00:00

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 276, "When You Don't Like Change." 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

All right, hello there, my friends, and welcome to the podcast today. Just really quickly, I still have room in my two online group classes that I am going to be doing, "parenting adult children" and also "dating after divorce. “They’re going to be Monday night starting on October 16th for six weeks straight. Classes are an hour and a half long. That means that we're going to do content for about 45 minutes, maybe an hour depending on the discussion. And then until the hour and a half is up, then we will be doing some one-on-one coaching, which means that you will get to speak with me individually about circumstances that you would like some help with in these areas. And I know it may seem a little bit scary to be sharing your stuff with all the people in the class, but I promise you it's an amazing experience. Not only do you receive some coaching, but everybody else gets to listen, and everybody's very non-judgmental in these classes. But they get to listen and hear and understand things from a different perspective because when they're not in the thick of it, they can see things a little bit more clearly and they can understand things that they would not have understood. And likewise, when other people are being coached, you will get to listen to their coaching as well. And it's going to be an amazing experience. Both classes are capped at eight people a piece so that there will be plenty of time for you to have an opinion, have ideas, ask questions, and get coached. So you don't want to miss those. This is the last week to sign up for those. You can go to tanyahale.com and at the top there is a "group coaching" tab that you can click on to do that.

 02:02

 Okay, so we are going to jump in today with the podcast title "When You Don't Like Change." Now I'm always a little bit surprised with how many people I hear say that they hate change, they don't like change, I'm not good at change. And I think that it's one of those phrases that we heard someone say and we thought, "yeah, I don't really love change either," and we just adopted it without much thought about what that phrase really means.

02:32

So can change be uncomfortable? Absolutely it can, especially the big changes. Moving homes can be an uncomfortable change for sure. On the easier level, we have the big tasks of cleaning out all of our stuff and packing and cleaning and then doing it all again on the other end when we move into any place. On a more difficult level, we may be saying goodbye to a job that we've been comfortable with and knowing that we will need to find and start a new job. We will have to get reestablished with doctors and a dentist and ,heaven forbid, finding someone to do our hair, which is always my least favorite part of moving. We need to figure out the area and how to drive to the places we like, where the grocery store is, and the department store, and Trader Joe's for heaven's sakes, right? And on an even more difficult level, we are often leaving relationships. Maybe we are moving away from family or that we're close to. We might be leaving neighbors and friends and a church community that we are close to and that we enjoy. Our work colleagues can sometimes be some of our closest friends and it could be hard to say goodbye. Are these all uncomfortable changes having to do with moving? Absolutely. And feelings that may naturally come up with all of that can be sadness and grief, maybe fear or uncertainty, but "hate"? Let's take a closer look at that.

03:56

Okay, so here's a question I have for you. Do you really hate change or is it just uncomfortable? I want to take a look first of all at some changes that you might just love. What if I told you that you could only eat plain oatmeal for every meal every day for the next year? No brown sugar or maple syrup, no nuts or fruit, just plain oatmeal. I'm guessing that for most of us, we wouldn't be super excited about that. We love changing up our meals and I love leftovers, but after three days, I'm so ready to move on and not make that meal for another three months, right? And that's not even eating that leftover for every meal. That's just eating it for one meal a day. It's just that I love the variety of lots of different fruits and vegetables and meats and combinations of sauces and breads and pastas. It's all fun for me. What about you? Do you love change when it comes to food? Interesting to consider that you might not hate change. It may not be a blanket statement, right?

5:05

Most of us love wearing different clothes every day. Now some people like Steve Jobs just want to put on a black turtleneck and black pants and shoes every single day and be done with it, investing zero energy in decision-making around their clothing. I absolutely am not one of those I love the variety that clothes offer me and I would rather spend less on a piece of clothing and have more variety that I can change out than a lot of fewer items that cost a lot of money, just because I love mixing it up and I love the ever-changing options. When I taught school I would try and go the whole year, and you'll think I'm crazy, but I would try and go the whole year and never wear the same combination of clothing. Now I didn't really do that but I love thinking that it was what I was doing and it was really fun to me to try to do different things and wear different combinations of scarves and shirts and jackets and pants and shoes and all the stuff. I just thought was fun. I just think the variety is great. I love change when it comes to clothing. How about you? I also love mixing up my exercise. Though I usually do the same kind of exercise, I rarely do the same exact routine two days in a row, or I'll even be several weeks, if not months before I do the same workout again. I love the change. I love the variety.

