes or the results that they get in their lives.

15:28

It does mean that we learn to accept that their outcome isn't ours to figure out. We can absolutely still pray for them and we can hope for them. But here's the thing, we cannot pray away another person's agency. It doesn't work that way. God will not take away someone's agency to make us feel better regardless of how hard we pray. That goes against the whole plan that He created for us. What we can pray for is the ability to accept the agency of others, the ability to love and care about them, to even know if there is something God would have us do or say. And then to pray for the ability to accept them and their decisions. This doesn't mean we have to love their decisions. Love is not the same as accepting. It's just realizing that they get to make their choices. And guess what? We can push against them and we can feel anger and we can feel frustration. Or we can accept their agency, accept their choices, and feel love and peace. And we don't even have to be happy with their decision in order to be accepting of their decision. Happiness and acceptance are not the same thing. We can be very sad about someone else's decision while still honoring their agency to make that decision.

17:03

Is it tough? Yes, sometimes it's extremely tough. It is so hard to watch people we love struggle, but their agency will lead them down paths that will teach them things they need to know. This is a space of developing a faith and a trust in God to turn their decisions into amazing opportunities. And if you pay attention, you will also note that often we are trying to take other over other people's agency so that we don't have such a painful experience. Again, we want other people to manage their behavior so we don't have to manage ours. But the struggle is a very important part of agency. Agency creates struggle because inevitably we're not...we're going to make choices that lead us into struggle. And struggle creates growth. And here's something that I know for sure about God. He has the ability to turn any decision we make into an opportunity to learn and grow in ways that will benefit us or whoever's making the choice. If we choose. And if we can learn to trust His process of agency, His plan of agency, then we will find peace in also learning to honor and respect agency the way that He does. God accepts the agency He has given us. He accepts that we will not always use it in ways that He would like us to.

But he also knows that by honoring this agency, we will be able to learn lessons we wouldn't be able to learn otherwise. And learning to see agency in the light that God sees agency is part of our learning process. When we can learn to honor and respect agency the way God does, we grow into becoming more like Him. We can feel peace around others agency while still loving them and caring deeply about their results and their outcomes in their future.

19:06

Accepting another's agency to make decisions we may see as questionable doesn't mean that we are happy they are walking this path. It just means that we accept that it is their decision to walk that path. And it then becomes our decision to decide how to show up for them in this relationship as they walk it. Do we want to show up supportive and kind, helping to provide a safe place to land if necessary? Do we want to create greater connection by respecting them and their decision to choose what they will? Or do we want to create discord and anger and frustration as we become overbearing, berating, seeking to tell them how to live and how to choose? Do we want to disconnect by stepping into our self-righteous, one-up position and talk down to them, effectively pushing them away? We get to choose not what they do, but what we do, how we show up.

20:09

Agency matters because it helps us learn to respond to agency the way that God does. Agency is the foundational piece of the whole reason we are here on earth. When we resist agency or go to war with agency, we are working against God's plan. But the more we can come to embrace agency, both ours and other people's, for the gift that it is, the more we start to grow into the person that God desires us to be, that we are capable of being. And this is when we begin to develop the relationships that we are capable of having here on earth. This is when we start seeing others as our equals rather than one upping ourselves in thinking that we know better than they do how to live their lives. This can be hard sometimes because, as we have aged, we've gained wisdom and better understandings about the consequences of our choices and we've seen things play out in our own lives when we want to protect the people around us for making similar choices. But just as fiercely as you value and want to protect your agency to make your own decisions, other people feel the same.

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One more way that I feel God does an amazing job of honoring our agency is through his complete willingness and ability to forgive us. When we use our agency to hurt ourselves, others or Him, He is always quick to forgive us. God doesn't look for ways He can punish us or create greater frustrations for us. He's not sitting there waiting for us to mess up and then rolls his eyes and says we deserve it and happily gives us difficult consequences. God, I believe, doesn't ask what we deserve when we struggle, but rather in our dark moments, I believe He is asking, "what do they need to learn and to grow?" That is the space that God gives us within our agency. Right? He doesn't condemn us for making mistakes. He says, "okay, what do they need?" He doesn't stand back in self-righteousness and say, "oh, they deserve that. That's all theirs." Right? That's not how God works. And when we can learn to respond more like God and not harbor resentments, and frustrations about the ways other people choose to use their agency and seek instead to offer love and kindness, asking what they need to feel supported and loved rather than focusing on what they might deserve for their unwise choices, I believe we are growing more into the person God has made us capable of becoming. And that is how other people's agency helps us to grow and become a better version of ourselves.

23:15

I love growing up. Don't you? It's a great, great space. Understanding these concepts can make all the difference in how we show up, and how we feel, and in our ability to live God's greatest commandments, which are to love God, to love others, and to love ourselves. It's all around agency, my friends. It's a valuable, valuable gift that we have been given and that every person has been given their own agency and it's our job to learn to respond to that in respectful and loving ways. Okay, that is going to do it for me today. I hope you have a really, really awesome day and I will talk to you next time. Bye.

24:05

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.