20. How to handle any problem

When life feels overwhelming after betrayal, even the smallest issues can feel like mountains. Your emotions spiral, your confidence dips, and every new challenge feels like a personal attack. But what if there was a practical way to understand your reactions and regain control?

In this episode, I introduce a life-changing tool: the Self-Coaching Model. You’ll learn how to use it to unpack your thoughts, shift your feelings, and create outcomes that serve your healing. Whether you’re navigating betrayal, everyday stress, or emotional overwhelm, this tool can help you handle any problem with clarity and confidence.

Key Takeaways:

• Discover why the same situation can trigger vastly different reactions and how to take back control.

• Learn how to separate facts from thoughts and feelings using the Self-Coaching Model.

• Understand how your emotions drive actions and create the results you experience in life.

• Gain practical skills to shift your mindset and manage emotional intensity after infidelity.

• Start reclaiming peace and personal power one thought at a time.

💬 Reflection questions:

What’s one problem you've struggled to handle since the betrayal? How might it change if you viewed it through this model?

Connect with Luke:

• Website: www.lifecoachluke.com

• Instagram: @mylifecoachluke

• Email: luke@lifecoachluke.com

Join the After the Affair community at www.facebook.com/groups/aftertheaffaircommunity

Episode Transcript:

The After The Affair podcast with me Luke Shillings is here to help you process, decide and move forward on purpose following infidelity. Together we'll explore what's required to rebuild trust not only in yourself but also with others. Whether you stay or leave I can help and no matter what your story there will be something here for you.

Let's go. Hello everybody and welcome to episode number 20 of the After The Affair podcast with myself Luke Shillings. How to handle any problem.

But first I have a question. Are you subscribed to my weekly mailing list? If not why not? It's simple to do just visit lifecoachluke.com forward slash subscribe and sign up today. But let me warn you unlike many mailing lists I don't want you hanging around too long.

It's purpose much like this podcast is to help you heal from betrayal. I trust that you will know when you are ready to unsubscribe. That's lifecoachluke.com forward slash subscribe.

It's okay you can pause the podcast don't worry I'll wait. Are you back? Great let's begin. Have you ever noticed how life never fails to throw problems and challenges our way? Or at least that's how it seemed to me.

Thinking back to this time about five years ago there was always something going on. It's as though the universe had some personal vendetta against me. Morning time was always a real test.

The kids would drive me crazy repeatedly asking for food and drinks and then they would just proceed to spill it all over the table and themselves two minutes later. Meaning either baby wipes to the rescue or a change of clothes because we clearly didn't do enough washing as it was. My wife would be getting stressed because we were running late again.

Her being stressed would make me feel stressed so we'd become short with each other. We'd then go outside and the car would be frozen solid. I'd finally get to work in which I'd already convinced myself that that would be easier.

But that was just a joke in itself. Despite working indoors our contracts literally had a statement in them saying come prepared to work outdoors. Which I should have clocked from the offer early as this meant for some pretty cold winters.

It wouldn't have been so bad but I required pretty good hand dexterity so it was either a case of fumbling around with thick gloves, you know dropping things on the floor all the time, or having hands so cold that they were numb with pain. As for the people I worked with well my boss just seemed chaotic and disorganised and you didn't know what you're gonna get from one day to the next. I actually liked him despite his apparent efforts to make things as difficult as possible for all of us.

Then there were some of the guys that I worked with. I was convinced that they were there with the sole purpose of making my life as difficult as possible. I'd get frustrated and then this would compound and then it was just like everything was against me and I was busy running around like crazy all the time.

It was just a constant juggling act and I think at this point I don't think I really recognised it in the way that I do now. I kind of just assumed that this is what everybody goes through. Isn't this what everybody experiences? Isn't it just how it's supposed to be? And yet there'd be occasions when I'd look at other people and just see them not reacting to the things going on around them.

I was convinced that maybe they were just ignorant or perhaps they just didn't care. You know, didn't care about the work or about things in general. It was as though nothing bothered them.

I'd always wanted to have passion and care for whatever it was that I was doing, and I still do, but I just didn't want to continue resenting my life because of the cards I'd been dealt. This isn't a life that I wanted to continue living this way. I didn't want to be at the effect of everything around me, of the world, the government, politics, other people, the kids, my work, and you know, money, all of the things that up until this point had been dictating how I felt.

At least that's what it seemed like. I needed some kind of solution, so I began my journey of trying to figure out what it was that was different about how I was experiencing things in my life, and what it was that maybe these other people who seemed less reactive, what it was that they were experiencing. Why? What was the difference? Are they just luckier? Have they got better genetics? Are their lives literally just easier, as in they just don't have the stresses that I have? But then I started to look closer at some of these people, and I can think of one person in specific where there were lots of similarities.

