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We are diving into the concept of staying out of other people’s models today. Part of the reason I wanted to do this episode is that on occasion, the way I teach this idea gets misused or misunderstood, and I want to clear up any confusion to empower you to create the life you want and become the person you want to be.
I often tell my clients – and continuously do this work on myself too – that it serves us to stay out of other people’s models. We all want to be happier, more peaceful, and more effective in our lives, and this concept is how we achieve it. We spend too much time getting in other people’s business and we have many observations about what they’re doing, saying, thinking, or behaving, and in turn, we have judgments and believe we can see what would serve them better.
Join me on the podcast today as I highlight the power of staying out of other people’s models and instead, keeping the focus on what you have control over. Doing the work of focusing on your own expansion and growth is the most effective thing you can do, and it will help you choose the highest version of yourself to become.
If you want to learn more about the self-coaching model or have specific topics you want to dig deeper into but don’t know where to start, grab the Podcast Roadmap I’ve created just for you! All you have to do is click here to grab it!
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What You’ll Learn on this Episode:
- What the self-coaching model entails.
- Why I encourage my clients to stay in their own models.
- How the concept of staying out of other people’s models gets misused.
- The goal of staying out of other people’s models.
- Why I think it’s worth spending some time considering how to be effective and what it means for you.
- The power of staying curious about yourself and others.
- Why being in other people’s models is the least effective use of your time.
- How to know if you have work to do in this area.
- What being your highest, most authentic self looks like.
Mentioned on the Show:
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- When you’re ready to take what you’re learning on the podcast to the 10X level, then come check out Be Bold.
- If you’re a coach who is already certified through The Life Coach School, I want to help you take your coaching to the next level. Interested? Get on the waitlist here.
- Follow me on Instagram!
- Grab the Podcast Roadmap!
I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy episode 265: Other People’s Models.
Welcome to Better Than Happy. I’m your host, Jody Moore. I’m a mother to four children. I’m a huge Taylor Swift fan, and I’m a Master Certified Life Coach. I’m here to teach you how to manage your brain and manage your emotions so that you can create a life that’s even better than happy. Are you ready? Let’s go.
Hey gang, how we doing today? Welcome to the podcast, thanks for tuning in. Make sure if you haven’t already that you subscribe to the podcast, because that way you will get new episodes automatically show up in your podcast feed on whatever podcast app you like to listen to. That is the best way to make sure you don’t miss a beat here at Better Than Happy.
Today, we are going to be talking about other people’s models. Now, if you’re new, a new listener then first of all, welcome, I’m so thrilled that you’re here. And you might be like what is she talking about models? I’m not talking about fashion models, runway models, we’re talking about the self-coaching model that I teach here which I have taught in the past, and I teach in depth, and really help you learn how to use in your own life in my coaching program, Be Bold. But if you’re new to the podcast then I want to recommend that you go get the podcast roadmap.
Or if you’re just looking for suggestions, what we did recently is we went through all the podcasts because we get a lot of requests like, “What podcast should I listen to if I’m struggling with this topic or that topic?” So we took the most common requests that we get and we pulled a handful of episodes that we recommend in each area and we added that little sort of mini directory, if you will, to the podcast roadmap. So you can go to jodymoore.com/map to grab it, it’s totally free.
And you will get both the new listener map that gives you the eight episodes I recommend you listen to, to really get up to speed on what I’m teaching here and then you get that little mini directory of sort of our most effective episodes for different areas as well as the most popular, most downloaded episodes are on there. So 265 is a lot of episodes, you don’t need to go listen to them all, just go grab that map, jodymoore.com/map.
But that said, I am going to talk to you today about your role in other people’s thought models or self-coaching models. In other words, what I mean by that is your role in how other people are thinking, or feeling, or behaving.
So part of the reason I wanted to do this episode is because on occasion the way I teach this part gets misused or misunderstood. So I just want to clear up some confusion and I want to constantly be empowering you to create the life that you want, to be the person you want to be, to feel more positive emotion. I think that’s what we all want, is to feel happier and more peaceful more of the time, but also to be more effective in our lives. And so that is why I teach a lot about your role in other people’s models, and we’re going to go into a little bit more depth here today.
