259: The Number One Thing To Make You Happier

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 tidy definition. Society’s name for us. It’s intentionally choosing to step back away from the chaotic rush of your every day 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 truth.

Let’s have a healthy disregard for the impossible. Let’s choose to be extraordinary. Hello. Hello everyone. And welcome to the Intentional advantage podcast. I’m your host, Tanya Dalton. This is episode 259. We are in our season on reclaiming your power and I’m excited about today’s show. But before we do that, I want to take just a few minutes to talk about how incredible you guys are.

Honestly, how much I love creating this podcast for you. Because honestly, since I’ve gotten off social media, oh, best move ever for me, I have gotten the nicest, most amazing emails from so many of you. And what I’d like to do just for a second or two is share a couple of them that really hit home for me. I have really loved hearing from so many of you,

and this is the thing with getting off social media is it really did deepen my relationship with so many of you all by listeners. And that was really one of the reasons why I did it. Why I thought it would be a good move because I felt like a lot of the conversations I was having on social media. Well, it felt a little superficial.

I mean, it was just kind of surface level. And now I feel like we’re going so much deeper. And I just got through meeting with John where we’ve, we’re mapping out some more episodes that we’re doing this season. And, and we are we’re, we’re going to go deep. And part of it is because of the emails you guys are sending my way.

It’s really getting me to think about what it is you want from this podcast, what it is you want to hear, what tools you want to add to your tool belt, how you want to reclaim your power, because that’s what this show is really all about. That is really at the heart of what I want to create with the Intentional advantage. I want you to feel like you are empowered.

And one of the things that I love is that now we’ve moved to this every other week format and all those off weeks, I been emailing you little tips and ideas or little activities. It’s been amazing to see how you guys have responded. You loved that meditation, that audio activity that we did together. In fact, I got an email from Tina who is one of my listeners who reached out to me after doing that activity.

And I wanted to share a little bit of what she said to me. What she says is, first of all, she has been working on her cathedral, thinking she read on purpose this past winter. And she has a big dream. Her dream is to one day, take her current business, which is fence row photography and launch fence, row farms.

So evolve it into something else, totally different. Something that she’s truly passionate about, what she says, a place where I can grow and create, but even more exciting teach. Here’s what she says. She says, I’ve mapped out my five to seven year plan of getting to fence row farms. And this year’s big goal is getting started. But a couple of weeks ago,

I began to stall out, began to lose hearts. Now I believe in my vision for a place where people can step away from the grind, forget worrying about whether others will approve of or like what they’ve made because they found their confidence and joy in creating. So when I did the activity and when I did the scale at the beginning of the meditation,

I was a five on whether I truly believed I could pull it off. By the end of the meditation, I was an eight. I love by the way, the exclamation mark, you can tell it that you so excited. She was an eight. Here’s what she said. I was so surprised when you had me ask myself. If I knew the steps I needed to take to reach our goal.

And I immediately responded, yes. I feel like I can get back to work now. And while this year is definitely going to be work in progress, I know that everything is going to help me learn and grow and make my dream an even better reality. Okay. This is why I do what I do. Tina. Thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time to email me,

because truly that is what I want you to get out of the podcast out of the emails that I send to you every week. What I want for you to understand is that you can absolutely do it. And I just want to give you the tools to make it happen. Let me share one more quick email, because this was an amazing one from Charles Z,

Charles Z has been a listener of my podcast. She’s been in my communities before in the past. She sent me the most amazing email about something that’s been happening in her family. So she says, I have big news. I’ve been sharing with all my friends and family, and I wanted to share it with you too, but I hesitated. And then I realized you’re one of the reasons we’re celebrating your wise and gracious words have shaped my words and action.

So you share this victory and this victory isn’t even mine. It’s my son. Samuel’s, who’s having his first book signing this weekend. A self published comic book and the real victory is the sacrifices he’s made to get it done. He has high functioning autism, and the pandemic has turned his world upside down. It’s hard to describe in just a few words.

