Talent Stack

You can have a beautiful idea for your life and never make it real. You can understand what you want, talk about it, imagine it—and still stay exactly where you are.

What makes the difference is a set of skills you can learn and practice. I call it a talent stack.

Think of a video game. Getting to the next level requires you to develop skills. You play, you fail, you try again. Eventually, you can do things you couldn’t do when you started.

We can approach our lives that way, too. Instead of expecting ourselves to know how to do everything already, we can develop the skills that let us create at a higher level.

When I looked at my own life, my most successful students, and the people I see thriving, I identified five skills. They build on each other: awareness, thought choice, processing feelings, massive action, and creating results.

1. Awareness: see what is happening in your mind

Without awareness, the other skills don’t matter. You have to pay attention to your life and understand how you are participating in creating it.

That includes looking at your circumstances—the things outside your control—and separating them from your interpretation of those circumstances.

Understanding the difference between a fact and a thought is simple intellectually. Practicing that distinction in your actual life is another matter.

We interpret what happens and then treat the interpretation as reality. I still do this when I’m not paying attention. I believe my commentary about the world as though it is a factual report.

Awareness means slowing down enough to notice what is factual, what you are thinking, and what results you are creating. You become the watcher of your brain instead of always being at the effect of it.

This awareness changes relationships, too. When I understand that someone else’s thoughts create their feelings and drive their actions, I don’t have to take their Model personally. Their Model is theirs. Mine is mine. That creates much less drama and friction.

2. Thought choice: deliberately think something you believe

Once you can see your thinking, you can begin choosing it.

Much of our thinking runs automatically. It has been practiced and programmed for so long that it feels like the required commentary on our lives. We don’t realize we have a choice.

Learning to choose thoughts is a skill. It doesn’t happen just because you hear the concept once. You practice thinking a thought, believing it, and feeling the effect it has.

I’m not talking about repeating an affirmation you don’t believe. You can repeat words in your head without creating a different feeling at all.

Choose a thought you believe that is better than the thought you are currently thinking. Practice it until you can feel it. Your feelings drive your actions, so a thought that changes how you feel can change what you do and the result you create.

Awareness and thought choice together are powerful. You stop accepting every automatic thought as something you must keep thinking.

3. Processing feelings: stay with the vibration

Knowing how to feel is different from knowing the names of emotions.

When I talked with my son Christian about what feelings actually feel like, there was confusion. Hearing me talk about emotions hadn’t automatically taught him how to process one.

Processing a feeling means recognizing it and allowing the vibration in your body. You stay present instead of buffering, ignoring it, or giving in to the urge to escape it.

This takes practice. Just as hearing an explanation of a back handspring doesn’t teach a gymnast how to perform it, hearing an explanation of processing emotion doesn’t replace actually doing it.

People sometimes fear that if they let themselves feel a negative emotion, it will never end. Understanding the Model helps you see where the emotion comes from: your thoughts.

That understanding is an invitation to curiosity and compassion, rather than a reason to beat yourself up for feeling bad. We aren’t trying to eliminate all negative emotion. Half of our lives will involve negative emotion. We are learning how to experience it without being afraid of it.

When you know you can process a feeling, you become more willing to set a big goal, risk failure, and live the life you want.

4. Massive action: keep going until you get the result

Massive action means taking action until you get the result you want.

Notice how much you need the first three skills to do that. You need awareness of your thoughts and feelings. You need to choose thoughts that help you continue. And you need to process the emotion that comes with failing.

Otherwise, you may try once, fail, feel terrible, and decide never to try again. Avoiding the emotion becomes more important than creating the result.

Massive action asks you to keep moving forward, picking yourself up with compassion and curiosity. You learn from each attempt and take the next action.

This doesn’t mean hustling until you’re exhausted. It means going through the pain of failure so you can keep finding your way to the result.

We are often taught to avoid failure and get the A. But choosing only things we already know we can succeed at keeps us doing what we are already good at. Growth requires learning to do something we haven’t mastered yet.

Make sure your goal is worth the work to you. Then commit to the process, even when you don’t know the path ahead.

5. Creating results: make the idea real

The final skill brings the whole stack together. You know what you want and learn to produce it.

When I first shared some of my ideas with my husband, he thought we were simply dreaming about possibilities. Then I would go create the thing we had discussed. He came to understand that when I said I was going to do something, I intended to keep going until it was done.

I have used these skills with my weight, drinking, business, team, and financial goals. The ability to create results makes bigger ideas available to you because you understand how to bring an idea into reality.

You are aware of how results are created. You choose your thoughts. You process emotions instead of letting failure stop you. You take massive action without beating yourself up. That is the stack working together.

Practice the stack in your own life

Look at your results. How did you create them? Which of these skills did you use, and which ones do you want to develop?

Ask how aware you are of your thinking. Ask whether you can choose a believable thought on purpose. Ask whether you can stay with a feeling without buffering. Ask whether you keep taking action when an attempt doesn’t work.

Do a little work consistently. Writing your thoughts down lets you see them outside your brain. Coaching can help you notice the background thinking you haven’t yet recognized.

This process is simple, but it isn’t easy. The challenge is part of becoming stronger. Build the skills, practice them together, and use them to turn your ideas into a life you create.