Ep. 10 The Titles We Wear

This is Lacey Jones and this is episode ten, the Titles We Wear. Hello, dear friends. Welcome back to another fun week on the podcast. Before we dig in, I just wanted to say a quick thank you to everyone for all the positive feedback I have received about this podcast and the work that we've been doing. It has been so uplifting just to hear how the tools that we teach have helped you. And I just so appreciate that. Whether it's a comment or a review on the podcast or sharing it with a friend, that's the biggest, I guess, form of flattery, right, is if you share it with someone who you think could use it or benefit from it. So thank you. Thank you to all those who have done that and to you in advance for doing that. It's awesome to see how this work has helped everyone.

So I wanted to dig in. This week we're going to talk a little bit more about the model that I've introduced, this Circumstance, Thought, Feeling, Actions and Result Model. And we're going to go into a little more depth in some of the aspects of the model in an effort to show you how powerful this coaching tool is when you're kind of sorting out emotional experiences. So just as a recap, I kind of glossed over it really quick as we dove in. But if you have a pen and paper handy, you can jot it down real quick. This model. Now, we start with C for Circumstance and then on the next line, T for Thought. The following line is f for feelings, then A for action.

And the last line is R for Results. And now that you have that written down and emblazoned in your memory, I want you to think about the different badges we wear and the titles we give ourselves. Think about the last time you visited a school or even like a hospital. You probably had to sign in at the front desk. And then you may have received a sticker or a lanyard with a card on it that said Visitor. And this badge allows you certain access to some areas of the school or the hospital. And it also means there are certain expectations that you must abide by while you're at the facility. So while wearing that badge, you are a visitor. You're not a teacher, you're not a doctor. And there are different badges for people who have earned those titles, right? Well, in life we tend to give ourselves titles and badges that we think we have earned. And in this past week of coaching and working with my clients, here are a couple of titles they have mentioned.

The first one is worldly or pessimistic and negative or bad with money or always behind and just a beginner and last unworthy. These are adjectives that we use to describe ourselves and others around us. And they're subjective, but we take them as facts and notice that most of these titles have a negative connotation to them. We can be so quick to put ourselves down. And I want us to look at why. Why are these our go to thoughts sometimes.

So this is where our handy dandy model comes into play and where we start sorting out the pieces. As I start working with a client and they begin kind of sharing what's on their mind and their current struggle, they often state these badges or titles as if they are facts about themselves. They'll start with something like, okay, Lacey, I need you to know that I'm just bad with money. I've been bad with money all my life, or I am just really pessimistic. I'm negative and I don't like that I am or I'm always running behind. I can't ever just get ahead, whether with time or money. And so as we dig into the session, my job is to start sorting the facts from the fiction to decide what is a circumstance or a fact we can all agree on and what is a thought. Things that are more subjective and based on our life experiences and the client being bad with money or pessimistic or always running behind.

These are simply thoughts they're having about themselves. We may or may not agree on some of these thoughts, but for sure, they are not absolute truths that everyone in the world would agree on. So why is it important for us to recognize this? It's because when we look at them as absolute truths in our lives, we give away our agency and our ability to grow and develop and change who we are.

We mark ourselves as victims destined to living a life that we don't want or forcing ourselves to accept a life that is less than what we want. When we put our titles in the circumstance line, we are not fully accessing all that life can be and all that we can make it. So when we make that subtle shift and place them in the thought line and notice the emotions and actions and results that we create with them, we can take ownership of our stories and then we can empower ourselves to become what we want to become.

So many of these titles are generalizations. So another tool I like to use is looking for specific facts and times when these stories tend to pop up. In order to do this, I'll ask my client, okay, tell me about the last time you thought this specific thought. What were you doing? What was happening around you? Who was nearby? Who spoke to you? Who texted you? How were you feeling physically? Tell me about the room you were in. I want that client to go right to that moment of when they felt this story coming in. So when we dial in on specifics, we gain control over our story.

Some examples of generalizations we often use against ourselves are the church or my family or society? How about the district office? The leadership management? My friends or everyone thinks this. They I am always, and I can never these are generalizations, and they often don't serve us as we try to solve issues and concerns that come up for us.

And what's interesting is I'll be coaching with a client, and they'll bring their problem to me. So, for instance, they'll say something like, I'm just so frustrated and tired. Society says I'm not a good mom if I don't have dinner on the table every night at 05:00 p.m.. Or well, you know how they say that if you don't have dinner on the table by 05:00 p.m., you're not a good mom or you're not doing it right. Well, who is society and who is they, and what did they say exactly? Oftentimes, we end up paraphrasing our interpretation of how we hear things.

And when we do that, we also layer on emotionally charged words that were not even said or intended by the other person or group of people. So this is why it's so important to work with specifics. I'm talking. I want to know what that person said exactly, word for word, and who said it and where were they. I want a dialed in circumstance. So I'm working with my client here, and I'll ask them to give me that specific example with specific words that someone out in society said about having dinner on the table at 05:00 p.m.. And typically, after a long pause and lots of digging through mental archives, they can't produce a specific example of when someone said that sentence word for word.

They might find an example of something that's close but not exactly intended as a client shared. So gaining this awareness of generalizations is so empowering because it shrinks the size of the group of people we're fighting and disagreeing with. It pulls the conflict down from, like, this large mob down to a set of two individuals. And then, spoiler alert ultimately, the only person you have to overcome is yourself. So as we dial in on specifics, we can get to the heart of the problem much faster and more efficiently.

