00:00

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 280, "Living in Alignment." 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

Alright, hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast. Just always, as always, just so, so glad to have you here. I love the work that I get to do with my clients. I love the work that I get to do with you here on the podcast. I think that this content that I'm able to create for you is just so helpful and so amazing. And I hope that it helps you to work through some of the pitfalls that I've worked through my difficult marriage, my divorce and then single years, and then getting remarried. It's been quite a journey. It's been an amazing place to be and a place of real self-awareness. And I think all of these tools really help move us into greater self-awareness so that we can create more of the kind of relationships we want to be because we are the more the kind of person that we want to be.

01:16

So anyway, that being said, really quick, if you have not signed up for my "weekend win" email that comes out on the weekends, go to tanyahale.com, go over to the contact me button and scroll down just a little bit and you will have a place to sign up for that. I don't send out too much. I do send out an email almost every single week and it's meant to be read in about two minutes or less. Just something quick to give you something to chew on and think about and it's some good stuff. So if you haven't been there and haven't checked that out, I would encourage you to do so.

01:50

Alright, let's jump in, shall we? Okay, we are talking today about living in alignment, I have been thinking so much lately and I've been having so many conversations with clients about living in alignment and what that means. And so I wanna share some insights with you. So this topic has actually been simmering in my brain for several months. I wrote it down probably in May or so on my list of ideas for podcasts. But because of some coaching that I've been doing lately, I was thinking about the book, "The Anatomy of Peace" by the Arbinger Institute. And if you haven't read that, it is just a great, great book about how to get out of war and how to start living in peace. But I re-read it a few weeks ago. And there was a whole section that works in the arena of being in alignment. And I feel like it just kind of gave me some missing pieces to feel like I could move forward with this topic and really share some ideas that would be meaningful.

02:47

So first, let's talk about what alignment is in the context of the phrase "living in alignment." So Merriam-Webster defines "alignment" as quote, "the proper positioning or state of adjustment of parts in relation to each other." Alright, so I think that this is a really great place to start. The proper positioning of parts in relation to each other. So in the context of "living in alignment," the parts that need to be properly positioned are our thoughts and our actions being properly positioned with our values. Now, each one of us is going to have different values. So being in alignment is going to look slightly different for everyone, but it will most likely feel pretty similar to everyone because it's that space of feeling like we are where we need to be. And I believe that this is a really, really great place to start is with our values. Because the first part of this idea then intuitively seems to be that we need to know our values before we can align our thoughts and our behaviors accordingly. When we value something, we hold it dear or it is desirable to us. So our values are those principles and ideals that we desire to have in our lives. The ideals that we want to be manifest in how we live. One of the best ways to identify what our values are is to look at how we live and often how we expect other people to live. And there can also be a difference between the values that we live and the ones we think we live or think we want to live. Right? That's why looking at the way that we live can sometimes be a better indicator of our values than what we think they are.

04:36

So a lot of the work of coaching is getting clear on our values and then learning how to get in alignment with those values more often. So here's some examples of some values: honesty, integrity, loyalty, humility, creativity, compassion, respect, courage, kindness, gratitude, dependability, fairness, spirituality... those would all be values that we would say, "I live by this, this is important to me, and I want to align the way that I behave and the way that I think with this ideal." So while looking at how we live, will give us a good indication of what our values are, also looking at changes that we want to incorporate in our life will give us a good idea of what we wish our values were. So every person has values that they live by, and even a person who is dishonest has values around their behaviors. But they would be most likely be values such as self- interest or attention-seeking or greed.

05:43

So I will say that the vast majority, if not all the people that I can think of that I interact with on a regular basis, have some pretty positive values. But this doesn't mean that just because I have these values and I live with them most of the time that I'm always going to live in alignment with these values. And herein lies the challenge of being a human. Even though we have values that we cherish and we really want to live by, we will not always live in alignment with them. And why is that? What gets us out of alignment with our values? Well, there's lots of things that get us out. So let's talk about a few of them.

