00:00

Hey, there. Welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 361, "A Luxurious Life, part one." 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. 

00:22 

Alright, hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast. Just so happy to have you here, and glad to be sharing with you content that I've been working on and preparing for you. I think you're going to enjoy this. Before we jump in, I just want to remind you the next Talk with Tanya is June 10th. You can go to my website, go to the "group coaching" tab, and sign up there for that, and you will be sent an email with the link to come to that. And that is just an open space where you just get to show up, ask me about questions, ask me about situations you're in. We can dig deeper into content and ideas, and we just are having some really, really great discussions there. And I just appreciate those of you who have made the effort to come. 

01:07 

And if you want to join in that, it's just a free webinar, and it's just super easy. There's no sales pitch at the end. If you ask me about coaching, I'd be happy to talk to you about it. But the goal of that is not to get you to buy anything from me. It's just to offer you another option to find some clarity and to find some direction in areas of your life that you may be struggling in and that I may be able to help you in. So go to tanyahale.com, go to the "group coaching" tab to check that out. 

01:37 

No classes offered at this point, but I will be offering some starting probably in August or September. So you'll want to keep your eyes open for that. If you want to make sure that you are the first to find out about new classes that I have coming up, you're going to want to go as well to my website, tanyahale.com. There is a pop up that comes right away where you can sign up for my weekend win. And this is just an email that goes out every weekend. Just something that can be read in two minutes or less, just some great content. I'm really proud of what I put out there as well as what I put out here. It's very similar to this, but it's just a quick little nugget, something to chew on for the weekend. And that is also a place where I will keep you informed on all things tanyahale.com. 

02:23 

And yeah, that being said, let's jump into today's topic. I have named this podcast "A Luxurious Life." So when we think about the phrase "luxurious life," we often think of huge homes, swimming pools, lots of exotic traveling, expensive foods, fancy clothes and jewelry, like all the expensive things that money can buy. And although I'm sure that that's a really, really great way to live, it would be pretty empty without meaning and purpose and direction in our lives. 

02:57 

In fact, we hear of many people who live in that type of temporal and monetary luxury who live lives of destructive excess. The definition of luxury as defined in the dictionary says that it is "a condition of abundance," or "great ease and comfort, something adding to pleasure or comfort but not absolutely necessary," and "indulgence in something that provides pleasure, satisfaction, or ease." Now, I love these definitions because they are a reminder that luxury is something that moves us from a place of survival living to living in a place of pleasure and comfort, ease, and satisfaction. It is a place of being in abundance rather than scarcity. 

03:48 

When I take the word "luxury" out of a materialistic context, what am I looking at here? For me, I think of living in a space of peace, of engaging with life in a way that feels powerful and energizing in a way that creates more internal energy than it expands. I envision living in an internal space of self-care and not needing to go outside of me in search of self-care, a place where I feel purpose-driven, where I feel like my life has meaning and fulfillment. I imagine feeling abundant in my life with love and compassion, with happiness and gratitude. I like the idea of having so much internal luxury that even when things are tough, I have enough strength and power and love and goodness to cover all the bases without feeling I'm on the verge of breakdown. 

04:53 

And so let's look for a moment at what does not feel luxurious in our lives. Overwhelming stress, frequent frustration, feeling out of control, living beyond our means, considerable contention, feeling thick and sluggish and energy depleted physically, lots of drama, relationships that are shallow and empty, relationships that are always in the thick of misunderstanding. Frequently feeling annoyed and irritated. These ways of living don't feel abundant in luxury to me. They feel exhausting, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. They feel as though we are one crisis away from losing our cool and our relationships. 

05:46 

And we can hit a point where this life becomes tolerable, something we're not really happy with and fulfilled with, but it's also comfortable and familiar. So we don't want to exert the energy to create something different. We don't demand more from ourselves and from our lives. We can feel that we are living with scraps, that we get the last of everything. We are the last to be seen and heard even by ourselves. And we sometimes feel so small and invisible that it's painful. It can feel as though there is never enough to go around, not enough energy, love, compassion, kindness, patience, understanding, or gratitude. 

06:31 

So how do we move ourselves from living in this space of internal scarcity to a place of internal abundance and luxury? In her book "Untamed," Glennon Doyle asked this question, "what is the truest, most beautiful story about your life you can imagine?" I love that question. In fact, I loved it so much that I wrote it out and it has sat on my wall to the side of my computer for about four years now. 

