00:00 

Hey there, this is Tanya Hale with Intentional Living and this is episode number 96, "Understanding the Thought Model." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:21 

Alright, well hello there, my sweet friends. Thank you for joining with me today. Happy to have you. Let's see, we're still in COVID, right? We're still in pandemic mode. In fact, this week in Utah, we just found out that school is canceled for the rest of the year, which, well, not canceled. They're doing what they call "soft closure," which means kids are not at school, but we are still in school and still doing learning, which is tough for these kids. I don't mind doing my job, but boy, these kids, there is just no equitability in their situations at home and it's really tough. In fact, we're having discussions at our school about how do we grade because there's no way you can you can equitably do any of this. So it's really, really tough and trying to expect middle school kids, any kids, really, any teenagers to have the self-motivation and the self-discipline to get all of this stuff done is very unrealistic. I think, I don't know, maybe I just don't have high enough expectations for my students, but my numbers with what my kids are doing is not are not very high. So I just feel bad for them. This is just tough, tough. 

01:33 

And I've got a senior who's just missing out on her senior year. And I'll tell you what, she's handling it like a champ. I'm so proud of her. She's like, "you know what, I'm OK with it. It's good." But there is a piece of her that's sad. And, you know, she's missed out on a prom and missed out on a graduation. They're having discussions now about do they want to do it virtually? Do they want to postpone it? What do they want to do? And it's just a tough time, tough time for these kids who have looked forward to this for their whole lives and now they don't have it. 

02:06 

So anyway that being said, I had a coaching session yesterday that was so great and can I just tell you, I love this coaching gig. It was a free one and I just, I love it. I love being able to talk with people about how they are responsible for what they're creating and how our thoughts are so powerful and they create all of this and it was so terrific. So if you would like to give this a shot, let me share one thing with you too. Coaching is not for people who are so broken that they can't manage life. I mean I think that I'm doing a pretty darn good job managing my life and I benefit from coaching weekly. I have a coaching session with a coach every week and I love it. Sometimes I have more than one because I've got coaches that I also switch with. It's helpful, so beneficial to help me clean up my life and clean up my thinking and just really start becoming the kind of person that I want to be, especially in this middle age when I'm starting to see things about myself so much more clearly. Things that just were not even, it wasn't even an option for me to see them before because of where I was in life and what was happening. And so this coaching gig, you may be totally in a good place and healthy and happy and I can still promise you that coaching will help, that it will help to give you some insight into your life and into what you're creating. 

03:37 

So contact me, you can go on my Facebook page which is Tanya Hale LDS Life Coaching or you can go to my website tanyahale.com and both of those have a place where you can just click right into my calendar and schedule something that works for you. And right now I've got a lot more flexible time because I'm not at school all day every day with my students. So I do have some times open up in the day because I can shift stuff around and do school stuff whenever, so take advantage of it. 

04:08 

So along with this coaching that I did yesterday I just thought you know what this thought model is so powerful and I wanted to share it with you. I know that I've done one in the past about the thought model and I've definitely talked about it a lot and I've covered concepts of it, but I really want to do one today that is solely devoted to explaining the thought model, what it is and why it's so important. And next week, actually, I'm gonna do a follow-up with why it's so important. I get how it  works. 

04:39 

So most people when they hear and see the thought model explained the way I'm going to explain it to you today, they recognize it as something that they have noticed in their own lives. They've heard quotes that talk about it, about the concepts in it. They have seen examples in their lives of it working, but they haven't ever really seen it laid out the way I'm going to show you today. 

