231: Living a Life on Your Terms: The Power of Choice

Extraordinary is a choice. Take that in, soak it up because of the hustle grind, repeat mantra that society has been touting for decades. It had it all wrong. I’m Tanya Dalton. I’m a seven figure entrepreneur bestselling author speaker, mom, and rule-breaker I’m here to help you live to your fullest potential. That’s what this podcast is all about. The intentional advantage is doing life on our own terms.

Define the status quo and seeing ourselves outside of the tie-dye definition. Society’s name for us. It’s intentionally choosing to step back away from the chaotic rush of your everydays and choosing, choosing to see that it’s your world. And it’s filled with opportunities. Let’s challenge the bedrock beliefs that so many have wholeheartedly trusted because we were told they were truths. Let’s have a healthy disregard for the impossible.

Let’s choose to be extraordinary.Hello, Hello, and welcome to the intentional advantage. I’m your host, Tanya Dalton. You probably got an idea. There was a whole new feel to this season. We have a brand new intro, some new music to kind of spice things up. And that is because I’m going to start this show with just a full admission that I lied.

I lied to you. I didn’t mean to lie at the end of last season. In that last episode that we had episode 230, but I did. I told you that we were going to do a season on designing your business, right? And that’s what I said we were going to talk about. And then I took my break and this is,

this is the biggest benefit of stepping away of taking time away of just breathing a little bit is it allows you to really assess, to take a good look about who you are, where you’re going, where it is you want to go. And I started to realize when I, when I really started to lay everything out on the table, I began to realize we have been talking far too much about business.

We’ve been really leaning hard into that area of our life. And you’ve heard me talk about the idea that there is no balance that we have to lean into a priority for a season. And then we counterbalance and we lean back. Well, my friends, I think I was leaning too hard, too long. Not that I regret any of that because I feel like all of those episodes are great.

I think they’re really beneficial. It’s just, I lost sight a little bit of who I am and what I love to talk about what I am passionate about. And I want to get back to that. I want to get back to talking about you holistically, you, all of you, not just you in the business or at the office or who you are when you’re punching the clock from nine to five,

I want to talk about who you are and who you want to be. Every single part of you. So this season is designing a life on your terms, designing a life with you in mind, really understanding who you are, where you want to go and how you want that to look. I think there’s incredible power in that. And yes, there will be times that we talk about business because business is a part of who we are.

There’s lots of different parts of us, and we’re going to actually touch on that in today’s show, but we’re not going to just focus in on the business. We’re going to talk about all of you. So this is designing a life. And if we want to design a life on our own terms, you gotta step back. You gotta, you gotta take a look at it.

Kinda like I did with the podcast. I was realizing. I mean, just to be totally honest with you, I was realizing that I was losing a little bit of my spark, a little bit of that fire in my belly. That gets me excited. It gets me wanting to get here on the microphone and talking, I was, what is it that was causing me to sometimes go,

oh, I don’t know. I’m not sure about this. It was really because I wasn’t being true to what I wanted and what I love. I love speaking to women, women in all aspects of life entrepreneurs, career women stay at home moms, women in school, all kinds of women about how they want to live their lives. So I had to get back in touch with that.

So that’s what you have to do too. If you want to design a life on your terms, we have to take a look at it. We have to take a good look at it. And we know that our personal thoughts and beliefs are rarely consciously created by ourselves. This is something that we have touched on numerous times before on the show, but our subconscious is what takes hold.

Our subconscious is what is our driving force with our thoughts and our beliefs. And a lot of times you don’t even realize it. And again, we’ve talked about this before, but your subconscious is set before the age of seven. So before the age of seven, a lot of those core beliefs and those core thoughts that we don’t even really recognize where having those are set,

which means we have a, seven-year-old running wild through the hallways of our brains, making our decisions, helping us make our choices, seeing what choices are out there. And I think that’s incredibly powerful to realize. And the other part of this is the way that we think, and we act is greatly influenced by our environment, the external environment around us,

the media, how we believe other people perceive us the world, right? The world has a massive impact on us, shaping us to what we think we should be doing, what we should be wanting, what we should be, be spending our time with. Instead of focusing in on what we want, what we desire. I think that we worry that wanting and desire is this bad thing that it means that we’re,

we’re wanting more than we’re really allowed. And the truth is you’re allowed to want for more, you’re allowed to step fully into your power and decide what you want your life to look like, what you want it to be. And the more that you think about this, I know that you’ll see the more it’s true that we learn at a very young age what’s acceptable and how we should behave so that we can be good.

