Ep #22: The Model: How Your Thoughts Affect Your Life
Episode Summary
Jenna shares an impactful tool called The Model and shows you how to use it to make the changes you want in your life.
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Show Notes
What would you say if I told you there’s a tool that can help you achieve exactly what you want in life, give insight about why you haven’t achieved it yet, explain why you feel and do the things you do, and give you clarity on your current thoughts and motivations? Well, this tool exists, and it has changed my life. So this week, I’m sharing it with you.
I’m introducing you to an incredible tool called The Model. This tool helps you really understand the relationship between your thoughts, feelings, and actions, and as a result, make the necessary changes to start creating the results you want in your life. And the best part? It is so simple that you can do it on the back of a napkin.
Join me this week and hear more about what The Model is, how it works, and why it is so beneficial. I’m walking you through some examples of how I’ve used The Model in my own life, some issues you might run into when using it, and how you can start using it right now.
What You’ll Learn From This Episode:
How a belief is just a thought you’ve thought over and over.
Why your circumstances do not cause you to feel overwhelm, and what really causes this.
How The Model enables you to see where you are contributing to your results.
Why you are not stuck where you are and can create whatever you want.
How we take action based on how we feel right now at this moment.
Some common pitfalls of The Model.
How your mindset can help you tap into the clarity within.
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Full Episode Transcript:
There's a tool that can help you achieve exactly what you want in life, give you insight about why you haven't achieved it, yet, show you why you're feeling the way you do, why you do the things you do. And, can give you the kind of clarity on your thoughts and motivations that you used to have to sit in a therapist’s chair for years to finally see. It has literally changed my life. And, I can't wait to tell you all about it.
You're listening to The Uncommon Way Business and Life Coaching Podcast, the only podcast that helps you unlock your next level in business and life, by prioritizing your clarity and your own Uncommon Way. You will learn to maximize your mindset, mission, messaging, and strategy in order to create a true legacy. Here's your host, top ranked business coach and reformed overanalyzer turned queen of clarity, Jenna Harrison.
Welcome back to The Uncommon Way. I am really excited, right now. I'm headed to California in a couple of days to visit my dad and stepmom. And you know, have some time by myself on that nice long plane trip. That is something I think any mom out there can relate to.
My dad loves to cook, and they're big wine people; they're part owners in a vineyard. My stepmom grew up on a vineyard in the Carneros region of Sonoma. If any of you have been there, if you're familiar with that area. And then, they sell their grapes to local producers. So, who knows, you might have even had some wine produced on their farm.
It's just going to be a week of good food, good wine, and daddy wisdom, which every girl needs. It's gonna be a lot of fun. Oh, and they have a new kitty; a new kitty, plus a real Christmas tree. I don't do real Christmas trees, so I'm so thankful that they're willing to do it for me. So, I can enjoy that smell without dealing with all the pine needles.
I don't know if you… Okay, random thought. Have you ever seen, there's a Saturday Night Live video that they made, and it was called “Back Home Ballers”. It was about how when these women go back home, they're just treated like royalty. And they basically, you know, can call the shots. So, I don't know, it was really funny. Because that's how I feel whenever I go home, that I am just living it up. That is absolutely me. So, I'm sure I'll have some stories to tell when I get back. And, I'll definitely be toasting all of you.
Okay, let's get down to some mindset work, shall we? And specifically, thought work. So, thought work is where we're really centering our thoughts and our cognition as the means to really understand and improve our mindset, and thereby, our results in every aspect of our lives. The specific tool we'll be talking about for this, is “The Model”.
I wanted to create an episode on this topic, because I refer to it in other episodes, and I plan to keep doing so, because it really has had such an impact on my life. I am a Certified Coach by the Life Coach School, so we do coach on “The Model.” And although I use it along with other coaching modalities and tools in the Clarity Accelerator, it's a big part of what we do in there. And, I'm just such a fan.
Now, what I'm about to teach you within this Model isn't anything new. But it is presented now very simply, in a way that makes it more accessible and workable than was previously possible. It's something that absolutely anyone can use; something that you can start using today.
Let me talk about some of the things that underlie it, because you'll see exactly what I mean about how it is nothing you didn't already know. So, we all know that there's a part of our brain that can be the ‘watcher’. That can really sit back and observe how we're thinking, and how we're feeling.
Neuroscience shows us that what we think about really determines a lot of what we're feeling. We can see different chemical strains going through our blood when we're activated in a certain way. Psychology shows us that what we're feeling really drives our actions and our behavior. It really comes down to that.
