0:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale, and guess what. Episode 49, "Fixing Yourself." 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 

Well, hey. Happy day to you. I hope it's a great one. I am doing so good today. I had an experience just this morning that has just upped my level of awesomeness today. I was communicating back and forth with someone that I knew when I was a teenager who had a huge impact in my life and in the way that I see the world, and later on, right after my divorce when I was trying to figure out how to how to move forward. And the things I needed to learn she stepped back in and gave me some more guidance. The woman who actually introduced me to Brene Brown. And I just was I was writing a letter to her today and expressing my gratitude for her. I was just so overcome with just an overwhelming feeling of how thankful I am that she's been put in my life, and for the fact that she has been there at huge crossroads in times for me in my life. You know, when I'm in high school and getting ready to graduate, you know right before I did big stuff and then right after my divorce, right after I did big stuff. She's helped me to find a place. So if you have not written a letter like that of gratitude to someone lately or called them and told them, do it. I'm so grateful. I did that this morning. It just energized me and gave me a new perspective and just helped to kind of settle my feet on the ground this morning. 

01:52 

So that being said let's move on. We're episode 49. That means the next one is 50. Can you believe I have so much to say? I'm kind of surprised that I have so much to say, but I do. And the ideas just keep coming. I just love this process for me of getting to work through things. And I learned something about myself today while preparing this one that was a huge aha, something that I got. I had the two puzzle pieces, but they weren't fitting together yet. And so I'm super excited about what I learned about myself today while I was doing this one. 

02:28 

So today is entitled "Fixing Yourself." So we're going to start off by talking about when I first got divorced. So there were a lot of ways that I was in a pretty good place emotionally, but I do remember thinking that there was no way I would be able to have a healthy relationship in the future because I was so broken. And I had this idea that something was inherently wrong with me that kept me from being able to connect with my husband. And I seriously doubted my ability to connect with people at all. Even though I didn't feel that it was a really dark time for me at the time, I did feel a lack of hope and a lack of wholeness and hope because at the time I couldn't see what was broken and a lack of wholeness because I felt there must be something missing in me that would allow me to ever have a healthy happy partnership. And although I didn't dwell on this a lot and it didn't throw me into extreme sadness or depression, it was always in the back of my mind: "I'm broken. There's something wrong with me. I'll never be able to have a real connected relationship." 

03:35 

So let's talk about how this plays out in you. Maybe you've never been divorced, but maybe you've been close. Maybe you've had the big talk and you've spent weeks or months thinking and crying and wondering what kind of a person you really were and what was wrong with you that you couldn't figure it out. Maybe a tough marriage hasn't been your thing, but maybe you've had teenagers who have made choices that have been so hard and caused you to believe that you haven't been good enough as a parent. If only you were stronger, better, more whole, then they would feel your love and change their ways, right? Or maybe you were sexually abused as a young child and those thoughts and experiences from your past continue to control your days today. The thoughts that you are broken and worthless and damaged goods just keep invading your mind. So remember the thoughts I was having? "I'm broken. There's something wrong with me. I'll never be able to have a real connected relationship". Because of that, I spent the first two years, not even a little bit interested in dating again. People would ask me, "hey, when are you gonna start dating?" I'm like, "oh no, no, not even ready to go there," because I had zero confidence in my ability to have that healthy relationship. 

04:52 

But it was within the first year of my divorce that I was introduced to Brene Brown's work by the woman that I talked about earlier today. And a shift started to happen and I began to learn some things about myself and about communication and connection and realized that there were some skills I just didn't have. And I didn't have the skills because I had never been taught them. I hadn't been taught them because I'm not quite sure my parents had them, and to be honest I don't believe my ex-husband or his parents had them either. Although I may be 100% wrong on that. But the more I became aware of these skills, and the more I began to put them into practice, the better I felt about where I was. And I continue to learn to become aware and to apply over and over and over through that process. And now I feel as though I'm in the best emotional place of my entire life. 

05:48 

But here's the real deal throughout this whole process: I didn't really change. The essence, the core of who I really am, stayed the same. I'm still the same person who back then wanted to be as Christlike as possible, even though my skills and my understanding were severely lacking. I was still the same person who wanted to treat others with respect and kindness all the time. I was still the same person who loved my children desperately and whose heart ached when I could see them hurting and struggling. At my core, I was still the same person. And this is when I really began to understand a key concept that I wish everyone in the world can understand: I was not broken. I did not need to fix myself. At my core, there is nothing wrong with me. 

06:41 

I am whole. And the same is true for every person who has ever lived and breathed on this earth. We are not broken. We do not need to fix ourselves. There is nothing wrong with us. We are whole. And this is where it's imperative that we begin to separate ourselves from our behaviors. Because this idea that we are broken is shame-based. It's an idea that something is wrong with me when in fact nothing is wrong with me. So if you remember from Guilt and Shame podcast, shame says, "I am bad." Guilt says, "what I did was bad." And this was my big aha about myself today as I did this. And also the big idea of this podcast. 