We play by the rules. We play by the social norms. We learn what rules we’re measured by. We learn how to fit in. We learn essentially how to conform. And after years of doing this, we really, we wind up doing this thing to ourselves. We, where we put ourselves in an invisible box that bounds us to these limitations that are based again on our seven-year-old us on those beliefs,

those thoughts, those experience, that form when we were young and what the world around us is telling us. So what happens is rather than taking risks, rather than trying to define ourselves, according to our own terms, based on our own unique standards, we wind up pollinating, tolerating, whatever life throws at us, we think, well, I guess this is just how life is,

or this is hashtag mom life. I mean, we see that all the time. This is what mom life looks like with a messy bun and I’m not showering and always putting your kids first and all those things we’re told by society, how we’re supposed to behave, how we’re supposed to believe. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to just sit back and let life happen to me.

I don’t want to tolerate just anything that comes my way way. And I’m betting you feel the same way. And you know, this reminds me, there’s this old saying that says you become whatever you tolerate. So here’s the truth. Nobody he intentionally chooses to live below their full potential. Nobody wants to have a job that they, that they don’t enjoy or have a life that feels like drudgery.

That feels like life on repeat. That’s exhausting and overwhelming. And yet far too many people in the world do exactly that they live life because they think this is how it’s supposed to be. And I’m here to tell you that that’s not truth. Everett is deep inside of you. That seven year old you that’s telling you, no, this is just what life like.

This is just how it is. Let’s break that mold. Let’s change how life looks. Let’s design a life on your own terms. Because when we design a life on her own terms, we become happier. And when we’re happier, we actually give not just to ourselves, but we give more to the world around us. We give more to the people we love.

We give more to our careers. We give more to every aspect of our world. When we fill our fountain, we can pour and it can overflow for everybody else that comes in contact with us. So what this all really comes down to when it, when we’re talking about designing a life, we truly want to live. That means we have to tap into our power of choice.

And now this idea of choice of choosing what we want and what we don’t want. This is a theme you’re going to hear a lot from me. This is the theme we’re going to be talking about quite a bit. Not just in this season is actually the heart of what I talk about in my newest book. That’s coming out in October on purpose,

the busy woman’s guide to an extraordinary life of meaning and success. We talk about that. Every chapter is a choice that you make. So we’re going to be talking about that here in the podcast. We’re gonna be talking about in the book, I’m going to be having events and experiences that I’ll be sharing with you later on. There’s a lot of exciting things that we’re going to be doing that really focus in on this idea of choice,

because at the end of the day, what I want you to remember, what I want you to recall for yourself is that you get to choose you, choose how life works for you. I know you may not think that you have a choice in the way that that life happens, the things that happen in your world, but honestly, you do.

We all do. Every day. We interact with the world around us. Other people, we interact with places, things, ideas. We interact with our own internal monologue. Everything that happens to us, we have a choice. We have a choice in how we respond. We can’t always choose what is happening to us. It’s choosing how we react to it.

And it’s unlocking the power of choice that ultimately makes the difference between our successes and our failure, our passion, and our indifference, and in the optimism or the pessimism that we use to approach any circumstance, any situation in our life. You know, it’s interesting. And I was just, I was watching this really fascinating film and they talked about this whole idea about really,

it’s how we view our world, how we see our world. And we all are familiar with the placebo effect. This is the effect that Dr. Spine or researchers find that when they go to test a medicine, they usually have two groups. They have a control group, which it gets no medication, or they have three groups. They have one group,

which is a control group who gets no medication. They get it. They have another group that gets the medication and they have a third group, which gets the placebo. They get a sugar pill, or they get an injection of just sugar water, right? What the researchers have found time and time and time and time again is that while the medicine may work while out of a hundred patients,

you know, 80, 80 of that 100 ended up really reacting well and being healed by the medication, the placebo group. Oftentimes if there’s a hundred people in that placebo group, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 of those, those people often are healed as well. Because power of belief that what they’re taking this sugar pill that they think is a medication is going to heal them.