04:59 

So one of my Life Coach certifications is through the Life Coach School, which was founded by Brooke Castillo. And she developed the layout of the thought model after years of studying people such as Byron Katie and Abraham. But even they haven't created the concepts behind the model. The concepts are just natural truths that have existed forever. And I see the concepts taught in the Bible. I see the concepts taught in The Book of Mormon, all over in the scriptures. I've seen quotes attributed to Socrates and Plato that talk about these concepts, about people all throughout history, quotes and things that you'll see. Often I see quotes from authors in the early 1800s or 1900s who are talking about these concepts. So although the concepts are not new, Brooke Castillo has laid them out into a pattern that helps us to understand just how important our thoughts are in really creating our lives. Because the biggest part of the thought model is helping us to understand how much control we actually have over our own lives. 

06:02 

And it helps me personally to come to understand my role in my own life. I'm not a pawn or a puppet that is being controlled by some outside force that I can't see or understand or by somebody else. I'm not being controlled by anybody else. Do things happen in my life that I have no control over? For sure. But beyond those circumstances, I have all control. And that's a pretty empowering thought. So one of the biggest pieces of the thought model for me is learning to stop blaming others or situations and to start taking responsibility for everything going on in my life. Everything. My experience with anything starts in my own thoughts. So let's jump in and I'll show you exactly how it works. 

06:54 

So the thought model consists of five parts: circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, and results. So of the five parts, the only one of those that we don't have control over is the circumstance. The other four parts are entirely within my control. So the first line of the model is the circumstance or what we call the C line. So let's talk about this first. The circumstance will always be neutral. The circumstance will always be a fact, meaning that everyone in the world would agree. It could be proven in a court of law. So for example, saying that it's raining outside could be proven. Saying that it's cold and rainy could be disputable. Okay, or saying that it's a cold rain. Because any time you add an adjective to the noun, it becomes disputable because some people may not think that it's a cold rain. If you're from Arizona, and you're used to 70 degree and above weather most of the time, to you it may feel cold. If you're from somewhere near the North Pole and you're used to much lower temperatures, you may not think that that rain is cold at all. 

08:06 

And here's a tougher example: saying that murder is bad, murder is wrong. Because again not everyone will agree with you. Once we put a judgment on the noun again it becomes disputable. There are people in the world who don't think that murder is bad and they find some sort of sick enjoyment in hurting and killing people. But we could say that a person murdered another person that would be neutral because then we can choose to think what we want about the circumstance. And here's a little bit more of a charged personal example, especially if you've got older kids. "My child is disrespectful." Now, this one will make a lot of people cringe right away because we all want to believe that when a child talks back to us, they're being disrespectful. But no, a child telling us their opinion is neutral, okay? If you say they're being disrespectful, we are making a judgment on their behavior. The child may not think that they're being disrespectful at all. They may think that they are exercising their right to voice a different opinion than you. And I've known people who think that anyone who is voicing a different opinion than them is being disrespectful. 

09:21 

So here's the biggest thing about circumstances. They have to be phrased in a way that we are making them 100% fact. So rather than "my child is disrespectful," we would say, "my child said, 'I hate living in your house. You're a horrible person.'" When you can put it in quotes, if you could have recorded it and then transcribed it, then it's a fact. Going back to the rain example, if we just say it's raining, no judgments about whether it's good or bad, no adjectives to describe it, then we are stating a neutral circumstance. So many of us have a really tough time working through so many of these. 

10:06 

When I did my training with this concept, we had a whole lesson just on distinguishing between things that were neutral circumstances and things that were our thoughts about the circumstances. A whole lesson on this. And we had one lesson a week. So it was a lot of training helping us to understand what's a circumstance and what's a thought about a circumstance. So how about this one? "Debt is not good." Neutral or not? Not because a judgment is being made. Is debt good or bad? That's a judgment, right? In many instances, debt is actuall. good. I am grateful for debt that allows me to live in a home that I haven't completely finished paying for yet. In my life, this debt is good, okay? There may be other debt that I feel is bad, but debt is debt. Debt is math. Debt is a number, okay? What we think about it makes that debt good or bad, right? But debt itself is neutral. 

