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“If we believe our happiness comes from “out there,” we have to give our power away to whatever is out there.” ~ Brooke Castillo
Within seconds of my fly hitting the water, I had him. Moby Dick, Walter, whatever you want to call him, I had him. I could see my fly on the end of my taught line fighting against the current. I was just about to give it slack and let the current take it downstream when he struck. The whole thing looked like something in slow motion from shark week on the Discovery Channel. I set the hook. At this point, this was the biggest fish I’ve ever had on my Tenkara pole and maybe one of the biggest trout I’ve ever caught. My rod bent in half. It never had this much tension on it. Not sure what to do, I reached into my back pocket and got my phone out. Even if he got away, I was going to be sure to capture the moment. I recorded about 8 seconds of video of him making a commotion, slapping creek water into the air. I put my phone back in my pocket and decided it was time to get serious. Time to bring this guy in. I chose to let him get tired in the deeper water before I drug him over the shallow rocks of the shore where I was standing. I didn’t have a net though after losing a nice sized brown the first time I cast in this very hole, I had considered getting one. Luckily for me, this fish was tired and let me get a hold of him. I tried not to squeeze too hard, but I was not going to let him slip through my hands once I had him.
I was ecstatic. I took some pics and looked upstream to show a fellow angler I had spoken to earlier. He gave me a thumbs up and yelled back, “Nice one. Bro!” I made another video of me releasing the fish and then packed my gear up. I was done fishing for the day. I was ending on a good note. A lesson learned from George Costanza.
At this point in my life, I had been feeling lower than whale shit for some time. The day I caught this trout was the best I had felt in months. It made me pause and reflect, “Am I happy because of a f**king fish or did I choose to feel this way?” All the coaches and self-help gurus out there have said, hell even I have said it, that happiness comes from within. More specifically, it is a choice. Happiness is a choice. All emotions are a choice. We can choose how we react to certain events. I used to not think so.
Years of immature behavior comes to an end in two seconds.
Many harsh moments in my relationship history have come from some very insecure and juvenile behavior on my part. A woman’s sexual history before me used to torture me and cause me to act out. Throughout the years I thought I had gotten past it, but it always popped up now and then. The last time it happened was years ago. However, that was the last time it ever happened. All because I changed how I let it make me feel. This is going to sound weird, but I was torturing myself with thoughts of my current girlfriend at the time being sexual with her lover before me one day and then, all of a sudden, for a brief moment, I thought it was kind of hot. (Kinky, I know.) I didn’t know what was happening at the time, but now I can clearly see what happened. In the time span of about two seconds, I had made a decision.
When, for just a second, the thought of my girl with someone else turned me on, it caused me to pause. “Wait a minute,” I thought to myself. “This is supposed to hurt me, torture me. At least that’s what has been going on for the entirety of my adult life. Is this possible? Can I actually not only be ok with a woman’s past but it be a turn on? (Because that would be fantastic.) Can I do again? Let me see.” I had more tortuous thoughts that should have, according to my history, gave me a sunken feeling in my gut but instead, it turned me on. More and more thoughts came, and I got more and more turned on. It was over. The immature behavior that I knew was wrong for years but couldn’t get over, was gone. All because I chose to feel another way.
(It has been years since I originally wrote this. As I continue to grow, I always have more to add to these previously written articles. That being said, what did I actually decide on? Did I choose to be turned on instead of disgusted? I think that’s what I thought, but now I see that I decided to see the situation in a different light. What bothered me was the thought of another man with MY GIRL. That’s the problem. I saw her as a possession. When I saw her as a person — a woman — who was expressing herself sexually, who was sensual, who felt comfortable enough to share her past with me and not feel ashamed I felt at ease.)
Love is a choice?
