Thought Model: how our thoughts trigger feelings and results

 I am responsible for my feelings! ✨

Today, I want to talk about “bad thoughts” and how they ruin our lives. Each day, something happens to us, and we, as human beings, process the information and produce thoughts and conclusions. Sometimes our conclusions have nothing to do with the reality itself.

Imagine you meet your old friend on the street, but she just replies “hi” to your greetings and walks further. Any thoughts? Ignoring you or getting late for work? Or maybe she forgot to put her lenses on and even forgot where she met you first, so she didn’t want to embarrass herself even more while talking to you.

Considering that each person can have up to 80,000 thoughts daily, and a bigger half of them are only our interpretation of reality, do we know what’s truly happening around us? And especially, I want to talk today about those events which make us sad and frustrated. What if we interpret the reality wrong? What if the truth is more “bright” than we see it.

The Thought Model is a perfect tool to see what’s happening with us.

1. Circumstances are facts of life. Life happens, and we can’t control it. Either it’s the weather, pandemic viruses, or other people’s behavior. But our brain processes reality through our senses and has to make meaning out of reality; our brain creates “thoughts” about circumstances as we process the life around us. Example: Let’s say we had a quarterly performance meeting with the boss but didn’t get a salary raise. Just a fact – meeting done, an event happened. Performance has been discussed, and feedback has been received. The salary conversation didn’t happen.
2. Thoughts are our reactions to life events. What we think about those circumstances triggers then our emotions and makes us feel something about those events. Example: Let’s get back to the performance meeting. If we were waiting for the salary raise and the discussion didn’t happen, we might think: “My boss doesn’t appreciate me enough. I am doing so much, and he doesn’t see this.”
3. Feelings are a vital part of being human; we can feel so much of them during the day, depending on the life events. Our example: What do we feel when we think we are not appreciated enough? Sad, frustrated, even depressed.
4. Our Actions are led by the feelings and emotions we have. Example: If we feel frustrated at our work, we are less likely to do it with enthusiasm and passion. That’s why the next project we won’t be working on with the same dedication, as we know – the boss won’t praise it anyway.
5. This can lead to poor Results of what we do. Example: we don’t care about our performance as much as we did before, the performance gets worse, and we don’t get the salary raise, which will again prove our point that the “boss doesn’t appreciate us”.

This is a scary and vicious circle of how we ourselves create some misconceptions of reality and then behave just to further prove it. And did you notice where the “drama” began? Not with the event happening itself, but with the thought we have after it! Because in our example, which was taken from real life, the salary raise discussion is planned for the next quarter in this team. The salary benchmark is being processed, and the Comp & Ben team is to prepare a report a month from now. And if our “example person” would ask a question about the salary raise during the meeting, she would hear the answer just like that.

Here are some other examples: 

• 👎🏻 My boyfriend didn’t reply to my message = he ignored me
• 👎🏻 My boss asked for a detailed report on what I did last month = she is not satisfied with my work
• 👎🏻 One of my team members makes a lot of mistakes and never asks me for advice = she doesn’t appreciate my experience. I am her manager and mentor, and I can help. But she doesn’t appreciate my authority enough.

When the thoughts also could be: 

• 👍🏻 My boyfriend didn’t reply to my message = Damn, he must be so busy today. I will call him in the evening and ask how was his day. He must need support today.
• 👍🏻 My boss asked for a detailed report on what I did last month = Great. Finally, I can show in detail what I did last month. I am confident in my results; my boss will see them finally as well. 
• 👍🏻 One of my team members makes a lot of mistakes and never asks me for advice = maybe she is scared of me? Or she feels intimidated to ask for my help and thinks she only has to do it on her own. I might talk to her and offer her help. By the end of the day, that’s all the results of our team.

🌿 As you see, the reality is that we are responsible for our own feelings! Not those other people who didn’t call said something we didn’t like or asked us something we didn’t want to talk about. 

🌿 Of course, sometimes life happens in its worst circumstances. And then feeling sad is the only normal reaction if you are not a psychopath 🤡 But let’s just not create a drama where there is none 😌

🌿 Have a great week ahead! And have lots of good thoughts 💭