00:00 

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 401: "Judgment and Grace." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just welcome people...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale, and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:21 

Alright. Hello there, my friends. So glad as always to be here. It is just such a treat to be able to create this content for you, to share pieces of this process that I continue to figure out all the time. And I go, oh, wow, look at how this fits together. I love this work so much. And I love it because it has created for me a life that feels miraculous and magical. And this relationship that I am able to create with Sione and how I am able to show up in the other relationships in my life just feel incredible and amazing to me. And to have figured out, for whatever reason, the pieces that I have. I just feel like this is what God wants me to be doing is learning this and sharing this. And so I'm grateful to have this platform to be able to do that. And I'm really grateful that you show up to listen and show up to participate. 

01:24 

And I want to encourage you, listening is great. But until we start really doing the difficult, down, and dirty work to implement, this will not make the difference in your life that you want it to make. And that is what's going to create what you want is the dogged work of digging in and just doing it, of figuring out your brain, of not allowing yourself to behave in horrible ways anymore. And just saying, "I'm done with that. I am finished with behaving that way." And moving in a direction that you really want. This is what this work takes, but I'll tell you what, it creates relationships like you cannot believe. It has been unbelievable to me. 

02:16 

Now, not everybody in my life loves how I'm showing up, but guess what? I love for the most part how I'm showing up. Of course, I'm not perfect. Of course, I'm still going to make a lot of mistakes. But overall, I look at the way that I'm able to show up now in my life and I'm happy with it. And when I do inevitably show up in a way that's not in alignment, I also know that I'm going to circle back around. I'm going to clean it up as soon as it becomes aware to me. Now, maybe there's people out there who know me on a personal level and who are like, no, she doesn't do that. But I'll tell you what, if I'm really aware that I have crossed a boundary and done something in poor judgment, I will circle back around. Maybe I'm just not aware. And if I've done something to hurt you, let's chat because I want to clean this stuff up. It feels amazing to me to clean up stuff. 

03:17 

And is it hard to see things that we don't know that we've done are hurtful and unkind? Absolutely it is. It's really hard to see that. And I found that for me, it is the step necessary for me to grow into the person that I really want to be. Because those, when people approach me with things that I've done, it helps me to see and to clean up triggers that I have or unkind thoughts or judgmental thoughts that I have. And it really helps me to see myself more clearly. And so I always appreciate when people share things with me that are hard for them to share and that are hard for me to hear. And yet I work really hard at being open to hearing and to seeing. 

04:03 

Now, even do I do that perfect? Probably not. There are probably also people who are like, yeah, I don't know. I told you something once and you kind of blew me off or you, whatever. Again, I'm a human. I'm going to be making all of the mistakes and doing all of the things. But the more that I work to clean this stuff up, the more that I work to circle back around on a consistent basis, the happier I feel and the better my relationships become. And so, yeah, this work is a boatload of work. I'm going to tell you that, or as my kids would say, a buttload of work. But it is work worth doing. Absolutely. 

04:45 

That being said, let's talk about two things really quick. If you just want to chat with me, to bring up some topics, to get some coaching, to ask questions, I would love to have you come to my next Talk with Tanya. This is just free coaching time. It is March 10th and it always happens at 2 o'clock Eastern, 12 o'clock Mountain. I would love to have you just show up and participate. And guess what? You don't even have to participate. I sometimes have people who come on and they just sit and listen to other people get coached. And I listen to coaching all the time from other coaches that I am members of their groups because it helps me to see my own stuff more clearly when I can see other people doing things that I do. And it's always easier and it's less of an emotional trauma to be able to identify what's going on with other people, but it also helps me see it in myself. So that's a great opportunity. 

05:46 

Also, my sense of self classes start today. I have one starting tonight if you're listening to this on the morning of March 2nd. First class starts tonight. The next class is Wednesday afternoon. I would love to have you join me in those if there is still room. Those sense of self-classes are foundational for all of this work that we do. And that's why I keep revisiting these sense of self-classes over and over and why I've had people, I have someone now signed up for it for the third time, because this work is just powerful and it helps us step into being able to do this work and not feel threatened by it and not feel terrified to do the work. And so if you haven't done one of those classes and you're still interested, jump on and see what's going on. And if you're getting this a week late, if there's still room, you can jump in a week late and I can send you the video from the previous week. 

