We slow down and we take a look at our thinking. We become the Watchers of our thoughts. And if you were not in a fight or flight state, if you’re not upset or sad or angry, if you really can be calm and you’re willing to take out a piece of paper and look at your thinking, you can see how your thinking is creating the results that you see in your life right now. So we use the model here at made for greatness. And this is something we learned at the life coach school, and the model has five parts. The circumstance line, the thought line, the feeling line, the action line, and the result line. So the circumstance is just the facts of the situation. The thought is your thought about that situation. Then you say what I’m thinking this thought, what am I feeling? And we put one word in that line.

And then we say what I’m feeling that and having this thought, what are my actions or inactions? Then you ask yourself, when you look at those actions or inactions, what is the result of this? And it will be related to your thought. So I wanted to give you some concrete examples today, and then some questions that you can ask yourself to do this work at home. So the first one I want to talk about is your adult children saying they won’t be coming home for Christmas. And so we’re going to be doing a ton of holiday stuff in masters in November. And specifically, we’ll be having some classes around dealing with your adult children. Cause there’s so much drama that comes out of that. And so the circumstance line is the adult children say they won’t be coming home for Christmas. Maybe your son and his wife are going to go to her parents’ house this year. And maybe it is every other year. And this has been decided, but they still say, Hey, this is the situation. Maybe it’s a COVID thing. So the neutral circumstance, it’s provable in a court of law. There’s no opinions. Here are adult children who say they won’t be coming home for Christmas. And your thought is they don’t want to come to see me.

You didn’t have any thought about that circumstance. But a common thought is they don’t want to come to see me. And when you think that thought you have this sinking feeling of rejection, oh, they don’t want to come to see me just terrible in your body. And when you feel rejected, here’s some things you might do. You might complain to your husband, to your friends. You might sit and think of all the things that you did for them, how grateful they are or what a waste of time giving up 20 plus years of your life. Serving these kids were, you’ll be sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. And then you will act hurt when they call you, right? You will be a little pouty and they will know. They will probably know why they may or may not, but either way, your result is going to be that they probably won’t want to come to see you because people don’t want to go see other people who are very bummed out and sad. Now, I don’t have to have any judgment about this, about your reaction or their reaction. This is just a model. A model is just to bring awareness to us. Circumstances. Adult children say they won’t be coming for Christmas. Do you think they don’t want to come to see me? You feel rejected. You complain and sulk. Think of all the things feel sorry for yourself. Act hurt when they call you and your result is they don’t want to come to see.

So this is just a great example of how your thinking creates your results, your thought they don’t want to come to see me is the only reason that’s not true. We don’t know if it’s the only reason, but it’s a contributing factor to why they don’t want to come to see you. And this in particular is a cycle that you just get trapped in. This is true for those of you that are melancholic. And thank you, have a negative attitude. People don’t like me because I have a negative attitude, the same thing. You’re going to feel rejected. You’re going to stew on it. You’re going to be kind of sulky. And then people won’t want to spend time with you.

All right. We also call this a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the model shows you that the circumstance is never the problem. That’s what we normally think. The problem is. We’re like, Ugh, kids won’t be coming home for Christmas. That’s a problem. We’re like, actually it isn’t a problem, right? Maybe your kids aren’t coming home for Christmas because they just had a new baby or you’re so happy for them that they married someone who’s so great that they want to spend Christmas with their family. There are so many different thoughts that we could have about this situation that makes you feel loved or warm or proud. Right? Think of how you’re proud of your adult children.

And that line of thinking would make you feel either excited, proud, happy, and then you would just go one, enjoy your own life by doing things you like, or it might prompt you to do something nice for them. Tell them how much you love them, whatever it is. And that might create the result of them wanting to spend time with you, or maybe your thought is I’m so proud of them. And you think of all the things that you’re proud about, and that will create the result of you being even more proud of them. That’s how your thinking creates your results. So the next one I want to talk about is scrolling on your phone. So the neutral circumstances, you got a notification and then you scrolled on your phone for 30 minutes. It’s not a problem. It’s not good. It’s not bad. That circumstance just sits there until you have thought about it.

