Ep #262: Believing the Model

Welcome to The Life Coach School Podcast, where it’s all about real clients, real problems and real coaching. And now your host, Master Coach Instructor, Brooke Castillo.

Well hello my friends. It is gorgeous in Dallas today. The sun is out, everything's turning green. I'm in my happy place. I love Dallas. I love being here. I love today. Amazing walk with the dogs today. Totally happy to be talking to you all about believing the Model.

I often get questions about the Model and how I came up with it and what its origins are and all of the things about my history with what was going on in my mind. And I talked a lot about my process in super thinking, previous episode that I did, and the idea of having idea babies, which is basically you get an idea from one place, you get an idea from another place, you mix them in your own head and then you have an idea baby.

And I have lots of idea babies. I think of myself as a creator in terms of creating content and creating tools and creating things for myself and for my students in order to navigate this world that we are all up in. The Model is one of the things, and I was recently talking to Chris and I think the Model has been one of the most powerful tools I've ever used for my own life and I hope it's not the last amazing thing I create. I hope it's just the beginning. I hope that I create five more things that are just as amazing as the Model.

Now, one of the things that I want to be clear about is that the Model is more of something that I observed than it is something I created. So when someone discovers gravity, when someone discovers electricity, they didn't actually create it. It was always there. It was always a truth, it was always existing. They just put words and concepts and function around it. That's how I feel about the Model. The Model isn't something that I'm that I'm like hey, maybe I should change the world so thoughts create feelings.

No, it's just something that I observed through all of my study and through my own life that was true. And I think that's a really important distinction because often, the idea of original thought gets confused as if somehow we can trademark the concepts that are true in the world, which is so silly to me.

I think that you don't trademark discovery. You don't trademark the truth, in my opinion. That's how I've looked at it. So when I wrote Self-Coaching 101, that's really how I introduced the Model to the world in the way that I had been using it because of the demand for it. And one of the things that I say in this book is hey, use this tool in your life. Share it with your friends.

This isn't something I'm going to try and hoard and keep to myself because it felt like something that I had just remembered. It felt like something I had just observed. Not something that I had created in the sense that it never existed before. And I don't know if that makes sense, but I think a lot of my students can relate to this.

It's like a way of describing something, it's a way of presenting something in a way that hasn't ever been presented before and yet it doesn't mean that it didn't already exist. It just didn't exist in this specific language. And so a lot of people will tell me that when I teach them the Model, it feels like something they're remembering. They're like, "Oh, I feel like I've already known this, I feel like this is an idea I've already had."

Yeah, it's how the world works so it probably feels familiar. And I've also had a lot of people come to me and say, "Oh, this model is very similar to this other person's teaching or this other thing that this person has done," and some of those teachers came before my book and some of the teachers have presented their ideas after my book. And I love that all of my teachers basically teach the exact same concepts but in different ways.

And I talk about that in the book a little bit. I talk about how the way that we present it is different but the truths are the same. So when you join Self-Coaching Scholars, I give you a copy of that book and you can read about that right in the beginning of the book. It's in the forward and where I'm accepting that this is just my observation and encouraging everyone to use it.

But one of the things that I have evolved through as I have coached myself and many of the students in my programs is that the Model just keeps getting more intricate and deeper and useful to me. And so one of the things that I wanted to share was kind of my evolvement in teaching and understand the Model and how I think one of the most important things is believing in it.

And it's not believing in the tool at your own expense. It's believing in the tool at your own success, and that has been what has been true for me. As I take my work deeper into my own self-coaching, my results continue to blow my mind. I am continually astounded by how much power I have in my own life to create whatever it is that I want in my life. Things that I used to think were impossible are now easy for me.

Losing weight, not drinking alcohol, creating money, creating amazing relationships. All of those things have changed so much because of my deepening experience of coaching myself and using the Model within myself to affect my external life.

As many of you know, my real mission in life is to be an example of what is possible, is to use my life to inspire and affect other people's lives. That is what makes me the most energetic and the most happy when I wake up in the world to know that I am doing that. So I think the first phase of the Model, when I first started teaching the Model was really my focus on defending it as a thesis.

I would have lots of clients questioning me and wondering about it and questioning their models and whether something was really a C, a circumstance or a thought, and what were really feelings and did results always prove thoughts. And so a lot of my work in the beginning was testing it on my own self and testing it with my clients and really realizing that I couldn't find one exception where it didn't apply.

And that gave me so much confidence in it in my own life and really just using it as a tool basically in the beginning to understand the thoughts that I was currently having about my past and how much that was affecting me in my present. And so I would go through and do models on all of my beliefs, all of my thoughts that were causing me so much suffering and so much pain.

