The Coaching Tool that Will Change Your Life

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What if you could take all those inspiring ideas you’ve heard from thought leaders—like “your thoughts create your life”—and actually apply them in a practical, step-by-step way?

In this episode of Modern Body, Modern Life, I am introducing you to The Model—a powerful coaching tool that can transform how you think, feel, and act every single day.

You’ll learn:

• Why circumstances are neutral until you have a thought about them.
• How your thoughts create your feelings—and why that matters for the actions you take.
• Real-life examples (from jeans that don’t zip to holiday stress and fender benders) that show how to shift your mindset in the moment.
• A simple question you can use daily: “What do I want to think on purpose?”
• How practicing this tool can change not just your health and weight loss journey, but also your relationships, confidence, and overall joy.

This episode is packed with stories, examples, and practical guidance to help you stop letting life “just happen” and start creating results on purpose.

Enjoy!  Courtney

Interested in speaking with me about how we can work together? Click here to head to my website: https://www.modernbodymodernlife.com/ and schedule a free consultation with me.

Transcript

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Sarah, welcome to modern body, modern life, the podcast for women who want to feel powerful, healthy, strong and confident, inside and out at every age. On this podcast, we talk about becoming a woman who is fully in control of her eating and movement, so weight loss, strength and energy become permanent. We also talk about something bigger, becoming the woman who takes her deepest desire seriously and goes after more in every area of her life. I'm body and life coach Courtney Gray, and I believe you can get in the best shape of your life at any age, and when you do, it becomes a catalyst for everything else, your relationships, your confidence, your joy, because when you feel like you and your body, all of life gets better. Let's get started. Welcome to the podcast episode 96 the coaching tool that will change your life. It sounds big, and it is big, so I teach you here on the podcast a lot of tools and strategies and ways to think and ways to live. And I go, of course, even more in depth with my clients, actually teaching them these tools. But this is the one that has changed my life more than any others. And I often tell my clients of all the things I'm going to teach you, if this is the one that you take away. This is the one that will change every area of your life. You've probably heard many thought leaders, right? It's, it's possible that you follow Maya Angelou and you follow Eckhart Tolle and Tony Robbins and Brene Brown and, gosh, there's just so many I could keep going, going, going with all the different thought leaders that we have, Napoleon Hill like you know, from people that have are not even alive anymore. And there's one theme that you probably have heard and maybe you don't even really recognize, but there's one theme that you have probably heard from all of these thought leaders, and that is your thoughts and your beliefs create your life. And I heard this over and over and over again, and I believed it. I remember watching the secret and I remember they talked about, like, what you focus on is what you get and and I remember hearing from Eckhart Tolle, like, the importance of focus. And I remember hearing from Tony Robbins, like, you know that you need to practice thinking certain things over and over again. I mean all the things, yes to all of it. But it wasn't until I became a student of Brooke Castillo. Brooke Castillo is a life coach, and she's just when I talk about my life coach, she is the person I am referring to, my life coach, and the reason why she has made such an impact on my life is because she's taught me something called the model, which I'm going to teach you here today. And it is a way to take all of these kind of abstract thoughts about how important our thoughts and beliefs are, and to actually take them into a tangible way that you can actually go from overwhelm in the middle of your day to understanding why you're overwhelmed and get out of it. It's she's the first person that made me be able to take all of these abstract just think more positive, and actually be able to go, oh, so this is how I can actually do that. And the beauty of this thing called the model, which I'm going to teach you here today, is it works in every area of your life, for every single circumstance that's happening for you, for every single emotion you're going through, and like everything you have to practice it. And this is what I do when my clients hire me is we practice, practice, practice, understanding our own models, understanding our own thoughts and beliefs and how they interact and how they are affecting and creating our lives. So when you think about the word mindset, sometimes it sounds very abstract. In fact, my husband has been getting into a lot of public speaking lately. He retired from coaching a year ago, and he's been he's an amazing public speaker, so he's been doing a lot of speaking. He's been speaking to coaches, and he's been speaking at the high schools and colleges, and he has this beautiful speech about that he's created about culture and culture building and mindset and achieving goals and all these things. And him and I are very close, and we work together on all these things. And so he said, I want you to look at this speech, and I want you to tell me how I can make it better, because he has a lot of knowledge that I don't have, and I have a lot of knowledge he doesn't have. And he talked at one point in one of these speeches that he was making to deliver to the high schools, and he kind of glanced over mindset, and I stopped him, and I go, Oh no, no. We need to. We need to, we need to, um, for this mindset part up. And he's like, What do you mean? I go, mindset