I spent years trying to lose weight. I would craft elaborate schemes around different weight loss programs. I would make binders full of check lists, plan menus, print out reams of exercise plans to follow, but I just never seemed to be able to stick to my plans. No matter what I tried, I wouldn’t follow through and, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why.
Then I was introduced to the Thought Model.
The Thought Model was created by Brooke Castillo of The Life Coach School. She will be the first to tell you that she was in no way the first person to talk about these connections, but she created the Thought Model as a way to help simplify them and help her coaching clients figure out the answers to questions just like mine.
I thought the problem was the specific program I chose to lose weight. I was convinced that, if I just found the right program, all of the pieces would fall into place like magic, but what working with my coach and using the Thought Model taught me is that it was never the program’s fault. It was my thinking that needed to be changed.
Let me show you how it works.
The Thought Model has 5 parts.
1. Circumstances: These are the things in your life that you can’t control. They are the facts of your life. In order to go with this line of the Thought Model, 100% of people have to agree to the fact. These include events that take place around you, the behaviors of others, your past, your body weight, etc. The amazing thing about circumstances is that they are neutral. They have no power over you unless you give them that power.
2. Thoughts: These are the sentences in your brain that you think in response to circumstances. This is where the incredible power resides in the Thought Model. Even though these thoughts often present as facts, they are instead always optional. This is where I focus my time with my coaching clients to revolutionize their lives.
3. Feelings: These are the physical vibrations in our bodies that are caused by our thoughts. We label them with one-word descriptions to help us identify them.
4. Actions: These are the things we either do or don’t do in response to the way we’re feeling.
5. Results: This is where the actions or inactions that you took lead to in YOUR life. They will always be proof of the original thought and they can only apply to you (unless you have the superpower to control other people’s behavior with your mind!).
Here’s my original weight loss Thought Model:
C (circumstance): Current weight = 196 lbs
T (thought): I don’t know why I can’t get my eating under control and lose the weight.
F (feeling): Helpless
A (actions): I’m constantly researching different weight loss programs. I indulge in confusion. I eat to make myself feel better. I don’t stick to a plan for more than 1-2 weeks.
R (result): I actually gain weight.
You can see that by constantly telling myself that I didn’t know how to lose the weight, I was actually creating the result of gaining more weight. That thought felt so true, but it was actually my brain lying to me. Once I was able to identify this thought with my coach, I was able to start to see it and then we began the work to change it. That’s the secret. That’s where the magic happens. If you want a different result in your life, you have to change the way you’re thinking. It’s so simple and so complicated. I tried to do it alone for a while, but, once I started to work with my coach, my results took off. I lost the weight and then I used the Thought Model to begin to address all the other results I wasn’t happy with in my life. I would love to work with you to help you do the same.