So one of the things that I am constantly trying to remind my clients and my own head of is that it serves us to stay out of other people’s models. We tend to spend a lot of time in our heads anyway and in the way we’re showing up in the world, getting in other people’s business.
In other words, we have lots of thoughts about other people, we have lots of observations and some of those observations are factual. But many of them are our own thoughts, our own interpretation of what’s going in for them, what they’re doing, or saying, or what they might be thinking, or feeling. And then we immediately have judgments about how they should be feeling or how we wish they were feeling, or thinking, or what they were doing. We can see what we think would serve them better, what we think would create a better result for them.
And sometimes we observe them and think that they’re creating a problem for us. So we spend a lot of time in other people’s models. And much more inordinate amount of time in their models than in our own models, by default. So one of the things that I’m constantly, again, advising you guys, and my clients on is let’s just get out of their model, let’s stay in our own model.
Now, sometimes this gets misunderstood. Sometimes people think that I’m saying, “Yeah, we don’t really care what’s going on for other people, we only care what’s going on for us,” which is of course not what I’m saying. It’s not that we don’t care about other people, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with having opinions, and thoughts, and feelings about what other people are doing or experiencing. It’s just that we can’t control them, we don’t have the control over them.
So certainly to be spending the majority of our thoughts and energy in our opinions about them is sort of a waste. Because I don’t know if you notice, but it doesn’t change them usually, it doesn’t get them to change how they’re thinking or feeling, darn it. In fact, it usually has the opposite effect. So again, it’s not that we don’t care.
Sometimes I’ll have clients who I teach this to, they’ll say, “My husband is really mad when I say this thing.” And I’ll say, “Well, we just weren’t spending so much time in your husband’s model. What if we decided that he’s mad because of what he’s thinking and we just shift back to focusing on our own model?” And then the next time her husband gets mad they say, “Well, sorry, that’s because of your thoughts,” in sort of this nonchalant way.
So that’s not what I’m saying at all here. Your husband’s anger is because of his thoughts. But when you’re being the kind of wife you probably want to be, the kind of person you probably want to be, it’s not going to sound like that. It’s going to sound like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry that you’re upset. I feel terrible when you feel terrible. I don’t want you to be upset, I love you. If you don’t want to be upset, I don’t want you to be upset anyway.” Now, again, you may not say it that way, but that’s the energy you would be coming from when you understand what I’m really trying to teach you here.
So nothing wrong with having emotions about your loved one’s emotions, it’s just that we want to keep the focus on our emotions, because that’s what we have the control over.
And when somebody I love is suffering emotionally and they’re telling me that I’m the cause of that, I want to hear everything they have to say. I’m of course not the cause of it, their thoughts are, but they’re having thoughts about me and my behavior, or what I’ve said, or what I’ve not done. And I’m all ears, tell me everything, I might be willing to change who I’m being, not always, but I certainly want to hear it because I love them, because I care about them.
So staying out of other people’s models is also not a way to abdicate responsibility for who you’re being, which is again, sometimes what people interpret when I say that. That is definitely a misuse of what I’m trying to teach you here. So it’s not to sort of put up your hand and turn your head away and say, “That’s not my fault, that’s your thinking.” No, it should be the opposite of that.
It should be us opening up to, “Tell me all the things, I want to hear more about your requests of me, about why you’re thinking about what I did in the way you are.” Because we need to educate ourselves about a lot of things. I want to be educated about what all the people I love, think and feel about my behavior. And I want to be more educated about people that I don’t know necessarily, because all of that helps me choose who I want to be. And I want to be my highest best self. I can’t decide who that is from an uneducated place always.
If I don’t know certain things are offensive how can I make a decision about who I want to be? I’m sort of operating in ignorance. So staying out of other people’s models is just to keep your focus in the right place. You have control over you. Are you being your highest self? That’s the question I’m constantly asking myself, am I being my highest self? I don’t always, I’m not always her. My goal is to be her more of the time, as much of the time as possible.
In other words, my highest self is the me that feels the best, she also has the most useful thoughts and takes the most effective action in the world. Now, what is effective? What are we trying to be effective at? Well, you get to decide that, that is personal and individual, and not for me to say who you should be. But I’ll tell you that for myself it depends on the topic that we’re looking at.