is one of these abstract things that people hear and they just think of like being more positive, but it's so much more than that, and people don't really, they don't understand how to use mindset in their lives. And so I really helped him break mindset down. Brown in this speech, and I just so proud of him. He delivered it so well, and he intellectually understood what I was saying, but I taught him how to teach it. It was a really beautiful thing. It was actually really cute, because I went to hear his first speech that he delivered at one of our local high schools. Was so fun. I mean, there were hundreds of people there and so many friends that were in the audience. And when he started talking about mindset, one of my girlfriends, I didn't even know she was there, she kind of looked at me, and I looked up, and she kind of turned around and she winked at me, and I winked at her back, because she knew she was like, Ah, this sounds like you. It was such a compliment. For many years, I would hear thought leaders talk about perspective and thinking positive and choosing your outlook. And it made sense, and it feel good. Felt good, but I really did not know how to do it in the moment. And I remember watching the video the secret. Did you ever watch the video about the secret, the law of attraction, the attention we give to things is is drawn back to us. What you put out into the world. You get back and again, it all just sound very like, Be positive, be nice, and you give what you get, which I believed, but how it seemed like is the word nebulous. It just seemed like hard to do. And I found myself thinking like, this sounds good, but how do I do this? Like, how do I stay consistent trying to think good thoughts? How do I in the moment not just have like, a knee jerk reaction? And I do believe that most people, as they are walking around their lives, something happens and they have a thought and it doesn't feel in control of that. In control. They don't feel in control of that thought. Something happens, and there's like this automatic thought reaction that they don't feel in control of. And I didn't know at the time that you can actually get really good at having that automatic thought be actually of your choosing. So I'm going to dive into this model that really teaches us that our thoughts and our beliefs are creating our lives, and it really has not only helped me feel more in control of my thoughts and my emotions, but it is it has led me to up level different areas of my life. I'm going to teach you the model, and then I'm going to give you some examples to understand it at a deeper level. I'll give you some examples from my clients. I'll give you some clients. I'll give you some examples from myself, you will be able to start going, Oh, I see this. I understand this at a deeper level. And let me just say too, is that this needs to be practiced, like everything. It needs to be practice. You know, learning it and understanding it is one thing, but actually practicing it on a day to day basis, is where you're going to start seeing the changes in your life first. When I say model, you might think of, like, What do you mean? Like an airplane model, like a model of the universe, like, What are you talking about? And so I want you to imagine me at my whiteboard. And I think what I'll do is I'll actually create a YouTube video that kind of, you know, goes with this podcast and put this up on YouTube so you can actually see me teach it, because of all the things I teach, the model is one that's actually really helpful to watch me teach it. So think of me at my whiteboard, and think of me like writing down a model. So it's not a it's not a model of the solar system. It's a model in terms of a five step process, and so the first step is circumstances. There are circumstances in our lives, and I love to say most circumstances are neutral. And so think about circumstances like the weather, your weight, things that are happening in your life, things that are happening with the economy. Think about things that are happening within your household. Think about the amount of money you have in your bank, your relationship status, things that people are saying to you, these are all circumstances, and most of them are neutral. Now let me tell you right now, when I learned this model, and I went through a coach certification and I got certified to teach this model, one of the things they taught us was that all circumstances are neutral. Now I have a really hard time even just wrapping my mind around this. So when we think of all circumstances are neutral, if we actually are believing that we're we're believing that, you know, child abduction is neutral. Death of children is neutral. Things that are really horrible in the world are neutral. And it what it that what that does for me is it gets me spinning in an area that's just not helpful for me. It makes me think that's not true. How could I possibly think good things about that? How could that possibly be neutral? That's a horrible thing. So what I teach this model a little bit differently, because that's just not going to help us to sit there and think sit there and think, no, all circumstances aren't neutral. That's ridiculous. And I found myself even in certification, when I was getting certified to teach this is I spent a lot of time sitting there thinking, This can't be neutral. I can't wrap my head around this. And so here's what I like to say, is, let's leave those things alone. Let's. Let's leave like a child abduction alone, and just for me, decide it's horrible, but let's focus on other things in our life that can be more neutral. Let me give you some examples. You put on your favorite pair of jeans and you're hardly able to pull the zipper up right we're heading into fall right now. And so maybe you're getting out of your skirts and dresses, and you're like, let's, you know, let's check and see what we need to buy here for fall. And you put on your pair of jeans and your zipper is not, is not working. This is actually neutral. And the