00:00 

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 324, "Greatest Hits - The Tolerable Life." 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. 

00:22 

Well, hello, my friends. Welcome to the podcast. If you're new, so glad to have you here. If you are returning, thank you for your continued support. And just so proud of you for continuing to show up to do what is very difficult work and work that makes a difference. It is work worth doing. That is for sure. Before we jump in today, this is the last week to register for the group coaching classes that I have, if you are interested in those. If you want to learn more about those, you can go to tanyahale.com. You can click at the very top on "discussion groups." You can see those through three groups. I have one for couples about emotional intimacy. I have one for singles about dating, and I have one for whoever wants to, about how to show up more equally in a relationship, how to stop playing the one-up, one-down game. And they're going to be great, and I can't wait for you to join me there. It's a much more affordable option of working with me. Groups are capped at 10 people so that we just don't get too big and so that everybody has a chance to participate. 

01:33 

Alright, that being said, we are doing week three of what I'm calling my "personal growth series." I'm going back and playing three of my favorite podcasts about personal growth, about what it takes for us to really move into growing into our next best self. And this is so important because to understand why our marriages have been dysfunctional and how they've broken down, or to understand why things are not working, to understand why we struggle, we have to understand ourselves. We have to see our part in every piece of that. And until we start seeing our part, there will be no growth, there will be no progress, and we will just continue to put ourselves in other bad situations or continue to feed the bad ones that we're in. And so this personal growth is so important. 

02:28 

Today I am doing a replay of episode number 201 called "The Tolerable Life." And I love this podcast because oftentimes we get to a point in our lives where we just say, "listen, I can do this. This is okay." We tolerate way too much when we need to be stepping up and addressing issues and cleaning things up. We tolerate way too much apathy in ourselves. And it is time often for us to stand up to ourselves, to tell our primitive brain where to shove it and let's get moving on growing and becoming. So this is going to be a great podcast if you have not listened to this one before. And if you have, then you get to listen to it again. And I'm sure that you will learn things because of all the growth that you've experienced in the time that you've last listened to it. So let's go ahead and get started and I'll touch base with you at the end. 

3:35 

Alright, my friends, how you doing today? So glad to have you with me. Thanks for joining if this is your first podcast of mine. Gosh darn it! Welcome!, So glad to have you go back and look at past titles see things that look interesting to you, and see what we've got. There's so much great information here. I promise you it will change how you look at the world and how you engage with yourself and with the people around you. Just love doing this so much. I'm so glad that you're here. Thanks for joining us. For those of you who are old hats at this, so glad you're back. Thanks for coming. I just feel so honored that you are here with me. I've become so emotional lately. It's such a good thing. I've been working on that. But I just feel so honored to share information with you that has changed my life and that I know will change yours as well. And sometimes this work is not easy and we're gonna talk about that a little bit today. But sometimes it is so exhilarating that I just can hardly stand it, and that's the part that I love. 

05:07

I look at my life where I am now and I am so amazed at where I am, especially when I put it in contrast with where I used to be, with where I was even just six and a half years ago when I first got divorced. So proud of where I am and of the work that I've done and it has gotten me to The most amazing place in my life. I don't think I've ever been in a better place, and this is what coaching and this content has to give you. So let's dig in. 

05:41 

Today we are talking about the tolerable life. Okay? I've been thinking a lot lately about how some people are always pushing and always wanting to grow and move and progress. And some people just don't have any interest in that. I have a divorced friend who is always wanting to grow as a person. And his ex-wife was just content to keep things status quo. And it created some frustration in their marriage, which was not the reason they got divorced, but it created some tension for sure that they both had different ideas of how they wanted to engage with the world. And really I think that either one is okay. We're all different, and we feel different drives and dreams and desires. But since you're here, since you're taking the time and the energy and expanding your life to be here, I can guess that you are a person who wants to grow more than a person who wants to stay stagnant. You're a person who wants to step into a better version of yourself. 

