You Can Change Your Life
With Life Coaching – Part II
(Photo by Etty Fidele on Unsplash)
In this blog post, I’ll explain exactly what I did that ended 30 years of struggle, pain, and alcohol and drug addiction so you can apply the same incredibly effective technique to your life and change.
You don’t need to be addicted to drugs or alcohol to benefit from this.
You can use what I will describe to help you make any change you want.
It works for everything.
You can use it to improve your relationship with your spouse or help you get up earlier in the morning.
You can use it to help you stop overeating or stay on a diet and exercise program.
You can use this to change how you feel about orange juice or the letter “T.”
I know the couple are ridiculous examples, but I wanted to get my point across.
It doesn’t matter what you want to change.
Using this skill will help you change anything and everything.
It doesn’t matter if you want to change how you feel, your actions, or the results you create.
Applying what you learn here today to every circumstance you encounter and every thought you have will give you a new, powerful perspective that puts you in control of everything you experience for the rest of your life.
Let’s get started with the lesson.
The key to every technique and strategy I give you is centered on one main concept:
The thoughts you choose determine your results.
That’s it.
The idea is simple.
And incredibly powerful.
Having a basic understanding of this core principle and applying it to your life will give you more control over all of your experiences.
Let’s take this concept, expand on it, and I’ll show you how I use it.
I want you to see how applying the fundamental principles of life coaching that I learned in the first session I had with my coach changed my life forever because you can do this too.
So again, the main concept is the thoughts you choose determine your results.
This concept is based on the following Equation:
- You experience a life event or a circumstance.
- You choose a thought about it.
- That thought produces a feeling.
- The way you feel drives the actions you take.
- And the actions you take determine the results you get.
I’ll come back to this Equation again and again.
For now, do your best to remember how each component of the Equation is related.
What my coach helped me do was to separate the first two components.
She helped me separate the circumstance from my thoughts about it, and my problem vanished.
Wait…what?
Yes.
That’s all it took for me to overcome 30 years of pain, suffering, and drug and alcohol abuse.
(Photo by Nigel Tadyanehondo on Unsplash)
Let me explain.
My coach helped me understand and overcome the most common mistake we all make.
Everyone confuses their thoughts about something as a factual circumstance we can’t change.
I was making this mistake too.
When you believe your thought is a fact you can’t change, you incorrectly believe you don’t have control over…
- How you feel.
- How you act.
- Or the results you’re getting.
You give away all of your power and control.
The problem with believing your thoughts are facts is you stop looking at anything that contradicts what you’re thinking because you incorrectly believe there is no other way to think.
This makes choosing a new thought unlikely.
And you stay stuck where you are.
I did this.
And as a result, I felt like a helpless victim.
Let’s get into the specifics of what thoughts I was confusing as circumstances so you can get a better idea of what I was doing and learn from it.
I will start by describing my story the way I told it to myself and others before I knew anything about the Equation and Life Coaching, and then I’ll explain how I think about things now.
I was looking for help because of the anger and hatred I felt towards my dad for the moves we made when I was younger.
My dad worked in sales in management for a large company, and he was very good at what he did.
He earned a promotion every four years, and these promotions required us to move to a different city and state where the new position he earned was available for him to fill.
If we talked about my childhood before I learned about life coaching and the Equation, I would tell you we moved a lot when I was growing up.
I would tell you how awful it was to be the new kid in school and endure all the judgment and loneliness that comes with it.
(Photo by Jeswin Thomas on Unsplash)
I would explain how I eventually got comfortable, made friends, and began to fit in, only to lose it all and have my life turned upside again and again.
I would go on and on about how starting over got harder and harder and how I turned to drugs and alcohol as a way to cope.
I had lots of stories I would tell you so you’d understand how I was a victim of my circumstances.
I’d want you to understand why I was an underachieving drug addict and alcoholic.
And most of all, I’d want you to know that none of it was my fault.
At some point, I might even explain to you my belief that my dad didn’t love me or anyone in my family.
I believed his selfishness was to blame for all of the trouble I had growing up and as an adult too.
My belief was I was broken.
None of it was my fault.
All the moves we did when I was a kid are how it started, and there was nothing I could do about it then or now.
This is the story I brought to my first coaching sessions.
My coach listened to what I had to say, and then she taught me the basics of the Equation.
Together we separated the facts from the thoughts in my story, and we talked about what I had learned.
It became clear that the main fact was very plain and simple, and everything after that was a product of the thoughts I chose about it.
When you strip my story down to just the plain factual circumstance, it’s this:
- I moved from A-B when I was 3.
- I moved from B-C when I was 7.
- I moved from C-D when I was 11.
- I moved from D-E when I was 15.
- And I moved from E-F when I was 19.
Everything after that was a thought I chose to think.
Everything after that was my creation.
Everything after that was my interpretation and opinion of the circumstance.
