00:00 

This is Tanya Hale with Intentional Mindset and this is episode number 13, "Being Content." 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 

Hello to you, my good friends. I really, really appreciate you being here and taking part in this podcast with me. I love the information that I have learned and I'm continuing to learning and I love the opportunity that I'm having to share it with you. So I appreciate you coming and joining me and being a part of this journey with me as I continue to move forward in my emotional growth and as I start figuring it out and putting pieces together and the fact that I'm able to share it with you means a lot to me. 

00:50 

And so here we are. We're going to start today on talking about being content. Content is a word that in the dictionary is defined as "being satisfied or in a state of peaceful happiness." And I thought, "okay, well, what is satisfied?" So satisfaction then would be the pleasure derived from the fulfillment of one's wishes, expectations or needs. So basically feeling like life is going good. I'm in a good place. I'm where I need to be. So we have that feeling of being satisfied, of being where we need to be and it creates in us a state of peaceful happiness. 

01:30 

I know that in my life I used to think of contentment as being something that was very passive, something that created in me a kickback attitude where I'm just not going to do anymore. I guess I thought of it as a state of stagnation because I thought that if I was content that I would be happy just the way that I was. But I found in my own personal life as I have grown more and more through this process and as I have come to understand things better and as I feel like I see the world better as I'm growing up, right, I've started to see. I started to feel more and more content in my own life. And rather than seeing it as a place to kick back and take it easy, I'm starting to see it as a place of growth. 

02:14 

Being content has become a place of acceptance for me and I'm settled rather than unsettled about my life, meaning that I'm happy with the direction that I'm going even though it's not perfect. But I don't have this constant unsettled feeling like something's wrong. I said I'm not where I need to be, I'm not doing what I need to do, and I really believe that acceptance of my life, so who I am what I do and what I do, it is a key component of being content. I can understand that my intentions and where my heart is even though I'm not perfect at living the way that I want to all the time, I understand where my heart is. I understand that I'm trying my best to be a good person. 

03:09 

And this also includes, I believe, this contentment and acceptance of my strengths and my weaknesses, because I know that both of these are going to be moving me in the direction of my growth. My strengths help me to fulfill my mission, so to speak, and accomplish things that only I can do here on this earth. And my weaknesses give me opportunities to become submissive and humble, and to learn to rely on God for assistance to overcome these weaknesses, right? So that submission and humility help me to become a stronger person in God. 

03:43 

I feel strongly that contentment also includes that I learn to accept my flaws and even my sins. Now this is not acceptance in the sense that I embrace and I celebrate my flaws and my sins, but that I realize that my flaws and sins are a part of living and growing toward what I really want to be. I have to learn to accept my imperfections, because these help me to rely on God and Christ in a way that I would never learn to if I were perfect. My imperfections help me learn to be submissive, which is exactly what I need to be in order to be what God needs me to be. 

04:24 

I also, to find this contentment, need to be accepting of where I am in my life. I'm in my 50s, and the more I embrace the fact that I'm in my 50s rather than fight and resist growing older, the more content I feel with my life. I've always been a little bit baffled by people who are like, "nope, I'm 29. I'm 29," or embarrassed to tell people their age; that's never really been me. I've always been really happy with where I've been in my age and what's been happening, and I love my age. I love the person that I've become as I've gone through the experiences, of raising children, of my marriage and my subsequent divorce, my healing and the growth process since that. All of these experiences have taught me things about myself and about life, and I would not trade them for anything because they've created the person I am today. I believe that they've all been part of the master plan to become the person I am today, perfectly positioned to do what I'm doing. 

05:25 

That doesn't mean I'm living a perfect life, and it doesn't mean I'm always making the right choices, and it doesn't mean I'm always thinking the right thoughts, but what it does mean is that I am learning to let go of the unrealistic expectations of myself. And with that contentment, I believe, also means learning to let go of the unrealistic expectations that I have of other people. These unrealistic expectations that I have for myself can cause me to feel as though I'm not enough, as though I'm not worthy of the good things God wants to give me in my life. Unrealistic expectations of others always creates unrest because I have zero control over whether those expectations will be met. 

06:13 

When I let go of the expectations I have of other people, I can begin to allow them to be who they are without feeling anger and frustration, which greatly reduces the drama in my life. And let's face it, drama is exhausting both mentally and emotionally. And a huge part of being content is that we feel healthy both mentally and emotionally. Having realistic expectations of myself means that I recognize and even celebrate the fact that I'm human, an imperfect human being in an imperfect world. And I'm okay with the fact that I mess up and that I make mistakes and cause problems because I know my intentions were good and I know that I'll do what I can to recognize what I've done wrong, acknowledge what I've done wrong, and fix what I mess up. It's that growth mindset that we talked about, right? I can have a growth mindset in realizing that I can grow and learn from this and be better. 

07:16 

I think another part of contentment means acceptance of being able to let go of the people because judgments of other people fit right in with the unrealistic expectations. Judgments will keep me labeling other people as good or bad because of how they do or they don't fit in with my ideas or my expectations of how they should be. 

