PRODUCTIVE FROM HOME

For the first sixteen years of our marriage my husband was active-duty Navy, so I was a military spouse managing a family and household in constant flux.  During that time, we birthed 3 children, moved 10 times, lived in 7 states, bought 4 houses and sent our daughters to 9 schools.   

In the early years, I enjoyed the frequent moves.  As a matter of fact, I found the changes quite fun – even exhilarating.  Every couple of years there was a new duty station, a new home, a new baby.  And as a stay-at-home mom, I learned to adapt my role and responsibilities to the needs of my growing family.     

As time wore on, however, things seemed to get more difficult.  The moves grew bigger – we had more stuff, my husband’s job was...

In this post, I wrote about the importance of becoming conscious of our thoughts as we learn to manage our minds around getting organized. We have to know what we’re working with in order to make the changes needed to get the results we want. 

I told you about how I learned to be a keen observer of my own thoughts. 

But then something happened.  I became aware of a habit that is all-too-common, especially with women who are trying to juggle all the things – family, work, home, etc. 

Negative Thought Patterns 

I noticed repetitive patterns of thoughts I was having throughout the day.  In other words, thoughts that I was thinking over and over again – also called thought loops. 

But what alarmed me was how negative my thought patterns were. And I’m certainly not alone.  Many women find themselves, consciously or not, looping negative thoughts as they go about their...

Now that you have a really good understanding of circumstances and thoughts, and how they are different, I want to teach you about the rest of the model.   If you haven’t already done so, I recommend you read my blog posts here, and here to acquaint yourself with these concepts. 

As I’ve explained, human beings have thoughts about the circumstances that occur in our lives and the world around us.  It’s what makes us rational. But what happens after we have these thoughts?  And why do we say that we can use our thoughts to create the results we want in our lives? 

Feelings 

When you have a thought about a circumstance, it causes a feeling inside of you.  Feelings are simply the emotions or vibrations you experience in your body like anger, nervousness, and joy. It’s important not to confuse these types of emotional feelings with physical, involuntary sensations like hunger, cold,...

One thing that can be confusing is how to effectively define the term “feelings.”  The word is often used interchangeably to mean both physical sensations in our bodies as well as our emotions.  When trying to manage our minds around any challenge, it is super important to understand the difference.   

A big distinction between the two concepts is where each originates.  Simply put, body-sensation types of feelings begin somewhere in the physical body and travel up to our brains.  In contrast, emotion-types of feelings, originate in our brains (from thoughts) and travel from our brains to our physical bodies. 

Body Messages 

A feeling that is a body sensation is simply a form of communication between the body and the brain about what’s going on with us, physically.   

Some examples of these types of...

When it comes to thought models, understanding the difference between circumstances and thoughts is often one of the more difficult things to do – especially for newbies. 

As I explained in my last post, when your brain has a thought, it is simply interpreting and applying meaning to the experiences and situations you have as you go about your day, living your life.  These experiences can also be referred to as circumstances. 

So, for every circumstance you encounter in your life, you’re going to have some sort of thought about it – whether you are conscious of the thought or not. 

Circumstances Are Always Neutral 

Let’s say that you have a thought about a problem you have in your life, like being disorganized.  You probably think the problem of being disorganized is a circumstance.  After all, in your mind, it is just a fact.  You think, “I am disorganized,”...

One of the most mind-blowing concepts I learned about when I started being coached and coaching myself was the idea of observing my own thoughts.   

I had pretty much gone through life simply thinking thoughts and reacting to the circumstances around me without any kind of consciousness of where my thoughts were coming from.  They seemed automatic, like they were happening to me and I had very little control over them. 

But once I was introduced to coaching, I learned that I actually had a choice in what I thought about - and that I could get the results I wanted in my life simply by managing those thoughts.   

What a concept! 

Become an Observer 

Every day, we have anywhere between 40,000 and 60,000 thoughts meandering through our brains, most of which we aren’t...

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...