07:09 

So material items aside, what would feel like a luxurious life to you? What would you feel like you were living? Let me restate that. Let's see. What would feel like you were living the dream and that you were just so satisfied and fulfilled with life? What would be the most beautiful story about your life that you can imagine? This is the space of luxury that I want to talk about today, because I believe this is available to every one of us. I 100% believe that each one of us has the capacity to step into this space of internal abundance and be filled to overflowing with gratitude and purpose and fulfillment in our lives. I believe every one of us can create beautiful, deep, satisfying relationships. We can live this luxurious life if we are willing to take the risks and pay the price necessary to do so. 

08:19 

Here is a basic tenet of my beliefs of how to begin creating this. We do things that create more energy than they expend. So let me explain that just a little bit. So let's start by revisiting the analogy of the bucket from our young motherhood days. When we do things for people, it takes water out of our bucket. And when we do things for ourselves, we put water in our bucket. Remember this from the 1980s and the 90s, right? The goal is to constantly be refilling our bucket so we don't end up with an empty bucket, hit rock bottom, and end up being of no use to ourselves or to anyone else. 

09:03 

And I really dislike this analogy because it feels as though we are in an anxious hustle mode, filling and emptying and filling and emptying on and on and on, right? It reminds me of the person spinning 10 plates, the panicky hustle of running back and forth and trying to keep all the plates from crashing to the ground. It just exhausts me thinking about it. It uses up energy just thinking about that kind of a lifestyle. So how do we get out of this bucket hustle and move into living a life of luxury where we can feel peaceful and calm, empowered and focused, energized and purposeful? 

09:46 

Here's how I imagine it happening. So let's go back to the podcast I shared a few months ago about relationship repair, number 347. And then I followed it up with number 357 on how to be more understanding. So in these podcasts, I talk about a way to show up in your relationships that can be super challenging, but that is phenomenal in its capacity to repair our relationships and to show up in alignment with ourselves. These tools can sometimes feel incredibly difficult to implement, but when we do, we walk away feeling so strong and empowered. We feel proud of who we are and of how we are in those moments. Let me show you how this works. 

10:35 

So let's say that showing up in a productive, positive way in a tough relationship requires seven units of energy. So when the situation has played out and we're on the other side, we look at how we showed up and we're like, "okay, seven units of energy," but we also feel such a surge of pride and empowerment and we experience the benefits of our disciplined behavior that we get 12 units of energy back. Our sense of self has increased. Our confidence has surged. We feel more love and gratitude, not only for the other person, but for ourselves as well. We feel more connected to this other person and also more connected to ourselves. This way of showing up used seven units of energy, but rewarded us with 12 units in return. That's an increase of plus five units. We have five more units than when we started. This is how we get to the place of overflow. 

11:44 

When we find ways to show up in our lives that increase our sense of self, that we feel amazing about, that make our relationships with others and with ourselves better, then we get this extra energy surge. And we have to start paying attention in our lives to what creates more energy than it expands. 

12:05 

I will say that for the most part, my engagement with social media takes more energy than it gives. It's an easy way to spend 30 minutes or even an hour or two and may only take one unit of energy to engage because it's so passive. But after 30 minutes or an hour or a few hours, I will feel that it has zapped another two or three or six units of energy because afterwards I feel sluggish and unmotivated and mostly regret the time that I spent there and increase that depletion the more time I spend. That's a net negative of three, four, or even more units of energy. We are emptying our bucket. 

12:56 

Also, doing something for someone with a bad attitude or judgment towards them also takes more energy than it expands. It may take me five units of energy to watch someone's kids for the afternoon. But if I said yes when I really wanted and even needed to say no, I will be grumpy and disengaged with the kids. I will fret over not getting the things done that I needed to. I will complain to people around me and feel exasperated by the time these people pick up their kids. Let's say that all of that takes an additional eight units of energy. Well that's a net negative of 13. It is emptying our bucket. And this is why watching someone's kids with all of that drama going on uses so much energy. That's how we get down to scraping the bottom of our barrel, right? 

13:51 

So what we get to learn to start doing is living our lives in a way that we are creating net positives where we are getting more than we are giving. And this is how we get our buckets so full that we begin to overflow. I will say that creating a life that moves into overflow takes a lot of energy and focused intention, but it is so worth the focused price that we pay. When we feel amazing about how we're showing up and about what we're creating in our lives, it comes back to us in the form of more intention, more energy, more drive and desire, more gratitude and generosity, more grace and a stronger sense of self. And there is no way we can put a price on any of that. This is the luxury that I'm speaking of today, the luxurious life of living in overflow. 

14:52 

So how do we begin to create this? What are some of the first steps we can take to create this inner life of abundance and overflow? There are a lot of ways. And this week and next week, we're going to talk about some that I've thought of and that I seek to implement in my own life because they benefit me this way. And there will be so many that I don't talk about, but that you will identify and connect with. These podcasts are just a starting point to get you thinking about your own bucket. 