Sometimes effective has to do with a goal I’m trying to achieve. So if I’m trying to maybe get a certain message out in the world, or I’m trying to achieve a certain goal in my business, or I’m trying to achieve a certain health goal for myself, or I’m trying to guide my child in a certain way. Sometimes there’s a goal, sometimes it’s me being the kind of mom I want to be, the kind of wife I want to be, the kind of woman I want to be in the world.
Who is the most effective version of Jody Moore that I can be? That’s a very personal decision and something that I’m constantly assessing. Sometimes effectiveness has to do with how I’m experiencing my life and how I’m experiencing the world around me. I want to be as effective as possible at living my life. You know what that means? Sometimes it means being really present.
It means putting the phone away and just taking a look at what’s happening around me and soaking it all in, and enjoying the small moments, not wishing for something different, or better, or waiting for some future moment to decide to feel full of gratitude. Sometimes that’s the most effective me in that moment.
Sometimes being my most effective self means that I am increasing and expanding, if you will. I love the idea that we are expansive beings, we are. It’s why we came here to Earth. Depending on what you believe you might say that we are products of the universe, which I personally believe God created, but choose whatever you want to believe about that. But we have a lot of evidence that the universe has been constantly expanding, that it becomes more complicated as time goes by. And we as human beings are the same way.
We are designed to become more knowledgeable, to create more, to obtain more, to give more, to learn more. And this might include actual tangible things, it might include, again, things that you know, and it certainly for me includes my spirituality. I’m constantly trying to expand. So is a little bit of a tangent, but I just want to make sure that when we talk about being as effective as possible, that’s something that I think is worth spending some time thinking through, what does that mean for you?
Okay, so back to again, staying out of other people’s models. In other words, I want to keep the focus on my own expansion, if there’s a situation where I want to see a change, then the most effective thing I can do is focus on me, on changing me.
So again, sometimes in coaching there is this, “Oh great, so you’re just saying I have to be the one to change?” No, you don’t have to it’s just that if you change you will change your experience, you will change your emotions, you will change your effectiveness, you will change your result. Trying to get other people to change is a lot harder, a lot harder, exponentially harder than just changing yourself.
Let’s look at another example here, so I hear this pretty frequently. My clients will say, “Well, if my husband wants to have sex and I say no, then he gets mad. Maybe he gives me the silent treatment for a couple of days or he just gives me the cold shoulder. He’s just very obviously mad.” Now, I will teach my client that, “Your husband is mad because of his own thoughts.” And this is true, “Whatever thoughts he’s having about you not wanting to have sex with him are the reason that he is mad, 100% true.”
This doesn’t mean though that as a wife I don’t want to understand why my husband’s mad. I want to understand. Instead of focusing though on him being mad and trying to control or manipulate his emotions, which is what we sometimes do. We’re like, “Well, I will just have sex even though I don’t want to, we’ll just go through the motions and then my husband at least won’t be mad.” Except the problem is that now that I’m mad. I’m mad at myself for not honoring myself, maybe I start to resent my husband.
This is the dynamic that we often end up in when we’re in his model instead of in our own model. So instead I want to decide what kind of wife I want to be in this situation. I want to own my own expansion as a woman, and as a wife, and as a partner, and as a sexual being. So I want to just get really curious about me. So what does that look like or sound like? Well, it can sound like a lot of things but let me give you some examples, there’s not one right way, but try some of these on.
Rather than thinking how do I get husband to stop being mad or resenting him. It might sound more in my head like, “I love you husband so much and I’m so sorry that you feel this way, let’s talk about it, tell me more. Tell me more about what you’re thinking.” Now, he may or may not want to have that discussion, but that’s my goal. Rather than close off and shut down, I want to try to open up and be available. And this is an opportunity to connect over this.
Can I get more comfortable allowing people to have emotions, especially the negative ones? This is work that I’m constantly doing, especially as a mother. When my child is really nervous and anxious, my first thought is, oh no, we have to solve that. But I’m constantly working on being more comfortable with my child being nervous and anxious, because the more comfortable I am with it the better I respond. The more helpful I am to him and the more he’s going to keep coming to me, sharing that and want to receive my help and guidance.