06:54 

And this growth requires some discomfort. And we've often heard those called growing pains, because something we weren't previously can be difficult to grow into. Because first we have to step into the awareness that a behavior is holding us back or hurting our lives or the people in our life somehow. And this can be really painful to see and to acknowledge. Because a lot of times we just don't see it. And when we do see it, we're like, "what? I'm hurting people. I'm doing this. I'm creating my own drama, my own difficulties." That's hard. And then after that, we have to start working to notice it more often, which can also be painful, when we see how frequently we are engaging in this. And then we need to consciously step into working to replace the behavior. And that starts with working to identify the thoughts and the feelings that are producing the behavior. So we will need to be willing to step into the fallout of seeing the consequences of our behavior. And this can be especially tough when the behavior has been very hurtful or has continued on for years and or decades. This work is not for the faint of heart. I promise you that it is not. That's for sure. For me, getting to the place where I could see and take responsibility for the dysfunction that I created in my marriage and with my children was really painful. It was really hard to see what I had done. It was hard to see how I had damaged really relationships and how I had created even patterns of behavior in my children that at the older stage in their life that they were at when I got divorced, that those patterns were already not serving them. In fact, those patterns were harming them. And I cried a lot of tears and I felt a lot of grief at this stage of creating awareness and seeing it. It is painful. And if it's so painful, then why do we do it? Why do we continue to show up here and learn information? Why do we continue to educate ourselves and to look for nicks in our armor? Why are we seeking to be self-reflective and seeking to understand ourselves more? 

09:22

Here's why I do it: because it feels so darn good to grow into the next version of myself. The next best version of myself is an amazing person and I love her so much and I want to be her. I want it feels so good to look back and see where I was and to see what I've created and what I've become and that creates confidence in myself that I can continue to move forward even into the next best version of myself. To see myself progressing, to know that I'm showing up as a more kind loving and compassionate person than I was capable of before. To feel the thrill of seeing how far I've come and experience the delight of deeper, more connected relationships. I feel my life is so much more fulfilling and that my contentment is deep and rich after having gone through so much of this work. The life I am living now compared to the life I lived before I did this work astounds me. The relationships I've been able to develop with three of my children is so fulfilling and I wouldn't trade where I am now for any amount of ease and comfort. The pain and the growth of this progress for me has paid off with a life that I am so in love with. 

10:59

But sometimes we can go for stretches, even years at a time, and not really have our finger on the growth pulse. We allow our lives to become tolerable, and this is what I want to look at today, is the tolerable life. Jane Austen, in the book Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy says when he first sees Elizabeth, he says "she is tolerable, I suppose, but not handsome enough to tempt me." One of my favorite quotes, meaning, I can deal with her if I must, but it doesn't really tempt me. She doesn't tempt me. She's, you know, I can look at her and it's not horrible, but it's not really tempting for me. And I've always loved that phrase, she's tolerable, I suppose. I can deal with it. And that's kind of what we're talking about here. Why do we sometimes just tolerate what we would consider a subpar life, something that we're not really happy with? Why do we hang out in unfulfilling relationships and stick around with spouses, with children, with friends, with siblings, with parents? Why do we continue to ache for deeper connection, but then we don't do anything about it? Why do we keep feeding our bodies horrible, unhealthy food and not exercise when we know that our quality of life could be so much better? Why do we stay in a dead-end job, totally unsatisfied and miserable? Why do we tolerate what we really don't want? 

12:40 

I think there's a couple of things going on here. We're going to talk about them. I think generally, and oftentimes it's because we don't realize that we are tolerating our life, most of us have developed this really amazing skill of lying to ourselves and of denying our feelings. We tell ourselves that "it's okay," that "we're fine," that it would be too much of a hassle to say something or to do something, that it would be a lot of work. We feel the discomfort of our situation and we may not even notice it because we've been feeling it for so long that it becomes normal. This relationship, this life that is unfulfilling, feels normal, that we don't even notice it anymore. We've avoided feeling this discomfort for so long that we've also developed coping mechanisms in order to distract ourselves from paying attention to it. These coping mechanisms are called "buffers." So buffering is when we do something outside of ourselves to avoid dealing with what we're feeling inside of ourselves. Buffering can include eating. People who are proclaimed emotional eaters are doing exactly this and we have a lot of people who are like, "oh, I'm just an emotional eater," and they say it so matter of factly, but this is what they're doing: a tough emotion comes up and to avoid processing it and feeling it and dealing with it, they head to the kitchen to get something to eat. Another way of buffering, we may have a fight with a spouse or a child and rather than process the difficult emotion or engage in the tough discussion, we go in and we turn on Netflix and we binge watch our favorite show for three to four hours. Rather than having that uncomfortable conversation with our boss or our coworker, we may choose instead to have a gossip or a griping session with another coworker, creating a lot of drama that distracts us from the actual pain and creates instead a feeling of superiority. 