15:28 

And how do you get it into an overflow state? A few years ago, I came across a video with Oprah and Brene Brown. And Oprah said something that crafted this whole concept for me. Brene asked Oprah about a voice in her head that she has had to struggle with consistently to keep herself where she wants to be. And Oprah responded that the struggle for her had always been phrases like, "who do you think you are?" and "you're so full of yourself." And that those really, she struggled with them for a long time. And then she said this, "I used to fear hearing the term, 'who do you think you are?' or 'you must be pretty full of yourself.' Now I work at being full. I want to be so full, I am overflowing. So when you see me coming, it ought to make you proud. What you see as a woman so full, I'm overflowing with enough to share with everyone else. I'm going to own the fullness without ego, without arrogance, but with an amazing sense of gratitude that I've been born at this time where I am female on the planet and I have the great pleasure and freedom to fill myself up." 

16:41 

Isn't that amazing? So obviously she isn't using the term "full of yourself" to mean conceited or arrogant or thinking that she's better than others. But I love the imagery here she is so full with goodness and self love and love for others and love for God that she is constantly overflowing, always having enough to share with others without depleting herself, never feeling drained. 

17:11 

So this is where this concept for me came from. So as we start talking about living this luxurious life of overflow, I'm going to start off with how we think. Now I know it's a shocker that I would start off any shift in our lives with our thoughts but that's what I'm gonna do. So let's start with a task like doing the dishes. If you're like me, you don't necessarily like doing dishes, but you do love a clean kitchen. Taking care of this household chore can either create energy or it can expend energy. And we want to be aware of how we can take what we're already committed to doing, which is the dishes, and move it from an energy depletion space to an energy creation space. 

18:07 

So when I'm done cleaning the kitchen, I can think, "oh, so glad that's over. Gosh, I hate doing the dishes." Now that may be true, but what does that thought do for your energy? Nothing. It's either going to keep me at the same level or it may even create a net negative. Because doing the dishes took two units of energy and having that thought, "I hate doing the dishes. This is the worst thing. I'm glad that's over," might even just take another one or two units of energy. 

18:41 

So what if instead I finished the dishes, two units of energy, and then I thought, "gosh, I love a clean kitchen. I'm so glad I took care of that. Tomorrow, Tanya is going to be so happy that she doesn't have to wake up to a dirty kitchen." Okay. Do you feel the energy difference in that phrase? What about this? "I love that I just do what needs to be done. I'm amazing." Okay. Do you feel the difference between that and "oh, I'm so glad that's over. I hate doing the dishes." It's very different. These types of thoughts actually create energy. Now it may only create half a unit, but it moves us forward. And if we do that 20 times a day and 0.5 units each time, that's 10 units created just by our thoughts. And I just realized that doesn't necessarily match because if dishes took two units, let's say that talking to ourselves that way creates two.and a half units, right? It's going to put us up an additional 10 units after we do that 20 times a day, right? 

19:46 

Many of us are not used to celebrating our wins. We just accomplish something and we move on, accomplish something and move on. We don't even think about it. But even small ones like cleaning the kitchen, it's important to make a part of our self-talk and improving our sense of self and moving into overflow this celebrating our wins, right? I think one reason many of us, especially women, struggle with this sort of celebratory, positive inner dialogue is because we've been taught that we can't think we're great or it will make us conceited and selfish and stuck up and arrogant, right? To use some 80s terminology. 

20:28 

But let's clean this idea up right now. Acknowledging what you are great at or great things that you have done is not arrogant or selfish. It's just an acknowledgement of what is, and it moves us into confidence. It is only arrogant or conceited or selfish when we start comparing it to others and put ourselves in a one-up position based on that. I'm not saying I'm better than anyone else at this, I'm just saying I did a fabulous job at this. So learn to celebrate your wins. Learn to give yourself immediate rewards for what you're doing that make a difference in the world. Learn to monitor yourself talk so that you are creating energy rather than depleting energy. 

21:17 

The first thing, learn to have amazing self-talk and acknowledge what you are doing that is great, creating energy by how you talk in your head. Here's the second way to create inner overflow. Clean up things in your life that are taking up unnecessary space. Let me share with you an example for my own life. When I first moved to Utah in 2004, we bought our first home and I went out and I got two 50 gallon barrels to store emergency water. And those barrels sat in my home for 14 years empty. No water in them. But guess what went through my brain every time I saw them for 14 years? A thought that I should fill them. And maybe even a disparaging thought like, "oh my gosh, I'm so lazy, why aren't I getting that done? What's happening?" And guess what went through my brain every time I sat through something that talked about being prepared for emergencies? Thinking about that I had those and they weren't filled and that I should fill those. 

