Jodi Cohen: Hello and welcome to Essential Alchemy. Alchemy is defined as the power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious or impressive way. My hope is that the information in this podcast can help you transform your mood, energy, physical health, or even some dots to help you shift your mental or emotional state. I’m your host, Jodi Cohen, a bestselling author, award-winning journalist, functional practitioner, lifelong learner, and founder of Vibrant Blue Oils, a company that sells proprietary blends of high-quality, organic, or wildcrafted essential oil remedies designed to help you return to your ideal mental, physical, and emotional state. You can find out more about me and my company at vibrantblueoils.com. And with that, let’s get started with today’s episode.
Hi, I’m Jodi Cohen and I am your host, and I’m super excited to bring you, my dear friend, Tanya Dalton, who is going to blow your mind with her knowledge about time management, calming, overwhelm, really actionable, no rocket science tips, no rocket Science is her podcast. And Tanya is a bestselling author, motivational speaker, nationally recognized productivity expert who you might’ve seen on the Today Show. She empowers executives and entrepreneurs to embrace intentional leadership. Welcome.
Tanya Dalton: Season 4, Episode 13: Productivity Hacks with Tanya Dalton Jodi Cohen: And I forgot to mention your book. You want to hold it up from the background?
Tanya Dalton: Sure. I’ve got two books, Joy of Missing Out Back here. I’ll grab it real quick. The joy of Missing Out is my first book, and yes, that picture I think says it. All right. That’s how we all feel; we’re trying to do everything. Yes, it really is about finding more joy in our daily life. I think there’s a lot of happiness, a lot of joy in the cracks and crevices of everyday life, but we’re so busy that we’re missing it, right? So it’s actively choosing to miss out on the things you don’t really want to do. My second book is on Purpose. So on Purpose, the Busy Woman’s Guide to an Extraordinary Life of Meaning and Success. And so the joy of missing Out is really about how you find more Joy. What does that look like? How do you create days that feel meaningful? And then on purpose, how do you create that vision of where you want to go? And then what goals do you set? How do you figure out what you want to do? So they kind of go together, but they also can be read separately.
Jodi Cohen: Well, and it really speaks to me. I feel like I wasted so many years when my kids were little like the hamster on the wheel. It was like task, task, task, sleep, rinse, repeat. And in hindsight like, oh my God, wow, did that go quickly? And I wish I had really leaned in and enjoyed it more. Can you speak to that a little bit?
Tanya Dalton: Yeah, I think there’s that whole saying that the days are long, but the years are short. And I think people say that to you when you’re pregnant and when your kids are little and you’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I just want to shower. I just want to be able to go to the bathroom by myself without anyone else in the room. And then one day you find yourself being able to go to the bathroom alone and you’re like, wait, where is everybody? Where your house is clean, like meticulously clean. You’re like kind of miss the mess.
It’s funny, the things that we wish for we eventually get, and then we kind of want to go back and revisit what we missed. And I think that’s the thing is we get so caught up in all the things that we think we’re supposed to do or should do that we’re not really taking the time to soak in the meaning to soak in the moment and be present fully. And for me, that’s really one of the things I like to talk to people about. I call my substack not rocket science because a lot of what I teach is not rocket science. It’s not difficult. It’s really easy to implement, and simple to manage, but monumental in the impact it makes on your daily life. And it is small things. One of the things I talk about in the joy of missing out is this concept of million-dollar minutes.
I call them million-dollar minutes because they’re these little slips of time in our day that if they were gone tomorrow, I know I would pay a million dollars to get them back. So it’s the little tiny things. Like for me, one of my million-dollar minutes is a lot of times I like to get up early, I like to write. And so I get up early in the morning and I write, and I’m doing a couple of things for myself. I make sure the kids are up and moving, and then I go and slip back into bed, which seems kind of funny, but I slide back into bed next to my husband because he’s just waking up and we spend 10 minutes lying side by side in bed talking about what we dreamed about the night before or what we have going on in the day.