second step of this model is thoughts. So again, imagine me at my whiteboard. Circumstances is the first line. The second line is thoughts. The first line is you're putting on your favorite pair of jeans, and you cannot get the zipper up neutral. The second line of this model is thoughts. When you have a thought like, Oh my God, I need to lose five pounds, that thought is going to make you feel a certain way. We'll dive into feelings in just a moment. But it is neutral. You might be like, it's not, I promise you, it is. And the way you think is going to be where all your power is. So let's dive into another one, your current money situation, how much money you have in the bank, how much money you have in your credit card, neutral. This might be the first time you've ever been like, is that true? It is true. But you have a thought about what your money situation is, maybe your thought is, I'm doing really great, beautiful. That thought is making you feel a certain way. If you have a thought, you look at your bank account and you think, Wow, I'm doing really great. You are feeling satisfied, or you are feeling safe, or you are feeling proud, beautiful. But if you are looking at your money situation, how much you are having in your bank, how much is on your credit card bill, and you have a thought, I'm never getting out of the hole. You feel stressed, or if you have a thought, I don't have enough money in my 401 k, that thought is making you feel a certain way. And maybe it's stressed. Maybe it's shame the money you have in the bank is neutral until you have a thought about it. Here's another one. Your son gets in a fender bender. We've been going through this a lot with my kids. Our kids are I just feel like, oh my god, can we just have six months with no one hitting someone else? Thank goodness that no one has been hurt. So you hear my thoughts here, okay, your son gets an offender bender. Let me take it to me, my son gets in a fender bender. It is neutral. It is neutral until I have a thought about it, and when I think, Oh, my God, this keeps happening that makes me feel negative, it makes me feel frustrated, it makes me feel hopeless, it makes me feel pissed, but when I have a thought, everyone is safe, we can handle this. All that matters is no one was hurt. That makes me feel calm, and it makes me feel grateful. And you might be thinking, Yeah, but my thought isn't a choice, but it is a choice, and that's what I want to teach you here on this podcast. Here's another circumstance, your daughter says her family's not coming over for Thanksgiving. We're heading into the holiday season, and maybe your daughter says, Hey, me and my family, we're not coming over for Thanksgiving this year. We are doing something else that's neutral. And you might be thinking, hell, Fuck no, it's not. You might be thinking, This isn't fair. You might be thinking, she's breaking our tradition. Those thoughts make you feel angry and hurt and sad, but it is, in fact, neutral, and it is possible for you to decide to think differently about it. Let me give you one more. We're heading into the holiday season, and I know for a lot of women, they feel just like, Oh my gosh. Like, it's common, right? Like most I feel like as women, and this is, this is a thought, you're gonna hear this my thought, but I feel like, for most women, their thoughts align with my thoughts. We do a lot of all the things when it comes to the holidays and the gift buying and the Food Prepping and the organization of all of it, I feel like a lot of it does fall on us. And I know that I'm presenting this like of circumstance, but it is a thought. It's not true, but I think that this thought, for a lot of us, gets in the way. It actually hurts us, because then what we do, and I'm going to talk about how our thoughts affect us, is we really put our own needs on the back burner. And it's not just our own needs of taking a bath and getting pedicures. It's our own food prep, our own movement, our own taking our bodies and our mental health and our sanity seriously, and so we need to be able to look at the holiday season and decide what we want to think on purpose. Why does it matter? Why does. Matter that we think on purpose. Okay, this brings us to the third line in this model, circumstances, most are neutral, then we have a thought about the circumstance. And the reason why that thought is so important is the third line in this model is feelings. When we have a thought, it creates a feeling in our body again, when you put your favorite pair of pants on and you can't get the zipper up, and you have a thought, Oh, my God, I need to lose five pounds. That thought makes you feel discouraged when your son gets in a fender bender, and you think, Oh, my God, here we go again. That makes you feel frustrated. Let's do those same circumstances with different thoughts. You put your favorite pair of jeans on and you could hardly get the zipper up, and you think, well, it makes sense. I really did have a fun summer. And you kind of laugh at yourself, and you say, I am capable of losing five pounds to be able to put these jeans on, and it's going to be making me healthier in the process, and I'm going to probably feel better, and I'm going to sleep better. So let's go that is going to make you feel empowered, or it's going to make you feel some flavor of confident, empowered. Your son gets in a fender bender. And instead of thinking, Oh my God, here we go again, you can have a thought, everyone is safe. I can handle this, and that is going to make you feel calm and peace. Let me just stop right now. And you might be thinking, that sounds great, but like I can't just click over and do a positive thought, Oh, I agree. This takes practice. Everything I'm teaching you on this podcast takes practice. This is what I do with my clients. When I work with them, we practice this over and over and over again. But here is what you will find, and this is what I tell my clients most of the time, especially when you're new at this, when you put on those jeans