He had children, had a wife, working a similar job to me with an income that was not dissimilar. It wasn't an exact mirror image, but it was not dissimilar, and yet his outlook and his view on things just didn't seem anything like mine. I couldn't understand it, so I was like, okay, well, so if it's not the physical things, it's not the literal things in our environment that are making the difference, then it must be something else.

And I was like, well, so what is it about what I'm experiencing that's so uncomfortable? Well, actually it turns out it's how I feel. I feel uncomfortable. I feel stressed.

I feel tired. I feel overworked. I feel overwhelmed.

These are things that I don't like, and this is where my discomfort was coming from. There must be a better way. Why haven't I been more successful? Why haven't I achieved the things that I thought I should have achieved? I've basically not met my own expectations in some way.

And as I was sort of going through this journey at the time, and making these discoveries about myself, I also stumbled across almost by accident something called the self-coaching model. Now the self-coaching model is one of many models that are used throughout the coaching and psychological fields. This particular one was created by a lady called Brooke Castillo.

Brooke Castillo is one of my mentors, and it's something that has allowed me to be able to make sense of the world in a completely different way. And it, for me, who has quite a logical brain anyway, it was perfect. Everything just fits right, and I want to be able to share that with you today as well.

So what is the self-coaching model? It's an awareness tool where you can insert literally any problem that you can think of, and be able to see it in a way that you probably haven't been able to see before. At its core there is one specific principle, and that is that our thoughts create our feelings. Now you'll have heard me say this at some point on the podcast before, but maybe not really appreciated the value of that statement.

Thoughts create feelings, and it's always that way. It's not the other way around. With the self-coaching model there are five categories in which encompass any problem or situation.

So let's look at the five categories and how we can use them. First up is circumstances. Now circumstances are the things that happen in the world.

We have no control over them, and they are completely neutral. They can be something that has been said, or something that has happened. They are facts.

For example, I have 500 pounds in my account. I weigh 75 kilogrammes, or 165 pounds. Today is my birthday.

I have been fired. My boss said get the reports on my desk by 5, or there'll be trouble. It's 10 degrees Celsius outside.

There can be no adjectives, nothing descriptive. So take that last example. It's 10 degrees outside.

This is a circumstance because it can be measured and checked. If I'd said it's fairly mild outside today, then this wouldn't be a circumstance. Not everybody would agree with that statement.

I notice this a lot when my dad visits the UK. Having spent the last 25 years in Asia, if I asked him what it was like outside today, after he'd finished taking off his three layers, hat, gloves, and scarf, he'd probably say it's bloody freezing out there. In both cases the temperature, or the circumstance, is the same, but our interpretation of it is very different.

A good rule of thumb would be to ask yourself, would this statement, this circumstance, stand up in a court of law? Would everybody agree with it? Only if you can confidently say yes, could it be a circumstance? So if it's not a circumstance, what is it? Well that leads us on to the second element of the model, our thoughts. Now I've already touched on thoughts, but what are thoughts? Well thoughts are sentences that happen in your mind. It is a way of interpreting the circumstance.

We've already established that two people can interpret the same circumstance in different ways. So that's just two of many possible thoughts that you could have about that circumstance. Now why is that important? Well it's important because of what I said earlier, thoughts create feelings.

So if my dad is thinking it's bloody freezing outside, then he's likely to feel less motivated and not be driven to go out for a walk. Whereas I would have a different thought which creates a different feeling. Perhaps I feel motivated so I don't hesitate to go and get outdoors.

So that brings us on to the next line of the model, feelings. What are feelings? Firstly, for the sake of clarity, I may use the word feelings and emotions interchangeably. You'll have heard me speak in far more detail about this on the don't mention the f-word episode, but feelings are essentially vibrations in our bodies.

They are how we experience the world. Something happens and the lived experience is that we then feel something. So we can feel excitement and joy, which can be a very light and tingly, or we can feel frustration or stress and anxiety, which can feel much tighter, much heavier, like a tensing of the muscles, maybe a tightness in the throat, a cloudiness in the head, or an empty feeling in your stomach.

But remember it wasn't the something that happened that created our feeling, it was how we were thinking about it. Each emotion has its own unique sensory fingerprint of sorts. This is really useful when we explore handling our emotions, something that most people are simply not taught.

