The CTFAR Model

Key Takeaways for the Reader (from this article):
  • You control your emotional state: Your thoughts, not external circumstances, generate your feelings.
  • The CTFAR model is a powerful tool: Understand how Circumstances, Thoughts, Feelings, Actions, and Results are linked.
  • Rewrite your narrative: Learn to identify and change the stories you tell yourself about life events.
  • Practical application: Use real-life examples (dreams, everyday annoyances, personal loss) to see the model in action.
  • Actionable steps: Get guidance on how to apply the CTFAR model to your own life for different results.
  • Empowerment: Realize you have choices in how you experience and respond to life's challenges.

Our life can be broken down into five simple pieces, if you will: Circumstances, Thoughts, Feelings, Actions, and Results. I want to urge you to really let this settle in and germinate, okay? For the majority of my life, I didn't know about this. It's been about three years since I learned about the CTFAR model, and ever since then, things have been much different for me in a good way.

So, let's spend some time with it. It's kind of like the conveyor belt of life in which we experience things. It's a rinse-and-repeat thing. Circumstances are in our midst, right? Things are happening around us; sometimes it feels like they're happening to us. Then we have thoughts about those events, and our thoughts generate our emotions or our feelings. From our feelings, we determine to take an action, and that feeling fuels the action. Then that action we engaged in produces an outcome, it produces results, and those are part of the new set of circumstances that we now have an opportunity to have a thought about, and another feeling about, and then take action from, and produce another result. This just goes on, rinse and repeat, constantly.

Circumstances

Let's spend some time on circumstances. Circumstances are facts, okay? On their own, you might consider them to be very boring. Facts involve things that could be proven in a court of law, so to speak. They could be entered as evidence in a court of law. They are the types of things that, given enough time, people would arrive at the conclusion that "yes, that is the case."

For example, I work in a medical lab, where we're constantly taking people's blood specimens and running them on analyzers, essentially asking questions like, "How much, if any, of this compound is present in this person's serum or plasma, or their urine, or their CSF, etc.? Is this compound present? Is this magnesium present, phosphorus, etc.? How much of it is there? How many white blood cells are there?" These are facts. They're scientifically grounded; you can't argue with them.

"Your car battery is dead." That would be a fact. You've tested it. You've hooked up the little nodes to it. You get no feedback. Your engine's not turning it over at all. That's a fact. "Your window's broken." That's a fact. "Your keys are missing." Well, currently it's a fact, but they're probably right where you left them, so you just have to figure out where that is, right?

The thing about circumstances is that they don't actually mean anything on their own. However, once these circumstances come into our awareness, it's human nature to have a thought about those things, or to create a story around the circumstances, to give it meaning.

For example, when we find out in the laboratory, certain test results are considered to be of note or critical, and we are to notify the doctor's office that this circumstance, this fact, has come to our awareness. We are giving you the information. It's considered a critical value based on scientifically established standards that the white blood cell count is higher than normal. It's a critically high value or a critically low value, etc. Then an opportunity for a story to be attached to that can be determined.

As an example, when we are wrestling with something in our lives, there's a challenge, if you will—a circumstance that we're not enjoying working through, or it's seeming like a real jungle of a situation. Initially, I spent the first 40 years of my life under the impression that circumstances were responsible for my feelings. Other people's behavior was the reason for my feelings, and I experienced no small amount of frustration around what I perceived to be the reality: other people are responsible for my feelings.

But to the point of a challenging circumstance, using the word "challenging" is actually a thought. When we're first starting to explore this idea, when we're determining what things in our life are, quote unquote, "problems," we have not yet peeled the layers back. We have not peeled circumstances away from the thoughts. We are assuming that the facts and the flavor that we've added by the story we're telling about the facts—we think they're the same thing, and they're simply not.

Thoughts and Feelings

We spend a great deal of time in our lives assuming that circumstances caused our feelings, and it's never been the case. Our thoughts always generate our feelings, not circumstances.

Try this on. Think about this for a moment. For example, Brittney was just telling me that she had a weird dream last night and it made her feel strange all day. Dreams are circumstances that we have thoughts about what we dreamed about. Have you ever dreamt that you broke the law or you were walking across the street bare naked, and you're like, "Oh my gosh, people are going to see me! What is this? What am I doing?" And it generates an emotion for you, and sometimes you'll, like Brittney was saying, be kind of in a weird funk throughout the day because of this weird dream that she had that she put a lot of thought into, and it generated some emotions for her. Nothing in the dream actually happened. It's not a real circumstance and, in fact, didn't actually happen, yet she's feeling something from it because she's been thinking about it.

I've used this example in the past, but it's been a long time, so I'm going to bring it up again. My kids and Brittney in church one day were opening up some candy wrappers, and it felt like it was extremely loud to me, and I felt like we shouldn't be making that kind of noise in the middle of a meeting. It's rude. It's distracting. It's disrespectful, etc. And I was so frustrated by it that I almost got up and walked out of the chapel. But then I thought, "You know, Bryce, you actually know better than this. You know that thoughts create feelings. It's not the opening of the candy wrappers here that's causing you to feel this way. It is your thoughts."