And to me, those 10 minutes are worth a million dollars or more, quite frankly. So it’s really 10 minutes of intention with my marriage. And so it’s when you start to recognize that these million dollar minutes are scattered throughout your day, it’s when Kay comes home from school, she’s 17, she’s my youngest right now, she’s 17. So she comes home and if she says, Hey mom, lemme give you a little tea. Lemme tell you what’s going on at school. I’m like, stop the presses. I don’t care what I’m doing. I need to give you my full attention because I know that this is really valuable, even if it’s people I don’t even know what she’s talking about or what’s going on. It’s me being attentive to her and receiving and giving her love. So it’s these tiny moments, and that’s what I think really stretches the time.
Tanya Dalton: I think so often we feel like we don’t have the time, and the truth is we all have the same 24 hours. You, me, Beyonce, we all have 24 of all the inequities in our world. Time is the one thing that is completely doled out evenly to every single one of us. It’s all about how you choose to spend your time. So understanding and acknowledging the choices that we’re making that I’m choosing to stop what I’m doing, to listen to my daughter, or I’m choosing to spend 10 minutes to focus with intention on my marriage, that time is not just going to happen. It’s not going to like, oh, fall in my lap. I have to create that time. I have to carve it out and really prioritize it. And if I don’t, it’ll slip by. So that’s one of the things. It’s like those little things, right?
Jodi Cohen: It really is. Those are the two. I do the exact same thing with the guy I’m dating and with my daughter. Every time she calls, I just drop it. But I’m curious. I went through a process of really prioritizing what I value. How do I, and I actually run everything through that filter of if I’m
making a decision, how does it line up with my values? I’m curious how you kind of coach people through this.
Tanya Dalton: Yeah, so I do the same thing. I use what I call the North Star, which is our mission, our vision, and our core values. So my mission or your mission is not what you do, it’s why you do it. I think if we get caught up in what we do, it feels very mechanical and it doesn’t have any purpose behind it. So for example, with you, Jodi, with your oils, it’s not about you don’t sell oils, you help people find health. You help people find sleep. You help them feel better so that they can show up and be the best version of themselves, right? Exactly. That’s your mission. It’s not about selling the oils, it’s why you do what you do. So that’s the first part of the star. Second part is the vision. So if the mission is the why, what vision is, where are we going?
Where is it I want to go? So often we just kind of wing it and we just, I don’t know. I don’t know where I’m going, what’s going on. It’s like getting in the car and expecting to drive to Disneyland or something, and not having a map or not having not mapped out ahead of time, you’re going to get lost. So where do you want to go? And then your core values, and that answers, who do I want to get there? How do I want to live? How do I want to present myself? How do I want to behave? And so through using that filter of your mission, your vision, and your core values, it becomes really clear what is your yes, right? I think so often we hear that we need to say no more often, and I would agree with that, but we also need to say yes more often.
I think we need to hear more yeses. And the thing is, a lot of times we’re saying yes, out of obligation or out of expectation, someone asks us, Hey, can you bake 75 dozen brownies for the bake fair? Sure, I can do that. Even though you don’t have time. We say yes out of that obligation, but every time we’re saying yes, we’re saying no to something else.
Tanya Dalton: And a lot of times the things we’re saying no to are our family, our personal passion projects, our own goals, the things that we really want to do with our time. We’re saying no to those. So recognizing every time you say yes, you’re saying no to something else. Let’s choose our yeses. Let’s decide what we want to say yes to. And in the joy of missing out, I actually have a little blueprint called the finding your Yes blueprint. And I’ll tell you this in the Finding Your Yes Blueprint, the first question is not, do you have the time? The second question is not, do you have the time? The third question is not, do you have the time? The first question are, how do I feel about this? Do I want to do this? Does this line up with my mission, my vision, my core values, my North Star…
Jodi Cohen: Right.
Tanya Dalton: We have to go through these other filters because so often we will say to ourselves, with the 72 dozen brownies for the bake fair, we’ll say, oh, I’ve got the time. Even though you don’t have the time, we’ll say, yes, I have the time. And really the question is, do I like to bake brownies? Do I support this cause, right? Is this something that’s meaningful to me? And let’s say it is a cause that you really like. Let’s say it’s to support your child’s school. Is brownie baking what you like to do? Or is there something else you could do instead? Could you pass out flyers for the bake sale? Could you say no to this and say yes to something else that the school does? So really being mindful of where we’re putting our yeses and choosing yeses that feel right to us, I think is a really big thing.