The extreme challenges the past few years have been for him. He’s to focus his energy on something different. He loves to read and he decided he was going to write a comic book book, a great short-term goal. And Charles, he says, I didn’t help him at all. He wrote the words, found a printer, did a fundraising campaign and a thousand more details.

So our family is gearing up for a big book signing. I’m excited and proud. Thank you for your consistent message on reaching big goals. I can’t count the number of times I read something or heard something from you that I haven’t passed along. Okay. So you guys can see why I’m loving these emails. Honestly, I feel like crying just from these two from Charles and Tina,

your words matter. We talk about that in on purpose. They matter a lot, and they matter, especially when you spread that joy and that love to others. So thank you so much for the emails. That’s why I do what I do, guys. This is the whole purpose and the intention behind the Intentional advantage. I want you to feel like you have the tools to move forward.

I want you to feel like we are connected enough that I can cheer you on when you do amazing things like Charles C son, Samuel, or Tina making her plan. That’s what I want. So we’re going to do another Intentional advantage live. It’s coming up on March 16th, which is free to join. It’s all about connecting. You know, if you showed up to the last one,

I show up with no agenda. There is no agenda whatsoever. I simply take your questions and I answer them. So it feels like a conversation. So in knowing how these emails have affected me and how much they mean to me and thinking about how much I want you to show up to the Intentional advantage live so that we can have these conversations. I thought we do something a little bit different today.

I thought I would share what a Q and a with me sounds like. So today I’m sharing a Q and a session that I did in one of my programs with Rachel. So this wasn’t part of the Intentional advantage live, but it’s a very similar vibe. And I thought it would help for a couple of reasons. First of all, I wanted you to see what it was like to have me answering your questions.

I think at our last Intentional advantage live, I think I answered 14 questions throughout the course of the hour together. And it was, it was incredible. But the other thing was, I wanted us to really think about this whole idea that we’re exploring this season of reclaiming our power. And I wanted you to think about your happiness. I wanted you to think about living a life on your own terms,

which is something that you know, is a common thread throughout all of my seasons, really taking charge of who you are and what you want. And I truly believe one of the most important things we can do. Probably the number one thing you can do to really ensure your happiness is setting up your boundaries, really deciding how you want to live and then setting up your life.

So it works for you. So it no longer feels like work, but it feels like ease. It feels like joy. So I’d love to share this conversation that I had with Rachel during one of the Q and a sessions that I’ve had with this group. I wanted to share that with you so that you could really start thinking about your boundaries, what life looks like for you,

are you reclaiming your power living life on your own terms? Are you living it by someone else’s rules? Because the truth is you don’t have to live by anyone else’s rules. You don’t have to do the things that require the word should or have to, or ought to anytime that we say should, it’s a sure sign that we’re living up to someone else’s expectations.

I should be doing this. I should be doing that. Right. So you’re going to hear that from Rachel. Now, Rachel and I are talking in terms of her being a business owner. So keep that in mind, but know that everything I’m talking to Rachel about applies to you, whether you’re corporate, whether you’re a stay at home mom or what I like to call the CEO of the home,

no matter who you are, you’re you might be a student taking charge of your boundaries is one of the best ways to really reclaim your power. So let’s go ahead and dive into that conversation right now. I have your question. You ready for this? I can read it to you if you’d like You said, what’s your perspective when it comes to working with a sense of urgency,

I often hear that phrase and have previously been coached to work with a sense of urgency. But every time I would begin to identify it, I would find myself working non-stop on my phone, constantly hustling to burn out. Okay. We can just stop right there. Right? I’m not necessarily referring to creating a sense of urgency for your customer, but the idea that you have to convert people when they’re there in the moment,

connecting with them while their emotion is high. For example, let’s say I’m getting ready to go to bed. But I accidentally check in with my messages, like, did you trip and fall? And like, your phone is like, oh, open the inbox, DNS. I’ve gotten a lot better about this, by the way. I’m just like thinking about,

I’m asking this in a lot of ways, like thinking about my team and how to drive this home with them do, but it happens once in a while. You want to go to bed, but you don’t want to miss out on a prospect. Who’s showing some great instruments in they’re ready to chat. Am I missing out on people because I’m not always available or are they not my people?