07:44 

So all of this acceptance leads us right back to the model. So when we look at the results in our lives or the feelings in our lives, do we feel content? Do we feel at ease with where we are? Are we in a state of peaceful happiness because we are feeling satisfaction or we feel the pleasure derived from the fulfillment of one's wishes expectations or needs. If we find that the feelings of our lives don't lead us to this place of contentment, it's time to trace that result back to our thoughts and to see what we are thinking about our lives. What are we telling ourselves that is leading to this place of an unsettled life? Because the thing is, we're not ill content because of how our lives are. We are lacking contentment because of what we think about our lives. 

08:40 

So what thoughts am I having that are making me feel as though my efforts are not good enough or that I'm not good enough? Why can't I accept my life, the positive and the negative, the good and the bad, and realize that I'm doing the best I can with the information and the tools I currently have. So, we're going to take a look at just a couple of steps of the model here to figure out how we can get in a better place if we are not feeling so content. 

09:08 

So just a quick review of the model. We start off with a neutral circumstance and that circumstance occurs and we have a thought about that circumstance. Those thoughts can take us any direction. We can think good things about it. We can think bad things about it. We can think neutral things, whatever. But we have these thoughts. Those thoughts then create feelings and this is where the contentment comes in. We're going to put contentment on that feeling line, right? But the feeling of contentment or those feelings then cause us to act in certain ways and those actions bring results into our lives, the overall things that we see. 

09:48 

So if my feeling is that I'm not content, I'll put that in the feeling line and then I'm going to work back to my thoughts which is just one step away. So what thought am I having that is causing me to feel unsettled or to not feel content? We may think I'm not smart enough to figure this out. Or maybe I think I'm too fat or I'm not beautiful enough. Maybe I think I'm not as good as somebody else that I see. Or maybe I think I'm just a really bad person underneath this facade that I've created. What about the fact that I was a horrible mother? Whatever my own thought may be, and we're all going to have our own thoughts, the next question we need to ask ourselves is if it's true. Is it really true and can I absolutely prove that it's true? 

10:45 

I love this work from Byron Katie where she talks about this first question. Is that true? Is that thought true? And this is where things will start to unravel in our unsettled world. Was I really a horrible mother? Did I wake up each day trying to figure out how to ruin my children's lives or was I doing the best I knew how with the tools I had in my particular situation? I don't know one mother, and I know a lot of moms, I don't know one who intentionally tried to ruin their children's lives. Am I really not as good as Beverly? Or does she have struggles and challenges and weaknesses that I just don't see? 

11:30 

So as we start learn as we learn to start confronting the truthfulness of our thoughts we can begin to move into a more healthy way of thinking because this is the deal. Just because our brain thinks it doesn't mean that it's true. If we start questioning the thoughts we have we'll realize that many of them are not true. We have to start questioning our thoughts every single thought that we have. Our brain thinks between 40 and 60,000 thoughts a day and many of them are not true. So after we question that first thought and we say, "well is that true? Is it really true?" Mostly we'll be saying, "well no that's not really true. Was I a horrible mother? Well no I wasn't. Was I a perfect mother? Absolutely not. Nobody was and nobody is. But was I doing the best that I had? Yes. If I was doing the best that I had, was I horrible? Absolutely not." So we need to start questioning and saying, is that true? Can I absolutely prove that that was true? And most likely we're going to come out with a thought that says, no I can't absolutely prove that it's true. 

12:49 

And then after we do this, Byron Katie suggests that we follow up with this question. "Who would I be without this thought?" I love this question when she talks about doing the work that she does. Who would I be without this thought? That's fascinating right? Who would I be without the thought that I was a horrible mother? If I could set that aside and instead say, "I was a great mom. I did the best that I knew how." Or what if I didn't have the thought that said "I'm not smart enough to figure it out?" What if instead I thought, "I am smart enough to figure this out. I just haven't figured it out yet." If we can start getting to this point, then I can be a person on her way to finding and living in contentment. I can be in that state of peaceful happiness. But I have to start questioning my thoughts. I have to start realizing that so much of what I think is not true. 

13:53 

So again, if you want to learn more about this, Byron Katie teaches these amazing content in her book called "Loving What Is," a brilliant, brilliant book that helps us to really start questioning our thoughts and moving to a better place with our thoughts. I love growing up, don't you? I love this process of learning things to help me be more content, because contentment is a great feeling. This feeling of being able to breathe and not constantly be beating myself up is a great place to be. 

14:27 

So if you feel it's time to start feeling more contentment in your life, you can contact me at tanyahale.com and you can book a free 20 minute coaching session to help you get started. I would love to help you get to a place of peaceful happiness. And just to close up, if you feel this podcast is adding value to your life, please do a few things for me. Share it with somebody. I would love for other people to understand these concepts and to start moving into a more content life. Next thing you can do is subscribe so that you never miss an episode and then you can leave me a review which would do wonderful things for my business and help me to move forward. So thank you so much for your time today. I hope that you have a terrific day and that you can find more peace and contentment in your own lives. Talk to you later. Bye. 

15:16 

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.