00:00 

Hey there, welcome to Intentional with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 404, "People Over Problems and Processes." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just go into the likes of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale, and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:22 

Alright. Hello there, my friends. So glad to have you here today. A couple of things. First of all, April 14th is the next Talk with Tanya. Love these. Show up if you just want some free coaching, if you just want to listen to what coaching is like, if you have questions or comments or want to discuss something deeper, this is the place to do it. You can go to my website, tanyahale.com, go to the group coaching tab, and you can sign up there. You will receive an email with the link so that you can join us for that. It is at 2 o'clock Eastern, 12 o'clock Mountain, and just super excited to offer those to you. I have been doing those for about a year and a half now, and they're just, they're just fun. Every week that we do it is just delightful. So that's going on. 

01:12 

The next thing over the summer, I'm going to be doing some group coaching classes. Don't exactly have the things ironed out there, but look for that. If you are not on my email list and you think you might be interested in some group coaching, again, go to my website, tanyahale.com. The first thing that pops up will be an opportunity to get on my Weekend Win email list. And that is the first place that most of this information is going to come out. So you're going to want to check that out. 

01:40 

Also want to remind you that if you love this podcast, if you feel like you want to dig a little bit deeper, always go to the show notes wherever you're listening to your podcast. And down in the show notes, I will have many other podcasts available with the links. So you don't even have to look them up. You can just click on the Apple or the Spotify or the website link and you can find those there. 

02:06 

Alright. I think that that's going to do it. I tried to go through those faster today than normal. Alright. Today we are talking about people over problems and processes. A lot of P words. Alright. So here we go. I think the last several weeks, I had been thinking a lot. And this thought just keep coming to my brain, this quote that says, "never let a problem to be solved be more important than a person to be loved."And I think with a lot of this stuff going on in the world right now, that that just kept coming to my mind. And so those of you who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, you may, that's often, that quote is oftentimes attributed to Thomas Monson, but the actual original author is Barbara Johnson. 

02:59 

But I love that quote, "never let a problem to be solved be more important than a person to be loved." And this seems to me to be another needed round of the first two commandments as given by Jesus Christ. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. And why is it just so darn difficult to implement this sometimes? And I believe it's because problems tend to be really in your face and processes feel really, really comfortable and familiar. And because of these two things, they can make it difficult to focus on what really matters in our lives. The things that matter the most in our lives, which are the people that we love and that we interact with, and sometimes people not even directly in our lives, but that are parts of our neighborhood and our societies. 

03:57 

And as I've been thinking about this over the last few weeks, another thought that has come to my mind is Adam Miller, who I've talked to a lot on here. He's an LDS philosopher, but he has taught that love is the law. And when Christ says the commandment is to love our neighbor, Adam Miller reminds us that love is the law. It's not something we receive as a reward. It's not something we get because we're nice, but it is something we are commanded to do. We are commanded to learn to love first and foremost. First and second and third, if we want to put the yourself in there as well. Those are the greatest commandments. 

04:39 

And learning to love others and ourselves first and foremost before we start behaving is a basic tenet of the work that I get to do with my clients as their life coach, helping them to step back from their situations and reconnect with the love that they actually want to feel and that they want to experience in their lives. When I am working with clients who are considering divorce, or oftentimes I work with people who don't want to get divorced, but they're in a really difficult relationship, one of the first things that I do is to help them touch base with love. 

05:22 

How are you treating your spouse? Are you feeling love towards your spouse? Are you treating them with love? Because when we step into love first, we align our problem-solving skills with our deepest values and desires. Right? When we love first, we are able to set aside our precious processes for how we like to do things in order to consider another person and their point of view or process. The primitive brain is a beautiful part of us that does so much good. It runs our lives. It puts everything it possibly can into a habit so that we don't have to think about it. We don't have to expend energy on it. And it protects us in so many ways. It does so much good for us. 

06:13 

And the primitive brain also wreaks a lot of havoc in our lives. When left to its own devices, the primitive brain will push us right past people and right onto the problem or rely on the processes, the habits that we engage in without thinking it moves us into our patterns of behavior. If we are going to love first, we have to slow down. We have to not rely on those processes every single time. We have to not consider the problem first, which is difficult because our primitive brain likes to go into all or nothing mode and black and white thinking mode. And it has us all considering all of the worst case scenarios that are available in our wildest dreams. 

