The Self-Coaching Model

Every once in awhile I come across a universal truth that makes me think, “Yes! This is exactly what I’ve been thinking, only this person has said it so much more eloquently – why didn’t I think of that?!”

This Self Coaching Model, formulated by Master Coach, Brooke Castillo, is one of those truths. It’s a formula used to solve any problem.

I just can’t deny the beauty of it.

Your circumstances affect your thoughts, which affect your feelings, which affect your actions, which affect your results.

Here is what Brooke shares about each of those:

• A circumstance is a neutral fact.

• A thought is a sentence in your head about a circumstance.

• A feeling is a vibration in your body caused by a thought.

• An action is what your feelings cause you to do.

• A result is the consequence of your action.

You can’t change a fact. But you can change a thought. That means, in order to get different results in your life, changing your thoughts will automatically affect your results (because it affects your feelings, which affect your actions, which affect your results).

Therefore, if you want to change the results you are getting in your life, you have to change your THOUGHTS. So much of the time, we try to change our actions without changing our thoughts, so our results don’t change.

Think about it in terms of smoking. So many people try to quit smoking by changing their actions. But if they haven’t changed their thoughts.

Circumstance: Smoking
Thought: Even if I stop, it won’t make a difference.
Feeling: Lethargic.
Action: Don’t stop smoking.
Result: No difference is made.

Results don’t change by action alone. They need the thoughts to be aligned with the action.

What if instead, the model looked like this:

Circumstance: Smoking
Thought: I can go without a cigarette for a day.
Feeling: Determined.
Action: Doesn’t have a cigarette today.
Result: A difference is made – a day without smoking.

The elegance of this model is the simplicity. It works every time to change your results.

Change your thoughts, change your life.

Golden Lining

Sometimes a collapse is a catalyst for change we didn’t even know we needed.

Yesterday our kitchen cupboard collapsed onto itself, and we were irritated because we had work cut out for us that we didn’t intend to have. 

However, we were forced to discover what was actually inside that cupboard. I had no idea we were hoarding 13 empty pickle jars.

Now it’s completely clear and the sense of satisfaction I get from being able to see every item of food we have is unexpectedly brilliant. 

Of course, the cupboard is just the starting point. It got me thinking, what if with every collapse that occurs in our lives, we didn’t just look for a silver lining, but also a giant benefit?

The Importance of Personal Development

Personal development gets given a bad wrap. I’ve had people tell me it’s selfish, self-indulgent and even superficial. I don’t know where this idea comes from, but it has permeated our culture so deeply that we feel guilty for the slightest self-care.

Personal development isn’t the selfish pursuit of personal gain at the expense of others. Personal development is about building up the human strengths that buffer against mental illness in order to increase fulfilment in life.

One way to explain mental health and illness is by using a number line from -10 to +10, where the negative numbers represent degree of mental illness such as anxiety or depression, and the positive numbers represent degree of mental strength. We want our baseline (the number we’re on) to be as high as it can be, right? However, with the current disease model, we’re only expected to get help when we’re ill. We’re led to believe if you’re not sick, there’s no reason to focus on personal development at all.

Not-sick sounds good in theory, but it means our baseline is at zero. Zero mental illness – but also zero mental strength. At zero, if we take a hit (a breakup or job loss, for example), we’re at serious risk of dropping into the negative, into mental illness. However, if our baseline is at say, +6, and now we take a hit, we’ve got a much better chance at coping with it, and we may only drop to say, a +3 – still quite mentally strong. Therefore, increasing our mental strength is an incredibly effective preventative measure to protect against anxiety and depression.

That’s great on a personal level – but what about other people? Isn’t it selfish to spend so much time on our own mental state when we could be helping others? Well, no. When you’re sick, you demand not only your own attention but the attention of others too. Ever heard the phrase, ‘you can’t pour from an empty cup’? To give, you must fill up your own cup, and then you’re in a much better position to help the world.

