00:00 

Hey there. Welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 428, "Amazing Grace." 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 

Alright my friends, here we are another podcast for you today and some great content that I think you're going to love. We're gonna be talking about grace today, grace within our relationships. Before we do want to just let you know that our next Talk With Tanya is going to be October 13th, okay? It's always on a second Tuesday, two Tuesday, right? At 2:00 Eastern, 12:00 Mountain. Okay? That makes it 8:00 for me here in Hawaii and it's a great time for me to be doing it first thing in the morning. I get to have a chat with some of my favorite people who show up and we just talk and have great discussions about all kinds of things when we do coaching. Have yet to do a Talk With Tanya that I did not just absolutely adore and love. So hopefully you will show up there. If you are interested in that, go to tanyahaie.com, my website, and then you can go to the group coaching tab up there at the top. And when you open that there will be a Talk With Tanya option where you can sign up for it. You will get the link...it will be sent to your email and then you just show up on the day and participate. You can just listen, you can show your picture, you cannot show your picture. Obviously we always like to see everybody's faces but that's not mandatory. Yeah it's just a great time. So if you would like to do that jump on in. 

01:47 

Let's just go ahead and get started on talking about amazing grace. Today I'm going to talk about grace in three different categories. One, divine grace, which is what our Heavenly Parents and Christ give us. Two, the grace that we offer ourselves. Three, the grace we get to figure out how to offer others. Alluded to this just briefly last week, but I wanted to talk a little bit more in depth about this. 

02:14 

So let's start off by talking about divine grace. When we talk about the grace from our Heavenly Parents or from Christ, we're talking about their favor, their acceptance, their love, their mercy they give to us freely. It is not earned. Don't do anything to get their grace. They just choose to give it to us. Guess what? We don't even deserve it. Have not had to do anything to get. Their grace, given by our Heavenly Parents and by Christ, allows us to be able to repent, able to move Into a next level relationship them and next level relationship with ourselves. 

02:58 

In Ephesians the Apostle Paul, Ephesians in the New Testament, he emphasizes that grace is a gift from God. It isn't something earn, rather received through God's goodness and mercy because of His unfailing love for us. This redemption isn't what we deserve, rather something our faith in Christ prepares us to receive. Because our Heavenly Parents aren't concerned with what we deserve. If they were they would get nothing. Rather, they're concerned with what we need to grow and progress, to find joy, and return live with them. They're not concerned with what we deserve, they're concerned with what we need. "There you go ornery child, you're never getting anything from me." Instead they go, "Oh, she must be hurting. I wonder what she needs." They know, right, they always. But they would say, "let's give her what she needs to grow and progress, to find joy and peace, to prepare to return to live with us." 

04:04 

As Elder Neil Anderson said something this way, he said "the blessing to repent is given by each of us by our Redeemer as part of the Plan of Salvation. But it is also a spiritual gift, allowing us to await the heavenly grace of our Savior." And in Romans, again it says, "Sin shall no longer be your master, because you're not under law, but under grace." So because of the mercy God, Paul tells us that our sins will not held over our heads. Where we fail, the grace of Christ can and will atone. Grace is at the heart of the gospel. It is unearned, undeserved and yet so generously given. Its purpose is not simply our salvation, but rather our transformation into people who love like our Heavenly Parents love and freely forgive as they freely forgive us. Our Heavenly Parents and Christ freely offer grace. It is an essential part of their character. It is who they are. 

05:18 

When we are told in the scriptures that God is love, if He truly is love, that's how he shows up every single time. And these divine beings see everything more clearly than we do: our weaknesses, our failings, our struggles. They see how flawed, and mixed up, and messed up we are, yet they still offer us grace. They have a clear understanding of who and how they created us to be, which is human. And, at the same, they also honor our agency to choose and often make mistakes. They created us to be humans who do make mistakes, and their grace offers us a safe space to analyze and adjust our behaviors and to decide if that's who and how we want to be. 

06:19 

Anne Lamott, a spiritual author, says, "I do not understand the mystery of grace, only that it meets us where we are and doesn't leave us where it found us." We cannot help but be changed when divine grace fills our soul with love and forgiveness and acceptance. 

06:43 

So how does divine grace respond to us? It responds with goodness. It responds with light, with hope, with acceptance and love. This is what we receive from divinity, whether we want it or not, whether we deserve it or not, whether we have done anything to earn it or not. None of that matters. Divine grace is a free gift to all of us, and it allows us a safe space to look at ourselves, to adjust, to become aware, to analyze, to see ourselves clearly without losing hope, without darkness. It gives us a safe space to see ourselves clearly and to move forward. 

