591. This Changes Everything

My life became exponentially easier and better when I learned the five-part self-coaching Model. And that is why I talk about it so much here on this podcast. I wrote about it in my book. You may have heard me teach it before. If not, you’re in for a treat today. But learning this Model and understanding it intellectually is not what changed my life. It’s not what’s helped me achieve my big goals. It’s not what’s made everything easier. What’s done that is understanding it on a deep level, installing the software of it, if you will, so that it becomes an automatic way that I assess my life, the challenges that come up, and my goals. And today, I’m going to teach you how to do exactly that.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we apply all the tools of psychology, human behavior, and mindfulness to live our best lives, navigate challenges, and achieve our goals. I’m Jody Moore and I’ll be your coach today. Let’s do it.

Alright, my friends. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me today. You may think that you know this five-part Model, and you may know it very well intellectually. But I wonder if it’s really ingrained on your heart. I wonder if it’s a natural lens by which you see the world. And even if it is, let’s make that even more the case because the more you have an awareness of what’s truly creating your experience and everybody else’s experience around them, the easier your life gets. You stop people-pleasing and trying to manipulate others, and instead, you just get better at loving others and being kind and generous and good because you want to, but not because you’re going to be able to control anyone else. 

You start being able to handle it when people behave however they’re going to behave. You start being able to feel how you want to feel no matter what’s going on in the world around you. You start showing up for your goals and following through on the things that you said that you were going to do instead of just blowing off because you didn’t feel like it. You suddenly start creating more than you ever knew you could create and feeling good along the way. That’s what I want for you, and that’s why I’m bringing you today’s episode.

Now, the way that I really got the Model deep into my soul, the way it became a part of me and how I naturally view the world, is by watching other coaches take people’s challenges or problems or questions and put them into Models over and over and over again. It’s something I do with my clients, and it’s something I’m going to offer to you today here on the podcast. 

Now, if you’re listening to this on audio, I highly recommend that you switch over and watch it on YouTube or go back and watch it on YouTube. Go look up Better Than Happy on YouTube because this is a recording of a call I did years ago with real clients, and I have my flip chart and my marker, and we’re going to do Model after Model after Model. I’ll tell you, I went and listened to this call the other day, and this is what was fascinating about it. 

First of all, it takes place. It was originally recorded right when the pandemic hit. You’re going to hear me call it coronavirus because remember we called it coronavirus before they named it COVID-19 or before I was aware it was COVID-19. You’re going to hear people bring up some situations related to that, but a lot that aren’t related to that at all. I still think it’s so fascinating to hear this coaching now that we’re way on the other side of that event, right?

I want you to hear Model after Model after Model. So I went to the vault, we might say, and I pulled Jody’s version, and I know you’re going to love listening to this because I loved listening to it, and I’m the one that taught it. So please enjoy. Send me your questions, and maybe we’ll do more like this in the future if you find it helpful.

So we always end up abbreviating it CTFAR, just a shortcut. So if you hear me coaching people and we’re talking about what’s happening in your T line or your A line or this is all, we’re not talking about subways here. We’re talking about T line, A line, F line, C line. We like to abbreviate around here. It’s like we have our own language, right?

So the C is the circumstance, and it’s the thing outside of you, and it’s the facts. It’s always just facts. Circumstances are neutral. Now, our brains don’t think that. Our brains think that some circumstances are good and some are bad and some are better than others, but they are just the things happening outside of us. And when I tell you that circumstances are neutral, a lot of you hear me saying, so you should think positively about them. And I’m not saying that. You’re not going to want to think positively about some circumstances, okay? You’re going to want to think negatively, and you’re going to want to feel something negative even. Or sometimes you’re just not going to be able to because you’re a human being, you’re not a robot. So it’s okay, but the circumstance is just the thing happening outside of you. It doesn’t affect you until you have a thought.

Circumstances trigger thoughts for us. As human beings, we are so good at thinking. We are amazing thinkers. We think 40,000 some-odd thoughts a day. We think them instantly. We think so many of them unconsciously that we’re not even aware of. We have memorized thoughts. We have really useful thoughts, and then we have some that aren’t serving us at all. We also have the ability to choose our thoughts. It’s not super easy to do. You’re not going to do it without being conscious of it usually, but that’s what I’m teaching you here and be bold is how to choose your thoughts. You have to sometimes show your brain that this is just a thought. Your brain might think it’s true. Your brain might think it’s really important to think that thought. Your brain will think all kinds of things that when we just gently take a look at it, we get to loosen up a little bit, and that’s where you get the ability to choose your thoughts. Okay?

Thoughts are what create our feelings, 100%. Okay? So circumstances don’t create feelings. Other people are circumstances. Whether kids go to school or stay home from school is a circumstance. It’s not creating your feelings. You’re creating it with your thoughts. Now, it’s okay to have whatever thoughts you’re having, but I want you to have, again, the awareness that you’re the creator of it.

Alright. Feelings are just a vibration in the body. They’re just literally a chemical or hormonal reaction in the body because of a sentence in the brain. The organs respond accordingly. Your body releases all the chemicals that create that sensation within you. Some of them feel hot, some of them feel fast, some of them feel slower, some of them feel peaceful and like a warming in the chest. Some of them create queasiness. Some of them create pains and aches. Some of them cause us to shake. Those are feelings. We feel them in the body. They’re generated by thoughts, right? They’re triggered by thoughts.

Our feelings are the fuel for all of our action. So we want to be taking the most useful action we can in our lives as often as we can because our actions create our results. And what matters more than what I’m doing is what’s fueling what I’m doing. Okay? So I could take the same action as my friend, and if I’m fueled by fear and insecurity, it’s going to create a totally different result than my friend who’s fueled by confidence and trust and love. Okay? So we’re not supposed to operate in perfect Models all the time. We’re not supposed to be effective all the time in our lives. It’s okay. Again, I’m not trying to turn you into a robot. I just want you to understand what’s going on and how we as human beings operate, how God created us, how to maximize your life and your results. And that’s what the Model shows us. Okay?