06:22

First, our primitive brain is a huge player in so much of what we do in the course of our day. And I'll tell you what, our primitive brain is a huge blessing in our lives. It makes day to day functioning possible. It's what allows me to tie my shoe without having to think about every little teeny tiny step along the way. Our primitive brain is what helps me to walk and to drive and to write my name and to type on the computer. All of these things come from the primitive brain turning stuff into habits and acting without me having to use my prefrontal cortex to engage the behavior. And it runs so much on autopilot that it can also wreak a little bit of havoc in our lives as well. Our primitive brain is always looking to protect us, always. And if it ever feels threatened, it jumps into behaviors that get us out of alignment pretty quickly. The really tricky part here is that when we have thoughts that create fear or another strong emotion, this strong emotion can flood our prefrontal cortex, which is our thinking brain, the part of our brain that problem solves and acts intentionally and it shuts it down or slows it way down. And then our primitive brain is kind of like, "woohoo, I get to do whatever I want." It's free to act from whatever place that it sees fit. So now if you recall from a lot of my earlier podcasts when we talked about this a lot more, our primitive brain has a strong emotion, has no values. It doesn't have any moral sense, no sense of right or wrong, of good or bad, of being kind or unkind. It acts solely to protect us and keep us alive. So here's an example from my own life a few weeks ago. I was in a hurry to get something done in a short amount of time. So the strong emotion that I was feeling was rushed. Like I felt a little bit of an edge to that rushness, right? And in this space, I made a quick decision that got the job done, but did not follow my usual protocol of fully considering other people, which put me out of alignment with my values of being kind and trustworthy. I was so focused on the time constraint that I bypassed my values, my prefrontal cortex saying, "this is what we, this is how we like to behave." And I acted out of alignment by doing something that ended up hurting another person. It was way out of alignment for my usual, but being human, of course, it's going to happen sometimes. Now, I can say that now with not a lot of emotion, but I struggled for about a week in seeking to resolve and repair the damage that I felt that I had done.

09:14

Again, here's where things can get tricky for us. When we do act out of alignment, we almost always have a good reason for why we did. My reasoning on this situation: I was rushed and it was an oversight. It wasn't intentional. So another reason that we might act out of alignment might just be that we're unaware. Honestly, our brains can only consciously process so much information at a time and our brains have to pick and choose which information to process and put to the forward part of our brain. And this is why we can be with someone watching the same situation unfold and we both notice something different. And what we notice is what, for some reason or another, we have told our brains to pay attention to. It's the proverbial looking for an orange car scenario, right? We never see orange cars and we'll think that they are super rare until we decide to start looking for orange cars and we realize they are more prevalent than we realized. But once we decide to start looking for orange cars, our brain has to start to filter out some other information it has been noticing because it can't notice everything. It cannot pay attention to everything that we might want it to. And that's what we're doing here on this podcast. We're working to increase our awareness of dysfunctional behaviors that hurt our relationships in our lives so that our brains will start to notice them more and then we can address them.

10:50

I know that I didn't even realize how often in my previous marriage I was acting out of alignment by being dishonest until about two years ago when I started to realize that, oh, wait a minute, this is what it means to be honest in a relationship. And once I saw it as being dishonest, as being way out of alignment with one of my core values, which is integrity, then I really started to see it showing up a lot. And then I could address it so that now I feel I'm moving in a pretty honest place in this regard.

11:28

And I'm sure that right now there are other things I'm doing that are moving me out of alignment that I'm currently unaware of. Such is the plight of being a human being, just one piece at a time. So another reason that we might get out of alignment is that our past experiences formulate how we interpret our present experiences. And this is related to the first reason I talked about in that we might unconsciously have experiences that trigger us and shut down our prefrontal cortex and everything that goes into our brain, all the information that our brain is gathering is interpreted through our own encyclopedia of experience. Every experience we've ever had in our lives is used to filter the new information and then it spits it out the other side giving it meaning. So a new experience will be interpreted differently by any two people on the planet because it's filtered through their own encyclopedia of experience which will never be the same as another herd of humans.

12:33

And with that something that may seem out of alignment for one person won't seem out of alignment for another because of how two people were raised and what they were taught through words and examples and experiences, one person may see a particular behavior as wrong and another person will see it as right. And seeing all of these differences can cause us to start to question our own interpretations of our values and we also just naturally grow into more complex ideas over time. So our values change over time as well. And something that used to seem in alignment to us no longer does because of our changing values and we need to make adjustments. So the book that I referenced earlier, "The Anatomy of Peace," calls moving out of alignment "self betrayal." And I like to think of it as the time when the needle on the record gets dragged across the record and it makes a screeching sound. That to me is what I feel inside when I get out of alignment, when I do something or when something I did is brought to my attention that is out of alignment, I get this internal screech that alerts me that I'm no longer want where I want to be. I can sense that I'm out of alignment or that I've just betrayed my values. When my own situation, the one I previously mentioned, occurred, I felt a very small screech in hindsight looking back. I can see that I felt it. But my feelings of rush and hurry were so loud that I didn't notice it consciously and the situation didn't really click with me until my friend whom I had hurt called to talk to me about the situation and then I remembered feeling that self-betrayal, that screech out of alignment, but it had been soft and quiet and I glossed right over it.

