The Self Coaching Model

If you have ever wondered why you feel the way you do or where your feelings come from? If so, this is the blog post for you my friend!

The style of coaching that I prefer and practice is causal coaching. This type of coaching helps you to understand what is causing you to feel the way you. It also explains why you have the results that you do in your life. With causal life coaching, we focus on solving problems. 

To do this, I use something called The Self Coaching Model. As you will find, the Model is made of several basic elements or themes common to the field of personal development. The Model was constructed by the founder of the Life Coach School, Brooke Castillo. 

The Model is comprised of 5 basic elements.  CTFAR is the acronym.

C is for Circumstances:

Circumstances are facts. They are things that can be measured, proven, or verified. It may help to think of them as facts that could be proven in a court of law. Circumstances can be past events or people's past actions, or they can be things in the present such as I make X amount of dollars/mo, I am single, or I weight X amount of pounds. Another example of a circumstance may be the fact that there is a pandemic of COVID-19 virus or the fact that you didn't get a job you applied for. These things are easy to prove and not disputable. 

A common mistake is we often misjudge what a circumstance is. For example, something like, my sister is angry with me. Nobody could prove that your sister is mad at you. Only she really knows how she feels. 

Circumstances are always neutral. This is a key concept of the model. It means that by themselves, they aren't good or bad. If a circumstance seems bad to you, it's really your thoughts about the circumstance that makes it seem good or bad. 

This brings us to the next part of the model.

T is for Thoughts:

Thoughts are just sentences in your head. It is estimated that we have about 60,000 thoughts per day. 

Given a circumstance, we create thoughts about that circumstance. We choose those thoughts, although some thoughts we have are more conscious than others. The point is that our thoughts are voluntary, optional, and entirely at our disposal to observe, choose, and change. 

Thoughts sometimes can be confused for circumstances.  In order to help you find that neutral circumstance, it may be helpful to look to see if you are using some kind of descriptor or qualifier. An example of this would be, he had a horrible childhood. The word horrible in that last sentence is a descriptor or qualifier. It is a thought, or an opinion, if you will, about his childhood. 

Because circumstances are always neutral, what makes something horrible or wonderful is the thought that you have about the circumstance. 

F is for Feelings:

Our thoughts create our feelings/emotions. This is a very empowering fact!

It means that we can feel however we want to, whenever we want to. It's liberating, right?

It also means that we are responsible for feeling the way we do 100% of the time. It's so easy to blame your circumstances for your feelings and your results. In fact it's often something that we do automatically because many of us have never been taught this model. 

Feelings or emotions (the two words can be used interchangeably) are vibrations in your body caused by your mind. They are generally one word such as happy, excited, sad, depressed, angry, frustrated, lonely, or disappointed. 

If circumstances caused our feelings, we would all feel the same way about a common circumstance. Let's go back to the circumstance of COVID-19. We are all living during this pandemic with the fact that it's out there, but as I'm sure you can see around you, people are all acting very differently. Some are very scared, worried, others in denial or disbelief. What is causing all those different reactions? It's the thoughts each of us chooses to have about the same exact circumstance that determines how we feel. If you are thinking thoughts that you are going to get infected with the virus and die then they will cause the emotion or feeling of being afraid, or anxious.

A is for Actions

Our feelings create our actions. Actions can also include inaction or reactions.

When you are feeling excited, energized, driven you are going to take action towards your goal. If you feel defeated, frustrated, or tired you are likely not going to progress towards your goal.  

Our actions can propel us forward, keep us in the same place or put us further from our goals.  If you find yourself stuck and not making progress on your goals, ask yourself what kinds of thoughts and feelings are you having. This is the power of The Model, to help you realize how you are feeling and what thoughts are creating that feeling. 

R is for Results

Results come from our actions, inaction, or reactions. While many coaching programs focus on getting different results, The Model teaches us that it's imperative if we want different results we need to change our thinking and not just our actions. Chasing your goals without addressing the mindset and the thoughts behind it will keep you from achieving your goal or limit your results. 

I hope now that you can see how everything stems from the thoughts in your mind. The Model is powerful and it helps you to solve your problems by getting to the root cause, your thoughts. 

It also helps you create the results that you want since you now know how each element is connected. To get the results in our life that we want, we have to live intentionally and start by choosing the thoughts that we need to create the feelings and actions to make those results happen. 

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Until next time.