11:12 

Alright, so once we start getting the hang of making the circumstance neutral, then we need to move down the thought model from the C line or the circumstance line into the thought line or we sometimes call it the T line. So this is where we will start making judgments or adding adjectives. This is where we can say that "murder is wrong" or that "my husband is a jerk" or "my husband is a sweetheart" or that "my child is disrespectful" or that "my child is respectful." And the beautiful thing about this, the thought line, is that when we start taking full responsibility for our lives, it's right here. This is where we do it. We cannot control the C line. Circumstances happen. Someone crashes into a car. I got caught in a rainstorm. My child said I was a horrible mom. Those things happen. We cannot control what other people say. We cannot control what other people do. We cannot control the weather. We cannot control natural disasters. But the thought line, okay my friends, this is where life becomes amazing because this is where we are empowered and get to start taking control of our lives. We get to create whatever we want with our thoughts. 

12:30 

But this is much easier said than done, and let me explain why. We have these amazing brains. When it comes to our thoughts, we often talk about two parts of our brain: the primitive brain, which is the cerebellum, often referred to as the lower brain. And the second part is the prefrontal cortex, often referred to as the higher brain. In a previous podcast, I talk about them as the brain and the mind. And you can check that out. That's episode number 58, if you want to delve a little bit deeper into understanding the difference between the primitive brain and the prefrontal cortex. But as a quick review, the primitive brain is programmed to run things automatically. And it does an amazing job for which we are very thankful. It makes it so that when I drive my car to the grocery store that I don't have to think about every turn or lane change. I don't have to plan in advance when to start applying the brakes. I don't have to think about how much to turn the steering wheel when I'm changing lanes, turning a corner, or doing a U-turn. My primitive brain has committed all of these pieces to memory, and I do them without even thinking about it. It's actually quite miraculous. 

13:43 

Do you remember learning to drive and how nerve-racking it was? Constantly having to pay attention, having to think about every little decision, remembering to look over your shoulder as well as check your mirrors while simultaneously turning on your blinker and keeping the steering wheel from moving when you moved your head to look over your shoulder. It's an exhausting process learning to drive. And our primitive brain knows this and learns what it needs to learn and then it tells us," I got you. You just focus on making sure you know where to turn and I'll do the rest," and it does. We get to where we're headed and we have very little recollection of ever using a blinker, although we did it on every turn, or checking over our shoulder, which we did it every time we needed to change a lane, or using the brakes and the gas, which we did consistently. We may not even remember putting the key in the ignition or pulling out of the garage or closing the garage door. I love the primitive brain. It works really hard to conserve energy for us because if I had to think about every one of those decisions, by the time I got where I'm going in 20 or 30 minutes, I would be tired. I would be exhausted. And yet because my primitive brain is doing all of that for me, it severely reduces the amount of energy that I have to engage in to drive my car somewhere. 

15:08 

But here's the tricky part about our primitive brains. They are so freaking efficient that it can get us into trouble sometimes because it will think thoughts that we are completely unaware of. We're not aware when our brain is thinking, "oh, check over your shoulder, oh, turn on your blinker, oh, start applying the brake." We're not even aware that our brain is thinking that. But our brain doesn't do that just when it's driving a car. It does that all day long. It gives us thoughts we're completely unaware of, okay? Our brains think about 60,000 thoughts a day, the vast, vast majority of those we are completely unaware. That's why sometimes when I'm driving to church I'll turn left out of my cul-de-sac as if I'm going to school rather than turning right to get to the church, because my primitive brain is doing its thing. It's saying, "oh, I know where we're going. We're headed out, right?" And it takes charge. Have you ever said something and almost immediately you realize that what you said was something that should have never been said? Okay, if you're human, you're gonna say "yes" on this one, right? Because that's a part of humanity. It's part of what we do. Your amazing primitive brain was working so hard for you to conserve your energy and it was doing the thinking for you. 