If I’m really uncomfortable with it, ironically enough, we’re less available, we’re less effective, we’re more trying to control and manipulate, which isn’t as helpful to my child. It’s certainly not as fun for myself as well.
So again, in this situation with the husband around sex, can I learn to just allow people to feel how they’re going to feel? I still can be open, and curious, and loving, and compassionate, but I don’t have to try to control it. Staying in your own model in this situation might look like also making sure that you’re not being mad at yourself.
Some of my clients go into shame at this point, they feel really bad and guilty. Rather than be mad at husband, they want to be mad at themselves. That’s something that would be an opportunity for me to explore and just be again, open and curious to, and decide if I want to keep that model for myself or not. Getting curious with myself and with regards to my relationship with my own sexuality, what’s going on there for me? Again, curious, not out of judgment, not out of shame, just curious.
Curious with myself in regards to my relationship with my husband in general and my overall attraction for him, and my thoughts about him. There’s lots of work you can see that we could do here around our own models and our own emotions and our own experience. The least effective place to spend our time is in husband’s model, trying to figure out what he’s thinking without genuinely opening up and having conversations.
Okay, so another way to say stay out of other people’s models that I sometimes use when I’m coaching or teaching is I remind my clients, “You are the circumstance in their model.” Or we abbreviate it with a C, “You’re the C in their model.” So what we mean by that is in the thought model, the circumstance is the thing that happens outside of you, it’s the facts of the situation. It’s not the part creating your emotions or your experience.
And so when I recognize, wait, I’m the circumstance in their model, again, it shifts me into, okay, so I’m not as powerful as my brain thinks I am. That’s good to know. And it also indicates that the things that I say, and do, and think, etc. are actually neutral until a human brain has a thought about them. So that is again a 100% true. Whatever I do or say doesn’t create emotions for anybody until somebody has a thought about it. However, I continuously have thoughts about my own behavior because I always have the awareness of it.
So while other people may or may not have the awareness of what I’m thinking, feeling and doing, I always do. So it’s really important for me to assess my own behavior, my own thoughts, and my own feelings because my brain is constantly going to have opinions about it.
Now, I can work on cleaning up my opinions about myself, which I do all the time with clients, and I do with myself, and I recommend we do. But I also want to work on, again, becoming my highest version of myself, because it’s a lot easier to think about myself in the compassionate kind, loving way I want to when I’m behaving like the kind of person I’m trying to be. Are you with me?
Now, in addition to that, most of the other people in your life are not doing thought work. They are not running models, they don’t really care about the model, they don’t want to hear about it and learn about it. And they don’t need to, it’s perfectly fine, you’re still the circumstance in their model. But they are going to have thoughts and opinions as soon as they become aware of what you’re doing. It’s totally fine, we don’t have to change them or fix them, we don’t need to teach them all the model.
We don’t need to point out to them that if they thought about us differently, they would feel differently about us. We really don’t have to do that. Whenever I hear clients saying to me, “I’m trying to show my husband that this is just his thoughts.” I’m like, “You’re missing the whole point, you’re in his model. You’re the C in his model and yes, he’s going to have default thoughts unless he chooses to think something differently, which he may not do.”
And here’s the truth you guys, it’s not rocket science to figure out what people are going to think and how they’re going to feel about your behavior. We do have the ability to influence others. So even though I’m the C in their model, I can take a pretty good guess as to how people are going to think and feel about what I do and say, because I’ve been a human in the world for 45 years now. So I have a pretty good understanding of human beings.
So knowing that I am influencing others, in other words, I’m the C which is triggering thoughts for them is something important for me to keep in mind, because my goal is to have a positive influence on others as much as possible. I’m not going to be perfect at it, but that’s my goal. And my most positive influence comes from choosing the thoughts and feelings that are driving me, a 100%.
Most of us spend a lot of time in the action line of the model, in other words, what should I say, or even what should I do? And where we’re missing the boat is getting in our own models and deciding what should I be thinking, and therefore, what emotion do I want driving what I say and what I do? So critical you guys. So let’s look at examples.
I get this question a lot, that’s some version of, “What should I tell my child? Or what should I do with my child? Or how should I guide my child?” Sometimes it’s just, “Do you have a podcast I can send my child to fix my child, or change my child in some way, change their experience?”
