00:00 

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 304, "Personalities, Preferences, and Perspectives." 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. 

00:23 

Well, hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast today. I am so happy to have you here. As always, thank you for joining. I just wanted to remind you that I am doing some experimental coaching with doing some couples and if you would like to take part in that, I will be doing six individual sessions with each partner and then also doing a bonus six sessions with them meeting with me together so that we can work on tools together and work on implementing tools as we converse and as we talk and as we interact with each other and helping each other see things. That's going to be a new skill for me and so if you are interested in that kind of a scenario you'll get six free coaching sessions while I start learning this new craft of coaching couples. 

01:18 

So you can go to tanyahale.com, you can click on the "free consultation" button right there at the top and sign up. Then if you two and me all show up at the same time, we can discuss it and see what it's going to look like and see if you're a good fit. I will just say that I do want two people in a relationship who are interested in working on things together and not just one, because I think it's not fun to work with people who don't want to work with me. So if one of you in your relationship is like "yeah, I think I don't want to do that," then this is probably not going to be the best fit. 

01:54 

Alright, so moving on. Today's podcast is called "Personalities, Preferences, and Perspectives." So, as my coaching business has grown and I've worked with more and more clients, it makes it easy to begin to see patterns that show up in struggling relationships. And also, being able to see the same patterns in my previous marriage, I get a pretty good understanding of how we are so destructive in our marriages. When I look at Gottman's Four Horsemen that we talked about a few weeks ago, criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling, I can see how these things are brought on by a lack of acceptance for what I'm going to call the three Ps: personalities, preferences, and perspectives. So many of us, for whatever reason, have developed a very low tolerance for differences in other people. There seems to be a belief thread running through our society that says that we have to be the same in order to get along. And that just will never be the case. None of us will ever be the same. And until we learn to create space for people to be different and also make that space safe, we will not have happy, intimate, enduring relationships. 

03:07 

Now I can see for many women where some of these beliefs come from because they come from a similar place where mine came from. They come from a place that says that we are in charge of everything and everyone in the home. We have been given a societal mandate to make sure that our homes run smoothly, that they are clean and organized, that our children are happy and learning amazing life skills, as well as tools to problem solve. We have been told that the spirituality of our homes depends on us, that it is our job to keep contention out of our homes and that we should make sure that everybody is happy all the time. And we do a lot of this by coming up with plans and procedures, with expectations for us and for other people, with the right way to do things so they run according to our plans, all the while not realizing that so much of that is none of our business. It is in someone else's lane. And I'm sure that men have a similar societal injunction, although I'm not as familiar with where theirs is. I would guess that their feeling of having to be in control comes from areas of needing to provide enough money, to never show signs of weakness, and even the idea that they are the king of the castle and that what they say goes in the end, which has been passed on from father to son for many generations. 

04:27 

And when both men and women have these ideas that they need to be in control of all things, that's a lot of pressure. I remember when my kids were younger thinking that if they left their religious upbringing, that it would be my fault because I didn't do enough. That if my husband had an affair, that it would be my fault for not keeping him happy. That if Christmas wasn't magical and kids were unhappy and grumpy and fighting, that it was my fault: my fault for not planning and  preparing well enough. And the truth is those these things felt very true because I had been indoctrinated with them for so many years. They weren't true at all. In fact, they were false beliefs. And what is a belief? It is just something that we have told ourselves so many times that our brain doesn't question it anymore. 

05:17 

So I don't think that all of these things were taught intentionally. But I do see them coming from a lot of fear-based teachings from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Teachings that were meant to shock us and scare us into doing what was perceived as right. And this didn't happen just in religious places. It was a very societal thing in the time, and maybe earlier, although I don't remember earlier myself, right? A huge problem from all this fear-based teaching is that so many of us really incorporated these beliefs into our lives. And these beliefs had a swerving all over the road, not realizing that we were driving all over in other people's lanes, trying to be in control of things that it's none of our business to be in control of. 