So here we go. We’re going to do some Models. If you have, again, go to the Q&A box with your questions, comments, Models, whatever. If you have a portion of a Model that you want to put in the Q&A box, you’re welcome to do that, and I will help you take a look at your Model, make any corrections or complete it. If you don’t have a Model at all, you don’t know where to begin or whatever, no problem. Remember, we’re getting a pedicure. Sit in the chair. Let me take care of you, okay?

Okay, here we go.

It says, “Hi. So I don’t know if I’m phrasing this correctly, but I’ve heard you say that we as humans pick up on, for lack of a better word, vibes of the people around us. So here is my Model.” C, “Husband says we have enough money to do those things. It’s all okay.” And she put that in quotes. That’s important, you guys, because remember, we’re super good at thinking. And so as soon as my husband says something, I usually interpret it into what I think he meant and paraphrase it into my own words. And now I’m in thoughtland instead of circumstanceland. So we only put in the circumstance line what your husband said in quotes, in his exact words. Okay? So great job on that.

Circumstance, “Husband says we have enough money to do these things, it’s all okay.” quote. Thought, “Maybe he’s lying like he used to in order to protect me. He seems like he’s stressed out. I can’t trust him. Why are we paying for some stuff but not for fillings at the dentist? Worry and stress and diarrhea and taking clonopin.” Okay. Let’s take a look at it. So, you guys can hear me, right? I wasn’t just talking to myself. Okay.

Alright. C, husband his words, we have enough money. How did you say it? To do those things. It’s all okay. To do, I’m just going to say this. I’m just shortening it, okay?

Now, in your thought line, in your T line, you have a whole bunch of thoughts. Okay? And I’m going to recommend that you just put one thought in your T line. If you want to take a look at all of those, you can do, you have about four or five different thoughts. We could do four or five different Models if necessary, okay? But let’s just pick one. And it doesn’t matter which one, you guys. We’re going to find the same thing probably, no matter which thought we choose. Okay? You know what we’re going to find? 

We’re going to find that your thought ends up in your result line. We’re going to find that you become the very thing you don’t want your husband to do. We’re going to find that you somehow create an experience for yourself that reinforces or proves or finds evidence for the thought you’re choosing. That’s what we all do. We want our thoughts to be true more than we want to feel good or make sure we have enough money or achieve our goals. It’s the craziest thing what our brains do.

Okay? So I’m going to pick this thought. Maybe he is lying. Now, you have some more to that thought, like you said, like he used to do. But I would run a whole another Model on that. He used to lie. It’s just an interesting thought to put in your T line. So let’s just look at this one. Maybe he is lying. Now, when you think this thought, maybe he’s lying, husband says this, you think maybe he’s lying. How do you feel? You probably feel suspicious. You feel concerned, worried, something like this, right? Let me see. You put worry, so I’m going to put worry here. You also said stress, etc., because we have multiple thoughts, and we’re going to have multiple feelings, and it’s harder to take a look at our brains when we put a bunch of thoughts and a bunch of feelings and all that. So we just want to put one C, when he said this, one of your main thoughts was maybe he’s lying, and you feel worried when you think this particular sentence, right?

Now, what do you do in this circumstance? Keep yourselves here, you guys. I was talking to my coaches in coaching incubator about getting really specific in the circumstance line, and I want you to give you guys permission to do this too. You have a great specific C. It’s not just husband. You have a really good narrow one. Husband said these words. Now, as you’re doing your Model, go there in your head. Byron Katie is really good at helping people do this. She’ll say, “Where were you, sweetheart? Were you sitting or standing up? Were you in the kitchen? Were you in the living room? Were you on your phone? Did he text it to you?” Like, go there in your mind, be in that moment, whenever it was, wherever you were, okay? And then again, imagine it again. He says, “We have enough money,” and you think the thought, “Maybe he’s lying.” How do you feel? Worried. And then what did you do in that moment? Did you ask questions about it? Did you say, “I kind of think you’re lying?” Did you like, not, did you sort of tune him out and start going in your own head and thinking about things? Have you been thinking about it ever since? Because I’m guessing you have, because you said you’ve been worried and stressed and having diarrhea and taking clonopin. I don’t know if I’m saying that right. Sorry.

So that’s what’s happening in your action line is your ruminating on it. You’re questioning, doubting, right? etc. Maybe trying to figure it out, looking for clues. Can you guys read this? Or am I blocking it with my big hair and my big head? Looking for clues, trying to figure it out, all this drama, questioning why are we not paying for fillings, things like that, right? Now, I like to, when I do my self-coaching, make my result a really, remember we have this arrow here because our T’s going to end up in our R line every time. They’re going to be connected. So what is the result I’m creating for me? Are you lying in some way? My guess is there’s a little bit of that happening here because did you say, “Hey, I kind of think you’re lying, husband, or I’m worried that you might be lying because you’ve lied in the past and we’re not paying for fillings, so I don’t really believe you.”

Now, I’m not telling you that you should say that, but if we didn’t, then we’re sort of lying. We’re sort of dancing around it, pretending and trying to just go along with it when really what we’re thinking is he’s probably lying, right? Um, did you find evidence? Another result might be that you find proof that he’s lying because that’s what your brain is looking for, right? It’s going to be like, oh, he just lied right there too. But here’s the truth, you guys. Who lies? The correct answer is every one of us. Every one of us because if I didn’t lie, I would be a very unkind person because I have tons of judgmental, not-nice thoughts. But I don’t walk around and tell everyone them, right? It wouldn’t be very nice if I went out there to my kids and said, just so you know, you’re really getting on my nerves today. I just keep that to myself. We could call that lying, right?