16:27 

So learning to figure out what our brain is thinking is a process. In fact, it's even a skill to start becoming more aware of the thoughts that we're thinking and learning to become aware of what's actually going on in our head is something that takes a lot of awareness and a lot of desire and a lot of work. And we'll never really learn how to manage every thought because our primitive brain is so amazing at its job. 

16:55 

But our job then with our prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of our brain, is to figure out what thoughts our primitive brain is thinking that are not helping our lives and learn to become aware of and manage those thoughts better. And still, we'll never be 100% on this ever, it's just too big of a job, but the responsibility of our prefrontal cortex is to learn to create thoughts on purpose so that we can start to create what we want to rather than just what our primitive brain puts out there. Because our primitive brain only works on past experiences, it only works on what it already knows, it can't look forward into the future and create something new. So living a different life today than I did yesterday is the job of my prefrontal cortex. My primitive brain is going to have me doing the same thing today that I did yesterday or that I've done in the past, right? I think we talked on an earlier podcast about how 90% of what we think today are the exact same thoughts we thought yesterday. Because of those 60,000 thoughts, our primitive brain is just doing its thing, right? It's just saying, "hey, I know this, I've done this, I know how to handle this," okay? So that's our thought line. 

18:14 

The next line in the model is the F line, or the feeling line. So we have circumstance, C line, thoughts, T line, F, feeling line, okay? So we're on the third of five steps. So because every single feeling we have can be traced back to a thought, that's why the feeling line comes under the thought line. And this is probably the place where clients give me the most pushback. Because so few of us really want to take responsibility for the fact that we are creating the feelings that make us feel so horrible sometimes. So let's say you have a sister-in-law who says, "your daughter is such a brat, I would never allow my child to talk to me that way." That, my friends, is a circumstance. In fact, if I had a recorder, I could replay it. It is a fact, right? If I could record it and replay it, that is a fact. What do we learn about circumstances? They are neutral. Those are just words. And you could say, "my sister-in-law said, 'your daughter is such a brat, I would never allow my child to talk to me that way.'" Or you could say, "my sister-in-law said words". They are both the same. She said words, right? That is a neutral thing. 

19:37 

But we might say that and we'll start to feel our ears burn a little bit and we start to get a little hot in our chest and our cheeks and our breathing gets a little bit shallow and we realize we're getting angry, right? Our initial response is to tie that feeling of anger directly to the circumstance of what she said and that is perfectly normal. She said this and I got angry, right? We do that all the time. It is the most natural thing in the world for us to want to go straight from the circumstance to the feeling, okay? We very easily think that what she has said to us has made us angry, but think back to the thought model if you will. What is between the circumstance and the feeling line? The T-line, the thought line. 

20:34 

So here's the most amazing trick. Slowing down enough to realize that what she said did not make us angry. That circumstance did not create the feeling. It was what's between the circumstance and the feeling, which is the thought. It was our thoughts about what she said that created the anger. Okay, so stick with me here. Victor Frankel, who was a psychiatrist, I think, or a psychologist in World War II, Jewish, who was put in a concentration camp, wrote an amazing book. It just has all kinds of amazing ideas and concepts, and this is what he says about this. Between stimulus and response, and here I'm going to say stimulus being the circumstance, response being the feeling. "Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response." There's our thought, right? And he continues on, "in our response lies our growth and our freedom." 

21:39 

So this is where these ideas go back to, this instance in World War II. "Between the stimulus or the circumstance and the response or the feeling, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response," or our feeling. Herein lies the thought. So if it wasn't her words that made me angry, what was it? It was my thoughts about her words that made me angry. Had she said those words in German, it wouldn't have bothered me because I wouldn't have understood them. They're the exact same words, but it's what I make them mean, what I think about them that creates the feeling. She could say that to me, and if I have the thought, "she's right, my daughter is being a brat right now," then I'm most likely not going to feel anger. If I think "she's so rude. How dare she say that about my daughter?" Then I'll start moving into feelings of anger. Right? My thoughts create my feelings every single time. There is no exception to this. Our thoughts are that powerful. When we feel anger, when we feel resentment, when we feel frustration, when we feel love, when we feel compassion, it all comes from what we are choosing to think. 