And of course, grandpa has already told us that the more action we take, the more likely we are to get our results; the kind of actions we take are what we’ll get in return. “Well, that's what you get,” grandpa would say. We also know that the brain creates meanings and thoughts based on events. We know that that produces feelings or sensations based on how we are making meaning, how we think.
If my son is defiant, and I think, “He knows better than this,” I have a totally different experience in my body and a different way of perceiving the world, than when I'm thinking, “Fascinating. He is right on track with building his own identity.” We know that our actions are based on how we feel, right now. In this moment, not in the future. Not how we should feel or how most people feel, but how we really feel.
And those feelings are driven by all sorts of underlying beliefs. And yes, our actions, and our way of being and showing up, produces results. We could take the exact same action, but if we're showing up to do that action in a certain way, we're not going to get the same results as we would if we were doing it in a different way.
So, there's lots of moving pieces when you think about all that, right? But life coach, Brooke Castillo, from The Life Coach School, came up with a really simple way of organizing them. And, she calls it “The Model”. It's so simple that you can do it on the back of a napkin. It gives us a beautiful snapshot of what's going on in our brains, and also, where you have to be mentally to create the results you want.
Okay, here's what you do. You ready? Write down these letters vertically on a sheet of paper, C-T-F-A-R. Now, the C stands for “Circumstance”. It is something that's totally objective, that everyone could agree on. Like, what are the actual facts. So not, “She was being snarky,” but, she said the words, “Is that all?” In that C line; right in that line, where the C is, we would write down: She said the words, “Is that all?” We get very specific.
Now, the T, stands for your “Thought”, right? What is your thought about that C? So here, you would enter: She's being snarky.
F is for “Feeling”. And here, you want to reach for just one word. So, we would typically do things like, the way we speak, is we'd say things like, “I feel like I have to justify everything.” But that's not really a feeling, that's actually a thought. You want to look for what is the feeling that you're feeling, in your body. You know, maybe it's defensive.
The A stands for “Action”. What action do you take when you're feeling that way, thinking that thought? What do you do? What don't you do? How do you show up? Really allow yourself to keep going, and get really detailed here.
And then, the R, stands for “Result”. What result does that create or will that create? Something really amazing, is that we almost always see that the result reflects our thought, in some way. It's almost as if our thoughts really do create our results.
Try it out for yourself, when you try out your own models, now. And I'll show you how, in just a sec. But let me also give you some examples, so you can see for yourself.
Okay, here's one that happened to me pretty early on when I was first doing this work. So, my C, my circumstance, was that I booked out with clients. Now, my thought was, “I'm so overwhelmed.” And then, the feeling was nervous. And the truth of how I experienced this in the moment, was, I call it a “coffee feeling”. So, I felt that jitteriness.
I think I've mentioned in a previous, maybe an email to my list or to you guys, that I am very sensitive to caffeine. So, I have to drink decaf all the time. And even if I have too much decaf, I'll start getting this feeling, this coffee feeling. So, that's what I was feeling. There was a combination of maybe, panic and nervousness.
And then, my action, based on that feeling, when I was thinking that thought, “I'm so overwhelmed,” is to work longer hours, sleep less. Right? Working more, yes, but in an unfocused way. I wasn't accessing my creativity or giving myself a chance to access creativity, or rest, in order to access the creativity.
So, I was just kind of trudging along, and I created a resentful attitude. I'd get resentful of my husband, who wasn't working as much as me. I'd get resentful of clients, even when they asked for support or help. I’d get resentful that people would even respond to my posts on social media. Or thinking, “I don't even have time.”
It’s not a good place to be in for a coach who's here to change lives. Right? I would spend my time, even when I wasn't at work, thinking about work. I'd spend a lot of time thinking, specifically, about the difficulty of this and how miserable I was feeling.
I'd worked myself into a panic about delivering for all of these clients, right? How are they going to perceive me? What are they going to think of me? Am I dropping any balls? And then, I would drop the ball on things. And then, I'd have to go back and spend twice as long fixing it.
So, can you see the result of all of this? I actually created a lot more work for myself, and a lot more energy expenditure for myself; I overwhelmed myself. My thought was, “I'm so overwhelmed,” and the result, was I overwhelmed myself.
We think that the circumstance of being booked out creates the overwhelm. It doesn't. It's the thought of you telling yourself you're overwhelmed, that creates the overwhelm. Some of you who are unfamiliar with this might find yourself thinking right now, “No, I am overwhelmed. I have so much to do.”
But it's kind of like when you're cold, and then in your head, you're telling yourself, “It's so cold. I'm dying, it's so cold,” and then you feel even colder. It's not that the temperature reads differently when you think about it differently, the temperature is what it is. Well, although maybe, it does, right? But that's a topic for another episode.