I love this question. Rachel. I’d love to know what you think. I’m going to tell you about this. I feel like you’re going to tell me that they’re not my people. I think that the hesitation comes in because I would love to make this more of a system, right? Like the communication with them about the opportunity, you know, use something more like email marketing or like give them a drip or something like that with all the information.

But I also have been coached to not oversell or like give them too much information. So it’s like, you only want to answer the questions that they have and talk them through their concerns and all of that. And sometimes I worry that I’m taking the personalization out of it. If I start going more towards the email side of things, so I have all these thoughts,

I’m like, should I be more in my Facebook inbox? Where a lot of people treat that like a text message and they love that it feels more personal or should I be more respecting my boundaries? It’s not your people. It’s that the people who are like you have to respond right away. Those are not your people. Do you really want to work with somebody?

He wants you to jump. When they say jump every single time, if it’s 11 o’clock at night and you have a sick kid and everything else is that who you want to work with. So you’re bending over backwards to work with people who are not your soulmate client, right? It’s that you are wearing yourself out, chasing down everyone. And Rachel,

you’ve heard me say this for everyone is not your clients. You don’t want to sell to everyone. You want to sell to your ideal clients, your soulmate client, the people who you get lit up. When you get to work with them, you get excited because you know, they’re going to transform, right? And so the thing is, is this idea of you need to always be selling and you need to make sure and respond within 10 minutes.

That they’re a hot prospect. Are they hotter at the moment? Possibly. But here’s the thing is that’s an absolute scarcity mindsets. It’s a scarcity mindset to believe that if you don’t jump on that one client, that one potential client you’re going to miss out on all of them. And that’s, that’s not the truth. I really think you can set up some systems and set up some automations to really make this work.

And what this is at its heart is the difference between urgent and important. That’s what we’re getting to the urgency is that they’re a hot prospect. We don’t even know what they’re a hot prospect. They just popped up in your messenger inbox. Right? We just assume that they’re a hot prospect because they’re in there. I mean, they may have checked in and then gone off and done something else,

right? So this is something that a lot of business women really struggle with because we feel like we need to constantly be serving giving to our people, making sure they’re getting taken care of otherwise, we’re going to miss out and that’s not true. So we’re giving into the urgent and we’re not really focusing in on what is most important. What’s truly most important is when you’re ready to go to bed,

you go to bed because that makes you a better business woman and makes you a better mom in the morning, right? Versus possibly chasing down this person who may or may not end up purchasing. So I want you to get out of that mindset, that if somebody pops in your inbox, we got to get on it right away, because otherwise you’re going to spend all day in your messenger inbox.

So I would really love you. And I know there are tons of coaches out there who want to tell you to hustle and grind. And that’s what life has to look like. But the truth is life does not have to be a hustle. Business does not have to be where you are wearing yourself out, chasing that every client, not. If you’re positioning yourself in the way that you really want to position yourself and quite frankly,

having an autoresponder, which you can do in messenger. I’m assuming, you know, that that says, these are my hours. I run my business. So my family is a priority. Love helping other women run their lives so that their families are priority. To please understand that I respond during my business hours, blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah, blah. Can I tell you how many people truly respect that? When I communicate that with them, people are like, I want to work with you. I like your style, my clients who, you know, by the productivity tools and those things, if they don’t like the fact that I give my team and I Friday off, okay,

there’s lots of other things out there that doesn’t work for you. Okay? I’m not going to bend and twist and shake myself into something that I don’t want to be to fit your ideal of what a business woman is. I want to design my business on my terms and that’s what I want for you. I want you to go to bed. I want you to turn messenger off.

I want you to feel free and open and have full permission to not check in. And if you are living or running your business in a way that it’s like, if somebody pops into my messenger, I’ve got to respond right away. How are you going to take a day off, Rachel? How are you ever going to feel good and do it?

