The Aligned Model

Practice the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the result you want before it arrives.

There is a difference between thinking you are trying to get somewhere and thinking from the place where you already are there.

It is subtle. But if your thought is that you are working on it, trying, or getting there, you are practicing being someone on the way. You are not yet practicing being the person who has the result.

That is why I want to introduce the Aligned Model. It gives you another way to see the Self-Coaching Model and find the thoughts, feelings, and actions that create what you want.

Instead of waiting for your circumstances to change before you change your mind, you can begin living the middle of your future Model now.

What makes a Model aligned?

The Self-Coaching Model includes circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, and results. Your thoughts create your feelings, your feelings drive your actions, and your actions create your results.

An Aligned Model is one where your circumstance matches the result you want.

Take a weight example. If you weigh 250 pounds and want to weigh 150, your current circumstance and your desired result are different. Once you weigh 150 and want to maintain 150, they match.

You have an Aligned Model.

The same idea applies to money. You might reach an annual income you want to maintain. Your current income and the income you want to create can match.

In other areas, you may keep wanting a bigger result. I continually want to grow my business. Both kinds of Models can exist in your life: ones you want to maintain and ones you want to change.

Look at the middle of the Model

Imagine that you earn $50,000 a year and want to earn $100,000. Now picture the Aligned Model: You earn $100,000, and that is the income you want to create.

What would you be thinking? What would you feel? What would you do?

Those three lines—thought, feeling, and action—are the middle of the Model. They are the part you can begin practicing before your circumstance changes.

A thought that helps you feel better about earning $50,000 is not necessarily the thought that will create $100,000. There is nothing wrong with feeling good about your current circumstance. But if you want a different result, look at what generates it.

When you imagine already having the result, the middle can become clearer. You can see how that version of you thinks, feels, and acts.

Then you take that middle and start living it now.

Being there is different from trying to get there

If you already have the body weight you want, you do not keep thinking that you are trying to get there. You feel comfortable in your body and get on with your life.

That is a different experience from waiting to feel comfortable until the scale changes.

We are trained to believe circumstances drive our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Even looking at the Model, we can assume the circumstance creates everything that follows.

But the middle is optional. You can choose it regardless of the circumstance.

I want you to experience having your dream in your mind before your senses experience it. Think and feel ahead of time. Practice that experience repeatedly until it feels real.

Your senses are the last part of you to experience the result. Your mind goes first.

Hope and being all in are different Models

A student was considering a mentoring group that cost $25,000. She told me she could not afford it, even though she knew she would make so much money by joining.

I pointed out that she did not actually believe she would make that money. If she did, the investment would not seem so large to her. She was focused on scarcity and living in a Model of hope and maybe.

I asked how she would think about the $25,000 if she already had the result she expected the group to help her create. From that place, she thought the decision would be obvious.

Before joining a program like that, I want my students to be all in. If you enter while believing it will not work, you can find ways to sabotage yourself.

Notice the difference between hoping something works and believing you will create the result. The second Model does not contain the same impatience or scarcity.

Your current evidence is not your future

Reading Joe Dispenza helped me think about living beyond my current circumstances. I love the idea of holding to your dream even when your environment has not yet caught up with it.

Your current results are evidence of your previous thinking. They do not have to become the evidence you use to decide what is possible next.

If you want to know what you are creating for your future, examine what you are thinking now.

How much of your day do you spend believing in the future you want, feeling the emotion of it, and acting from it? How much of your brain power is devoted to living that middle?

When I was quitting drinking, I began to feel what it was like not to want alcohol. I was still moving through the old habit, but my desire was decreasing. I recognized that I was beginning to live the middle of a different Model.

That experience showed me what it meant to change my mind before the whole change was visible.

Make your dream your new standard

Repeated thoughts, feelings, and actions become habits. Some serve us beautifully. Others keep creating results we want to change.

To become a new version of yourself, you need to stop rehearsing the middle that produces the old result and practice the middle that produces the new one.

Look at your current standards. The life you are living may include things you once dreamed about: marriage, children, a house, a job, or a business. Now those things feel normal.

What would it mean to make your next dream your standard?

When I reached a significant business milestone, it felt as if the circumstance finally snapped into alignment with the result I had wanted. It was exciting, but it also felt normal because I had been living the middle of that Model for so long.

Then there was another Model to create.

Write down the result you want. Imagine the circumstance already matching it. Find the thoughts, feelings, and actions in that Aligned Model, and ask whether you are living them now.

That is the skill: Become the middle of the Model until your circumstance reflects it.