And here’s what I think is fascinating. It’s the wrong question to be asking, “What should I say? What should I do?” We all ask it, but it’s the wrong question. Because if you cleaned up your own model, if you got out of your child’s model for just a minute and you got into your own model and recognized that you’re the C, I could tell you what I think you should say, but I don’t know if I would be right or wrong. And what would matter more is the thought, feeling driving your conversation.
I was thinking about this the other day because I was talking with some of my girl friends about this idea that kids are so much more well behaved for other adults than they are for their own parents. And they even, I think, take advice differently, oftentimes better from other adults than they do from their own parents. Now, again, your kids’ behavior, whether or not they take advice, all of that, is your kids’ model. And so it’s coming from what they’re thinking and what they’re feeling.
But I also think, again, if I’m the C, and I have some influence then the energy that I’m coming from, matters. It’s going to trigger certain thoughts, because my kids are definitely not running models and choosing their thoughts intentionally.
And I wonder if it doesn’t have a little bit to do with this idea that as a parent I bring so much more drama to a conversation, even if I think I’m hiding it, our kids can sense that, we all as human beings can sense it. So maybe the nervous energy, or the worry, or the sort of like having so much investment in whether or not they change, or listen, or feel better, they can feel that. And then they respond differently to me than they would to another adult who’s much less nervous about it, who kind of comes into it like whatever they choose is going to be fine, they’re going to be just fine.
Do you notice this with other people’s kids? They’ll tell you about their kid and they worry that he’s struggling, or she’s struggling. And your thought is, “She’s going to be fine, don’t worry.” You start telling your friend and you genuinely believe that. But when it’s your own kid your brain just thinks it’s so much more important to worry. And then it’s hard to lose that nervous energy around it. So the conversation that you have with your child is going to be totally different from nervousness and worry than it would be from peace and confidence.
And I sometimes wonder if that isn’t partly why our kids respond better to other adults than ourselves. I think about this with sales too, because I do quite a bit of business coaching, having a business myself and having worked in sales for many years. I notice that – I could even have a script, sometimes in sales we like to give salespeople scripts, just read this and say what’s on the page and then you can’t go wrong.
But you still can go wrong, because you could even use the exact same script, but if what’s driving you is thoughts and feelings of scarcity, and desperation, and need to make the sale, then even the way you say the words, and your body language. And all the other subtleties of human behavior are going to be totally different than if you’re coming from complete confidence, and abundance, and wanting to just serve your client, not worrying about the need to get the sale. The same words even will come across differently.
So how do I be most effective when it comes to me influencing others is I focus on getting my head and my heart in the right place. Whether I’m selling something, I’m parenting my child, I’m giving a talk in church, whatever it is I’m doing, my main focus has to be on my model. That is how I influence others for good the most, not by spending a lot of time in their models in my mind. Am I making sense?
Here’s the last thing I want to teach you about this topic. When you truly understand that you are the circumstance and you do the work on your own head, in your own self, then this is what it kind of looks like. It looks like being loving of others. It’s so much easier to be compassionate, and open, and again, I want to care when other people are suffering. I want to have emotions about that, because I’m coming from love.
But I know I’m the C and there are times when I’m willing to adjust myself at their request. And there’s other times when I’m not. But I want to be open and available to all of it. It also looks like being really honest, telling people the truth with kindness. So I don’t have to share every thought that comes to my head, but am I operating in integrity? Or am I sort of walking around pretending because I think it’s my job to control their emotions than it’s my job to be my highest best authentic self?
It also looks like not operating from this fear based place where we’re trying to control people and things outside of us in order to feel better. It’s just being my highest best self and trusting that that is going to benefit the people around me. And if at times it doesn’t, that’s the tradeoff sometimes. Sometimes being our highest best selves, other people don’t like. And those are tough decisions, but decisions that we have to own.
It also looks like being able to hear others, because of the openness and curiosity that you bring when you’re focusing on your own model without any judgment. You become much more open and able to hear and take in the opinions of others, which speaks to the next thing which is humility. Humility is required for me to expand myself, I have to be willing to be wrong. I have to be willing to ask for help and make mistakes to continue to learn and grow, that’s the way.