And I would just do it all day, literally. I would do it with my clients and then do it with myself and just always try to uncover anything that I hadn't been deliberately conscious of and hadn't ben deliberately creating. And in the beginning it was really about - and you can see this in the book - it was really about taking a thought that I was currently having and creating a new model to replace it.

And I would say the first few years of using the Model was really just about what I call thought swapping. Was really just seeing wait, there's an alternative way to look at this, I'm going to try and look at it a different way. I'm going to try and think about this a different way. I'm going to try and think about this maybe the opposite way I've been thinking about it and see if it changes it.

And sometimes this would work and sometimes it wouldn't, but what I learned was that it was optional to think what I was thinking. And that was astounding to me, to recognize that my brain wasn't simply making observations factually but that it was having opinions about everything and those opinions were affecting the way that I felt and the way that I showed up and acted in my life was unbelievable overwhelmingly exciting, and also terrifying because I kept looking at everything I didn't want in my life and I started having to take responsibility for it and own it.

If I had a result in my life, I knew that I was the one creating it. If there was a feeling I was having, I knew that I was the once creating it. If there was an action I wasn't taking or was taking, I knew that it was within my ability and within my control to change that.

And I hadn't been living that way. I had been living at the effect of my life. I had been functioning as if my life was happening to me and I was just trying to deal with it. And when I thought about the truth that my life wasn't happening to me, my thoughts were happening to me, and that I can control my thoughts, everything started to change.

So the first phase really is believing in the Model, in the sense that understanding that circumstances are not thoughts, that there are things that exist factually and then there are things that exist simply in our minds, and which ones of those are true. And the way that we define is it is a circumstance is something that everyone would agree is true. Everyone would agree that there's a tree right there planted in front of us.

Everyone would believe that we are in a house right now. And so there were much fewer facts than I thought. There were much fewer truths that existed kind of outside of my brain than I thought. I thought everything was happening and we were just interpreting. So that was kind of my first belief in the Model. And I watch people go through this when they're first learning the Model.

I watch them have the cognitive dissonance of recognizing the difference between what they thought was true, what they thought was an observation, and recognizing that it was just a judgment, that things that we have been taught are good or things we've been taught are bad are simply just opinions and that there is no good and bad that exists in the truth realm, in the outside of us world.

And all of the adjectives and adverbs are really what's going on in our brain and everything else is just neutral. That, I think, is a really challenging realization. It was for me, but it was also incredibly empowering. I loved knowing that I had a lot more control over my experience than I thought I did.

So as I started to evolve into believing the Model at that first level, I started using that belief to understand other people's actions. So instead of just understanding my own models and why I was feeling the way I was and why I was acting the way I was, I was able to start looking at other people's behaviors and understand that they were acting the way they act because of what they're thinking and because of what they're feeling.

And it opened me up to experience other people in a much bigger loving way where I wasn't constantly judging them. When I understood, oh, they're doing that because of how they think and feel, I do this because of how I think and feel, I started to feel this amazing connection with the human race. And this included people who didn't believe what I believe, this included people who didn't act the way I act, this started to include everybody, even the evil people. Even the people that did the horrible things.

I started understanding human nature in a way that I think made my heart explode. It made me open up to the world. And I think that's what happens when we do this work on ourselves. When we start uncovering our own layers of judgment, our own layers of thoughts towards ourselves, towards other people and recognize them for just what they are, they're just thoughts in our brain, they're just sentences in our mind, and we stop using them against ourselves and against other people is we drop into a way of being in the world that is much easier.

Where we don't have to try and shove everything into right and good and better and just and push away anything that we think is bad or evil or wrong. And instead, just open up our hearts to understanding all of it in a way that relaxes so much of the resistance and so much of the judgment.

So, as this transformation happened in my own life, as I applied the Model to my own life, I started to notice that I didn’t have to do the second model all of the time. So I would recognize my current model, I would recognize that I was thinking a negative thought and that it was affecting me negatively. And instead of having to come up with a replacement thought or a new thought, I could just simply recognize that it was optional. I could recognize that the thought was the source of my pain and it would just start to dissolve.

I didn't need to replace it. I didn't need to feel better right away. And that kind of took me into the second phase of really recognizing that I don't need a new thought to feel better because feeling "negatively" is fine. And I will recognize that I'm the one causing the negative emotion with my own thinking, but I don't have to push it away right away. I don't have to get to the better feeling thought so I can feel better.