Jodi Cohen: What a proactive approach to mental health, because so many of us, say yes to things we don’t want to do, and then we dread it or we have anxiety about it, or we procrastinate and don’t show up in the way that was our best self. This is brilliant because you’re alleviating problems before you agree to them,
Tanya Dalton: Right. Because that’s the thing is if you’re feeling resentful or irritated, are you really giving them the best you possible? Probably not. And you’re certainly not giving your kids your best, you or your spouse, your significant other, or your friends, because you’re irritated and grumpy that you have to bake these stupid brownies.
Jodi Cohen: To boundaries a little bit. Absolutely. People get really confused. What do boundaries mean? Just saying no to people. No, it’s prioritizing what your yeses are.
Tanya Dalton: It is, it’s prioritizing what is truly important to you. I like to say productivity is not about doing more. It’s doing what’s most important. So choose what is most important to you. But I think a lot of times we feel uncomfortable with saying no. That’s one of the things is we’re like, oh, but I don’t want to say no. And we mix up the request with the relationship, right? We’re like, oh, they’re really nice. So I want to say yes. Meanwhile, we’re resentful and we’re irritated, all those things. So I like to tell people, first of all, to have a go-to phrase that you can say when someone asks you to do something. Because a lot of times you get asked in the hallway at work, you get asked on the sidelines of the soccer field, you get asked, you don’t know what to say, so you just say yes.
And then five seconds afterward, you’re like, why did I say yes to that? So I like to say, when someone gives me a request for my time, I’ll say, oh, that’s such a great opportunity. I need to go check my calendar. Or Let me think about it. I have several things going on right now. I want to make sure I can prioritize it. So when I’m saying no to them, or I’m giving them myself some space to step back and assess it and see if I want to do it, I’m already making them feel good about it by saying, I want to make, I can prioritize this because I know this is important. And then when I’m saying no to someone, because it’s not my priority but theirs, I will use what I call the sandwich strategy, which is like a sandwich, two slices of bread, two slices of kindness.
The meat in the middle is the no. So I’ll say something like, I’ll start with the kindness. Thank you so much for thinking of me for this opportunity. I really love what you guys are doing there with whatever the organization is. Unfortunately, right now, I just am not able to have the bandwidth to be able to commit to this, and I would love to because it’s such a priority. I know I really want
to be able to support you guys in the future. Let me know what I can do for you some other time. So it’s two pieces of kindness with that solid knowing there’s no maybe or I’m not sure. It’s like I can’t commit to that, and I make it really clear, but I also elevate their cause, their thing that they want to do. I can’t prioritize that. And it deserves to be a priority.
Jodi Cohen: I love that. I occasionally have social anxiety, and it’s really correlated to disappointing people. People are always asking me to do things that are not on my yes list, and I don’t know how to politely say no. So I love having the script in advance. That’s wonderful.
Tanya Dalton: It helps because truly we will say yes when we don’t know what else to say. And then we’re like, oh, why did I say yes to that thing? I have no interest in it. And then we feel stuck. And so what I would also tell you is we’re never stuck. Even if you said yes to something, go back to them and say, listen, I’m not going to be able to do this to the best of my abilities. You deserve to have this done really well. I’m going to need to back out and maybe help them find somebody else to take the place. Or I can do something else.
Tanya Dalton: For example, with the bake sale, as I said, maybe it’s, you know what? I can probably do the flyers. I can help with that. Or I can help process the checks afterward, find some other way that you can help, that fits what you want to say yes to.
Jodi Cohen: Well, and I think so many of us as pleasers do confuse the request with the relationship. And we’re afraid that the person won’t like us if we say no.
