287: Leading with Authenticity & Empathy with Patrice Washington

Patrice: When we don’t allow ourselves to receive the love, the support, the encouragement, and we always carry this attitude well, I’ve got it. I’ve got it. I’m here for you. Right? You know, I don’t need you. When we actually need people, they don’t realize that we need them, and

we have trained them to stop asking.

We’ve trained them that we don’t need support. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been in seasons in my life where I’m like, no one checks on me. No one, they don’t care about me. No one loves me. I’m always there for people. And it’s like, yeah looking back, I’m like, yeah, you absolutely trained them to not check on you.

You did that and then they obliged.

Tanya: There is nothing that makes me feel more like an island like I am on my own and not like, a fruity cocktail kind of island where you have like an umbrella in straw, like more like Tom Hanks putting out his tooth with an ice skate kind of island. That’s when you start to feel like why is nobody showing up? But I love that realization. It’s because you have trained them. You’re telling everyone, I don’t need, I don’t need

Patrice:Mm-hmm.

Tanya: need your love, because I got plenty here for myself.

When really

That tank is empty.

******

Tanya: Hello, hello everyone, and welcome to the Intentional Advantage Podcast. I’m your host, Tanya Dalton. This is episode 287. We are bringing the fire today. My friend, my incredible friend, Patrice Washington, is on the show today and , we are diving deep in our conversation because we are gonna be talking about anger, we’re gonna be talking about relationships, we’re gonna talk about letting go of the toxicity and confronting it.

How five minutes of discomfort can be all you really need to create that life you really want. I’m gonna walk you through an activity where I talk about how you can really lean into forgiveness. It’s an activity I have done every day for the first quarter of the year, and it has… whew… I can’t even tell you how much it has changed me.

So I’m excited about today’s show because I know this is going to be. This is gonna be what you need for today. So really confront how you feel about yourself, redefining love with your relationships. And well, let’s just be honest. You’ve heard Patrice before on my podcast, and you know how incredible she is.

She is my amazing friend. If you’re not familiar with Patrice, she was named one of Success Magazine’s Top 25 Influential Leaders in Personal Development. She is a thought leader. She’s an award-winning podcaster, author, she’s a media personality, and she’s consistently on Good Morning America, CNBC, Cosmopolitan, Essence Magazine.

She is an incredible resource and she is an incredible resource for me, quite frankly, our conversations that we have on a regular basis. Change me, mold me, shape me into who it is I wanna be. So I’m excited to have her on today’s show for you to get to, to listen in on our conversation today. So let’s go ahead, let’s get started.

There’s a spiritual art to work and life. I’m not talking about sitting in silence on a mountaintop or chanting mantras for hours a day, but finding meaning in your work in everyday life can increase your productivity, boost your happiness, and yes, make you feel so much better about your days. I’m Tanya Dalton, a bestselling author, motivational speaker, seven figure entrepreneur.

Oh yeah, wife and mom. So I get it. I understand the stress of daily life, but as a productivity expert, I’m here to help you choose the extraordinary life. This season, we will be exploring work, parenting, personal growth and more. Because when you choose to be intentional, every day can be filled with meaning.

Let’s create the world we want our daughters to live in. This is the Intentional Advantage.

Tanya: Patrice, I am so excited to have you on this show today. You are my beautiful, amazing, fabulous friend, and we were just giggling before we got started about the fact that the one thing I’m worried about on this is not whether we’ll run outta things to talk about

Patrice: Never.

Tanya: No. You and I have some amazing conversations and I knew I wanted to bring you on the show because. we love to dive deep with each other, and that’s, that’s one of the things I love about our relationship is you’re not afraid to push me. I’m not afraid to push you, and I know you are really pushing yourself right now in your podcast. You are diving into redefining love. And so I really wanted to start there with what does that even mean to redefine love for.

yourself

Patrice: As you know, friend, you knew before, people knew publicly that I’ve just been in this big transition in my life after a long-term marriage and 15 years married and almost 20 years together deciding to end that season of my life. And so in that, a big part of how I’m navigating and processing is redefining what love looks like.