As a High Performance Coach, that’s what I help people do – heighten and sustain their mental strength so they can make an impact that truly matters in the world. I help them push their own limits and rewire their thinking, using their own life as a training gym.

And how do I actually do that?

By having deep conversations, sometimes face-to-face, but mostly on Skype, and asking a lot of questions. I ask questions you’ve never thought about the answers to, until you begin to think differently, and you discover new ways of handling life’s lemons. Most of the work happens outside the conversation – when you go and apply your strengthened mindset to all the different areas of your life and watch what happens. I also have my clients set commitments and then fulfill them by a deadline they set for themselves. I push them to reach their mental potential in the most supportive way possible – like a personal trainer.

To be physically strong, you don’t need a personal trainer, but you do need to exercise your body. Similarly, to be mentally strong, you don’t need a coach, but you do need to exercise your mind. A coach is one way you can do that more effectively, but you can also read personal development books, take courses, listen to podcasts, watch documentaries and cultivate growth-friendships.

The point is, we shouldn’t take developing mental strength for granted – it’s not self-indulgent, selfish or superficial. In fact, it’s the exact opposite, because when we are mentally strong we have the capacity to help others and contribute to the world in a way that we can’t when we’re stuck in a cycle of dropping from neutral to negative and back again. Personal development is a worthy pursuit.

What you think, you become

What’s your desired outcome?
Stop smoking? Lose weight? More money? Better relationships?

Your thoughts create your feelings, which create your actions, which create your results.
think > feel > act > get

That is the meaning of the saying “What you think, you become.”

The reason we don’t get what we want is that we try to change our actions without changing our thoughts. You’ve seen it. The person who tries to stop smoking, and says they will – but hasn’t changed their beliefs, their identity, their THOUGHTS. They fail and they can’t understand why. Changing things at the action level alone won’t work. You have to change your thoughts first.

Ask yourself, “Now that I have (insert desired outcome), what do I believe, what do I think?”

Start there. See how it ripples out to your actions.

Handling Criticism

Brooke Castillo said (and I paraphrase), if someone told you “I hate your blue hair” it doesn’t hurt, right? Because you don’t have blue hair. That’s not offensive. You just think “Um, okay?”

Criticism only hurts if part of you believes it.

If you believe you’re not good enough, and someone tells you you’re not good enough, it will hurt. But if you believe you are good enough and someone tells you you’re not good enough, it won’t hurt (Unless there’s a tiny part of you that still believes you’re not).

Your beliefs determine your feelings, not other people.

How to handle criticism? Examine the part of you that believes it, and find out why. Then instead of leaning into your anger or upset, spend your energy working on changing those beliefs.

Hell yeah or no

Hell yeah or no.

High performer and brilliant mind Derek Sivers invented a genius cure for overcommitment:

When you've got a decision to make, if you don't think HELL YEAH! at the idea, then say no.

If you say no to almost everything, then when a truly incredible opportunity comes along that makes you think HELL YEAH, you have the time, energy and space in your life to fully commit to it.

Too many of us take on far too many things at once to function at peak performance.
Say hell yeah, or no.

Choosing happiness – now

I haven’t been posting photos of me for a while, because I haven’t felt compelled to take them. I don’t want to take photos that seem ‘aspirational’ just for the sake of making things look good. Things ARE good. I don’t want feel the need to show that they’re good by post a selfie right now. More thoughts on this to come.

The past few days have been a time of unexpected awakening, and I think I’ve been jolted out of another layer of the matrix (hey, not trying to get too woo-woo, but you gotta love the film the matrix). I feel like I’ve realised I’m on the right path, I’m doing the things I want to be doing, but I’m in the wrong vehicle. I’m not sure what exact vehicle I would like to be in yet, but I know what I’ve been doing doesn’t feel quite right. I’ve been struggling, and all because of my own mentality. Right now, I choose maximum happiness. I’m finished with the struggle of being here and wanting to be there.

