What a lot of people don't know about me is that I used to be toxic AF. I was one of those super annoying people who had a gift for nitpicking and finding something wrong with everything. (It’s how my parents are) So I was also pretty judgey, and the scary part is I didn’t even know it. This is why I was always reacting to other people, which meant I was this gnarly bundle of emotions where I would cry my eyes out feeling like I was nuts. 

Obviously I didn't like being that way. I really didn't like that other people could see it about me. 

But I didn't know how to stop. And I'm guessing some of you, if you're really honest with yourselves, you know that you have a negative mindset too. Maybe you've told yourself more than once, "I need to stop being so negative," but nothing really changes, right? And that's because telling yourself to just stop being or doing something is never enough.
This is why I thought it would be cool for today’s episode to walk you through the framework that finally gave me a very tangible way to approach mindset. And it’s something I love sharing with my clients all the time. 

I’m going over examples from real people so stick around if you want to see how this works.

You're listening to This Is How You Think, the show that remodels your mindset. I'm your host, Jule Kim. Let's dive in.

So it's 2020, and the pandemic is in full swing. The government shut down all non-essential businesses, which includes my photography business. Everything feels really heavy. I’m scared, I don't know what to expect. I’m also really frustrated because I had finally started to gain some momentum in my photography business and then suddenly I’m shut down and making no money. I’m overwhelmed, and low level terrified because I don’t know what’s going to happen with the rest of the world.

If you lived through 2020, you probably felt something like this.

It was pretty bleak. But in a lot of ways, this is the very beginning of how I became a coach. Before that year, I didn’t even know coaches were a thing - I heard coach and thought sports like football. 

So 2020 was the first year I met a coach. She reached out to me because she wanted my help with marketing and offered to coach me as a trade. And I said yes, which, when I think about it, is kind of crazy given that I didn't know what coaching was at all. 

So I come into this session, and my energy is not positive. I'm depressed, kind of beat down, scared, and very heavy. We start the session. I tell her a little bit about what's going on, how I'm feeling, and that’s when she asks me, What's a different thought you can have right now? 

And I was like... what? What do you mean a different thought? This is what I’m thinking - that the world is f’d up and we’re all about to die.

She goes, "Yeah, that's what you're thinking now, but what else can you think?"
That was the first time anyone ever told me that I could choose to think something different. I didn't even know you could do that.

And this is where she took me through a framework called The Model. So, when she told me "what's a different thing you can think," that's what she was doing. In the moment, I remember being super resistant because I was immediately like, "oh this is a trap and I don't like this." So I told her, "well I can't just say that the world is gonna be okay." She says, "Okay, well then what's something else that you can think?"

I end up picking I can serve the people in my circle the best way I can, and that starts with helping out our delivery drivers like US Postal and UPS.

By the end of that session I felt like a switch had flipped. It was crazy. I walked in feeling really tired and heavy, and I walked out so much lighter and optimistic. It was like a magic trick.

Nothing in my life had changed — my business was still shut down, the pandemic was still happening — but I felt completely a completely different person. And I was like, how the heck has nobody taught me this before??

Because for the longest time, I was such a negative person. I still remember in the early days of dating my husband, he told me, "I wish you weren't so negative." It sucked hearing that, but I knew he was right. I was overwhelmed by the racing thoughts, the anxiety, the constant fear. I sure as heck didn’t like feeling that way, but I didn't know how to stop the feelings or the toxic negativity. It’s probably why burnout, anger, and depression were my best friends.

So when my coach showed me this framework, it was huge. I could instantly see how applying this consistently would change a lot of what I was feeling.

Now, the version she used was more linear - it’s called The Model, and they teach you that thoughts come first, then feelings, then actions.

But over time as I studied the psychology behind it, I realized it's actually more like a triangle. And in fact, when I looked it up I discovered the CBT triangle, which is drawn with the corners labeled thoughts, feelings, and actions, but each of the three sides are an arrow pointing in both directions. Meaning it's not necessarily that one always comes before the other. And the reason why I went down this rabbit hole is because I noticed that sometimes your emotions show up first - before you even have a conscious thought about what's happening.

Here's an example. 

I was driving on the freeway and somebody started merging into my lane. I immediately felt a sense of danger, and I was screaming — and the crazy thing is I didn't even realize I was screaming. I remember hearing it and thinking, "Who's screaming? Oh, that's me." I was already swerving, and I barely missed being in a collision with this car that merged directly into the spot where I had been a second ago. This woman almost ran me off the road into the ditch. And at 75 miles per hour, that was really dangerous.

That moment has stayed with me ever since, even though that was almost 20 years ago now, because I've always wondered how I reacted so quickly. 

But now I know how, that’s how your brain works in certain situations - emotions travel on a super highway compared to rational thinking. So in my situation I sensed imminent danger that my conscious mind wasn't even aware of yet and I immediately acted. My brain caught up a minute later and that’s when I started thinking all the thoughts like, "Oh my god this crazy lady, she almost killed me."

So that’s a classic example of when emotion hits first, action second, and thought last. My emotional brain knew something before my rational brain did, and it saved me. 

This is why I adapted the Model and CBT triangle into my own framework that I call my T-E-A Chart (like the tea you drink) — which stands for your Thoughts, Emotions, Actions. 

