00:00 

Hey there, this is Tanya Hale with Intentional Living and this is episode number 26, "Taking Offense." 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 

Well, hey there, and happy day to you. Thank you for joining me today. I'm really glad to be here and I'm glad that you're joining me. We're talking today about taking offense. So hopefully you don't just decide that you're going to turn this off right now, but let's, before I offend you, let's go ahead and jump in. This is such an interesting concept. 

00:46 

So when we look at offend, it means to cause a person to feel hurt, angry or upset by something that's said or done or to hurt the feelings of someone else. And as I read through that definition, I was just fascinated by the wording. I just thought to hurt the feelings of, they're not talking about something that I really have control over hurting on someone else. I can hit someone, I can slug them in the arm and I can hurt their arm. I can do that kind of stuff, but feelings are something that are inside and that are not really tangible. So kind of a fascinating concept to start thinking about the ability to hurt someone's feelings. 

01:33 

And yet we've grown up with this idea, haven't we? We've grown up with the idea that, "oh, you don't want to hurt her feelings," or if you say that it will hurt his feelings or did-so-and so hurt your feelings." It's very interesting that we are quick to blame other people for the feelings that we have, when in reality feelings are our own responsibility. Other people literally cannot hurt our feelings. My inner feelings are my responsibility, right? 

02:10 

So let me ask, do you know where I'm going with this? If you've been listening to several of my podcasts, I think you have no doubt where I'm going. Getting offended, having my feelings hurt, has absolutely nothing to do with what someone else said or did. Absolutely nothing. First of all, nobody can touch my insides and especially feelings since they're not even a tangible thing to be felt, right? My insides are all on me. Nobody else can hurt them. If my insides get hurt, it's because I am choosing to hurt them by what I am choosing to think. The pain I feel is my fault. People can act like idiots, all day long. They can tell me my hair is ugly or that I'm overweight. They can flip me off or they can cut me off in traffic. They can cut in front of me in the concessions line at the movie theater, heaven forbid. They could tell me I'm an angry person. They could tell me I'm unlovable. They could give me a dirty look during church. They could misspell or mispronounce my name and they can even talk about me behind my back and tell everyone else I'm insensitive and self-righteous. You name it, they can do it and I can get offended by it if I want to, or I can choose not to get offended by it. If I get offended and hurt it's because I want to. Plain and simple I want to be offended and hurt. That's a little harsh, right? If I get offended it's because I want to. 

03:56 

So the big idea here is that the sooner I stop blaming somebody else for how I feel inside and I start taking responsibility for my own feelings, the sooner I will find the peace and the contentment that I so desperately crave every single day. Now this is probably going to start making some of you feel really uncomfortable, even uncomfortable enough that you might want to turn this podcast off. You may even just say "she's full of crap and I'm not going to listen to her anymore," but I'm risking it all for this amazing truth. Taking offense is a choice. Nobody can offend you. See? I said it. Nobody can offend you. You know how you can get so riled up because of what someone from church said? You know how something can get dragged on for days because you keep talking to your friends about it and every time you bring it back up you get riled up all over again and you feel more and more justified in your side of the story? 

04:59 

You know how when you see these people then you start getting a knot in your stomach and you do everything you can to avoid speaking to them? And then if you have to speak to them you walk away from that experience a little shaky inside and your face feels hot and your breathing is shallow. And then it takes you like an hour to settle down. None of that even has to happen, honestly. It really doesn't even have to happen. When you make a firm commitment to start taking responsibility for your own feelings and stop blaming others you will have taken the first step toward not feeling those ugly uncomfortable feelings. 

05:40 

Because here's what's up. What another person says or does is inconsequential to how I feel. What they say and do is completely neutral. It's just words. It's just actions they only become hurtful when I decide in my thoughts that they are hurtful. If I think, "how in the world could they say that? They're the rudest person I've ever met, they have no right to be so mean to me," then automatically I have put them in the driver's seat of my emotions. And do you really want a person who is so insensitive to be in control of your emotions? I don't think so. And yet, the longer we nurse those hurtful feelings, the deeper they go and the more we start to embrace them and really believe that they are true. 

06:32 

See, this is the deal. We have these two brains, right? Our primitive brain, which only wants to protect us, starts thinking of this person then as a danger and starts sending warning signals to us whenever we're around them. And these warning signals include that knot in our stomach, that shaky feeling, the hot feeling in our face, our breathing that gets shallow, right? Those are warning signals from our primitive brain. And our primitive brain is just doing exactly what it's programmed to do, to warn us of danger so we can protect ourselves. And yet, the original words or acts this person engaged in were actually 100% neutral. We are the ones that made them negative. And we told our brain that it was a dangerous place. Our primitive brain is only acting on what we told it. 