It also looks like serving out of a desire to be the kind of person who serves others because that’s who you want to be and you love you the most when you’re being that kind of person. And you love God enough to want to serve others in this way, not because I’m trying to control others emotions or opinions, just because that’s who I want to be.
So as I give you that list I’ll tell you, I have so much work to do in this area, I really do. This is like sort of my life’s work, it’s like can I be more honest, more authentic, love me the whole time even with all my mess. And stop thinking I know how other people should be. Stop spending so much time trying to control other people’s models.
The opposite of this is people pleasing, first of all, which is where we do things in order to try to manipulate other people’s emotions. But meanwhile we have our own negative emotion we create as we do it. It’s like showing up for others because it will please them at my own expense. That is people pleasing, that’s the opposite of this. When I get out of their model and I stay in my model, I be who I want to be, then I’m working to become the highest version of me and the people in my life might like her most of the time but occasionally they may not.
Another thing that’s the opposite of this is pretending. Can anybody relate to this? It’s like really silent, and kind, and lovely, and it seems really nice. But inside I’m sort of resenting, or inside I’m sort of seething, or secretly complaining about this to other people who will validate me. But to the person’s face I’m just polite and smiling, pretending. That’s the opposite of understanding that I’m the circumstance in their model and I need to get out of their model and I need to be my highest self. My highest self maybe needs to tell the truth, or maybe needs to clean up what she’s thinking.
I also know I have work to do every time I’m wanting to be right. I like to be right. I tell you, I’ve still got some work to do, I did a podcast on that a few episodes you can go check out. Every time I have judgments, you guys know the difference between judgment that’s useful and judgment that is taking you out of the model where you’re being your highest self. I do, I can feel the difference.
Here’s the truth, the one that takes me out of my model where I’m my highest self is sometimes kind of addictive, because it helps me connect with other people when I can complain and they validate me, and I validate them. And we both feel justified in our judgment, in our self-righteousness. But that is the opposite of understanding what I’m trying to teach you here.
And the last thing to keep an eye out for is you know you’ve got work to do in this area if you spend time worrying about what other people will think. Because again, if we understand that we are the circumstance in their model and we get out of their model and we just allow people to think what they choose to think, then that’s huge progress. Now, this is different than being open and curious about what they’ll think. The difference is that one comes from worry, one comes from curiosity and a desire to learn and understand. Do you see the difference?
Alright, so this is complicated stuff, if you’re new and I lost you, I apologize, just go back and get the podcast roadmap and listen to some of those episodes on there and then come listen to it again, and I promise you will get it. But us being the circumstance in other people’s models is not a way to justify our own bad behavior. And when I say bad, you’ve got to choose what that means, but you know, you have this internal moral compass that guides you.
And I think we all know the difference if we pause and consider it as to when I’m validating me not doing my own work, me not expanding myself, me not getting uncomfortable and really examining myself. Or learning how to be kind, and compassionate, and patient with myself until I’m able to do that work versus just sort of abdicating responsibility for it. There is a difference.
Please don’t use this work to put distance between you and your relationships. If you’re focusing on your model it should bring you closer together, it should be an opportunity for you to connect because you will want to be open and hear people out, and allow people their emotions, but be compassionate, and kind, and available to them at the same time.
Alright, you guys are amazing, thank you for being willing to show up here and continue learning. And thank you so much for applying this in your lives, that’s what really matters. I’m not just here to hear myself talk into a microphone. I am here to try to enact change in the world. And I love hearing from you when you apply it and you see that progress in your life.
And if you want to take it all to the next level, you have to come join us in Be Bold. So I invite you as always to come and join me there at jodymoore.com/membership, otherwise have an amazing rest of your day. And I will see you again next week. Take care.
Who is your life coach? If you don’t have one I would be so honored to be your coach. I created a virtual coaching program called Be Bold that I want to invite you to join me in. We can address challenges, we can work on goals, and we can do it in so many different ways.
We have group coaching, individual private coaching, and online chats along with hundreds of hours of courses and content that I’ve created just for you. When you’re ready to really take what you’re learning on the podcast to the 10x level, then come check out Be Bold at JodyMoore.com/membership.
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