00:00 

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 403: "The Path to What's Possible." Welcome to your place with finding greater happiness than intentional groups, because we don't just welcome to the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale, and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:22 

All right. Hello there, my friends. Super glad to have you here. Thanks for joining me. I, let's see, first of all, next Talk with Tanya is going to be April 14th. Free coaching. Come talk to me about anything you want. It is at 2 o'clock Eastern, 12 o'clock Mountain. Just a great opportunity to answer, to ask questions, to discuss things, to get some coaching, to listen to coaching, to see what it's like to get your feet wet. Great opportunity. So please take advantage of that. You can get that on my website, tanyahale.com. Just go to the group coaching tab, click on the Talk with Tanya, and it will send you an email with the link in it. You're going to love that. 

01:08 

So I'm going to jump in today because I've got a little bit of energy around this one today. I woke up early this morning and my brain was buzzing because of an experience that I had yesterday. I was doing a recording a podcast with someone yesterday and afterwards, she was asking me about what's going on in my life. And I was telling her about moving to Hawaii. And we were talking about an experience that I had. And because she said, "I bet five years ago, you could have never imagined you would be living this life." And it took me back to an experience that I had about, oh, let's see. I don't know, probably about five, about five and a half years ago, I guess, where I could not imagine living this life. 

01:56 

But I was working with a life coach at that point. Still do, by the way, but this is a different life coach that I'm working with now. But I was working with her and we were talking about me and about my life. And I remember telling her, and if you've listened to me for a while, you've heard this before. But I remember saying, "why would I want to mess up my life with a man?" I was in such a good place. I loved my life. I loved what I was doing. I was so happy. My sense of self was strong. And I just could not imagine my life being better than it was. It was so great. And she kind of coached me through that and through some things that she helped me realize that getting married would not necessarily be the same kind of experience that I had come from, and that I could create something different by choosing something different. And I really just got this sense that there was, that I could create, that I could be empowered to create the kind of life that I wanted to create. 

03:07 

And then I think this was a different day, but she took me through an exercise where she was like, "tell me about the five best things going on in your life right now." And the details are a little bit fuzzy at this point because it's been almost five years ago that this happened. But I was like, oh, like I am single. I'm so happy. I am running a coaching business. I'm working through life coach school, which was just phenomenal for me and so good. I have a podcast that I'm doing that at that point I had been doing for a couple of years and I just loved it and everything in my life just felt like it was so good. 

03:51 

And she said, "okay, now I want you to stop and I want you to go back five years. What about your life you're living now could you have predicted five years ago?" And I was like, oh, five years ago, I had just gotten divorced. I hadn't even found Brooke Castillo's, not Brooke Castillo, she did life coach school, Brene Brown's work yet. That was the catalyst for all of the work that I've done. I hadn't even found that yet. So I was still swimming in victim mentality in believing that it was all my ex-husband's fault and that I was blameless for all the stuff that went on. I had never even listened to a podcast five years before, did not even know what they were, had never even heard the word podcast. 

04:41 

And then five years later, what? I have my own podcast and I'm doing it. I had never heard of the life coach school. I had just barely gotten a life coach certification, but it was more of a leadership corporate type of leadership of life coach certification through the John Maxwell team. And though that was fabulous, it's not something that I really work with at this point in the work that I'm doing. But I remember just having this feeling of being blown away that where I had been five years before, I could not have even comprehended the life that I was living five years later because there were things that existed five years later that did not even exist for me five years earlier. And like the podcast, I had never even heard of a podcast. And five years later, not only have I listened to loads of podcasts, but I had my own podcast. And it was such a huge part of who I was and how I saw the world and how I wanted to engage. And it just blew my mind. And then this life coach told me, she said, I want you to imagine in five years looking back. And I was like, what? Like, I can't even imagine what my life could be. 

06:08 

Well, now here's where I am. I am now five years out from that experience. And so this recollection came to me yesterday when talking with this coach that if I go back five years from where I am right now, what about my life that I'm living now? Did I, like, what's the best thing in my life? Right now, it's absolutely my relationship with Sione. The things that we are creating, the life that we're living, the traveling we get to do. Five years ago, I had never even thought of American Samoa. And now I've gotten to spend a month there three years in a row. Five years ago, Indiana had never even really crossed my mind much. I mean, I knew Indiana existed and I lived in Kentucky for a while when my ex-husband was in the military. So we had driven up to Indiana, but it wasn't a place that I thought of. And now I've lived here for almost four years. Just the traveling that we do. 