Okay, let’s rephrase that. How are you going to take a day off? Guilt-free cause the whole time you’re going to be like, what if somebody is in there? What if they waited, you know, an hour? What if they’ve waited 15 minutes? So I would love for you to set up some systems, set up some automations. The first thing I would say is there are extensions that like there’s one called inbox.

Pause. If you use Gmail that can pause your inbox. So nothing comes in. So if you trip and fall on the way to bed and open up your inbox, there’s nothing in there. That’s brand new. Let’s use, you know what? Let’s take our own willpower because I think this is the thing is we say, oh, I just don’t have the willpower.

I don’t have the discipline. That’s bullshit. There is no discipline. There is no willpower. It’s just setting up habits is setting up things so that it works for you set that up on the back end. So you don’t have to make that choice anymore. Choose it once, set it up. And then it’s done. Right? So inbox, pause is one of them works for Gmail,

most email programs. You can find an extension that allows you to pause it so that you’re not getting in new emails and you can set it. So it doesn’t come in from eight o’clock until eight o’clock at night, till eight o’clock in the morning, or, you know what, whatever hours work for you because you know what, it’s your business, run it on your terms.

Okay. So that’s the first thing. And then I would say when these emails are coming in, are they coming into your personal work, email account? Like, are things coming to you directly or are they going to like a main account? For example, like I obviously have a work email and then we have hello@Tanyadalton.com. So when people submit questions and those kinds of things,

it goes to hello, it doesn’t go to my inbox. How do you have your set up Right now? It goes to my personal one and I have another one created that I wanted to start moving things over to that one because my VA is in my inbox for me. And she helps me to shift through like I have like order confirmation and order shipment and I track it all with streak.

So that’s where I’m getting a little bit, like, I don’t know how to transfer it over to a different one because my streak is so set up in my personal already. So I don’t know if I just create a different personal account and keep that as my main business account or, you know what I’m saying? Does that make sense? Yeah. You can set as an alias.

You can still, you can and stop, stop using whatever email account that you’ve been using for business transfer. Over. For example, I have a public facing email address that people can figure out or if I’m sharing it and I’m like, that’s an inbox, that’s there. Then a lot of times I’ll have an assistant check or someone else, right?

Occasionally if I say like, Hey, you email me directly. I’ll check those emails for a short period, but I have this, I have a secret email address that nobody knows unless I give it to them unless, you know, I have met them in person and we have a direct relationship that I use that’s for me. So that way I’m not getting any of those emails.

So I would have those emails go to the separate inbox. So they’re not getting confused. Does that make sense? I just want to take them off and celebrate this with you because I feel like this has been a big shift and change for you since we started working together all that time ago, that you have a VA who is going in your inbox.

Can we just take a moment and just like, that’s amazing. I love that. You’re like, no, I haven’t. We have streak in it. I mean, this is exactly what we want. Right? We want to take you where you’re out of that, where you’re not doing all that work because then you’re able to do the visionary work.

Okay. So let’s do that. Let’s separate those out. And then, you know, I think that old adage of you don’t want to over serve your people. Don’t answer too many questions. I think that is such an old hustle. Can we just let that go? Let’s serve our clients and let’s serve them well, let’s serve them within our boundaries,

but let’s do our best to love on these people and answer their questions, making sure that there’s good. FAQ’s on your website. One of the things that I love about our CRM, our customer response module, I think that’s why I can never remember what CRM stands for. Our CRM is that we use Zen desk is it has plugins. So that the thing to fill out to send us an email is embedded in the site,

which is done through the CRM program. And when they type in a question, you know what it does, it doesn’t send it right away. It says, huh? Does one of these answer your questions? And it pops up with FAQ’s that will answer some of their questions. And they can say yes, and their question gets answered, or they can say no.

