00:00

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 278, “My Coaching Journey.” 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

Hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast today. Super glad to have you here. I've been pretty reflective today as I've been preparing for this podcast. I've had a lot of people ask me lately about my coaching journey, about why and how I got into coaching and the impact that it's had on my life. And so I thought that I would share some experiences and some thoughts with you today. It's been a journey that I would not trade for anything. So let me just kind of jump in.

00:53

So about 15 years ago I heard of life coaching for the first time and the concept of it really resonated with me. I have always been someone who is interested in self-help types of books and ideas and at one point before my mission, I wanted to be a marriage and family therapist. And then I realized that it would take a master's degree to do that and, being the 80s and feeling very much the need to do what I was taught, it didn't seem plausible for me because I thought I was supposed to be a mom and not really have a career or definitely not have a career that would be difficult for a family. And a master's degree just didn't seem to jive with that idea for me. And so teaching was the ideal for a mom at that time if I was going to have any job at all. So I went ahead and got a teaching certificate but I've always been fascinated by relationships and what makes them work and what makes them tick. And I've read a lot of books and it's interesting that I had such a dysfunctional marriage with all the books I read. I just couldn't figure out. I just could not figure out what was wrong in my marriage.

02:04

So anyway, I didn't really consider marriage and family therapy beyond that once I found out I needed a masters. But I've always been interested in making the world a better place in helping people to have better lives. It's just something that has spoken to my soul and it's also the language that my soul has always wanted to speak. So years and years later when I learned about life coaching, I was pretty sure that that was what I wanted to do. But at the time I was thick in the struggle of my previous marriage. I still had four children at home and was just entering the teaching profession after 15 years of being a stay-at-home mom. So I kept a lookout for coaching concepts and ideas and programs and I looked it up occasionally but I didn't really ever find anything that appealed to me.

02:51

Then when I was just about ready to file for a divorce in 2015, I saw an advertisement for the John Maxwell team that had a coaching certification. And I had read a few of John Maxwell's books and I loved them. And after thinking and praying about it, I decided to sign up for that. And this was a great experience. And even though all of the training was video modules, I did go to Orlando for the final certification and that was a great experience and a spiritual experience. I met some really wonderful people, some people that went on to impact how I approached life in the coming years. But over the over the next few years, I found that the John Maxwell training wasn't exactly what I was looking for. It was focused more on corporate leadership and what I would now call action line coaching, meaning that it only focused on changing your behaviors. It didn't go into the thought work that we do here.

03:50

But I was with my business, I was plugging around, along trying to talk to people, setting up some free classes at the library and taking the entrepreneurship self-reliance class at church, which is where I found my first paying client, actually. And that was an exciting day. And we had some great experiences. It was a man in my stake who had his own business and wanted to move forward. And we did some great work. The coaching that I received through the John Maxwell team was great as far as action line and probably really good for what this client needed at the time. But it wasn't really what I was feeling driven to do and pulled toward. So during this time, I had gotten divorced in 2015, and I went through about nine months where I was 100% in victimhood and blame. The whole horrible marriage seemed to be my ex-husband's fault. And I really couldn't see where I had added to the dysfunction at all. And the John Maxwell coaching, though great in a lot of ways, did not help me with stepping into responsibility and getting out of that victim mode.

04:59

So then after those nine months I was introduced by a friend to Brene Brown and I checked out from the library her five-hour audio presentation called The Power of Vulnerability. In those days I always listened to books on CD while I was in my car and I ended up listening to this presentation three times back to back before I had to return it to the library. And listening to it was changing my life. When she talked about vulnerability, I was amazed that emotional vulnerability was even a thing in marriage. My previous spouse and I had never really ventured into that arena and I honestly didn't know that it was a thing. Which kind of helps you see why there were so many issues in our marriage, right? Neither of us were aware of it. And everything that she taught in those CDs was blowing my mind. And for the next year I read all of her books, some of them multiple times. I listened to The Power of Vulnerability CDs, a total of seven times that year. I just couldn't get enough. It was like a balm to my soul. And I just felt like I learned and grew so much emotionally listening to that and learning concepts that I just was not even aware of.