So again, I’m not telling you that you should do anything differently. I just want you to see what’s really going on, right? That you’re, you could find proof of him lying for sure, 100% of the time. That’s true for any human being. And you can go to the past too and be like, remember when he lied about that thing? Or remember how he lied about this? So I don’t know what exactly is happening in this scenario. I don’t know if you said something or not or how you lied a little bit. But that’s what we’re going to create from this, okay? So there’s a Model.

Isn’t that just good to know? Isn’t it good to see that we think the problem is husband saying this? Not a problem. Okay? If we, we could even add your C line whatever the bank account looks like. What if there’s not money in the bank account? What if there’s, whatever the balance is, we would want to put in the C line. The bank account balance is zero. Let’s just say that’s a C. And husband says, “We have plenty of money to do this.” Okay? Now, your thought, maybe he’s lying isn’t serving you. None of these thoughts are. Maybe he’s lying like he used to. I can’t trust him. Why are we paying for some things but not fillings at the dentist? None of these thoughts are serving you, okay?

So what do you want this to look like? Let’s just decide we have a different option. We have all kinds of options. Let’s play with it. We’re going to keep the C exactly the same. I’m going to move this box so I can make sure you guys can see where I’m writing. Okay. We’re going to keep the C exactly the same. In your new Model, you guys, keep it exactly the same. Now, I do want to say something. For those of you that are that have been here a little while, sorry, I’m just trying to adjust my clothing. Don’t mind me. I don’t want you to be in a hurry to go to the new Model, okay? Sometimes it takes you sitting in your old Model for a while and really seeing that thought is optional and seeing what you’re creating for you and understanding that to the deepest possible level before you’re going to be able to go to the new Model. But sometimes we can just find a different thought, go to a new Model. Okay? So I want to show you how to do that.

So husband says, we have plenty of money to do this. Okay. Oops. The T is next. Hello. Okay? So, what do you want? Let’s start with the result in this one. Might be fun. I don’t know. Let’s see what happens. Instead of the result being me lying or me finding lots of evidence that he’s lying, what’s the upside of that? Not going to control him, not necessarily going to get him to stop lying, right? What do we want the result to be? Here’s what you really want. You really want to feel confident about your money. Right? You want to feel confident that you’re going to have what you need and that you’re taking care of financially. Isn’t that what you really want? So we’re making this all about husband, but this is really about us and our relationship with money and all of that.

So let’s just try that on. I know what’s going on with my money. And when I say my, I mean you and your husband’s money, our money, our family money, okay? Isn’t that what you want the result to be? Okay. So, I mean, you, what you really want is to change the circumstance. So that’s what we all want. But if we can’t do that, if we’re not going to spend time trying to control uncontrollable things like husbands and whether or not they lie, let’s just say this would be a nice, much better result than the one you have now, okay?

So what would you need your action to be? We’re working up the Model. What action would you need to take in order to have the result of knowing what’s going on with your money? What would it need to be? Well, maybe you’d need to look at the bank account. Maybe you’d need to monitor it. Maybe you would need to, I don’t know what’s going on, what else is going on, but maybe you’d need to be speaking up and be more confident about the decision that you and your, maybe you’d need to feel like you guys are making decisions together if you’re not right now. So you get to make decisions about money. Okay?

Now, again, I don’t know the scenario. I don’t know if your husband is like, “No, you don’t need to worry about money. I’m the one who manages that.” If so, that is a result that you’ve created because you’ve allowed that in some way, right? So we have to decide how to create a different result. Maybe that’s not the case. Maybe you do have access to the bank account. I don’t know, but whatever’s going on here is coming from your thought and feeling. Okay? So maybe you need to feel, how do you need to feel to take this action? Do you need to feel focused? Do you need to feel committed? 

Do you need to feel confident? Do you need to feel excited about money? I don’t know. Like, how do you need to feel? And again, let’s go back to this C because I got away from it a little bit. When your husband says, “We have plenty of money to do this,” how do you want to feel? I’m just going to put confident. Did you know you could? You could feel confident. You don’t have to feel worried. You don’t have to feel stressed. You don’t have to feel doubtful. But it’s going to have to come from a thought like, “I am, let’s see. Maybe a thought like, I am capable of monitoring our money too.” Because here’s the thing, I’m capable, I deserve to, I’m allowed to, I’m entitled to, however you want to think about it.

Because is husband lying or not? How do we know? This is just a thought. We have plenty of money to do this. We don’t need to worry about it. Is your husband’s thought? It’s not a lie or not a lie. It’s his thought. He’s totally allowed to have that thought. And maybe you would agree with him, and maybe you wouldn’t. You’re allowed to have your thought about money. But when we delegate all of it to husband, then we don’t have, we feel so out of control and worried. But if you decided that you and your husband are partners in your life and with your money, you guys get to make decisions together, and he can totally think we have plenty of money, and you can think, no, we don’t. We’re not going to, I don’t want to do that, and you can have reasonable discussions about it. Or we can just sit back and wonder if husband is lying or telling us the truth. Okay? So again, there’s some backstory there I’m not really sure of, but there’s a place to get started hopefully. Okay.

“I’m wondering if I’m on the right track with my unintentional and intentional Models. I’ve been working on this for a while now, and one thing I’m getting stuck on is that my friend gets upset when I don’t respond to her requests like I have in the past, which is hard for me.” Okay. Perfect. Let’s do a Model on it. Anybody else have someone in their life that doesn’t like it when we do what we do? Okay. 