And I can help take a client, take ownership of what they can control, and help them discover whether or not the story they're telling is useful or damaging to them. Specifics are empowering. It means that the circumstances of your life don't have to change in order for you to find the peace you're looking for. It means that no matter what others say and do, you can still move forward, confident in your abilities. All right, so should we walk through an example with a little more detail? Okay, let's do it. That's what I thought.

Allow me to introduce you to my beautiful client, Susan. Susan is disappointed in herself because she can't ever stick to a meal plan, and she overeats, so she feels like she will never get her eating under control, and she wants help with that. So Susan has walked into the session with a big name tag on that says, hi, my name is Susan, and I overeat. Please help me. Well, my goal as Susan's coach is to help her gain an awareness of her thought process and how that thought process is creating a result in her life. And oftentimes this result is not what she wants. So as we gain that awareness, we move towards acceptance and then empowerment. As we seek to change that result, oftentimes blame and shame will come into the picture, and we work through some of those too. So it's not always a very linear path. There's some stops in between that we've got to work through. But when Susan introduced herself as someone who overeats, I listen to her story, and then I start sorting out the facts while asking clarifying questions to kind of aid in that process. And Susan stating that she overeats, that's a pretty broad, all encompassing statement, and it's subjective. She and I are not going to agree on what it means to overeat. We don't have the same protocol or rulebook in hand.

So I need to dial in on some specifics with her. And I asked Susan about the time she last over ate. I want to know where she was sitting, who was in the room, what was on her plate, what did she eat, exactly. And I want to know whether or not she has a food protocol that prescribes what and how much she should eat and when.

So as we talk and Susan dials in on a specific meal where she felt like she had overeaten, she's able to list what she eats, who she's with, and how she's feeling in that moment. And as she's talking and sharing, I'm building her model. So at this point, I have the circumstance that she's dialed in a very specific one. Right. So she says, two days ago, I was eating at the table with my siblings. I ate fruit, honey, mashed potatoes, and a few bites of meat.

So after listing off these specific examples of where she was and what she was eating, a new thought kind of becomes, oh, I overeat on occasion. Notice that the title on her badge has changed a little bit. At first, it was, I overeat. Now it's I overeat on occasion. And do you notice how even those two thoughts bring up different emotions? The first thought, I overeat was bringing kind of shame to Susan. And while that second thought, I overeat on occasion, it was bringing up frustration. But even that's a little bit lighter than shame. So let's keep building this model. If someone is sitting in front of a plate of food or at a table with dishes and multiple plates of food and they're feeling shameful about their food choices, what might they continue to do? There's a pretty good chance they're going to continue eating more and more food to try to cover up and shove away that shame.

This is a very natural reaction to shame. It's uncomfortable, and many times we just want it gone, so we keep doing the very actions that we don't want to be doing. It's such an interesting little thing that comes up. And I tell you, being a human is messy. It's fun, but it is messy, right? So as we travel down this model and Susan is eating more and more, she ultimately creates this result of overeating, the one thing she didn't want to do.

And why is that? Well, let's look at where the shame is coming from. Our emotions are created by our thoughts and the story we tell ourselves. So in this case, Susan was labeling herself as an overeater, and that was creating a sense of shame for her, which was really, really heavy and weighing her down. And you could see it in her body language and how she was carrying herself. And as we talked more about Susan's goals and whether or not she actually has a specific eating protocol to measure against, that allows her to kind of get a bigger picture of what's going on. And Susan shared with me that she does have the protocol, but that she actually wants to follow it 80% to 90% of the time, not 100% of the time, and that she has a little wiggle room to go off of protocol.

She shared that she has great health and that she wants to allow herself some flexibility when it comes to food and what she eats. So I offered her a new thought, which was really her own thought. If we build her model with this new thought, it will look like this.

The circumstance or the facts? Two days ago, Susan was eating at the table with her siblings. She ate fruit, honey, mashed potatoes, and a few bites of meat. This new thought that she discovered was, I am flexible with my food protocol. I follow it 80% to 90% of the time. And can you guess what happened to Susan's demeanor? She sat up, her countenance changed, and she just looked lighter because she wasn't piling the shame on herself that accompanied her self assigned title of overeater. And I asked her how she might eat when she's feeling emotionally lighter, and she very quickly saw that she most likely would make food choices that aligned with her food protocol in a more honest and genuine way.

She would no longer eat to stuff away the shame, and she would gain confidence in her ability to make healthy food choices 80% to 90% of the time, leaving that little wiggle room for eating off protocol. So she was able to drop her self title of overeater by working through the generalizations and identifying a very specific meal where she felt like she had overeaten, and by looking at it in a new lens and with a new perspective. She saw that she really did make food choices that were within her food protocol 80% to 90% of the time. And that's what she wanted. She wanted that flexibility. She did not want perfection. So by changing her title to I Overeat, on occasion, she dropped this weight of shame. And now she's working towards moving forward with more confidence in her ability to make healthy choices for herself.

So now I challenge you to look for an area in your life where generalizations and self assigned titles might be creating the Weight of Shame in your life. How can you dig into the story and identify specific facts in an effort to rewrite the story? You've been packing around for far too long. And as you do this, I know you're going to feel lighter. I have seen it with my clients. That happens in most every session.

They come in, there's a weight on them, and there's just this moment where it just switches and this lightness comes to them. And that's going to allow you to create this beautiful cycle of confidence as you move forward, honoring who you truly want to be. Now, remember, you don't have to do this work alone. Sometimes it takes a different perspective to just show you how your story is playing out. So if you need this different perspective, you can hop on my website. It's just Laceyjonescoaching.com.

You can schedule your free consult or an appointment or there's a mentor program on there as well. So it's super easy. It can just totally change your path and that weightiness that we're packing around. But I look forward to working with you and I hope you guys have a great week. We'll see you next time.