06:52 

So all of that being said, let's jump into today's topic. We are talking about judgment and grace. And I think that these are two opposite ways to approach the world and to approach our relationships. So earlier this week, I had a great discussion with a client who she had been talking with someone in her life that she loved and appreciated. And yet she says, I just walk out of that relationship or out of that discussion feeling drained and exhausted and sucked dry and empty. And she just didn't know how to deal with it. And this is what we were coaching on. 

07:36 

And guess what? I think we have all been there. We have people in our lives who might seem to demand a lot of us. And we walk away from those experiences just feeling like, "oh my gosh, this is exhausting. I don't know that I can keep doing this." But here's the place. We show up in these relationships because we are seeking to be a good person. We want to be there. We might recognize that they're struggling and we want to give them our time, attention, our listening. And yet, in trying to be this good person, we actually sometimes walk away feeling worse than when we started. And it kind of goes against what a lot of us have been taught, that if you do something good, then you're going to feel good. 

08:25 

Okay. But what's happening is we're doing something good, but we're not doing it with the good heart. And so we do walk away feeling worse than when we started. So here's what I see going on. Okay. First, we very often go into situations like this, taking on responsibility that is not ours to take on. We call this sometimes going in the other person's lane. So we may be trying to fix their situation by giving them advice or by telling them what to do. Somehow we get this feeling that we need to be the ones to help them see the light. 

09:07 

I know that I have felt that for so many years, feeling like it was my responsibility to help them live a better life, to help them see it and to help them do it. And I felt that part of that was that I had to show up being an example for them so that they could know how to do it better. And I have learned how to step back from that. I have learned that, listen, even with my clients, it is not my responsibility to fix their situation for them. It is my responsibility to ask really good questions, to help them see what's going on, and then to support them in the decision that they make. It's also my job as a coach not to really have an opinion on what decision they make. And I just go, "okay, listen, I'm here to help you." So when we step into this space in these tough situations, when we say, listen, it's not my job to fix their stuff. I'm not responsible for fixing this or even making sure that they take any certain path. Then it doesn't feel so heavy. 

10:13 

We oftentimes call this getting, as I mentioned before, getting in the other person's lane, doing things that are their responsibility. Okay, we're trying to give them advice, nudge them in a certain direction, get people to do things the way that we think they should be done. Okay, this is a problem. This is not our place to be in. Now, sometimes it feels like as well that the other person is grabbing us by the arm and pulling them, pulling us in, trying to get us to take responsibility for  things that are theirs. This is also not okay. And this is a place that we've got to stay out of taking responsibility for something that is not ours. Stay in your lane. And regardless of how much begging or cajoling or enticing other people do to get you to come in, stay in your own lane. 

11:11 

The second thing that I really see going on, and this is also a part that increases a lot of this heaviness and these feelings of being drained and exhausted is that we, when we are sitting with this person listening to them, we are actually getting very judge-y about what they're telling us or about how they are seeing it or how they are handling it. And most of us don't know this because we've never thought about it, but when we are judging other people, this judgment feels horrible and exhausting and draining. It goes against most of our foundational values of wanting to be loving and kind and compassionate to other people. But when we spend the time with this person, judging them for any aspect of the situation, it feels bad. When we judge others, we are putting ourselves in a one-up place. We are seeing ourselves as better than them in some way. 

12:19 

And this always feels out of alignment with the person that we want to be. And this being out of alignment, being judge-y, when it's juxtaposed with what we want to be, which is loving and kind and compassionate, this takes its toll on us in a really big way. We're fighting a battle inside of us between how we're being, which is judge-y, and how we want to be, which is loving and kind. And this internal battle is exhausting. It drains us. And then what also happens is that we end up judging ourselves for judging the other person. 

13:00 

And this is why these situations, when we are listening to another person or engaging with another person and we walk away exhausted, it has nothing to do with what the other person is telling us or how they're behaving generally. Those are just neutral circumstances. What creates the emotion of exhausted is our thoughts about what the other person is telling us. And if our thoughts are judgy thoughts, then that creates the exhaustion. 

