Intentional Living with Tanya Hale

This week my husband, Sione, joins me as we share a recent experience we had in which we had the opportunity to step into some pretty honest communication.  It took a lot of vulnerability, courage, and awareness for both of us to create this experience, but it ended up being a beautiful exchange.  Our hope is that by sharing how we are stepping into better communication, you can understand how you...

Circling back around is a technique that my husband, Sione, and I use in our marriage that allows us to apologize better and show up more as the partners that we really want to.  We incorporate the concepts of awareness, acknowledgement, apology, and application to increase our connection and communication.  This episode delves into these concepts more depely and helps you understand how you can b...

Forgiving someone who has hurt us can seem like a herculean task sometimes.  The pain can run deep and wide and it can feel that if we forgive that we are condoning the behavior that was so painful to us.  And yet, forgiving is the path to peace and progress.  Learning to let go of the pain and lean into the love exemplified by Christ is one of the purposes of forgiveness.  There is a stronger and...

So many of us unintentionally engage in passive-aggressive behaviors, and it's hurting our relationships.  Today we are going to talk about 18 different ways that these behaviors show up.  When we create greater awareness around our own passive aggressive behaviors, we can start to clean them up and start healing our relationships.

When we want/need to have a tough discussion with someone, we can have a tendency to blame and accuse the other person, which generally tends to lead to defensiveness and a fight.  In this podcast I'm sharing with you a tool I use to help communication around difficult circumstances that allows us to share what we're experiencing without blaming, and creates a safer space to discuss tough things.

There are times when we feel as though our cup is so low that we don't have anything left to give, and then we need to check out of our lives long enough to replenish and refill.  But what if we could get to a place where we always have more than enough and are in a constant state of overflow, never running out?  Maybe it's possible. Let's talk about it!

Sometimes it can feel as though we get a lot of complaints from our children about all the things we are doing wrong, or have done wrong, as their parents.  And that's all pretty normal, I think, because no parent is perfect, and we all fall short of being the parent our children wish they would have had.  In this episode we're going to discuss why that's all okay, and how not being enough for our...

We tend to put our noses into a lot of things that are none of our business, and it ends up hurting our relationships.  In this podcast we are talking about three things that are none of our business, why they are none of our business, and how to figure out what really is our business.  

Life is messy.  That's not the problem.  The problem is when we believe life shouldn't be messy, that we should always be in control and that people should always say and do the right things.  That people should get addicted or have affairs or get divorced or separate out from the family.  I'm not saying those things are easy, but they are part of life.  When we can learn to accept the messy as th...

The lack of forgiveness in our lives can be a huge source of feeling stuck.  Sometimes forgiving another person can be one of the most difficult challenges in our lives - even more difficult than working through the original offense.  When we can learn to step into compassion for ourselves and for the 'offender', forgiveness will come much easier.  And that's important because there isn't any heal...

Many of us really struggle having discussions with people we love about what might be a difficult topic.  And yet, working through things together, in a productive and healthy way, is part of what creates great relationships.  In this episode I will share with you five things you can do to help you go into the tough discussions with better skills and more confidence, and how to come out of them wi...

For me, few things cause more discomfort than feeling disempowered.  The idea that someone else gets to decide what happens to me, how my life turns out, how I feel, doesn't sit well with me.  Knowing how to feel empowered in life gives us confidence and assurance and hope for our future.  Today we are talking about four things we can do to create more empowerment in our lives.

It can be so easy to look at other people's poor behavior and get really judgy about it, especially when it is hurtful toward us or someone we love.  But one of the greatest shifts that we can experience in life is when we begin to see other people's hurtful behavior coming from a place of pain.  When we can recognize that 'hurt people hurt people', and begin to look beyond the behavior and see in...

So many of us get caught in people-pleasing.  This is a space of trying to please others, often at our own expense, and seeking others' approval.  In this episode we not only talk about how people-pleasing shows up in our lives, but where it stems from and how we can begin to move out of constantly worrying about how others perceive us, and feel really good and confident about how we are showing u...

Are you someone who gets stuck making decisions?  You just might find that it has more to do with how you respond to the decisions you make than the actual making of the decision.  In this episode we talk about the reasons why making decisions can be difficult, how to make decisions easier, and how to move with more confidence when you finally get there.

Sione (my husband) and I have some rules we feel make a huge difference in helping us to create the intimate partnership we want.  These were put in place the weekend we decided to date exclusively, and we continue to implement them because they have made such an amazing impact in our marriage.  Our hope is that our rules will spark ideas for you to create your own rules and have more connected re...

Obligation is such a detrimental concept when it exists in our relationships. Obligation comes from a place of fear, a place that relies on 'have to' or 'should'.  And this is a space that will never create intimacy in our relationships - whether they be with a partner, with God, or with ourselves.  In this podcast we discuss more in-depth the dangers of obligation and how to begin the move out of...

It can be so easy to get stuck in resistance to middle-age.  This can often show up with patterns of behavior that damage our relationships and keep us stuck.  And yet, learning to lean into all of these mid-life changes, to accept them and, yes, even embrace them, is the key to really creating the life we want and discovering ourselves at a deeper level.  Believing that the best is yet to come wi...

When we feel disempowered, we often don't recognize it as a result of our own thought processes.  And yet, when we allow ourselves to settle into shame or blame, we are creating just the right environment to feel disempowered.  Feeling in control of our lives requires that we counter our shame with self-acceptance, and our blame with self-awareness.  

Learning to replace shame and judgment with compassion and curiosity in our relationships with ourselves and with others will create a huge shift in the quality and intimacy of those relationships.  Whereas shame and judgment will shut us down and stop our progression, compassion and curiosity will create a safe space for growth and exploration.  They give us the opportunity to really come to know...

Contrary to what your mother told you, life really is all about you!  This episode has nothing to do with ignoring others pain or being selfish, but rather intentionally choosing to take on the responsibility for being the person you really want to be.  About showing up as the best version of yourself.  This is what you can control in any circumstance, and it has everything to do with you!

The time in our life when we put divorce on the table is tough.  There are so many things to consider, tons of pressure, the grief of unfulfilled dreams, and the pain of perceived failure.  We really want to make sure that we make the best decision for us, that we don't walk away when things could have gotten better.  From my own work, and work with a lot of clients going through this process, tod...

Divorce is often one of the biggest challenges in a person's life.  And it impacts a lot of people, not just those in the immediate family.  So often friends and family struggle with knowing how to handle the divorce of people they love.  What should they say?  What should they do?  Today we're going to talk about the best way to show up for the divorce of someone you love.  

I love low maintenance things, and I put a lot of value on being low maintenance in my marriage.  But with the tools I now have, I can see that in my previous marriage the things I considered would me a low maintenance spouse, were actually very damaging and hurtful, and in reality, very high maintenance that added to the demise of my marriage.  Now I still value being and having a low maintenance...

I used to think that if I was doing life 'right', that I would be happy all of the time, that I wouldn't need to have challenges or trials.  I was so cute and misguided back then!  Now my understanding of the struggle has deepened and grown so that now I see it as an amazing place for growth and progression.  The tension created by struggle is actually necessary for our progression and happiness,...