So here’s what you have, unintentional Model. Now, by the way, for those of you that are like, “What does that mean, unintentional, intentional?” Unintentional is just the Model that you’re in right now that your brain just gives you on default, that without really stopping and taking a look at it and choosing intentionally, your brain will just give you this unintentional like, “Here’s what we think about this,” and then we react accordingly, and we create a certain result. Okay? So your unintentional is your current Model. Circumstance, “I have a friend and I say yes when I don’t want to.” Okay. Your thought, “She needs me too much.” Your feeling is resentful. Your action is I pull away and your result is I want to do less for her and with her. Okay.

So I want to clean up your Model just a little bit here because I don’t want us to put in the C line, I have a friend and I say yes when I don’t want to, only because it’s a little bit subjective. We’re sort of getting into thoughtland, like I can’t really prove that you didn’t want to. It’s just a little bit challenging to get traction that way. So instead, why don’t we just put in the C line that your friend asked you to do something and you said yes. Okay? So I’m going to just put here, I said yes, or whatever you said. I’ll be there. I’m happy to.

Now, you have in your thought line, “She needs me too much,” but that’s actually the thought that drives you saying yes. Let’s do it this way. I’m going to change up the way you’re doing your Model. Okay? Let’s put in your action line that you said yes. I say yes because now that we’re down in the action line, we can put like, I lied because that’s a lie, right? Because you didn’t want to. You wanted to say no. So I said yes even though I didn’t want to. I lied because that was a lie. And that was because you were thinking the thought, “She needs me too much.” 

Now, in the circumstance line, we’re just going to put the friend asks me whatever she asked you to do. Friend invites me over. Friend asks me to come over. Friend asks me to watch her child. Friend asks me to bake cupcakes for the school, whatever. Friend asks me something. And your thought is she needs me too much, and your feeling is resentful. And then you say yes and you lie because you want to say no.

And the result is she, well, hold on. I don’t want to put her result. I notice she keeps asking. And notice that also in your result line, who really needs you a lot right now? You do. Right? Because you’re not meeting your own needs. Like your friend needs you too much because she doesn’t know how to meet her own needs, but you don’t know how to meet your own needs either. You lie and you try to please other people instead of yourself, and now you need you too much too. Okay? So, see what I did is I just moved that down to your action line is that you say yes when you want to say no. This is what’s creating it. Okay.

In your intentional Model, you said, “I have a friend, and I say yes when I do want to.” Okay, so when you go to your intentional Model, the C has to be exactly the same. Okay? So in your intentional Model, your friend still asks you to do the thing. But you’re trying to get to like, “I do want to,” and I’m saying step one is we keep the part where you don’t want to, but you just say no. You just stop lying. Okay? That’s where I would begin. Before you try to get yourself to want to, you have to take care of you first. You have to watch out for your own self and your own needs before your friend because you need you so much right now. What you need from you is to say, “I love you so much and no.” Okay?

So you’re trying to kind of hop over the work that there is to do, which is being there for you, telling the truth even when it’s hard to do, stopping the whole people-pleasing thing of trying to manage your friend’s emotions, and just taking responsibility for managing your own emotions. Okay? So part of that is going to be letting go of how your friend feels if you say no. If you’re coming from love, you got to love that friend and love you. Then how she feels is up to her. But tell her the truth. What if we just stopped lying and we told the truth? You know what the truth is? 

This is the truth, friend, “I love you so much. I’ve been saying yes to all kinds of things in my life that I really wanted to say no to, so now I’m practicing telling the truth, and it’s really hard to do because I don’t like it when people are unhappy with me, and you might be unhappy with me, and that would be a bummer, but I just love you anyway, and you’re allowed to. And if you do, I get it because I’ve been pretending all this time, and that’s really unfair to people. They think I’m a certain way and I’m really not that way. I really don’t want to do it. So if you want to be mad, I get it. I just love you, and I’m working on telling the truth.” The truth is I don’t want to do it. That’s some big girl stuff, right? You up for it? Give it a try. Alright.

I’m an early morning seminary teacher. I was really hoping to do at least one class a week in person, but the plan is C, two Zoom classes and three online classes each week.

Okay, hold on. I love this Model. Let’s do it. C, seminary, and the plan is two Zoom classes, three online classes, two Zoom, three online. This is a week. All right. Now, what’s your thought? Zoom classes are a poor substitute for in-person. Feeling, disappointed and discouraged. Action, not doing the prep I would normally do, not excited for the new year, worried the students are being shortchanged. Okay. And then result you have a question mark. My online teaching is a poor substitute for in-person? Yeah, definitely, right? When you think Zoom is a poor substitute for in-person, and you feel, what did you say your feeling was? Disappointed, discouraged. And then in your action line, you don’t prep well.

You don’t show up very well, right? You don’t prep, you just worry about the students. You engage in a little bit of self-righteousness and self-pity. This isn’t the way. We shouldn’t be doing this. We should be meeting in person once a week. We do some complaining and again, there’s a little bit, there’s a lot of righteousness going around right now. A lot of people have opinions about how things should be right now. And if I thought that was going to get people to change, I’d say, “Let’s do it.” But usually, we’re not our most influential, most inspirational, most persuasive selves from righteousness. In fact, we repel. People do not want to be told that they’re wrong and that their way is wrong and my way is right and you should hear me out because I have all the answers. We don’t really like that, right?

So, anyway, you’re not doing the prep work that you would normally do. You’re not excited for the year. That, for sure, is not going to create your most impactful Zoom call. I’m not impactful or whatever word you want to use, amazing on Zoom classes. That’s it. That’s your Model, right? Okay. So, what do we want to do about this? What do we want to think about all this? Why are you choosing this thought? Zoom is a poor substitute for in-person classes. Now, you probably just think that thought is true, right? So that’s what our brain tells us. It’s just true.