And dealing with the grief of, of dreaming a new dream and moving forward with my life. Y ou know, for many years there was an idea of love. Not just love of of others, but love of myself and love of God that didn’t necessarily serve me. I believe that what I thought was love was actually being more committed to the applause, you know, of longevity than confronting some of the toxicity that I actually experienced and had normalized to be loved.

And so in this season,

Really, really diving into what does it mean to really love Patrice? Cuz when I really love myself, then I have greater expectation of how other people should love me, right?

And I know what my needs, wants, and desires are, but all of that has really come about because in 2020 I started to like really redefine my love of God. I really started to look at my relationship with God and realize that I had been raised to feel like God was just this big authoritative figure in the sky that always wanted to condemn me for everything I did wrong, which that’s every day, all day, right?

And so you know, no matter how much we try, we still fall short.

Tanya: I mean we are humans.,

Let’s just acknowledge that..

We’re humans, right?

We’re fallible and that we do things wrong, or we do things that we’re, upset about or we’re even ashamed

of, if we could let go of some of that, that

Patrice: Yeah.

Tanya: would be fabulous.

Patrice: When I started to reshape and redefine how I saw God in my life, it really allowed me to appreciate my human side, my humanness. It allowed me to appreciate the fact that God knows I’m not perfect, and yet he made no mistakes on me, right? So that God would not put me in a place to feel like I was being punished for prior decision.

Earlier in my life. And so all of that came together to be what I’m now calling redefining Love, and just sharing my, my takeaways and my perspectives and these downloads that I’m getting

that’s hard work. Let’s, let’s just go ahead and throw that on the table.

Yeah. That might be

it is, oh my gosh.

Tanya: too before we hit record about the fact that it’s like you go through one layer and there’s a whole nother layer to go, and then there’s another layer underneath that.

We’re like onions. But the truth is we cannot grow if we’re not willing to change. And change happens when we confront

Patrice: Mm-hmm.

Tanya: we were before, our old beliefs, our old

identities, the old relationships that no longer serve us. I love what you talked about there with that idea of, you know, confronting the toxicity, we have that tendency to normalize: This is okay, I somehow deserve this, or , this is, this is what is what I always have in moving forward

Patrice: I did a podcast episode years ago, and it was about romanticizing expired relationships and in that episode, and it was about someone who worked on my team was the genesis of that episode, but it, I was saying how it can apply to everything. Well, I circled back years later and my own episode came back to serve me because it turned into an exercise for me where I started to go:. Where am I romanticizing reality? Like if I remove what I want to see and what I hope to see and just look at things for what they are personally, professionally, in every area of my life, am I willing to be real about what I see? and then take radical action to remedy that if it’s not something that serves me.

And so that was a huge wake up You and I talk about this like Tanya’s my friend in real life, right? So, you know, one of the last times we FaceTimed, I was telling you about a situation, a relationship situationship, if you will. And I was like,

yeah. I’m like, I’m not going to romanticize reality, right?

I literally had a list in my phone of like, this thing happened. I’ve learned to observe and stop, you know, creating scenarios because we love to rationalize and we love to like make excuses for other people, and

I love to say when we rationalize, we ration out lies. So we lie to ourselves, we lie to others.

We have this whole narrative going on when it’s just not true! It’s not rooted in reality. It’s rooted in what we desire. When I started to do that, my self-love improved because I was being real with me. Like I was being real with, do you like this? Do you not like this? Does this work for you?

Does this not work for you? And then it enhanced because I was giving myself permission to do something about it. not waiting for validation or external approval for me to be able to make a move and do what I needed to do to remedy that.

Tanya: I, I think the thing is too, a lot of times we acclimate to the situation and it’s like a security blanket. It’s just like having a security blanket that’s smelly and gross looks awful, but we wanna hold tight to it because it’s familiar. And the idea of throw in that blanket, even in the washing machine to give it a good wash or to say, Ooh, do I even like carrying this thing around?

We keep lugging it around because this is what we’re used to and shifting and changing out of that, it feels scary even though you’re getting rid of, what is toxic, what is not serving you, what is not letting you be your highest and greatest self? And I think that’s one of the things that keeps us and holds us back, is sometimes these relationships with other people, but also the relationship with ourselves.