and you go to sip them up. In the beginning, you're going to be like, Oh my God, I don't fit into these jeans. And you're going to have that thought, like, I can't believe this is happening. And then you're going to have that thought, and then you're going to have a feeling of discouragement. But then you have the opportunity to change the way you think. You have the opportunity to go, okay, and stop yourself and say, okay, Courtney, what do I want to think on purpose here? And this is a thought I think every day probably at least five times. What do I want to think on purpose? In fact, if I were you, I would suggest pausing the podcast and writing this in the Notes app on your phone, what do I want to think on purpose, especially when you are are just now learning this model and learning how to think on purpose, it's important that you are able to stop and catch yourself. I did this over and over and over for probably months when I was learning this model, and I would have a thought, feel a certain way, and that feeling would make me go, Wait a minute, what do I want to think on purpose? It takes time to get good at this, my friend, so you are going to have a thought, it's usually going to be negative. It's going to make you feel negative. And then you can stop yourself and think, What do I want to think on purpose? And oftentimes, when you have a thought that you that kind of comes up for you, that you want to think on purpose you don't fully believe it. You're like, I'd like to believe it. That's okay. You want to just say, what if I did believe that? And then you will get better and better and better. But you can't expect to all the sudden have something happen, like your kid calling you and saying, Hey, a guy got into fender bender, and you to go, oh, this is no problem. That's not what's going to happen is your immediate thought is going to be, Oh, my God, oh my god. And then they're, you're good, they're going to assure you, everyone's okay. And then you're going to be able to take a beat and say, What do I want to think on purpose? And then you're going to get really good at this. This is how I spend my days. Something happens, I have an initial reaction, and I very quickly go, Whoa, what do we want to think on purpose all the time. I woke up this morning and I thought, What am I doing today? It's a Sunday morning. And then I thought, oh, I need to record my podcast. And my instant thought is, I really don't want to do my podcast. And then I think, Whoa. That makes me feel discouraged, that makes me feel frustrated, that makes me feel tired, emotionally and physically. Okay, what do I want to think on purpose? And what do I think want to think on purpose is, I love my podcast. I already know what I'm going to be recording for the people I know. It's going to be amazing. I'm going to be really glad after I record it, because it's going to give me freedom, mental freedom, to just go about the rest of my day. And so from that place, I feel calm, I feel confident, I feel like it's no big deal, but allow yourself, especially in the beginning, to have a negative thought come up and you, I want you to catch it and redirect so you're going to have a neutral circumstance happen in your life. Yeah, you're probably going to initially have a negative thought and then a negative feeling, and then you're going to have the opportunity to go, Whoa. That feels shitty. What do I want to think and feel instead? And when you have the thought, you might not be fully on board. But this is a practice. This is a practice to How can I believe something else in this moment? And here's another little tip for you, is when you have a thought that you're trying to believe, let's not have it be too positive. So for example, this morning, when I thought, oh my god, I have to record the podcast. Oh my gosh, I'm tired. I don't really want to do that. I don't go to this is going to be amazing. I can't wait to record this podcast. That's not the thought I want to have, because there's a part of me that's going to go so what I want to say is, you're going to be so glad after you've recorded it. The thought is going to be, this is going to be a really great podcast for your people. The thought is going to be, you know, I looked over the podcast I've done in the last 10 weeks. That's one of the things I always do when I when I go to record a podcast for you is, I'll look over what I've done. What have I talked about a lot? What do they need to hear? What have my clients been struggling with? How can I help them so I really look over the past like 10 podcasts. What can I teach them that I felt like I haven't really talked about lately? It's going to be really powerful for them. So it's going to be easier for me to believe this podcast is really going to help people, then this is going to be amazing. We don't need to be poly positive, right? When my son calls me and goes, Mom, I just got an offender better. I'm not going to go. This is no problem. Yeah, of course, I don't want my kids to get in a fender bender. Of course, my insurance rates are going to go up. Of course. Now I'm going to need to come up with money to buy a new car, right? There's I'm not going to go to this is no problem. I'm going to go to my kid is safe and the person he hit is safe. When my clients step on the scale and it's the same weight that it was the week before, and they've been working so hard, they're immediately going to think, oh my god, I can't believe I haven't lost weight, yes. But then they have this moment, and in this moment, they have the ability to say, okay, that feels like shit. What do I want to think and feel instead? And they can think, you know, what? You've been working so hard. I'm so proud of you. We've got this we can think, you know, what? Are there other things that are happening besides this stupid three digit number? Are there other things that are happening that are good? Are there other things that you can be proud of? Is there other evidence in your life that you're actually getting ahead and here's why