And it goes ahead and sends the email. So taking out some of those roadblocks, because here’s the truth. You don’t need to be wasting time answering the same question over and over again. You really don’t. Even if you’re using canned responses in Gmail that is still taking up 15 seconds of your time or a minute of your time, 15 seconds times,

you know, a hundred emails. That’s a lot of your time. What could you do with all that time? A lot. I can tell you right now, not answering emails, sitting in front of a computer, going outside, enjoying your kids, enjoying a hobby, doing something else. So let’s see what we can do to try to automate some of those things.

But the truth of the matter is set your boundaries, own those boundaries and just really stick to them, like set what works for you. And then don’t question it. Okay. Other people are going to say to you, oh, like people will say to me, oh, you, you take off Fridays. Like, is that a good idea?

Yeah. Works for me, works for my team. We’re happy with it. I feel like my business is doing pretty well. You know, Honestly, I mean, we’re pulling in what we want to pull in. So I’m not sure why it matters to anybody else, but P other people, when you run your business on your own terms, when you do things and you go different from the status quo,

they will sometimes take it as you questioning how they live or how they run their business. And it has nothing to do with them. So we have to let that go. Right. But Rachel, here’s the deal. Do you want to hustle? Do you really want to hustle? Do you want to hustle all the time selling to people constantly? You know,

ABC always be closing in your inbox nonstop. Is that what you want? No, absolutely not. And I’ve come so far since I read Jomo. I’ll just say that it’s been like ever since I read that book, it was the game changer for me. I was like, oh my gosh, because that is so much the direct sales mindset. And I mean,

I’m sure it isn’t a lot of other ones too, but just in my experience, I’m like, oh my gosh, direct sales is you have to be in your inbox. And I have been challenging that so much. And even within my team, I’m trying to talk them through this a little bit. And they are struggling. They have notifications on all the time.

They have their emails popping up. I’m like, you guys turn them off. And then I told them one night that as like, I usually don’t work. Usually don’t work after my kids go to bed and you should’ve seen their faces. They were like, are you serious? I know. They’re like, What’d you do? Why do you do you do it because you want to work nonstop or do you do it because you want to have freedom,

right? You want to have lifestyle freedom. You want to spend time with your family, your friends, you didn’t go into business so that you could work yourself to death. And that’s what ends up happening. So can we just, you’ve made my day with what you just said right there, because this is the thing is I sometimes see like a salmon swimming upstream,

and that I’m saying something different than everybody else is saying. And that you don’t have to hustle. You don’t have to, you know, grind and just constantly be selling to anybody and everybody. And it works. And you’re so much happier for it. I feel like I’m, I’m so much happier. I know that you are so much happier for it.

So stick to the boundaries, let that go. Run your business on your own terms. I would love for you to really just think about after we get off this call, I want you to think about what are the hours you want to work, and it can be different each week if you like setting up your messenger. So it’s automatically replying that new email account or the old email account that you were using for personal,

that we’re transitioning over. I want that to have an autoresponder on it as well, that it can have links to here’s a heat. Some of the things like most frequently asked questions, here’s some answers to them. You could even have videos that respond to them. If you really want to have a personal touch, right? If you have like five questions are 95% of what lands in your inbox,

shoot a video for each of those. And that creates a personal touch, right? It doesn’t have you directly interacting with the client to have that personal interaction. Okay. And that way autoresponder and in that autoresponder again, communicate, this is a value for you. And I know it is this idea of having boundaries. Tell them why this is a value for you and that you love helping other women find these values as well.

You know? And then again, the soulmate clients, the women that you want to work with, do you think they’re going to be attracted or repelled by that message? Definitely attracted. I’ve brought in a few lately who are totally attracted to that message. And I’m like finally finding people. I watched what you’re posting on social media, and you’re talking about these things and I’m seeing in the comments,

people responding, like this is amazing. This is what I want. So again, it comes back to that whole idea of attract and repel. And we don’t like that word repel worries us. I don’t know. I don’t want anyone to feel bad. It’s not, not people feeling bad. It’s just saying this is not a client for me and that’s okay.