When using the self-coaching model, we always try and keep to a single word to describe an emotion. Okay, so a quick recap. So far we have circumstances, thoughts, and feelings.

Now feelings drive our actions, so actions is the next element of the model. Actions are our behaviours. They're everything that we do and don't do in the world, and can include reaction.

These actions, remember, are driven by our feelings. And then to complete the model we have results. Results are the outcomes.

It's what we see as an effect of the behaviours that we carry out. And the interesting thing about the results, the result is always evidence. It's always a kind of proof for the thought that we had in the first place.

Okay, so we have these five categories which make up this self-coaching model. Circumstance, thoughts, feelings, actions, and results. So how do we actually put this into use? Well let's take an example and run it through.

So imagine that you've, well let's imagine that I've arranged to meet a friend for coffee. And it comes to the day and I go and I get there and they don't show up. And very quickly I become annoyed.

So I send them a message which on reflection was perhaps a little passive-aggressive. I'm short with the barista as they're making my coffee and then when I go to the table I sort of forcefully push the coffee down on the table and end up spilling it everywhere. In the meantime I'm also muttering some expletives underneath my breath, just generally in a bad mood.

So how can we put this into the model? Well let's look at it. Let's go back to that first bit. The friend didn't show up to meet me for coffee.

So that would be the circumstance in this case. The friend didn't show up. And then from that I have a thought.

And the thought might be he doesn't respect me, which makes me feel annoyed. So we've now got the first three lines. We've got friend didn't show up to meet me for a coffee.

My thought was that he doesn't respect me. And now I feel annoyed. And of course remember our feelings drive our actions.

So from that place of annoyed I then sent a message which was a bit passive-aggressive. I was short with the barista even though they were just trying to do their job. And then I spilled the coffee over my table because I was just being careless, because I was frustrated.

So what result do I get? Well I do not respect him or myself. So we can look back at that and see how those things occurred and we can see how the result was created by the actions that I took. And those actions were taken from that feeling of annoyed.

I felt annoyed because I was thinking he doesn't respect me. Where the temptation is to say that I was annoyed because my friend didn't show up to meet me for coffee. But of course my friend not showing up to meet me for coffee was just a circumstance.

It was neutral. It didn't mean anything until I had a thought about it. And not everybody would think about the same situation the same way.

So how else could we look at this same situation? So let's leave the circumstance exactly the same. Friend didn't show up to meet me for coffee. But instead this time the thought might be perhaps something came up last minute.

I'm sure there's a simple explanation. And when I think that, well I feel relaxed. And remember the feeling drives the action.

So from that place of feeling relaxed I just send a message to check everything was okay. And ask if there's anything I could do to help. I enjoyed my coffee whilst doing a bit of people-watching.

And I chatted with the person next to me. So what result have I created? Well I've created a relaxed experience for myself. And I've showed compassion to myself, my friend and the person that I spoke to.

Look how different that outcome is. Yet the circumstance was exactly the same. The friend didn't show up for coffee.

Everything else was just my own creation by the way that I was thinking about that scenario. And this is where the true power of the model comes in. It's a tool to be able to take a snapshot in time of why a particular situation happened.

Now the great thing about this is you can actually start anywhere in the model. So if you're feeling an emotion, maybe you're feeling upset, then you can start by writing upset in the feeling line. And you can ask yourself, well why do I feel upset? And from that you'll be able to explore what it was that made you feel upset.

Now using the example I just gave, I recognise you'll be tempted to think that the thought is something like, well it's because my friend didn't show up for coffee. When in reality that's not the problem. The problem is what you're thinking about the fact that your friend didn't show up for coffee.

What are you thinking that means? Maybe you think it means that he doesn't respect me. He doesn't care. I'm not valued.

My time is not important. You know and all manner of other potential thoughts that you are allocating the automatic assumption as to what this all means. But these are just thoughts that you are choosing.

Those thoughts create negative feelings. The negative feelings drive your actions and your result ends up not being what you actually desire. Now this is just a basic overview of the self-coaching model and one of the many ways it could be used.

You can take a situation that causes you to feel a negative emotion and go through the steps I've mentioned to uncover the underlying thoughts behind it. Simply by being more aware of why we are doing the things that we do gives us so much power and control. And you know as well as I do, after you've been betrayed we all need to take back a little control.

If you or anyone you know has been affected by a betrayal in their relationships then I can assure you that help is available. You can learn more by downloading my free first steps guide available at LifeCoachLuke.com and by joining the mailing list at LifeCoachLuke.com forward slash subscribe. I'll pop the links in the show notes as usual.

That's all for this week. Speak to you all again very very soon.