I mean, when you’re in person, you can do this and this and that, and we miss out on this, and then there’s this reason and the kids won’t be engaged and whatever. You could build a whole file cabinet full of evidence that this thought is true. And you’ve probably done some if not a lot of that, because that’s what we do. Remember, we just want to be right. Our brains want to be right more than they want us to be really successful seminary Zoom teachers. They just want to be right.

So we’ll start talking to friends too, like, don’t you think that learning, trying to do seminary via Zoom is going to be really hard? And other people will validate our stories and we’ll like that and we’ll all engage in it together and the story will get even better and they’ll give us another reason. They’ll tell us about a study they read that said that students aren’t very engaged on Zoom and that their learning goes down significantly or that you can’t feel the spirit via Zoom. Like, we could build a whole case for it. But if the classes are going to be on Zoom, I don’t see any upside to that. Zero upside. This is an optional thought that your brain is making true for you right now. That’s not going to be very fun for you. It’s certainly not going to help your students in your seminary class, right?

So what if we just decide that we could be totally wrong about this? That meeting on Zoom could be better than meeting in person. It could be the perfect substitute for in-person classes. That could be true, right? Here’s the thing. I’ve been teaching over Zoom to you guys for four years now. What’s the deal? How is it that we’re doing so much good work? How is it that you guys are changing your lives? And I don’t even get to meet with you in person hardly ever. And yet, we make it work. But if I have the thought, Zoom is a poor substitute for in-person, like it should be in person, then I’m going to limit what I’m going to be able to do for you on Zoom, for sure. I don’t think that thought ever because it doesn’t serve me, right? It’s not going to serve you for me to think that. So instead, I think Zoom is amazing. It’s like you’re right here in my office. And I can put things on flip charts and I don’t have to worry about keeping everyone quiet, because if you’re tuned out, no problem, but that’s, you’re not going to be distracting somebody else.

There are so many benefits to being on Zoom. That’s the way I think about it because Zoom is the thing. Zoom is the way we do it. Zoom’s what we got. So what if you decide Zoom’s an amazing tool and that this could be a year that those kids will never forget? And they could have a more meaningful seminary experience this year than any other possible year. Why is this true? Our kids are living through something amazing right now, you guys. I am super excited for all of the classes that they’re in right now, that all of us are in. I want to be like, “Oh, this is the part of being a human when everything you thought was going to happen doesn’t happen at all.” And guess what? That’s going to happen in your life over and over and over again. So I’m so glad it’s happening right now while you’re young and you’re right here and I’m with you, and I’m going to guide you through it.

We have a couple choices. We can be mad about it and dig our feet in and say it wasn’t supposed to go this way, or we can roll with it. We can embrace it. We can decide this is a chance for us to evolve and change and grow. And maybe we’ll decide seminary is better on Zoom and we’re just going to do that forever. It’s possible because I might figure out the best way to teach seminary on Zoom. Let’s go, right? So your thought is preventing you from showing up at your best. Isn’t that crazy how we do that? We’re like, “Well, I shouldn’t prepare very thoroughly and I shouldn’t get excited.” Not going to serve you at all, my friend. Zoom is amazing. This is going to be the best seminary year ever. That’s your new thought. Okay. Let’s see. Let me get a fresh page.

Circumstance, husband does not like the smell of the new shower curtain I bought, so he washes it in the dryer. The shower curtain shrinks. Okay, Whitney, what else you got? Let’s see. Thought, I’m upset that it is now shrunk and I wish he wasn’t upset with the smell because then it wouldn’t have shrunk. Such a small issue, but would love some help. How to not get upset with husband in these neutral circumstances? Okay. C. How do we know husband is like, I don’t like putting things like husband doesn’t like the smell, etc., because that’s a little bit subjective. If he flat out said, “I hate the smell of this,” then we put that in quotes, right? Okay. So, what we’re going to put is shower curtain shrinks.

That’s the fact. All the rest of it’s kind of dramatic. It’s kind of like might make for a good TV show. There’s something dramatic there or there’s something that could be funny and dramatic happening, right? With the husband not liking the smell and he washes it and all of that. So we’re just going to put in the sea lines, shower curtain shrinks. It gets smaller now than it was before he washed it. Now, you have thoughts like, “He shouldn’t… let’s just fill in the blank with someone. He shouldn’t not like the smell. He shouldn’t be upset about the smell. He shouldn’t have washed it and shrunk it. He shouldn’t have done that,” right? That’s what’s basically happening in your T line. So in other words, we’re resisting reality. We’re thinking the shower curtain shouldn’t have shrunk. He shouldn’t not like the smell. And then we are upset. You know why we’re upset? Because we’re arguing with reality.

Every time we argue with reality, we lose. So we’re just losing over and over again. Of course, your husband should not like the smell. And of course that shower curtain should have shrunk. You thought that was going to be the shower curtain and it was going to be a certain size, but you were wrong about that. It was never going to be the case. You were never going to hang that shower curtain, at least not at the size that you bought it. You were only going to hang it smaller or not hang it at all. That’s it. That’s always how it was going to go. So we can be upset about it, or we can just embrace, “Well, now what?” Okay? Because when you’re upset, you ruminate. In other words, you think all kinds of thoughts. You start building a file cabinet of evidence to prove your thought true. Let’s just resist it even more. And you know what I notice is that husband does this all the time. He’s so whatever. He’s so this. He’s so that. He shouldn’t do any of these things. We start resisting reality and upsetting ourselves even more. That’s what ruminating is, right?