I was opening myself up not only to what was going on in my mind but also the next layer, which is really what goes on for us emotionally. There are quite a few teachers that I learned from that taught me that feeling good all of the time was the goal. And although that sounds lovely, it did not serve me in my life because any time I wasn't feeling good, I was feeling bad that I wasn't feeling good.

So it was like, layering the negative emotion. And when I started recognizing that bad feelings aren't bad, that negative feelings really aren't negative, they just don't feel good, but I don’t have to make them mean that something's gone terribly wrong, I could just make them mean that I'm having a thought, it really took me to the next layer of belief and growth about what I believe it is to be human, which is to have the experience of contrast, to have the experience of negative and positive.

The idea that you can't truly find what you love without understanding what you don't love. You can't understand what feels good truly unless you know what feels bad truly. And when you see that as the negative and bad and wrong is all necessary in order to define the good and right and better. Then you kind of crack up that shut down feeling and you become more and more open to any experience regardless of what you believe the feeling will be that accompanies it.

And so our willingness to be uncomfortable and to be open to the experience of anything in life, knowing that it's only thoughts that create our emotions and the worst thing that can happen is we think a thought that causes us pain, then we become fearless of our own emotion. And when you are afraid of how you might feel, you give all your power away. And when you are not afraid of not feeling any emotion, you open up to it in a way that I don't know any other way that would open us up this much.

If you are willing to feel humiliation, if you are willing to feel doubt, if you're willing to feel failure and shame, you are willing to live on a plane in a way that is so much bigger than the primitive brain would have us live, which would be on the couch watching Netflix, which is the equivalent of the primitive cave with the fire inside.

So the first layer was my thinking and really understanding that. The second layer was really feelings and opening up and believing that I could believe anything. And understanding that all of my actions need to be fuelled by the emotions that I choose to feel.

And some people will say to me, "Well, I'm fuelled by negative emotion. I'm fuelled by fear." And I always explain to them that they're switching models when they say that to themselves because really what they're doing is they're feeling afraid but they're doing it anyway and they're doing it anyway because they think they can overcome the fear.

You have to understand how your mind allows you to move forward despite a negative emotion. It's with a new thought that either says it's worth it, I can do this, it's either confidence or courage. If you think about having fear and taking action when you're experiencing fear, that is courage. That's the emotion of courage even though fear is still present.

And so our actions are always reflective of the way that we are feeling. And to understand that I could choose to be fuelled by love, I could choose to be fuelled by belief and happiness and joy and ambition and determination instead of hiding in doubt was one of the biggest a-ha moments that I ever had with the Model.

But by far in a way the biggest epiphany that I had was believing in the Model, in the R line. So I had believed that circumstances are different than thoughts, I had believed that thoughts were sentences in my mind, I had believed that feelings were caused by thoughts and that feelings were all correct, that were all right, that were all purposeful, that there wasn't a world in which there was no negative emotion.

But what I really didn't realize until, I don't know, I'm going to say maybe - what's it been now? Four or five years ago is that you can put whatever you want in the R line. And no matter what result you want, you create it with your thoughts first. And whatever result you have right now, you're creating with your thoughts first.

That doesn't mean the circumstances that you have in your life. It means the results you have in your life you're creating with your thoughts. So if you look around at the results that you have in your life, your body weight, your relationships, your bank account, the house you live in, the car you live in, the - everything. The clothes you wear, those are all results that you have created in your life.

And that you genuinely can put anything you want in that R line, in that result line and create it with your mind. Now, there's a difference between understanding something intellectually, understanding a concept and then really believing in it. And for me, that took several years for me to have the moment where I went, "Oh, I can put whatever I want in the R line and create it if I believe that that is true."

And so that's when I decided to put a million dollars in the R line. And the money thing was amazing. I don't think it was as profound for me as the drinking thing, as not drinking. And my desire for the R line was not just to stop drinking. My result for the R line was to not desire alcohol, to have alcohol be irrelevant to me, to have it not be interesting to me at all.

And that felt more impossible than a million dollars. That felt like the most impossible thing that I could imagine having for my life. But I believed in the Model enough to put it in the R line. I believed enough to practice that model, to see if I could create it for myself.

And I think what happened was when I created that model for myself and I lived into that model and I became that model and I am now living that result as a solid result in my life, that's when I really thought, "I can put anything I want there. Anything. What do I really want and what seems impossible? Let's really prove this true."

And I did and I've made a million, 10 million, 17 million, and I will make 100 million dollars because I believe in the model and I know that it works and I know that that's true. And when I work with my students, when I talk to mane of you all, I can see that you haven't quite made that shift because you're allowing yourself to believe thoughts that will create the opposite.