The reason it's just these three is because these are the things you can actually control. You don't control the situation you walk into — that's your starting point. And you can influence your results, but a lot of the time - you know how it is - the results end up being outside of your control. What you CAN control is what you think, what you feel, and what you do.

If you're someone who tends to lead with thinking, like me, you start with T. If you lead with feelings first, it's EAT (like me on the freeway earlier) or ETA. Same thing with leading with action - taking certain actions affect what  you think and feel. It’s like a ball rolling in different directions. It’s always the same framework, but different starting points depending on how your brain is wired or the situation you’re in.

Before I walk you through the examples, you don't have to write any of this down. I'm putting a link in the show notes where you can download the PDF, and it'll have everything I'm about to cover, plus more.

So how this works is I imagine a two-column chart with 5 rows. The left side is your current reality — your situation, your thought, your emotion, your action, and your results. The right side is your desired reality.

The way I walk my clients through it is like a U-shape. You go down the left side first — what's the situation, what am I thinking, what am I feeling, what am I doing, and what results am I getting? Then you move over to the right side at the bottom and go up.

So it flips from what are my results now to what results do I actually want?

What actions would get me there? And then — this is the key — what do I have to think and feel in order to actually want to take those actions? The starting situation is still the same.

Some people prefer going straight down both columns, top to bottom. That works too. But the U-shaped approach clicks for a lot of my clients because it starts with where you are and ends with what needs to shift in your head to get somewhere different.
Now, there’s one thing I need to call out here: when you choose a new thought it has to be something you can actually believe is true. On a scale of 1 to 10 on how true it feels for you, it has to be at least an 8 out of 10.

So for example, if you try to swap "I'm not good enough" with "I'm amazing and unstoppable," your brain is very likely to immediately say, "no I'm not."

This entire exercise will fail because the thought you have chosen is already rejected by your mind. Then you wonder why nothing changes. 

So if you've ever felt like affirmations never worked for you, or you've stood in front of the mirror saying things you don't believe, and felt like a fraud - this is why. The replacement thought has to be something your brain can't argue with.

Now let me show you what the TEA chart looks like applied to two real clients. 

Ok here’s example number one. I had a client who wanted to start creating content on LinkedIn. She had been talking about it for a while. She knew she had things to say. But the thought running in the background was "people are going to think I'm so cringe." So, of course that meant her emotions were fear and uncomfortable, which meant her action was to stay a lurker, always watching, never creating. The result was she continued to have no posts. She had no presence on LinkedIn. 

So that was her current reality.Then we started on her desired reality. The new thought she landed on — and this is where the truth scale matters — wasn't "I'm going to go viral" or "everyone's going to love my content." It was "I can learn how to do this if I just try. Growth is inevitable." 

She could believe that. Her brain didn't fight it. From that place, her emotions shifted to confidence and optimism, which then let her pick something that she wrote about, and she posted it. The result was she finally started her content creator journey. She had one post on her account, and that was enough to break the cycle.

And I noticed something really interesting about LinkedIn, by the way, because I've had a lot of people over the last several years tell me how much they wanted to post on LinkedIn, but they were all afraid. The thoughts are actually different from how people are scared on other platforms like Instagram, for instance. For example, on LinkedIn, there's a lot more people thinking things like "Oh, I'm not professional enough" or "What will my coworkers think?" 

So if you have multiple thoughts like that, the key is for you to put each of those thoughts into the TEA chart and go through the exercise with each one. 

Sometimes different thoughts will lead to different emotions, which will then potentially lead to different actions, right? A lot of times we bundle multiple thoughts together, and it's hard to figure out which one is really the biggest blocker until we sit down and unravel all of this, which is kind of like untangling a giant ball of yarn. 

Okay, here's example two. I had a client who's a photographer, and she got a message from an Asian woman asking about photos. And before the conversation even happens, the client is already thinking “She just wants cheap photos. She's going to tell me I'm too expensive."

And because my client is thinking all of this, her emotions turned to angry, hostile, and frustrated, even though they hadn’t spoken yet! That’s the crazy part.

And because of what she was thinking and feeling, she then responds to the message with a link to her website price list and barely any message in the email. No warmth, no effort. Result: She never heard from that woman again.

So we flipped the script for any future potential clients. Her new thought became: "I know exactly what you're going through as a new mom. You’re dealing with your family, work, and a new baby - I got you." Her emotions turned into feeling confident, happy, encouraging. The action changed completely — she asked for a call, expressed how excited she was about the new baby. And the result that my client gets to walk away with, is regardless of whether the next new  mom books her or not, every mom is going to feel seen. And because of that, my client might actually get hired for photos.

If you want to try this yourself and you haven’t already downloaded my PDF for my TEA chart, click the link in the show notes. It has my workout example, the client examples I just walked through, and a blank template for you to fill out.

Here’s how you do this: pick one situation in your life right now where you want to do something different. Fill out your current reality top to bottom. The situation, your thoughts, emotions, actions, and current results. Then ask yourself — what's a thought about this that I believe is true, at least an 8 out of 10, that's different from what I've been thinking? Something that is more positive that you can believe. Write it down and go through the rest of your desired reality.

As you work through my TEA chart, just remember this doesn't fix everything, but it's a good place to start. It helped shape the beginning of my journey, and I think it can do the same for you.

That's it for today.

Thank you so much for listening. And remember, I believe in you. See you next time.