Tanya Dalton: Yes, we do so much out of people pleasing, don’t we? Because we don’t want people to be disappointed in us. And I think that’s the thing that really holds us back a lot of times. But would we rather show up as our best selves or our grumpiest most irritable selves because we’re not happy about what we’re doing? So when we show up and say yes to the right things, we show up as our best mom, best person, best spouse, best friend, best community member, and best neighbor, when we are feeling really good about what we’re doing. So when we think about it, it really is helpful to everybody else. There’s this effect that’s been scientifically proven called the halo effect, that how we behave affects everybody around us. It’s our blast radius. So when we’re irritated, we’re grumpy, we’re feeling overwhelmed. That bleeds into how our family feels, and how the other people we interact with feel our coworkers feel. And if instead, we choose to take care of ourselves and we start doing things that make us feel good and healthy and well rested and all those things, that halo effect is also there. The people around us start paying attention, and they start mimicking and doing the things that we are doing, and we can really be a change, a force for good.
Jodi Cohen: I’ve noticed that even in my company when I start to think more self-care because then I think there’s no resentment. So you’re just always more respectful with people.
Tanya Dalton: It’s so much easier to give, I think. I like to say, we can’t shine our light on others if our battery needs recharging, and if we’re not taking care of ourselves, our battery is just flickering and going out, and then we’re irritated about trying to even shine the light. We’re just so tired. So taking care of yourself really is a gift for everyone else. It really shouldn’t be called self, self-care, because it is community care. When we all take care of ourselves, we can all take care of each other. And I think that the rising tide lifts all the boats. That’s true for us as well.
Jodi Cohen: Well, and I love the way you’re kind of rethinking productivity and overwhelm. It’s almost the antithesis of what most people say. Get up earlier. No pain, no gain, do more. Can you…
Tanya Dalton: Hustle? Hustle.
Jodi Cohen: Yeah. Of some of your favorite tips?
Tanya Dalton: Oh yeah. I mean, this is the thing I’m very anti-hustles culture, which I think is kind of the drive today where it’s like, just dig in and do more. And if you’re not, no pain, no gain. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. And so I think to me, it’s like, gosh, that doesn’t sound like how I want to live at all.
Jodi Cohen: But…
Tanya Dalton: People are disciplined. You have to be disciplined. And that’s a big one for me, is people always will say to me, oh, I’m just not disciplined. I’m like, discipline is boring. Discipline is way overrated. I mean, I don’t want to be disciplined. I like to have the freedom to be able to do things. And that’s what good productivity allows you to do. It’s not stifling, it’s not rigid. It’s a little bit of structure. It’s a little bit of scaffolding to help hold you up. I like to say it’s our bridges and buildings we build that have that flexibility built in for the high winds of life and that are going to withstand tornadoes and things like that. We need that with our productivity. So building in that grace. And one of the best ways to do that, quite frankly, is mapping out your day, but not doing that at one time.
At the beginning of the week, I teach a process that I call the five Ps. The first P is to purge it out of your brain, get it out on a sheet of paper, and just brain dump it. Don’t worry about the order of it, don’t worry about what it looks like. Just write it on the sheet of paper. And then we want to process. We want to process each day as it comes. So what we do a lot of times is we sit down on Sunday and we’re like, here’s what I’m doing Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and we map out the whole week. And then we wonder why we feel like we’re behind half the week. Well, okay, let’s say Monday was fantastic and we got a lot of things done, and it feels amazing. Tuesday, maybe you have a sick kid who crawls into your bed at three o’clock in the morning and you don’t get any sleep.
Or maybe you wake up with allergies or you know what? Maybe it’s just a rough day and you don’t get as much done. Well, if you’ve already mapped out what you’re doing Tuesday and you don’t get that done, and you mapped out Wednesday, you wake up Wednesday morning already feeling behind, and then Thursday, there’s just that whole snowball effect. So I like to say, get up in the morning, think about how you feel right now, and then set an intention for the day. How do I want to feel at the end of the day? What’s that feeling I want to have? And then you map out and you write down three to five things that you want to accomplish that day to actually get that feeling at the end of the day. So don’t map out your whole week process each day as it comes.
Tanya Dalton: Some days you’re going to wake up and you’re going to say, today’s rough. I just, I’m tired. I don’t feel good. Let’s put less on your plate. Maybe you wake up and you’re like, oh my gosh, I got up. I had my walk. I did some yoga. I read my book. I did my journal. I did some amazing things. I’m ready to get going. And it’s like, all right, let’s put a few more things on your plate for that day. Let’s pay attention to how we feel instead of just doing the things we think we’re supposed to do. And really, that idea, that concept of focusing on that feeling at the end of the day is huge for me. Because some days I want to feel present at the end of the day. Let’s say that my daughter has a sports activity that night. Maybe she has a volleyball game or a soccer game or something.