07:39 

And when we can learn to accept and embrace this divine grace, it perfectly positions us to then start to have grace for ourselves. So if we're to become as Divinity has created us to become, we must also learn to embrace and offer grace. So embracing grace means that we accept the grace offered to us by Christ's Atonement. We forgive ourselves, we understand our humanness, and we understand the Plan of Salvation. Meaning, the plan for us to return to live with God again. 

08:22 

Being mortal and making mistakes isn't a problem, it's part of the solution. I wanna explain that a little bit. From our limited human perspective, we often think that our purpose is to be happy in life, and if we're going to be happy, then making mistakes is a problem because it keeps us from that happiness. Having mortality thrust upon us and seeing the world through mortal eyes is a problem because that doesn't make us happy on most days. 

09:01 

But, our Heavenly Parents and Christ don't have such a limited view. They don't see happiness as our purpose here in life. What do they see our purpose is? To grow, to progress, to become more like them. And if that is what our goal is, then being mortal and making mistakes is actually part of the solution to help us create that. It's not a problem at all that we make mistakes, because it's only in making the mistakes that we can become these divine creatures that we were created to become, to become more like them. 

09:52 

So our mortality, our making mistakes is part of the solution when we see it from the vantage point of divinity. We were created to be mortal. We were created to be imperfect and to make mistakes. Our immortality is the solution to our growth and progress. It is the solution to helping us become as they are. Isn't that fascinating? 

10:22 

And I love this idea as well: we cannot fully accept the Atonement of Christ in our own lives if we do not figure out how to accept His grace. And we accept their grace when we embrace our humanity within their plan for us to live and grow and progress and return to live with them. See, the Plan of Salvation sent us here to have an imperfect body and to learn how to manage this body and to create and grow and progress within the confines of this imperfect human body. Again, that's part of the solution. It's part of helping us grow to become more like them. 

11:11 

So being human, of course we're going to make mistakes, of course we're going to struggle, of course we're gonna be a hot mess sometimes, but that is because this is how we learn, and we were sent here to learn. And we can only learn through trying and figuring things out and making loads of mistakes. So we do the best we can, and sometimes the best we can is not very good, but it's the best we know, right? 

11:38 

If I remember in seventh grade, I was being considered to take an advanced math class in eighth grade, and so we had to go in and take this math test to see what we knew how to do. And I got to a question and it had the square root sign and a number 25 inside of it. I had never before in my life seen the square root sign. I'd never seen it. I had no idea what it meant. The only question was the square root sign with the 25 inside of it. And I kind of tried to work out things underneath it and tried... I mean, I just didn't even know what I was doing I couldn't, I just didn't know what that sign meant. I was doing the best that I could, but I did not have the tool or the knowledge of what that sign meant in order to solve that problem. Once I learned that that meant the square root, I was like, "Oh, the answer is five." Right? I knew, but I did not have the tools. 

12:38 

And many of us, we're doing the best that we can, but our tools are either non-existent or they're dysfunctional. Oftentimes, we're doing the best we can based off of wrong or outdated beliefs, but we're still doing the best we can. Right? And just as I, even though I didn't know the square root sign, I think that what I was showing underneath that showed that, oh, well she's got some aptitude for doing math, which I think I lost somewhere in there. But it let them... I did make it into that advanced class actually, right? Because even though my tools were dysfunctional, there was a place where they could see that, oh, but she can problem solve. She can figure things out. Okay? 

13:23 

So we are doing the best we can, but we're living within the bounds of humanity that our Heavenly Parents have set. Yes, we are mortal and we are making mistakes. We are unable to be perfect in this life because of our mortality. And so having grace for ourselves means that we embrace Christ's Atonement in order to repent, and repair, and realign, and redirect our lives without beating ourselves down for being a human that makes mistakes. We're not gonna beat ourselves down for being what we were created to be. 

14:00 

Instead, we use our mistakes as stepping stones rather than as boxing gloves. We were created to make mistakes. That's part of the solution for how to grow us into stronger and more divine versions of ourselves. Having grace for ourselves means that we embrace this humanity and that we don't think that we're horrible, messed up, never gonna make, amount to nothing kind of people. 

14:30 

I love this idea that Max Lucado says. Max Lucado, I know him for, for writing children's books, but he says, "When grace moves in, guilt moves out." Why is that? Because when I can see my life and my efforts through the eyes of grace, I give myself permission to be a human, permission to make mistakes without making it mean anything about my worth or my worthiness. Grace allows me to be imperfect, and it creates a safe space for me to move forward from that severe imperfection to a little bit less imperfection. It allows me to grow. It allows me to move forward. I don't have to guilt myself to death. I don't have to feel shame for being a human. I can allow grace to change the way that I see myself, and see my efforts, and see my growth. 