07:19 

Guess what? And I mentioned this last week. We're getting ready to move to Hawaii. Who would have ever thought five years ago that that would be something that I would be looking at doing? And never in a million years would I have thought that. It was never on my radar. Five years ago, I was living in Utah. I had just started dating and I thought that whoever I dated would be from the same area and that that's where we would live out our lives. I was teaching school. Just everything is different. I'm living a life now that I literally could not have imagined five years before. 

07:59 

And so I woke up this morning and this was just buzzing in my head, this idea that we get to create things, that we get to create our life. And sometimes we don't even know what's possible. We don't even know where our life is going to take us. But our life will not take us to that place until we have the courage to make a different decision than what we're living right now. So I got up super early and I started writing down some thoughts that I wanted to share with you today. 

08:42 

And one of the things that came to my mind was that poem that Robert Frost wrote. And I wanted to share it with you because I think it's so beautiful. It's called The Road Not Taken. And if you grew up in the 70s and 80s, this is one of those that came out when we had to memorize poems for elementary school and share them. This was one that was always an option. But here we go. He says, "two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler. Long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth. Then took the other as just as fair and having perhaps the better claim because it's grassy and wanted wear. Though as for that the passing there had warned them really about the same. And both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day. Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." 

09:58 

I love this idea that the road less traveled by is a road that we get to choose. We get to, and I'm not comparing the traveled by with somebody else's life. I'm comparing it to our own. We get in these paths in our lives where we just do the same thing over and over and over. And we get very, very comfortable living the life that we're living, tolerating the life that we're living. And yet if we could courage up enough to imagine something different, to step onto a different path, to implement a different tool, we could create a life that we couldn't even dream of. 

10:47 

Now, Robert Frost is not the only one to muse upon the path of life and upon what happens when we do something different. Katie Couric said this. She said, "be fearless. Have the courage to take risks. Go where there are no guarantees. Get out of your comfort zone, even if it means being uncomfortable. The road less traveled is sometimes fraught with barricades, bumps, and uncharted terrain, but it is on that road where your character is truly tested and have the courage to accept that you're not perfect. Nothing is and no one is. And that's okay." Love that. Here's a quote from Glennon Doyle from her book, what's the name of it? Untamed. She says, "what is the truest, most beautiful story about your life you can imagine?" That was one that when I was reading that book, I copied that out in that little on and put it on a sticky note, and that's been sticking above my desk for a long time now, since before I met Sione. What is the truest, most beautiful story about your life you can imagine? 

12:02 

We have to imagine, we have to start thinking it. What about Mary Oliver? And I know you've heard this one who says, "tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" Mary Oliver was quite wise. She also said these two quotes. She said, "when it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement." Isn't that beautiful? And then she also said, "listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?" And let me share one more quote with you. This is from Eleanor Roosevelt. She said, "the purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience." 

12:51 

Now, I know that all of this sounds really lovely. It sounds like, yes, I can do great things. I can have great things. I can have this amazing life. And yet, in reality, it can be so much more difficult. And the reason it's difficult is because of uncertainty. And our primitive brain does not like being uncertain. But here is a truth. Growth and progress and something different does not happen in certainty. Creating a life that fills our souls requires discomfort. It requires not knowing. It requires courage. And when I was working with this coach all those years ago, I realized that I had to do something different if I wanted something different. I was blown away by what she helped me see, that I was living a life that I couldn't have even conceived of five years earlier. 

14:00 

And yesterday, when I realized that it's five years beyond that experience, and now I was living a life that I couldn't have even conceived of five years earlier. It was the life I was living five years ago was so much better than anything I could have ever thought of. And the life that I'm living now is so much better than anything that I could have ever imagined. Five years ago, I didn't even know that Sione existed. And here I am living this amazing life with him. 

14:40 

So how does this happen? How do we get to a point where we are living this life that we couldn't have even conceived of? Well, let's be honest. It starts to happen one decision at a time, one courageous decision at a time. We might choose to read a book or listen to a podcast and that might give us an idea or shift something in our brain. But then we can't just have an idea. We have to choose to implement a better life tool from what we've learned. This is when our life trajectory shifts. Now we're taking a path that is less traveled. If we want to live the life of our dreams, we have to get out of our reality. We have to have the courage to dream that there can be something better and to make a move toward it. 

15:40 

And it doesn't always have to be a huge move at first. It really just starts with our thoughts in thinking, "I could do this. This could be my life. I could have this." And let those thoughts create some excitement, some momentum, that then that feeling moves us into action, into doing something different. 

