Intentional Living With Tanya Hale

One of the toughest things about being a parent of adult children is letting go of the desire to continue to parent them.  We have been so used to having expectations of how we want them to behave and what we want them to do, that letting go of that can be difficult.  But once they're adults, it's time to friend-zone them and step away from parenting them.  Let's talk about how to do that.

Some of us can have strong physical and emotional reactions to being wrong, and it can make us very resistant to the experience. But learning to look for and embrace the experience of being wrong can have some amazing benefits to us. When we learn to step into the more humble space of understanding where we are wrong, we can step into a stronger and happier version of ourselves.

Forgiving can sometimes be so difficult.  When we feel we have been severely wronged, letting go of the pain and the anger and the resentment can seem overwhelming.  And sometimes, we don't even know where to start with moving into forgiveness.  Today we are going to talk about how to do just that.  How to forgive anyone.  It may seem a pretty large task, but it is possible.

Kindness has so often been associated with acts - Acts of Kindness.  What if we were to back this up a bit and start with Thoughts of Kindness and see the difference it would make in how we, and the recipients of our kindness, felt?  Focusing on our thoughts rather than our acts will create a completely different experience.

All of us tend to have manuals for how we believe other people should behave.  What we find, is that our expectations for them are a way to try to control their behavior so that we can feel better. When we seek to control other people's behavior, it never turns out very well.  They feel manipulated and we feel horrible because they're not doing what we think they should and then we're angry or frustrated on top of it.  It's time to figure this one out!

Every experience we have in our lives gets turned into a story in our brain. And in our story, we generally become either the hero or the victim (and maybe sometimes the villain!) When we choose to become the victim, we feel disempowered and experience little to no growth, or may even decline a bit. And it's so easy and can feel so good to be the victim! When we choose to become the hero, we are empowered and step into a space of growth that can be amazing. Let's chat today about how to become your own hero of your story.

Connection with other people is something we were created to desire. And yet, sometimes we feel as though we are struggling to connect with those people who matter the most to us - our spouses or significant other, our children, siblings, friends, and even ourselves. What creates true connection and how can we step into more of it? Let's talk about it!

Possibility. A word filled with hope for what is to come. Dreaming of an amazing future of fulfillment and contribution. And yet, somewhere along the way, many of us have forgotten about our possibility. We've entered into middle-age having focused on other people's possibility, and lost touch with our own. Let's remedy that, shall we? We still have decades of possibility ahead of us!

Why would we want to allow ourselves to feel uncomfortable emotions? Because discomfort is the price we pay for growth and progression. When we avoid uncomfortable emotions, we are keeping ourselves stuck, and nobody I know likes being stuck!

Sometimes in our closest relationships, it can be very easy to hold a grudge rather than extend grace.  But to truly develop the connection that we desire in our relationships, it is imperative that we learn to forgive others and embrace their humanity.  Only with grace will we create the deep, intimate connections that we desire.

When was the last time your emotions came on so strong and powerful that you felt out of control?  All of us have times that our response is way bigger than is warranted by the circumstance.  Today we're chatting about why this happens, and how we can turn these times into opportunities to grow and learn and progress.

Spring always feels like the perfect time to clean out some closets and cabinets.  We get rid of things that are no longer needed in our lives in order to make space for things that will serve us better.  Emotionally, spring is a great time to do the same thing - find behaviors and patterns that may have served us well at one time, but that are no longer creating what we want to create.  Is it time for you to do some emotional spring cleaning?  

Do you ever feel like you work towards getting what you want and then get exhausted and quit? Whether it's weight loss, business or education goals, relationship goals, we can only change our behavior for so long before we just don't have what it takes to keep it up anymore. Today we're going to talk about how to really get what you want by getting out of just changing our actions and instead move into changing our thoughts, which are the cause of all of our actions and results.

Challenges, struggles, and trials are just a part of God's plan for our life here on earth. When we can embrace this concept rather than believing that we should be happy all the time, we can find a level of peace, fulfillment, and contentment previously unavailable to us. We truly can find happiness in our unhappiness!

Perfectionism has, at time, been hailed as a really great thing.  And I'm sure it is. . . at some point in the far distant future!  Having perfectionist tendencies at this stage in our human experience can actually be more detrimental than beneficial.  In fact, perfectionist ideas can keep us stuck in a place we don't want to be.  Let's talk about why.

What would you be willing to pay on Amazon for a happier, more connected relationship?  What would you be willing to pay for more confidence?  More fulfillment?  More engagement with your life?  Would you be willing to pay . . . attention?  Because paying attention to our lives, our minds, our people, is what having a more fulfilling, engaging, connected life will cost.  

A question I get asked a lot is, "What's the difference between coaching and counseling?"  Today, we'll discuss the differences, the similarities, and when you would enlist the services of each. 

Very few of us will want to admit that we sometimes lean toward martyr behavior, but I believe a lot of us exhibit it from time to time, and it's destroying our relationship with ourself and with others. Last week we discussed what being a martyr in a relationship looks like, and this week we're talking more in-depth about 10 ways being a martyr shows up in your life, and 10 ways we can begin to move away from our martyr behaviors

I believe that most of us, at one time or another, have relished in being a martyr. The fascinating thing is, we often do it as a desperate cry to be seen and heard, and what we create is everyone avoiding us so that there is no way we'd be seen or heard. We actually end up destroying the relationships we want so much to be a part of. Today we're talking to you about why we do it, how it shows up, and how to move out of it.

If you're someone who has constantly been in the "my weight is not what it should be" mindset, you will love this podcast.  My good friend, and fellow coach, Wendy Lee Johnson will walk you through the basics of intuitive eating and how it differs from dieting in some very significant ways — most notably, the thought work behind it.  And I love that these concepts apply not just to dieting, but also to moving into intuitive living as well.