Episode #35:

The Cognitive Thought Model: How to Think Positive Thoughts on Purpose

January 25, 2022

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Episode #35: The Cognitive Thought Model: How to Think Positive Thoughts on Purpose

Have you ever wondered how some people are able to get so much done regardless of whatever events life throw their way?

For example, how does a young mom of 2 kids under 5, run an entire Emergency Department, exercise daily, have a great marriage, and start a successful business?

It all starts with one thing: Creating Intentional Thoughts.

On this weeks podcast, I introduce you to a powerful and simple tool that is rooted in ancient philosophy and has been successfully used since 300 BCE.

Listen in and learn how to use the Cognitive Thought Model (CTM) to think your thoughts on purpose and start creating the results in life that you want.

Listen in to learn how to use the CTM to start thinking intentionally and on purpose, and see how your life changes.

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Dr. Vanessa Calderón, MD, MPP has over 20 years of leadership experience. She is a Harvard grad, ER physician, Life and Leadership coach, and a mother of 2. She's a first generation Latina and is dedicated to uplifting her community. She's the founder of the Latina Leadership Accelerator, where she uses education and coaching to support the personal and professional development of Latina's and all women of color at all stages of their lives and careers.

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The Cognitive Thought Model: How to Think Positive Thoughts on Purpose

Welcome to coaching for Latina leaders, the only podcast dedicated to the advancement of Latinas at every level of life with your host, Dr. Vanessa Calderon, a Latina with over 20 years of leadership experience, Harvard grad physician and mother of two.

Hello, my cuties. Welcome back to the podcast. So I am recording this about close to the end of January. It's January 24th today. And the interesting thing about January 24, is that most people start to fall short on their New Year's resolutions about 20 days into the month of January. So right about now, and next week's podcast is going to be all about getting back in line with your New Year's resolutions and continuing to achieve the goals that you set. So stay tuned for that next week. And today's podcast is sort of a setup for that. And the reason why I'm doing the podcast today and introducing you to what I call the not what I call but what essentially is called a cognitive thought model is because you know about a year ago or so, my older sister had asked me how I do everything I do. And I thought she was not being genuine. I thought it was one of those kind of off the cuff comments like you do so much. How do you do everything? And so I asked, you know, do you really want to know? And she said, Yeah, I'm curious. I'm really curious, how are you a mom of two young kids, you have a full time job, you do all these other things? How do you do everything? And when I really thought about it, I was like, wow, I mean, I guess it's just my intention, I set intentions, which start with thoughts that I think on purpose that helped me create my results in life. And that's how I do everything I do. It sounds so simple. So I want to share with you the cognitive thought model that has really served me well, that helps me create all of the results in my life. And I think the beauty of this is that it's so simple. And hopefully after you hear today's podcast, you can start using it yourself to start thinking your thoughts on purpose and creating your results on purpose.

Alright, so let's start from the very beginning. Why do I love teaching? And why do I love using the cognitive thought model? So number one, it's because I want to create awareness about everything that I'm thinking, number one to create awareness about our thoughts. Number two, I want to create awareness of the results created by my thoughts. And number three, I want to start creating intentional thoughts. I want to start thinking on purpose so that I can create intentional results in my life. That's why I've been using it for so many years and why it served me so well.

Okay, so a little bit of background about the cognitive thought model. So again, it isn't something new, I did not invent it. In fact, the theory behind it dates back to about 300 BCE and the Stoics. It's also the foundation of cognitive behavioral psychology, cognitive behavioral therapy. And if any of you know Dr. Viktor Frankl who's the Holocaust survivor, and the author of Man's Search for Meaning, who's done a lot of amazing work around the space of logotherapy, which she essentially invented, and is the psychology of choice. It was the foundation for him as well. And it was one of the tools that my coaching instructor Brooke Casteel really based a lot of her teachings on. And so for me, even though I had been introduced to thinking on purpose, you know, over five years ago, the entire cognitive thought model became really solidified for me over the last two years, as I was getting my going deeper into my coach training and coach certification.

Okay, so to understand the cognitive thought model, you first have to understand that everything in life has come from a thought first, everything in life was created, because somebody thought about it. That's pretty simple, right? Which means all of our results in life come from a thought. So the Stoics, and cognitive behavioral psychology also believe that our results in life are not at all based on the circumstances in our lives, okay, or things that happen to us, but instead on how we choose to perceive and think about the circumstances. Now, we're going to take this one step further, the cognitive thought model, or what I'm going to call CTN, asserts that our results will always be a function of what we think, how that thought makes us feel, and what that feeling leads us to do, what actions we take because of it. Alright, so essentially, all of our results in life will always be a function of our thoughts. And our thoughts, if we're thinking on purpose, can be under our control. So I'm going to break down the cognitive thought model for all of you here. And then I'm going to go back and talk about each one of these in more detail. So again, as I mentioned earlier, the cognitive thought model, the beauty of it is that it's so simple, and it can be broken down into five simple things. And those five things are circumstance, thought, feeling, action, and result.

