00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale, and this is episode number 80, "What a Girl Wants." 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 

Well, hello, my friends. Happy to be with you today. I have to tell you, I am generally not the most techie of people, and I'm okay, I can manage things, but I just got a new computer, and this is the first one that I am recording on my new computer, and I started recording, and I could not get the sound. I spent 40 minutes trying to figure out how to get the sound to work, and I finally figured it out, so I'm super proud of myself. Just a little bit at a time, right? Figuring it out. 

00:54 

Okay, so today we are going to be talking about what a girl wants. It's kind of interesting to me that my thoughts, from one podcast to another, all just kind of seem to mush together, and they grow and develop off of each other from one week to the next. But it's always amazing to me how a topic will come up several times in my life within a short period of time, and usually from very different places, and I always feel like this is God trying to teach me something by bringing it into my life multiple times so that I can see it, and then I can see it from another angle, and then revisit it again from even a different perspective. And in the course of this happening, I get to discuss the topic with different people, and I get to see their points of view, and it helps me to understand the topic at different levels. 

01:50 

So this is exactly what has happened to me with this topic this last week. In fact, I was not using my time well earlier in the week, and then I didn't get to my podcast, to record it on Thursday night as usually planned, because my son unexpectedly came into town and we were having dinner together and spending some time chatting. So I was a little annoyed with myself for not using my Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights as productively as I could have. But here's where I think life is just perfect sometimes. Come Friday during lunch at work, this same topic came up again and another discussion helped to clarify some thoughts on this topic. 

02:28 

And so now that it's Saturday, I feel like I have a better perspective to share with you because I didn't get it recorded when I usually try to. So even though I didn't create what I had wanted to this week, when I wanted to, I love that it always seems to work out just perfectly. And I'm sure if I had several more discussions, I would be even better prepared to share this topic, but that's just the nature of life, right? We never know everything. And over time, we learn and grow and gain deeper understandings of things, and we often even change our minds. But if I waited until I could provide you with a 100% perfect podcast, you would never get one. 

03:08 

So realizing that I had several opportunities to refine my thinking and to reassess my beliefs, I'll get this one recorded and sent out into the universe so we can start a discussion. And no doubt next week, I'll have another discussion or thought and wish I could have included in this podcast, but I'll be super happy with what I have shared because it's such great information even though it's not all inclusive. But the great thing with a podcast is that in a year, I can come back and I can revisit any topic and we can have a completely different conversation about it because both you and I will have grown into different people and we'll see the world and this topic differently. And that's an amazing thing about life, don't you think? So here we go, what a girl wants. 

03:51 

I mentioned to my daughter on a mission recently that I was doing this topic and she immediately started belting Madonna, "Girls just wanna have fun," right? And I think we do, but I also think we want to make a meaningful contribution to this  world and many of us get lost along the way. So who even knows the answer to that question, what a girl wants? From the men I've spoken to, I know that the bulk of them have absolutely no idea and here's why I think that's the case. Most women don't know what they want. Honestly, we have very little understanding of our wants and here's part of the reason why I think that is. This is not scientific, this is just my own observations. 

04:38 

Culturally and socially, especially for us women in our middle life amazingness, we have been raised thinking that we were not good or righteous women if we went after our own wants. We were taught that our job was to be a good mom and a wife and that all of our purpose and desires should be focused in that realm. We were taught to be the center of peace in our homes and our lives and that it's our responsibility to make sure that everyone is getting along, that everyone is comfortable, and that we need to be of service continually. I have felt so responsible over the years for making sure that things are easy for other people, often at the sacrifice of my own wants. In fact, some of this mentality, because of this mentality, we're very often not even in touch with what we really want. And even when someone asks us, we just reply, "oh whatever, it just really doesn't matter to me," because really, we don't know. 

05:35 

I have a friend who got divorced and for the first little while things were tough for her because of this. She said she didn't even know what her favorite color or her favorite food was because she hadn't even been asking herself these kinds of questions for so many years. And when it comes to wanting something outside of the social norm, we also find ourselves lacking. For years we have made school decisions based on what's better for everyone else. I have friends who had dreams of doing great things but settled for university degrees doing something they weren't passionate about because it wasn't conducive to family life. We sacrifice eating the way we want because other people in our family will only eat certain foods. We sacrifice being involved in cultural or other activities because it's too hard with a family and a home to take care of. We don't take that job, we don't try out for that play, we don't write that book. Because our time, our efforts, our energy are spent being the person we feel we should be. Always taking care of other people's needs before our own. 

