00:00

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 97, "Why the Thought Model Matters." 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 

Well, hello there, my friends. So nice to be with you today, thanks for joining me. Let's see, how are you doing? Like how are you really doing with this? I noticed that there's all kinds of reactions, people are all over the page from one end of the spectrum to the other, some people are doing really great with this isolation thing and others are just not doing so well. And I want you to realize that regardless of where you are, it's okay, no judgment, but it is interesting to stand back and take a look at where we are and get curious about it. If you're doing really well, get curious about it. What am I doing well? What's happening? What's going on? Why am I doing well? If you're not doing so well, again a really great opportunity to get curious and to start wondering why and to start taking a look at your mental and emotional help a little bit and see if there are some adjustments that need to be made. That's what this program is all about, helping us to manage our thoughts and manage our lives and our relationships so that we can be in a better mental and emotional place. 

01:33 

So that being said, if you would like some coaching, I do offer you a free coaching session so you can see what it's like. And also if you just have any questions, you can contact me at tanyahale.com or you can go to my Facebook page which is Tanya Hale LDS Life Coaching and there's a little button there that you can just click and get access to my calendar and you can sign up for a time that works for you. 

01:57 

Okay, that being said, last week we had a really great in-depth discussion about the thought model, what it is, and how it works. And I hope that you listened to that one before this one, because these are really kind of a part one and part two. So if you haven't listened to last week, stop this quick, go back and listen to last week's, and learn about the thought model. And then today we're going to talk about why the thought model matters. 

02:22 

So for just a quick review of last week, for those of you for whom this was a new concept, the first line of the thought model is the C line, or the circumstance line. And circumstances are always facts. Everyone in the world would agree to them, and bonus, they are always neutral. Always, always, always, with no exceptions. The second line of the thought model is the T line, or the thought line. And this is where we decide what to make that circumstance mean. And we can think any kind of thought that we want to about any circumstance. Some of these thoughts are intentional and some are so deeply subconscious that we aren't aware at all that they're going on inside of our heads. But whether the thoughts are conscious or subconscious, they're important because they create the third line of the thought model and that is the F line, or the feelings line. Every feeling we have in our lives is created by our thoughts. 

03:23 

Again, whether those thoughts are conscious or subconscious or sometimes it's easy to figure out why we're having the emotion because our thoughts were more intentional. Other times we have feelings and we're completely confused where they're coming from because they are being caused by deep unconscious thoughts. And then our feelings create our actions. So the F line creates the A line. So every action we engage in is created by a feeling. Take any action, any behavior of yours, and you can trace that action back to a feeling and then back to a thought. So the fifth line, or the R line, also called the results line, comes as a consequence of our actions and more often than not we will see a clear and direct correlation between our results line and our thought line. What we are ultimately seeing in our life, what our life becomes, the results all starts with a thought about a circumstance. 

04:24 

Okay, so here's our review of the thought model. So today we're going to discuss why the thought model even matters. Why is it important that we come to understand these processes and how will they make a difference in our mental and emotional health? I believe that the biggest reason the thought model matters is because understanding the whole process is important in how empowered we feel in our lives. And this empowerment is directly related to taking responsibility for everything going on in our lives. So circumstances happen in our lives thousands of times a day. I am completely free to choose how to engage with those circumstances through my thoughts. Now, many of these are going to happen so quickly and so seamlessly that we're just not even really going to pay attention. However, there are other ones that seem to take forefront in our lives that we're just like, what? What is going on? What's happening here, right? So those are the ones that generally we need to work with. 

05:22 

So it is very empowering when we realize that we are free to engage with circumstances however we choose. No circumstance controls me. It doesn't matter what anyone says or anyone does. It doesn't matter what is going on in the world. It doesn't matter what challenges or blessings come into our lives. I get to choose what to think about it. And the thoughts I choose to think create the rest of the thought model. Every result I see in my life is created by me. And as soon as I realize that I create everything in my life but the circumstance, I can step into a place of power. 