Not understanding that we are worthy of so much more. It’s almost like we’re scared that maybe we’re not worthy.

Patrice: Well, you know what I learned too, Tanya? I had Dr. Tama Bryant on my podcast and she’s the brilliant author of a book called Homecoming. And on my 41st birthday last March I was on the beach by myself in Costa Rica reading this book, and I got to a passage where it talks about many times. We believe that people who are in toxic environments, and again, this is not just a relationship, it could be a work environment that you’ve tolerated for years or decades, right?

That sometimes we go, well they must have low self-esteem, or they must be down and out or downtrodden and I struggled with that for a few years leading up to me deciding to separate and divorce because I was like I’m doing all of this work. I don’t feel like I have low self-esteem, but I couldn’t put words to it.

I’m like, maybe it’s deep down in there. And, you know, the self-help personal development junkie that I am , I’m, you know, I read all the books. I’ve read your books, right? I read all the books. I listen to the things I, I’m just very self-reflective and I have coaches and therapists and all this.

And then I get to the line. It’s not necessarily low self-esteem, but sometimes it’s our overconfidence that we can fix things and people just merely through our own effort, no effort of them, of their, of theirs, but our own effort.

And that’s the first time friend that it hit me. I was like, oh my gosh, I’m so used to being a person that when I put my mind to something, when I lay out a plan to execute something, right, when I, you know, say I’m gonna make something happen, I’m a doer and I’m a finisher, and not finishing is like failure and I’m not a failure.

The same strategies that have gotten me degrees in certifications and an award-winning podcast and bestselling books and all the things. I tried to apply that to a relationship where I thought I could pray more fast, more, church more, right?

Like, do all the things, go to all the conferences, do whatever it took, and I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t working and it wasn’t about me having low self-esteem. It was overconfidence.

Tanya: That’s a huge realization, because we do, we think people are not in good relationships because of this low self-esteem, or because there’s some, there’s something wrong with them and we’re like, no, I’m a strong woman. Patrice is a strong woman, right? So that’s such an amazing realization because so often we go into relationships and we think, oh, I can fix this person.

Whether we’re talking about a romantic relationship or a family member or a friend, and we think, I’m just gonna stick it out because I can fix this. I like to call it broken bird syndrome. I used to have a very solid broken bird syndrome where I’d like, oh, this little bird is so broken. I can fix them.

This is what I’m good at. And then I started to realize, This is not healthy for me to be fixing broken birds because sometimes it’s okay for me to be the broken bird. Sometimes it’s okay for me to need people to pour into me and to support me, and that is a, a very interesting revelation to, to receive where it’s like, you know, you don’t have to constantly be holding everybody else up.

It’s okay to sometimes need

supporting yourself. You know what too? I have found that allowing myself to be supported is also a big part of the self-love journey. Is like loving myself to be honest with people that I need

support. And in this last year I have seen so many people. Raise up in different ways and not because I even had to say, oh, something was going on, but my relationships in general, like, you know, I have several good girlfriends where we do these, you know, once a month or every other month we have a FaceTime like you and I do, and it’s just, it like fills us up and it’s so good to just talk to someone.

And it’s not because we’re living the same experience, but it’s someone who who is also purpose driven and like-hearted. And, you know, foundationally we share a lot of the same core values so we can talk and it makes sense, you know? . And so I had those moments with several girlfriends.

Again, some once a month, some every other month, but it’s so good to have your tank filled up, allowing myself to be loved because a part of what I’ve also learned is that, you know, love is around us and can be present for us every day, even if we’re not in a romantic relationship. and you can’t regulate this whole thing about love of self, love of God, and then love of others.

It’s about experiencing love in different moments throughout the day and experiencing love from girlfriends or friends or other family members. And when I started to expand even that idea of love, I’m so loved.

Tanya: I love that.

Patrice: I’ve always been so loved, but now I’m in a space where I can receive it.