06:37 

Now I'm definitely not saying that we shouldn't be of service and we shouldn't be taking care of the people we love. But I also believe that Christ really meant it when he said to love our neighbor as ourselves. We're not here just to love our neighbors and our families and our friends. We are also here to love and take care of ourselves. And to be honest, I'm not seeing a lot of positives that come from this self-sacrificing belief that everyone comes before we do. I see students at school who honestly, 100% honestly, think the world revolves around them. Their mothers never show their kids that they are people and they have their own wants and needs. Their kids have no idea their moms want anything. They just think that whatever they do, their mother will be there always. They literally don't have any idea that their mother is a person with hopes and dreams and wants and needs of her own. They somehow think their mother's entire existence is to substantiate them. 

07:42 

And this is not healthy for the kids. This creates these people who are narcissistic and selfish and rude. Can I put that in there? These kids are rude. And very often the husbands in their lives also don't realize that their wives could possibly have hopes and dreams aside from their family. And that often deprives the man of opportunities to be involved in family life at a deeper level that will increase his compassion and their engagement so they can have deeper connections with their children and their wives. It is depriving men of growth opportunities as well. 

08:18 

And here's another casualty from women not connecting with what they want: we find ourselves more and more dissatisfied with our lives. Do we love our families? For sure. Are we grateful for them and for the growth that occurs through our sacrifices? No doubt. But when we are constantly putting off the desires of our hearts, when we keep shushing that voice inside of us, we feel increasing frustration. These are the women whose husbands are completely shocked when at 25 years of marriage the woman files for divorce and he had no idea it was coming. Did you know that on average women file for divorce 66% of the time? And some years it has been as high as 75%. Also the divorce rate among people 50 and older has doubled in the past 20 years. Between 1990 and 2012 the divorce rate for 55 to 64 year olds more than doubled. That's a lot of middle-aged women and men getting divorced. 

09:24 

The other piece of this is that even if a woman knows what she wants, she is more unlikely to say what she wants because  of the reasons stated above. I know for years I felt that saying what I wanted would be unkind because then someone else wouldn't get what they wanted. My job in my family was to make sure that everyone else was happy to sacrifice my wants and needs for the well-being of everyone involved. That was, after all, the Christlike thing to do, right? Actually, no. And I just want to put on there this pressure wasn't coming from my ex-husband; it was coming from me, from my beliefs that I had inside of what I should be doing. And those come from social situations and from things that I was taught. But I'm not blaming anyone for this. A LCSW counselor friend of mine tells of several couples she works with where the woman won't even say where she wants to go out to eat. The husband will ask if she wants Italian or Chinese and she'll say she doesn't care but afterwards she's all upset and mad because she really wanted Chinese and he chose Italian when she said that she didn't care. 

10:36 

So here's the sad thing: so often we start understanding what we want but then we're afraid of being un-Christlike if someone else around us doesn't get what they want. So we acquiesce our desires. But then we start holding resentment in our hearts because we're angry that we don't ever get what we want. Here's the thing about resentment: it grows and grows and grows if it is not addressed. And of course it's often not addressed because we're trying to be nice and not cause an argument. So the resentment in our hearts toward this person builds and builds in our hearts until there isn't any room left in our hearts for love and compassion. 

11:16 

And that's when we blow. We have spent so long, months, years, or even decades not feeling heard and seen, and we just can't take it anymore. But so often this is self-created because we're so intent on being "Christlike," I'm putting that in quotation marks, that we don't acknowledge and express our very own wants. And then we start to realize that our own unawareness of our wants or our unwillingness to voice our wants has created a toxic situation in which we're very unhappy. We don't feel as if we are ever seen or heard even though we have not stepped up or spoken up. As women we generally have this idea that we should be able to hint and everyone around us should know what we want, assuming that we know what we want ourselves, right? But sometimes we expect people around us to know what we want when we ourselves don't even know what we want. Okay, come on ladies. It is time for us to step up our game. This is destroying us and it's destroying our relationships with the people we care about the most. 

12:29 

So let's start off with deciding that it's okay to want. Not only is it okay, but God wants us to want. He didn't give us passions and desires and strivings to tease us or to mock us. He didn't give them to us to create dissatisfaction and frustration. Our spirits, I believe, have these wants because they are how we're going to contribute to the world as our best selves. So yes, it is okay to want. Remember that the second great commandment is to love our neighbors as ourselves. We should be as aware of our own wants as we are of the wants of those people around us, and we need to not just be aware of them but it's totally okay to have our wants trump other people's wants sometimes. It is great for other people to have a chance to see us as real people who want to create and explore and become. It helps them to become more selfless and aware of others. Now, I'm definitely not saying that we will never compromise or synergize or work something out that will benefit others more than ourselves. The nature of relationships is give and take. It is both sides being aware of the wants and needs of the other person and doing what they can to bless and serve them, not just one side. So first, it's okay to want. 