Instead, I choose to want to be here, right now. I choose to want my life exactly as it is right now.

I choose to be 10/10 happy with my life. Someone has to be the happiest person in the world, right? Why can’t it be me? Or you?

Inspiration vs Aspiration

The inspirational Emily

Tonight I had a coaching call with one of my amazing clients, Emily, and she said, “I’ve stopped following anyone on social media who is aspirational. I only follow inspirational people now.”

BAM. That hit me like tonne of bricks. I had never even thought about the difference between the two because people so often use them interchangeably. But it is the insatiable desire to have more and achieve something that won’t actually make us happy – that makes us unhappy! Whereas inspiration is an inner feeling that can produce happiness on its own.

Google’s definitions:

Inspiration: the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.

Aspiration: characterized by wanting to achieve social prestige and material success.

My definitions:

Aspiration appeals to the ego, while inspiration appeals to the intuition.

Social media is a brilliant place to start cutting aspiration out and editing inspiration in.

I’m going to take a leaf from Emily’s book and do a bit of an inspiration audit on my online consumption.
Is that person inspiring? Are they inspiring me to be a better me? To push my limits? Or are they aspirational? A hollow symbol of success, wealth, fame, beauty? Causing me to believe I’d rather be cool than happy?

I think we confuse the two because we admire both kinds of people.

Here’s my litmus test to tell the two apart:

When you consume their content, do you feel:

a) motivated and encouraged?
b) envious and dissatisfied with your life?

Be. Honest.

I can already think of a few Instagram personalities I need to unfollow once I’ve finished writing this!

Thank you Emily for the inspiration to write this post!

Push your limits

Last night I set a brilliant, impossible goal. I went to bed excited, and then this morning I awoke feeling sick to my stomach about it. It wasn’t my impossible goal. I realised I was putting immense pressure on myself to do another ‘impossible’ thing, but I didn’t actually want to do this one. Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE setting impossible goals. But only if I’m setting them for me. The moment that it feels like I’m doing it for someone else, I feel totally off.

This realisation made me have a deep think about my message as a content creator. I don’t ever want to make anyone feel like they have to set an impossible goal just for the sake of it, including myself.

I realised that the core of my message isn’t really about achieving impossible goals. It’s about pushing your own limits, whatever that means. Setting impossible goals might be part of that for you (it certainly is for me) – but pushing your limits is more than that, it’s a way to grow. Achieving an impossible goal is an outcome. Pushing your limits is the action.

Pushing my limits feels so authentic to me. I do it every day. I’m attempting to achieve 100 push ups in a row. I moved to the other side of the world without a clue where I was going to live. I followed a career path (the personal development industry) that my friends and family weren’t so sure about. I’ve committed to writing this blog every day for 2 years. I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. I committed to 365 days of meditation in a row. I push the limits of what I can achieve in my career, in my relationships, in my health and fitness, and in my whole life. I believe that’s what makes life fulfilling – growing into your highest potential so you can serve this world as best as possible.

I don't want to achieve my dreams yet

I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and find out all my dreams and impossible goals have come are true. What? Am I crazy?

Take marriage. Imagine waking up tomorrow, married to the ideal person, with your ideal children all grown up, with the perfectly designed house and garden and country club.

You’d miss out on all the excitement!

Instad, you want to meet the person, anticipate your first date, experience the magic falling in love, creating a vision of your life together, choosing the table decorations for the wedding, finding out you’re having a baby, seeing your baby on the ultrasound for the first time… and so on.

How awful would it be to wake up, married to the ideal partner with the ideal kids and never experienced any of it?

Sounds like my idea of a nightmare.

I don’t want to have my Impossible Goals given to me. I want to work for them. I don’t want to have the success I dream of today. I don’t want my dream life right now. Anticipation and working for it make the success so much sweeter. It’s the dance along the way.

Remember this the next time you’re feeling impatient. Patience is sweeter deal than you think.