Returning Models

Give other people their Models back—and take responsibility for your own.

Imagine opening a package, trying on what is inside, and realizing it does not belong to you. It does not fit. It does not feel good. Then you look at the label and see that it never had your name on it.

You would send it back.

We can do the same thing with the thoughts, feelings, actions, and results we have taken responsibility for that belong to other people. I call this returning Models.

It starts with recognizing what is yours and what is not.

Your Model belongs to you

Your thoughts create your feelings. Your feelings drive your actions. Your actions create your results. Those components belong in your Model.

Other adults have their own Models. Their thoughts, feelings, actions, and results belong to them.

Sometimes they want you to take care of their feelings or create their results. Sometimes you volunteer before they even ask. But taking on their Model does not serve them, and it does not serve you.

The purpose of this work is to become aware of your own Model and take responsibility for it. You cannot do that clearly when you have filled it with someone else's actions and feelings.

Someone else's action is not your action

I coached a woman whose husband had an affair. She thought he had done it because she had not been a good wife. She was taking responsibility for his action as though she had caused it.

But his cheating belonged in his action line. His thoughts and feelings, and his choice to act on them, produced that action.

In her Model, his action belonged in the circumstance line. She could look at what she thought about it, what she felt, and what she wanted to do. She did not need to take ownership of what he had done.

This distinction is also important for people who blame themselves for abuse. The other person's action is theirs to own. Being the person they acted toward does not make that action yours.

You may have thoughts that you should have said no, run away, been better, or handled it differently. Those thoughts are yours to examine. They do not make you responsible for the other person's decision to abuse you.

You can give that Model back. What they did is their work to contend with.

The responsibility goes both ways

Once you understand that someone else's actions are not yours, you also have to understand that your actions are yours.

You cannot say you screamed because someone made you mad and then put the responsibility for your screaming into their Model. Your thoughts created your feeling, and you chose the action.

You get to look at that honestly. What were you thinking? What did you feel? What did you do?

Returning someone else's Model is not a way to avoid your own. It is a way to stop confusing the two.

You cannot fill in their thought line

We spend enormous amounts of energy trying to control what other people think about us. We act kind so they will think we are nice. We act funny so they will think we are charming. We help so they will think we are useful.

We people-please so they will like us.

But our action line does not control their thought line. They can think whatever they want, even when we believe we have done everything perfectly.

I decided to stop trying to manage other people's thoughts about me. I gave them permission to think what they wanted, which was funny because they already had that permission. That is how the world works.

You can stop imagining their thoughts and trying to complete their Model. Return it to them. Then look at your own thoughts about yourself and about them.

Trying to make them think well of you so you can finally feel good is a long way around. Your feelings come from your thinking.

Kindness does not require controlling a feeling

We also try to take responsibility for other people's feeling lines. We say we do not want to hurt their feelings, and then act as though we can choose their emotional experience for them.

You may do something you consider kind, and someone may think it is condescending. Someone else may interpret the same action differently. Their thoughts create their feelings.

That does not mean kindness is pointless. Your own thoughts create the feeling that drives your kind action. You get to experience love, generosity, and the way you want to show up.

When you act from that place, you do not need the other person to feel a particular way to validate what you did. You are not requiring their Model to complete yours.

I wanted to call my mother from love

My mother sometimes interpreted my not calling as meaning I did not love her. But I could love her very much and not enjoy talking on the phone.

I tried explaining the Model to her in the middle of those conversations. I do not recommend that approach. It did not go over well.

What mattered for me was noticing the difference between calling from obligation and calling because I genuinely wanted to. Obligation created resentment. Love and generosity created a very different experience.

I wanted my calls to be real, rather than an attempt to manage her feelings. Taking responsibility for my own feeling changed how I experienced the relationship.

Notice whose result you are describing

Clients sometimes tell me I changed their lives. I appreciate what they mean, but the Model helps us see the work more clearly.

I taught them, offered tools, and shared my experience. I was in their circumstance line. They thought, felt, and took action. They changed their lives.

A result I create can become a circumstance for someone else. That is different from running their Model for them.

Keeping that distinction lets you own what you have done while allowing other people to own what they have done.

Use this to take responsibility, not dismiss someone

I have heard people use this teaching to justify lying, cheating, or being inconsiderate. When someone expresses hurt, they tell that person to change their thoughts.

That is not useful.

This work asks you to take responsibility for your actions. It also gives you a way to communicate about someone else's actions without trying to control them.

You can describe what happened, what you think about it, how you feel, and what you are going to do. You can say what you will do if it happens again. You are working in your own Model instead of demanding that the other person follow your manual.

It does not mean you stop communicating or sharing feelings. It means you stop trying to control each other's Models.

Return what is not yours

Ask yourself whose Models you are carrying. Whose actions have you blamed yourself for? Whose thoughts are you trying to control? Whose feelings have you agreed to manage?

Then ask which parts of your own Model you have tried to outsource.

You can give other people back what belongs to them and bring your own thinking, feelings, and actions back into your care. That is where you have agency. That is where you can do your work.