My thought that moving sucks isn’t a fact.
It’s a thought I chose about moving.
Although I couldn’t see it before, some people think differently about moving than I did.
Because it’s possible to have different opinions about moving, my belief that moving sucks wasn’t a fact.
It was a thought I chose, and this choice caused me to feel like a helpless victim.
My thought that being the new kid in school sucks isn’t a fact.
It’s a thought I chose about being a new kid.
Although I couldn’t see it before, some people think differently about being the new kid than I did.
Because it’s possible to have different opinions about being the new kid, my belief being the new kid sucks wasn’t a fact.
It was a thought I chose, and this choice caused me to feel lonely and awful.
My thought that my dad doesn’t love me isn’t a fact.
It’s a thought I chose about my dad.
My thought that I was a victim isn’t a fact.
It’s a thought I chose.
My thought that I was broken, a drug addict, and could never live a “normal” life isn’t a fact either.
These are all thoughts I was choosing.
I could point to evidence that supported every one of my thoughts, and I could argue how they were true.
Someone else could have the complete opposite thought and opinion of the exact same circumstances I experienced in my story.
And they could find just as much evidence to support their claims.
Who’s right and who’s wrong?
And does that even matter?
(Photo by Andrea De Santis on Unsplash)
What matters is the results that are created by the thoughts you choose.
My interpretation of events only guaranteed me one thing.
I would continue to produce the same results I had been getting, which was a life I didn’t want to be living.
I didn’t know this before.
So I kept telling myself and others an ever-growing version of my story.
After repeating this story over and over again, I grew to believe the way I saw things wasn’t just my opinion or interpretation of events.
My story and my thoughts about it weren’t just thoughts to me.
They were absolutely the truth and the only way to see things.
As a result, I never seriously considered any other way of thinking about what I believed.
I would immediately dismiss any thought offered to me that contradicted my beliefs.
And because of the thoughts I was choosing, I kept creating more results that I used as more evidence to support my beliefs.
This story I believed so much in was keeping me trapped in a life I didn’t want to live.
Every day I piled on more proof that my story was right.
Then one day, a Life Coach pointed out the difference between a thought and a fact.
I learned I was in control, and I finally understood I could choose my thoughts about every circumstance I experienced.
And because I do, I control my feelings, actions, results, and the life I am living.
Once I accurately distinguished between the factual Circumstances and the thoughts in my story, and I understood that the thoughts I had been choosing were creating the life I was living, I finally opened up to the possibility of thinking new thoughts that would produce a different result.
For the first time in my life, I realized I had created the mess I was living.
It wasn’t my dad’s responsibility or anybody else’s.
It was mine.
I’m not a victim of anything other than the thoughts I choose.
So I decided it was time to change and create a life I wanted to live.
And in that exact moment, I realized I was free.
(Photo by Jason Hogan on Unsplash)
I realized I was free to choose any thought I wanted, feel any way I desired, and take action to produce the results I wanted the most.
I finally understood I could choose my thoughts, create my results, and control my life.
So I did.
I don’t know what thoughts you’re choosing to think.
And I don’t know if you’re confusing them as circumstances or facts you don’t have control over and can’t change.
What I do know is the life you’re living is a product of the thoughts you’re choosing.
If you’re not happy with how you feel about something, I know you’re doing this to yourself.
There isn’t a feeling you experience, action you take, or result you get that isn’t caused by a thought you’re choosing.
You control every thought you choose, every emotion you feel, every action you take, and every result you create.
You aren’t a victim of anything.
No circumstance or fact – whether it’s something somebody says or does or some event that happens – no circumstance gets to determine your thoughts about it.
You do.
Maybe you don’t know exactly what thoughts you’re choosing that create the feelings, actions, or results you don’t like and want to change.
Sometimes they’re hidden in your subconscious.
But you can uncover them and determine what they are.
Other times your thoughts are plain to see.
Regardless, there is a way to change.
There is a way out.
(Photo by Jamie Templeton on Unsplash)
Separating the Circumstances from your thoughts about them is one of the many steps you can take to free yourself.
Take the time to analyze your thinking and do your best to separate Fact from Thought.
And then choose new thoughts that produce what you want.
You have the same choice to make as I did.
As you begin to build your awareness, you’ll discover that there are thoughts you’re choosing that are causing you discomfort and sometimes even pain.
Once you’re able to distinguish them as a thought and not a fact, you’ll begin to open up to the idea that you’re choosing these thoughts that are hurting you or creating a result you don’t like, and you don’t have to.
Understanding what these thoughts are, why you’re choosing them, and discovering thoughts that will lead to the result you want instead is the goal.
This is what awareness is, and this is where your control over your life begins.
Never forget your power and control comes from the thoughts you choose to think.
You can use deliberately thinking to create any result you want and take control of your life.
I’m here to help.