I want to be fully present. So that means what do I need to get done so I can be fully present? I can shut the door of work behind me and focus. Maybe it’s that I want to feel prepared because I have a big client meeting the next day. All right? If I want to feel prepared at the end of the day, let me think about what things I need to get done so I feel prepared, right? Think about what the emotion is that you want to feel. Now the trick here is you don’t always use the same word. You can’t just say successful, right? That’s pretty loose and easy, and it’s kind of a give-up. So really be intentional with how you want to feel for that day. Think about what you want that night to feel like, and then, all right, these are the activities. They’re going to help me do that. And so process each day as it comes that way, really think that through.
Jodi Cohen: No, I love that. That’s actually what I do. I have a little Post-it pad, and I just pick three things, and then if I do all of them, then I pick three more.
Tanya Dalton: That’s a great way to do it instead of making a giant. Well, this is the thing people want to make a giant.
Jodi Cohen: I did have a giant list, but on the post-it, I only have those three things.
Tanya Dalton: So that’s like your purge list. That’s your P. Yeah because that third P, so I said the first P was purge. The second one is process. The third one is to prioritize what are the priorities? Instead of having a to-do list, what are the things I really want to do? And I teach people in the book how you can do the priority list. It’s very simple. I call it A to-do list with intention, your post-it notes are a perfect example. What do I want to prioritize? What are the three things? And when you accomplish those, then you go to the next three. That’s perfect. Yeah.
Jodi Cohen: Yes. And I do like to put little check boxes next to things because I really,
Tanya Dalton: Oh, we love to check things off. That’s our little dopamine hit in our brain. That feels so good.
Jodi Cohen: Yes. These are amazing tips. Is there anything else that we haven’t talked about you want to share?
Tanya Dalton: Oh my gosh. Well, I mean, I have two books worth and 300 podcast episodes worth of things I could talk about. But really it comes down to that phrase that is really the mantra of everything I teach is productivity is not about doing more. It’s doing what’s most important. So figure out, and get super clear on what is most important to you. That could be as simple as just making a brain dump of what are the things I really love. What are the things that I really want to accomplish? I actually just posted on my substack, not rocket science. I posted a little activity that you can do about your essential needs. What are the things that you need each day? And that helps give you some clarity of what are the things that are important for you that you’re making sure you prioritize.
Jodi Cohen: I love that exercise. Social Connection.
Tanya Dalton: Well, I’m big on little activities. I like to make sure everything I teach is actionable because it doesn’t do us any good to have a bunch of theories I love to look at scientific studies and understand how your brain works, and that’s great, but how do we apply it? How do we make that work for us?
Jodi Cohen: No, I love that. Give some examples of the things you need every day.
Tanya Dalton: Oh, the different things that you need. Well, some people need outside time. I’m a person who needs to go outside every day. Ideally, I like to go barefoot if I can. It’s hard to do when it’s in the middle of winter. But during the spring, summer, and fall, I am outside every day. And that might mean eating my lunch outside. It might mean just going and taking a 10-minute break to walk around for a few minutes. It might mean even if I can’t go outside raining, just go and sit and look outside and maybe even read a book while I’m doing it. Some people have a need for being with other people. And I think that’s an interesting one because some people just need to be in a space with other people versus interacting. So that’s a really interesting essential need that people a lot of times don’t recognize.
They think, well, I’m not very good at studying at the library. I never could do that in college. Or I’m not very good at working alone. But they go and work at a coffee shop, they build off the energy that’s already there in that space with all the other people.
Tanya Dalton: So those are a couple of needs. There are 21 all told. There can be the need for learning and exploring, trying to really grow yourself, whether we’re talking mentally or with your career or spiritual opportunities for growth. There are all kinds of needs. So it’s really getting clear on what is unique for you that you need, and then making sure that you’re filling that up. I think a lot of times people do think self-care is like mud masks and bubble baths and pedicures, and those are all fantastic, and I do enjoy them. However, we have these deeper needs that when those are met, physical touch is another one. Maybe you’re in a space where you like to have physical touch or a lot of our love languages, the words of affirmation, recognition, what is important to you that you need that fills up your love tank and makes you feel really good. And then we can show up as our best selves for everybody else.