22:24 

OK, how much space were those barrels taking up in my brain? Too much. My brain was expending energy to remember that they needed to be filled. along with feelings of guilt or shame because they weren't filled. All things that drain energy. And what was holding me back from filling them was just not knowing how much bleach to put in the barrels to preserve the water and make it safe. I know it's ridiculous, right? When I finally got around to filling them, it took me 30 seconds to look up the bleach answer online and I believe the answer was something like six drops for 50 gallons of water and then it took me 30 minutes to get them filled from the potable water from our hose. So that job took me 14 years 30 minutes and 30 seconds to complete. Doesn't that seem ridiculous? And once this task was done I celebrated a bit and then guess what? I never thought about it again. I cleaned out that space in my brain that had been holding a place for those barrels. 

23:43 

So in my life, I call these my two-year, 20-minute jobs. They take me two years to get to and 20 minutes to complete. In the meantime, these tasks have taken up space in my brain and energy for my brain to keep them on my to-do list and energy to manage the guilt or shame around not doing them. Energy drain, right? It's not creating energy, it's depleting energy. Get this type of stuff out of your brain. That closet of unfinished craft projects, either finish them or get rid of them. I had a quilt that I had pieced together when I was a young, young mom, and I had started quilting it a big, huge king-size thing, and I think I'd gotten like three of the blocks quilted, and I never finished it, but I carried that thing around with me for 20 years before I finally gave it away to somebody who I knew quilted. And once I did, I didn't think about it ever again, and I didn't feel guilt or shame about it because I knew the person I gave it to would enjoy quilting it. 

24:55 

Clean this kind of crap up. Either take care of it or get rid of it. Make space in your life and your brain for things that apparently matter more to you than that does. If it mattered a lot, it would no longer be sitting in your closet, right? You will be amazed when you take that home repair list of 45 items and spend a few days knocking them out at how good you feel, at how much energy that creates. Okay, it creates energy going, "dang, look at me, doing a great job, getting all this stuff done," but it also cleans up your brain. 'Cause your brain expends energy to remember all those things. Every time you walk past that unfinished project, your brain reminds you about it and it is taking up space and energy. 

25:49 

There is everything great about having a to-do list, things you want to accomplish. You just have to actually do them. I find that when I have something on my list and I take care of it within a few days or a week, that it is so energizing. It is easy to celebrate how amazing I am that not only did I get it done, but I also got it done quickly. It did not sit and marinate for weeks or months or years. The energy I create from these thoughts is luxurious. They create more energy than getting the tasks done expended. Overflow. This is what we're creating. This is the luxurious life of overflow. 

26:41 

Okay, third thing that I thought of: really start being honest with yourself and with others. Now if you are like me, Integrity is a big part of who you want to be. And yet as I look back at my previous marriage specifically, I was not living in integrity. I was staying quiet when I actually had things to say. I was putting myself and my wants and needs on the back burner with the thought that I was being a peacemaker, I was being the bigger person, when in reality I was just keeping the peace and stoking my fire of resentment. 

27:19 

It can be hard to acknowledge what is true for us because we've been socially conditioned as women to put ourselves on the back burner, to see ourselves as an appendage of supporting others or as a helper rather than the one who matters. And yet in this space we are not being honest with ourselves and with others. We are denying our God-given strengths and capacities to interact in the world in a way that impacts and influences it for the better. We have learned to put our wants and needs, our dreams and desires on the back shelf in the back closet In the basement for the betterment of someone else, either for our spouse or our children or our colleagues or our ward members or our neighbors or our friends. 

28:07 

And that, my friends, is not honest. Until we show up wholly and fully as us with wants and needs and dreams and desires, we are not being honest. When we don't have the tough discussions because we don't want to rock the boat, when we keep quiet thinking it will be easier that others will be more comfortable if we don't speak up, that we don't want to put other people out we are not being honest. 

28:39 

It is tough to start speaking up and standing up so that we can be heard and seen. For sure it is. And it requires a lot of mental awareness to even see where we're acquiescing ourselves for others, especially after a lifetime of doing it. It's just natural. But it is an absolute necessity that we learn to do this if we're going to move into overflow, into the internal abundance of luxury. When we show up for ourselves, making sure we are heard and seen by ourselves and by others, we create energy. We are living in integrity with who we are. And it feels amazing to step into who God created us to be. And when we find ourselves in a tough situation, shutting down and struggling to find ourselves, learning to be honest with ourselves about what we're thinking and believing, about where we might be trying to manipulate others with our responses and reactions, about where we're not showing up in alignment with who we really want to be. 