06:02 

I've noticed as well that because of this, we are not very good as a generational society of honoring other people's agency. We talk a good talk about agency, but we don't walk the walk. We think that others should be doing a lot of things differently, and we can get judgmental and heavy-handed about how things are done, especially when we see those things as falling under our jurisdiction. And this heavy-handedness creates a lot of contention in our relationships, and this contention often shows up in the form of the Four Horsemen, which again are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. And yet so many of the things we get all up in arms about are none of our business to try and control. This is where we get to identify our false beliefs and about what we need to be in control of and readjust our thoughts. I believe that when we can learn to respect and honor other people's agency regarding their personality, their preferences, and their perspectives, that we can create so much more kindness and love, and our relationships will improve significantly. 

07:11 

So let's dig in. The first thing we need to learn to honor and respect is other people's personalities. Now, I know this seems fairly simplistic at first, but often we are just not good at letting other people be themselves. And especially in a marriage or a parenting situation, we will start to nitpick the other person for parts of them that are just part of their personality, we think the other person is wrong because they respond differently than us. 

07:40 

Okay, so let me give you an example of what this can look like. So do you remember back in the, probably, 90s there was a book that came out called "The Color Code Test"? It was a personality test. There are loads of personality tests but this is one that I did. So when I took that test back in the day I came in fairly heavy yellow, which means that I am motivated by fun. I was almost half yellow, okay? So I'm motivated by fun. My sweet husband Sione, when he took the test came in as fairly heavy red, which means that he's motivated by power and control. Now neither of these is good, neither of them is bad. They just are. It's just different ways of being. But within this personality dynamic of a red and a yellow being married, there is a lot of room for conflict, meaning that we do things very differently. Right? I am always looking for fun, I'm dancing in the kitchen, I'm not afraid when things go awry, and my husband likes to have things organized, he likes to have things taken care of, he's super responsible about taking care of loads of things, which I super appreciate. 

08:53 

But here's a reminder about how I use "conflict" when I use that term. I don't use "conflict" as a way of saying that it's negative, like contention. But I see it as rather just two people having different ideas or opinions about things. So when I talk about conflict, I know that generally it has a negative connotation. I like to just pull the negative out of it and just say, listen, two people with different ideas. And it's how we deal with the conflict that can lead us either to contention or to greater connection. Okay? 

09:27 

So here's a real life situation from our marriage from last year. We had been married just a little bit over a year and we had invited some people over for a grill and we had thought that we had burgers in the freezer. At the time people were supposed to be starting to show up, it was time to pull the burgers out and get them going on the grill, we realized, didn't have any, and where we were staying was about 20 minutes away from a store. So that's 40 minutes round trip, right? To go get some burgers and come back and yet people were supposed to be showing up. So my natural yellow personality response to that is to laugh at ourselves, at our mistake, and then to take it in stride and figure out our next move. I just think it's kind of funny when that kind of stuff happens. So in my brain, I'm thinking we can call the friends and we can see if any of them have any hamburgers or we can just serve the brats and the hot dogs and not have hamburgers. Or we could delay the start of the dinner and run to the store. Sione's natural red personality response was to get stressed about it. His thoughts about him have him thinking that he hasn't been responsible, and how could we have overlooked such a basic and fundamental part of the dinner? If we didn't have burgers, that we would be letting people down. That's this amazing, responsible part of him. 

10:55 

Now, neither of these responses is right or wrong. They are just thoughts based from our personalities. But can you see how this could have created some contention? And it almost did. Sione was seeing this as a serious situation. And I was over there just laughing and going, "oh my gosh, I can't believe we did this," right? We were absolutely not on the same page. And so he decided he wanted to run to the store to get more burgers. And because there were other people at the house and we kind of have a standing rule that if we can run an errand together that we will, and so since there were other people at the house, I went with him. And it was good. It gave us a chance to chat about our different responses. He was completely was not understanding why I was laughing, because we were still fairly nearly married, right? And I could tell that it was difficult for him when we started talking. It was serious for him and I was laughing. 

11:54 

So now I try to remember that although sometimes it's hard for me to just check his response before I start making fun of the situation or making light of it, my phrase tends to be "this is going to be an adventure." I used that a few months ago when we were going to Samoa and we had all these flight issues that were causing all of these problems when we got to the airport. It was not a phrase that Sione really appreciated because his red had him stressed and uptight, and we have to make sure we get on the plane. "We have to make this and we have to do this," right? And so I try to watch him a little bit and see if he's feeling really stressed and tense. I try to honor and respect that and say, listen, this is the kind of stuff that's hard for him. I'm gonna let the heat cool down a bit before I really just check in with my more light-hearted view of the situation. 