15:33 

So how does grace respond? With goodness, with light, with hope, with acceptance and love. Grace for myself gives me a safe space to grow. The more grace that I'm able to offer myself, then the more grace that I am able to offer to others. And that's the last section of this I wanna talk about. Christ's example of grace to us is an invitation for every single one of us to learn how to extend grace to others. This does not come naturally. What comes naturally for most of us if we let our primitive brain run rampant is anger, and revenge, and frustration. What comes unnaturally as we learn to become more like God and, and Christ is compassion, and love, and grace. 

16:40 

So in Matthew, the Savior taught, "For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your son, your sins.” Jesus Christ here clearly indicates that the grace we seek from Him is conditioned upon our willingness to extend it to others. If we seek His mercy, He requires that we act mercifully toward others. Learning to offer other people grace is part of His plan for us to grow and become more like Him, because that is what He and our Heavenly Mother do. They offer grace. 

17:27 

So if we want to become as they are, we have to also learn to offer grace. And when we can learn to embrace our own humanness and our need for grace, as we talked about in the last few minutes, we then can more freely extend grace to other people. And here's the deal: expecting perfection from other people is just as ridiculous as expecting it from ourselves. Nobody was created to be perfect in this life. Every single person you know, those who drive you crazy and those who don't, was created to be a human who will make mistakes, a human who will see the world from their own perspective. 

18:11 

Of course other people in your life will say unkind things, just as you do. And of course, others will forget things like your birthday or important get-togethers that you have just as you do sometimes. Of course other people will get distracted and not quite hear everything that you say in, in the way that you meant it. Just like you. Of course other people will do things that you don't agree with and have opinions that you don't agree with, just like you do. 

18:52 

When we extend to other people the same grace that we are extended by our Heavenly Parents and Christ and the same grace we learn to extend to ourselves in our own flawed humanity, then we're becoming Christlike because our business isn't to judge or to get other people to change the way that they do things even if those things are hurtful to us. 

19:17 

Our business is to manage ourselves and learn to offer them grace and kindness and love regardless of how they show up. And when someone else's behavior creates discomfort for me this isn't a signal that they need to change. That's not what it means at all. When someone's behavior creates discomfort for me more often it signals that I get to learn to live better, that I get to learn to honor people's agency better, and I get to learn how to offer grace more freely. This is when we nudge our trajectory closer to living within our values offering other people grace is compassionate. It is kind. It is Christlike. And every ounce of grace we offer other people brings us closer to Christ. 

20:13 

And when we get there, this is when we stop getting offended by what other people say and do because we realize that we say and do awkward things sometimes too. Not in an attempt to hurt people but just because we're human. This is when we stop judging other people for doing things different than we do because we realize that people seeing and experiencing and perceiving the world differently is part of our human experience. 

20:41 

And this is when we no longer see the world as black and white, as right and wrong, because we understand that everybody's experience is so different that nobody in the world sees the world the same way that you do. This is when we can really embrace the broad diversity of human experience understanding that we all see and experience the world differently, and because we do what seems right for you might be wrong for me. 

21:15 

I just want you to think about the complexity of this and the miracle of this for a second. Nobody in the world has had the same perspective of the world as you. It's not even possible. Everybody was raised by different parents and if they weren't... If you have the same parents as a sibling you were raised in different times, right? Or if you're a twin who was born minutes apart you still had a different experience in your birth because you were born minutes apart. But then also even if you were treated fairly close to the same, your parents learned to understand you as different people and treat you as different people. And then you had different experiences. You might have been sitting on one side of the room, they were sitting on the other side of the room. You were seeing that room from different perspectives. Okay? You have had different people that you've engaged with. 

22:20 

It always is fascinating to me that I have all these people in my life that I love and adore and Sione doesn't know loads of them. Even though Sione and I are these people who love each other and we wanna share our lives together, he knows tons of people that I don't even know that he knows. And he loves them enough that he's like, "Oh, this is a great person." Right? We all just have different experiences and we've engaged with different movies and different books and different school teachers and different classmates and different working conditions and different jobs. Everything. Nobody has had the experience that you have had. So of course nobody else is going to see the world the same way that you do. 

23:08 

And the more that we can embrace this amazing diversity of the human experience the greater our capacity for offering grace. Offering other people grace is a place of honoring other people's lives and of honoring their agency to make the choices that they want to make and to see the world from their perspective without us judging and criticizing them. We let  go of our expectation that they should be different than they are. We embrace them for who they are and how they are. We accept them for that person rather than wanting them to be someone else, and grace does this with kindness and compassion, with clean love rather than with white knuckles and underlying disappointment. 

