This coaching tool will change your life

Ever heard the phrase “change your thoughts, change your life”?

It’s an adage that’s at the core of coaching. Regardless of whether it’s focused on career, health, money, relationships, or something else, coaching helps people change their life by changing the way they think about their life.

There’s one tool that underlies all the different forms of mindset shifting used by coaches. It’s called thought work and it stems from a framework called the categories of human experience.

Here’s how it goes:

To sum it up: If you want to change your life, stop fighting reality and start thinking about reality in new ways.

When you consciously decide how to think about your circumstances—to have thoughts that support you instead of working against you—you take control of our life.

So yeah, change your thoughts, change your life. Pretty simple, right? It is—and that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

What most of us do

Most of us spend the majority of our time unconsciously reacting to the circumstances of our lives.

This creates a cascade of protective thoughts that keep us “safe” in our comfort zones, preventing us from growing, trying new things, and taking risks. Overtime, these thoughts become ingrained beliefs and we accept them as reality.

Then, in response to those limiting beliefs, we generate negative emotions—we feel angry, scared, depressed, anxious, irritable, frustrated, embarrassed, nervous, impatient, confused, take your pick.

Feeling like that causes us to act in ways that work in direct opposition to the outcomes we want.

Unconscious thinking is incredibly common—and incredibly destructive. It’s the very thing that keeps us stuck, that makes us feel exhausted and like we’re constantly pushing a boulder up hill instead of living with vibrancy and ease.

The good news is, you can coach yourself out of this pattern using the categories of human experience.

How to put this tool into action

Step 1: Notice

Applying the human-experience framework starts with awareness. Before you can change your thoughts, you have to notice your thoughts.

So many of the thoughts we carry around with us are running on autopilot.

We’re either totally unaware of how often these unconscious scripts are playing in our minds, or we’re aware but so used to them that we don’t stop and question whether they’re actually true.

Meditate, journal, lay in bed for an extra couple minutes, whatever works. But put yourself in a place where you can get quiet enough to listen to what your mind is telling you.

Step 2: Write

Once you’ve identified some thoughts that you suspect might be getting in your way, write them down. There’s a few reasons for this:

• It helps clarify what you really think. Writing has a way of forcing you to slow down and articulate things that you might otherwise ignore or distract yourself from.

• It helps you get them out of your brain. Sometimes just the act of writing down negative thoughts helps you detach from them. Oh look, there’s that thought on a piece of paper which means it’s something outside of me, not me.

• It helps you remember the thoughts so that you can later challenge them if they remain sticky.

Step 3: Question

Okay, now you have some thoughts you think could be holding you back from achieving the outcomes you want. Time to see if they stand up to scrutiny.

Ask yourself about each thought, Is this true?

Your initial impulse might be something along the lines of, Of course it’s true, that’s why I think it!

Challenge yourself to consider whether the thought you’re having is absolutely, objectively true.

Don’t just use your mind to question your thoughts. Use your body.

When you ask yourself whether the thought is true, notice how your body reacts. Do you tense up? Hunch your shoulders? Feel a pit in your stomach or throat? That’s probably your body telling you something isn’t right.

Discovering—or even suspecting—that a thought may be untrue is the first step toward dismantling the hold it has on you.

If a thought you’re having is untrue, that means there’s an opportunity to replace it with a different thought that’s more supportive of the outcomes you desire.

Resources for continuing with thought work

Thought work is an ongoing process. The thoughts that cause you suffering probably won’t go away easily—after all, the reason they showed up in the first place was to protect you.

However, persistence pays off. As you get more practiced at noticing and questioning your thoughts, you’ll get better at proactively deciding to think in ways that better serve you. Keep at it.

To help, I created a free worksheet so you can track how your thoughts are affecting your outcomes. You can print it out and hand write (recommended) or type directly in the PDF.

Working with a coach can be helpful for identifying and dismantling thoughts that are getting in your way. If you want to have a conversation, let me know.