Maybe you, I don’t know, do you talk to friends? Like sometimes we’re like, “Girls, you will never believe what happened. I bought this very expensive shower curtain from the Pottery Barn. It was beautiful. Paid full price for it. Husband didn’t like the smell, so he washed it and it shrunk.” And our friends all join in now. We story fondle. And we just upset ourselves over and over and over again. But at least we feel some validation and some connection over our upset with our friends, right? So what else do you do here? All you’re doing is making this case even stronger so that you can be upset longer. It feels good in the moment when you’re with your friends because you get to connect and you get to be right. Remember, we just want to be right? Your friends are like, “I can’t believe he did that. He should not have done that.” The brain’s like, “Oh, I like being right.” Only problem is then we go home and we’re still upset. We still don’t have a shower curtain that’s the right size. We still have a husband that didn’t like the smell. We’re still upset. We’re just stuck. We sort of spin in this place.

So, what’s the result? Maybe I shouldn’t keep upsetting myself over and over again. Maybe I shouldn’t get upset. He’s upset about the smell and you’re upset about him being upset about the smell. You guys have a lot in common. He’s upset about the smell of the shower curtain. You’re upset about the smaller size of the shower curtain. We’re both really upset about the shower curtain. We have so much in common that husband and I, no wonder we get along so well, right? So this is what’s happening. Now, if I were you, if this were my Model, I would take a look at it and then I would just choose to be amused by it. We don’t need to get upset with you, right? I would just be like, “Look at my brain thinking that husbands shouldn’t be mad at or shouldn’t dislike smells and they shouldn’t shrink shower curtains.” Of course they’re going to. That’s the way it goes, right? Now what? I want to be the person I want to be in the world. I don’t like being upset.

I don’t like thinking that things are supposed to go smoothly and perfectly and things aren’t supposed to shrink and husbands aren’t supposed to have different opinions than me. There’s zero upside to that. I want to connect with my friends over how much I love my husband, over how funny he is, the funny thing he said, right? Or something that’s positive, something that’s not with judgment, something that’s not resisting reality because resisting reality doesn’t change it, guys. It really doesn’t. All it does is upset us. So those are our options, right? Of course he shouldn’t have liked the smell and he was always going to shrink it. Now what? What if you just make it awesome that you have a smaller shower curtain? Own it, sister.

Okay. What if we can’t think our way out of a situation or feelings? I don’t want you to think your way out of a situation or feelings if you if you can’t or don’t want to. I want you to just allow the feelings. This is not about, like I said earlier, this is not about turning you into a robot, you guys. This is about you understanding that you’re creating your feelings, but sometimes you won’t be able to or won’t want to think differently and create different feelings. So then we just get really good at feeling our feelings. That’s video number four on those four foundational videos, number four is how to feel your feelings. Because if you get good at feeling feelings and you learn that feelings aren’t scary, feelings aren’t dangerous, feelings aren’t problems. I was talking to my sister about this the other day.

Right now, we’re in a pandemic, so there’s coronavirus, right? So if somebody gets the coronavirus, we’re like, “Oh, something’s wrong. We need to help them get healthier. We want them to rest, we want them to take care of themselves. If necessary, they might need medical attention,” because coronavirus is not a thing that everyone needs to have to have a complete human experience. It is something wrong in the body, if you will, right? Then we have feelings like anxiety. And we tend to talk about anxiety the same way we talk about coronavirus, right? We’re like, “Don’t get coronavirus. Do everything you can to avoid it.” And we say the same thing about anxiety when one of our kids has anxiety, we’re like, “My son has anxiety. What do I do about it?” Oh, have you tried this? Have you tried that? As though it’s an illness. It’s not an illness.

It’s a feeling. Nothing’s wrong with you. You haven’t caught something that you weren’t supposed to catch. When we come here to earth and we become, we live in human bodies, we’re supposed to experience all of the feelings, all of the emotions. I’m not sick, nothing’s wrong. I don’t need to fix it. I just need to learn how to just allow anxiety. So you don’t need to think your way out of anxiety. You just need to learn how to feel anxiety. Did you know that you could just do that? Your body knows what to do with it. It will process it and it will cycle through you and you will be just fine. What’s intolerable, what causes heart disease and ulcers and all kinds of other problems and I think even contributes to severe depression and chronic anxiety, is resisting those feelings, thinking that we shouldn’t be feeling them, pushing them away, trying to trying to escape them or run away from them.

That’s where we create problems for ourselves is when we’re not willing to feel them. So you don’t have to think your way out of a situation ever if you don’t want. Just allow the feelings because they’re not dangerous. They’re not there’s zero risk of dying from anxiety. There’s a risk of dying from coronavirus, not from anxiety. Right? There’s risk of dying from heart disease and other things that we get from repressing and pushing away and resisting anxiety, but not from just feeling anxiety. There’s a whole book I love. Go check out Kelly McGonigal’s Ted Talk called The Upside of Stress. She talks about this. She spent her whole life teaching people that stress can kill you, in short. And then she learned stress can’t kill you. Thinking that you shouldn’t be stressed when you’re stressed is what kills you. Resisting feelings is the only problem, okay? All right.

Thought, “I’m upset.” Oh, whoops. This is a continuation of the shower curtain Model. I’m upset that it is now shrunk and I wish he wasn’t upset. We already did that one. Sorry. Okay. Let’s see. How about this Model? In your circumstance line, you have, “I have a body.” Your thought you have, “I’m so much heavier than I’ve ever been. My husband is so fit.” Your feeling, you said, “Fat.” Your A is to fixate on weight and your R is still heavy. Okay. So, let’s just make a few tweaks to your Model because I have a body is a circumstance, but I think it’s much easier to get leverage over your Models if you get more narrow with your circumstance. Get a really specific fact to put in the C line. So, in the C line, I want you to put your current weight, okay? That would be one way to approach getting really specific.

