I didn’t like her at first. I still don’t. But I’ve listened to 228 hours of content, so I like her at least that much.
Her name is Brooke Castillo and she runs The Life Coach School. Abbreviated it’s LCS, which makes me think of LDS (Latter Day Saints), and I don’t like that. This petty thought exemplifies my conflict with our relationship. I find reasons to dislike her. Still, I come back for more.
She wants me to join her school. She wants you to, as well. She’s opulent and obnoxious. I don’t like her style. Her hair is too blonde. She wears jewels and prom dresses. She has white dogs and white furniture.
But, she’s bold, wise, and unapologetic. And I like that. She holds your hand while she kicks your ass. And that’s what good people do.
I met Brooke on podcast episode 216. She was interviewing a closet organizer who was recommended to me, Shira Gill. I tuned in reluctantly. Out the gate, I judged a Brooke by her podcast cover (pardon the pun). She’s white and entitled.
Me too.
So, I listened.
“Organization isn't just about prettiness and cleanliness. It's about managing consumption, which means managing your mind. Most of us consume without thought. That’s buffering, and buffering is avoidance.” —Brooke Castillo
Everything we own evokes thought. Thought is energy.
“What do I want my brain to be doing right now? Do I want it to be naming the 7,000 things in my room? Or do I want it to be thinking about something that I want to create?”—Brooke
At this point I’m thinking: she’s done over two hundred episodes. If nothing else, she’s committed.
With so many to choose from, I played podcast roulette, swiping up, dropping my finger at random, and listening to the chosen episode. I consumed this way for a while until I caught onto what she was teaching and went back to episode one for the origin story.
After ten years as a coach, studying philosophers, thought leaders, and a psychology degree, Brooke developed The Model: A framework for solving any problem. At its core, it separates facts from thoughts about facts.
“Problems are not problems until we think about them, and make them problems. What's a problem for one person is not a problem for someone else.” —Brooke
The Model is a plug-and-play exercise explaining that circumstances trigger thoughts. Thoughts produce feelings. Feelings generate actions. And actions cause results.
All day, every day this happens.
Circumstances are facts. “The sun came up today.” It happened, undeniably. Circumstances are neutral, not good nor bad. Even death is neutral until we add a thought to it.
Thoughts are sentences in your mind. “The sunrise was incredible.” It’s only awesome or terrible when you decide to have a thought that makes it that way.
Feelings are vibrations or sensations in your body, caused by a thought. Feelings are described in one word: happy, sad, angry, ashamed, joyful, etc.
Actions or inactions are what you do or don’t do. Your feelings are the cause. If you’re not taking action, ask yourself what feeling you have right before you want to take action. Then work backward to the thought driving the feeling.
Results are the outcomes of your actions, inactions, or reactions.
If you know the answer to one area, you can fill in the rest by working backward or forwards through The Model. Apparently, the answers to our problems are contained in this process.
I wouldn’t know. I haven’t solved any problems this way, but I haven’t practiced, and I haven’t paid for deeper learning. But I have brought awareness to my thoughts and I’m way better for it.
There’s nothing more important than thinking about what you think about. Our thoughts are roots from which everything grows—an indication of our health. Thoughts are what we say to ourselves when nobody is listening (except our subconscious is always listening). Get to know them. They know you.
Brooke teaches buffering, consuming without thinking, numbing with nouns and verbs: food, sex, alcohol, clothes, dating, watching television—anything that’s done in excess to avoid feeling.
Her teaching originates from overeating, which she has under control. Now she doesn’t drink alcohol, and neither do I (I’ll get to that).
“I got through my childhood by disassociating from my body and numbing the pain. When I began working on emotional eating and understanding why I would eat when I wasn’t hungry, I recognized that food was a very good way for me not to feel. So is alcohol and so is drama.” —Brooke
When we numb, we can’t hear the thoughts that cause the pain. That’s precisely why we do it. And that is also the reason it’s hard to stop.
Brooke says that the human experience is fifty percent glory and fifty percent pain—nobody escapes the pain. When we accept it, open to it, experience it, and process it, we come alive and take action. If we fight it, we pillage from the fifty percent glory and increase our pain.
If I thought that you could buffer instead of feel, I’d be all for it. But the pain doesn’t go away. The thought causing the pain keeps running in the background, like a computer system, using energy, and seeping into your life in insidious ways.
She invites us to reconcile the idea of pain now and pain later and to choose pain now, when possible. Meaning, hear the thoughts and feeling the feelings that have us drowning ourselves in alcohol instead of bathing in our emotions.
Pain is not pleasant and it never will be. But “Nobody ever died from feelings. They’re simply vibrations in our body.” She says.
Brooke’s enthusiasm about life without alcohol piqued my interest. Not a heavy drinker, but a habitual one, in February 2021, I chose this path. I can say, with certainty, that not buffering (in this way, at least) breeds contentment. An essay on the topic is forthcoming.
Brooke’s mission is to be an example of what’s possible in the world. She unabashedly talks about money; how much she earns (35 million), and plans to earn (100 million)— life coaching!
Her focus on money (circumstance) is cringe-worthy (thought), which makes me ask why we avoid talking about it (thought), which intrigues me (feeling), which makes me listen to her podcasts every Thursday (action), which increases my emotional intelligence (result).
Thank you for everything, Brooke Castillo. Love (hate), Simone Silverstein