00:00 

Hey there. Welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 351, "Grace, Shame, and Letting Yourself Off the Hook." 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 

Alright. Hello there. Welcome to the podcast today. So happy to have you. I just love doing this. I love creating the content. I love the kind of person that it is creating in me when I am constantly thinking about and processing and obtaining information so that I have ideas to share with you so I can work better with my clients, so I can also improve my own life. And I think that the fact that this information is just constantly in my brain and constantly on the front burner for me just is a game changer in how this works for me. And I think that that's why a lot of people who choose to work with me one-on-one will come back and say that was a game changer as well because having it more in your face, having it right up front, having it a part of what you need to focus on and do every day, makes such a difference in how we can move forward. And as well, working one-on-one with me gives you an opportunity to have an outside perspective on some pretty intimate details of your life and to see what's going on. 

01:31 

And so if you're feeling like this work is moving you but you want to move a little bit faster, one-on-one coaching might be a really, really great option for you. So you can go to tanyahalel.com. You can go to the "free consultation" tab. You can get on my calendar. And we can chat. I can give you some free coaching and we can talk about what coaching is and how it might fit into your life and how it could help you move forward. I promise it is a brilliant, brilliant move to do some one-on-one coaching. And I know it takes sacrifice in many different forms, time and energy and money, and it is well worth it. 

02:10 

So we're gonna jump in today. We are talking about grace, shame, and letting yourself off the hook. So I was working with a client recently who said that she struggles to give herself grace because she doesn't want to really be letting herself off the hook. And this is a conversation that I have had many times with many different clients. And if you've listened to me for any amount of time, you know that I love the concept of giving ourselves grace for being human. Of course we are going to make mistakes. That's inevitable. We're going to hurt others. We're going to say and do things that are thoughtless and unkind. We cannot avoid doing any of these things because we have a human brain that is limited in its capacity to process and see and understand things. 

02:54 

But the question she asked then, how do I know when I'm offering myself grace for my human frailties? And when am I giving myself a free pass to make mistakes with abandon, to be hurtful to others, maybe even to be a jerk, to not hold myself accountable for how I'm showing up? And how do I keep from going into a shame spiral when I do human things that I don't love? 

03:20 

So for me, the line between human and jerk and going into shame is actually pretty clear. Am I accepting responsibility for my poor behavior and doing what it takes to circle back around and cleaning up? Or am I going into a one-up or a one-down position? Am I walking away from the destruction of my behaviors without taking responsibility? So this does have us approaching this situation from a one-up or a one-down. Or if I am offering myself grace, that is me coming in with an equal mentality because I am seeing myself as an equal that all people are humans, all people are going to make mistakes, all people are going to find themselves in this type of a situation at some point. And I promise you are not a unicorn. Everybody does all the kinds of stuff that you sometimes get on your case for doing. 

04:18 

So let me share an example from this week with Sione and me. So we had cooked for about four days straight and we are not really good at cooking for just two people. So we had a fridge chock full of leftovers. Now, we like eating leftovers and it was all delicious food, so no problem there. In addition, we had two more meals that need to be used up before the fresh vegetable parts go bad. So fridge full of stuff to eat. So earlier in the day that this happened, I had made a big plan in my head around when we were going to eat all the leftovers when we cook the other two meals. And I like doing that, right? Food has just always kind of been something that I enjoy being responsible for. I like to cook and so I generally have some sort of idea about the family food plan in my head. Although not always, but generally I've got a pretty good idea of what's going on and and what's gonna happen. 

05:15 

So I had about a three to four day food plan in my head to include eating leftovers for dinner that night. So that evening before I had had a chance to go down and do dinner, because I'd been coaching a little bit later that day, I had just finished coaching and I was sending a few emails to my clients. When Sione popped his head in my office and he'd been home for a few hours and he was letting me know that he had just put some chicken on the grill and had made a salad. And the salad stuff we already had in the fridge but the chicken he had taken out of the freezer. 

05:47 

Alright, can you guess what was happening in my brain? Anybody else's brain work this way? Now I will tell you, I am so in love with Sione. I love that he cooks. I love that he takes the initiative to prepare a meal. I love that he doesn't wait around and say, "well, I don't know how to make food. Can you do it?" Like, he's just amazing. He's great at that kind of stuff. And my brain had a plan for all the food that was already in the fridge. And it did not include taking some chicken out of the freezer and starting a whole brand new meal. 

06:21 

So in the past, I might have jumped right into saying something about how we already had so much food in the fridge, and why didn't you think about that? Right. I might have got a little bit of accusatory, maybe some blaming. Not harsh, but could have gone there for sure. But I'll tell you what, I I noticed my brain spinning like going, what? The plan I had! And I noticed it spinning. And, you know, when things spring up like that, it can take our brains a bit of time to make sense of all the info. So mine was spinning with thoughts of all the food in the fridge and that this wasn't what I had planned. And he's stepping in and messing up my plan. And what is he thinking? Right. 