13:39 

And one of the results from that behavior comes is that we end up judging ourselves for judging the other person. And there's just so much inner turmoil around how we're showing up. So what are some of the thoughts that we think when we're sitting there with some of these people? We might constantly be thinking, "oh, they're doing this wrong. They're such a mess. If they would only do it the way that I think they should do it, this is driving me crazy. They are driving me crazy. Oh, there are so many other things I could be doing rather than listening to the same story over and over. Oh, this is a waste of time. They never figure this out. Why can't they figure this out? What is wrong with them? They should, they should, they should." 

14:32 

Alright, now, I am sure that just like me, you are very familiar with so many of those types of thoughts. And when we have those types of thoughts, we walk away feeling spent, feeling exhausted, feeling emotionally drained, etc., etc. What everyone gets to learn how to do in these situations is very much like what I was trained as a life coach to do. And we were taught, one of the first things we were taught was to stay out of the pool. 

15:07 

Now, let me explain to you what this means. This means that if everybody is in their story and it's like they're swimming around in their story with all of these beliefs and all of these assumptions about what it means when people do things and how they are and what's going on. Everybody has their story. Okay. My job as the life coach is to stand on the side of the pool because as soon as I jump in the pool with them, I get mixed up in their story. I'm believing their story. I'm saying, "oh my gosh, yeah, that person really is a jerk," right? And as soon as I start believing their story, I cannot see clearly what's going on. So my job is to stay out of the pool, to not believe their story. 

15:55 

Now, that doesn't mean that I'm not compassionate and kind. It doesn't mean that I can't understand why they are where they are or why they're believing what they believe. But as soon as I start really engaging with their story and saying, "oh my gosh, that's horrible," then I lose my capacity to really see what's going on. And so what we get to learn how to do in our regular lives as well is to learn to stay out of the pool. We can be loving and compassionate and kind and we don't have to be emotionally involved and engaged in believing all the stuff. 

16:39 

So we get to let them have their story. We get to let them believe what they want to believe. Because for them, it's real. It doesn't matter. Even if we have factual evidence that what they're telling us is not true, to them, it is true. From their point of view, this is what's going on. And it doesn't help to say, "oh my gosh, you're totally wrong," right? In most situations, okay? But we get to let them have their story. We get to let them believe what they want to believe. We get to let them work through their problems however they want to. We get to let them figure it out in their own way. 

17:22 

Now, isn't this generous of us to let them live how they want? When we learn how to allow them to walk their life path however they want, boy, we're being generous, aren't we? But here's the thing. It's not like we really have a choice. Every person's going to live their lives however they want, regardless of how much we're judging them. They still get to do that. But when I learn to let go of all the judgment, when I learn to just say, listen, they are figuring this out. When I learn to honor their agency, then my engagements with this person are not exhausting. 

18:14 

So learning how to stay in your own lane and to stop worrying about other people's lanes is both liberating and empowering. Because we learn to just be responsible for us. And it's not so much to carry when we just have our own stuff. I'll tell you what, our own stuff is a heck of a lot of stuff anyway. I've got enough on my plate without trying to go around and control what everybody else is doing in their lanes. If I just stay in my lane, that is more than enough work for me. So figuring out how to stay in our own lanes is a huge part of feeling more empowered, of not dropping into this exhausted and drained space. 

19:04 

And it's liberating because guess what? It's not mine to take care of anyway. I cannot control anybody else's life. And when I stop trying to control it, that's liberating. Okay. When I learn to stop resisting who the other person is and how they want to live, then I feel better. I am liberated from responsibility that is not mine. And then when we get to that place, we can engage with them and it's not hard. It's just, it's just sitting with them. It's just letting them talk, letting them figure it out. And we just get to learn how to love them. 

19:52 

Now, this takes practice, I promise you. But just like any skill that you're going to learn in your life, it takes practice, it takes effort, it takes intentionality, but it is a skill learning to do this. We are learning the skill of offering grace. Now, grace is the ability, I believe, to assume best intent of other people. It is learning to see them as an individual who is doing the best that they can. Now, is this true that everybody's doing the best they can? I don't know. I have had some pretty in-depth discussions with people about this. And a lot of people are like, "no, people are not doing the best they can." And guess what? I believe people really are. I really believe, I don't believe people wake up and say, "what can I do to screw up my life really bad today?" I don't think people wake up that way. 