07:25 

And so it boils down to the fact that we're really only in danger from our own thoughts. So instead of thinking that they're rude and have no right to be so mean, what if instead we thought, "wow, they must really be having a rough day"? Or we could say, "huh, that was interesting. I wonder if they realized what they just said." Okay, here's a side note. I totally get that last one, because like many of you, I'm a professional at saying things and having no idea that it sounded rude or mean. In fact, one time I had some friends who made me a t-shirt that on the front, nice and big it said, "was that mean?" Because I was and I still am so good at saying things that I didn't think were mean at all. But that apparently were. They worked really hard to train me and I'm not sure that it worked really well. But there you have it. This is Confessions by Tanya, right? 

08:23 

Okay, so back on track. So sometimes, just because we're human and our lives and minds are filled with all sorts of different things and we've had all kinds of different experiences, sometimes we say things that don't come across so well to other people. Huh, go figure, right? If I'm raised in a home, as I was, where teasing was the norm and was actually our form of love language, I can say something seemingly mean to somebody else, but to me, I'm trying to be teasing, right? To someone else, and if they were raised in a home where there was no teasing and any form of teasing was considered unkind, it can come across as very mean. I may be teasing, trying to connect, and they may be super put off, not like it a little bit, and feel very disconnected. 

09:16 

See, I don't think most people are trying to be mean. I think most people really are nice and doing their best, but we all come from very different places and we all have very different ideas of what's accepted social behavior. And beyond that, we all have days where our brain is preoccupied with other thoughts and we don't see things clearly or say things just right or it will look like we're looking at somebody and we don't even see them and then they think that we're like whatever, right? You looked right at me and well, I didn't see you, right? We all have these days where we're like that. We all have days where we're tired or hungry or frustrated or stressed, right? 

09:58 

And during these times, we're very often not at our best and not one of us is exempt from these types of situations. Not one of us. We all cross the line sometimes and give people reason to raise their eyebrows at us but when we feel the need to raise our eyebrows at somebody else, that can be the extent of our drama. It can stop right then with a raised eyebrow because once we've raised our eyebrows, because we were initially caught off guard, we can then choose what we want to think about that experience. Again, if I think "how in the world could they say that? They're the rudest person I've ever met.  They have no right to be mean to me," then I am choosing to be offended. I'm choosing to have those feelings of hurt and frustrated and anger and betrayed or whatever else. My thoughts about their behavior hurt myself because I'm the one choosing to think those thoughts. 

10:57 

So one time when I was a young mom and my now ex-husband was in the military, we belonged to a small branch in California, a branch of the Church in California. So for those who may not be members of the Church, that's a congregation that's just really small. And I had another woman in the women's organization called the Relief Society, in the presidency of that, tell me that the only reason that my husband and I did good things for the other people in the congregation was because we were trying to get my husband to be the next president of that branch. So I can honestly say that was never in my plans or my schemes for why I did kind things for people, but she thought it was true and she wanted to let me know that she was onto me and my husband, right? 

11:46 

And at that point I chose to be a little bit offended. I just thought, "oh my gosh. How could she think such a thing about me? How could she say such a thing? She has no idea what's going on in my heart and to accuse me if something is so rude." And I'll tell you what, I am not a person who gets offended very easily. And my excuse for this one is just that I was young and I wasn't offended for a super long time. But that really hurt me. The thought that somebody would think that I was just trying to exalt myself was really hurtful. And looking back though, it hurt because I chose to think hurtful thoughts. I chose to think that she was being intentionally rude. I chose to think, and maybe she was. That's not my place to even make a call on, right? 

12:40 

The thing is whether she was intentional with trying to be mean or not, I have a choice of whether I want to accept that idea and that belief into my life or not, right? So I could have just as easily laughed it off and told her absolutely not. I could have thought that maybe she accused me of that because that's how she was feeling herself, right? Which I wouldn't think so, but I could have quickly realized that she doesn't know me well at all and that something must have happened to cause her to think that I would try to climb the Church social ladder. 

13:17 

But within a few days, I did adjust my thinking and it wasn't a big deal. But for a few days, I would get all riled up again when I thought about it. I would feel angry and I started to have resentful feelings toward her and then toward the other women that she was friends with because, come on, they must have known and been thinking the same kind of thing, right? So when I finally decided to speak with her about it some days later, she was very apologetic. And I realized that she didn't mean to be mean. She was just being thoughtless. And maybe, who knows? Maybe she really did believe that. But can her believing that really hurt me? Can what's going on in her head cause me pain, even if it comes out in words? If she's the one thinking unkind thoughts, then it's her heart that's feeling less compassion and love, and not mine. I only feel less compassion and love when I choose to think unkind thoughts about her. 

14:17 

Remember, my thoughts create my feelings, and the more I practice this concept, the better I get at slowing down and thinking intentionally about what I really want to think. I can live a life without ever getting offended if I practice it enough. 'Cause this is the deal: being quickly and easily offended is the result of an untrained mind, a mind that has been allowed to run rampant and not trained to think more positively about our fellow humans on this earth. An offended mind is a mind that has not been checked or questioned. Is what I'm thinking really true? Because not everything our brain thinks is true, you know, a lot of what we think is actually false. 