But it's that you make the situation so much worse, and your brain is paying so much more attention to it, and it's exacerbating the problem. I'm just now thinking about when I lived in Germany and we would go to Christmas markets. So, it's in the dead of winter in Germany, and at night it would be so cold. And yet, I would be so caught up in the wonder of the beautiful little things that were for sale, all the different lights, things that they were showcasing, I never felt the cold in that way.
So, back to overwhelm. We know it's not the circumstance of the things that cause the result. Because another person could think of that situation totally differently. They could handle it totally differently. They could get a different result, starting from that same circumstance. So, it's not the circumstance, it's not the C; it's the meaning created by the subject. And what that, then produces.
In my situation, another person might have thought, “You know, I'm so glad my clients are so resourceful. This is so easy. Right? All I have to do is show up and coach. And, this is easy.” Which would produce a totally different feeling in the body. It would produce totally different actions, and a completely different result.
So, let's do some more. This is fun, right? This is how like, we geek out on these things. I have a client who has been bartering services, and the other person sent her an invoice and started charging, but was still asking her for the advice she used to give. So, in this case, the C, was a text. That's all it was. Her thought was, “I'm being taken advantage of.” And that F, that feeling, was frustration.
Now, the actions were to ruminate. To spend time thinking of catty things she could do back, right? She didn't spend as much time focusing on growing her new business. She looked for evidence from the past, that it was true that this person wanted to take advantage of her. She nibbles on food, she said she wouldn't eat. Because she's feeling so frustrated about the situation.
Maybe, she opens up bottle of wine, even though she knows she won't sleep as well. And, she doesn't talk about it directly and clear up the issue. So, what's the result of the thought, “I'm being taken advantage of,” y'all? I'll give you a sec. It's that she doesn't take care of her needs, of herself. She's the one taking advantage of herself, or diminishing herself in some way.
For all we know, that person assumed she'd send an invoice too, or at least whenever she determined that the service was invoiceable, right? That other person isn't an expert in that field, so they don't know. And even if they do know, like, let's say the person is literally thinking, “Ha-ha, I'm going to take advantage of her.” It's like Martin Luther King said, “A man can't ride on your back unless it's bent.”
And that is something that The Model does really quickly. It pulls you straight out of victimhood. It always let you see where your contribution is to your results. And some people, don't want to see that.
But you can see why I jive with it. Right? It is such a great clarity tool. Which is great news, because it means you have so much power to create change. You're not a victim. You're not stuck. You can create whatever the hell you want.
And when you start seeing the world, in terms of Model, it clarifies things for you. It's so easy for me to see the cascade that happens with the thoughts about a lack of clarity. Or, of kind of moving forward, “I'll just put this out anyway,” and they don't really have that foundational piece. And so, they end up speaking to no one. They end up trying different things.
All of these different actions are just cascading from that, what we call a “thought error”. It's a thought that is not producing the results that you asked, truly want to create. And yet, we go on thinking it because it's a practiced thought. And, it's how we've been thinking in the past.
We haven't had the clarity yet, to say, “Hmm, this is definitely not serving me. It's something that we need to change. I'm no longer going to continue trying to put out webinars or try different social media platforms. I'm going to recognize that what I need to do, is get very clear on how my customers speak and what resonates with my clients. So, that I can put it out anywhere.”
So, here's your homework, okay? Here's how to start using it today: I want you to block off some time for yourself, only has to be 10 minutes. Pull out a blank sheet of paper, just write down the thoughts in your head, and then pull just one of those thoughts and create a model for it. And then, don't do anything differently. Sit in that awareness. Sit in that feeling of, “Huh. I thought I was feeling this way because of X. But actually, it's my thought.”
Here are some of the problems you might run into. One, is fighting with it, fighting with the model, right? Saying, “I'm not creating any of this,” that is going to rob you of any opportunity to create change. You're welcome to think that, but is it really in your best interest? What is even the 1% that you could change, that would give you the best chances of creating that different result? Where do you want to take responsibility?
Number two, I see this a lot; it's not getting specific enough. So, what was the exact C? Don't just put down “my business”, right? Think back to an exact moment, so you can really get clear on those autopilot thoughts. Those pesky autopilot thoughts that are kind of slipping in there without you even realizing.
And, what's the real thought, right? Keep asking yourself, “And, so what?” And, “What did I make that mean?” Until you start to get to something that really feels charged. And then, flush out those actions. Keep going with them until the result really reveals itself.