07:37 

When it comes to seeing ourselves, even in the most difficult of circumstances, and even when we have made huge mistakes, and even when we feel ourselves drowning in the emotional pool of misery, we have to understand that it is not us that is broken, it's our behaviors that are broken. When I look at my rough years of my marriage, which was pretty much all of them, so many situations that were tough were because I just did not have the skillset to take care of things the way I could have. I didn't have the knowledge to know how to work through them and fix them. I didn't understand how to truly listen with compassion or approach my then-husband with love rather than with frustration. I had no clue about vulnerability and how important it was to building a strong connection. I didn't know how to set clear boundaries that would protect my heart from resentment. All of these things I just didn't know. And it's not because I was broken or I needed to be fixed. It's because I just didn't. No, and because I didn't know I wasn't aware these things even existed, there was no way I could begin to change my behavior. 

08:56 

Because remember, I wasn't broken. My behavior was broken, and it was broken because I didn't have the tools to fix the behavior. But through it all, my value, my worth, didn't change. I wasn't broken. My behavior was broken. I wasn't a mess. My behavior was a mess. I wasn't horrible. My behavior was horrible. And I had no idea until this morning when I was working on creating this podcast that I was living in this place of shame when I thought I was broken and would never be able to have a healthy and happy relationship. I just thought I was being realistic. After all, 24 years of a tough marriage with a constant struggle to connect emotionally seemed to be enough evidence that I was not capable, that something really was wrong with me. 

09:57 

But in the years since, I've learned some beautiful truths. Knowledge really is power if I'm willing to accept it and engage in it. This knowledge is tied to my behaviors. I can't change behaviors if I don't have the knowledge that I'm doing something wrong or hurtful. Making this distinction between what I really am, which is a whole beautiful, amazing person, and my behaviors, which are sometimes good and sometimes not so good and sometimes really rotten, was a huge first step for me. In fact, I don't think I realized that I had been living in shame during those last many years of my marriage and the first few years of my divorce. 

10:42 

Here's when I had a huge aha about all of this, when it started to happen for me. Last winter, I was dating someone and realized that I was fully capable of having a healthy relationship. I could have tough discussions that were uncomfortable. I could set healthy boundaries around myself. I could be responsible for my own happiness and emotional health. And when the relationship ended, I realized that I wasn't broken. I realized that I was capable and strong and healthy, even though the relationship didn't work out. So I wasn't perfect by any means, but I was whole and I didn't need fixing, just my behaviors did. I'm really thankful for that experience because of what it taught me about myself. I was able to have a good relationship, a connected relationship, where I could implement skills that I had been learning that enabled the relationship in the first place. 

11:40 

So not knowing something does not make us broken or in need of fixing. Not yet being aware of what we need to move forward does not make us broken or in need of fixing. We are not broken. We don't need to be fixed. There is nothing wrong with us. Our behaviors, for sure. All of us need to work on behaviors. All of us have broken behaviors. All of us have behaviors that need to be fixed. And that's a huge part of what we're doing here on earth. Learning to align our behaviors with what God asks of us. We're not here because we need to be fixed. Our spirits were sent here whole and complete. We're here on earth because we need to teach our spirits how to control a body, how to control a mind, how to move forward in our eternal progression. 

12:38 

You, my friend, are not broken. You do not need to be fixed. You were sent here whole and you continue to be whole. You continue to be a perfect spirit in an imperfect body, learning and growing in this next stage of our development. We don't look at a young baby learning to crawl as broken because they haven't figured it out yet. And we don't look at a young child learning to write their name as broken because they can't do it yet. And we don't look at a young married couple and think they're stupid because they're struggling to adjust bringing two lives together. All of these are in the process. There is nothing wrong with them. They are just learning the skills necessary to be successful and move on. And this is how we must begin looking at ourselves. We are not broken. We do not need fixing. There is nothing wrong with us. We are just in the process. We are learning the skills necessary to be successful. be successful and move forward. God created us perfect but put us in an imperfect world to learn to navigate it. You are whole. You are complete. You are perfect just the way you are. It's just your behaviors that need some tweaking. 

14:09 

Okay, isn't growing up awesome? I love this process of where I've been learning and that process for me this morning of realizing that, oh my gosh, I was living in shame when I thought I was broken. That was a huge aha for me. I hope some of this has been helpful for you today, too, and that you've been able to put some pieces together in your own life, because isn't that what this is about? Learning, getting our behaviors where they need to be, tweaking our behaviors. We are perfect. Our behaviors however need some serious help. 

14:40 

Okay, and if you need some serious help figuring all this stuff out, give me a call. I am getting busy enough that I have moved my appointments down to only three consults a week, three free coaching sessions to get you started. So if you're interested, get on. Again, they've cut way back, I'm just getting too busy to have to do too many, but this is a great chance for you to get in and do that. 

15:11 

Alright, if you feel this podcast is helping you, if it's making your life better, share it with someone else so it can make somebody else's life better. Make sure you're subscribed so that you don't ever miss an amazing, fabulous episode of hearing me talk about my crap. And leave me a review. I want to get to 100 reviews on iTunes. So if you've got an iTunes option, go ahead and leave me a review. I would love that and I would appreciate it more than you would know. So if it's helping you, then turn around and help me. Will you please? Okay, have a terrific day, have an awesome week, and I just pray for all good things for you, that step-by-step, we can start figuring this out together. Okay, have a terrific one, bye. 

15:57 

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.