24:00 

So instead of focusing on them and on their behavior and what they're doing wrong and why it's wrong, grace helps us to focus on us and on our response. How does grace respond? Grace responds with goodness, with light, with hope, with acceptance and love This is what it means to have grace for other people, realizing and even embracing the fact that they are very different than us. And us learning how to be loving and kind and accepting regardless of how they show up. 

24:40 

That doesn't mean we have to love their behaviors, right? If they're doing something physically harmful to us, we don't have to love that. But it also means that we focus more on, "How am I responding?" That doesn't mean we can't protect ourselves, but we don't try and change their behavior. When we are devoid of grace, how do you think we want to be? We want to respond to evil with more evil. We want to respond to unkindness with more unkindness, and we want people to get what we think they deserve for their supposedly bad behavior. 

25:30 

But this is not the way that our Heavenly Parents and Christ think. It is not the way that They are because They always love us whether we deserve it or not. They never ask what we deserve, but rather They ask, what do we need to heal, to grow, and to progress? And as we learn to become more like our Heavenly Parents, we will embrace love over all else. Because if God is love, to become more like Him and our Heavenly Mother, we also get to learn how to become love. And from that place, we will offer grace and kindness, not seeking to give people what we think they deserve, but rather seeking to give them what they need to heal, to grow, to progress, to feel safe. 

26:27 

And as we really step in to being able to offer other people grace in all of their glorious humanity, our lives get better. I feel more love. When I want to give people evil for evil, that does not feel good in my heart. It feels dark. It feels ugly. It feels oppressing. But when I want to give people what they need to grow because I have this capacity to offer grace, I feel light. I feel hope. I feel goodness. I feel love, and that feels amazing. We get to choose how to feel, and we feel that way because of how we choose to think. 

27:20 

And when we choose to think of others as being equal to us, as being children of God, as being humans who are figuring out the world as wretchedly as we sometimes are, we can offer this grace. We can offer this amazing grace that not only creates a safe space for others, but that changes our life and that just feels so amazing. 

27:53 

Okay, that's gonna do it. Think about how that applies to your marriages. Think about how that applies to your adult children. Think about how that applies to your ornery neighbor. Think about how that applies to people at church who drive you insane. Think about all the things, because the more you stay in your lane and the more that you practice stopping judging their behavior by offering grace and saying, "How do I want to respond to that behavior?" The more joy and focus you will feel and the greater your sense of self will become. 

28:37 

Okay, this is the kind of stuff that I help my clients do with one-on-one coaching. If you have been following me for a while and you feel a little bit like, 'Yeah, this is good stuff. I like it,' and it's not really making a difference, I think you're an amazing candidate for one-on-one coaching, because one-on-one coaching will force your hand, in essence. It will put you in a position where you will see and understand and implement these tools in a way that you haven't. And as a coach, I am trained to help you see things that you cannot see yourself. I can guarantee you that there are patterns of behavior that you are engaging in that you do not see at all, and yet those patterns of behavior are wreaking havoc in your life. And until we see them, we cannot clean them up, and it's my job to help you see them. 

29:33 

Now, I'm gonna tell you this: Coaching is not easy. It is not for the faint of heart. If you want to just come in and have a nice little skip and a stroll through the park, yeah, this isn't yours. I work with a lot of clients who after the first couple weeks, and sometimes even later on they're like, "Listen, I didn't think I was gonna come back next week 'cause I didn't like what you  had to tell me. And yet, as the week went on, I started to see it. I started to understand it, and now I feel better prepared to move into next level." 

30:06 

This growth we're talking about is amazing. It has helped me to create this life with Sione that is unbelievable to me. But it doesn't come without a lot of growing pains, without a lot of going, "Ugh Who am I? Like, why would I behave that way?" And learning how to offer myself grace and curiosity rather than beating myself down. It's been a great growing curve there for me and for my clients. 

30:41 

But I'll tell you what, you want a different relationship, you want more intimacy, you want to be more kind, you want to start feeling more love rather than anxiety and frustration and angst and resentment, coaching is a brilliant tool to help you get there. So if that's something you wanna figure out, go to my website, tanyahale.com, go to the Free Consultation tab up on the top right, get on my calendar, and let's get to work. It's going to require time and energy and money, and I promise you, it will be worth it as you develop into a person who will get to benefit from this growth for the next 20, 30, 40, maybe even 50 years, depending on how old you are. This is for you, my friend. If you're feeling that tug in your heart, this is for you. Okay, that's gonna do it for me today. Have an awesome, awesome week. Get on my calendar if you feel like this is a good option for you, and let's get some work done. Let's help you create what you really wanna create in your life. Okay, see you later. Bye. 

31:57 

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.