Jodi Cohen: I absolutely love that. And you’re right, everyone does think of self-care as like a bubble bath.
Tanya Dalton: We do. We do. And again, listen, I have no qualms against bubble baths, but I mean, I’m a big fan, but we have these other things. And I think having this very narrow definition of what it is, are you and I talked about last time I saw you in person, that idea, and you just told me that you were doing that writing down with the dry erase marker of how you want to feel each day. That’s a form of self-care.
Jodi Cohen: I do mirror in the bathroom.
Tanya Dalton: I love it. That’s one of the things that’s been a habit for me, is I write down a word of the day about how I want to feel. What’s my intention for the day? You write it with a dry erase marker in the bathroom because you put it on the mirror, you write it as you’re brushing your teeth and you think about it. And then that helps me as I’m going through my day, I’m thinking about that word. How am I embodying it? And then when I go to bed at night and I’m gearing up to go to bed and I’m brushing my teeth and washing my face, I’m going to look at the mirror and guess what’s on the mirror? My word. And I look at that word and I think, okay, did I live to that word today? Did I do the things I needed to do to feel that way? And then what’s a beautiful thing is you take your rag and you just wipe it off. Tomorrow’s a clean day. Tomorrow is a fresh start. So even if today felt like it didn’t go the way you wanted it to, even if today felt hard and difficult, good night’s sleep, especially if you’re using your oils right, Jodi, good night’s sleep. And then tomorrow is a brand new day with a brand new intention. And it’s okay if yesterday didn’t go.
Jodi Cohen: Okay, today’s now the easiest way to kind of Marie Kondo your life, as opposed to, is this bringing me joy? Does this align with my word? Am I on track?
Tanya Dalton: Well, the question is, does my life spark joy? I actually just asked that in my podcast this last episode. I took a radical sabbatical where I took a lot of time off to really rest up, take a look at how I’m living. Do I like what I’m doing? Do I like where I’m going? And just kind assess. And so I came back and we talked about does your life sparks joy. Because so often we’re thinking about the items in our house sparking joy, but my gosh, the one thing should spark joy in your world. It’s your life that doesn’t make me happy. And if the answer is no, or if the answer is no, very often we need to stop and take a good look at it, right? Let’s do a quick little assessment and see what’s keeping me from feeling happy. What is stifling some of this joy?
Every single one of us deserves to be happy. Every single one of us deserves joy in our lives. And yes, we have hard seasons. Every single one of us goes through these trenches of life. But if you take the time to map out your own life map, you’ll see there’s going to be trenches. But there are also mountains, right? And we can’t have the mountains if we don’t have the trenches. And so it really does remind us that there is a lot of joy out there. We have to choose to see it. Some days it’s really, really damn hard to find. On other days it’s easier, but taking the time to really intentionally choose, makes a huge difference. And allowing your life to feel joyful.
Jodi Cohen: What I heard you saying, it’s kind of in the trenches. We don’t make changes when we’re happy or when everything’s kind of okay enough. It’s only when it gets bad enough that you’re like, this is intolerable. I have to do something different. And so what I love about your strategies is we all feel like we have to go to our job. We have all these time commitments, and we don’t see where we have flexibility within that, but we do. And I love that.
Tanya Dalton: We do. We do. It’s all in how you look at it too. My son right now is working at a job. He’s in a gap year, and he’s working right now because he’s getting ready to go to Europe for a couple of months. He’s going to backpack through Europe, and he’s mapping it all out. He’s paying for it. And he said to me the other day, he said, I’m just really frustrated. My job doesn’t have any meaning. And I’m like, okay, tell me more about that. Tell me more about how your job doesn’t have meaning. And he’s like, well, I serve food for people and it’s no big deal and it has no meaning. It has no purpose. And I said, okay, that’s a really interesting thing to think about. I said, what is your job doing for you? What are you making money for?
