00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 95, "Resilience." 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. 

00:20 

Hey there, my friends, happy to have you here today. Thank you for joining me. Hey, before we get started, I want to remind you that I have free coaching available. I will do one free coaching session for you. A lot of people are like, "well, I don't have any big issues going on in my life right now," and you know what, that's not necessarily what coaching is for. Yes, coaching can help you through some really tough situations and I have done that with my clients before. But a lot of times coaching is also just for small tweaks we want to make. Sometimes it's just for understanding our thought processes better so that we can see what our thoughts are creating and what's happening for us in our lives and that's my job. My job is not to give you advice and definitely not to tell you what to do, but to help you see your thoughts better so that you can make decisions based off of what you really want to be doing with your life, instead of just living on the fly, right, as things happen, but really being intentional about the living that you are doing. 

01:26 

So take me up on that. You can go to either my Facebook page which is Tanya Hale LDS Life Coaching and there's a button there that you can schedule. Or you can also go to my website, which is tanyahale.com and go to the "contact me," and you will see a place there where you can also just tap right into my calendar. And I mentioned before that now that I'm not teaching school physically, I have a little bit more flexibility with my schedule. So, I have opened up some daytime appointments so if that works better for you. I have that and I still have some evening ones as well. So take advantage of the coaching. I love it. Every time I get to work with my coach, I'm just floored by the things that I learn about myself and the progress that I make in understanding more about who I am and why I'm doing the things I'm doing, the thoughts that are dictating my feelings and my behaviors. It's amazing to me to see what's going on and to start cleaning all of that up. It's such a brilliant, beautiful process. I love it and I want to share it with you, so get in touch with me. 

02:32 

Okay, so moving on today, I've been thinking a lot about resiliency lately with all of the physical distancing that we're engaging in right now. I think that when school first got canceled and many people started working from home or getting laid off, many of us just thought of it as a bit of an annoyance and we figured we'd just kind of wait it out, right? I know at first it was kind of like, "ah, give it a couple of weeks, it'll blow over." And it seemed a little bit like getting stranded on a desert island. So at first it seemed so unbelievable, and we just kind of put ourselves on survival mode, like," okay, I'll just wait this out, it can't be too long." It was kind of like being on a desert island and finding just enough food to eat or making a very basic rudimentary shelter or just making sure that we could find clean water...just waiting it out because the ship was sure to show up any day now, right? But then came the announcements that schools would be out for another four weeks. And I know many states have gone ahead and canceled school for the entire year. And we've started to realize that we need more than just the basic survival skills for a week or two. We wanted to have more than just the basic necessities because life really isn't just about surviving. It's about thriving, about creating something bigger and better than what we have. And for so many of us, this is the place where we begin to see our mental and our emotional health more clearly, these kinds of tough crisis situations. This is where we start to see what we're really made of. And this is where we start to see how resilient we really are. 

04:13 

So resilience is most easily defined as our ability to bounce back from a difficult situation. Specifically, the dictionary defines it as "the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change." Fascinating, right? Not just to recover from, but to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. So looking at our current coronavirus challenges, rate your resiliency. On a scale of one to five, how easily have you been able to adjust to the changes or even the misfortunes that may have entered into your life? Okay, wherever you placed yourself, I want that to be a non-judgmental number. Okay, this isn't something to beat ourselves up over, but something to look at ourselves and go, "huh," right? I don't want it to mean that you're horrible or that you are even fabulous, really. I just want that number to be information for you. 

05:13 

So let's take a closer look at resiliency and see how we can develop a greater resiliency around challenging circumstances such as the one we're currently in. There are a couple of things that will impact your resiliency at a deep level. And the first ones we're going to talk about are a little more spiritually connected. When we have a clear understanding of who we are, of what our purpose in life is, and of what we want to accomplish, we will more clearly be able to understand where we need to go in the midst of struggles. We don't feel so much like we're completely lost in the forest because we understand the direction that we want to be heading. Another spiritual connection to resilience is that living true to what we know to be right brings courage and strength to keep going, to get up, to keep fighting for what we want, for what we know that God wants for us. And the stronger we live true to these values, the more strength that gives us to hold true to those values in difficult times. So really having a spiritual connection with who we are, understanding what our purpose in life is, that can help us. And when we live the way that we feel that we want to live and that we we desire to live, that again living true to those values gives us a greater strength. So having a strong connection to God and to our purpose in life is a very very valuable part to being able to be resilient during times of struggle and adversity. 