Tanya: It’s interesting because that’s one of the things I realized at the start of the year that I needed to work on. I am very good at pouring love into other people, but the act of receiving the love, receiving and love comes in many forms. it can come in the form of compliments. It can come in the form of physical love. It can come in the form of just conversation and support and kind words and reaching out. It comes in many forms and a lot of times I was, you know, rebuffing it. I was, oh, no, no, no. Someone would compliment me and I wouldn’t receive it. Or someone would come in and say, how can I support you? And I’d say, oh no, I’m good. Even though I wasn’t, because again, I’m here to take care of everybody else and I’m confident so, Somehow I don’t need this. And I really started to realize that if I truly want to experience love with other people, that’s a two-way street.

I have to love them and they have to love me back. I deserve that love. And I think that’s really powerful. And I started to realize I was doing this meditation where I was focusing in on the feeling of love and spreading it throughout my body and then spreading it outside of my body and doing this whole meditative process where you’re pushing love out into the world, pushing out good.

And it was really interesting cause I’d, I’d start with this little seed of an idea and I’d be like, I don’t know if I feel that. And. . When you stop and you think about someone that you love and how they feel about you, you’ll feel it inside your body. And if you are not able to feel that in your body, it means, Ooh, I need to open up more to that.

I need to really open up to experiencing love to go deeper with people because you’re worthy of it. Just Just by being you.

Patrice: Yeah. And it’s also teaching people how to treat you. So when we don’t allow ourselves to receive the love, the support, the encouragement, and we always carry this attitude well, I’ve got it. I’ve got it. I’m here for you. Right? You know, I don’t need you. When we actually need people, they don’t realize that we need them, and we have trained them to stop asking.

We’ve trained them that we don’t need support.

And, and then I don’t know about you, but I’ve definitely been in seasons, not this particular season, but I’ve been in seasons in my life where I’m like, no one checks on me. No one, they don’t care about me. No one loves me. I’m always there for people. And it’s like, yeah looking back, I’m like, yeah, you absolutely trained them to not check on you.

You did that and then they obliged.

Tanya: Cuz that’s totally when you get really irritated. Cause you’re like, how come no one’s here? I showed up for you when this happened and that happened and you stubbed your toe and I showed up for you and you didn’t like think things, little things, all kinds of things.

Where are you? And you’re right. We have trained people not to show up for us because we’re like, no, I’m good. And then everyone around you, this drives me crazy when people are. You, you try to express that you’re going through something hard and people go, oh, you, you’ll be fine. You always do good. You always

Patrice: You always do.

Aha. You’re the strong. I know you’re strong. You’re

Tanya: you always, you always, do good things, you’ll be fine.

And I’m like, A. Stop telling me how I feel. B. I’m trying to tell you I need help and you’re telling me I’m gonna be just fine. There is nothing that makes me feel more like an island like I am on my own and not like, a fruity cocktail kind of island where you have like an umbrella in straw, like more like Tom Hanks putting out his tooth with an ice skate kind of island. That’s when you start to feel like where is, why is nobody showing up? But I love that realization. It’s because you have trained them. You’re telling everyone, I don’t need, I don’t need

Patrice:Mm-hmm.

Tanya: need your love, because I got plenty here for myself.

When really that tank is empty.

that tank is really empty.

Patrice: You know what? I’ve also realized that sometimes you can’t share sometimes the things that we wanna share with everyone. And this just kind of goes back to that having those trusted confidants and knowing who’s in your corner and where you can go with certain things. Right? Because I’ve shared things with you that I might not necessarily share with other friends that we both have in common.

It’s not the place that they hold in my life. Like it just doesn’t come up naturally. And it’s not even that I’m intentionally, like I can tell Tanya, but I can’t tell so-and-so. It’s not that. But you know, every relationship has its own culture, if you will, and its own kind of language and vibe.

And I think it’s just important that we learn to identify who those people are for the different parts of our lives who can hold space for us and allow us to be 1000% ourselves. Because you can’t feel safe in a space where people are instantly judging or, doing the , oh, you’ll be fine.

So they’re dismissive of your experience and, and those types of things. And I try to hold that space for some girlfriends, depending on what it is they’re telling me, hold the space. . I’m not even here to offer advice or an opinion. I’m just here to

Tanya: Yes. is, that is sometimes hard to do. I don’t know if you experience. With your daughter, but there are times where she’s telling me something and I will immediately jump into fix-it mode. Well, okay, well why don’t you do this? And then I’m like, oh, I’ve had to go afterwards and apologize and say, Hey, I, I totally jumped into fix-it mode there.