But if you have a story in your mind about you struggling with your phone, you might have a thought, I can’t stop looking at my phone and you feel defeated like, cause kind of unspoken. There is I want to stop, but I can’t stop. You feel defeated. And when you feel defeated, when we feel like we’re losing and we can’t change it, we get grumpy. We get snappy. We don’t pray. We don’t problem-solve. We’re not connecting with the Lord or, or the people around us. And actually when we feel defeated, when we feel like we’ve already lost, we just do more of the thing. So you’re going to look at your phone to numb yourself out instead of feeling defeated.

And then your result is going to be that you don’t stop looking at your phone because plenty of us look at our phones. Notice that 30 minutes have gone by and we don’t make it mean anything. It’s not a problem. We don’t have a judgment about ourselves. We don’t think we’re addicted. We’re not worried about the kids watching us. And then some of us really struggle with the phone thing. And we think I shouldn’t have done that. I’m giving a bad impression to the kids. Can’t stop looking at my phone, but that though I can’t stop looking at my phone is keeping you trapped in this model where you’re spinning out and you continue to look at your phone.

I want you to see that I’m speaking very slowly today because I want you guys to know your thinking creates the results in your life. I can never say it enough times. So the next example I wanted to give you is your husband watches the kids. So you can do the planning so often and masters, we’re doing mindset coaching, but we’re also giving some practical suggestions. So sometimes women will say like, I’m so overwhelmed that I don’t have time to meal plan or to plan out our homeschooling schedule or to plan the holiday schedule, whatever it is. And I’ll say, well, have you asked your husband if he could watch the kids so that you could plan? And most of the time they say, no, I hadn’t thought of that. And you know, a lot of your husbands would be pretty willing to do that.

If you said, you know, I want one hour or two hours or three hours, depending on the scale of the thing that you’re planning, can you watch the kids so I can sit down and plan this thing because that would give me a lot more peace later on. Cause I would just know I would have this plan. So let’s say your husband says yes. And the circumstances husband watches the kids. So you can do planning for yourself. Just insert whatever kind of planning that is. But your thought is, we’ll see how long this lasts, right? Maybe you have a husband that doesn’t normally watch the kids. Maybe he was like, oh fine. So he’s watching the kids, but you have this thought, we’ll see how long this lasts.

And do you feel distrust? And then while you’re sitting there planning, you don’t feel calm. You don’t feel settled. You’re of checking on him, kind of peeking over. You’re thinking about him. I wonder what he’s doing. What he’s feeding the kids. I don’t know if this is going to work, right? You’re not really focused on your work. So maybe you, you do an okay job of planning, not a great job of planning. And then when you get done, you’re a little cold with him. Maybe you don’t even say, thank you. You’re just like, all right, what are we having for dinner? And you’re already off to the next thing. You don’t give him credit later when you are successful with your meals or your homeschooling or whatever you were planning, you don’t say, Hey, you know what? Today went really well because you gave me that time to plan. Thank you. Now we can’t know what your husband is thinking, but it’s pretty likely that if you were cold and you don’t say thank you and you don’t give him credit for your success later, partial credit, right? You had to show it to that. He’s going to be like, oh, I guess I wasn’t that important to her. Or I guess it didn’t work.

Right? And then he stops feeling motivated to do that. And your result is it doesn’t last him watching the kids so you can plan it doesn’t last. And you think it’s his fault. You think it’s cause he doesn’t want to watch the kids or he doesn’t want to support you. He can’t be bothered. But actually, he said he would watch the kids, but you had this thought, we’ll see how long it lasts because you felt distressed from that thought. You’ve shown up in a weird hinky way that wasn’t lovely. And he doesn’t feel motivated to keep doing it. So it doesn’t last.