07:08 

And yet, when we go into that panic protective mode of our primitive brain, we rarely, if ever, put people first. We rarely, if ever, connect with the feeling of love before we start trying to solve that problem. The primitive brain is really great at helping us to focus on the problem at hand. And yes, problems are important and they do need to be solved, but they often do it, our primitive brain does it for sure, at the expense of living our lives in alignment with our value of being loving, of loving first. 

07:50 

In our relationships, when we can override the primitive brain's propensity to focus on the problem first and instead focus on love first, that's when we start to choose the relationship and that's when we start showing up in ways that create the intimacy that we want. When the way the dishwasher was loaded becomes more important than the person who loaded it, we are putting the problem or the process before the person. When the way someone chooses to drive to the store becomes more important than the person driving, we are prioritizing the problem or the process. When the different way that someone approaches a problem overrides our love and kindness for them, we are out of alignment with prioritizing people. 

08:48 

One of the biggest challenges that I find in life is to learn to love people first and problem solve second. And that is because our brain moves so fast. It thinks so many thoughts every second. And if we are not conscious and aware and have made a decided decision that I want to put people first, these things will happen without any conscious awareness. And to me, loving first means that I choose to consider the person before the problem. People first. I have to ask questions like, "do they feel safe? Does this person feel loved? Am I treating them with kindness? Am I remembering that they are a person with thoughts and feelings? Am I remembering that this is the person that I have chosen?" And once I have touched base with the commandment to love, that that is the first thing that I want, then I can move on to solving the problem. 

09:56 

Now, I'm going to tell you, this is a longer process. It will take more time. It takes a lot more self-reflection and self-discipline. It takes a lot more intentional thinking and engaging with my own uncomfortable feelings. It also means that I check my processes. Is my response to how they are approaching a situation a strong negative one just because it's a different approach? Do I get upset or annoyed when things aren't done the way that I expect or anticipate or desire? And can there be multiple processes and ways to problem solve in a particular situation? Are there different ways to get the same thing done? 

10:47 

Most likely and in most instances, the answer is yes. And we just get to learn to slow down our brains, to learn to be aware of our primitive brain's desire to be right, to do things that are familiar to us and to resist anything else. We have to watch our brain wanting those things. This requires some awareness. It requires paying attention to our resistance to something different. We get to learn to ask ourselves, "okay, does this really matter? All right, so what? Is it possible I'm wrong? Could there be another way to look at this?" So much of our resistance is unconscious. Before we're even aware, we will be criticizing the other person for the way they're doing something or asking them, "are you sure?" Or suggesting our way, "you really should do it this way." 

11:50 

But learning to create awareness around these behaviors can be tricky because if we really do think that we're right, our brain doesn't look for other options. It just rejects and resists. I like to think about it this way. When we were in our dating stage, so for some of us, that was me just four and a half years ago, or if it was you a long time ago. When we first start dating someone, it seems like our brains are always on high alert. We're always wanting to treat the other person well. We're always wanting to prioritize them and think about them first. We realize looking back, "oh, I had the capacity then." How come? And it's because we were thinking about it so much. And there was a huge dopamine hit associated with this person. When we're first dating, that dopamine rush is pretty high, right? And so we do have the capacity to put this other person first. We just get comfortable and we choose to forget to prioritize our partner. 

13:14 

Now, I know a lot of people are going to be like, "well, I didn't choose to do it." Well, we kind of did. We kind of chose to do that. We chose to let down our guard. But we all have the capacity. Even now, if some high-ranking government or church official that you really admired came over and spent three days living at your house, think about the way that you would behave. Many of us would be behaving in very different ways. We would be considering what they want and what they need and what can I get you and how about this and do you need this? We would be doing that for this person. 

14:02 

And when and when we start choosing to do that for the people in our lives as well, yes, it takes a lot more energy. Yes, things take longer and more time to get done. But this is the process of putting people first, of loving first. We have the capacity to do this. We just get comfortable and we stop. We let processes and problem solving take over. We let our primitive brain take over and we stop putting the other person first. But when we can remember to love first, we protect our relationships. We let the people in our lives know that they are our first priority, that they really matter to us. And we step into alignment with our values and we strengthen our sense of self. We choose to act in alignment with our desire to be loving first and then we problem solve from that place rather than the other way around. 