I’m sorry, did you just want me to

listen?

Because I didn’t but it’s, it’s true. We, have this tendency for that. And, and here’s the truth too. When people say you’ll be fine, when people say you always do okay, that is a form of them trying to love you. That is a form of them trying to say, I think you’re a great, great person and you’re gonna be okay in this, and maybe they’re loving you the best way then can.

Patrice: A great problem solver.

But it’s

Tanya: not necessarily what you need,

and that’s okay.

If their

Patrice: and that’s

okay.

Tanya: you is not what you need, it’s okay to say That is not what I need and you are not my person. That’s not insulting to that person. It’s just having that, that cognizance and that realization that I have other people, I have certain people I can talk to about my business, things I have certain people I can talk to about my personal life.

I have certain people I can talk to about parenting and, and knowing who those people are is really

powerful. It’s really powerful. But we do need to surround ourselves with people who can fill in. You and I both talk about this more than just one aspect of you. You are so much more than just worker bee. There’s all these different aspects of who you are and what makes you special and unique. Having people in your corner for each of those different facets of you, that’s really powerful. It’s really powerful.

Patrice: Yeah.

and, and also just knowing that it requires you to also show up for them, because I don’t know about you, but I’ve also just experienced this kind of thing where, you know, there’s certain people where it’s on, they only show up when they need to tell you something, but they’re not available when you need to tell them something.

and I don’t believe that you can make big withdrawals from places you haven’t deposited because it does leave the other person feeling depleted and like they’re at a deficit. Those are conversations that I’ve had to have with some people in this season as well, just acknowledging, you know, , I need you, I need you to be more present.

And listen, when I, when I’m sharing and you know, everyone’s busy and they’re going through their stuff, no one gets that more than I do. I totally understand a full plate. However, somehow I’m able to create space when needed for a good friend and reciprocity is expected. and that’s been the hard conversation to have it, it was a fruitful conversation and I’m glad that I did it, but it, it was a conversation that I had to have with a

Tanya: friend.

I like that, that, it’s a hard conversation. I think so often the discomfort of the conversation is what holds us back. There is honestly five minutes of discomfort on the front end of that conversation. Once that first five minutes is over with, you’ve, you’ve released that and it’s so much easier to talk about how you’re really feeling, how you’re receiving whatever it is they’re giving to you.

We let five minutes of discomfort hold us back from a lifetime of a relationship, from a lifetime of receiving and giving love from a lifetime of so much goodness that five minutes of discomfort it’s so tiny in the spectrum when we look at the timeline of your life.

We let that discomfort hold us back from growth, from the relationship, from whatever it is you’re desiring.

Patrice: Yeah, because when we don’t just have that five minutes of discomfort, when we don’t have that conversation, we allow resentment to take root. We become bitter, right? And then you’re having these silent arguments with someone that doesn’t even realize they’ve done something to hurt or offend you.

And so you are upset and now that’s turning into unforgiveness. And we know unforgiveness starts to bleed into everything else you know, that you’re doing and become such a distraction. And instead of going down, that path of destruction, , because it’s gonna lead to destruction. Like, you know, destroying something.

That five minutes of discomfort has really restored a great friendship for me. And it was, it was uncomfortable. But what I’m learning in this season as well, just about self-love is it’s important for me. It’s not even so much, I don’t know that I call them boundaries anymore, but it, they are governing decision.

Governing decisions for how I live my life. These are some base level things that are just kind of required to be in relationship with me and in alignment for where I am today in my life, or even for works related things, right?

And so that governing decision dictated that I have the conversation because I believe that anyone that I have in such close proximity to me that they would want to know if they did something my governing decision is in order to be in relationship with me, that you will cherish the sanctity, like the sacred space that we have, right?

So if we, if we decide that we’re gonna do a FaceTime, even if we’re late, we’re like, Hey girl, five minutes, gimme this, gimme that. Wise, like, you know, we’ve had wild stories. Our FaceTime has just like blown up our phones, like all kind of things, but. We, because we hold that time sacred when we decide we’re gonna have that time, we both are very like intentional about, okay, I’m pulling up, I’m getting somewhere, I’m logging on, I’m doing this.