14:55 

That at the time feels good, but give us about a half an hour when that's over and it feels really horrible, right? There's something going on here that I think is so fascinating. We are unwilling to feel the difficult emotions, to see the dysfunctional behaviors, to acknowledge our own lack of courage to engage in healthier ways, and so we are accepting our life as it is. We are living the tolerable life. We have actually created a tolerable life. We're not living a fulfilling, deeply satisfying life. I'm angry with my child, so I go eat a brownie. The anger is soothed by the dopamine hit I get from the brownie, and then I'm not so angry and I can move on. So what I'm doing is I'm training my brain to accept a subpar life because I'm not moving forward. I'm staying stuck in the angry relationship. I'm not working through it. I'm not creating something different. I'm not healing and progressing, but it's okay because, guess what? I feel better with the dopamine brownie hit. It's tolerable, I suppose. And when I eat that brownie, I miss an opportunity to resolve a concern and to deepen my relationship. I'm making my life tolerable, even though it's not what I really want. 

16:26 

You may have a dream of, say, creating your own business, but your brain knows it's going to take a lot of work and effort, a lot of sacrifice of time and of money, so instead, you find yourself consistently binge watching TV series on Netflix or scrolling Facebook until you kind of get a headache. You're not stepping into what you feel driven and called to do. You're not stepping into your dream, but it's okay because you're laughing and enjoying your Netflix show right now. You are tolerating not fulfilling your dream of your own business by numbing out that desire with something else, in this case with watching TV or scrolling Facebook. 

17:11

You may really want that deep intimate connection with your spouse, but know as well that the vulnerability and the uncomfortable discussions necessary to get there are going to take a lot of energy, a lot of self-reflection and humility, and will probably produce a lot of tears and frustrations and pain so instead, I don't know, you start going to the gym every night after dinner or you head to your your workshop to work on the furniture that you make or the jewelry that you make, or you start doing family history or you get caught up in reading romance novels and it eases the pain of not having the deep, intimate connection because you distract your brain from what you really want. You're still doing something you enjoy you may even be productive in something else, but when we are denying our drives and our desires, that aching in our soul to have or to be or to create we will always be left feeling empty and the tolerable life is always a bit empty. 

18:27

It's not to say that we don't have people that we love and we don't do things that we like, but that deep longing that we have for something more is left hanging. There is something unfulfilled within us often, especially if you're a person who feels the compulsion to grow and to develop. And because we are not willing to feel the discomfort of what we want not coming to pass and we buffer instead, we are creating the tolerable life. And until we are willing to step into the discomfort and see and acknowledge the discomfort and to let it sit in us and even fester in us, we will never create the life we ultimately want. When we buffer by doing something other than feel the feelings that would drive us to change, we are making our lives tolerable. And tolerable always seems to feel like it's good enough. But good enough has never created the stuff that dreams are made of. Learning to accept things as they are has never pushed us up the hill. Being unwilling to engage with the discomfort of growth has never produced a person's best self. 

19:50

I will say that for a lot of years, I was living a tolerable life. Some things in all those difficult years of marriage I was avoiding on purpose, like having some tough discussions, like standing up and being seen and being heard. But a lot of times I was also completely unaware of what I was doing. And I think a lot of us live in the space of not being aware. And this is where coaching has changed my life, because I talk about this with somebody else, a third party, who stands outside and looks at me and they go, "oh, yeah, I see what's going on here." Right? Somebody who can help me see things that I'm not seeing. The tolerable life sometimes is just what we know and we don't understand how to move out of it. Other people that I've talked to who have started to move out of theirs and who may have been in a tough situation and ended up getting divorced, they're just like, "that's just what I knew. It's what I thought marriage was. And I just saw so many people living the same way that I just figured that that's what it was." And we may think that life just doesn't really get any better, that this is just what it is. We may think that everybody lives in this space and we maybe we don't know how to have the tough discussions of how to own our own thoughts and feelings and behaviors and have productive meaningful connected discussions. We don't know how to step into curiosity instead of getting defensive. We don't see that we're making ourselves a victim and we don't understand how we can start to step into our own responsibility. 