12:53 

So Sione also is really good at trying to remember that I just don't take things as seriously, and that it's not personal or me making fun of him when things happen. I can tell that he's managing his thoughts when he says "Okay, it's gonna be an adventure." I love that about him. You know that he sees that in me as well. And this is just the differences that we have. Our personalities are different this way and that's okay. I get to learn to honor and respect his red and he gets to learn to honor and respect my yellow. Neither is right and neither is wrong. They're just different. I love sometimes that Sione will say, "I never knew I needed yellow in my life until I met you." Like, isn't that great? It's so sweet. Like, he sees that it's very different and he's having to work his brain around all of my yellow, especially in situations that are a little bit more tense. But he's seeing that that is a benefit. And I'll tell you what, I love his red. When we're traveling, I don't have to be in charge of very much at all because he loves to be in charge of it. And traveling's become so easy for me. I used to have to be in charge of a lot and now I'm like, "oh, did we bring money?" And he's like, "of course we brought money," right? Like, so it's just a difference in personality and learning to respect and honor that. 

14:18 

Now, I don't need to learn to become more red. And he doesn't need to learn to become more yellow. It is important, however, that we do learn to give each other a safe space to be who we are and not become critical of the differences. Notice how easy it could be for us to introduce the Four Horsemen into our relationship over differences in personality. Criticism can tempt defensiveness, stonewalling. It could start with just getting annoyed by the different responses, by us not thinking that they're doing it right or they are doing it wrong. And then if we don't catch it, we put it on that back burner and it grows and it bubbles and it heats up. And then we just keep throwing stuff in it and pretty soon it becomes unmanageable in our minds. And we start by being critical of who they are, of their personality. And then we start treading on dangerous territory. 

15:14 

So I just looked up a list and it had over 630 primary personality traits. In fact, 638 it said. And each of us has our unique blend. So here are some of these personality traits that I think can be hard for us to manage our brains around sometimes. Someone who is stress-prone, an extrovert or an introvert, someone who's overly generous with time or with money. Really ambitious, not ambitious, very open, carefree, flexible, super planner, spontaneous, very particular, easy breezy, clean or dirty, high energy or low energy, health conscious or not health conscious, methodical, someone who's a spender, someone who's a saver, optimistic or pessimistic, impatient, punctual or late, realistic or romantic, uptight or laid back, emotional, absent minded, funny, serious, conservative or liberal, sarcastic. That's just the tip of the iceberg when there are 638 on that particular list. There are so many different ways that we can be. 

16:30 

Learning to appreciate and create a safe space for the other person's unique personality creates intimacy because it is showing that we accept them for who they are, that we appreciate their unique blend of personality traits. This doesn't mean that we won't ever have conflict, that there won't be things that we need to talk about and even make adjustments to come into a collaborative space. We are going to have to talk about things, but we absolutely don't want to be critical of the person that our person is. Their personality is who they are. When we become critical of that, we start shaming and we shut down the relationship. 

17:27 

Okay, the second thing we want to learn to honor and respect is the other person's preferences. Now all of us have likes and dislikes, and again, there is nothing right or wrong about them. Some people love broccoli and some people hate it. Everyone gets to like or dislike whatever they want regardless of what we think about it, even our spouse. So your husband may love a good, warm flannel shirt and you just might hate flannel. He may love a good action movie while you just want to get immersed in a really great Korean love drama. You might love to exercise and he may feel that a walk to the car is enough for him. He may love to eat healthy and you may just dive into bags of chips like none other, right? We all have preferences. This is part of being human. And when we step into a space of judging another person's preferences as right or wrong, and especially in a marriage when we can easily cross the line into attacking the other person for what they like and dislike, we are not accepting them for the unique human they are. 

18:33 

So I'm going to share a previous marriage thing with you now. I have people all the time who are like, "remember that Super Bowl story?" And I'm like, "yes, I do." That's one that everybody remembers about my passive aggressive tendencies, but here's one about me not allowing my previous husband to have his preferences. There were things that my ex-husband liked that I didn't like at all and I really honestly thought that he was wrong. I was so in this crazy place of thinking that I was just right on all the things. So I do not like boxed mac and cheese and in response to that, I make a really good homemade multi cheese mac and cheese and he didn't like it. He didn't like the homemade stuff. He preferred the box kind and I'll be honest, I passive aggressively refused to make the box kind for him. I thought it was ridiculous that he would pass up the homemade yumminess that I was making for the box stuff. And my contempt for his lack of sophistication was high, and I didn't even try to hide it. He was obviously in the wrong for not liking the delicious mac and cheese that I made. And I thought it was my job to educate him in the finer points of mac and cheese. 