So to have someone in my life that doesn’t see that that time with me is sacred. And so if they just blew it off or like, oh, I girl, I forgot. Like I, like I just have hours laying around to do nothing like, Disqualifies you if you do that too many times, that’s like, okay, well then you don’t hold this friendship as sacred as I do.

And that’s okay if that’s not where we are in this season. But I’m also not gonna cre continue to create space for you. Right. And I needed to have that conversation. So she understood what that felt like for me, and she had an opportunity to remedy it, which she did. But because I held that as a a, a real thing to be in community with me, to be in spaces with me, you have to hold me sacred.

I’m not in a season where people can just take advantage of me

Tanya: you have to hold me sacred.

Patrice: or my time.

Tanya: I, that is everything right there, because I think you’re so right. We have these conversations in our head. 10 minutes after whatever has happened that we just go off, or we’re having the conversations too at like two in the morning as well, where we’re like, well, I’m gonna say this and I’m gonna say that, and it’s what, that’s not doing us any good.

So to, to have the five minutes of uncomfortableness in order to salvage or save a relationship, to set the boundaries that are healthy and nurturing and nourishing to you is incredibly important.

I think though, that there are times where those conversations either can’t happen or they’re almost impossible to have when I’m talking like, you know, maybe someone who’s passed, someone who’s no longer in your life.

One of the things I have been doing, part of my focus in 2023 has been for forgiveness because I have found that I store a lot of that anger, frustration, irritation inside my body.

I’ve really been trying to pay attention to where I’m holding it. I will think back on something that happened 20 years ago.

And when I say things like 20 years ago, that makes me feel old, but we’ll move on from that. When I think about things in 20 years ago and I still feel them in my body, I realize, oh, I’ve not moved on. I am holding onto that and why? Right? Things that happened in high school, things that happened in college, things with an old boyfriend, things with….

So I don’t need to go back and find those people and have those conversations, but I have this little exercise I’ve walked myself through. Really granting forgiveness for them and for me, that has been so cathartic. It has revolutionized how I hold, I don’t hold any grudges anymore, and I don’t move into anger the way that I used to.

I would move into anger, but nobody else would know. Oh, no, no. That would be inconvenient for them. . I just store it and bottle it up inside my body. But it was freeing when I realized I needed to. So I’ll just tell you about it if you’re interested.

Patrice: Tell me the exercise I’m like, on the edge of my seat, like, what’s this exercise friend?

Tanya: I made a list of the people I needed forgive, which was like cleaning out a closet where you’re just pulling it all out and you’re like, okay, this. This feels good. Alright. We’re gonna, we’re gonna dig through this and we’re gonna get rid of some of this old things.

So I, I wrote out a list and then I thought, okay, I’m gonna focus on one person, one event. Some people have multiple events, let’s be honest, one event a day, and this exercise takes me like five to seven minutes. I think about the person and I call them forth in my mind, and then we go to a spot that I feel is neutral.

So it might be a space that’s meaningful for us that where our relationship was good or a space that’s very meaningful for me. I have wallflowers in my backyard, so I bring them there and then I just lay it out on the table. This is what you did to me. This is how it made me feel, and I let myself fully feel all of it….

Every single bit of it. I let myself feel, and then in my mind’s eye, I change the scene to black and white because when you take away the color of a scene, all the emotion goes away. I’ve let myself feel it. I’ve put it out there, change it to black and white. And then I shift the point of view from me to them.

So I literally go from me to their point of view and they tell me, this is why I did it. This is what happened in my past. This is the way that I felt or thought or saw you at that time. And they lay those things out on the table and I just listen. And then I go back to me and I say, okay, here’s the lessons I got out of this.

Because everything bad has something good, right? You can’t have good without bad, can’t have dark without light. Here’s the good I got out of it: out of this, I realized I needed better boundaries or out of this, I realized I didn’t wanna have relationships like this anymore out of this. So I take and I just extract the lessons and then I make the decision, am I ready to forgive?

