Hey there, friends! In this episode, I had a great time sharing a handy tool I use in my life coaching sessions. It's all about looking back at our thoughts and seeing how they shape our feelings, actions, and results. I even talked about how this approach I learned from the Life Coach School.
I gave some real-life examples, like how a mom might react to her son's letter from his mission, and even shared a personal story about my son's mission call. It's all about swapping out those unhelpful thoughts for ones that empower us.
I also stressed the importance of watching our thoughts – think of it like not letting a toddler run around with a knife! Plus, I'm super excited about the upcoming group sessions where we'll dive even deeper into these ideas. Can't wait to help you all feel more empowered and less overwhelmed by your thoughts. Catch you next time!
Share your missionary stories where you agree to allow me to share them: michellesevans.coach@gmail.com
Hey there, friends! In this episode, I had a great time sharing a handy tool I use in my life coaching sessions. It's all about looking back at our thoughts and seeing how they shape our feelings, actions, and results. I even talked about how this approach I learned from the Life Coach School.
I gave some real-life examples, like how a mom might react to her son's letter from his mission, and even shared a personal story about my son's mission call. It's all about swapping out those unhelpful thoughts for ones that empower us.
I also stressed the importance of watching our thoughts – think of it like not letting a toddler run around with a knife! Plus, I'm super excited about the upcoming group sessions where we'll dive even deeper into these ideas. Can't wait to help you all feel more empowered and less overwhelmed by your thoughts. Catch you next time!
Share your missionary stories where you agree to allow me to share them: michellesevans.coach@gmail.com
Welcome to the podcast. I wanted to introduce a tool that I use while I'm coaching and give you some examples so that you can kind of understand some of the things that I use. I've learned this over and over again to observe and question my thoughts. So I learned this when I was at the life coach school. And then recently I was listening to a book called out one mint by Thomas whirlwind, McConkie, which is outstanding. I can. Cannot highly recommend it enough. And he reiterated how important it is not to get consumed by all of our thoughts and to be able to step back and observe them. Like, like there on a movie screen. And he also mentioned that usually we want to use our brains to think our way through things, but embodying the body. Is also key to being able to be in tuned into what's happening. I'm going to cover the bodywork in another episode, but today I wanted to talk about brain and thoughts and how they work together and what's happening there. I want to explain the model, and this is something that I learned from going to the life coach school. And I want to explain just how I use it in my life. And how I use it in my client's life, just so that we don't struggle as much. first of all, we have circumstances and circumstances or things. In our life that are facts. So like our son is, my son is leaving on a mission. That's a fact. Or my son is on a mission. And his companion is so-and-so. That's a fact. And then we have we have thoughts about those facts. And those are just thoughts that our brain comes up with about the circumstance about what's happening. And then from those thoughts, we have feelings. So, whatever emotions come up when we're thinking that thought. And then with those feelings, we take action. And then we create the result in our life. I'm going to give you an example of a recent call I had with a mom. And what was happening for her? The circumstance was her first son. While serving his mission, received a letter from their Bishop and it said don't. Come home unless you're in a pine box. And we can put that in quotes because that's not her thoughts. Was that's a fact, he received a letter. We can quote what the Bishop said. So that's the circumstance. Then we have the thought about the circumstance. I don't want my current and this was hers. I don't want my current son. That's going on a mission to crumble under the pressure. By other people. And so then she was feeling fear. And then the action she was taking was she was wringing her hands. And she kept talking to her son trying to reassure him. And she was ruminating and her mind she probably was talking to her husband, maybe talking to her friends. And, and all of that was happening out of the fear. That was being generated by the thought. I don't want my current son to crumble under the pressure. By others. And the result that she was creating is. The mom was crumbling under the pressure of her second son going on a mission. And. None of that was happening because of the circumstance. So the circumstance, let me just remind you. Was that her first son on his mission received a letter from their Bishop that said, don't come home unless you're in a pine box. those are just facts. And then everybody has thoughts. And ways of interpreting that. And that's kind of the lens that we look through. The thought created the fear, the. The fear created the actions. And the result was the mom is starting to crumble under the pressure. So, let me give you an another example. My, my fifth son received his mission call. This happened last spring. And my thought was I can't do this. And so I was feeling. Fear or maybe I was feeling deflated. And the action I was taking was I was talking to my husband. I was ruminating just in my mind, I was spinning and just really working myself up. And the result was I was trying to prevent my son from going. And as soon as I realized the thought, I can't do this again. I realized I was creating my own struggle because the reality was that my son was going and I was just resisting. What was actually happening. And this was a helpful for me and it wasn't helpful for my son and it didn't feel good for either one of us. And sometimes we can see it really clearly. And we can do a thought swap. So in this situation, I was actually getting into my truck. And I was like, thinking I can't do this again. And