What is actually holding you back? This is a question I ask often and for good reason because so many people focus on the wrong culprit. They think it is the thing in their life that is creating their pain. The Wife is making them mad. The kids are disappointing you. The promotion to that new position is because the boss is a jerk. None of these are the real reason why you are unhappy, unfulfilled, and Feel as if you are chained to your desk. The person holding you back is you and the Model can show you how.
What is the Model?
The reason you are playing it small is because of your thoughts and that is what the model does so well. It shows you your thoughts and how they are getting in your way. The Model also shows if you are going off the path. Where your thoughts are leading you astray. Are you not getting the connection you want out of your marriage? Your thoughts and the model can help point out how
What is it used for?
Now The model isn’t new. It’s not anything I ever came up with. I am not that smart. The Model has been around for a good while or at least its concepts have been. My Mentor and teacher Brooke Castillo over at The Life Coach School is who put the concepts together to show people their minds. Show them that their thoughts are the biggest scariest obstacles they will face. The thoughts you have are a choice. What you choose to let rule you and it is what keeps you playing small or choosing to go for big leagues.
So how does it help?
What it does is, The Model allows you to see what you are thinking and how those thoughts you have, are giving you the results you are getting. You are not being oppressed by some boogie man you are being oppressed by you. You are unhappy because you chose to be unhappy. You are living in poverty because of the thoughts you had.
Parts of the Model
The model is actually simple to explain. You have a Thought about a Circumstance. That thought creates an emotion. That emotion leads to an action, and the action produces your result. So When you hear me talk about lines in the model they are as follows
- C – Circumstance
- T – Thought
- F – Feeling
- A – Action
- R – Result
So let’s break these down
Before the Model; The Thought Download
This is where you lay out all of your thoughts. You can make it about a particular topic, or you can just let your thoughts rain down onto a piece of paper. The choice is yours. The thought download allows you to see your thoughts and to pick apart what you want to. You can take 10 minutes or an hour. The amount of time is up to you.
Now I do recommend that you do this with a pen and paper. This allows you to see your thoughts but it also allows your brain to stop trying to hold on to these thoughts. Our brain is great at thinking but horrible at remembering. So when you write your thoughts down your brain doesn’t have to waste energy trying to remember stuff. This often gums up the thinking process. Therefore I recommend doing a thought download daily. If for any reason it just frees up space.
Circumstance
These are the facts of the situation. It has to be free of descriptors, feelings, or thoughts. If you are struggling with your marriage. Your fact is, “you are married”. It’s not, “your wife hates sex”. It is “you were passed up for a promotion” not ‘Your boss is greedy SOB”
The circumstance line of the model is something we can all agree on. You could take it to a court of law and say yes that is a cat. Not everyone will agree that it is an extra fluffy cat because someone could say I know a cat that’s extra fluffy and your cat there is just fluffy.
Why? Because your circumstance is neutral. They are not good nor are they bad. Circumstances aren’t positive nor are they negative that is until we apply thought to that circumstance.
An example is The World Trade Center towers on 9/11 The attack was bad in our eyes. Yet on the other side of the world people were having celebrations that the towers fell. Was it good or bad? depends on the thought. Also, you weren’t affected by the towers falling till you heard or saw the towers fall. Before that, you were having other thoughts about other circumstances
Thought
The Thought line of the model is what we think of the circumstance. This is where we apply the positive or negative aspects to the circumstance. This is where the problems or success originate. If your wife is not feeling lovey you can choose to have the thought of being a victim and thinking it’s not fair, or you can have the thought that she isn’t feeling connected enough, so how do you change it? More on Model switching later.
More episodes on thoughts
Feeling
These are the emotions you feel. Now before you groan understand yes we all have emotions. No this isn’t an instance where you get in touch with your feeeeeeelings. No, but you need to be aware of your emotions and what emotions you are having because what normally happens is that when we experience an emotion and it isn’t a “positive” emotion or one that feels good, we avoid it. We do things like buffer or turn to other urges. These distract us from what we are really wanting to do.
Action
This is what you do when you feel that particular feeling. Do you lean into it or avoid it. What do you not do? Maybe if your wife rebuffed your advances you go to the living room or pout.
Results
This is the outcome of your action. So if we were still sticking to the wife not wanting sex then the results would be that you don’t have the connection needed for your wife to want sex with you.
What to watch out for
Model switching
This is where you notice that you are running a particular model and you don’t like the emotions being felt and you just change your thought so you have a better emotion. This can be used as buffering. Denying emotions doesn’t work. Our life is 50% Pain and 50% pleasure. If you don’t have the negative you won’t appreciate the positive.
Mixed models
These models don’t give you a proper result.
Needing help with figuring out your models? You can reach out to me or if you want coaching on how to use the model or coaching in general you can see how we can work together