19:52 

And here's an interesting point that you might find fascinating as well. I took his not liking what I made personally, as though there was something wrong with my mac and cheese. And that meant that I was less valuable because he didn't appreciate my culinary offering. When I can stand back and see that I was making his preference mean something about my worth, then it becomes even more fascinating. The other person gets to have preferences just because they have them. They don't need a reason. And they don't mean anything about who you are or your worth as a person. I think it can be so easy for us to create a space for us to like or not like things in our relationships. It makes perfect sense why we like and don't like the things that we do. And we can tend to move in a space that says that our likes and dislikes are the right way and everyone should get on board, especially the people in our lives. Because wouldn't it be easier if everybody just had the same likes and dislikes that we did? We wouldn't have to make any adjustments. And so because we have to manage our brains around other people's likes and dislikes, we oftentimes just try and get people to change. 

21:16 

But let's stand down on this, can we? I could have easily made a box of mac and cheese, as well as the homemade kind that I preferred. How long does box mac and cheese make? Like, hardly any time. It would have been so easy to respect and honor his preferences. But because I felt threatened by his not liking what I liked, I pushed back and tried to make him think that he was wrong in his preferences, and that was not okay. And I think a lot of us can have a tendency to move in this direction if we're not careful. It may not be with food, but it may just be with something else. The preferences can be in anything such as home decor or styles of homes or cars or clothing or how clean things are, or whether everything matches or not, or how religious we want to be, or how much physicality we want. All these kinds of things, we just have preferences. And learning how to make room for the other person to have their preferences and us not give them grief about them is an  area where many of us can do some work. There's a lot of passive aggressive statements that can come up about people's preferences. And we just got to clean that up. We got to let people be who they are. 

22:40 

So the third thing we want to learn to honor and respect is the other person's perspectives. Now, all of us have had very different lives. When you consider all of the personality combinations, all of the different preferences that people have, and then you take all of that and you combine them into your parents, two people who raised you, and most likely with other children in the home who are all going to be different as well. So let's say there were five kids, you've got seven people, all with different experiences. And all of these people are influencing us and impacting us. And we are all going to see and interact with the world differently because of our personalities and our preferences and all of the experiences we have. Every TV show or movie you have watched, every book or magazine or webpage you have read has shown you something that has impacted your perspective on the world. Every friend you have, every teacher at school or at church, every coach or trainer, even cashiers at the store or people on the next aisle over who say something can impact how you view the world. 

23:49 

So I was raised in a fairly conservative community. And although we didn't talk much, if at all, in my home growing up about politics or worldviews, my community shaped how I thought and saw the world. My fairly religious community and my church community and even at school, so much conservatism there. There were liberal viewpoints that I just could not wrap my head around and could not see how any person of kindness and integrity could espouse those views. And I have learned. I've worked through a ton of that, right? But it was interesting that a few weeks ago I listened to a podcast where the person being interviewed was raised in a liberal home and a liberal community. And I thought it was funny that he described that into his 30s, he couldn't see how any person of kindness and integrity could espouse conservative views. Isn't that interesting? We both thought that people of kindness and integrity would believe like we did. We all just see the world from our own unique perspective. And until we can learn to get curious and seek to understand the other views, we will struggle with accepting others and creating a safe space for them. 

25:06 

So on another podcast I listened to last week, a man was talking about how when he finds a perspective that he doesn't agree with, he intentionally works to listen all the harder and seeks to understand their point of view. As I have tried much harder to do this over the last eight years or so, I've found that very often a fairly large percentage of what the other person says I actually agree with. We all can just tend to get caught up on the smaller percentage that we may not agree with. And guess what? It's totally okay to not agree. Our experiences have been different, so of course we would see the world differently. We would value things differently. In the past, I would feel very threatened or defensive if someone had a different viewpoint. I felt it was them telling me that I was wrong and my ego was pricked, right? Notice again that I would take it personal, that I would make it mean something about me. But it doesn't mean anything about me at all. 