So that’s called the placebo effect. This belief that if something’s going to heal us, it actually does our body reacts. Our mind has a really strong influence on how our body behaves. But what we don’t talk about is what if the opposite happens instead of a placebo, it’s a no CBO. It’s a negative thought, a negative injection, a negative pill that we’re taking.

Doesn’t that also have the same effect. If a placebo can benefit us something positive in our thinking, our belief in ourselves, our belief that what we’re doing is for us and is better for us makes us healthier. What is the opposite? Do the no CBO. If we have negative beliefs, if we don’t think that life can change, if we,

if we think that the world is against us or it’s negative, isn’t that what we’re creating in our world. I thought that was so powerful. I, it really just struck me because I had never thought of it in those terms. But what happens is we become so habitualized, we, we think this is just how life is. And we stop thinking consciously about a lot of the choices that we’re making.

So we do things like follow the status quo because we grow comfortable with it. It’s easier to go with the flow than to fight upstream, like a salmon, right? But so that’s what we do. We, we follow the status quo, even if maybe deep down we disagree with it, or we don’t believe in it. And what happens is we become accustomed in this mindless way of making decisions.

And so we, we wind up missing out on the opportunity because we fail to choose. We fail to act on our own behalf. We fail to be advocates for ourselves. We fail to embrace the power that we have to make decisions that will ultimately make our lives better decisions that have the ability to change our world. So I want you to think about that just for a moment about how do you approach your world?

How do you feel about your relationships? How do you feel about where you work? How do you feel about your health? How do you feel about all those areas of you? I know that you’ve seen examples of this, you know, with a friend perhaps who feels stuck in a relationship or stuck in a job that they hate it doesn’t fulfill them as much as it should,

or maybe, you know, someone who struggles with trauma or health issues, because they’re convinced that there’s no way they can rise above whatever’s holding them back, that they cannot change their situation or even worse that they don’t deserve to, or that they shouldn’t change their situation, because they’re afraid that choosing to act and finding something else is only gonna make it worse.

And honestly, too often, I come across this kind of thinking in the thousands of women’s I’ve connected with, in my programs and in the different speaking events I’ve been to, I’ve come across this kind of thinking in myself in the past. If we’re going to peel back the onion here, if we’re really going to be honest with ourselves, I had to start.

By being honest with you, we all have moments in times in our lives where we do feel stuck, where we feel overwhelmed, where we feel like we don’t have any choices, and that can be really hard. But when we realize that the old way, the rules of thinking don’t apply here, we can change it. When we realize that we have the power to make a difference in our own lives.

That’s when we take back the control that we do have, right? How we react, how we choose, how we believe, how we do everything, how we do everything. If you, you want to change your life, if you want to progress, then it is time to really tap into that power of choice, the power of choice that you do have and turn it around.

So we have to back up a little bit because we have, I have to dive into the sunk cost fallacy, which you’ve heard me talk about before on the show, we’ve talked about it in lots of ways with productivity, but some cost just to remind you is the feeling that we need to pour more time, more energy, more money, more of whatever,

into a project, a task, anything in our world, simply because we’ve already poured time, energy, and money into it. This is why we sit through a movie that we don’t love because we paid for a movie ticket. This is why we finished the book that we’re hating 30 pages in, but we slogged through it anyways, because we bought the book and we spent the time reading those first 30 pages.

So costs holds us back. Some cost is just exactly that it’s a sunk cost, but what happens is the sunk cost fallacy applies to all of the things we just talked about, the movie, the book, the all of those things, but it also applies to the dead end job. The unresolved trauma that holds us back, the, the, the belief that we can’t improve our health.

