Small groups of focused people are dynamic. In the A.C.O.M. Model small groups meeting virtually or in person have the potential to multiply and become many more groups where individuals discover and determine a new identity and often within  groups develop a new sense of belonging.

 

Ever heard the phrase, “Don’t get me started?” Growing up in your home it is possible you didn’t talk about religion or politics at the dinner table. Perhaps in your past there have been these or other topics you did not bring up, especially with or around certain people. It wasn’t going to end well and if it happened at dinner it wasn’t worth the digestive trauma that could follow.

 

There is a dynamic that is often misrepresented or missing in the approaches to therapy and traditional or faith-based coaching. You and I think, choose, and feel in that order of impact. When psychologists or self-development gurus tell you that the order is think, feel, and choose they have departed from a behavioral or biblically supported model of the relationship between your mind, your will and your emotions. When the model for health and healing is think, feel and choose in that order, be aware, raise an eyebrow, or just close that down and open a copy of CoachABLE to the included principles and Bible passages. 

 

With think, feel and choose no matter how well-intentioned, inviting, credentialed, or research-based the prescribed process will be exhausting and never ending. If you measure it on the continuum introduced in this book as resisting and not reacting to assumptions and troubling triggers so a new response is identified and possible, it will not allow you to a reach a resolve in overcoming stress. It will only compound your stress by keeping you from arriving at a place of completion in a new mindset. When feelings determine choices instead of choices determining feelings you won’t get to a place of completion. You won’t get the results you need and want!

 

When you think and choose first what you feel will follow not lead the ideas you have and the decisions you make. Perhaps the simplest way to express that is in the title of a book that has sold over one million copies, Happiness is a Choice. 

 

In the foreword the question is asked, “How does it happen that there are so many depressed individuals among the most fervent believers?” You could ask, “How is it that so many believers aren’t overcoming their stress, escaping from depression, and living free from their fears and anxieties?”

 

How is it that even Christians so readily react to challenges and adversity in ways that make living life more difficult, demanding, or even devastating when a choice to respond differently could change that? And while you are asking, “What role does inspiration, being inspired and inspiring others, play in making consistent responses possible?”

 

Some would say we don’t just need more information, but more application. To put it bluntly, the answers you need may not come so much by knowing more, but by applying (obeying) more. Relying on God and obeying is a choice.

 

The Compendium: The Battle to Believe in CoachABLE will help you ask the right questions and arrive at the right answers for those questions. The verses and passages give you insights, understanding, and even revelation into the need for and importance of obedience.

 

They remind you that you are not just thoughts, choices, and emotions. You are a spirit with thoughts, choices, and emotions.

 

The A.C.O.M. Method is not just about the critically important overcoming of pain and tough times or your personal improvement and development, it is about you sharing with and guiding and helping others with the principles you discover in these pages. 

 

As you move into the text consider the following seven steps out of uncertainty or crisis and into growing empowerment and an improved sense of satisfaction in the circumstances of life. You don’t have to stay stuck!

 

1. You have acceptable innate strengths.

2. You do not react to negative Assumptions and unrealistic expectations.

3. You resist troubling and toxic thought Cycles.

4. You reframe with strong completed targeted thoughts.

5. You respond and overcome Obstacles.

6. You are released with a new Mindset(s), a new resolve.

7. You maximize your personal freedom and your effectiveness with others.

 

It can be helpful to take a minute for each of these steps daily to write or record what you are saying, doing, or feeling about them. Seven minutes a day for three weeks will add up to about two and one-half hours. Look back at your notes at the end of each week. You are definitely worth that investment!

 

As, or when you are facing challenging or disturbing issues that do not at that time have a resolve get help and talk it through with someone you trust who will keep your confidence. When that someone will participate with you in the steps the time needed will double but each of you will gain greater insight and the benefits will be greater for both of you. 

 

One big exception is that it is not recommended that you discuss or address the cause, and especially the memories of or the continuation of trauma, traumatic events, or the potential of repressed or intense memories using the seven steps with anyone other than with a traditional therapist, a thera-coach as introduced in this book, or a mental health professional. And never minimize the pain of someone who is traumatized or has been traumatized.

 

These steps, the principles and tools in this book can be life-transforming in therapeutic settings and the same excitement and potential can be developed and released in coaching opportunities.

 

You will be considering design-thinking and the designing of responses from the Capturing Thoughts, Trouble and Restoration cycles the author developed.

 

As a reminder, throughout this book it is important to ask and keep asking the question, “What part do assumptions play in stress, depression, and anxiety?

 

As you continue reading you will come to these words:

 

“At some point, you have to face the fact that there are old beliefs you can’t change. They can’t be transformed. Even if you have spent years trying to do that they have to go. You have to abandon and replace them. It’s not a make-over or a remake, it’s a new design for thinking and responding.” 

 

The old thought cycles have to die and you have to kill the assumptions that have supported and enabled them. Kill in this case is more clearly and accurately defined by a Greek word, katargeo (kat-arg-eh’-o), which means ‘to put away,’ ‘to abolish,’ ’to make completely inoperative', or 'to put out of use.’ You have to render the old thought cycles ineffective and powerless as if dead. It is an exchange. You are putting off one belief (design) and putting on another.”

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the A.C.O.M. Method to develop anyone.