06:03 

But this also comes with a lot of responsibility. The realization and then the acceptance that I am responsible for every result, every action, every feeling, and every thought in my life is so important to this process that we're going through of growing up. This is what we call "emotional adulthood," realizing that we are the creator of every emotion we experience. And no one else is to blame, regardless of what they may have said or done or didn't say or do. And this is a really amazing place to be. When I step into this responsibility, I am no longer blaming anyone else. I am no longer putting myself into a victim mentality. I have taken charge of my own life, where I've been, where I currently am, and the direction I am headed. Empowering, definitely. A little scary and intimidating for many of us, without doubt. But exciting and exhilarating, yes and yes. 

07:13 

I always think about the dichotomy of emotions here in this sort of way. When I think of the judgment day and me standing before God, if I think, whoa, whoa, it's all me. There's no one here to point a finger at. I can't say that I was forced to behave in a certain way by someone else. Then the feelings I create with those thoughts are ones of being scared and intimidated by the responsibility. They're motivated by fear, right? When I stand there and I think, whoa, I can't blame anybody else, right? But if when standing in front of God at the judgment day, I choose to think, no one can keep me from standing here worthy and prepared. No one else can hold me back. Then I feel empowered and excited and exhilarated. 

08:00 

And when we choose not to take responsibility for everything going on in our lives, we can sink pretty far down, pretty darn fast. Because we are choosing to think that it has nothing to do with us. We are just the victim of our circumstances or somebody else's choices. However, when we choose to take responsibility for everything going on in our lives, then it can help to spur us on, to help us gather our courage and move forward because we realize that we can create whatever we want to create in life. And no one else can say or do anything about it. 

08:40 

So this all comes back to the agency that we've been given in life. I get to choose. In fact, beyond the circumstances, I get to choose everything else in my life. My thoughts, my feelings, my actions, and the results. I can choose to feel angry about something and there are some things in life we really want to be angry about. But it is so important to realize that we are choosing that anger by the thoughts we have about the circumstances of our lives. The anger isn't just being thrust upon us by some unformed, unseen force because of a circumstance. I am responsible for the creation of the anger. And so it goes with any feeling or emotion. I am the creator of it. It doesn't matter whether the emotion is one we would categorize as positive or negative. We have created all of them. An exception of course to this would be chemical imbalances in our brains that are causing depression or other mental illnesses that are in need of medical treatment, right? That's it. That's a totally different story than what we're talking about here. But for so many of us who don't have these chemical imbalances, we can learn to become more aware of our thoughts and see how those thoughts are creating everything else in our lives. And just to say, people with chemical imbalances can use these skills as well. But there's an additional component going on there where there's medication of course that is needed, right? But even on medication, a person can still learn to use this and learn to manage thoughts to see how we create things. 

10:21 

So learning to take responsibility for everything going on in our lives is a huge shift for how so many of us live. So many of us are used to saying things like, "oh my husband just made me so mad." What we learn to acknowledge is that our husband presented us with a circumstance. And that circumstance is 100% neutral. Then we get to choose a thought about that circumstance, and then our thoughts created our future: in this instance, the feeling of being so mad. So let's say that your husband said he would pick up a gallon of milk on his way home from work and when he shows up he's forgotten to stop and get it. The circumstance here would be that there is no milk or that my husband didn't buy milk. That's completely neutral. How do we know? Because different people will think different things about it. For example, one person may think "he's so lazy and irresponsible and he never thinks about me." Okay, that's going to create some some pretty heated emotions, right? While another person might think, "oh I'm so glad he's weaning himself off of cow's milk and drinking more almond milk." Right? See how people can think different things about the same circumstance? But we can prove that either there is no milk or that our husband didn't stop and buy milk on his way home from work. We can open the refrigerator and see or recognize that our husband walked in the door from work with no milk. He might even say, "I didn't buy milk on my way home." So, it's a circumstance and it's always neutral. 

11:53 

What we make this circumstance mean, however, is our thought. We may even choose to think, "if he really loved me, he wouldn't have forgotten." Or we could choose to think, "he's so selfish and never thinks about the things that I need." But we could also choose to think, "it looks like he had a pretty rough day today." And each of those thoughts will create a very different feeling. 