I caught the thought. And I was like, wait a minute. I am doing this again. So I did it. I did an immediate bot swap. So sometimes that works a lot of times. It doesn't, but sometimes. So then my model was, I am doing this again. And the feeling that I felt was I felt empowered. The action I took was I showed up for my son. I was very enthusiastic. We went shopping. We did all the things. And the result that I created was I showed up in a way that I could respect. And I sent him off with as much love and hope as I could. So it's just a completely different model. And same circumstance. My son got his mission call. My first thought was I can't do this again. And then when I caught it, my second thought was, I am doing this again. And can you feel the shift in the emotions that generates, like, I can't do this again. Oh, my gosh. And it's like this very fearful, like playing very small. As opposed to I am doing this again. I am doing this again, and I repeated that thought over and over and over. And it was so helpful and so much more empowering. But that's one of the things that our brain does is it feeds us. These most interesting thoughts. And most of the time we think that our thoughts are facts. And we need some help so that we can start to loosen their grip on us. And that's some of the work that I do with my clients. Now in a previous episode, I've talked about the nervous system. I've talked about trauma. Those are different. And thought worked doesn't work unless those activations. That are happening in our body have been addressed. So there's been a few times that I've been coaching people, not a few times. The number of times I've been coaching someone and I can see that their nervous system is very activated. And in that case, we don't try to do an model. We don't try, I don't try to show them their thoughts and what they're creating because their CEO brain is offline and they're working with their primitive kind of monkey brain. And so we stay with what's activating them. And if it's a nervous system response, I can help them get back into regulation. But if it's a trauma response, then I can refer them. To a therapist for some trauma help. But thought work is very instrumental and important and can really help us see what's going on and what our brain is doing And I do this quite often when we're reflecting back and we're trying to see what's going on and it doesn't have to be reflecting back like a year or even a month, even like a day or two, we can start to get on to what was happening and what was creating it. And once we get an understanding. That our brain comes up with things and it serves us thoughts. That they, that our brain thinks is helpful. But sometimes it's not helpful and it's not useful. Like the thought that I was having about my son's mission. Not useful, not helpful at all, not empowering. Also the one about them. I shared it with my client, that she was afraid that her son was going to crumble. It's not a useful thought. But this is the lens that we see through and it helps us struggle less and it helps us also have empathy for others. Because we know that they're looking through a different lens. With a different brain. And so one of the ways we know it's a thought. Is, if you look at the circumstance and other people have a different response or they have a different thought, that's how, you know, your brain is serving you a story. So a lot of times, like when my kids got their mission calls, people were really excited. And they were like, congratulations, this is awesome. Whereas mine was like, Not excitement initially. Right? It. I can't do this again. That's when, you know, you're having a thought. And you can start to question those things. But it's important to remember that when we don't supervise our brains and our thoughts. And we just are acting like all of it's true. That it's like leaving a two year old. Unsupervised with a knife. And so being able to be very conscious, Of what's happening. And sometimes we have subconscious thoughts that are running. But usually when we're coaching, we can get some of those subconscious thoughts to come up and you can see them. And I've been in many sessions with people where that's happened and they're like, oh my gosh, I just saw the thought. I didn't even realize that's what I was thinking. And then we can get a grasp on it and we can put it in a model and we could start to see what they're creating. And just remember that stories and thoughts are not facts. this is just something to keep in mind. The model takes practice. One of the things that I do every morning, I meditate. I pray. I do a little. You know, study. And then I write in my journal. And I just kind of do a free flow writing and then. I looked back at what I wrote and if there's something I'm struggling with, I look to see if there's any. Story or thought. That is kind of like more activating, like, Ooh. Like that one's, that's it. That's the thought right there. And then I put it in a model for myself. And I see what I'm creating and I do that almost every morning, not every morning, but most mornings. And it's been very, very helpful. To getting me to be able to. Be in the most aligned place. So that I'm showing up in a way in my life. That I'm really proud of. It's been very helpful for me to be able to expand my mind and be able to really grow and. And, struggle a lot less. So it's just been very useful. I wanted to give you guys an example of that so that you guys had an understanding. And then to let you know that my next group. We'll be starting on April 16th and it runs for eight weeks and we deep dive into these concepts. And I kept the group at eight people so that everyone can get the help that they need and they want. And it's also very helpful to watch other people get coached because you can start to see. How it applies to you and to your life. if you're interested in expanding in every aspect of your life. Make sure you click on the link in the show notes to get on the list. Or you can click the link for a free consult with me and we can meet and we can talk. About what's happening for you and you can decide then if it's a good fit for you. All right, everybody. Thank you. so much for joining me this week. And I will see you next week. Bye bye.