23:05 

So let me give you an example. Remember way, way back when your kids were tiny and after all the chaos of putting them to bed was over and you'd have about an hour of silence, maybe watching TV or reading a book or whatever. So you've had all this quiet and peace and then on your way to bed you'd stop to look in on them. So you'd open the door and the hallway light would shine across their little angelic face, which what is more beautiful than a little sleeping child, right? And you would see that and you would think about how much you love them. And you would get this rush of love that was so intense that it would bring tears to your eyes. Just thinking about that. I'm getting tears in my eyes right now, right? Thinking about those times that I would just open that door and see those little faces. Right? My child was just lying there sleeping. That's a circumstance. But you had a thought about how blessed you were, about how much you loved them. And then the emotions welled up so strong that you could hardly contain them. It's not that they were sleeping. That's the circumstance, although that was always amazing, right? When we finally got them to sleep and it was quiet for the day. But rather, it was the thoughts in your brain about them that created that rush of overwhelming love. 

24:33 

But then, and I know that you did this too, because you're a human and we all did this. You would think, so there would be those times you'd have that door open, the light shining across their face. You would see them sleeping there. And you would also think, "what would happen if they got cancer or some other disease and they died?" Right? Look at this. I was crying too. And then immediately those feelings of love would disappear and you would feel some overwhelming heartache and you would start to cry again. Right? But this time for a different reason. And again, the circumstance is that your child is sleeping. But your thought about that child sleeping created a completely different feeling. 

25:21 

Now I didn't start getting choked up here on purpose. That was not in my plan here. But look how that thought for me even created feelings. The thought of looking at that little child's face and watching them sleep and how much I love them create- -Gosh darn it, what is up with me?--created such feelings of gratitude and love. But then same circumstance, my child is laying there asleep, and I think about them getting cancer or I think about them them dying or getting some other painful disease and them suffering and that creates another totally different feeling that also brings tears to ours, right? This is the amazing power of our thoughts. They create our feelings and this can be difficult to swallow. 

26:15 

Sometimes my clients get angry with me and they refuse to believe that they are the ones responsible for the anger or frustration or resentment they are feeling. They want so desperately to believe that it is all someone else's fault, but I promise you it is your responsibility for how you are feeling. And when you learn to embrace that idea, you get this amazing feeling of empowerment. So many people who struggle with so much drama in their lives, it's because they always think that another person is causing their feelings. If we want to cut the drama out of our lives, we have to start taking responsibility for the feelings and realize that we're creating them. 

27:04 

Okay, now that's not saying that we take responsibility for the circumstance. The circumstance we have no control over, but the feelings we do. But here's one thing, something to remember. Our primitive brain is working its butt off to do all the thinking for us because it wants to keep us from having to think too much, right? It's trying to conserve energy. So it puts forth all kinds of crazy, unconscious thoughts in order to do that. And those unconscious thoughts are creating feelings without us even being aware, okay? Have you ever had the feeling that something is just really wrong and you scan your life and you call your family and there's really nothing wrong at all? Okay, those times for me come when I'm starting to engage  in something a little new and scary and out of my comfort zone. And although I think I'm doing great with it, my primitive brain is freaking out and creating unconscious thoughts that start creating feelings and all behind the scenes where we're not even aware. 