16:02 

About three years ago, I recorded a podcast called The Tolerable Life, and I was talking a lot about this same idea that so many of us just are tolerating our lives. We're living a life that doesn't excite us, that doesn't thrill us, that doesn't feel our souls. And we're okay with it. And we're okay just living this life that does not bring us joy. I call it the tolerable life. We're not loving our lives. We're not living in this space of overflow that I talk about. We feel like we're constantly hitting rock bottom. We're spinning. We're scraping the bottom of the barrel. We're constantly exhausted and tired and fearful. And it's just get up, do the thing, go to bed. Get up, do the thing, go to bed. 

16:59 

But when we choose to believe that we are meant for joy and fulfillment and wholeness and overflow, we make different choices. We courage up and we shift out of our comfort zone. These don't have to be huge changes at first, but nothing changes until something changes. And it all starts with our thoughts, thinking of something different we want, thinking of who and how we want to be and the kind of relationship we want to have. 

17:35 

Everything, everything that has been created in this world began with a thought. And that thought created some feeling that  drove an action. So I just look down at my desk. Here's my pen. Guess what? This particular pen started with somebody thinking. It started with someone years and years and years ago creating a pen in the first place. But this particular pen started with somebody thinking, what can I do? How can I make a better pen? What would I like in a pen? Everything starts with a thought. And that requires courage. It requires that we dare to dream that there could be a better life for us when we start wanting something more. 

18:28 

And I'll tell you what, if you are here on this podcast listening to this, it is because you want something more. You want to create something bigger and better and more fulfilling and more overflowing for you. But we have to dare to dream that we can create something we've never created before. That we can have a life that very few people get to have because most people are too scared to courage up and to work with the feelings of being uncomfortable. 

19:06 

But at some point, we have to decide that we want something different, not because it increases our worth, because it doesn't increase our worth. The life I'm living now, my worth is of no more value than it was five years ago, or even five years before that, when I had never even heard of a podcast. My life is not more valuable now. But I'm just in living a different experience. And sometimes we forget that we get to choose. We get to choose the life that we want to live. But it's so easy to get stuck in victim mentality, thinking that others get to choose for us, thinking that our lives can't change until somebody else does something different. 

19:56 

But if we're going to get out of victim mentality, we have to step into hero mentality and start thinking about solutions rather than problems. We have to start thinking about, okay, this is where I am. Now what? Tell you what, making that choice is not comfortable. It is fraught with uncertainty. Saying, believing that there might be something more for us, choosing to believe that I can create something different. Having the courage to say, okay, this is where I am. Now what am I going to do? Choosing is not comfortable. There is a lot of uncertainty. But can you feel the discomfort and move forward anyway? Is your desire bigger than your discomfort? Until it is, you won't make those changes. Your desire has to be so big that you are willing to walk through the discomfort. 

21:08 

Now, I don't know what your life is capable of, but I believe you have an inkling. Maybe you don't know as well. I didn't know the specifics of how my life was going to be today, but I did know that there was something there for me. I knew, I felt this drive, like I can push, I can create something bigger and better. And I believe that every single person on the earth has the capacity for greatness. I believe that you have the capacity for greatness. Now, your greatness will not look like anybody else's greatness, but there is something inside of you that can grow into something more fulfilling and more joyful. But we don't find that piece of us until we move out of our comfort zone. All of us can shift our trajectory and create something different if we choose, if we are willing to courage up and make a different choice. 

22:14 

So when Sione and I got married, we only knew each other for three and a half months before we got engaged. And then we got married four weeks later. And one of my dear friends questioned me. She was like, "are you sure this is a good choice?" And with all the love in her heart, she wasn't doing it because she was scared for me, because she was scared, but she really just wanted, she knew my past. She knew my experiences with my previous marriage and she had a lot of love and concern for me. And she was like, are you sure? Like, this is a big deal. And we were talking about it. And I said, you know what? I said, at some point, I have to be willing to take a risk. I feel like he's my person. I know that he's my person. I can sense it, but I have to be willing to take a risk. If I'm going to ever get the kind of relationship that I want, I have to risk something because I'll never know until I try. 

23:17 

And as we were talking about it, we talked about a parachute. And you know what? I went skydiving once. And is there always a chance that the parachute might not open? Yeah, there is that chance. Or that there might be something wrong with it or whatever. Absolutely, there's a chance. Doesn't happen a lot, but it does happen. And I just said, you know what? It's kind of like using a parachute. Like there's always a chance that it might not work. But most of the time, you know, it will. And I have to take a chance. If I'm going to have the thrill of the fall, I have to be willing to take a risk. And marrying Sione, knowing him for only four and a half months, was it a risk? Yes. Were a lot of people concerned? Absolutely and rightfully so. But we will never get something different until we're willing to take a risk. 