07:07 

So as well as I was able to manage my brain with all of that spinning around in my head, it was just going so fast. And I was like, wait, wait a minute, wait a minute. I was having a hard time seeing his plan and my plan. Right. So but I do tell you, I got curious and I asked him a question instead of making an accusation, actually. And that's a big mama step forward from my past patterns. So I asked him what his thoughts were when he prepared the chicken. Now, as near as I can recall at this point, because, you know, our memories are all pretty sketchy, right, he mentioned that it good and he just wanted to get dinner made. And then I made mention of all the leftover food in the fridge and then said I'd be down in a few minutes when I finished my emails. Short and sweet. And nothing mean or harsh was said. 

07:58 

But after he left, I realized that although I got curious by asking a question, I also came across pretty ungrateful for him making us dinner and not following my plan, which he had no idea the plan existed, right? So generally, I'm a pretty grateful, kind of person. So what was going on in my brain at this point was that what was happening in real time wasn't what I had planned in my head. And I was having a hard time getting the new reality of him making some chicken and putting it on the grill into alignment with my plan of using all the leftovers. 

08:37 

Now, let's just be clear. Nothing had gone wrong. Sione gratefully had made a delicious dinner. On the other side, I had a food plan. Both are good things. One is not right, one is not wrong. Where it went awry was when my brain very slowly, seemingly too slowly, made the adjustment from the rock solid plan in my head to Sione coming up and implementing his own plan. So right after Cione left to finish dinner, my brain finally finished processing that he had lovingly made dinner. And I was able to see that even though it didn't fit in with the plans that my brain was clinging so tightly to, it was a wonderful thing. And it wasn't the problem that my brain was trying to make it out to be. It just took my brain a little bit longer to process the new information. And he was gone before it was finished. That's a human frailty, right? I'm generally very grateful to towards people, but my brain was just not putting the pieces together fast enough to reconcile Sione's plan with my plan. 

09:54 

So as soon as I got downstairs, I found him, I pulled him into a hug. I let him know that I was sorry that I didn't express gratitude, that I was in fact very grateful that he had made us dinner. And I let him know that I was just distracted by the other thoughts and the plans in my head. And he of course offered me a lot of grace for my response. We shared a nice kiss and then had a delicious dinner. 

10:21 

Now let's get back to the question we started the podcast off with. When am I offering grace and when am I letting myself off the hook? And when might I go into shame? So I'm telling you, I think that I did a great job offering myself grace on this one. My brain was distracted and having a hard time connecting the new plan with my old plan. That's going to happen. We just don't always see everything clearly at first glance because of the limitations of our human. brain. So I could have beat myself up, started berating myself for being so thoughtless, for not expressing gratitude, for potentially hurting Sione, and with that I would have felt a lot of shame. I might have felt embarrassed for how I responded and and that could have made me slower to get downstairs because I would have wanted to avoid the embarrassment of my behaviors and I would have wanted to avoid seeing him, then I would have avoided talking about the situation at all because shame causes us to want to hide. Okay, but shame doesn't serve us ever. It puts us in a one-down place, a place where we feel less than. So that would be if I'm going in shame. 

11:36 

If I was letting myself off the hook I might have started to justify my initial resistance to him making dinner. I would have started by thinking how ridiculous it was that he didn't see all the food already in the fridge and we'd even shopped together for the other two meals that were ready to be made. I could have turned this into a Sione problem, focusing on all the things he did wrong here. And then, of course, I would be frustrated that this then became my problem when he was the one that started it. I would feel resistant to apologize because it clearly was not my fault that he cooked something from the freezer when we already had so much food. Couldn't he see that? 

12:15 

So notice here the one-up thinking. The idea that my plan was better and that he was off base by not seeing the situation the same way that I did. It can be so easy to slip into one-up thinking and blame the other person for our lack of gratitude. And in this case, it's not that I wasn't grateful. I was just so distracted by my brain trying to process the new plan when my other ones seemed so big and so real and so perfect. But in this space, I wouldn't have focused on my response as much as I would have focused on his behavior and it would have justified my less-than-stellar response. This is letting me off the hook for my lack of gratitude and blaming him for why I felt the way I did. One-up for sure because I am exempt from blame and responsibility and it's all his fault. 