06:34

 And if you have children, what about them? I loved my kids when they were young babies and though I was sad to have them grow so fast, it was also exciting to see them learn how to roll over to sit up to crawl to walk to talk. I loved when they started learning how to dress themselves and feed themselves and I absolutely loved it when they learned how to pump themselves on the swing, I didn't have to stand there and push them the whole time anymore. When they learned how to read and do math, oh gosh, I just thought it was so fun to watch their little brains figuring things out. And them growing into teen years was just a riot for me. I enjoyed my teenagers so much. They were so funny and it was great to be able to talk with them about more important ideas and see them start taking responsibility for more adult things in their lives. Although having them move out and go to school and on missions was tough, it was also exciting. Watching their growth, their change, their development is a beautiful thing.

07:37

My testimony of the gospel is another place where I love change. I loved it over the last few years especially. I've been able to move out of a checklist way of living the gospel and into more of a relational way of living the gospel. I am more in tune with myself and my relationship with and connection to God. I don't do things so much now because they're on a to-do list somewhere, but because I feel that it will nurture the relationship between myself and God and Christ. And a huge part of this change for me has been stepping away from living the Gospel from a fear-based perspective. I'm not doing things now for fear of missing out on blessings or fear of God being disappointed or not loving me. I'm living the Gospel so much more from a place of love: love for God, love for Christ, and a love for me and what feels good to my soul. So part of this change has also been giving myself permission to ask questions that I've been afraid to ask for most of my life for fear of losing my faith. And I feel that this is moving me into greater faith, actually. I am really, really loving this change in my life. And one last thing I'll mention is the growth change of doing this work. Can it be painful, uncomfortable, to see my fault so clearly, to see how I've hurt others and cause long lasting pain? Absolutely. Can it be difficult to struggle to change a thought and create something healthier that will improve the quality of my life and my relationships? Absolutely. You bet it can be difficult. But the work to create change is so, so, so worth it. Knowing that on the other side of discomfort is more peace in my life makes the discomfort valuable. Knowing that I will treat others with more love, more kindness, and more compassion because of the work I'm doing not only makes the discomfort palatable, but almost makes me look forward to the next thing I'm going to recognize about myself that is dysfunctional. Sounds a bit crazy. I know. But once you work through the initial sting of seeing your raw self more clearly and you see the effects of cleaning up some things, you just might find yourself looking forward to the next revelation of how you are hurting others and yourself.

09:59

So hopefully in these examples, we've been able to challenge the thought that you hate change or that change is horrible or that you're not going to change... because guess what? All of those are just thoughts. They're not facts. How do we know? Because we would not be able to prove it in a court of law and everyone in the world would not agree. So let's put it in a thought model and see how it plays out when we say that we hate change, because it's fascinating to see what might seem like an innocuous thought. Like it's not a big deal, what it's creating for us.

10:39

So let's say the circumstance is that your oldest child is moving across the country next week and your thought is, "I hate change." The feeling: loads of them here. You might feel annoyed, irritated, resistant, overwhelmed, stuck, resentful. When we feel any of those emotions, how does that show up in our behaviors? We might be short-tempered, distracted, emotionally disengaged. We might throw out some passive aggressive comments. The end result of those behaviors is that we don't engage in the change; we pull away from the change. So one thing that I find fascinating about hating change is that it is a distraction from the real feelings going on. In this example, there's probably a lot of sadness and grief with a child moving so far away. And we could be feeling that sadness and grief, and then we would be connecting with that child over the sadness and grief before they go. But instead, we are choosing to create annoyance and irritation with our thoughts of hating change. And that annoyance and irritation has us disengaging, disconnecting, being passive aggressive, showing up the exact opposite of the kind of person that we actually want to be. Thinking that we hate change distracts us from the much more productive and connective feelings of sadness and grief. These two emotions connect people. Annoyance and irritation disconnect people. But even if we don't go to hate, what if we just say, "I don't like change" or "I'm uncomfortable with change" or "I don't do well with change"? Let's put that in a model. Okay, so again, let's use the same circumstance. Oldest child is moving across the country next week. Thought: "I don't like change" or maybe "I don't do well with change." Feeling: (notice they come up exactly the same as the I hate change.)We're going to feel frustrated, annoyed, resistance, overwhelmed, resentment, stuck, right? And then our actions: distracted, disengaged, short tempered, snippy, passive, aggressive comments. The end result, we don't handle the change well. We think "I don't do change well" and we respond by not doing change well. That ends up being the end result for us. So it's pretty similar to what happens when we say that we hate change.