So we just operate at whatever we think is how we’re supposed to operate. The sub cost is what convinces us, just to stay put with where we are, because we’ve already invested in the situation, whatever it is, whatever that investment is, time, money, energy. So we think, well, I’ve already sunk this much into it. I’m just going to stay where I am.

Instead of saying, you know what? Let’s cut bait. Let’s move forward. Let’s move on. Right? Let’s change what we’re doing, which is funny enough, actually, what you heard me, I just realized this that’s what you heard me talking about it that started this show. I had said that we were going to do a season on designing a business.

I could have leaned into that and said, well, I’ve already, I’ve already committed to that. We’ve had a couple of you know, of, of episodes in the last season where we talked about business. We’ve been leaning into that. We got to just keep doing that, but we don’t, it’s not cost move on, change your direction, change what you want.

But the sunk cost tells us that we should feel guilty about making the changes because of the time, because of the energy, because of the effort, because of the promise that I made to you, we’ve invested into these things. And when it’s not working for us, we just stay the course. Instead of saying, you know what? I’m not going to feel guilty for this.

I’m going to change because I know this is going to make it better. That’s why I decided to change the podcast because I knew it would make me happier recording these episodes. And I can tell you right now, I’m already measurably happier with how we’re going in this episode. But we feel like we can’t because we feel guilty. So the sunk cost fallacy can really compound.

So the further we go in the wrong direction, the more time, the more energy, the more focus that we go in the wrong direction, the further we move away from the ideal life we want, the harder it becomes for us to backtrack, to change our direction, because we feel like we have failed and you haven’t failed. You haven’t failed at all.

And this is the thing I want you to keep in mind right now, before we do our mid episode break, before we shift our focus to a couple of simple ways that we can put an end to this and truly tap into our power of choice. This is what I want you to remember. If something is failing you in your life, if something is not progressing in a way that you imagined it would,

or the way you wanted it to be, if you, if there is something in your life that is dragging you down and stealing your joy, then you need to move on, tap into your power of choice, make the decision to embrace change before you waste any more time, time is precious. Life is precious. Let’s treat it that way. Let’s realize that we can let go of that sunk cost and we can move forward into the life we want.

We can design a life on our own terms. Okay? Now, as I said, I want to explore some ways that we can tap into that power of choice. But before we do that, I want to take a really quick mid episode break. I have something so exciting that’s coming this month. That is just for you. Okay. So maybe you’re noticing a little bit of a theme with this episode.

And with the start of the season, we are talking a lot about the power of choice that you get to choose the life you have. And yes, life is all about the choosing. And I know as we touched on earlier in this episode, that many of you think you don’t have a choice that life is boxed you in that you’re stuck, or there’s no options,

but the choices are there. They’re there for all of us. So when I was coming up with this season, I knew I wanted to go big and do an event. I wanted to create an experience to show you that it’s by choosing that we create the life we want. So what I’ve done is I have pulled together an incredible live five day event called the courageous choice experience,

the unconventional choices, powerful women make to live on purpose. You’re going to hear from some of the strongest, most amazing women that I know who have made choices to get to that life that you see them living. Now, these are women who have spoken on 10 stages. These are women who you see on TV, or you see on stages. These are people who are thought leaders,

best-selling authors, all kinds of women from all different walks of life and all different industries. They are giving you a behind the curtains peek at the decisions and the choices that they have made. Many of them are going to be talking about parts of their journey, parts of their lives that they’ve never spoken about before publicly. I am so excited for this event.

And the best part is it’s totally free. Simply go to Tanya dalton.com/choice to sign up. It’s going to be five days, 15 women will. We’re going to be diving deep into the choices that they’ve made. I want you to see how it is possible. These, these women were ordinary women, normal women, just like you and me who made powerful choices,

unconventional choices that led them to the greatness of their lives right now. So go to Tanya dalton.com/choice. I would love to have you be a part of this event. All right, let’s get back to today’s show because I want to talk about three ways to tap into your power of choice. So I want you to really think about how you can embrace the power of choice that you have and to start designing your dream life,

truly living it, not just dreaming about it, but actually letting it happen, let it come to fruition. All right. The first one is, take a look at yourself and your life from the big picture. All right. I want you to zoom out. I like to call this the forest view. Now you’ve heard that saying you can’t see the forest because of the trees.