And if I am, I forgive them and I hug them and I send them on their way. And if I’m not, I say, I will see you tomorrow. We will have another session like this. And then sometimes it takes me two or three times, but then, What’s funny is afterwards, if I think about that same person or that same event, that feeling no longer shows up in my body, it’s gone.

I am not carrying it, and that my friend is freeing and has changed everything in my world. I did it every single day for the whole first quarter of 2023, and now I feel like I’m moving through the world so much lighter and happier.

Patrice: Friend, I cannot wait to do this. So I’m gonna start, and then you’re gonna come on the Redefining Wealth podcast, and we’re going to tell this story again. You’re gonna share this exercise again, and I’ll share what comes out of it for me. I did a energy releasing kind of cord cutting, if you will, ceremony the weekend before my, my birthday in March.

And. a part of that process. In the ceremony, we had to write apology letters to ourselves and then an apology letter from the person who we believe offended us. And so in a similar fashion, it was them apologizing and acknowledging similar to what you visualized. I have like the letters from those people but I like this.

I like the whole idea about. Turning to black and white and the color leaving and the emotion like that was so good. I cannot wait to do this. But even in that exercise for me, the writing, the apology letter from the person I chose for the purposes of that of that exercise, at the time, it was freeing.

It was very freeing. And I also was able to extract the lessons because I was very clear, you know, I, you, you know, I’m, I’m looking to date with intention this year, and I’m like, I wanna trust myself in the dating space because I have been coupled my whole adult life, you know, with my former husband.

And so learning to date as a 42 year old woman in a new world, in a very different world than what it was. You know, obviously in my early twenties, it’s really important that I extract these lessons from each situationship…from each experience, I’m looking to just extract the lessons and figure out, okay, well what do I take with me into my next experience?

Which I’m definitely down that that’s a part of the process. You know, you meet some characters along the way and I feel like I’m gonna need to be forgiving people.

Tanya: Yes you will needs to do some forgiveness activities without question, but I do think when you take the emotions out, you can see the lesson so much easier. And I wanna go ahead and throw out there to do the opposite, to saturate and to pull more color into a scene allows you to feel emotions more so when, earlier when I talked. Wanting to receive love better. I would take those scenes where I was experiencing and I would literally turn up the saturation and make it full color, fully bright. And that just drives those emotions and those feelings inside your body up.

Patrice: Mm.

Tanya: It’s really interesting with visualization.

Patrice: I love that!

Tanya: I’m excited that you’re gonna do, I’m I will send you a, a text after this to make sure that I went over all the different things with you. But I’m excited to hear how this shifts for you because, really letting go of anger is revolutionary. Because I think too, as women we’re taught not to be angry, so I know for me, I took my anger and I would, I’m an Enneagram eight, which I think they automatically go to anger.

I, I would experience anger, but nobody else would know, cuz I would just put it in this nice little bottle and shove it somewhere inside my body and I would continue to be angry

Patrice: yeah.

Having conversations

Tanya: in my head, which was doing no one any good, wasn’t doing me any good, wasn’t doing them any. And that idea of the energetic cutting of cords, this is like a beautiful way to, they’re not just cut.

I’m pulling the cords out of this person, pulling the cords outta me. We no longer have an energetic exchange. I am no longer, you’re no longer in my sphere. Bless and release my friend.

Patrice: We’re not tethered.

Yeah, but you, you said something really important. I just now in these last several months have learned to accept my anger. For so long, something would happen and I could spiritualize it, and I could intellectualize it, and I would not allow myself to feel the emotions associated with it.

So when someone would do something like a betrayal or something, and I had every right to be angry, and I had every right to experience anger, I had learned to very calmly talk through it. You wouldn’t maybe see me like having a disagreement with someone from across the room, and you’d never know that I was angry because I, I looked exactly the same,

It was just very, like, even tone. I’m very clear and level-headed. I’m articulating my thoughts very clearly. You did this thing, but nothing on my face was saying she’s angry. Nothing in my body movement was saying, oh, this is an angry woman. I was just, I did not appreciate, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But do you So much

Tanya: suppression there.

Simmering

under the

surface,

Patrice: Some

just simmering under the surface. So much

Tanya: Storing it up in that body.

Patrice: So not only could I get angry, I didn’t know how to, I didn’t even know how to be angry, but I also didn’t know how to

cry for years.