06:50 

Another huge part of resiliency I want to talk about is the ability to see our lives for what they are. A place to learn and grow. Our lives are meant to have crises, to have challenges and hardships. These are all part of the deal when we came to earth. And you don't have to be a religious person to get this idea. We are guaranteed three things when we come to earth: to be born, to live, and to die. And that's it. Everything else is extra. But when we look at the "living" part, the middle part, this is the most difficult part. It's like any trilogy, right? We all get bogged down in part two. We're all like, "oh gee whiz, can part two ever end?" Right? The middle of the book is always the most difficult. And this is how our lives are. The middle part, this living part is the most difficult part. This is where all the struggle is. This is where all of the learning takes place. 

07:51 

And life, to be a life worth living, is all about obstacles because in between the birth and the death we have the opportunity to live and living requires engagement. And engagement requires awareness and vulnerability and growth. To find true fulfillment in our lives we have to be growing and progressing, and growing and progressing do not happen without challenges. They do not happen in a life of ease. So when we have a crisis in our lives, like the current COVID-19 crisis, our goal is to be better on the other side of it than we were coming in, to learn something new about ourselves, to grow into a better and stronger person, to have re-evaluated our lives and made changes that will help us to live more satisfying and fulfilling lives. 

08:45 

So first of all, we have to come to terms with the truth that we are here on earth to grow and that growth comes through adversity. I think a lot of us can give some pretty good lip service to the idea of "opposition in all things." We can connect with the idea that we won't know the good without knowing the bad. We won't know the light without also seeing the dark. We won't understand right if we also don't understand wrong. Doctrinally, it can all make sense. But we're not always so good at applying this to our individual lives. I know many of us have this idea in our heads that if we try to live good lives, to live the commandments and to choose the right, that it should all just fall into place and we really shouldn't have to go through many challenges. But that is some erroneous thinking that I've had to coach myself through as well. Trying to live a good life doesn't exempt me from challenges. In fact, it may even qualify me for more challenges. 

09:48 

So here's the deal with challenges, adversity, difficult, hard times, whatever we want to call it. Not only are they part of the deal, but they are essential to living a life that is meaningful and fulfilling. They are the path to true growth and progression in this life. When we can learn to embrace this concept, truly embrace it wholeheartedly, we can start growing into a better version of ourselves. 

10:13 

The question is then, how do we take these tough situations we encounter and bounce back? How do we engage with a higher level of resiliency so we can move forward and be stuck less? It all starts with how we choose to think. Specifically, I  want to discuss with you today the first two parts of the thought model: the circumstances and our thoughts. We cannot control the circumstances. We can't control that the coronavirus is out there right now, but we can control our thoughts about it. I can always control my thoughts, regardless of what is happening out there. I can choose whatever I want to about any situation I encounter. And this is the beauty of our lives. We get to choose. We get to decide. And all of our power comes from our decisions. 

11:10 

Here's an interesting idea. Every circumstance is completely neutral and only becomes positive or negative when we attach a thought to it. And it is true. Right now, coronavirus is completely neutral. It only becomes a horrible thing when we think horrible thoughts about it. But coronavirus is just science and math. That's it. And what we are choosing to think about it is what gives away our power or what creates our power. If I'm sitting inside my home on basic survival mode, feeling the victim of my circumstances and just caring for my very basic needs, it's because of my thoughts that this virus is in charge and that I don't have any choices. I'm feeling very trapped. But I can just as well sit inside my home and begin moving beyond my basic needs, just like the Swiss family Robinson, right? Remember them? I can stop waiting for somebody else to come and rescue me and instead choose to make my life amazing. I can build a mansion in the tops of the trees if I want. It is easy to have victim mentality thoughts when we first get stranded on the island, right? That's completely normal. It's what our primitive brain does. 

12:33 

But we do hit a point when those initial feelings of sadness or frustration or anger or isolation begin to be indulgent. They may feel really good short term, but long term, those feelings are not helpful at all. They get us stuck and they keep us stuck. And realizing that our feelings are created by our thoughts is one of the biggest ahas we can have in our lives. Everything I am experiencing in my life is created by my thoughts. Some of you are going to want to argue with that and say that it's the virus that's making you miserable by making you stay home. That entirely is not true. It is your thoughts about staying home that are making you miserable. It's just as viable to think that getting to stay home is an amazing deal, that without having to commute, I'm getting more time to sleep or more time with my family. I can choose to think whatever I want to about my getting to stay home or my having to stay home. Thinking that "I get to stay home" creates a completely different feeling than thinking "I have to stay home.: Think of just the power in changing that one word. You are creating something completely different in how you choose to engage with your thoughts. 