So the circumstance is anything that can be proven in a court of law, the circumstances of fact, you can't just say I was raised poor, you like that's not necessarily You can be proven in a court of law, that's not necessarily objective, because your poverty level can be different than somebody else's. But you can say, I was raised in a house where the annual income was $30,000 a year. Okay, so that can be proven in a court of law. So you want your circumstance to be a fact. And then the thought is a one line sentence of what you think about that circumstance. And everyone's going to have a different thought about the circumstance, but it's what you think about that circumstance. Now, you're going to have many thoughts about one circumstance. For example, I was raised in a house where the annual income sometimes was $30,000. A year, my thought about that is, oh, poor me. My other thought about that is wow, we were able to do a lot with a little bit of money. And my other thought is Holy smokes, like talk about resilience, you know, like, you're gonna have a lot of thoughts about that same circumstance. So you want to choose one thought. And the reason why you choose one thought is that the model works best when we break it down one thought at a time. And the reason why that is, is because every thought might cause you to have a different feeling, every thought is going to have is going to be new, wants to bet, right? So for example, if my thoughts are, oh, poor me, my feeling might be sad. But if my thought is, Heck, yeah, look at how resilient we were, my feeling is going to be proud or excited. Okay, so that brings us to the F line, the feeling line. So this is going to be a one word sensation in your body.

And you can find it by asking yourself, How does this thought make me feel? Or when I think this thought, How do I feel? Okay? So the feeling line you want to get, as you know, really drops into your body when you're trying to answer the feelings. And if it's helpful for you, you can close your eyes. And sometimes I do that when I think that thought I'm like, How does this really make me feel? And I'll close my eyes and ask myself, What am I feeling, because your feelings you feel in your body, usually, we try to go to our head, think about what we're feeling. But those are thoughts, and our feelings or sensations in our body. So you want your feeling link to be a one word sensation in your body.

And then you go to the A line, the action line, so your A line is going to be all of the actions that your feelings lead you to do or not do. So this should be a substantial list. And at minimum, it should include about four things, okay? Now, if you find yourself thinking, it doesn't make me do anything, this feeling causes me to do nothing. And ask yourself, If I were a fly on my wall right now, what would I see me doing or not doing. And remember, your A line is what ultimately leads to your results. So you want to be really clear, and you want to be really robust when you look at your A line, your action line.

And then you go down to the results languages, the last part of your results are going to be what you ultimately create based on all of your actions. Okay? So your r line will always be a function of your thoughts of your T, because your thoughts cause you to have the feeling that led to all of your actions. Okay? So your R line will always be a function of your thought magnified. That's the way I like to think about the results of my life are always an exponential magnification of whatever I was thinking.

Okay, so let me give you a quick simple example of how to use the cognitive felt model. So let's say it's 75 degrees outside, okay, you can measure the temperature outside with a thermometer. So it's an objective measurement, you can put that in the circumstance line. It's 75 degrees outside that cannot be disproven. Now, my thoughts about that. My specific thought about that is the weather is perfect. Someone else might think it's too cold. Someone else may think it's too hot. But my thought is that the weather's perfect. So in my T line goes the thought the weather is perfect. When I think that thought how does it make me feel? I feel super excited. I love when the weather's perfect outside. So I feel excited when I feel excited because I think the thought the weather is perfect, what is it caused me to do? What's my actions, I want to go for a long walk, I wear my favorite sundress, I decide to work outdoors instead of working inside of my office. I don't complain about the weather. I call my friends to go for a walk with me. I eat my lunch outside to have a picnic outside. So those are my actions. And so then your R line is going to essentially be whatever you see in your A line, whatever you see in your actions magnified. So when I think that the weather is perfect, and I feel excited, I do all of those things. My R line is, I create a perfect day for me, right? So I have my perfect day. I'm outside all day, I wear clothes that I love. I'm very fun energy, so I created the perfect day. So that's an example of the cognitive thought model. Okay, so again, if your thought about the temperature is that it's too cold outside, you might feel sad or gloomy. Your actions might be you wear a really one coat, you want to just stay in your bed all day, you want to cuddle up with a book. You want to sit in front of a fire, you want to have a nice warm cup of tea. And that's if you feel like it's gloomy outside, right. So what are your R's your R's are You essentially stay indoors all day, if you feel if your thought is it's too cold outside, and you feel gloomy, and you do all of those things that I just mentioned, essentially, your result line is going to be different than somebody else's result line. That thing's something different.

Okay, so that was the breakdown of the cognitive thought model. And the reason why it's so important to think your thoughts on purpose, because extensionally, your thoughts are going to cause a feeling in your body, which drives you to take action, all of the things you do. And those actions are what creates all of your results in life.