it matters, here's why circumstances are neutral until you have a thought and then a feeling. The reason that feeling matters so much is that feeling is what drives our actions, our behaviors, what we do and what we don't do. When you feel discouraged, you do not want to keep going. When you feel frustrated. You don't feel like going for a run, you don't feel like Food Prepping. You don't feel like meditating when you're pissed at your kid because you have a thought about their fender bender, you're not nice to them. So our feeling drives our actions. It drives what we do and what we don't do. Think about this for yourself. Take a moment. This would be really powerful for you, to pause this podcast and think about something just in the last 24 hours that happened. Acknowledge that it's neutral, and what was your thought about it? And then what did that thought make you feel and because you had that feeling, what did you do when we feel sad? We don't usually do something that helps our life. If we go back to these few examples I gave you, if your daughter says her family's not coming over for Thanksgiving, she texts you that, or sends you a voicemail or whatever, and you feel frustrated or sad, you probably don't show back up to her with love. You probably don't say, oh my gosh, we are going to miss you so much. Is there a chance we can celebrate another time? Can I come to you? Can I bring you? You probably don't end up acting in a way that you're proud of. Usually, we don't, and let's just think about something really little that a lot of us can think about. Let's say you wake up in the morning. This happens to me so often you wake up in the morning and maybe your spouse's job is to, like, unload the dishwasher. I'll give you one of the things my husband does is he usually unloads the dishwasher in the morning. So if my husband goes to work in the morning and he hasn't unloaded the dishwasher, and then I go to put a dirty dish in the dishwasher, and I see that he hasn't unloaded it. My initial thought is, oh, my God, why do I have to do this? I have to do everything around here. It's a very common thought for those of us late. And I think we do a lot, I think it's, you know, I get it. I get why we have this thought. But when I have that thought, it makes me feel resentful. And if I'm resentful, there are things that are going I'm going to do and not do with my day that are going to affect my life, not just his life, but my life. If I let myself go down the resentful rabbit hole, maybe I'm like, You know what, I'm not going to put any of the dishes in. I'm just going to leave all of this for him to do when he gets home. You know what? If he messages me and says, Hey, are you going to the grocery store? Can you get me this or that I'm going to not answer him for a while because I'm like, I'm just going to leave him hanging maybe when he asked me there, so that I'm just going to be kind of cold to him, maybe I'm going to go throughout the rest of my day and think about how I do everything around here, and he doesn't do as much. Have you ever done that where you like spin out, you create all this drama in your own life, drama in your relationship over something as simple as them for getting to unload the dishwasher. So in that moment, now that I know how to use this model, I'm able to predict this in advance. So now sometimes, if my go to put a dish in the dishwasher and I see that he hasn't unloaded the dishwasher. I sit there and I say, okay, Courtney, what do I want to think on purpose? And here's the reality. Well, it's not the reality, but here's what I really think on purpose. My husband is is an angel, like, he's not perfect, but I fucking love him, and he would never be like, Screw Courtney. I'm just not going to do the dishes, because she'll do it. And I'm not. I mean, you know, I'm not going to worry about this. That's not what he he's not even thinking about it. He's not even thinking about it. And if I texted him in that moment said, Hey, you forgot to unload the dishwasher, what would he say, Courtney? He would go, Oh, I'm so sorry. I totally forgot to do that. Leave it and I'll do it when I get home, he's an angel. He's can be annoying. Sometimes I always tell my friends, sometimes I want to throat punch him. Sometimes he wants to throw punch me. We are not perfect. But in that moment, I can either decide, you know, Screw him. I can't believe he's doing this, and I can be resentful, or I can say he didn't mean to do this to me, and I can take two minutes and unload the dishwasher. And the reason why that's a powerful moment is the way I think and feel in that moment is going to determine my happiness throughout my day, my happiness in my relationship. Then it's going to really affect my happiness with my husband, and it's going to be affect his happiness, because if I'm not very nice to him, he's gonna be like, what is happening? So why would I do that to me? Why would I do that to us? Now this doesn't mean that maybe sometimes we don't sit down and say, hey, I want to have a talk with you. I feel like I'm doing more around here than you are. We've had those talks. He's had talks with me about things that he wants me to change. It doesn't mean we don't set boundaries. It doesn't mean we don't have honest conversations. It just means in that moment, we take our power, and that sounds so like it sounds so dramatic, but it it's real. My power in that moment is just deciding what I want to think, because it is going to determine how I feel, and how I feel is going to determine the actions I take and don't take throughout the day. So the fourth line of this model is action. And make sure when you're understanding this model, it's the action we take and the action we don't take. And the reason why action matters is because it affects our results in our life that we are creating, and even if you just look at results that you're creating in that day. So let's keep going with this. This example with me and my husband, if I wake up and he has not unloaded the dishwasher, and