28:12 

I had that experience just this morning. My life is great. I'm in a really good place. And yet I'm in this place of trying to figure out how to run a business, how to start marketing, how to start really building my business. And that's always kind of going on. And this morning I just got this feeling of dread, a touch of anxiety, and a touch of, "oh my gosh, what am I doing?" And when I slowed down enough, I realized that my primitive brain was back there going, "oh come on, girl, what are you doing? Like you think you can do this business? Like you think that you can create something amazing like this?" Okay, so and then I was like, "well yeah, I really kind of do. I really do believe that." And then that feeling started to subside. But in the background, in my subconscious, my primitive brain was starting to play these thoughts of, "yeah, who do you think you are? You know, you're getting too big. You think that you can really do this. You think you can change lives of people. You think that you can help. You think you can make a difference in this world." And my primitive brain starts giving me all these thoughts. And these thoughts start creating feelings of uneasiness, right? I just all of a sudden got this feeling this morning of "whoa, what am I doing? What is going on? Who do I think I am?" Right? And I had to really check that and figure that out. 

29:45 

So sometimes we feel depressed or we feel anxious or annoyed or frustrated or grumpy and we don't know why. This is when we can start examining our thoughts that are going on behind the scenes in our subconscious and discover that we are the ones creating those feelings with our brain. And it's not to say that that all of those feelings are bad or unwelcome. Sometimes they're the right emotion at the right time. But realizing that they are being created by our thoughts is a huge step into emotional adulthood, okay? I feel like I can go on and on about this thought and feeling connection, okay? But I think I've I hope that I've gotten my point across and I don't want to belabor it. 

30:33 

But let's move on to the next one. So our feelings then create the next line in the model which is the A line, or the action line. Everything we do in life is because we have a feeling. Again this will stem back to thoughts that are either conscious or unconscious but our actions are created by our feelings. So let's say I feel very connected emotionally to my spouse. That's my feeling, okay? What actions does that feeling create? So possibly I'm willing to share very vulnerable thoughts and ideas. I may call them more often or text them more often. I may be more physically intimate. I may engage in more service for them. All of these actions are a byproduct of the feeling of being connected. But let's say on the opposite end of the spectrum I feel very disconnected emotionally to my spouse. That's my F line, right, my feeling line. And then what actions do I start to engage in because I feel that way? I'll probably start to shut down emotionally and won't share things. I'll clam up and not talk to them. I will avoid them emotionally and I will avoid them physically. I may stop doing nice things for them. In fact, I may even start doing kind of mean things, right? If we can learn to check our actions, we can always trace them back to our feelings and then we can trace those back to our thoughts every single time. 

32:02 

In fact, a lot of times when I work with clients we don't even start with the thought line. Sometimes we'll start with the action line or the feeling line and then we'll work it backward to figure out what is the thought. And it's always amazing when we do that, the thoughts that we find that are behind all of our feelings and actions. And a lot of times my clients were like, "oh my gosh, I didn't even realize that I was thinking that." And that's the brilliance of this work, that's the brilliance of the thought model, is we realize the unconscious thoughts that our brain is putting out there. 

32:36 

Okay, so something amazing though Is that we have been taught in so many places in our lives to work to create change in our lives from the A line, the action line. If you want to love your spouse more, start serving them or iron his shirts or make nice dinners. That will work for a short time. But long term it will never stick because all change occurs in the thought line first. If the whole time I'm ironing that shirt I'm thinking, "oh, he just doesn't deserve this. He's so ornery, is so not nice," it's not going to change. It's not going to keep me in this place. What has to change my feelings are my thoughts. I have to start thinking, "you know what, he works really hard for our family. I appreciate that he does that," right? Everything has to start in the thought line first. 

33:24 

And this is why so many people start new eating plans with their actions, because that's what we've been taught that we do. We just dig in, we do the discipline, we do the the willpower, and we change. We know exactly what to eat, how much to eat, and when to eat it. But after a few months of managing these actions they go back to how they were eating before because the thoughts behind the actions were not consistent. They were just white knuckling it to eat the way that they thought that they were supposed to. But their thoughts are still in the background going, "oh, I'd just love a piece of chocolate cake," right? They're not changing the thoughts behind it. We can hold up the action line for a long time, but not for lasting change. Because eventually our thoughts will overtake the whole system. We can only white knuckle willpower it for so long. 