Tanya: Yeah, well, you’re a good girl, so you don’t wanna do, you know, you don’t, you don’t wanna make anyone else mad. But here’s the thing, Patrice, I see you. I feel you. I, I totally, I am here with you because I have totally experienced that myself. Nobody else has any idea. Meanwhile, under the surface, I am so mad.

I can barely speak, but I’m gonna hold it all together. , right? Yeah. Ugh. Okay. Well I think we’re, I think we’re out of time. We’re over time because, and I knew this would happen because this is how it works for Patrice and I. We’ll be like, let’s schedule an hour and then John will be like, who have you been talking to for like two and a half hours?

Patrice: for two hours

Yeah, two hours

later.

Tanya: and I have been chatting for two and a half hours. This is so. So good. And I feel like this idea of really diving into who we are and giving and receiving love is so powerful. And Patrice, you are an amazing person who I’m so grateful to have in my world. Please tell everyone listening where they can connect with you.

Patrice: Well, you definitely wanna catch part two of Tanya and Patrice over at the Redefining Wealth Podcast . So wherever you listen to podcasts, check out redefining wealth, and you can find all things Patrice Washington at patricewashington.com.

Tanya: Patrice has amazing, amazing stuff. She is a fabulous author, just, just a fabulous person all around. So definitely go check out Patrice washington.com. Patrice, thanks so much for coming on today’s show.

Patrice: Thank you for having me friend.

Tanya: Whew. I don’t know about you, but this conversation. It was fire for me. It really was. This is, this is how the conversations with Patrice goes , where I say to her, okay, we have like an hour and then we end up talking for two and a half hours or or like on today’s podcast. I said, okay, we’re keeping it to this short little timeframe, and then we keep talking because it’s so good.

It’s so nurturing and nourishing. I’m hoping that you got a lot out of today’s conversation because I know I did. You know, acknowledging and giving yourself permission to experience your emotions, to, to express your feelings. I think it’s really powerful and I love how Patrice is on this journey of really redefining love for herself and her relationships, her relationship with God as well.

It’s really powerful when we lean into this type of work., So I’m hoping that you feel like you are ready to move into forgiveness, that you are ready to acknowledge some of the anger and the frustration to, to no longer put up with the toxicity maybe that you’ve put up with in the past. Because the truth is, it’s powerful when you start to do this kind of work.

So if you enjoyed today’s show, I hope you did. Be sure to take a screenshot, send it to your best friend, send it to your neighbor, send it to your coworker, send it to anyone and everyone who you feel would benefit from this.

Here’s a fun little extra that I’m now doing. I’m recording the podcast and putting them on YouTube. So if you wanna see my expression when Patrice said something, or her expression , when I said something that maybe surprised her, head over to YouTube.

you’ll see some video, you get to see Patrice in action. It’s a lot of fun. So I’d hope you wanna join me there. Just go to tanyadalton.com/youtube and like I said, be sure to share the podcast with your friends, your relatives, people you don’t even know, people on the street. That helps us spread the word of the Intentional Advantage.

Here’s what I want you to leave today’s show knowing when we truly acknowledge who we are. And how we feel when we move into forgiveness and releasing some of those emotions we’ve been feeling. That helps us step into being our best self. And yes, that helps us be more productive in every single facet of our lives, not just with who we are at work, but beyond that in our relationships, and really stepping into being who it is you desire to be

because when you do that, that’s when you’ve got the Intentional Advantage.

Ready to take action on what we talked about on today’s episode. The easiest way to get started is my free take five challenge, five minutes a day for five days. That’s it. And yet it will boost your productivity and double your happiness. I can promise you thousands have taken the challenge. Go to Tanya dalton.com/take five to join or click the link in the episode notes.

And don’t forget to follow the intentional advantage on your podcast player so you don’t miss an episode.

**The Intentional Advantage is a top rated productivity podcast for women. This transcript is created by AI, so please excuse any typos, misspellings and grammar mistakes.

Tanya Dalton has been called one of the best female motivational speakers. She  offers keynotes and talks on the topic of  productivity. Her entertaining and engaging sessions cover topics like habits, purpose, time management and goal setting.