06:17

And after about a year of reading and doing all this Brene Brown stuff, I started to feel a bit saturated and ready to move on. And then a friend of mine recommended Byron Katie's book called Loving What Is. So Byron Katie is the person that I always quote that she said, "when you fight against reality, you're going to lose but only 100% of the time." So this book Loving What Is is just saying, "listen, circumstances are what they are. You can resist them. You can push against them. You can hate them. You can fight them. But it's just causing you misery. So if we can learn to love what is rather than fighting against it, we can live a life with much more peace." And I read that book and I was blown away by her ideas that we can learn to love what is and find peace in any circumstance. And then sometime later, I was creating a class on boundaries and happened upon Brook Castillo and the Life Coach School podcast. She had two episodes on boundaries that blew my mind. I loved the work that Brene Brown did on boundaries, but Anne Brook Castillo's work filled in some of those pieces for me that really helped it to make more sense to me.

07:37

I wasn't a podcast listener at that point. So sitting in the local library, I listened to them from my computer and I continued to dabble in creating content over the next year. I became introduced to listening to podcasts from my phone and I don't remember the process of all that. But eventually, I ended back up with a Life Coach School podcast and I became a loyal listener. I was introduced to a few more podcasts from life coaches who had also been trained under Brooke Castillo and I started listening to them as well. And within about six weeks of starting to listen Brooke Castillo started advertising that her life coach certification was opening up and I just knew that was for me. It was one of those times where I just feel like God was like, "okay here you go, next thing" and my spirit was like "I got you" and it just wasn't even a question. So I don't know have you ever had those experience where you just feel like God is just spoon-feeding you and getting you where you need to go? I just knew. It was expensive and I had some money saved from my dad's estate after his death and after waiting a few weeks to make sure I would still be thinking about it, I signed up.

08:49

And about that same time I had the same feeling about starting a podcast. It was listening to podcasts...I was just like, "oh, this is my thing. This is what I'm supposed to do." Now, I was still trying to get some traction for my coaching business and wasn't sure how to move forward. But one day listening to a podcast, it just hit me that this was my venue. And so all of that was probably in October or November of 2018. So I started figuring out how to do a podcast. I worked through a lot of fears of people judging me and thinking I didn't have any right to put this kind of content out into the world. You know, I didn't have enough, or any, letters behind my name. And so I had to work through all of that fear of being judged. And I finally hit a point where I decided that if I were the only person in the world to listen to the first hundred podcasts that I put out, that I would have grown and progressed so much that it would be worth it. And that for me was a thought that really kind of threw me over the edge that I was like, "listen, even if this is just for me, it's going to be worth it." It was a very vulnerable and scary thing to start this podcast. And yet I felt compelled. I felt driven. I really believe that God was nudging me in this work.

10:26

So I started this podcast in March of 2019, about a month before I started my certification for the Life Coach School. At that time, I was single with one daughter left at home. I was teaching full time. I was working with one client. I was preparing and recording two podcasts a week and doing the certification course, which took several hours a week. And it was busy and felt a little bit overwhelming sometimes. But it was just the path to get where I wanted to go. So I was just doing it and when I started my certification I realized that I was pretty emotionally stunted. I struggled to feel difficult emotions and I had no idea that I struggled to feel difficult emotions.

11:10

As I look back about seven years into my previous marriage I had decided that I didn't want to be a mom who cried every day, that I needed to be a mom who wasn't crying, so I started turning off my emotions with my husband and in my marriage so that I could be functional with my kids. And though this served me really well in showing up and getting the things done with my kids, it didn't serve my children well because I found that I couldn't turn off emotions with just one person; it bled into how I showed up in every relationship, although I didn't know it at the time. Now I wasn't a heartless cruel mom, but when my children experienced difficult emotions, it scared me because I made it mean that I wasn't a good mom. At this point, I see how dysfunctional that behavior was, but at the time, I really thought that people were meant to be happy all the time and that if they weren't, there was something wrong. And in the case of my little kids, if they were not happy all the time, I must be doing something wrong as a mom. And I didn't want, I couldn't wrap my head around that because I was working so hard to be a good mom. So though I loved my children desperately and I was a really amazing mom in the ways that I knew how, I didn't understand emotions and how to engage emotionally and that difficult emotions were part of everyday living. And so if my kids were unhappy, they had to go to their room until they could come out happy. And that just makes me cringe at this point, but that's what I understood and what I knew how to do. So when I started my certification with the Life Coach School, I found myself struggling in this area of feeling emotions and soon realized that I had some serious work to do to start connecting with my emotions better, specifically my more difficult emotions.

13:02

And thus began a journey of learning to feel more. This was part of my coaching journey, is my own personal growth. In fact, I think that that's been the most important part of my coaching business and my coaching journey is my own personal growth. So business wise at this point, I just kept showing up. I cut back to one podcast a week because two was just too much. I started picking up more clients very slowly. In 2022, right before I got married, I cut back on my class periods at school because my business was needing more time and attention with the number of clients that I had.