24:17 

Now, I know for sure that I'm not the end-all-be-all. But I have figured out one thing, that I will not create a different life by living the same life that I'm living today. If I'm doing the same things, if I'm thinking the same way, if I'm engaging with people the same way that I am, day after day after day, I will always be living the same life. If I want something different, I have to be willing to do something different. And that starts by changing my thoughts, by seeing what's going on, by recognizing and identifying the thoughts that are keeping me stuck and in victim mode. And I have to be willing to take a risk, to challenge what I know, to step into uncertainty if I am going to create a different life than what I'm living now. 

25:20 

So maybe for you, like for me, it required working with a coach. That coach that I was working with was brilliant in helping me see and understand and push my comfort zone to be willing to step into some discomfort in order to create something big and beautiful and amazing. And maybe that's what it will take for you. Maybe working with a coach who will push you out of your comfort zone. Maybe having somebody else help you to see what you are not seeing, because I promise you, you're not seeing your stuff. You're not seeing where you're stuck. Most of you. Because we just don't see it. 

26:04 

This is the work that I get to do with my clients. I get to help them see where they are stuck. I get to help them see where they are being a victim in their own brains. I get to help them understand how they can move out of it. I don't know where your path is going to take you in five years, but I do know that until you change the trajectory, you will not create something different. 

26:31 

You know, and I look back, I think I mentioned this last week on the podcast, but I'm going to mention it again. You know, I look back at the money that I invested in the life coach school and in other things that I've done. Could I do a side-by-side comparison that the money and this experience were equal? Probably not on a lot of them, but I'll tell you what I can tell you. That the value of what I have paid for has been the change of trajectory. So all the money that I've invested, probably coming up on close to $100,000 I've invested in different coaching programs over the years and different things that I have done, has led me, has put me on a trajectory and continued to refine that and nudge me and move me in different directions. 

27:23 

I'm living a life now that I five years ago could not even imagine. 10 years ago, like what I'm doing now would have been, I mean, nothing would have been even thinkable for me. But it just starts with one decision at a time, one decision to shift your trajectory. That's where it starts. Courage up, my friends. You can do this. You have to be willing to take a risk if you're going to create a life that you want to be living, a life that excites you, that in the mornings you wake up and you go, oh, I just can't wait. 

28:07 

Like, and not everything that we do is amazing, but every day I wake up and I'm like, oh, I get to coach today. Or, oh, I just love this man that I'm waking up next to. And I'm not a unicorn. I swear I'm not. I'm about as regular of a person as they come. But until I have the capacity to dream of something different, I will never create something different. This is what we're doing here, my friends. If you've just been listening thinking, "oh, this is nice. That would be nice. That would be lovely." I want you to feel something different today. I want you to feel that I can choose something different. I can implement something. I can make a change that will change the trajectory of where I'm going. 

29:01 

I love that when they talk about airplanes, that you change an airplane at the beginning of a trip just one degree, you end up in a completely different part of the world 12 hours later. And so you make small trajectory changes now. Your life will end up in places that you never dreamed of. More exotic and more exciting and more fulfilling and joyful than you ever imagined. Okay, my friends, let's do something with our lives. Right? Your one wild and precious life. What are you going to do with it? 

29:44 

All right. So if you want to learn a little bit more about this, if you want to grow on this, go down to the show notes. I will have several podcasts there that you can listen to that will continue to build on this idea or build more foundational stuff. Thank you for being here today. I love you. I want all good things for you. I want you to live a life that blows your mind. I  want in five years' time for you to look back and go, whoa, I could never have even imagined five years ago that this is the life that I would be living. I want you in such an amazing place. That doesn't mean you're not going to have challenges and difficult things along the way, but you will blow your own mind with how you're able to manage those and navigate those and lean into those and make something of those that you never thought was possible. 

30:43 

You've got this, my friends, and I've got you. If you want to talk with me about shifting your trajectory, go to my website, tanyahale.com, click on the free consultation button, and let's have a chat. And let's get you moving. Let's get you creating the life that you are capable of living just because you can. Not that it's not going to make you a more worthy person, but you're going to just be having a different experience than what you're having now. I love you. Thank you for being here. And I will see you next time. Bye. 

31:24 

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.