It’s not crazy. You guys, so many of us are doing this to our husbands and he’s like, I did exactly what you said and it didn’t make you happy. The reason it didn’t make you happy. It’s because you were having all of these thoughts. We call them unintentional thoughts. And I really love that word. I love that. We call them unintentional thoughts because they just pop up. It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. You’ll be a human brain that has thousands and thousands of unintentional thoughts. And they pop up your job. After hearing any of this work is to go, oh, I get to control my thoughts. And that happens on two fronts. One, it happens when the unintentional thoughts come up when we go, oh no, thank you. That’s not real. You don’t think like that anymore. Brain. This is a problem. I like to say that to my grain a lot. Hey, brain. See that you’re upset. This isn’t a problem. And then I also like to tell myself that I’m safe. Oftentimes my brain has a lot of unintentional thinking when it feels unsafe, I’ll go, oh, Hey sweetie. We’re safe. It’s okay. So that’s the first part is just not agreeing with your unintentional thinking. And then the second part is thinking on purpose, the intentional thinking.

And that’s when you look at your circumstance line and it’s the same and we decide, what do we want to think instead? And so husband watches the kids so you can do some planning and you could think my husband is great. He’s fantastic. He helps me succeed. He is my rock. Let’s try this out. Like, Hey, let’s just try this out. We don’t make it mean a big thing. Let’s do adult children say they won’t be coming home for Christmas. I’m so proud of them, right? Like you could be so proud of them for being the kind of adults that know that you can handle that. Like maybe your children feel so safe with you so loved by you that they’re like, you know what? I know my mom can handle it. If we don’t spend Christmas with her, our relationship is strong enough to handle that. Right. What if I’m not coming home for Christmas was evidence that you did a really good job. You’re a really good mom.

Okay. Let’s do the next one. Got notification on the phone. Scrolled your phone for 30 minutes. You could think phones are awesome. Love my phone. So fun having a phone. You could think that was relaxing. One, a nice break, right? There’s so many thoughts that you could have. You could notice that you scrolled on your phone for 30 minutes and then you could just think all right, time to get to work. I think that was a nice break. And now it’s time to get to work. What are we going to do? You don’t even have to think about the phone thing at all, but when you begin to do this work, you will have very different results in your life. And I know you guys can feel that. I know you can feel the difference when I have shared those different thoughts with you From the same circumstances, the exact same thing was happening, but we could have very different thoughts. And then all of a sudden it’s leading to us, feeling proud, feeling focused, feeling grateful. And when we have those feelings, we show up very differently in our lives.

I write down a lot of my thoughts now sometimes formally like in a pretty notebook and sometimes I just scratch it out and I’m like, Ooh, what’s going on in there? And I allow myself to dump out the thoughts. We call it a thought download. And we just dump out all the complaining thoughts. And then I ask some questions and I want to share some of those questions with you today. One of my favorite questions is what are you making that mean? Right? Let’s say one of your kids stole something from something, from one of your friends. What are you making that mean about your kid or about you?

Let’s say you forgot to pay one of your bills. What are you making that mean? Is that a problem? Because people who feel really comfortable managing their money, if they accidentally forget to pay one of their bills, they’re like, oh, I forgot to pay that. I’ll take care of that right now. Right? They don’t have a big story, but for those of us that, you know, maybe struggled to manage our money and a lot of things were left on paid and we didn’t open things. There were a lot of late fees, right? Well, you might make it mean a big story.

Why is this a problem for you? Right? So this one I like to use with other people. Like if other people aren’t behaving the way that I want them to behave, like, listen, can’t we all just do what I want to do all the time. Turns out. No. And so I’ll think of their choices or their behaviors. And I think why is that a problem for me? But I’m usually asking my brain. So I do say to you, why is that a problem for your brain? I love talking to my brain. It makes it feel less. Perse. I dunno. It makes it feel less Judgy. It’s not about me. It’s like I get to separate myself out from my brain. And my brain is thinking, I like to ask what is the worst thing that could happen?

I like to go there because sometimes our brains are so scared about the worst thing that could happen. And then when we say it out loud or like, I guess that’s not that bad and I could handle it. And in fact, that’s always the answer I could handle it. I asked myself, how do I want to feel about this? How do I want to feel when I go to the party? How do I want to feel when I’m, you know, meeting this person? How do I want to feel when I’m recording a podcast today? I wanted to feel really connected.