21:42 

And then for me, and probably for you as well since you're here, you were blessed enough to find coaching and we begin to gain the tools we needed to begin creating something different. We began to understand concepts of how to engage, how to communicate, how to really love a clean love, how to listen so that we could create something different, how to create what it was that we have always dreamed of, that dream and that desire inside of us for something that is full and nourishing and satisfying. We start learning how to create that and now we no longer need to just tolerate our lives because we realize that we can start to create what we want with our lives. We have spent years, many of us, tolerating a very unsatisfying life because we didn't see it. We didn't understand it. And even though we had an inkling, a nudge, an itch that something was off, we also didn't have the tools to see it and to fix it. Or we've spent years tolerating an unsatisfying life because it just seemed like so much work to change it. 

22:59 

I was speaking with someone about this concept just last week and she said, when I talked about the whole buffering piece and having to stop buffering and feel the feelings, she said, "oh, that just sounds like so much work." And guess what? She's right. It is a lot of work, but I promise you, it is work worth it. doing. My goal through this podcast is to help all of us see what we haven't been able to see, to understand what we haven't understood, to recognize what's off, and to give you the tools to make the changes that you want to make. I don't want any of us to continue to live a tolerable life. Regardless of where you are right now, I want you to live the life of your dreams, to be able to say, "my life is tolerable, I suppose, but not enough to tempt me any more." 

24:00 

Will it take work? Absolutely. Will it be painful? Without a doubt. Will it be humbling at times? And will it be scary? And you'll be terrified? For sure. But when we are willing to feel these things, and to stop buffering in order to get the quick dopamine hit that makes the situations tolerable, then we can really start to move into ourselves. Because the goal of coaching is to help you move into yourself, your true self, your God-given self, not to help you move out of yourself, it's to help you move into yourself, to fulfill your divine destiny, whatever that is, to intentionally choose to live the life of your dreams. No more tolerable lives, my friend. It's time to step up and to start living what you feel driven and to live, and to satisfy that itch that has been going on for some of you for far too long. 

25:13 

There is information here on the podcast. There is also a coach right here who can help you do this. Come on, my friends. Middle-age, it's time to start living what we want, to start creating what we want, to step out of the tolerable life, and to start creating what we feel driven to create. Those desires and those dreams that we have, they are a window into who we're capable of being and what we're capable of creating. This is the joy of growing up into middle age, and I love it so much. I love it so much. I love my life. I'm just so grateful to be where I am, and I want to help you get on a path where you are so in love with your life that you can just hardly stand it sometimes. 

26:13

Alright, that is it for me. If you want to work with me, if you want to talk with me about what working with me entails, get in touch with me. Go to tanyahale.com. You can book a free consult on there and we can chat about it. I am getting fairly booked and I'm loving it so much. In fact, I'm booked enough that this is my last year teaching school. And so I'm going to be coaching full-time come the end of the school year. So super exciting. But if you would like to get in and get one of the last few spots that I have available right now, this is a great time to do it. Okay tanyahale.com, book your free consult and let's get to work my friends. Let's build you a life that's way, way more than tolerable. Let's build you a life that you wake up in the morning and you're like, "dang girl, I can hardly wait to see what today brings." This is what it's like. 

26:49 

And I am back! Such good stuff, can you stand it? I love this concept so much, this idea that that we don't have to tolerate this mediocre life that many of us have accepted is okay. Time to move on, my friends. It is time to grow, alright? 

27:16 

So as we finish up today, a couple of things. One, if you have not shared this podcast with someone who you know could use it and you like this podcast and it's helping you, then it's most likely to help people that you know. Please share it. You can share it on social media, you can send people links, you can just tell people about it, you can talk to people about the content. If you find a friend who wants to listen to it with you, coming together to go for a walk in the mornings or the evenings and discuss it and talk about it is going to deepen your understanding and your commitment to do some change. So share this with people and let's get this message out there. There is some good stuff here that will change lives. 

28:02 

Okay, again, if you've not signed up for my "weekend win" and you are interested in just a quick little email on the weekends, go ahead and get that done. You can go to tanyahale.com there should be a pop-up coming up that will allow you to sign up for that. And yeah, that's gonna do it for me. Have a great great week. Again, last week to sign up for the the classes that I've got going on. So I will talk to you next time. Thanks for growing up with me. See you, bye. 

28:36 

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!