Coaching Fundamentals: Separating Your Thoughts from Your Circumstances (and why it matters)
Of all the coaching practices I’ve learned to date, there hasn’t been one more useful than learning to separate my THOUGHTS from my CIRCUMSTANCES. If you can master this, you’re on your way to being able to take ownership for your shit - and your life - and actually turn it all into whatever it is you want it to be.
Pretty useful, right?
Here is the breakdown of this foundational coaching topic: CIRCUMSTANCES vs THOUGHTS:
Circumstances are the facts of our lives: the weather, your height, or your current address - these are all facts, all things we can prove and that any collection of sane people would agree on.
Everything else is a thought. Statements like, “I hate my job”, or your opinion of the current presidential candidates, or a sentence like, “My kids are so fussy today,” are all thoughts. We can’t prove them in court and not everyone in the world would agree with us about them.
Circumstances (facts) happen in our lives. They’re just there. Thoughts, on the other hard, are always optional. We choose them all day every day even when though we’re not aware that we’re doing so most of the time. “I hate my boss” is a thought you can choose to think in reaction to something your boss says, and “My boss is a person with insecurities just like me”, is also a thought. You can choose to think one of those thoughts or another, at any time.
Why does this matter? Most of us go through life assuming that it’s our circumstances that create our results. For example, someone may think she married the wrong person and that she now wants a divorce. In that case, she likely believes the circumstance of being married to her partner is what’s creating her unhappiness, but the reality is her marriage to her partner is simply a circumstance. It’s a fact. It has no meaning until she has a thought about it. It’s the thought, “I married the wrong person” that’s causing her unhappiness.
Now, this doesn’t mean she should just start thinking happy thoughts she doesn’t believe about her marriage and everything will suddenly be better….but it does mean that she doesn’t have to think the current thought, “I married the wrong person”, that’s creating all this misery for her . She can choose to change her thinking about her marriage if she wants to, to something that feels better for her and that she still believes. There’s a wide range of thoughts that fall under that category, but she can choose to think any of them. For example:
“My marriage isn’t perfect, but I want to make it work”
“My partner makes me so angry sometimes, but he’s also a kind person who loves our family”
“I’m not sure I want to stay married, but I know whatever choice I make I will be OK”
When there’s something you want to change, or something that’s making you unhappy, the reason to focus on changing your thinking instead of just changing your circumstances is two-fold:
1) If you do want to change your circumstances, you want to do it from a place of, “This is whats best for me and the future I want to create” vs. “I just need to get the hell out of here so I’ll grab whatever option gets me there the quickest”. See the difference?
2) If you don’t clean up your thinking and you just jump to a new circumstance, your thinking will come along with you and show up somewhere else….So you won’t actually “solve” your problem.
Here’s an example: You’re working way too much at your current job
You’re first to arrive and last to leave, boss is messaging you at all hours, and you respond no matter what....
You’re thinking, “I’m just so overworked at this job”
You want to make a career pivot
You make the pivot - and you have somewhat of a breather (yay)…But if you didn’t clean up that thinking about being “overworked”, that will show up again in your new job. (Remember: You take your brain with you wherever you go). You may see this if you’ve changed jobs but then had some of similar challenges at all jobs, or gotten feedback about the same things from different bosses. This is why you want to be AWARE of your thinking ahead of your pivot. It’s so important to get clear on what you’re thinking that’s creating your unhappiness so that you can be sure to not take it with you when you make your pivot in your career, your relationship, or in whatever it is that you want to change.
Owning the fact that it’s your thoughts, not your circumstances, that are causing your dissatisfaction is a hard pill to swallow because it means you have to take responsibility for whatever it is that isn’t going your way….and on the flip side its the best news because it means you don’t have to live at the mercy of your circumstances. You get to change anything you want - just make sure to start with your thoughts.