14:02 

So much of our ability to be resilient is our willingness to embrace adversity, not just as an important part of our human experience, but also to embrace it as an amazing part of our mental health. When we can manage our thoughts around difficult circumstances, we can control how we feel, how we act, and ultimately the end results of what we see in our life. And this feeling of being in control of our lives is a big part of our mental health. 

14:33 

So some of you at this point are going to want to argue the fact that just by having positive thoughts, we can't really control the world. Let me offer you this. Our positive thoughts definitely will not change the circumstance. I can't think positive thoughts and make this virus go away, but my positive thoughts, managing the thoughts I'm having about the virus, completely changes how I personally interact with this virus. This is such an amazing opportunity for each of us to see our brain more clearly, to identify what we think and how we think. Are your thoughts coming from a place of fear or a place of love? If your thoughts are mostly fear-based, you will find yourself struggling to bounce back and be resilient. If your thoughts are mostly love-based, you will discover that your resiliency rises to the occasion and helps you pull into a better place. We definitely, definitely cannot change the circumstance, but we can change how we interact with the circumstance by how we choose to think. 

15:43 

Here's another thought that I would like to offer you: every thought you are having about any circumstance is just made up. Your primitive brain is programmed to look for the negative more often. That's part of the survival mechanisms that are built into our brains, but our prefrontal cortex is the part of our brain that is created to see the possibilities, to not get stuck in survival, but to desire to thrive and to move forward. It's important to let both parts of our brain have equal time or have an equal say. Going into worst-case scenarios is natural, but many of us don't allow ourselves to go into best-case scenarios. And here's the deal. Both the worst- and the best-case scenarios are just made up in our brains. When we think the thought, "all my family could die from this," that's a worst-case scenario that may come true. But it's also a made up thought about  the future. We're just kind of pretending, right? And it's only fair to ourselves to also look at the best case scenario and say something like, "we could all end up completely healthy after this and also have stronger connections and relationships as a result." That's also a made up thought about the future that could come true. 

17:02 

Here's the big question about that: which of those thoughts serves you better? Which one makes you feel and act better? Which one moves you to create the life that you want to live? Considering they're both made up thoughts about the future, we really get to choose which one to think, and learning to manage our minds puts us into a place of greater resiliency. And this works with any situation we're encountering in our lives, whether it be our personal growth or our feelings of self-worth, maybe our relationships or our job or our bank account or our housing situation. How we choose to think about it is in direct correlation with the ultimate results we are seeing in our lives. How we choose to think about anything affects our capacity to come back again, and again, and again, if necessary. 

17:57 

Our resiliency directly impacts how we engage with the world and the success we create. If I have created the ability to never give up, then I will have more courage when other circumstances come up in my life. I will have a greater strength to build upon what I've already created and move into an even stronger position. And this all becomes an upward spiral leaving us to higher and higher places of self-awareness and growth, and it all begins with our minds. It begins with the acceptance that life is supposed to be hard. Greatness is supposed to be hard. None of us are entitled to easy. Every one of us signed up for opposition, but this opposition, this adversity will either make us stronger or weaker. 

18:46 

If we seek for the short-term emotional relief by wallowing in our negative thoughts and by choosing to feel the victim, we will become weaker. If we seek to have a more long-term vision, seeing where this adversity will take us in the future, if we manage our difficult emotions and don't run from them, then we will become stronger. The biggest question to ask ourselves is who are we becoming in the process of this adversity? When I ask questions such as, "what can I learn from this circumstance?" Or if we realize that this adversity is serving a purpose and seek to figure out what that purpose is, then I will become stronger, more courageous, and more capable. And it all starts with the resiliency of learning to manage my thoughts around these circumstances. 

19:39 

So we have a choice. We can either use adversity for us or against us. Resiliency chooses to use adversity for us in creating thoughts that work to our advantage, thoughts that create what we want to create. Thoughts that can change us into a better version of ourselves. And when we have figured out how to create resilience in one area of our lives, it's transferable to other areas of our lives as well. We find ourselves more capable of bouncing back from adversity easier. Not because the circumstance is easier, but because we are stronger and more capable. So resilience really comes down to the ability to manage our thoughts around circumstances. To decide to choose thoughts that will move us forward rather than keeping us stuck. 

20:35 

Isn't this middle-aged gig just amazing? I love growing up. I love it. I love it, and I'm glad that you're joining me on this process, because I hope that you love it as well. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else who could use this information. I think it's such powerful, important information to learn and to know, and we are at the perfect stage in our lives to be applying this and figuring it out once and for all. Alright. Love you, my friends. Again, thank you for joining me. I wish you all the goodness that you can create in your mind. Have a great one. Talk to you next time. Bye. 

21:15 

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.