I decide to keep going and believing that thought I have to do everything around here and I am resentful all day, it is going to affect my happiness that day I'm going to act in ways that I wouldn't act. Maybe I'm not going to meditate because I'm feeling resentful. Maybe I'm not going to text him and tell him I love him. Maybe he's going to say, Hey, do you want to go out to dinner? And I'm going to say, no, let's just have leftovers. It sounds dramatic, but this is what happens to an unmanaged mind. This is mindset in the result I'm creating in my life is I'm not having a good day, I'm not focused on the positive. I'm not creating a strong relationship, I'm creating a lot of drama for myself that is going to affect the results of that day. If we are experiencing a negative emotion, most of the time, we do not eat in a way that aligns us with our goals. Because in 20, 2520 Six whenever you're going to listen to this podcast, the fastest way to get out of a negative emotion, which our primitive brain always wants us to is to eat or scroll or stop moving. Take a nap when we are feeling resentful we don't go to the gym, have an amazing workout, reach out to friends, tell them we love them. We're thinking of them. Ask our husband if they want to back rub. We don't create a better life for ourself. We feel resentment. We give up on our goals in the moment, we eat to make ourselves feel better. We have a cocktail because we feel like we deserve it, and in that moment, it is creating a lot of chaos for us. So we create our own results. And so here's what I want you to see with this model. Here's the model if we wrote it down in a piece of paper, here's what it would be, circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions and results. And here's what I want you to see. This is the most important part. The circumstances in our lives are not what matter, because circumstances are out of our control. Where we have our control is our thoughts, our beliefs. And so I want you to get good at seeing circumstances as neutral and being able to choose your thoughts on purpose in this starts with a level of awareness of you. I think the easiest way to do it is recognizing the thought and feeling you're having and going, is this serving me? Here's the best way to do this. This is what I tell my clients all the time when you're when you're new to doing this, the best way to start practicing this model in real time is by identifying a negative feeling. The negative feeling you have can be like a trigger to go, Oh, I'm feeling a negative feeling. So here's what you do. You're in the middle of your day, and all of a sudden you're like, uh, you don't feel good. Like there's a negative feeling, not a physical, like I'm sick, but like a negative emotion. And you can say, Okay, what is this emotion? Am I feeling jealousy? Am I feeling sad? Am I feeling resentment? Am I feeling frustration? Whatever it is, what is the feeling? And it's important that you are able to diagnose what that feeling is. Where is the feeling in your body? I know that sounds kind of Woo, but you can say, is it in your chest? It is in your stomach? Where is that feeling? What is the feeling? And where is it? And then when you can say, I'm Feeling jealousy. Oh, okay, why am I feeling jealousy? And oftentimes, when you're new to this work, you're going to go to the circumstance. I'm Feeling jealousy because you're going to list us, you're going to say because of this circumstance. But that's not why you're feeling jealousy, because you're having a thought about a circumstance. Here's a really cool story that happened years ago to me, and it just kind of highlights this. So I remember my neighbor and my good friend across the street. Her daughter got into some amazing program. She got into college, and then she got into some amazing International Program. Her daughter's a stud. She got into some amazing an international program where she was not only able to go to a big time university, but she got to do this international program where she was studying in China, and then she was studying in Milan, it just and she's telling this 18 year old girl is telling me, I'm gonna get to go to Milan. I'm gonna go here, I'm gonna go here, I'm going here. And I was feeling excited for her. There's multiple feelings happening. But then as I hugged her, I told her, so excited about her. I started walking home across the street, and all of a sudden I had a negative emotion. And as woo, woo as this sounds, right? As I got to my side of the street, I stopped, and I'm like, what is happening, Courtney? And I'm like, What is this feeling? And I'm like, oh, it's jealousy. And I'm like, what is happening? I am jealous of an 18 year old, and I'm so good at this work now that I'm like, Oh, this is fascinating. I find any negative emotion now fascinating, fascinating. Why am I feeling jealousy? Someone might say, well, you're feeling jealousy because this 18 year old is getting it to do all this stuff. No, no, I'm Feeling jealousy because I'm having a thought. And the thought was, I wish I could do these things that she's doing, this is not available to me. You can't do this in your life. As a 46 year old, however old I was at the time, and I was like, Oh, that's so interesting. And Jealousy is a really, actually, I think a cool emotion. When I think of jealousy, I like to think of it's something that we want. Oftentimes we feel jealousy, and then we like, turn our heads away from it, like we don't want to look at it. We're like, you know, it's almost like, shame on that person we don't want to even see. But for me, jealousy is like, ooh, clearly, there's something here I want. And so I said to myself, Oh my gosh, Courtney, what do I want to think on purpose about this? Yeah, and my thought on purpose, instead of, this isn't available to you. You can't do this. It's, oh, clearly, I really want to travel internationally. Clearly I want to study abroad. And you know what I'm going to do that. Maybe I can't do that right now because I still had kids