So maybe I weigh 280 pounds. I don’t know what you weigh. Just put whatever you weigh in the circumstance line, okay? Now, your thought is, “I’m heavier than I’ve ever been and my husband is so fit.” So you have two thoughts that you snuck into your thought line. Let’s just have one thought in the thought line, okay? I’m so much heavier than I’ve ever been is one thought. My husband is so fit is another thought. And so we would run two separate Models. We could do the same circumstance, but we would want to run two separate Models, okay? So in this one, I’m just going to put, “I’m so much heavier than I’ve ever been.” Now, you said that your feeling was fat. But I’ve got some news for you. 

Fat is not a feeling. Fat is not something that you are either. Fat is cells on your body. Fat is tissue on your body. Fat is the certain cells we call fat cells and they can get bigger or they can get smaller, those cells. That’s what fat is, okay? It’s not a feeling. It’s not a thing that you are. You aren’t fat. You are a human being, right? And you don’t feel fat. What you feel is something like ashamed, depressed, stressed, discouraged, something like that is what you feel, okay? So I’m fat is another thought that would go in the T line. So we’re just going to put this here.

Now, when you feel ashamed, discouraged, depressed, you think about your weight all the time. Now, this is such a great example of what I was mentioning earlier when we were talking about the Model, which is that the fuel matters, okay? Because you could be thinking about your weight all the time and get a result like weight loss, or you can be thinking about your weight all the time and gain weight. Okay? Because the fuel driving it matters. If you’re ashamed, if you’re discouraged, if you’re depressed and you’re thinking about your body all the time, you’re fueling that negative emotion, you’re fueling those negative thoughts, you’re finding more reasons to judge and hate on yourself. And you know what a really nice escape from that is? Food. I’m going to put overeating.

So, you get to decide what that means, but we could say not eating healthy, not eating on a protocol, eating too much food, eating too much sugar, whatever is happening here in the eating section of your A line is the reason that you’re not losing weight. You’re consuming as many calories or more than your body can use in a day instead of consuming a little bit less calories than your body can burn in a day. That’s it. That’s all weight loss is. It’s very simple, right? But the reason you’re doing that is because of shame is fueling you or discouragement is fueling you. So, this is all that’s going on. And this is going on for so many people, my friend. You’re not alone. This is the reason losing weight is so hard is because of this cycle happening, okay?

So, let’s just look at it and let’s just question it and let’s just play with some other options. So, let’s start in the thought line. I’m so much heavier than I’ve ever been. What if it’s true? What if you’re, you weigh 280 pounds, you’ve never weighed that much. In fact, although here’s what’s interesting. At least yesterday you probably weighed maybe 279. You didn’t become 280 pounds overnight, or whatever you weigh. So, you have weighed this amount for a little while. You slowly built up to there at some point, okay? So it’s kind of a lie. You’ve been this weight or close to it for a while. But even if we just give you that thought is true, what if we just decide it’s true that you’re, you weigh this amount, you haven’t weighed this amount in a long time. So what? So what?

That’s just the facts, right? It’s just the number on the scale. It’s just the amount of tissue on your body. It’s just the Earth’s gravitational pull on your body in that moment. That’s it. The only problem is that you think you shouldn’t weigh this much, that you should weigh less because you’ve weighed less in the past, or for some reason now you think you should weigh less than you have before, or you should weigh at least only as much as you have before. But all of that is just made up. It’s just made up BS that our culture feeds us, our society feeds us, and we all buy into it, and we all like the story, and then we use it to punish ourselves, and we have to overeat. This is the painful cycle so many people are in.

So, who cares that you’re heavier than you’ve ever been? You’re supposed to be, okay? You know why? Because you ate food. And your body was like, “What do we do with this extra fuel we just ate?” “I guess we’ll just store it on our hips, on our waist, on our thighs, on our butt. We’ll put some here under the arms. We’ll put some here.” I always am like, “Thanks, body, for storing it on my back.” I love all that back fat. Good place to store it. That’s what your body’s supposed to do when you eat food. It’s not that anything’s wrong with you. In fact, you have a body that’s working perfectly well. It takes the food you eat and it uses what it needs for energy, and it processes some and you digest it, and it comes out in the bathroom in the toilet. And then the rest it’s like, “Well, I guess we’ll just store some here in case we need it later.” That’s it.

Okay? So, I don’t really care that your husband is fit. I don’t care what you’ve weighed before. We have to embrace where you’re at because this is never going to cut it. This is not going to be the fuel that’s going to help you achieve your nutrition goals. And whether you lose weight or not, I don’t really care. I don’t want you to live a life suffering and struggling and beating up yourself and your body. There’s zero upside. It’s not going to make you skinnier. It’s not going to motivate you to eat less. Maybe temporarily, but not long term. Okay? So, instead of that, let’s keep the C the same. Whatever your weight is, goes in the C line. Do you know why it goes in the C line, you guys? It goes in the C line. Oops, we said 280 pounds. It goes in the C line because it’s just a neutral fact. Whatever you weigh, it’s just a number on the scale.

It’s neutral. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it’s not heavy, it’s not light, it’s not fat. It just is a number. The end. Start from there, okay? Now, what do you want to think? What do you want to feel? What do you want your action to be? What do you want your result to be? You get to decide that. We can put anything we want in the result line. You want your result to be that you start losing weight? Do you want your result to be that you love yourself and are having the most fun life experience ever? Because this is your one life, why not have fun with it? Do you want the result to be, what do you want the result to be? We could start there. We could start in the action line. What do you want your action to be? You said you fixate on your weight was your action line.

Do you want to not be thinking about your weight all the time? What do you want to think about instead? I guarantee there’s something more fun and more useful than fixating on your weight. Do you want your action to be that you eat, I always say I just want to eat like a lady and not eat like a toddler, because I’ve been eating like a toddler for a very long time. I think I’m going to, I’m 45 years old now, maybe I’ll try eating like an adult lady. Let’s see if that’s a thing. Okay, so maybe you want to eat better. Maybe you want to enjoy your life. Maybe you want to, I don’t know, what do you want your action to be? So I’m just going to simplify it and we’re going to put, “Eat like a lady.” That’s always my goal. Just eat like a lady today. I don’t want to starve myself, personally. I don’t, I’m not willing to. I just want to eat like a lady, like a grown up adult lady.