"I'm not good at this. This isn't working for me. I don't know if I like this. I should change my mind." If you believed with all of your heart that all you had to do was put your deepest desire in the R line and then believe it into being, you would not indulge in any thought that didn't support it. You wouldn't go there.

You would stay committed and faithful to your desired model. No matter what. You would watch your brain try and pull you away from it and you would come right back to it and you would practice. I am an example of what is possible. You can put whatever you want in your R line and believe it into being. You can create your own reality.

Now, many of my friends and students talk about the woo, talk about magic, and a lot of people will say to me, "Well, I like working with you because you're not so out there," but here's the thing; physics and creating your reality is kind of out there. It is kind of beyond our current education.

It is having faith in something that you don't quite 100% understand. And I think that's the hardest thing for many of us, whatever religion - and religion is a set of beliefs - whatever religion, whatever thing we're committed to believing, it's harder to believe when there is a trace of doubt. Of course. When it requires faith, when it requires believing in yourself and in your own creation and in something you can do.

But you have to ask yourself, do you really believe this? Do you want to believe this? Do you choose to believe that you are the one in control of what you create in this lifetime? Do you believe that your thoughts create your feelings 100% of the time? It's not sometimes. It's not but in this topic it's different, although I try to do that a lot. It's 100% of the time that this is true.

100% of the time your thoughts create your feelings. Your feelings drive your actions and you will create the results in your life no matter what they are, no matter how impossible you think they are. You are the one that is running the model of your life. When you look at the biggest result you have in your life, that is your model.

Do you know what your desired model is and are you living into it on the day to day? Are you believing in it no matter what? Are you believing in it harder than anyone else gives you the right to believe in it? I'm doing it for me to prove it true to myself, but also to prove it true to all of you. To do the thing that seems impossible to anyone who doesn't have the Model but seems inevitable to anybody who does and uses it and understands it.

I know it's not a mistake that I made this observation and created this model and have used it and taught it to so many people. I know that it's on purpose and so I know that my ultimate proof and creation and inspiration will come from setting and creating the most impossible goal.

So the question becomes how do you believe in the Model? And I want to give you a couple of tips. First, believe in the concept of the Model. Practice believing in it and proving it to yourself. See in your own life how your thoughts have created your results. See in other people's lives how their thoughts have created their results. Trace them back. See how they've created their feelings, their actions, their results in their own life.

There is no exception to this rule. There is no exception to this observation, so find it everywhere. And then bring it home to what it is you want to create and then start practicing and believing that. Start putting it in the R line of your model. Start thinking the thoughts that help you become the person who feels the feels and does the dos and creates that result.

You'll know when you truly believe because the result will match the thought. That's when you truly believe. So when my students say to me, "Oh no, I 100% believe that I will do this," that's very different than believing you are this. This is done. Not something you're holding off in the future but something you are being right now. You are being the person.

And then the universe just catches up to the person you're already being. It's almost like it's as good as done, we're just closing the gap right now. The belief is strong enough. I love the imagery of creating a thought that generates an emotion that's almost like a magnet that draws you to the behaviors, that draws you to the actions that you need to take in order to create that result, and you don't even have to know what those actions are.

As long as you keep generating the belief and the feeling you will be led to the exact things to get you there. There's no way I could have told you 10 years ago how I got here. I didn't know yet. I didn't know what I didn't know. The same is true, when I make 100 million, when I get to that place. The same is true when I quit drinking and quit overeating. I didn't know how I would get there but I knew I would get there. I was committed to getting there because I believed in the concept of the Model.

So take this time to question. If you're one of my long-time students, I want you to sit back and ask, is there an area of your life where you think the Model isn't applying? Is there an area of suffering where you think you aren't creating that result for yourself? And question that because when you believe in the Model 100%, then you can apply it 100% to your life to create what it is you want.

It is the thing that exists. It is always working whether you believe it or not, so you might as well utilize it and live the most deliberate life, the most delicious life, the best life that you most want to live. So I encourage you to question your belief and then question if you want to believe in it, and if you do, what is the thing you most want to create with the belief that you have?

Have a beautiful week everyone. Talk to you soon. Bye.

Hey, if you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out Self-Coaching Scholars. It's my monthly coaching program where we take all this material and we apply it. We take it to the next level and we study it. Join me over at the TheLifeCoachSchool.com/join. Make sure you type in the TheLifeCoachSchool.com/join. I'd love to have you join me in Self-Coaching Scholars. See you there.