Change Your Life or Your Feelings?

You can change your thoughts about a situation. That doesn’t mean you should stay in it.

This is a distinction I want to make very clear. The Model is a tool for understanding your mind and making conscious choices. It is not a tool for convincing yourself to tolerate a life you don’t want.

When a job, relationship, or other situation isn’t working, you may wonder whether to change it or change how you feel about it. In Episode 329, I explained why the more useful question is about the order in which you do the work.

Understand your Model. Acknowledge and process your emotion. Then decide what you want to change.

Changing the circumstance doesn’t process the feeling

Consider a hypothetical job where your boss yells at you every day. The yelling goes in the circumstance line. You might think it is abusive and not okay, and feel scared or frustrated.

Looking at that Model doesn’t mean immediately replacing your thought with a happy one. You may want to keep the belief that being yelled at is not okay with you.

A thought can serve you without feeling good.

You get to decide what action you want to take. You may decide to leave the job. I want you to like your reason and understand the emotion involved.

One mistake I see is leaving a situation and assuming the emotion disappears along with the circumstance. You get a new job and expect the old Model to stop mattering.

But unprocessed fear and frustration can come with you. You enter the new situation already on guard, resisting feelings you haven’t acknowledged.

You may change the circumstance before you have fully processed the emotion. That doesn’t make the emotional work irrelevant. Understand the thoughts that created the feeling and allow yourself to feel it, rather than expecting the new situation to do that work for you.

You don’t have to feel happy about everything

Another misuse of the Model is deciding that because your thoughts create your feelings, you should be able to make yourself happy in every situation.

Ask a better question: Is this a situation I want to be happy in?

You may not want to be happy about someone’s behavior. You may want to think it is unacceptable to you and make a change.

There are circumstances I consider abusive, unhealthy, or not for my highest good. I process the emotion and change them.

The Model doesn’t remove your power to leave. It helps you recognize that power and understand the decision you’re making.

The goal is consciousness. It is not uninterrupted happiness in a world that includes things you do not want to be happy about.

Changing everything outside you can miss the thought

The other mistake is continually changing circumstances to try to change how you feel, without understanding the thinking that is creating the emotion.

I used to change where I lived, who I talked to, what work I did, and what I read. I kept looking outside myself for the reason I felt anxious or upset.

Sometimes the situation was one where I was treated well and fairly. Yet I still felt frustrated, sad, or anxious.

I took those feelings with me because I took my thinking with me. I hadn’t recognized what I was thinking about myself and the circumstances.

Eventually, in situations I considered healthy and not harmful, I chose to stay long enough to understand my mind. I learned that I could feel differently without replacing everything around me.

When a change in circumstances changes your feelings, your thoughts about the circumstance have changed. Recognizing that gives you a more accurate understanding of your own power.

Being able to stay doesn’t require staying

Once you understand that you can be happy in a situation, you still get to decide whether you want it.

I used to sell jewelry at Nordstrom. I was good at it, made good money, and could be happy there. I still didn’t want that job as my career.

I wanted to do something else with my time and life. Being able to enjoy the job didn’t obligate me to keep it.

Some clients do thought work and decide to leave. They leave understanding that they are responsible for their happiness and can use that ability elsewhere.

Other clients find that a situation they once thought intolerable becomes one they genuinely want to stay in. Their thought work changes how they experience a relationship, career, house, or city.

Neither decision is automatically the correct one. You have to evaluate your own Model and what you want.

Some situations require a lot of thought work to stay in. You may decide you don’t want to spend your energy that way. Sometimes a change in thinking is much simpler than you expected.

The order that gives you your power back

Start with the situation you are in. Write down the specific circumstance, your thought about it, the feeling that thought creates, the actions you take from that feeling, and the result.

Then ask whether this is a Model you want to live within. Is your thought conscious? Does it serve you here?

Notice that I’m not asking only whether it makes you happy. A thought such as “This is not okay with me” may be painful and useful.

Acknowledge the emotion. Feel it and process it. Don’t rush past it to a new thought or a new circumstance simply because you want it gone.

Then choose. You can change your thinking and stay. You can keep a thought you want to keep and leave. You can understand your thinking and change the circumstance for a reason you like.

When you blame every result on something outside you, you overlook the decisions available within your own mind. Bringing the Model into awareness lets you see what you are creating through your thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Use that understanding for yourself. The goal is to feel, understand, and decide consciously. From there, you can change your life and your feelings on purpose.