13:14

And I want you to notice that it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we say that we don't do well with change and then we show up distracted and disengaged and snippy because we feel frustrated and annoyed, then of course we won't be handling the change well. We prove to ourselves that we're not good at change. We think that these are true thoughts. We think that they are part of our DNA and that we were born hating change. And there may be some truth to the idea that we are born with preferences. And maybe you've struggled with change your whole life. Okay, that's not a problem. In that case, if I were to ask you if that thought I don't do well with change is true, You might say, "oh yeah, that's true. We could prove that in a court of law." So let's say that we actually could prove that it's genetic and that you don't do well with change.

14:07

The next question I would ask you is pretty important, probably more so important than whether the thought is true. It's the question, is that thought helping you? Are you showing up the kind of person you want to be because of that thought? That thought is most likely causing you to show up distracted, annoyed, frustrated, ill-tempered, passive -aggressive, resentful, stuck, disconnecting with the people around you. So is it a helpful thought when it makes you show up with those feelings? I think most of us would say "no, it isn't helpful." And this is where we get to take back our power. If it's not helping you, you don't have to keep the thought. Because you get to choose what you think about. Nobody gets to be inside your head directing your thoughts. And even if you believe it's a true thought, you can choose to think something else if it's not a helpful thought. We don't have to believe everything that's true. We just don't. We get to choose what to think in our heads.

15:13

So how do we do that? How do we think a different thought? How do we change the thought? We find a different thought to think instead for example, we may choose to think: "change is hard and that's okay." Notice the softer piece of that that comes in. How about "I'm going to figure out how to work through this." Very different, right? It doesn't make us feel so stuck. Or if we catch ourselves saying "I'm just not good at change," we can quickly tag on "but I'm getting better, but I'm figuring it out." Notice that just saying things like "that's okay" or "I'm figuring it out" or "I'm getting better," those help us to move into more of an empowered place. If we put those in our thought line our feelings will be something more like resolve or determination or capable. And those feelings will create much more productive actions. We will find ourselves stepping into behavior such as problem-solving, reaching out more to connect, finding ways to keep connected after the move. These actions will create more of what we actually want to create in our lives, which is connections with other people.

16:29

So are those thoughts true? Probably. More importantly, are they helpful? I think they're way more helpful as they are helping me show up more the person I really want to be. That's why the thought model is such a powerful tool because it really helps us see where "does this thought take me? What does it create in our life?" Creating awareness around our thoughts is a powerful way to start seeing the impact of our thoughts, and then creating something more helpful if we want to.

17:04

But here's another amazing thought. What if we didn't focus on the difficulty and challenge of change at all? In the example given about a child moving across the country, what if we chose to focus on them moving rather than the difficulty of change for us? What if instead we thought, "I'm so sad they're moving so far away" or "I'm going to miss being so close to them?" The feeling that those thoughts would create would be sadness, grief, maybe longing, and then our actions could more easily move into expressing those feelings.

17:47

Okay, but be careful. We don't want to express them, or show up here in a way to manipulate or passively aggressive, like trying to get them to change their minds. We're not going there. We're just having some honest communication of expressing the feelings of sadness or grief or longing. We might cry. We might reach out to have them over for dinner a few more times before they leave. We might engage in some deeper than normal discussions about life. We might set up a schedule for having regular Zoom calls or we might express our deeper feelings of love. So, notice if you felt the natural resistance to feeling sadness or grief. You are 100% normal if you did because those can be tough emotions. And our brain wants to go into protective mode and that's why it will focus instead on not liking, or even hating, change. Our brain is just trying to protect us. However, sadness and grief are much more healing and productive than something like hatred is. In fact, hatred toward anything, even change, is detrimental because it puts us in victim mode rather than in hero mode or responsibility mode.