13:15 

So to be able to offer myself grace comes from place of seeing myself as an equal, as all people, as being humans, even though I did something potentially hurtful, something out of alignment with my desired behaviors. I'm not less than Sione because I didn't show gratitude and I'm not better than because my plan was obviously better. We are both humans. We are equals. Offering myself grace was acknowledging that I didn't respond the way I wish I would have and as soon as possible circling back around and seeking to repair. Letting him know how grateful I was not just for the dinner but for him as well. Apologizing for my weird response, acknowledging what I had done that was hurtful. In a space of grace I'm taking responsibility for my response. 

14:13 

Our egos, our primitive brains, really push back against taking responsibility. Somewhere in there our brain feels as though it's in danger when we own up to our bad behavior, when we see bad behavior. And it can make it really difficult to acknowledge it and apologize for it. And yet in this situation I wasn't in any danger. I'm only in danger if I'm going to beat myself up for being a jerk and step into one-down shame or if I'm going to hold on to justifying my bad behavior and start one-up blaming him because then it will cause danger, damage to my relationship. So do not let your primitive brain make you believe that apologizing is scary and dangerous. 

15:00 

Now, I get that the man I married to is exceptional and he accepted my apology with grace and kindness. He hugged me and kissed me back and then he let go of it. I know there are some people who will turn it back and say something hurtful and accuse you of being so ungrateful and doing it on purpose. And guess what? I'm sorry if that's the situation you're in and  though it can be hard to hear, let's also be honest that it's not generally putting you in danger. That would be a time when you would want to engage in the tools taught in number 347. Go back and listen to that if you need to. Just a few weeks ago, I put that out there about relationship repair. Understanding that your partner might be responding that way from a protective stance, a place where their brain is freaking out with feeling in danger. That's important to recognize that none of us behave our best when we feel attacked or unappreciated or unseen or unheard. Our primitive brain goes berserk.So maybe your spouse doesn't respond with grace toward your human response. Okay, that's an opportunity then for you to practice your skills of offering grace when they are feeling the need to protect. But realize that generally you aren't really in danger if they respond that way. 

16:26 

Your brain just hates being wrong and it freaks out. So first we have to know we are going to be kind to us when we do something that hurts another person. That means we don't beat ourselves up and put us in a shame spiral. And we also don't go into justifying our bad behavior by blaming them and don't address the problem because we think it's their problem. Instead, we seek to go into it with an equal partnership mentality. Own your own crap. We have zero control over the other person but a hundred percent control over us. Pick up your control and use it. Control your response. 

17:07 

And please don't try to convince yourself or me that you don't know what happens. "I just blow up and rage before I even know what's going on." I promise you can control it and you're feeding yourself a story if you believe you can't control yourself. If someone you really admired was in your home, you wouldn't blow up and lose control in front of them. You can control yourself. You have just given yourself permission to not be in control in certain situations and with certain people. So saying you can't control yourself is letting yourself off the hook. It's blaming the other person for being so selfish or unkind rather than focusing on your response, which is what you can control. Letting yourself off the hook is justifying your bad behaviors and choosing not to go into repair. Offering yourself grace is acknowledging and owning your bad behaviors and choosing to go into repair. 

18:17 

Hopefully that example helped you see more clearly how this is working. So let's look at another situation just to solidify the concepts here. Let's just say that one of your adult children happened to mention that when they were a teenager and had an umbilical hernia fixed, that the next day you made them clean the whole house. Now I'm not saying that this happened to me in the last week. I'm just putting it out. There is something that could happen, right? So what would going into shame sound like? Shame would start beating yourself up. "Oh, I'm such a bad parent. How could I have done that?" That kind of comment, right? And I might even express those thoughts to my children. "I'm sorry, I was such a bad mom. I can't believe you had to put up with me," blah, blah, blah, right. So how does this play out if that's how we respond? I feel horrible about my parenting and I start shaming myself. They might even start to shut down and stop telling us anything else because it becomes a shame fest for us. And we just turned the whole situation into something about us when they just wanted to be seen and heard. We didn't see and hear them because we turned it and made the whole story about us. And so they want to stop sharing. And it also makes them uncomfortable when we go into these shame spirals, because then they feel like they're responsible for it, either for putting us there or for getting us out. 

19:51 

Okay? So letting ourselves off the hook might sound like denying any involvement in such a scheme. And to be sure, guess what? We may not remember it at all. So we deny it. We tell them that we would never have behaved that way, that their memories are wrong. This has absolutely been my go-to in the past. I don't take the opportunity to see and hear my child who is sharing something with me that is probably pretty difficult for them to share in the first place. Or, if we do have a recollection of doing that behavior, we might justify our position by saying things like, "yeah, well, your room was always such a mess, it probably took an entire day to dig yourself out of it." Or we might say, "you had me so stressed out at that age that you probably deserved it." Or maybe I'd say something like, "your bedroom had spilled out into the whole house, so really, you were just cleaning your bedroom." 