14:30

It's super important that we seek to increase our awareness of when that misalignment happens to learn to listen for that screech and also important that we accept that we are humans and we're not always going to catch it. So maybe someone asks the question about some thing that we're slightly embarrassed about and we tell a small lie. Or maybe spur of the moment we don't mention the extra change given to us at the store or the item ringing at a lower price even though we noticed it. We sometimes getting this "Do I say something do I not say something?" We get these weird things even when our value is honesty at all costs. Getting an extra dollar fifty, which really is quite a small amount, can create this feeling of "Do I keep it? Do I give it back?" like we may feel like we have to question that, right? Or maybe we share information about a friend that isn't ours to share, like we just feel like we want to participate in a conversation or feel like we're in the know or something like that. So I think for most of us it's really small things. But we do these small things and we feel that screech out of alignment. This is when we get to start making choices So one of my first initial reactions is to ignore it; Pretend like I didn't feel the screech and that way when the fallout happens, "Oh my gosh, I can be surprised." Okay, I can pretend like I'm surprised, right, but I'm not always surprised because sometimes I just ignore it. And I ignore it on purpose. And at that point I'm just feigning surprise, which then leads to me again acting out of alignment, getting me farther and farther off course because I feel a surprise and then I'm like" Oh my gosh, I'm really surprised when really underneath it all." I'm not surprised, right? So then I take another step of dishonesty away from alignment. It's crazy how this works. We also have a natural tendency to start justifying our behavior. "Oh, it's not a big deal. I didn't mean to. They should have paid closer attention. It's really their fault. They started it," right? Notice the tendency to start to one-up myself myself when I start justifying, which moves me into judging their behavior as well.

16:59

What heals relationships is for us to become aware, to acknowledge, to apologize if necessary, and then circle back around to get back into alignment. But that sort of humility and vulnerability can feel so big and scary sometimes, especially if we are already struggling with the embarrassment and even the shame that can come from the behaviors that put us out of alignment in the first place. This inherent need to be right that many of us have will cause all kinds of dysfunctional behavior, all in the name of protecting us from feeling as though we were in the wrong. We might start to one-up ourselves, or one-down them, seeing them as the problem, or even dehumanizing them. We may start to identify to ourselves all the ways that they are doing it wrong. We might also start to victimize ourselves, telling the story that "they're a villain; they make my life so hard, that life would be so much better if they change and it's their fault that things are how they are. And I can't change it until they fix this particular behavior." Right? Crazy how we do this. Sometimes we might go into a false bravado. A place in our brain that says "I'm stronger and more powerful than the other person." Thoughts that make us feel as though we are in charge and in control. And then what about our tendency to want to be seen as a person who doesn't make mistakes or to want others to see us as a good person? When we think that admitting our mistake will put those things into question, it can be really hard to circle back around so that we can get back in alignment. Also, it can be super easy at this point to start to blame them, saying that they brought the problem on themselves. That we wouldn't have acted that way if it wasn't for them in the first place. To justify our behavior, we might also start to take a much more broad view of the situation thinking that, "oh, life is just so unfair. Life is unjust." And we need to learn to stand up for ourselves even if it means being out of alignment occasionally. Right? So we think, I have to stand up for myself here. But sometimes that means that we get out of alignment to do that.

19:25

Again, notice the self-betrayal. Being out of alignment generally feels pretty uncomfortable. And our primitive brains want to ease the discomfort in the quickest and easiest way possible, which is very often to move into some of these blaming techniques that we just talked about. And it's so fascinating that in trying to get out of discomfort, our brain actually creates more discomfort because the quick solutions offered, all that list of stuff we just talked about, actually begin to layer on more discomfort. We'll start to feel strong justification, some anger, some frustration, some resentment, maybe even contempt. And then our brain will push us to go even farther out of alignment to seek to rectify or gloss over these new difficult emotions. But all it is doing is layering on more and more discomfort and it gets bigger and bigger and we step farther and farther away from our values and from the peace of living in alignment.