13:39

And then I got married. I quit teaching. I moved to Indiana from Utah and started coaching full time and I love it. But I think even bigger than the whole career change for me with my business has been the personal growth that coaching has given me. As I just mentioned, I really struggled to fill the more difficult emotions when I got certified with the Life Coach School and I started working with coaches to address this. And as I grew into a deeper understanding of my doing this and the impact that it had specifically on my children, I have had conversations with them that have been life-changing.

14:14

At one point three of my four children and me were sitting in our living room on the sectional and I was letting them know what I was learning and I apologized to them for the difficulties that I had presented in their lives because of it. We had a very open and vulnerable discussion and all four of us ended up in a bundle in the corner of the sofa crying and holding each other. Talk about the power of vulnerability. I believe that that was one of the most powerful experiences I've had with my children and it deepened our intimacy and our love for each other and I was blown away by their ability to forgive and to embrace me in my struggles to become a better person and to figure this out. So the healing that this coaching has created with my children in their lives and in my life and in our relationships has been huge.

15:13

I will also say that I have absolutely seen God's hand in this work. I am always amazed at how often I will have an experience that I need to work through and within the next few weeks I will have a few clients who are going through something similar and can benefit from my newfound understanding and growth. It really is a place where I feel God is helping me to learn and grow in ways to help my clients and also to help you, my podcast listeners. So often I feel God deeply. I love to pray before I start preparing a podcast and I know that what I put out there is not all me. When I go back and listen I'm often amazed at what I'm hearing and realizing that I shared information that I didn't necessarily know and I didn't necessarily understand at the time.

16:08

So just to be clear, in no way am I thinking I'm special in this way because I know other people have these experiences and in no way do I think I'm a spiritual leader. I just feel so deeply that I am doing the work that God wants me to do and as I engage, He's helping me because I can help you. And that feels like a sacred, sacred space to me and I really feel honored to be able to be part of your life. I also feel that my own relationship with God has deepened significantly since I started engaging in coaching.

16:47

I was at a coaching conference just this last weekend in one of the presentations we were asked to reflect on how our relationship with God has changed since we started coaching and as I thought about that I was so moved and overwhelmed because I feel that coaching has definitely moved me into a more loving relationship with God. Before coaching I had a very checklist-y relationship with God and the gospel. And being raised in the 70s and 80s, it's not surprising because we were taught things like how to keep the Sabbath Day holy with a list of things that were appropriate and things that weren't. I remember when I taught at the missionary training center giving my missionaries a list of how to pray like all the steps of how to pray and there were like 20 of them or something. But we were given checklists and being checklist-y is an important developmental stage but to grow our relationships into something more meaningful and deep with God and with other people we have to start moving out of the checklist and start moving into love. And coaching has helped me with that significantly. I see so many of the concepts that I teach here have applied as well with my relationship with God. And as I've sought to apply them, I feel I have a much more personal and intimate relationship with him.

18:11

For example, the concept of clean love that I teach about in podcast number 92 applies in our relationships with God as well. Do I show up loving God without expectation that he will bless me or respond in a certain way? Or can I grow into the ability to love Him and not tie His love or blessings or answers to prayers to my love? In podcast number 218, I talked about honest relationships. Again, I have asked myself if I am showing up honest with God or am I deluding myself into thinking that I can hide things from him? Am I really stepping into vulnerability with him when I speak and pray to him? And when I seek His guidance? And for example, when I talked about feeling obligated in podcast number 227, I have to consider how am I showing up with God? Do I feel an obligation toward Him? Or do I seek to align my life with Him out of love for Him? Do I feel obligated to be an example for other people? Or am I seeking to just love Him and live my life from that place? And if people see me as an example, that's fine, but that's not my goal. So so many of the topics that I cover about relationships have crossed over into my relationship with God and it has deepened my conversion and my commitment to Him. I feel I am much more open and honest and vulnerable with God and with others. And through this, I have also moved into a place where I am willing to ask more questions of God for most of my life. I was afraid to ask some tough questions because I was scared

to receive answers that I didn't know what to do with or scared that I wouldn't receive answers at all. And as coaching has helped me move more into a living from a place of love rather than from a place of fear, I've been able to courage up and start asking some tough questions of myself and the gospel in the church.

