If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you always go. But why do you do what you do? The Impact Framework used by coaches can help you understand yourself better and how to change the outcomes you get. According to this model what you do is influenced by how you feel. Neuroscientist and author Jill Bolte-Taylor explains that when you react to something in your environment, “There’s a 90 second chemical process that happens in the body; after that, any remaining emotional response is just the person choosing to stay in that emotional loop.” If your emotional response such as fear or anger lasts longer than that, then you’re perpetuating those feelings, through the way you are thinking. If your thoughts weren’t re-stimulating the emotional circuitry that created the feeling, it would go away after 90 seconds.

So how do your thoughts affect your brain? According to authors Andrew Newberg and Robert Waldman words literally change your brain. “A single word has the power to influence the expression of genes that regulate physical and emotional stress.” Their work suggests that when you use positive words this helps the outer conscious part of your brain function better and drives your deeper motivational centres of the brain into action. Conversely negative words increase the activity of your brain’s fear centre, releasing stressed hormones and neurotransmitters, which interrupts your brain’s function – impairing your logic, reason and communication. Basically how you interpret and assign meaning to different events, people and conditions in your experience will affect how you feel, which affects what you do and what you get. Of course this can turn into a vicious circle, where things spiral off course from the outcome you want. The problem is it becomes an ingrained habit. Like exercising a muscle, your brain gets stronger at doing what it practises.

So the question is how can you start to use this knowledge helpfully, to get the outcomes you want? The first step is to consider a person, event or situation that you have found challenging. Then ask yourself, “How did it make you feel?” Next consider how you interpreted that and what was the outcome they produced. So for example someone you know may have said something that upset you. It might have made you upset, angry or hurt. You may have interpreted it as them not liking you or that you were inadequate in some way. The outcome might’ve been that you beat yourself up, doubted yourself or you might be ‘off’ with them next time, maybe making the situation worse.

Once you start to see that patterns of behaviour, feelings and thoughts that are resulting in the outcomes you have, you might want to reflect on how best to change things. One way in is to consciously reinterpret an event and the meaning you assign to it positively. This can enable you to step back from situations that can make you feel bad and start to be in control enough so that you feel good.

The interesting thing here is how many of the thoughts you have whizzing round your head all day destructive or constructive? How much time do you spend wrapped up with positive events or the negative ones? What do you say to yourself? What does it do to you? How can you counteract it?

The next question is what’s influencing your thinking? The answer… your belief’s. Beliefs are the rules, ideas and convictions that you’ve acquired from you family or culture on how to live. You accept them as true because they are true for you, but truth and belief are not necessarily the same. Another useful step in this process is to consider your limiting beliefs (e.g. I’m not good enough). Ask yourself, “Is it true?” If it’s not true, devise yourself a new empowering belief.

As Lao Tzu was reported to have said, “A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step.”