15:13 

I believe Christ when he teaches us to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. I believe this is true, a true commandment, because when I do this, I grow in my capacity to be compassionate, to be kind, and to offer grace. These are all things that feel amazing. I grow in my capacity to love and respect myself. I believe Christ when he teaches this because when I choose people first, I am always rewarded with this self-respect and a remembrance and a recollection of my own worth and value. I believe because when I choose to see people before problems, the situation always resolves in a cleaner, more sustainable, and relationship-building way. 

16:11 

Does it take longer to get there? Yeah, it does. But these people are worth my effort. They are worth my time. I believe because when I choose to question my own processes and I have the humility to look at other people's processes, I often find ways that are more efficient or more effective or even more in alignment with my own values. They're just ways I haven't thought about before. I get that problems can often seem overwhelming and huge and like the world will end if they're not solved right now, this second, this day, right? That's the panic protective mode of our primitive brain. And that's exactly what your primitive brain wants you to believe because it is the quickest way to resolve our discomfort when a problem arises. 

17:12 

But it's also the quickest way to let the people in our lives know that they are not a priority, that we don't value them as much as we value other things in our lives. And it harms our relationships when we put the problems and the processes first. But learning to act from our prefrontal cortex, the decision-making part of our brain, we can choose the more difficult and  yet more rewarding path of people first. And the overall outcome of problem solving second will always be greater. Problem solving first is a quick fix. It's a dopamine hit, a fast end to our discomfort. But it creates a bigger problem of destroying relationships and the trust within those relationships. 

18:13 

Refusing to consider people before processes is also a quick fix. It's another dopamine hit that rewards us for getting the thing done. But afterward, it can leave us with hurt people and broken relationships in our wake. Choosing the slower, more difficult, more intentional path of loving people first is such a challenging decision and it requires a lot more intentional effort. And yet when we choose people over problems and processes, we create more peace, more fulfilling relationships, more self-alignment, and better life satisfaction. 

19:00 

Research teaches us that the quality of our lives is dependent upon the quality of our relationships. And when we choose relationships first, when we choose people first, it may prove more challenging for multiple reasons up front, but it will be more rewarding in the back way. Wait, let me rest. It will be more rewarding in every way on the back end. So where in your life do you tend to put problems before people? How can you slow down your brain enough to start choosing people first? 

19:50 

If you need help with this process, this is what I do with my clients. I help them to see what they're not seeing, and then I give them tools to implement that will put the people they love on the top of their priority list. I teach them to put people first, to love first. It can be hard to see, and it can be even harder to do. But it's the work that needs to be done if we are to have beautiful, meaningful, and fulfilling and intimate relationships. You've got this. Learning how to slow this down, learning how to show up this way in our relationships is part of growing up. 

20:39 

Tell you what, I love growing up. These tools, this kind of behavior, this kind of engagement has created deeper, more meaningful, more intimate relationships than I have ever had in my entire life. And I think the path that we've had to get to be middle-age has led us right here. You can do this, my friend. If you need some help from me, because it feels overwhelming, tell you what, go to my website and click on the free consultation tab. Let's sit down and chat. I promise you, one-on-one coaching will push you forward faster than anything else in your life. And if you can create better patterns of behavior for putting people first in your life now, I want you to just imagine what will your life be like in a year if you can do this? What will your life be like in five years if you've had five years of implementing these tools in your life? 

21:54 

Last week, I finished up working with my class that was the Ultimate Date Night class. And we had some couples in that class that came that were, that I had previously worked with all of them one-on-one. And in one of our last classes, we were talking about the work that we've done here. And one of them said that they thought that the most significant thing that they have done for their relationship has been the one-on-one work that they did with me. And the other three all immediately were like," yeah, 100% I would agree with that." 

22:39 

This comes right back to our sense of self. When we are strong and capable within ourselves, when we are not engaging in our relationships from a place of insecurity, but from a place of confidence, from a place of self-love. We are more capable of receiving feedback, of listening and understanding different points of view. We're not always seeking validation and wanting the other person to fill up our bucket, which they are incapable of doing anyway. One-on-one work is brilliant. And I promise you, you will get farther faster with one-on-one work. It's absolutely an investment, but it is so worth your time. Promise you. And so worth the money. It is so worth the money because it will put you on a trajectory that will change everything for the rest of your life. Okay, my friends, that's going to do it for me. I hope you have a really, really awesome week. And I'm going to see you next time. Bye. 

23:54 

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.