29:43 

This is some of the toughest Work, capital W work, we will do. And it is also some of the most vital work that we will do. Seeing our subversive motivations, seeing where we are being manipulative and passive aggressive is so, so hard and intimidating sometimes. And yet, when we start cleaning up these messes in our lives, we create space for more beautiful engagements with others. And the self honesty it requires to see our darkness, to address our insecurities and our dysfunctional patterns of behavior can feel brutal and overwhelming. And yet it has to be done if we are to create abundance overflow. We have to step into this honesty if we are to live in luxury. Keeping ourselves buried under delusions of goodness and grandeur when we are living out of alignment depletes energy. 

30:45 

Suggestion four: forgive everyone. Yep. Everyone. When we choose not to forgive, when we tell ourselves "it's too hard, I can't let go," we are not doing the third suggestion, which is to be honest. It might be super hard to forgive. And we might have a lot of crap to work through in order to forgive. I'm not making light of situations that are hurtful and painful to the core, but it is possible. And it has to be done if we are to move into creating overflow. Every time we choose not to forgive, it expands more and more energy, and the longer we hold on to it, the more it takes from us. Not forgiving takes mental space because we are constantly repeating the offense in our heads and in our hearts. We are constantly needing to attend to our pain. We are ruminating over how we were offended and how we didn't deserve it, and we get caught up in mental scenarios of revenge. All of this takes so much time and energy, and it feels horrible. 

32:08 

We might get a quick dopamine hit when we think about this person getting what we think they deserve, but all that uses up energy and leaves us depleted. We have to understand that forgiveness on our part has nothing to do with the other person. They don't benefit one iota from our forgiveness. We are the ones who benefit from our forgiveness. Their sins aren't forgiven when we forgive. Only God's forgiveness can cleanse them of their sins. Forgiveness is a commandment for us because it's an opportunity for us to learn how to love ourselves better. It's the process God uses to purify us, to make us more like Him, to teach us to honor and respect ourselves and other people's agency. 

33:05 

It is easy for us to get duped into believing that forgiveness is about the other person, but it isn't at all. It is all about us, about us becoming more Christlike, about us creating space in our souls for beautiful things and energy rather than harboring and holding on to darkness and anger and resentment. Forgiving others not only cleans out space within our soul for more productive things, but it creates energy when we let go of the angst, when we live more in alignment with what feels amazing. I see holding on to things as very similar to that list of to-do's that we have. It takes up space and energy in our brains that could be used for more productive pursuits. Instead of constantly ruminating about the hurtful situation and the horrible person and how that played out and how it's ruined our lives, which all expends energy, we can then, after we've forgiven them, use that space and energy to create amazingness in our lives and in the lives of others. 

34:16 

We can do things that feed our souls and our relationships. We can pursue strengths and talents that contribute to the world in amazing ways. We can step in into our possibility and grow into the person we feel called to be. Forgiving others is a powerful way to create energy, because as we learn to let go of other people's behavior, we feel empowered to step into our own capacity for greatness. And this creates energy. It is luxurious living at its finest. 

35:01 

So what is it going to take for you to start living in luxury? I promise you that doing this capital W Work will move you into luxury. It will create this space of internal abundant overflow that will change the energy in your life. It will build your sense  of self and empower you to do things you never thought possible. and possibly that you never even considered, but that are part of your path forward, that are part of you stepping into your God-given possibility. 

35:38 

And this space of abundant luxury, it is all part of growing up if you choose. I feel like I am tasting this. I don't know that I am fully making this fully available to myself, but I am moving in this direction and it feels amazing. This truest, most beautiful story about my life that I can imagine, I feel like I'm living it in many, many ways and it's great. And I want you to experience the brilliance of this. If this feels out of reach for you, coaching may be the self-care that you need to help yourself move into this luxurious life. And I would love to do a free coaching consult call with you. You can go on my website, tanyahale.com, go to the "free consult" button, and you can get on my calendar. 

36:52 

I would love to work with you. I would love to help you see how you can clean things up, how you can move more into this space. We do not have to live in the dregs of life. We do not have to live with scraps. We can live a luxurious life with abundant, overflowing energy. And it doesn't come from outside of us. It comes from inside of us. And this is the work that I am privileged and honored to join with you. doing. Okay, that is going to do it for me. Next week, we're going to come back with part two of a luxurious life. We're going to talk about some more things that we can do to move into this space. I think you're gonna love it. Okay, have an awesome, awesome week, my friends, and I will see you next time. Bye. 

37:47 

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!