Number three is not being honest. So, sometimes you're using a thought that you think should make you feel a certain way, maybe it sounds good. But take a pause and ask, “How do I really feel when I think that?” I'll give you an example, “I'm going to hit six figures.” Sounds like a thought that if you just keep thinking enough, it'll make it happen.
But if it is producing a feeling of dread in you, if it's producing a feeling of disbelief, that is what's going to drive your actions. So, get real. How are you really feeling?
Number four, is that you're getting into other people's models, or you're putting people in your own model. This is only a tool for us to figure out our own brains. You don't want to be psychoanalyzing everyone else, especially without their permission.
And you never want to have a thought where you're projecting what that person is thinking about you, or what that person is doing. They get to be in the C line, and that's it. That's something for you to think of, as well. You are, at most, somebody else's C line.
Another mistake people make early on, is they really jump to use The Model against others, right? They show them how they're thinking about a situation incorrectly, when they haven't asked for your coaching. You might find yourself saying, “Well, I might have said that, but you can choose to think about it however you want.” That's not helpful, in that moment when the person is feeling charged, and they don't even know what you're talking about with The Model.
Number six, is always trying to fix your thoughts and turn them into happy thoughts, with the end goal of being happy. Right? First of all, you are a human and you have a human brain, so you will always have negative thoughts. Probably 50% of the time, you'll experience negative emotions.
And for sure, you will recreate negative experiences if you've never stopped to get in touch with the truth of where you are, at this moment. To really feel your feelings. I highly suggest that you go back and listen to Episode 14. It's called, “The Number One Skill for Entrepreneurship”. You just go to TheUncommonWay.com/14. It's all about learning to be with your feelings.
So, you've got to get comfortable feeling your feelings and sitting in the truth of where you are, and your agency in where you are, before you move on to changing anything. Because that’s how you stop being afraid to feel feelings, so you can take bigger risks and ultimately create safety from within, rather than seeking it through avoidance of risk.
It's safe to be in your body with these emotions. It's okay for you to be having a human experience. You got you. You’re gonna be fine. But then, yes, you can start to step yourself into new ways of thinking and new beliefs. Once you have sat with and acknowledged that space that you're in.
A belief, it's just a thought that you've thought over and over. So, as long as you actually find a new thought that produces the kind of feeling that you want to feel, you can absolutely start practicing that thought, and watching different results unfold when you do.
And here's what I haven't really told you yet, and I didn't want to until I created enough reason for you to want to actually sit with that feeling and sit with where you are. But the truth is, you don't have to work just top-down on The Model. You can choose any line as your entry point. You can choose the F line, A line, the T line, right?
Like, what I suggested for you for homework, find a thought and then put that in the T line, and work your model from there. But you can also enter from the R line, from the result line; what is the result that you want to create? What are the kinds of actions that would lead to that result? How do you have to be feeling to take those actions?
Really, what do you have to be thinking, that actually generates that feeling in your body? And if you need help learning how to create thoughts and beliefs that you don't actually believe in the moment, but you want to believe so that you start showing up differently, showing up bigger, hitting bigger revenue goals, even creating clarity. Yeah, your mindset can help you tap into the clarity within.
If you need help with that, I can help. I am an expert in creating new beliefs that drive transformation and new results. So, we need to talk. In fact, right on the podcast now, we've put a link where you can, right there in the description, click that link, and it will take you to my scheduling page.
Okay, let's recap. The Model is an amazing tool that condenses all of those moving pieces that we already knew about. And it just puts it in this very simple, actionable format that lets us work with all of them. So, it's nothing new, but it's crazy workable. You can start using it today, by just grabbing a sheet of paper and blocking off a few minutes. And soon, it will get to the point where you're just thinking it in your head.
There are some common pitfalls; I pulled out about five or six of them here for you. But The Model always works. So, just be on the lookout for user error. Work with it a bit, and you'll get the hang of it. And don't underestimate how much this one thing can absolutely change your life.
Okay, friends, that is it for the day. Remember, deep down, you know who you are. And each day you are stepping further into what you're here to create.
Hey, if you're a coach who wants true clarity about your secret sauce, your people, your best way of doing business and how you talk about your offer, then I invite you to join us in the Clarity Accelerator. I'll teach you to connect all the dots; the dots that have always been there for you. So, that you can show up like you were born for exactly this.
Come join us and supercharge every other tool or tactic you'll ever learn from Facebook ads to manifestation. Just go to TheUncommonWay.com/schedule, and set up a time to talk. I can't wait to be your coach.
Thanks for joining us here at The Uncommon Way. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business and life, including the Clarity First Strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit TheUncommonWay.com. See you next time.
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