15:07 

And yet, somehow there's a payoff to getting offended. Otherwise we would not choose to be offended and have those negative, uncomfortable feelings that we have. So, I don't know, here's just some ideas. Maybe it's feeling like a victim that we enjoy. Because that allows us to not take responsibility for our own feelings and behaviors and decide that somebody else is in charge of that for us. Maybe the payoff is a feeling of pride, thinking that I would never engage in such behavior. Come on, every one of us engages in hurtful behavior, rarely intentionally. But we're humans who make huge mistakes, thinking that you would never act that way is ridiculous because we all do. Maybe we just really like the drama that comes from being offended. It keeps us on our toes, right? You know, we can rally the troops and get everyone on our side and hate everybody on the other side. There's so much energy and drama, isn't there? Granted it's negative energy, but maybe  we've learned that negative energy is better than no energy at all. And we haven't yet figured out how to create positive energy. There's probably loads of other payoffs, there's just three. But whatever the payoff is for you, it would be amazing, don't you think, to spend some time figuring out what your payoff is? 

16:34 

If you get offended easily and often, discovering why that is your go-to response would be a great way for your life because awareness is the first and biggest step in all of our growth. A disciplined mind will question what we're thinking and eventually learn to slow down the process. A disciplined mind will give others the benefit of the doubt and realize that we're all sinners in need of repentance. A disciplined mind will allow others to work through their humanness without judging and getting offended. It will be as patient with other people's sins and weaknesses as we want other people to be with our own sins and weaknesses. We want people to know that we're trying hard to be more like Jesus. We want people to acknowledge that even though we're trying hard, we still will make mistakes. And we want people to be forgiving of our mistakes and continue to love us and give us second chances. A true compassion is giving others the same sort of compassion that we hope to receive from them. True compassion is choosing NOT to get offended. 

17:53 

Okay, now before we get all freaked out, that doesn't mean that other people's behavior doesn't sometimes need to be called out. Because sometimes it does, but we don't have to do it from a place of being offended. We can do it from a place of kindness and compassion. In that case, we will speak gently and kindly with them from a place of love for ourselves and love for them. This is where we set the boundaries, right? 

18:19 

That are so important. But boundaries are set out of love, not out of anger or offense. We will value the other person enough to not only give them space to be human, but when necessary, because the infraction crossed those boundaries, we will speak to them and not speak about them. Many times things just need to be ignored and not dressed directly. But sometimes they do. But when they do, and we approach it from a place of love and kindness, rather than a place of offense and resentfulness, our whole world changes. Taking offense is completely optional. It is 100% my choice. It doesn't matter if the situation involves my coworkers, my friend, my neighbor, my mother-in-law, or my sister-in-law, my spouse, my children, whoever, it doesn't matter who it is. My taking offense is completely 100% my choice. But if my brain is in the habit of taking offense, it's going to take some time, it's going to take some practice, it's going to take some discipline to stop thinking painful thoughts that make me have feelings that I'm offended. 

19:41 

But we can do it. We can change those thoughts over time. Do you know why? Because we are freaking amazing and we want to have better, healthier lives, every one of us. That's why we're here, because we want to grow into a happier healthier version of ourselves. We know we have what it takes to do amazing, incredible things and learning to take responsibility for our own feelings and to stop blaming others is a sure path to being happier and healthier with ourselves and in our relationships. 

20:18 

Just as we finish up I have a quote from Dieter F. Uchtdorf, who says we have a choice. We can seek for the bad in others, or we can make peace and work to extend to others the understanding fairness and forgiveness we so desperately desire for ourselves. It is our choice for whatever we seek that we will certainly find. Great quote, don't you think? It is our choice. We have a choice to choose to be offended, to take offense, or we have a choice to choose not to take offense. 

20:59 

I love growing up, don't you? I love getting to the point where all these pieces are starting to fit together and it's really the puzzle of life is really starting to make sense. I'm starting to see it for what it is. 

21:15 

Alright, if you would love some personal help from me to learn how to take offense less or just to navigate some tough situations with more clarity, contact me at tanyahale.com. Go to the coaching page and you can book a free 20 minute coaching session to get you started, because I would love to help you find a better way to interact with those around you and be in a happier and a healthier situation. And if you feel this podcast is adding value to your life, please do a few things for me. One, subscribe so you never miss an amazing episode, right? Two, leave me a review. The few that I've gotten, I've loved reading and I appreciate them so much. And number three, share this with someone else who needs it, who needs  these ideas and these concepts to help make our lives better. I just wish you the best of days and hope that all goes well for you in all that you're doing today. Have a wonderful day and I will talk to you later. Bye! 

22:11 

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!