20:50 

Okay, but remember we've talked about in the past: 60% of our memories are false. And with that, we could be wrong. They could be wrong. We could both be wrong. This fact alone has completely changed the way that I view the world these days. I may not have any recollection of that situation, but if my memory is 60% wrong, offering myself grace for being a human might sound like, "oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. Gosh, if I could go back and do it differently for  sure, I would. I wish I could have been more compassionate." Offering grace says, I'm a human. Of course I didn't always make the best decisions. And because of that, we take ownership. We apologize. We share with them how we wish we would have done it differently. The whole circle back around strategy that we've talked about. 

21:51 

Did we do things as parents that were ridiculous? Of course we did. And do we remember all of them? Absolutely not. We probably don't remember most of them as our brains are working desperately to protect us from our own ridiculousness. And just because I don't remember it doesn't mean it didn't happen. And just because they remember it doesn't mean that it actually did happen. But we most likely will never know in this life who remembers correctly. And whether it really did happen or not, it's their memory and it's real to them. So at least the repercussions are real for them. Their perception is their reality, right? So I take responsibility. If it didn't happen and I own it, guess what? It doesn't hurt me at all. It lets them, though, know that I value them and our relationship enough to respect their point of view and own up to it. If it did happen and I deny it or find a way to blame them for it, then I'm letting myself off the hook. And that destroys the trust in relationships. And without trust, any relationship will struggle mightily. 

23:10 

Best bet if you value your relationship. You can even say, "I don't remember" if you don't remember, but follow that up with owning it and circling back around. It would sound like this: "Wow, I don't remember that, but that's not to say I didn't do it. I am so sorry, that was a pretty crappy parent move. I wish I could go back and do that differently and let you rest and recover instead." Grace means we accept that we don't and haven't done everything right, which I know that right is subjective, but it means that we accept that there will be times that we say and do hurtful things. 

23:48 

There will be times when we aren't aware of things that it seems that we should have noticed and been aware of, that sometimes we will underreact and other times we will overreact, that sometimes we will be dismissive and distracted and that we won't understand the importance of what someone says or does, right? Or like me, my brain was so busy trying to process the new plan that I was not wrapping my head around how to respond the way that I wanted to. We just won't be able to always show up in what would seem to be the proper way. Our brains and our patterns and our deficiencies just won't allow it. We've gotta get used to being human. 

24:35 

And grace also means that we have a strong sense of self that can create space for these human frailties. And then grace means that we take responsibility for what we can. We seek to build and strengthen relationships and we're not afraid of being wrong or doing wrong because we know it's just part of our human experience and not part of our human worth. When we have a struggling sense of self, we will fall more easily into reacting with shame and blame and letting ourselves off the hook. With a strong sense of self, we can step into responding with love and compassion and valuing the other person more than we value our ego. A piece at a time. We gain insight and awareness into our patterns of behavior, and we start addressing them and applying the tools a piece at a time as well. 

25:32 

We do get better at this stuff. You will get better at this stuff. Learn to pay attention to yourself and to your interactions. Do the hard thing and circle back around. Check yourself. Get in alignment with who you ultimately want to be. Don't shy away from being the human, but rather learn to lean into it and embrace it as part of who you are, part of your intrinsic amazingness. I promise you will continue to figure this out if you just keep feeding yourself helpful content. Pay close attention. Remember, you don't have to be fearless in addressing your humanity. You just have to be courageous. You can do this. 

26:23 

And if you need some help reach out for a free coaching session. Coaching will fast forward your progress. This is all part of growing up: seeing our crap, cleaning it up, treating people better, showing up more in alignment with who we want to be, learning how to be an equal in the world rather than moving in the space of one-up and one-down. Okay. That is gonna do it for me this week. Good stuff, right? 

26:56 

Okay, if you have not let me have left me a review. Will you please go to Apple or Spotify? And you can very quickly in five minutes or less, if even that, leave me a review. That helps other people find this content and I just think this content  changes lives. It's changed mine. Unbelievably. And I hear from people all the time for whom this is changing their life. And so one of the best ways that that you can help other people is to share this content. So you can do that in a lot of different ways. You can just leave a review, you can share it on social media, you can copy the link and send it to somebody that you're like, "wow, I love this one." Like it's all good ways to show up in service in the world, making the world a better place. 

27:47 

Okay. I love you. I really do. Thank you for being here Thank you for your kind notes and and emails that you send me and thank you for showing up. And even if you've never sent me an email, we've never talked, I'm so grateful you're here because you are making your world and the people that you interact, with you're making their world better. This is some great great stuff, I'm so grateful to have found it and to be able to share it with you. I hope you have an amazing week and I will see you next time. Bye. 

28:25 

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!