Thought Models: How They Work

A Thought Model (also referred to just as a Model) is a daily tool that can be used to implement changes in your life.  The concept is not new, as a matter of fact, my mentor, Brooke Castillo, borrowed the concept from forward-thinking teachers like Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle.  I use the concept myself in my own self-coaching practice and am convinced that it can solve any of life’s problems. 

Simply put, every situation or issue you encounter in your life can be broken down into five components, all of which are interrelated.  When you change one component, all the others will change as well. 

So, what are the components that make up the model?  They are: 

• Circumstances
• Thoughts
• Feelings
• Actions 
• Results

Let me explain how these pieces fit together.   

Every event, situation or occurrence that happens around you on a daily basis can be considered a circumstance.   When you experience a circumstance, you have a thought (or maybe several) about it.  Therefore, circumstances create your thoughts. 

Next, the thoughts you have about a particular circumstance in your life create feelings inside of you, so we say that your thoughts create your feelings.  

As you’ve probably figured out, the feelings you experience are what cause you to take a particular action (or actions.)  And ultimately, it is the actions you take that create the results in your life.  

Confusing?  Let me give you an example that revolves around cleaning out your home office. 

Let’s say that you’ve finally hit the wall with the mess in your office and you just KNOW that you must get it together for once and for all.   

Maybe you can’t find the envelope filled with receipts from last year that need to go to your tax accountant a.s.a.p.  Or, maybe you’ve stopped seeing clients in your home office altogether because you’re embarrassed about how disorganized your workspace is – you certainly don’t want them to think poorly of you! 

Determinedly, you block 4 hours on your calendar the following Saturday to get your office organized, even rescheduling a breakfast date with your sister.   

You wake up Saturday morning, dress in comfy work clothes, make a pot of coffee, and proceed to your office.  But when you enter, you are hit with an overwhelming sense of dread.  Slumping in your office chair (after carving out a small nook on your desktop to safely set down your coffee cup), you think to yourself,  

“This is hopeless, I’ll never get this place organized,” 

 “I don’t even know where to start,” 

“What’s the use, it’ll just get messy again,” 

“I’m just not an organized person.” 

Let’s pick one of these thoughts and see what it would look like in a thought model. 

C:  Cleaning home office 

T:  I’ll never get my office organized 

F:  Defeated 

A:  Don't organize office, don’t follow through on schedule and commitment to clean office, give up and do other activities instead of cleaning the office. 

R:  Office is not organized and didn’t follow a schedule - which is now disorganized as well. 

Can you see how the thought you had about not ever being able to organize your office ended up with those exact results?   

The cool thing about the model is that when you change any component of it, all the other components change in response.  Let’s look at a different model about the same circumstance. 

C:  Cleaning home office 

T:  I can start organizing my office by organizing my desk first  

F:  Motivated 

A:  Empty each drawer and desktop and sort items into piles.  Toss or recycle the garbage pile, put items to donate in a box for Goodwill, relocate items that belong somewhere else in the office or house, wipe down drawers and desktop, replace items I will keep into drawers/containers that make sense to me. 

R:  Desk is organized and one step closer to having the entire office organized. 

Did you notice that when your thought about getting your office organized changed, everything else below it changed too – your feelings, actions, and results were all altered when you had a different thought. 

That’s the magic of using models to manage your mind around the circumstances in your life.  When you want to alter the results you’re getting – in your productivity or any other area – all you need to do is change your thoughts and the rest will follow. 

In my next post, I’m going to teach you how to understand the difference between circumstances and thoughts.  Knowing this concept is really important and sometimes a little tricky, so be sure to look for it.