Okay, so I'm going to share a little bit about some of the common pitfalls with using the cognitive thought model. So I think the most important pitfall of using the cognitive thought model is people trying to start only thinking thoughts that are going to make them feel good. So I only like trying to think really positive thoughts all the time. So if you're, for example, trying to run a cognitive thought model on something because you're not feeling good, you're feeling really sad. And you're trying to switch the thought to make you feel good. That's not going to work. Okay. And so I call that thought swapping. And the reason why thoughts swapping doesn't work is because you haven't fully processed the negative thoughts and the negative emotions yet. And when you haven't fully processed, you know, any emotion in your body and you're trying to swap it with something else, what you're essentially doing is resisting the negative emotion. And whatever you persist in life, whatever you resist in life will persist. And the more you resist it, the stronger it becomes. So for example, a lot of you know that my mom has stage four breast cancer, and her disease is progressing. And it makes me really sad. And if I didn't allow myself to process the sadness, and instead, I was trying to just be really positive all the time, and I'll just do whatever I can, I'll just enjoy her hair, I am trying to do those things. And at the same time, I'm trying to feel the sadness. Because you know what happens to people that don't process grief in the moment, it just bubbles up, and it comes back stronger later. So, again, we don't use the cognitive thought model to try to avoid life's negative emotions. We use the cognitive thought model in those instances, to help us create awareness about what we're thinking and feeling. And to really allow us to process now I have an entire podcast about how to feel hard emotions.

So if this is something you struggle with, I want to direct you to that podcast on how to feel strong emotions, it's one of my earlier podcasts, I think it's number. Maybe it's 13, or one of my earlier podcasts, how to feel hard emotions. So again, we don't use a cognitive thought model to try to help us feel positive all the time. Because the purpose of life is not to feel positive all the time, the purpose of life is to feel all of life's emotions, sadness, sometimes anger, sometimes grief sometimes, and really create peace with everything we're feeling. Okay, so the other common pitfall with this is people trying to use this model in your head, this is kind of a funny thing. But what you'll see is if you want to commit to using this cognitive thought model, it works best when you write it out. So I literally will get any scrap of paper around my house, when I want to do this, when I have a thought coming up something I can't really process, I'll get whatever scrap of paper lying around. And I'll just sometimes it's a napkin, and I'll just put on it C T F A R, circumstance, thought, feeling, action, and result. And I'll run a model based on what I'm experiencing to help me process what's coming up for me. And I do it sometimes intentionally before I go to bed, and I'll use the Notes app on my phone, or I'll do it on whatever piece of paper I see lying around. Now, if you're trying to do this in your head, as opposed to writing it out, and you're like, Okay, this is the circumstance, this is what I'm thinking, this is how it makes me feel. These are the things I'm doing. Sometimes that can work, but it's about less than 5% of the time. And the reason why is your thoughts are going to keep getting in the way when you don't get them out of your head. Instead of you creating your results, you're going to keep thinking things and thinking things about your actions. And as opposed to just focusing on one thought, there's going to be a lot of stuff coming up for you as you're trying to do this in your head. So my recommendation is if you choose to use this, choose to practice and try to write it out every time you do it or type it up. Try to get out of your head when you're doing it.

Okay, so the beauty of the cognitive thought model is that the more you use it, the more you can start consistently creating intentional thoughts, you will start capturing your unintentional thoughts more and more the sort of unintentional thoughts or your habitual thought patterns that have just come up for you from like, you know, for example, I used to really believe that I wasn't quote unquote, smart enough, and so t that unintentional thought would come up for me often and I wasn't able to catch it. So it would lead me to do things that caused me You know, it would cause me to feel insecure. But I felt insecure, I would hide, I wouldn't answer questions in a classroom, I would want to sit in the back, I would feel really embarrassed about the work I was creating. So those are unintentional thoughts. And again, the beauty of the cognitive thought model is you're able to start thinking thoughts on purpose. So you're able to start practicing consistently, what you want to think, what's coming up for you, you see those unintentional thoughts, and you're able to see how they don't serve you. And then you create thoughts on purpose. Now, when I work with a lot of my students and my clients, once they get really, really good about using the cognitive thought model to really see their unintentional thoughts, I show them how to create intentional thoughts and how to replace those unintentional thoughts with intentional thoughts. And that is really beautiful.

The intentional thought creation process that I teach is just so beautiful and so powerful, because you start essentially dismantling those neural pathways that you've created for so long when you thought these unintentional thoughts for so long. For me, for example, I'm not smart enough, that was such a strong neural pathway in my brain, that almost any little thing would trigger it to turn on. And that would just be where my brain would go. And when I started dismantling that which, by the way, feels really uncomfortable when you first start, but when I started to dismantle that I could start replacing it with a thought that actually served me, like I know everything I need to know in this moment, I have everything I need in this moment, for example. And what that does is that you start approaching those unintentional thoughts with the place of curiosity and self compassion. It's really, really, really beautiful and really profound, and it will change your life. So you don't have to take my word for it, go and practice it on your own. And you will see that practicing this cognitive thought model becoming hyper aware of your thoughts will change your life once you start thinking thoughts on purpose.

Okay, I will stop there. If you want more of this good stuff, I want to remind you to get on my mailing list, follow me on Instagram or Facebook where I post a lot of my good stuff there. And yeah, I have my group coaching coming up and I will be sharing more details very, very shortly. Alright, cuties have a wonderful powerful week and tune in next week when we talk about how to get back on track with all of you with all of your New Year's resolutions. Alright, until then, adios

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