Live Oaks #1
9×12
Acrylic on panel
©2023 Lucinda Howe

Over the years that I’ve been studying self development, working in the corporate world, and making art, I’ve observed that there are some things we can’t control. We can’t control other people; we can’t control the past. We can’t control external forces out there in the world.

The things that we can control are our thoughts, our feelings, our actions, and our results. This is good news because we have the option to choose thoughts that serve us and drop ones that don’t.

If we get confused about which things we can control and which things we can’t, we make ourselves feel victimized and out of control. This is a natural human thought process, but we stay stuck and unable to move forward.

At The Life Coach school, we are using a coaching model that clarifies our thinking and identifies the thoughts and feelings that are driving our actions. The math and logic side of my brain loves a structured model. I’m finding that the model is useful in all kinds of circumstances and aligns with my beliefs from other areas of my life. As an artist, I can use any colors I want in my art. In doing a business plan, I can choose my goals and assumptions. In relationships, I can choose how to feel about people.

The model is used to separate everything in our brains into five categories:

• Circumstance – the facts without opinions or judgement
• Thought – my thought about the circumstance (choose only one thought)
• Feeling (or emotion) – one word that describes the feeling caused by the Thought
• Actions – list all the things you do or don’t do when you think that Thought
• Results – what you create for yourself when you think that Thought

The model is deceptively simple, and very powerful. We can use it to raise awareness of how our thoughts (not circumstances) cause our results. Having awareness is the first step to change, but it takes a while to recognize and decide to change old thought patterns. I’ll talk more about this in the future.

If you would like to understand more about how your thoughts create your results, contact me by email to set up a time for a free consultation.