If it weren’t for the experience mentioned, I would never have believed that feelings were a choice. I used to argue with a friend of mine because she thought love was a choice. “Wrong,” I said. “You don’t choose it, it happens, or it doesn’t.” I think part of it had to do with my anger issues. I used to explain to whomever I was in a relationship with, that I had no control over how I reacted to things. It’s just a natural response. (Think about it, me claiming that the reason I threw stuff at your car as you drove off was that it was just a natural response. I couldn’t help it? What a load of crap.) So, if I were to admit to my friend that love was a choice, I would also be acknowledging that anger was a choice. That would make me responsible for every abusive thing I ever said or did. Something I was not ready to admit at the time.
At this point in life, I had been listening to life coach, Brooke Castillo’s, podcast for maybe a couple of years. Even though I thought she was brilliant, I had rolled my eyes over and over again every time I heard her mention “The Model.” A process she developed to help people work through their emotional problems. Blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah! Well, I’ve finally come around.
This is The Model:
Circumstances — Events you have no control over. They happened. They are facts.
Thoughts — One sentence in your mind about the Circumstance
Feelings — One word that describes how you feel.
Actions — Your behavior. Your Reaction.
Results — What the action created. (Usually proves your original thought as true.)
How The Model works is you fill in the blank for each line. You can start anywhere. Let’s look at a made up example:
Circumstances — Your significant other breaks up with you.
Thoughts — I’m a loser and will always be single.
Feelings — Depressed
Actions — Sedate yourself with booze or chocolate cake.
Results — Gain weight, get sick, actually becoming unattractive and feel more, you guessed it, depressed
Do you see how the Results reinforce the original Thought? This is how people either get on a roll or in a rut. Now let’s look at the same circumstance but change the thought:
Circumstances — Your significant other breaks up with you.
Thoughts — Well, I guess it wasn’t meant to be.
Feelings — Relieved
Actions — Go out with friends. Meet new people.
Results — Find the love of your life. Get married. Have a kid. THEN get fat.
Did you notice that by changing the thought in these scenarios, everything else changed? A positive thought yielded a positive outcome, a negative thought a negative one. This can happen in real life too. We can not change the circumstance, what happened to us. We have no control over it but what we do have control over is our thoughts. Change your thought, and you will change your feelings, which makes feelings or emotions a choice.
Are these scenarios realistic? I don’t know I just made them up, so let’s look at a couple of real ones.
Circumstances — I got a vague diagnosis from the VA
Thoughts — I am never going to figure out what’s wrong and get out of this rut.
Feelings — Depressed
Actions — Two-day drunken binder.
Results — Took days to recover and felt worse.
Circumstances — I caught a huge rainbow trout!
Thoughts — I am the f**king man!
Feelings — Happy
Actions — Smiled, walked with some pep in my step, talked to some people
Results — I successfully engaged an attractive woman in conversation, possibly made a friend, and was out of my depression. OUT!
So, back to my original question. Did a fish pull me out of the several month long depression I was in? No. It didn’t. I pulled myself out. So, I caught a fish, yippie sh*t. About a month later I caught an even bigger, prettier brown trout and it did not have the same impact on me. The first trout was so significant because the moment I set the hook, I chose to be happy. I chose to feel good. All because of the thoughts I had. I didn’t have to think to myself “think positively now.” It just happened. The negative thoughts could have come, but I chose not to have any of them.
- About time something goes my way.
- This will probably never happen again.
- Just my luck to catch this big of a fish in a catch and release creek.
- Still not worth all the money I spent on lost flies in this creek.
- Well, there is the extent of any good luck I will have for a while.
- I wish I could catch a girlfriend this easy.
Plug any of these thoughts into The Model and what do you think the results would have been? The Circumstance is the same it’s just the thoughts that are different.
My version of a quick story.
Twin boys were raised by an alcoholic father. One became a drunk, the other, a success in all aspects of the word. When the drunk was asked how he got to where he was in life, he answered, “My father was an alcoholic. I was destined to be like him.” When the successful man was asked how he got to where he was in life, he answered, “My father was an alcoholic. I was destined to not be like him.”
One Circumstance, two different thoughts, two different outcomes.
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This post was previously published on Medium and is republished here with the author’s permission.
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Photo by Ben White on Unsplash