26:10 

What I have learned, and am still learning to be honest, is that a different perspective, a different opinion, means that there are probably facts and ideas that I don't know about yet. When I feel threatened because of my own insecurities, I will shut them down and not look. When I can be confident and secure that I am a good person, even if there are facts I don't understand yet, then I can summon the courage to look at and even investigate different perspective on things, because it doesn't make me less of a person if I find information I didn't have before and I realized I was wrong. And maybe it has nothing to do with one perspective being right and another being wrong. Maybe it's really just about seeing the world differently and valuing things differently. And when it comes to the people in our lives that matter the most, learning to appreciate their perspective is a way of letting them know that we accept them because part of who they are at their core is their perspective. It is difficult to detest their perspective and also be loving and accepting of who they are. There will always be different perspectives in the world, as many perspectives as there are people. And people have very good reasons for having the perspectives they have, even if we don't understand their reasons or if we don't agree with their perspective. 

27:39 

Learning how to step out of the belief that there is a right and a wrong to everything is such an important part of creating relationships. Think of all the different ways you and the people around you think and believe and behave and feel. When we can really honor and respect the diversity of humanity, when we can learn to stay in our own lanes and let other people live in ways that feel genuine and in alignment with them, rather than harping on them for not doing it the way that we would,  then we can start to create the safety in our relationships that is necessary for intimacy. 

28:16 

Here's the thing, because of all these differences, we will bump into each other as humans. It will happen. We cannot avoid it. What I believe and value and how I see the world will be different from every other person, and it is inevitable that these differences will clash at times, that we will bump into each other. We will never be able to avoid the bumps that happen. That is part of life. What we do get to do is decide how do I want to respond to the bumps, because that's the only part that we can control. What we get to learn how to do, and what I feel more and more is what we really are here on earth to do, is to learn how to live in alignment with my own values, my own personality preferences and perspectives, and learn how to not just allow others to do the same, but to find joy in them living in alignment with their values, even if it's uncomfortable for me. Then in our relationships, when we can genuinely love and respect and honor others living in their own alignment, when they can feel safe being who they are and how they are when in relationship with us, then we will start to show up with the vulnerability necessary to create greater intimacy. 

29:46 

Watch yourselves, my friends. We are so conditioned to think that our way is the right way when it's not. But when we are seduced by the idea that we are always right, we sabotage our relationships. We act in destructive ways that are hurtful and unkind. We swerve all over into other people's lanes, and we shut down the possibility of greater intimacy. I love that Terence Reel asks the question, "would you rather be right or would you rather be married?" What's more important to us, our ego or our relationship? We can either be right or we can be in relationship with someone. Personality, preferences, and perspectives are part of being human. And learning to love your humans in all of their uniqueness is, I believe, God's purpose for us here on earth. 

30:48 

And if this is something that you are struggling to do, let's chat. I work with clients on this exact same thing all the time. An investment at this point in your life will pay dividends for the next 30, 40, or 50 years. You really don't have to spend all of those next 30, 40, 50 years in constant contention with the people you love. You can learn to love better. You can learn to accept and embrace others. And I tell you what, the work that I have done in this arena has changed my life. It's amazing and I love it. And I hope to be able to share it with you here on the podcast. And if you feel like it's time for you to get some serious help because you're in a little bit over your head, go to tanyahale.com and sign up for that free consult. It's a good, good deal. It's 90 minutes long where we actually get to do some coaching as well. And I'm loving these new 90 minute coaching sessions. Okay. So here's the deal. This is all part of growing up. It's awesome, isn't it? I love growing up. 

31:59 

So if you are a consistent listener, will you please take two minutes and go to and leave me a review. I think you can leave them on Apple and you can leave them on Spotify. A quick review makes such a big difference. The more five star reviews I get with comments about why you love this podcast will help other people to find it. It pushes it up in the algorithm and it's such a great way for you to help make the world a better and a more loving place, because that is my goal. I would love to have you help me by sharing this podcast with other people in your life, as well as on social media, and as well as by with writing me a review. So thank you for doing that. I would appreciate it a lot. Hey, that's gonna do it for me, my friends. Hope you have a really, really amazing week and I will see you next time, bye. 

33:00 

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.