Some days I want to feel fired up or excited, but today I wanted to feel really connected to you guys. I wanted to show you that your thoughts create your results. And I wanted you to feel hope and I don’t have control over that. You get to think whatever you want, but you could ask yourself right now. What kind of thoughts lead to the feeling of hope? Maybe this could help me. That sounds easy. I could do that. Maybe I don’t have to feel bad about that thing anymore. What would you need to think in order to feel hope?

Another question I like to ask myself is what if nothing has gone wrong because my brain is very sure that lots of things have gone wrong and it kind of has a siren that goes off. [inaudible] Something has gone wrong. And I will say, has it, what if nothing has gone wrong? What if this is exactly what should have happened today or this year or in that conversation or with that project or that child. And then the last question that I like to ask myself is what am I grateful for in this situation? I think a lot of us learn the gratitude thing and we start making lists like I’m grateful for my house, fearful for my family, but high, like really asking myself what I’m grateful for within a challenge within something, my brain thinks is a problem.

I’ll ask myself, what am I grateful for in this situation right now? I want you to think about something that you’re struggling with. It feels painful. It feels like it’s a problem. I want you to ask yourself, what is one thing that you can be grateful about within that situation? And obviously the easiest answer is, well, I’m alive. Yes. We can be grateful that you are alive, right? If we’re in pain means we’re living, but let’s be more creative than that. Let’s be more curious. What can you be grateful about in something that is a struggle? And I honestly believe that this was the superpower of the saints. They were able to see Jesus and everything. They were able to find gratitude, no matter what was going on. They knew he was with them. He chose this for them and they could just see him in every situation.

And they had trust. They had trust that whatever this was, it was for them, not against them. So I want you to bookmark this episode, see you listen to those questions again. Maybe especially when you’re spinning out and you’re having a bad day or you’re feeling stuck in some area of your life and you can come back and you can find out how your thoughts create your results and some excellent questions to ask yourself when you want to do self-coaching. And if you think this was interesting and powerful, come join us in masters. We take this one tool and this one concept and we study it and we talk about it over and over again. And it never gets boring. It is always interesting. Ask anyone, you know, who’s part of it. There’s always a new way to see that our thoughts create our results. And it is especially powerful to have a well-trained coach watch your mind because we can see things. So clearly that feels so heavy to you.

And I think that is the great power of watching group coaching, right? Because we coach as a group. And so everybody’s watching the person being coached. And I think watching someone being coached is actually even more valuable than getting coached because you are not emotionally involved. So the person getting coached may feel like nervous being coached. And then they’re also feeling the actual feelings of what they’re being coached on. Fear, sadness, rejection. And so they’re just like in their head swirling and whatever model we’re talking about. But when you watch a coach be calm and pull the facts out of the situation and show that person what their thinking is creating, you will also see it so clearly. And then you’ll go, oh, I’m doing the exact same thing in this part of my life. That’s always what we see when we see someone getting coached.

And for those of you who are listening that are in business, we just launched the made-for-the-business show, which is available as a podcast and as a YouTube show. So if you want to go to madeforgreatness.co/business, you can find out more about that show. And we will also be putting content in masters. I’m going to be dripping out videos, teaching you how to grow your business from zero to 10 K. So the program and there is going to be called lunch 10 K, and I’m going to be helping women who feel called to business to learn how to do that for the Lord. And the podcast will be about that as well. So you guys can go check that out, made for business. It’s going to be so fun. And we had our very first business coaching call and masters today.

And it was great. It was so fun to hear the different businesses that moms have and then to do some coaching on that, do some coaching on, you know, should you charge money in a ministry? How do you know if God’s calling you to be in business? What is a business plan and how do you get started? Those were all things that we talked about today on that call. So if you’re in business and you want to come network with us and do coaching and get more education about growing a business and scaling it, come join us and masters. I’m praying for all of you. God has a beautiful plan for you, and he wants you to pay attention to your thinking and clean it up so that you can hear his voice and do the work that he is calling you to. And I gave you everything that you need today in order to do that in order to do self-coaching in order to see what your thinking is creating in your life. So take it to prayer, take it to paper. I’m praying for you. And remember the world offers you comfort. You are not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.