He said, well, I’m making money so I can go on this trip. And I said, oh, okay. So the meaning behind the job can be that it’s affording you to go on a two-month trip through Europe, where you’re going to grow, you’re going to explore. You’re going to do all these amazing things that are going to help you grow. Couldn’t the meaning or the purpose behind your job be as simple as that? Sometimes your job can be the place where you find a lot of meaning, and it’s through the work that you’re doing.
Tanya Dalton: I know, Jodi, you and I both feel that way about the work that we do. Sometimes your job is the vehicle for the meaning. It allows us to go and explore. It allows us to go out and do amazing things in our world, and it’s not the job itself, but what the job allows us to do.
So I told him, I want you to make a little list of this is how much the train tickets cost. This is how much it is to stay at a hostel for a week. I said I want you to make little check boxes. He makes like, I don’t know, $15 an hour. I go make little check boxes that are $15 and then check them off every time I do an hour of work. And I want you to see how that’s getting you closer to your trip to Europe. And he was like, oh. And I think this is the thing, especially with our younger kids. I say younger, he’s 20, almost 21 with our kids today, is they’re hearing that your job has to have meaning. There has to be a purpose. I’m a big advocate of that. But sometimes your job, that’s the vehicle. If you own a business, your business is the vehicle for the life you want.
Your business is not the end all be all. It’s what your business allows you to do. It’s what your job allows you to do. That’s part of that purpose and meaning. So it is a little bit of reframing and looking at things a little bit differently. I think often we’re just kind of stuck in this mindset of there’s one way, this is how we do things. This is what life looks like. This is the routine. This is what I’m supposed to do when I’ve done this. Then one day I’ll be happy. And instead, let’s step outside of ourselves. Let’s observe like we do in meditation, and let’s choose how we want to view our world because that influences everything. So for my son now, he’s like, oh, okay. So I don’t mind so much going for work because I just got two train tickets to Austria, or I just got, so it is, it’s shifting how you’re looking at things.
Jodi Cohen: And even, I mean, you’re in a long-term marriage. I’m in a long-term relationship. Sometimes if you had a choice of how you’d spend your day, you’d do it differently than your partner. But it brings them so much joy that it’s a win. It’s like, great. He does a lot for me. Absolutely. I can totally do this for him.
Tanya Dalton: I’d only say give and take, because I think take has such a negative connotation. It’s the give-and-receive of relationships, right? Yeah. I’ve been married almost 24 years now, and there’s a lot of give and receive, and you have to be willing to receive, which is one of the things women a lot of times have a hard time receiving, just actively, openly receiving, and we feel like we’re giving a lot. So there is a lot of that give and receive that I think is really important.
Jodi Cohen: This was amazing. I could talk to you for hours, and I’m sure everyone who’s listening is going to want to learn more. Can you share again where they can find you and how they can learn more or work with you?
Tanya Dalton: Absolutely. So basically, anywhere that you’re listening to this podcast, you can find my podcast, the Intentional Advantage. You can search by the Intentional Advantage or my name Tanya Dalton. I also have a substack that we mentioned earlier, not rocket science, and you can find that by going to tanyadalton.com/connect. And that’ll lead you there. And I just started it a couple of weeks ago, and I’m very excited about the direction it’s going. It’s creating a lot of conversations and a lot of ways to find a lot more meaning in what we talk about in the podcast or just in things you’re already doing in your regular everyday life. It is, it’s kind of shifting the mindset. So tanyadalton.com/connect.
Jodi Cohen: I love that. And overwhelm and time management are so tricky. So thank you for helping us reframe this and really helping everyone kind of get those million-dollar minutes.
Tanya Dalton: Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me, Jodi. This was a lot of fun. Jodi Cohen: This was great. Thank you.
Tanya Dalton: Thank you.
Jodi Cohen: Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. I hope this podcast empowered you with some useful information and takeaways. If you liked this episode, please consider sharing a positive review or subscribing. I would also love to offer you my free parasympathetic toolkit as a gift just for listening. It will teach you how to activate the most important nerve in your body to turn on your ability to heal. This free toolkit includes a checklist, a video, and a detailed guide. If this podcast prompted any questions, you can always find answers at my blog at vibrantblueoils.com or my book Essential Oils to Boost the Brain and Heal the Body. Until next time, wishing you vibrant Health.