34:19 

Okay, and then our actions always create the results that we see in our lives So the A line, or the action line, creates the our line or the results line. Do you have a loving intimate relationship with your spouse? Look at your thoughts and you'll see why. Trace that reaction, "I have a loving intimate relationship with my spouse." That's your result. What actions are you doing to create that? Then what feelings are creating those actions and what thoughts are creating that? Okay. Do you have a distant rocky relationship with your spouse? Again, do the same thing. Check your thoughts. So start off in my results line: "Distant rocky relationship." What are my actions that are creating that? What are my feelings that are creating those actions and then what are the thoughts that are creating those feelings? Check your thoughts every single time and it will be very clear why you have the results in your life that you have. 

35:13 

Okay, so that's the thought model. Okay, I could talk about this forever and guess what, we've already gone longer than I usually go on this. So I'm gonna talk about this next time. I just really believe that it's one of the most important things we can understand in our lives to have a better mental and emotional health. Okay, but I am not done. So next time we'll talk about why the thought model matters. Now that you understand the basics of it, it's super important to see the implications of why this is so important and how you can use this information to move into a better place in your life. I love this work so much. I love helping my clients feel empowered by understanding the thought model and teaching them how to become more the kind of person they want to become by utilizing the thought model in their lives. 

36:02 

This is the foundational work I do in my coaching business. I help my clients to take responsibility for what they are creating in their lives. If you would like help figuring this out, let me be your life coach. Let me teach you how to identify your thoughts better so you can find more control and power in your life. I promise you, this is life-changing work. Is it investment? For sure, it's an investment. It's an investment in money. It's an investment in time. It's an investment in energy. But I promise you, you walk out the other side of this a better person, a person who is more empowered, a person who has better relationships and knows how to create the kinds of feelings that you want to create. I promise you, this is amazing work. And it's not just for those who struggle. It is for those in good places who also need help identifying. It is amazing to me how much this work continues to bless my life regularly. As in, daily I'm applying these concepts. So it's not just work for the super struggling. It's for anybody who wants to move forward and grow and progress. I personally work with a coach almost weekly and it's a process of self-discovery that is helping me to move into a better place, because there is a fulfillment that comes from this personal growth that you can't get anywhere else. And I really believe that this middle age is the perfect time to start doing this because we see ourselves more clearly than we ever have before. 

37:52 

Love, love, love growing up, don't you? Okay, that's going to do it for me today. This podcast, I love it, do you realize this is number 96? I am coming up on a hundred podcasts. It blows my mind that I have been doing this for over a year and that I've created over a hundred of these. And I still, every day I'm like, "oh I should do a podcast on that, I should do a podcast on that." There is an unlimited number of concepts for me to share with you and talk with you about. I hope that this is blessing your life. I hope that it is helping you to see things more clearly and helping you to find more empowerment in your life. This is what this is about. This is work that all of us need. Every one of us needs to understand this better and I totally get that it's not everybody's gig. 

38:43 

Not everybody likes learning this kind of stuff. I was talking to somebody a few weeks ago and she's like, "I don't listen to podcasts because I don't like people telling me what to do." Which totally made me laugh. I'm like, "well there's tons of podcasts that don't tell you what to do." But in her mind, this is telling her what to do. I like to think of it as giving you a different way to think about how you're engaging with your life and what you're creating. But she feels like she's being told what to do. 

39:10 

So anyway, if you know somebody who would love this kind of stuff, please share this, please share this. I just, I wanna change the world by helping people to be more mentally and emotionally healthy. This is what it's about for me. Okay, that is gonna do it my friends. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for being here. I wish you all the best and next week we're gonna talk a little bit more about why the thought model matters, right? Why all the stuff we talked about this week is so important. Okay, have an awesome, awesome week and I will talk to you next Monday. Ciao. 

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Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.