20:09

And from this place of questions, I haven't always received answers, which I feel actually requires that I live more from a place of faith. Because the opposite of faith isn't doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty. If I am certain of something, I don't have to exert faith. Having questions without answers actually requires more faith from me. I love this quote from Richard Rohr, who I believe is a Catholic priest. I may be wrong on that, but he's brilliant and has some great stuff. But he says this quote, "My scientist friends have come up with things like 'principles of uncertainty' and 'dark holes.' They're willing to live inside imagined hypothesis and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution, and clarity while thinking that we are people of faith. How strange that the very word faith has come to mean its exact opposite." Isn't that a great quote? I came across that years and years ago early on in my coaching journey, and I've just thought about it often that faith is actually not knowing. It's not having closure, resolution, and clarity. Faith is places where we don't know. And so as I have questions about things and I don't have answers, I feel that it actually requires me to live with more faith.

21:41

So one last thing, and I've touched briefly on this, is that I feel this work has helped me to tap into the possibility that God sent me here to earth to step into. This work aligns so deeply with what I feel speaks to my soul, and with what I feel my soul needs to speak, that I feel that I am doing what I was sent here to earth to do, what I was created to do. And from this space,  I feel deeply held by God. I feel that He guides me so much and teaches me things that I wouldn't be able to access elsewhere. And with this, I feel a deeper connection to Him. I feel more converted to Him than ever before, because I see Him in this work that I'm doing. And even if this work were just for me, even if I were the only person to ever listen to this podcast, it would be worth the journey for me because of how I have seen God's hand work with me, especially in thispodcast.

22:41

I will also add that the work we do here has absolutely changed my life. Through coaching, I have been able to move out of victim mentality from my divorce. I've been able to step into the responsibility for my own dysfunctional behaviors that I contributed to my marriage. I can actually see them now. I couldn't even see them at first. Coaching has opened my eyes to how to feel more deeply, both the easy and the difficult emotions. It has taught me how to love more cleanly and how to honor people's agency more fully. Through coaching, I've learned how to be more honest in my relationships, how to speak the things I need to speak, how to create an equal marriage partnership. I have learned how to courage up and not be afraid of the personal work required to acknowledge my faults and weaknesses and to repent and repair and move forward. Coaching has helped me to learn how to listen with love and compassion, how to empathize with others in their struggles, and how to give others space to be human and struggle. It is teaching me how to love others and myself without judgment to offer grace and compassion when there are missteps and unkindness.

23:53

I have come so, so far from when I got divorced and started my coaching journey eight years ago, and more especially five years ago when I found LCS and the tools that were available to me there. It's a journey that has been difficult. I've cried a lot of tears when I've seen my true self, when I've been blessed to see my rawness and my great failings. And it's also a journey that has brought more growth and joy and fulfillment into my life than I really could have ever imagined. I have come so far and I know that I still have a long way to go. But now I feel so confident in the direction I'm heading on the path I'm on. I feel like I am showing up more and more the kind of person that I want to be.

24:44

Coaching has allowed me to create the amazing relationship I have with Sione. We were talking just today about how some of the struggles that we've gone through could have caused some real destruction in our relationship but with the coaching tools that we use, though these situations have been difficult, they have not impacted our relationship. I thank God every day for leading me to coaching which helps me to live the Gospel more fully. To have a deeper relationship with Him and to create a life that is full of joy and meaning.

25:19

So that's a bit about my coaching journey. And even with the overwhelm and the tears and the frustrations, I wouldn't change one day of it because every day has led to this day. And this day is filled with so much gratitude for the work that I get to do with you, for the work that I get to do with myself and with my husband, and for the life that all of this is helping me to create. I love growing up. I love the growth that I've been through in the last eight years since my divorce. It's been incredible. And I'm so grateful that I get to share this journey with you and that you choose to come. And I just thank you for being here. And I guess just a quick reminder, I know I do this at the end of every call, but if you feel the need to step more into your journey, coaching is an amazing tool to help you do that.

26:32

And you can contact me at tanyahil .com where you can at the top click on the free consultation button. You can sign up for a free, free 30 minute call with me where we can just sit down and we can chat about coaching and I can give you all the deets. I can tell you all the things and we can talk about whether coaching is going to be a good fit for you or not. I think it's amazing. It has changed my life so much. And I work with clients every day who also just recognize how much it changes them and how it just accelerates your path.

27:12

So that's it for me today. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being a valuable part of my journey. It means the world to me. I love you and I'm grateful that you're here. I hope that you have a really, really amazing week, my friends. I'll see you next time. Bye.

27:34

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.