Okay. All right. Okay. Does that feel great? Thank you. I think my favorite part of that conversation that I had with Rachel is how she sounds at the end. She sounds lighter. She sounds happier. She sounds more empowered. Doesn’t she she’s reclaimed her power by deciding when she wants to respond to people. And that’s what I want to remind you of you absolutely have that power.

We’ve lost sight of it, which is why the season’s called reclaiming your power. All of the things we talk about this season are things you’ve always had the power over, just like Dorothy, and the wizard of Oz. You always had the power. It’s just, we forget because we’re so busy giving. We forget because we’re so busy playing by other people’s rules.

We forget because well, life is busy and we simply don’t have time to really decide to stake our claim to say, this is how I want to live. And this is how I’m going to move forward. Right? That’s what I want for you. I want for you to be reminded of who you are and what you want, because what you want is incredibly important and it’s okay to live life on your own terms.

It’s okay to set these boundaries. In fact, as I mentioned to Rachel, when I set these boundaries and I’m very clear about communicating them, I’m very clear about it. People not only respect them, but they decide and moving forward nine times out of 10 to do it for themselves. The number of times that I have set a boundary for something in my personal life,

with my kids, you know, with, you know, PTA or projects or things like that. When I will say to someone who’s pushing me to volunteer and I set my boundary and they’ll say, wow, I love that. How do you do this? And I’ll say, oh, all I do is I, I decide I’m not going to do things after eight o’clock at night,

or I’m only going to do things three nights a week out or whatever my boundary is. And then I’m just really clear and I’ll talk them through some of what I talk about in the joy of missing out, right? We talk about that whole sandwich strategy. And I find that they’re empowered to move forward into their world and do the same. That’s what we do.

When we reclaim our power. We encourage other women to reclaim theirs as well. And I want you to remember that because truthfully, I think so often we worry or it feels like, oh gosh, am I okay? Reclaiming my power is that somehow taking away from anyone else, if anything, you are giving others permission to reclaim their power. And that’s how we come together as a collective,

as a group of women, as a community. When we link arms together, we are so much stronger than when we’d go it alone. So stake your claim, set your boundaries, live by them. Be clear. You can still be kind being kind and being assertive are not mutually exclusive. You’ve heard me say that before, but not only is it kind when you’re being assertive,

it’s also empowering others. And speaking of empowering others, please don’t forget that we’re going to have an intentional advantage live coming up. It’s happening on March 16th. I would love for you to join me. Simply go to Tanya dalton.com/live by doing that, you’ll get access to the link to join. There’s no sales strategy. As I said earlier, there was no agenda.

It literally is based a hundred percent off the questions you asked me. I answered the questions, especially the ones that have been upvoted. And we have a great time. We have a conversation. There’s lots of things happening in the chat. Even if you can’t make it live. If you sign up, what will happen is I will make sure that you get a hold of that replay so you can watch it as well.

This is one of the ways that we’re really going to make a difference. This is how I make decisions about what we’re going to have on the podcast. In fact, I’ll be asking you some questions about what things you want to hear this season. I have some ideas I’m, I’m excited to see what you guys think of. Some of my ideas that we’re going to dive into this season.

So Tanya dalton.com/live is the link to join me again. It’s totally free. No agenda. Just come with your questions and I’ll be happy to answer them. All right. This has been an amazing episode. If you have any questions, any thoughts or any comments, you know, those conversations are that those emails that I shared at the beginning of the show from Charles Z and Tina,

I’d like to make that a regular occurrence. I would love to get more emails from you guys. Anytime you need anything, just respond to the email that I send out on Tuesdays. I send one out every Tuesday, just reply back to that and share with me what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling, what you want to see, because that means a lot to me.

All right. All right. Here’s the truth. When it comes to reclaiming your power, you’ve had the power all along, and that’s what I want you to walk away from this episode, remembering because when you do, 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.

 

 

**This productivity podcast transcript was created using AI.

Tanya Dalton is the host of one of the best productivity podcasts for women, she is a motivational keynote speaker and the best selling author of two productivity books. As a woman productivity expert, she has a unique view point when it comes to finding balance, time management, setting goals and creating habits.