20:32

So for example, let's say that I tell a lie, right? And then I feel discomfort when I recognize that. But then I blame it on them. So then that that blame layers on top of that. And then I start to feel like a victim and then that layers on top of that. And then I start to feel shame and that layers on top of that. And so pretty soon it's not just the lie that has moved me out of alignment, it's also the judging, the blaming, the all those things move me farther and farther out of alignment. This is where so many of our struggles in our relationships come from, from this place of blame that puts us in a victim mentality. Then we are in full-on protection mode, walls up, and then we start shooting arrows at the other person. And all of this can happen literally in a matter of milliseconds, so much faster than we would ever think. So how do we keep from getting out of alignment then? I really believe it is a practice of learning to slow down our reactions and giving our prefrontal cortex a chance to catch up to our primitive brain and outthink it.

21:41

Outside the panic of the primitive brain to protect us is a prefrontal cortex that wants to show up in alignment, that wants to feel and extend love and compassion, to have integrity and honor and humility in dealing with others. But it seems that the primitive brain is just a couple of milliseconds faster and that doesn't seem like much but it's enough to put some dysfunctional behaviors into action, especially those patterned behaviors that our brain doesn't even have to process and think about.

22:13

I will say that for me the longer that I do this work, this work of striving to be aware and show up more the way I want to, the slower time seems to go in many situations. I know that seems crazy but I think there's a time warp going on, right? Learning to take an extra breath before responding and asking myself what kind of person I want to be has helped a lot. It's really easy to just jump on that first impulse but learning to slow down and not jump on the first impulse to notice the impulse when it comes and stop my brain and just take a breath and think. Also, I am trying really hard to be more aware of the screech when it happens and address it ASAP. Sometimes that means I stop right then and correct my direction. And so sometimes I'll even be saying "no, no, that's not what I mean to say. Actually, this is what I want to say or this is how I want to do it." Sometimes it means that it can be minutes, hours or even days later before I really recognize my out of alignment, my screech, and I own up to the misalignment, but I'm consciously seeking to get back into alignment as quickly as I can. It's one of my goals in my life. Part of this process for me is realizing that I'm human, that my primitive brain does what it does and it's all okay. So of course I'm going to get out of alignment. Of course I'm going to catch myself in a lie sometimes. Of course there will be times that I overstep boundaries. That's all part of my human experience. Learning to offer grace for these missteps helps me to not step into shame, which always leads to shutdown and then even more movement out of alignment.

24:09

Another part of this process for me is acknowledging that there is nothing wrong with being wrong. I spent a lot of years thinking that I needed to be right in order to prove my worth and my value. I thought that if I was wrong people wouldn't trust me or see me as relevant. Coming to a place where I've been able to challenge those thought errors has taken me some time and I'll tell you what, being able to anticipate that I will be wrong and not feel shame about it. Being able to expect that I won't have all the answers. Accepting my humanness has been so liberating. And it has done amazing things for how I feel about myself. I'm no longer holding myself up to this impossible, perfect standard of always knowing and doing all the things correctly. Huh. Like who knew that perfectionism was a roadblock to self-love, self-compassion and self- respect. The grace I now offer myself to make mistakes and to be wrong has been life-changing. And a huge side benefit? The more grace I can offer myself in this way, the more easily I'm able to offer grace to others in the same way. My ability to see others as humans who make mistakes, to be able to offer them grace when they get out of alignment, to be compassionate in their struggle, is in direct correlation with me being able to do those same things for myself.

25:42

Will I get out of alignment? Absolutely. I fully expect to and I've learned not to make it mean anything about my worth or the kind of person I am...most of the time. Sometimes depending on the situation it can be harder than others, but I still really focus on relating to myself with compassion and understanding. But the work of noticing when I'm out of alignment and then the work of getting back into alignment is absolutely work worth doing.

26:16

So to finish up today, I want to review the circling back around process that can be part of getting back into alignment The biggest purpose of coaching is to help me increase my awareness around my behaviors so that I can more intentionally respond and repair. And this circling back around process works like this. First, Awareness. Creating awareness around our own behaviors so that we can determine how they align with our values. Noticing the screech, that's what the awareness is. When do I notice it?

26:53

The second step, once I notice it: Acknowledgement. Acknowledging to ourselves and to the person harmed that we have acted out of alignment. Sometimes we become aware and we kind of put it on the shelf and we kind of pretend it didn't happen. No, we can't put it on the shelf, we've got to keep it right here and work through it. So we have to acknowledge to ourselves and then tell the other person, "hey, I recognize that I did this."