at home. But I thought, oh, good to know that this is something you really want. It's something to put on your vision board. It's something that because you want it, Courtney, you know, you can create it, and it's something that's available to you. So I took that jealousy, identified the thoughts that was creating it, and then I decided to think a new thought, Oh, cool. This is something you want. You're going to create this for yourself, and this is something that's available to you. It turns out that travel, studying abroad is not just available to the 19 year olds, 18 year olds, and that is going to make me take different actions. It's going to make me create different opportunities for travel in my life. So let me go over some of the thoughts that I think are pretty common for us, ladies and I want you to be able to recognize if these are thoughts that you have, because a lot of times our thoughts come to us on repeat, like, here's a bunch. It's always something that's a thought I hear from people on repeat, and you'll find that if that's something that you say to yourself, you probably say it a lot. This shouldn't be happening. I don't know what to do. I can never catch a break. I'm not good at this. It's all on me. That's a big one. As we come into the holiday season, I think a lot of women have the thought it's all on me. He doesn't respect me. They don't respect me. Now, these thoughts come so quick we feel like they're facts. That's a big problem with a lot of people, is they think that just because they have a thought presented from their brain, that it's a fact, but it's not. It's an option. We get to choose our thoughts. A lot of our thoughts come on autopilot, and these thoughts that create feelings, that create the actions we're taking and not taking, which create the results in our lives, they are actual neural pathways in our brain. So by doing this model and understanding this model and learning this model, you get to actually change the neural pathways in your brain. That's why this is so important. That's why this podcast is called the coaching tool that will change your life, just like all of the physical habits we do during our day, the way we brush our teeth, the way we floss our teeth, which shoe we put on. First all, of those things that are very habitual. Our thoughts are habitual, and they are neural pathways in our brain. So there is a show on TV, and I don't think there's a new season yet. I'm waiting for a new season. It's really great. It's called shrinking. First of all, Harrison Ford is in it. I love Harrison Ford. And there's a bunch of other actors that are in it that I don't know their names, but I recognize them for from other movies and other shows. So it's a show called shrinking. And there's this one character in the show, and he's very positive, and he always says, Life loves me. He's this gay character, life loves me. And I remember thinking, Oh, my God, I love that thought. So this thought, This guy says this all the time. Life loves me. He says it so much that you can tell with this character that it is a belief. The thing is, is when we have these thoughts over and over and over and over again, they really become beliefs. If you're always thinking it's always something, if you say that over and over and over, you just start believing that it's true. When your thoughts happen on automatic and you believe them so hard, they become beliefs in this show, this character is always like, left loves me. And I remember pausing it when my husband and I were watching, and I'm like, Oh, my God, I'm gonna start saying that to myself. And my husband laughed at me, and I go, No, I love thinking the way I think about it. I don't think life loves me, but the one thought I have been really trying to think on purpose for a long time is this is happening for me. And I actually think that when things go wrong, this is happening for me. Oh, that launch didn't work. Well, this is happening for me. Oh, one of my kids did this, or that this is happening for me. How might that be true? Is there a lesson here I'm supposed to be learning? Is there a lesson my kid is supposed to be learning? Oftentimes, we want everything to go so well for our children. We don't want any failure. We don't want them to be sad. We don't want any heartbreak. We don't want their their girlfriend or boyfriend to break up with them, right? We don't want there to be any sadness. But when there is sadness, I try to say to myself, this is for them. This is for me. Our brains are by. Biased toward the negative. There is a thing called negativity bias. Our brains were designed for survival. They were designed for us to always be scanning for potential danger. So when something happens, our brain is automatically going to go to the negative. But you now have listened to this podcast, and you get to take the steps to actually decide you want to think positive on purpose. So I want to break this down for you one more time so you really, really understand. And if you really want to get good at this model, I hope you will join me, and you will either reach out for a consultation, and you and I can talk about working together privately, or you will join one of my groups. In fact, when this podcast comes out, there's one week left with for my ready for change program enrollment is going to close on the 16th or 17th, I can't remember, but there's a link on my website, modern body, modern life, to join that program. And I am going to teach you this model, and we are going to work on it and practice it together. But I want to dive into a few examples, just for a recap. Okay, so I've got two examples here for you. Let's think about the circumstance of past holiday seasons. As we come into the holiday I know a lot of women start having thoughts and a thought I hear a lot of times, and I have had myself, I promise you, is it's all on me. It's all on me as a thought. When we have that thought, for me, the emotion that comes up is overwhelmed with like a side helping of resentment. Okay, so the the