A lot of times we’re deep in the trees and all we can see are all these trees. We got to zoom back a little bit and take a good look from up above and really see the entire forest for what it is because what I want you to do is I want you to take a holistic approach to your living. What areas of your life are suffering?

All the different areas. Where, where do you see the biggest struggle in terms of your fulfillment of your happiness? Happiness is a really important commodity, quite frankly. I mean, happiness is one of those things we undervalue, but it’s so important to wake up and feel like the day is for you, not against you. And that comes by feeling happier.

Every goal, every dream, every desire we have is steeped in this idea that we want to be happier. So let’s make that happen. Let’s zoom out and take a look. Now in my fast track to freedom formula program, I talk about this idea that we, we like to look at ourselves solely in terms of success, how we’re doing financially.

And that becomes this one, single metric. That’s one single measure of how we’re doing, but there’s really six pillars of you. So we have financial, which is money, revenue, titles, status, things like that. But there’s also relational relationships with your friends, with your families, with other women, with yourself, we have our physical part of ourselves,

our body, our diets, how we’re sleeping, how we’re nourishing ourselves, whether we’re getting movement and where we’re breathing, really breathing. Then we have spiritual, which is our higher purpose. Our calling God universe source, the divine, whatever it is you want to call it. That thing that is so much bigger, so much greater than just our physical world around us.

We have the recreational pillar, the hobbies, the passion projects, the entertainment, the activities that we love and enjoy the self care. And then we have emotional the feelings, the reactions, the hot buttons that trigger us, the emotions that we feel on a regular basis. So financial, relational, physical, spiritual, recreational, and emotional. Take a look at those pillars and see,

how are you doing? How are you feeling? Are you happy? Are you satisfied? Are you feeling fulfilled? You know, maybe it’s maybe it’s your health thinking about that physical pillar, maybe you feel sluggish. You’re not getting enough sleep or your diet is suffering somehow. And you’re not getting the energy. You need to operate at your best to really be present in all the areas of your life.

Maybe it’s the relationships with your significant other or your friends or your family. Do they feel like a solid foundation you can stand on or does it feel like you don’t ever have really the time to invest in them the way you want to do you have healthy boundaries established in your life that allows you to spend time nurturing those relationships? What about that? Recreational pillar?

You know, are you doing things? Are you spending your time doing activities that truly lights you up? Things that inspired you, are you feeling fulfilled as much as you could. Are you really satisfied with your free time and spending it in ways that bring you a lot of joy? What we want to do is we want to experience more joy and more happiness in the different areas of our lives.

Because if you’re not feeling joy, if you’re not having happiness on a regular basis, then there’s things we can do. There’s choices. We can make to shift things around, to bring the happiness you want. And you deserve when we do that, it spreads like wildfire and the life you want that ideal life, you imagine can become a reality. So really taking a good look at who you are and what you’re experiencing.

How do you feel? How, how are you waking up? How are you showing up for yourself? There’s a lot of value in really just stepping back and taking that look. I know it can be a little bit frightening. It can be a little bit scary because you’re afraid of what you might see, but it’s there regardless of whether you look or not.

So zoom out and take a good look. Now this leads me to the second way. You can tap into your power of choice and that’s to surround yourself with support. It’s so important to seek out a support team, really finding your people. Because I know for me, when I found the other people in my world and I connected with them because they experienced a lot of the same issues as I did,

or some of the, the choices that I was struggling with, it was life bringing. It brought so much life and so much joy into my world. It was like taking a giant weight off of my shoulders. And I think there’s a lot of power with that when we struggle to rise above and to make in our lives, it’s so helpful to connect with other like-minded women.