27:23

The third step: Apology. Letting the other person know we are sorry. And this is the wording that I love to use. "I'm so sorry I ____. That's not the person I want to be in this relationship."

27:33

And then the fourth step: Alignment. Bringing myself back into alignment with my values and with the other person. For me, this sounds like if I could say or do it again, I would say or do ____. This pattern is a great way for me to reconnect with myself, the other person and my values.

27:59

Let me give you a personal example of when I did this just in the last few weeks. My husband and I were back in Utah and we went to the temple to get sealed. If you are not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, that's a ceremony that we do in our temples that is a marriage ceremony that we feel has eternal consequences to our marriages, that it helps us to be able to be married eternally. So my husband and I went to Utah and went to the temple to do this. And I had someone who I had invited, some good friends of mine that are my daughter's friends, a married couple that I really like. He didn't come to the temple and but his wife did and when I saw her in the temple I was like "oh where's your husband?" and she said, "oh he's got some homework to do." And I was like "oh like he's choosing homework over this super important day for us." And then the next day he came over with his wife to have some lunch with my daughter and and when he showed up I happened to be there at the door and thinking I'm all clever and witty and funny I was like, "oh my gosh, where were you yesterday homework are you kidding me? You would choose homework over that?" And I wasn't trying to be mean, absolutely I wasn't, I just was thinking I was being clever and funny. I felt like this little bit of a screech and I kind of just like was like "um okay right good." But I kind of ignored it for a little bit and we chatted for a little bit longer and then I went in the back to finish getting ready for something and while I was in the back by myself, I was like, "oh my gosh, look what I did." I was totally shaming him. I was trying to make him feel bad for the decision that he made and I was like, "oh, it is not what I want to do." And then I really came to terms with the screeching, right? The awareness that I had come that I had done something hurtful. So the first piece of that then was the acknowledgement to myself that I had been hurtful and figuring it out. And then I went back out there and when I had a chance to chat with him again before he left, I said, "hey, listen, I recognize that this is how I behaved when you were here and I just want you to know that I am super sorry for teasing you in that way and for calling you out that way that wasn't kind." And he was like, "oh, it's okay. It's okay." And I was like, "no, it's not okay because that's not the person that I want to be." So there's the apology, right? And then alignment, bring myself back into alignment and so at that point I said, "you know what, if I could do it again, I would say 'I am so glad to see you. It's been a while. Come on in and let's chat. Let me tell me all the things about your life.'" I would have just not even mentioned that he wasn't there the day before and when I said that, I just saw his face soften up a little bit and he gave me this hug and he was just like, "thank you."

31:22

This pattern of circling back around is so important to it gives us a chance to be vulnerable with other people and sometimes our connections are deeper after we circle back around than if we would have never had the opportunity to. It would have been great if when he first got there, I was just like, "oh my gosh, come in and tell me all the things. It's so good to see you." But this opportunity to stand before this 24 year old person and say, "listen, I'm sorry. That's not the kind of person that I want to be and I don't want to treat you like that in this relationship" was pretty powerful. And that's what we get to do.

32:12

Here's the thing. Getting out of alignment with our values will always be a thing. Just like me showing up for this gentleman in my home, getting out of alignment will always be a thing that is our human experience. Getting back into alignment has to be an intentional choice. And it's a choice of how we want to feel in our lives, how we want to feel in relationship with ourselves, and how we want to feel in relationship with others in our life. It takes a lot of grace toward ourself when we get out of alignment and it takes a lot of courage to get back into alignment and to step into the vulnerability necessary. But the payoff is so worth it. I love growing up. These concepts, I don't know where they were when I was in my 20s and 30s and even my 40s, but I'm so grateful. I'm figuring them out in my 50s. It's a beautiful, beautiful place.

33:14

Okay. If you want to talk about coaching, if you want to connect with me and see if coaching is a good fit for you, you can go to tanyahale.com. You can go to the top where there's a free consultation tab. Click on that. You have access to my calendar and you can set up a day and time that you can come and chat with me and we can see if coaching is a good fit for you.

33:33

Thank you, my friends, for being here. I hope that there's something here that you can implement this week to make your lives a little bit better, to help yourself get more in alignment where you can live in more peace. I love you. Thanks for being here. See you next time. Bye.

33:50

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.