20:49 

Now, I think that we have a lot of really poor coping mechanisms. And I think that sometimes the way that each one of us sees the world and the way that we think is going to fix our problems really doesn't. But I don't think anybody goes in trying to really make their lives horrible. But we all see the world so differently and have had such differing lives that we see that what makes sense to us of how to try and fix a situation does not make sense to other people. So the more that we can really just believe, maybe it's, because here's the deal, maybe it's not even true. 

21:28 

Maybe my belief that people are doing the best they can, maybe that's not true at all. But is it a helpful thought for me? Yes, it is. It is helpful for me to see people as doing the best that they can because then I show up more loving and kind. When I see other people that they are just figuring things out, just like I do, and they're probably making some mistakes along the way, just like I do. Right? The more that I step into this place, the more compassion I have. Now, their mistakes may be different than mine. They may be ones that I wouldn't make. And guess what? That's okay. Of course, they're going to be making different mistakes than me because their life journey is not my life journey. We are both approaching life from a different point of view. 

22:26 

I remember one time, and I shared this in a podcast called "The Right Path" years ago. I just had this little snippet of a  vision, and I'm not a visionary person, but I saw Christ as a sphere, and he was there. And then I saw unlimited number of paths leading to Christ from every direction. And it was such a powerful little snippet of insight for me to realize that, listen, somebody might be on a path that is the exact opposite of mine, coming at the sphere of Christ from the exact opposite direction, and yet their path was also leading them to Christ. 

23:12 

Okay, of course people will see the world differently because we are on different journeys. Of course, they will make different mistakes and it will sometimes not make sense to me at all, but it doesn't have to make sense for me for me to be compassionate and kind and loving. And so developing the capacity to stop judging other people's journey and rather to offer grace to them is both liberating and empowering. I'm staying in my own lane. I'm not taking responsibility for things that aren't mine. And I'm loving fiercely. And these all feel so great. And I will tell you, it takes capital W work and effort to figure this out. What we are doing is learning to increase our capacity to love. 

24:13 

Now, when Christ was asked what the greatest commandments were, he said to love God and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. These are the two greatest commandments we are told. So I love that Adam Miller talks about how love is not a reward, but rather love is the law given to us by God. And this is exactly what Christ says here. What is the greatest commandment? What is the greatest law? To love. We are commanded to figure out how to love people regardless of what they bring us. When people bring us difficult situations, learning to love them rather than to judge them is the key to us coming closer to our greatest capacity. It is the key to us learning how to sit with people and not feel that heavy, angsty space that we get into. While loving is full of grace and assuming best intent and accepting, judging is full of contempt, assuming worst intent and rejection. Loving puts us in this place of overflow, a place where we actually create more energy than we use. 

25:39 

So let's say that sitting down and listening to this person takes five units of energy. When I can do it from a place of love and compassion and not judging and offering grace, it may take five units of energy, but I get seven or eight or nine units back because it feels so amazing to be in this place of grace. Whereas judging the other person puts us in a place of depletion where we use more energy and we tend to hit rock bottom more often. So let's say that sitting with the person takes five units of energy, but all the judging, that depletes that and it takes another five units of energy. So then we are 10 units of energy down. So we use more energy and we feel horrible. That's when we feel like we're scraping the bottom of our barrels, right? Because that is when we just never have enough energy. 

26:46 

This is when we feel exhausted and sucked dry and drained and empty. Judging depletes while loving restores. Learning to love others and offer them grace is really God's plan for us here on this earth. It is what we are here to do. This is learning to be like our Heavenly Parents because they don't sit up there and judge us. They sit up there and go, oh, what do you need? How can I help you? They just love and love and love. When we are told in the scriptures that God is love, He doesn't know how to do anything but love. Are there consequences for our choices? Of course. But God is loving. And that is what we are here to do on earth, to learn to be more like our Heavenly Parents, to learn to become love. 

27:47 

So I'm going to give you two phrases that I use that help me step out of judgment. And I'll tell you what, being judge-y is a very natural space for me. And I think it is for most humans, right? But it's that draining space. So if I want to step into the overflow, I have to be able to more freely offer grace and compassion. And here are two phrases that I use a lot when I want to really bring myself back to this. I use the phrase, "of course," and I also use the phrase, "and that's okay." These two phrases help me to stay in my lane, and they help me to offer grace. So they might sound something like this. "Of course they're struggling with this decision. It's a really hard one." Notice the difference between a judge-y phrase that would say, "oh my gosh, are they still struggling with this crap?" Right? This place of, of course they're struggling with it. It's a hard one. 