12:18 

So, this is why it matters. Every result in our life is a creation of our thoughts. Every result, every action, every feeling. Now, just to clarify, this isn't to say that we want to get to the point of never feeling anything but happy. First of all, our human experience is for us to engage in this process called "living." We need to be feeling all the feels. We need all kinds of different emotions to help us have a fulfilling and satisfying life experience. And second of all, we will never be able to control all of the thoughts and only create the feelings we want to. With over 60,000 thoughts a day, the vast majority of those being unconscious, we will never be able to get a handle on them all. We're just imperfect humans learning to manage the best that we can. 

13:09 

So, if we're supposed to feel all the feels, and if it's impossible for us to manage all of our thoughts, why does this thought model even matter? Why bother learning about it at all? Because when we learn to become aware of and acknowledge that we are the creators of everything in our lives, then we can stop blaming and hurting others. Then we can stop trying to control others. Then we can step into responsibility and feeling control of what's happening in our lives. When I find myself feeling upset because someone else got upset with me, I can realize that I don't have to be upset, regardless of their behavior. I can choose not to be upset, though I will not be able to control their thoughts that are making them feel upset. I can control my thoughts that make me upset. I don't have to live in upset. I don't have to live in resentment or anger if I don't want to. Understanding the thought model helps me to understand that no one else is making me feel anything. I am in complete control over what I choose to feel. So how do we get to this place of awareness and acknowledgement? 

14:25 

I am so glad you asked that question, my friends. I have a tool that I use many times a week to help me understand what my thoughts are that are creating my feelings and my actions. And this is called a thought download. Basically a thought download is taking time to sit down and write about everything I am experiencing about a particular situation. So I'm going to suggest that you hand write them out, and there's a very good reason for that. Hand writing takes more time and it allows our brain to process more and figure things out when we slow down a little bit. So take any situation. It doesn't have to be a huge overwhelming problem. Maybe you're just feeling slightly bugged by your sister or your mother-in-law or your husband. Start by writing it all out. Everything you can think of. 

15:14 

Now the trick here is to not edit your thoughts. We don't want to not write something down because we think it's mean or unkind or unjust or un-Christlike. Our goal is to see what our brain is thinking because remember our primitive brain is always creating thoughts and many of them are not true or they are things that even go against our value system. Okay, for example, think about being in a store and the time that you just think "oh my gosh, I could just stick that in my pocket. No one would know." Most of us that's not even an option, right? But our brain still puts that out there. Our primitive brain just says, "hey, look, here's an option." Okay, but regardless we have to just realize that our primitive brain puts stuff out there that isn't true and that goes against our value system. 

16:07 

But even so those thoughts are creating feelings. Every thought our brain puts out creates feelings. So get all of your thoughts about that situation out of your brain so you can scrutinize what's going on up there and see why you're feeling bugged. Once you get everything out on paper, read back through it and identify what the circumstance is. And remember the circumstance is only facts, no opinions. It could be proven in a court of law. Then go back through what you wrote again and start to identify thoughts, feelings, and actions. I do this by putting a C, T, F, or an A next to sentence that I wrote. And sometimes I'll do this in bullet points and other times I just do it in paragraph form. It just really doesn't matter. Whatever feels comfortable to you. 

16:58 

But now you need to go back through it and start identifying the different parts of the model. So for this particular situation we know that we're feeling bugged. So let's put "bugged" in the feeling line and fill in the rest of the model. So for our C line, our circumstance, let's write, "my sister said, 'I don't really like your potato salad. How about if you bring store-bought rolls for dinner?'" So if it's a direct quote, if we could have recorded that and that's what she said, then we can put it in the C line. Saying something like, "my sister doesn't like my cooking," unless she said, "I don't like your cooking," you cannot put that there because that becomes an opinion, right? Of what she said, you have to be as factual as possible here. So if we can record that she says she doesn't like our potato salad and she wants us to bring store-bought rolls, then we put that in the C line. 