circumstances past holiday seasons neutral, or maybe we can even say the circumstance is this holiday season, we have a thought, it's all on me. Or maybe I'm not going to have time to put myself first, and then we feel overwhelmed with a side helping of resentment. And the reason why that is so important is it's going to affect our action. It's going to affect what we do and don't do. And what happens is we're going to do too much, we're going to overwork, we're going to be pissy with everyone. We're going to constantly be thinking, Why me? Thoughts? Oftentimes, we then don't end up asking for help. We don't delegate. Because in the end, we really, actually think we're the best at everyone. For all these things we don't enjoy ourselves. We question everything. We dream of when the holidays will be over. Did you ever do that? I did that. I remember so many holiday seasons telling my husband I love Christmas, but I just can't wait for it to be over. So sad. And then what do we do? Guys? We eat and drink to make ourselves feel better, and we don't make time for ourselves and quit. That's all the action we are taking and not taking. And then the result is we create a holiday where it's all on us, and we create misery for ourselves. We do so much more than we actually have to do. What is a different way of thinking about this? I remember one year I had bought my holiday Christmas cards. They got delivered. I bought them. They got delivered, and I was sitting there on the couch next to my husband, the kids had gone to bed. It was like nine o'clock at night. I was working so much in my jewelry business, and I remember looking at him, and I, can you help me address these, these envelopes? And he looked at me, and he goes, I really don't want to do that, not from a mean or anything. He just, I really don't want to do that. And I said, Neither do I. And he goes, then, why are we doing it? And I literally decided to change my thinking. My thinking was I have to send out these Christmas cards? And I was feeling resentful to him that I was doing it by myself, to all the people, like, Why was I having to do these Christmas cards, all of it? And I literally decided to think something differently. I don't have to send Christmas cards if I don't want to. I kept five of them. I wanted to send them to our grandparents, who probably weren't on Facebook at the time, and I thought, I'm just gonna post our beautiful picture on Facebook. Love to all the people. And I recycled all of the Christmas cards. And that was the last time I bought Christmas cards. And I just decided, instead of being resentful to my husband and resentful the society determined I sent out Christmas cards. I just decided to go, you know what? I'm not going to do Christmas cards anymore. This is too much, and I don't want to do it. And I felt relief, and I started enjoying the holidays so much more. I started rethinking about all of it, instead of it's on me, and feeling overwhelmed, the feeling like I had to do all this, I started going, do I really want to do this. Beautiful. Changed my results. I so much more enjoy the holidays now, since I don't feel like I have to do all the things. So if you changed your thoughts around the holidays, how would you feel? What would you do different? And how would your results change? I think one of the biggest reasons why so many people wait until the new years to really start putting themselves first is because they tell themselves they don't have time. Is that true? No, it's not true. It's not a fact. It's a thought that you get to choose. Is it serving you? You can choose another thought. Okay, the last example I'm going to give you. Is the circumstance of when you step on the scale and let's say it's not moving, let's say it's the same as last week or last yesterday, whatever it is, and you've been working really hard to get healthy and put yourself first. What if you actually took a moment to say, Okay, I'm feeling frustrated. The reason I'm frustrated is not because of that number. The reason I'm frustrated is because I'm telling myself this isn't working. This isn't fair. I am doing everything, and it's not working. But what if you actually thought differently? What if the scale is neutral until you have a thought about it, and what if your thought is this is just data. What if your thought is, the scale really doesn't matter that much. What if your thought is, you know what? The number isn't moving. But I actually am really proud of myself, you know? What if your thought is, the scale isn't moving, but I actually feel better in my clothes. You get to decide what the number means. And the reason why it's important is because when you decide what the number means, it is going to affect how you feel and it's going to affect what you do for the rest of that day. Very rarely does someone feel discouraged and actually do better that day. Actually go from discouraged to putting their priorities first, patting themselves on the back like they they don't. Nothing good happens from feeling discouraged. I challenge you with starting to look at your life and things that happen as neutral. And what do you want to think on purpose? What thoughts do you want to start thinking on purpose? And can you get good at believing them? Will you be willing to practice them and see how this affects your day to day life? Because the way you feel on a day to day basis affects how you feel on a weekly basis, it affects monthly and yearly, the way we think, creates the results in our lives. We have so much more power than we have claimed in the past. This might be the longest podcast I've ever recorded, but I really think that this is powerful, and I hope you listen again, because I want you to feel like you are in control of the way you feel and the results you're creating in your life. I adore you. Have a great Tuesday for information on how we can work together. Head to modern body, modern life.com. To schedule a consultation with me. I'm currently coaching women privately, and I offer group coaching programs. I.