Because as the saying goes, there is strength in numbers. There’s so much strength in numbers and really having that support system. I like to say that when we have a woman in our world who is supporting us, it’s like, they’re just pushing us again. And again, to rise up, to be our best. We push one another together, almost like those ridges in a mountain range.

They push together that, that pressure of pushing one another, allows them to rise up. And that’s what a good support system does for you. It pushes you to be your very best. And when we surround ourselves and we have people around us who are there to love us, encourage us to kick us in the ass when we need it. It’s easier to remember to,

to not lose sight of the fact that that we’re alone in this. You’re never alone in any of this. Everything you’re experiencing everything you’re going through. There’s someone else in this world, that’s doing the same thing coming together with other people who have walked on the path that we’re on, or who are walking that path right alongside of us. There’s a lot of power in that.

It allows us to make those shifts and those changes and those adjustments even easier. And it truly can make all the difference in the world. It can bring forth a lot of confidence. When we come together with a supportive group of people who are there to listen to you and lift you up and advise you and pull you up. When you’re feeling stuck,

trust me, it changes everything. So I want to remind you to look at your support group, who do you have in your corner to hold your hand and to make sure that when you’re in the thick of things, when you’re feeling overwhelmed, that they remind you that you have the power of choice, that you can design a life on your own terms,

call them, email them, message them, ask them to lean in and support you. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you need. And a lot of times what we need is that support. And that brings me to my third way, that you can tap into your power of choice. This is truly the easiest way to tap into that power of choice and to turn your life around and you can do it right away.

And that is to sign up for the courageous choice experience. That is the free event that I just talked about during our mid episode of break. It’s happening later this month. And trust me, you’re not going to want to miss out on this incredible event. I have pulled some amazing, fabulous, strong women who are determined to help you to see how they’ve done it.

And when I tell you, they’re going to be talking about things that they are not known for, that they don’t talk about publicly. They really are. They’re, they’re diving deep because they want you to be empowered to make your own choices. So you have a choice this week. You can take one step forward for the better, so that the dream life that you want become so much easier to design.

So do that now, pause this episode right now and go right away to Tanya dalton.com/choice. That is an incredibly simple, easy thing you can do right now to start heading in that direction. You really want to go in. So save your spot. Tanya dalton.com/choice. We’re going to be having, we’re going to have a Facebook group. You’re going to be able to find that support system.

You’re really looking for that supports you need and crave and mark your calendar, because it all starts on the 23rd of this month. I can’t wait to see you there. It’s going to be an amazing event. You’re not going to want to miss it. All right, we’re going to be talking about the power of choice all season long. And as I said,

we’re talking about it in the book. We talk about it in on purpose. We’re talking about it in the events and the experiences that I’m pulling together over the next few months, we have a lot, a lot of great things in store for you. And I cannot wait because when you tap into the power of choice, when you begin to design a life on your own terms,

that’s when you have the intentional advantage. Thanks so much for joining me today. Quick question though, before you go, do you like prizes? When you leave a rating and review of the intentional advantage podcast, you’ll be entered to win my life changing course, multiplying your time. Simply leave the review and then send me an email@helloatTanyadalton.com with a screenshot. I choose one winner at the end of every month.

So go ahead. Do it right now. Just a quick comment with what you loved about this episode or the show in general and a rating and send it our way. Not going to lie by stars is my favorite, but I’d love to hear what you think of the show. And if that’s not enough of an incentive for you to win the multiplying your time course,

I have to tell you the reviews are the number one thing that supports this podcast. And me, it’s the best way to spread the word and get business tips and strategies to all those other women out there who need it. So there you go. Two great reasons for you to go and leave a review right now. So go ahead and do it,

send that screenshot my way, because I want to give you a free course. And thanks again for listening today. I’ll be back next Tuesday and I’ll plan to see you then.

 

 

**The Intentional Advantage is a productivity podcast for women. This podcast episode transcript was created with AI technology.

Tanya Dalton is a top 10 best female motivational keynote speakers on the topic of productivity, time management, setting goals and finding balance.