19:01

So, did I just equate saying that you hate change with being in victim mode? Yes, I did. Let's take a look at why I would say that. Remember that victim mode means that we are making someone or something else a villain in our lives. In the case of this, what we're talking about today, in the case of change, change actually becomes the villain. And if there's a villain in our story, there is always a victim and the victim becomes us. And when we're in victim mode, we feel powerless to do something different. In fact, the person or situation has to change in order for us to feel better or do better. Notice that saying "I hate change" or "I'm not good at change" makes change a villain. And because change is occurring, we are powerless to feel anything other than hate or frustration or annoyance or resistance or overwhelm. Right? We are the victim of change. We feel powerless to do anything against the change and "powerless" is one of the worst feelings I think we ever feel because it is infused with hopelessness. When we stop making change the villain, then we aren't the victim anymore. And then we have the capacity to move into hero mode, the place where we are fully empowered to create what we want to create to focus on solutions rather than problems. Thinking "this is hard and I can figure it out" is so empowering. We can absolutely acknowledge the hard. We don't need to pretend that everything is okay, that it will be easy. Change can be hard. But we've done hard things before. Some things are super hard and we were created to do hard. We don't need to pretend that it's easy, that "woohoo I love change. This is so great." We don't have to pretend that. But also we don't want to acquiesce our power to a thought like I hate change.

21:13

To step into our power we have to completely get rid of the villain in our story and that means we stop empowering change by thinking we are helpless in its wake by saying "I hate change. I'm not good at change." Okay. Now, I'm guessing that most of us just picked up this phrase from someone else in our lives and at some level it just resonated with us and we thought, "oh yeah, I don't really like change either." And we started using it and we haven't even really thought about it since then. It's just a phrase that we keep using because it makes sense at the time. But we've never really thought about it.

21:58

Well, today is the day to start thinking about it. Our thoughts are more powerful than we can imagine and so many of our thoughts we are completely unaware of. Probably "I hate change" or "I'm not good at change" being some of those thoughts. You guys, it's estimated that we have about 60,000 thoughts a day. There is no way that we can be aware of and monitor every single one of those thoughts. So what we get to do here with coaching is identify the biggest thoughts that are holding us back from feeling the way that we want to, from behaving the way that we want to and make the adjustments we feel necessary. "I hate change" or "I'm not good at change" or "I don't like change" are some that I would love for you to look at and see if you use it. them, how often you use them, and if you do, decide if they are helping you or hindering you.

22:59

And this might just change your life for the better. And that's some change that we can love. I love growing up, don't you? This midlife change, all the changes that happen at this part in our life, they can be tough, they can be hard for sure. But they're also amazing. This is the best time of our lives. I love that you're here joining me with this and I love that you are moving into a better and a stronger and a healthier version of yourselves. Thanks for joining me here. I hope that every week you find at least one little nugget that can shift your trajectory of the direction you're going into the direction that you want to go. Life is amazing. This work is life-changing... is so life changing.

23:54

Now, if you are struggling with figuring out how to manage your thoughts, how to identify thoughts, how to change thoughts, and how to move into more healthier patterns of behavior, one-on-one coaching might just be a really, really terrific fit for you. If you want to talk with me about it, you can go to my website, tanyahale.com. On the top, there is a tab that says "free consultation". You can click on that. You have access to my calendar. You can sign up for a time and we can get on a zoom call and we can chat. I promise you, I'm not a high pressure kind of person at all. Do I love coaching? Absolutely. Do I think everybody needs a coach? I absolutely do, but I'm not going to try and talk you into coaching with me because if you're not fully invested, you're not going to get out of it what you could. And I want every client that comes to me to grow as much as they possibly can. And this work is amazing. It has changed my life and it's changed the lives of so many of my clients that I've worked with and I'm just so grateful to have the opportunity to share these ideas with you. And to coach those of you one-on-one who come to me and those of you who never have or never will? All good. You're here learning amazing things and I hope that you're implementing them. Okay, that's going to do it for me. My friends, again, if you are interested in either of those classes, "parenting adult children" or "dating after divorce," go to my website and check them out and get signed up. Again, they are limited to eight people a piece. So if those are going to work for you, get on there, check them out and I will talk to you next week. Bye.

25:33

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.