Ep. 06 Mindful Inquiry Model
I’m sure you’ve heard this idea that we craft our own stories. That we believe the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and about the world. That these stories construct our reality. I take that to mean that we decipher the meaning in our lives. What happens in our lives is neutral and what we make that mean about the world and about ourselves is on us. It is both conscious and unconscious.
It’s based on things we learned about ourselves and the world as children and then every day since. But how can we start creating stories about life and about ourselves that serve us? That help us achieve our goals? That bring us into alignment with our authentic selves?
In this episode I want to tell you about a coaching tool that has become a foundation to my coaching practice and fundamental to how I coach myself. It offers a practical approach to creating your story.
I was a coaching student for over 10 years and the basis of that was training my myself to understand that I wasn’t my thoughts, to be curious about them and to see that they weren’t always serving me. I didn’t have to listen to the thoughts my brain was serving up.
It’s important to understand that on a conceptual level. And you can put it in practice by working directly with a coach, and that’s very effective and helps you unearth your blind spots.
But you can’t be communicating with your coach 24/7. You need to develop this skill on your own as well. And you need to have a way to move beyond understanding it conceptually for it to have any real impact on your life.
So in today’s episode I’m going to provide a really practical tool called the Mindful Inquiry Model that will allow you to literally coach yourself in the moment and over time, change your life.
So first I’ll explain what the model is and then I’ll give you an example of how you can use it.
It goes like this…Circumstances in your life lead to your Thoughts which lead to your Feelings which lead to you taking an Action which have a Result for you.
All circumstances are neutral. Circumstances are the facts without anyone’s opinion. So if you were to ask a group of people what the circumstance is, there won’t be any disagreement.
For example, Let’s say you get on the scale and it says your weight is 180lbs. That is the circumstance. It is the gravitational force on the earth at this moment in time. The number 180 is entirely neutral.
Your thought about the number 180 may not be neutral. Depending on where you are in your journey, it could be positive or negative to you. But it’s your thought about the number on the scale, not the number that determines how you feel.
So if you were expecting 160 and then saw 180 and are wanting your body to be at 130, you’re thoughts are that this is terrible. Which might cause you to feel discouraged, hopeless, embarrassed, ashamed and a host of negative emotions.
These negative feelings then influence how you act. Your action. This can look like staying in on the couch instead of going out for a run or for those of us who soothe ourselves with food, it can mean overeating. This is the vicious cycle right?
Your action then leads to a result. In this case the result is no weight loss or even weight gain. This is why when we’re at 180 and want to be at 130, we can easily end up at 200.
I urge you to practice doing this for yourself because it is the key to understanding your own thoughts. The thoughts that are leading to the result you have now. This is true for your weight and it’s true for any result you have in your life.
So here is the writing exercise. On a sheet of paper write these letters down on the left hand side: CTFAR for:
Circumstances
Thoughts
Feelings
Action
Result
Then start filling it in. You may be surprised what comes up, or you may just find it helpful to organize your thoughts and feelings in this way. Doing this brings clarity and gets us out of confusion and overwhelm.
Additionally, what’s so useful about knowing your brain works this way is that now you can reverse engineer it.
So how we do this is we write the Result we want in the R line. So let’s say it’s 130lbs. That’s the result we want. We then list all of the actions that will produce that result. Every person is going to have their own unique winning formula, but most likely it will be things like not overeating, eating enough protein and vegetables, working out 3-4 days a week, drinking more water. You get the idea. Put it all in there.
Then we think about how we will need to feel to summon up enough activation energy to do those things. Most likely we need to feel motivated, inspired, confident, energetic, determined. All those good feels.
I know what you’re thinking, that you can’t possibly feel inspired and motivated all the time. That’s why you haven’t been able to stick with it right?
You need to start practicing the thoughts that create those feelings more regularly. So write down all of the thoughts that would generate motivation, confidence, energy, and determination.
These may be:
“I know my goal weight is achievable for me”
“I’ll feel so much better after my workout”
“This is an expression of love for myself”
“I’m building trust with myself”
“I can do whatever I put my mind to do”
“I’m unstoppable”
“I’m making more and more progress every day”
At first this won’t be easy. It takes some practice. And there may be times when you just can’t believe the thoughts. In that case, rein them in a little so that your brain can believe them.
For example, “I know my goal weight is achievable for me” can also be “I know it’s possible for someone who’s my current weight to reach my goal weight”
You’ll likely find you have to do a lot of this thought work in the beginning and you'll get some momentum with your weight loss and won’t need to rely on it as much. And then you’ll go back to it again during tougher times. Or times when you just feel like you’re slipping into confusion and overwhelm.
If you are in a funk, it’s a perfect time to use it. A funk usually means you’ve been thinking some negative thoughts consistently and so you’re feelings are also negative. You can use this mindful inquiry model to get clear on the thoughts, and come up with replacement thoughts.
Now you may be thinking, you can’t just change your thoughts and be happy. I get that. I agree.
Sometimes I’ve done this exercise and it turned my whole day around. Sometimes it didn’t.
I’m not suggesting you can go from a bad mood to ‘everything’s wonderful’ but I am suggesting you can get clear on what’s happening inside so that you can nurture yourself instead of playing that old, tired negative loop unconsciously or turning to food out of habit.
We can start to try on new thoughts rather than being oblivious to why we’re not getting the result we want - not living the life we want.
You can change your thoughts over time. The thoughts you constantly think which become your thought patterns. It’s a process. Your thoughts create feelings that turn into a mood which over time turns into a temperament which over time turns into your personality.
It matters what you think. Neutral circumstances - thoughts - feelings - action - results. This is how we start thinking deliberately and start crafting the story of our lives.
Good luck.
I’ll talk to you next week.