17:55 

So then our F line, remember our F line is that we're being bugged. So now we need to fill out the T line, the thought line, between the circumstance and the action and the feeling line. Okay? So let's say that we look back through our notes of our thought download and we saw we have the thought "I just really don't appreciate how she thinks she does everything better than me." Okay, and this thought makes us feel bugged and then what actions? So we have circumstance: she said "I really don't like your potato salad. How about if you bring store-bought rolls." We thought: "I just really don't appreciate how she thinks she does everything better than me." The feeling we have is bugged, and then what actions does this feeling cause us to engage in? Okay, we might show up late for the dinner. We might talk bad about her to our husband or siblings our parents or our friends. We might stop talking to her altogether or we might even avoid her while we're at the dinner. We might even do something a little more passive-aggressive, like not bringing enough rolls or buying a kind that you know that she doesn't like. 

19:09 

Okay, then we have the R line left. So we have our actions there, and then what are the results? When we engage in those kinds of behaviors, what ends up being our result? Here's some options: we could have a hard time connecting with her, our relationship is strange, she may think even more strongly that she can't trust your judgment in food, she doesn't feel appreciated and neither do we because she didn't accept our offering a hundred percent. So the most important thing here is not how big or small the issue is. The most important thing here is to learn to see how our thoughts are creating a trickle down effect in our feelings, then our actions, and then our results. We start to see how our thoughts truly are creating everything in our lives. Can we control the fact that our sister said that? No, that's a circumstance, but we can control the rest of it. 

20:06 

And the point of doing thought downloads and doing thought models is to really help us see how and what we are creating with our thoughts. When we can start becoming clear on how we're doing this, we begin to really take responsibility for our own lives. We learn to try to let go of other people, the control of other people's lives, and then our relationships with others and with ourselves will start to improve. I've even done thought models and realized thoughts that I was having about or towards God that have been impeding my having a deeper relationship with Him. So this process works in every area of our lives. My spiritual life, my relationships with anyone, and even my relationship with myself, they've all been impacted positively by using this process. 

20:58 

So why does the thought model matter? Because understanding it and implying it, we can step into a better version of ourselves by understanding better what thoughts are hindering and what thoughts are helping. What thoughts are helping me to grow. And it's only when we are aware of our thoughts that we can see what is really going on with ourselves and then start to make healthy changes. Henry B. Eyring said, "those who do not see their weaknesses do not progress." Right? So true. We have to be able to see our weaknesses, but we only see our weaknesses when we really start looking for them. And doing this thought download and the thought model is an amazing way to start identifying our weaknesses, to start seeing our thoughts more clearly. 

21:54 

This work has done amazing things for me. It is truly helping me to see and acknowledge thoughts that I need to repent of, thoughts that are keeping me from growing, and thoughts that are keeping me from moving forward. And this awareness is vital to becoming more the person that I want to become. This is a process that takes time and a lot of practice. And as a coach, when you work with me, I become your thought download to help you see your thoughts more clearly. I help my clients learn how to implement the thought model into their growth plans. So if you'd like some help, again, you can go to tanyahale.com and you can sign up for a free session there or you can go to my Facebook page, Tanya Hale LDS Life Coaching, and there is a button there that you can do to book a session with me as well. And both of those will take you directly to my calendar so you can just sign up for something that works. 

22:53 

Okay, this growing up thing is amazing I cannot cannot get over where my life is going because of this work and what I am becoming and the changes that I'm seeing what I'm discovering about myself. I am amazed. "Amazed" is probably even not quite as strong enough word. I love love love where this work is taking me and the kind of person that I'm becoming. It's such a powerful place to be. And I want you to get there as well because it is so brilliant and so amazing. So let's do this together, shall we? Okay, give this a shot. If you're struggling with it, call me, let me work through a session with you. It's just so cool. 

23:45 

Alright, my friends, if you feel this podcast is adding value to your life, you can subscribe, you can leave a review, and you can share it with someone that you feel that this is kind of their thing as well. And you might be surprised the kind of people that might like this. So if you go on my Facebook page, feel free to share it on Facebook. Feel free to just share it verbally. All kinds of ways you can share, but please take the time to do that. 

24:12 

If it's helping you, it will help somebody else. And that, my friends, is gonna do it for me. I will talk to you next week. Bye. 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.