13:57 

Second, figure out what your wants are. Some of us have been shushing that voice inside of us for so long that we don't have any idea. Start listening. Start respecting her. Start remembering what your heart dreamt of before you chose to turn off those dreams. Remember what you used to be passionate about before you took a different path that was more advantageous for others, for home life, and for taking care of other people. Please don't be afraid of these wants. At this point, they may seem so far away and even crazy, but they're not. We may have strayed far from the path of these dreams that we were on, but there is always a path back, and very possibly the path you took has better prepared you to get back to your passionate path. I know I have always been passionate about helping others with mental and emotional health issues. 

14:52 

I spent many years not pursuing that passion while I was raising my family and being married to a spouse in the military. And even though there were some tough things in there, I'm so grateful for those experiences because even my divorce has prepared me to be right here creating what I'm creating right now and following my passion with greater understanding and insight. 

15:14 

Okay, so third, start learning to speak up and stand up. Be seen, be heard. It is okay to have a preference on which restaurant you want to go to. It is okay to not like going to baseball games and to say you'd rather do something else. It is okay to go to a movie by yourself because no one else wants to go with you. Learning to have a voice is empowering. It is respecting yourself as a person who is an individual, who has wants and needs, and works toward bettering herself by learning to listen to those spiritual promptings leading you to your true self. 

15:53 

For some of you, if you haven't started voicing your wants yet, this may be a huge challenge. So start small, but take time to recognize the small surge of self respect that comes with having a voice and expressing your wants because being true to ourselves is huge. Here's the thing: you may rock a few boats when you first start doing this and you're not rocking them because people are bad. You're just changing the rules that have been needed to change for a long time. If your spouse is resistant to you having a voice when he spent 20 years with you not having one, it will be an adjustment for him as well. But it's totally okay for you to sit him down and express your thoughts about your wants and that part of fulfilling your own needs is for you to pursue your own wants. So resistance doesn't mean divorce, it just means change, and over time change is good. 

16:51 

It's the same discussion we had in the "Boundaries" podcast. When you start expressing and asking for your wants, you are ultimately going to create a happier and a healthier you, which will only create a happier and a healthier relationship. It may be uncomfortable at first, but it's the only way to create space to grow into a better version of yourself. If you have always been self-sacrificing to the point of self-degregation with your children, they will have some learning to do as well. They've been used to you dropping everything in a moment's notice for their own wants. They will not be used to you doing your own thing and not being there for everything. And guess what? That's okay. When they start to see you as a real human being with real wants and needs, and they begin to treat you that way, that's more than okay. That's actually what we need to be doing as mothers, helping our children to see other people, to respect other people, and for them to be the sacrificing one sometimes. 

18:00 

Now, in all this, I'm definitely not saying it's time for us to throw out our maternal natural instincts. Absolutely not. I love those aspects of who I am. But when we are mentally and emotionally healthy because we are caring for our own needs and wants, we can be even more nurturing and loving to other people. And I'm definitely not saying that all this has to be done outside of the home in a job or a career either. But each of us needs to be true to the desires of our spirit and to that voice inside of us that is trying to push us to become our greatest selves. When we are happy and healthy, we don't feel the need to start making little jabs to let people know we're unhappy. We can stop with the slight emotional and mental abusive behaviors that are so destructive to our relationships. If you need a refresher on these, go back to podcast number 60 that talks about mental and emotional abusive behaviors. 

19:01 

So my sweet friends, know that it's okay to want. Figure out what you want and start asking for what you want. Start going after what you want. And you can do all of this without one ounce of guilt or shame. You can do this knowing that God gave you these wants so you can contribute to the world in amazing ways that only you can. He created you and that includes your passions and your desires to do things. We only bring honor to God when we pursue our dreams, figure out what we want, and respect ourselves enough to go after it. This is the path to truly finding ourselves, to finding the contentment that comes from becoming who we are meant to become. This is the path to healthier and happier relationships. Honestly, this is the path to true joy. 

19:53 

Okay, if this is overwhelming or challenging to you, contact me for a free mini session and we can start working through it. You are worth the investment of time, energy, and money. This is a piece of growing up that is so exciting to me. This this piece of growing into who I am really meant to be. Growing into the person that that I sometimes have not listened to and shoved to the side a little bit. Okay, so let's do this my friends. It is time for us to listen. It's time for us to have a voice. It's time for us to step up. If you've been holding back, and I know that many, many, most, probably most of the women that I talk to feel like they've held back, it's time, it's time to not. It's time to start listening to the Spirit and move into that, okay? 

20:53 

That is going to do it for me today, my friends. I hope that you have a really, really awesome day. I hope that you move into your greater self and that you listen to yourself and start finding your voice. Have a great one. We'll talk to you next time. Bye. 

21:09 

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.