So, remember, we’re keeping the sea the same. So when I step on the scale, what do I want to think and feel? I need to feel. How does a lady feel when she chooses the healthy option, the ham sandwich on whole wheat bread or the chicken salad? What is she feeling? She’s not feeling ashamed. She’s feeling confident or at the very least compassionate for herself. Got to be compassionate. We got to be nice to you because there’s a reason that you’ve overeaten food. This is what I’m finding. My relationship with myself is so much better now than it’s been in years because I chose to love my body exactly where it was.

Because the reason my body weighs what it weighs is because there was a lot going on. I didn’t know how to manage it. I didn’t really know how to process urges. I didn’t really know how to, how to love my body. I wasn’t doing all that work. So I had to get to compassion, which is I love this body. I love you, body. Thank you so much for doing your job. You know what your job is? If I eat too much food, if I eat more food than I can utilize as energy, you need to store it somewhere on me or we need to, you know, get rid of it in the toilet, but please don’t make me sick. That’s the alternative, right? We could get super sick if the body wasn’t functioning properly, but it’s, I love you body, you’re doing your job perfectly well. Okay? So, I love you body. Confident, compassionate drives eating like a lady. Now, like I said before, you could still think about your weight if you want to.

I’m very focused on my weight and my food right now. I track everything I eat, everything. My kids are like, “Mom, what are you doing?” I’m like, “I’m putting it in my phone again.” Everything I eat, everything that goes into my mouth goes into that app. I’m very focused on it, but I’m not focused on it out of shame and discouragement. I’m focused on it out of competence and compassion. I’m like, “Listen, I love you, body, and I overate for years and now we’re carrying extra weight and we have high blood sugar and all kinds of things happening, and I’m going to take care of you now. Thank you for taking care of me. 

Now I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to pay attention to what I put in you. I’m going to pay attention to how you react. I’m going to pay attention to how I felt when I ate that thing and whether or not you liked that thing or just my mouth liked it and you actually hated it.” I’m hyper focused on my weight, but out of compassion and confidence. You know what the result is?

My body gets healthier. It does. It’s loving me now. I love it. It loves me. This is such a better relationship than the one I had before where I hated it and abused it and used it to escape my emotions and then beat myself up for it and then disconnected and was numb and didn’t even pay attention to it. Okay? All right, you guys. Stop hating your bodies. They’re just doing their job. Okay. We have time for one more. Let’s get take one more. Let’s see. I want to go down to a… Okay, there’s a weight one we just did. Let’s try this one. My daughter plays with our cat and gets covered in cat hair and it drives me crazy. How do I help myself not lose my temper when she won’t lint roll and goes places covered in cat hair and it gets all over me when she gives me her awesome hugs.

We recognize, first of all, that cat hair is neutral. Okay? C, cat hair. What’s your thought about cat hair? Why is it a problem that she gets it on you or she has it on her and she won’t lint roll? What’s your thought about cat hair? I don’t know what it is right now, but you have a negative thought about it and then you have a negative feeling about it and then your action is to be mad that we can’t control daughters and cats who lose hair and then you create that result for yourself, okay? But cat hair is just hair. So I would start there. I would be like, “What if I could just be totally fine with having cat hair on me?” Now, it doesn’t mean you don’t teach your daughter and try to get her to lint roll and all that, but if she doesn’t do it, do you really want to be annoyed by it? You really want, is it really worth it? That’s what I would ask myself.

This is not worth it. This is just hair. Sometimes it helps me because my brain thinks, “No, this is reasonable. Nobody wants to be covered in cat hair. Come on.” Okay? So what helps me is I, because my brain so wants to do that thing of like, no, everybody would agree, is I remind myself, “Yeah, but I’m not like everybody.” You know? I mean, a lot of people would be annoyed by this. A lot of people would be upset by this, but I’m not like everybody. I don’t like to be upset and I know how to not. And so I just choose not to. I just choose to go, “This is just cat hair.” Because I promise you, whatever’s happening in your action line right now with your daughter, the way you’re trying to get her to do it, the way you talk about it, the way you whatever, or maybe you don’t talk about it, maybe you just avoid it. Whatever’s happening here because it’s fueled by irritation because of your thought about cat hair, you’re going to get a totally different result, remember, if you’re fueled by something more useful.

You got to clean up first, your thinking about all this. This is just cat hair, you guys. Another way you might even think about it is like, I’m, I have the best life ever if this is my biggest problem today. But human brains are going to look for things that are wrong. Your brain is going to look for things it doesn’t like, things outside of you that it thinks should be different because that’s what brains do. But you get to answer your brain and say, “Listen, brain, point taken. We don’t need to worry about this.” It’s just cat hair. Come here and hug me some more, girl. Come get that hair all over me because you love the cat and you love hugging me and those are both good things. So let’s get some more cat hair in our lives, right? You see what I mean? That’s where I go to like, not everyone would feel this way, but I will because I’m not like everyone.

And that’s when I step into who I really am. I stop trying to be who everybody else is and justifying my own negativity and my own suffering. And I just own being the best version of me. All right. You guys are amazing. Thanks for doing Models with me today. Love you. Happy Wednesday. See you soon.

Hey everybody, thanks for listening today. Please do me a favor and make sure you’re following or subscribed to the show if you got a lot out of this and share it with a friend. Make sure you never miss an episode and help me spread the message of mental and emotional health and creating your best life. I’ll see you next time.