28:51 

What about this phrase? "They're really struggling to figure this out. And that's okay. Of course they want to talk it through. They're in a pretty tough place. They seem really stuck and that's okay. This is not mine to fix and that's okay. Of course it's not mine to fix. This is theirs." When we can learn to offer this space of grace to the other people, not only do they have a safer place to work things out because they're not being judged, but it feels amazing to us to be loving instead of judge-y. 

29:32 

And here's the other thing. When I'm being judge-y, I can promise you that I am not a good enough actor to hide it. And neither are you. When you're being judge-y, you're not hiding it very well. It will ooze out of you some way, somehow. It will be in the way that you look at them. It will be in the tone of your voice, the rigidity of your body, or the downturn of your mouth. The phrases that you use will have adjectives that attack and deride. I promise you, your judge-y will ooze out of you. Then you're not only feeling the inner angst of being judge-y because you know that's not how you want to be, but then you also have the difficult feelings of knowing that they know that you're not loving them, that they know that you're judging them. 

30:22 

And I'll tell you what, this is difficult work, to be sure. Learning to go to the cause of so many of our struggles, which is our thoughts, requires a lot of concerted awareness and focus. The circumstance, what the person is telling us, how they're showing up, what they're doing, that is the neutral circumstance. What causes the feeling of angst is what happens between that circumstance and the feeling, and that is the thought, the thought that they're doing it wrong, that they're weak, that they can't handle this, that what is wrong with them. Those types of thoughts create the judge-y. And that judge-y then creates that inner turmoil that depletes us of energy. 

31:17 

So learning to be aware of our thoughts and learning to really clean up our thoughts is so much work. And it can be really difficult to do on your own because we don't see these thoughts that we have every day. This is why I work with my own life coach because she is able to help me see thoughts that I'm like, "whoa, wait a minute. Did I really just say that? Did I really, is that really a thought that I have?" So many of my clients are taken aback when I show them thoughts where they're being judge-y because they don't even recognize them as judge-y. They don't even recognize that that thought is there. And when I go back and I say, can I share with you a thought that you just told me? And when I share that with them, they go, oh my gosh, right? But when they start cleaning them up, relationships in their life get better. 

32:16 

And more importantly, really, their relationship with themselves gets better because they are living in alignment with the person that they really want to be. They feel they are being more Christ-like and kind and compassionate. They feel more full of grace and love. And this all feels amazing. The inner turmoil of living out of alignment subsides and they can breathe easier and relax into living with more grace. It just feels so much better to drop the judgment and to embrace the grace. 

33:02 

And my friends, if you need help with this, I promise you, I can help you. I am good at this. And as you clean this up, you've got 20, 30, 40, maybe 50 good years left in you. If you can invest the time and the energy and the effort now to clean this kind of stuff up, you have got 20, 30, 40, 50 years to reap the benefits of feeling better inside of you, of being able to be loving and kind and supportive in better ways. You can do this. I know you can. 

33:48 

If you would like to work with me and talk about this, you can go to tanyahell.com, go to the free consultation, and you can sign up for a 90 minute consult call with me. This is where we are going to do some serious coaching because I want you to know what coaching feels like and we can get some work done. And we can help you see where the hiccups are happening in your situation. What can you clean up? And after 12 weeks of working with me, you will be amazed at what you are seeing and what you are experiencing that you weren't before. This is powerful, powerful work, and it is the most important work that we will do in our lives. 

34:39 

Learning, as we talked about today, to drop the judgment, to embrace the grace that will change everything in your life. This is important work. Let's get to work. Come to Talk with Tanya. Set up a free consult. Take one of my classes. Something to help you see what you're not seeing and move into a better version of yourself. Life is amazing. This is what growing up means. And this space of midlife where we get to start really stepping in is a beautiful, beautiful place because we are more prepared to see it and experience it than ever before. Okay, that's going to do it for me, my friends. Have an awesome, awesome week, and I will see you next time. Bye. 

35:35 

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 weekend" Friday emails: 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.