So I'm like, "Okay, let's actually put this into action." And I began to reflect on what an amazing feat and miracle it was that they were able to move their hands to manipulate these candy wrappers and to be able to open them. And I thought, "What a miracle that is that they're able to use the dexterity of their hands and the coordination and all that's going on biologically to create that?" And I immediately, immediately felt something totally different. Instead of being disgusted by the noise, I was in awe that they were able to produce the noise. In fact, once they stopped—as soon as I was able to experience some enjoyment out of this because I changed my thought—they stopped opening the wrappers, and I actually began to miss the sound of the wrappers because that sound meant that their hands were working properly.

You see, I created a story in my head initially that was creating me angst and disgust. And then when I changed my thoughts about the very same noise, I felt something and experienced something totally different.

Emotions are simply vibrations in our body, and they do come from our thoughts. Another great example is movies. These are fictional stories that people have created for our entertainment to take us on an emotional journey. Music is added in very commonly to amplify the storyline, to augment it and put us in a situation where we're going to feel something. Our brains really can't tell the difference between something that is real and something that is fake. If you have a thought about it, that makes it real, and it generates the vibration, it generates the emotion for us.

And so then, even though that movie Lord of the Rings, for example—we like to watch that on New Year's Day, and usually it takes us more than just New Year's Day to get through it—but we like to watch that movie, and every time there are certain parts that really just stand out to me, and they just choke me up. And yet those things aren't actually happening. It's just a digital representation of something that was captured on film (probably not film anymore, but captured onto the video device). I'm not even witnessing the actual event, right? But even the event itself, when it was being filmed, was just a representation of something that didn't actually happen. And yet I'm experiencing an emotion from it because of what I'm thinking: "Oh, that's so powerful that Samwise will lift up Frodo and carry him up the mountain. He can't carry the ring for Frodo, but he can carry Frodo, right? 'I can't take it from you, I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you'"—whatever the line is. And they've got the music in there just right, and boom, every time, it chokes me up.

Actions and Results

Thoughts create feelings, and then, from our feelings, we take action. Like when I was in church in Sacrament meeting, I was very close to my action of being disgusted and frustrated with the noise. I was going to leave, and my body language would have been very much in line with being upset. However, once I changed my thinking and I had a different emotion going on, my composure changed, and I remained where I was. Our actions are fueled by our emotions. They carry with them a certain residue, if you will.

It's like two people could say the same thing to you: "I love your hair." But depending on how they say it, the emotional place they're coming from when they say it, it's going to carry with it a totally different energy, and it will produce a different outcome, right? "Oh, I love your hair." Or, "Love your hair." Same exact thing is said, different tones, because of the different emotional place that they were in when they said it. It's like when someone says they're sorry, you can sort of tell if they really mean it, right? You see it, especially with our kids. "Say you're sorry for doing that." "Oh, I'm sorry." "You know that happened. I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't see you there. I'm sorry I elbowed you in the face," you know?
And once we've taken that action, fueled by that emotion, a certain result is going to follow. And we own the results. It is from our actions, from our emotional energy, from our thinking that these actions ultimately flow, and the results are the outcome, which are new circumstances.

Applying the CTFAR Model

Take any situation you want, write this out on paper: first line at the top, CTFAR. Work your way down. Pick anything you want and plug it in, and remember the circumstance—make sure that you don't mix up your thought about the circumstance and present it as the fact. Such as, "My sister-in-law hates me." I don't think any of my sisters-in-law hate me, but let's just say you thought yours did. That's actually not a fact. It's a thought. You would have to get a little more specific. Why are you saying they hate you? What is the circumstance?

As you begin to separate fact from story, or fact from fiction, or fact from the flavor that you've added to it, we begin to see that the source of all of our real problems are the stories we are telling ourselves.

I was speaking with a gentleman earlier today. I just met him. I was outside on a jog, and I happened to see an amazing... (that's a thought now!) I saw a whale burst out of the water, maybe about a thousand feet away. It was relatively close; I could see it very well. It burst out of the water and just crashed into the water, huge splash, very spectacular. (Again, that's a thought!) But that's what I thought about it, and I just felt so grateful and amazed at this force and phenomena of nature that I just witnessed.

And this gentleman named Jim—I turn around and he's walking up, and he introduces himself and says, "Hey, I heard whales are breaching!" He just missed it. I said, "Yes, they are. I just saw one." And we got to talking. He's 85 years old, and I learned that his wife of 61 years had passed away a few years ago. And he said, "You know, you can take anything in life and feel good about it or bad about it. It just depends on how you look at it." He said, "I was relieved for her, and actually so grateful that I got to be with her in that last moment of her life, and what a treasure that was." And I was just amazed at his perspective on the situation.

As we go through any type of loss or challenge like this, we're going to go through a process of different emotions. We're going to have different stories about it, and none of the stories that we tell are wrong. You're not wrong for having a certain story about anything. The whole point of causal coaching, the whole point of the CTFAR model, is to simply point out that you have a choice in the story you're telling, and it is your story that is generating your emotional experience, not the circumstance. But your experience is very real. Yes, it is, and we do have control and a choice about what story we decide to tell.

As I've talked with people over the last few years and observations from my own experience as a husband and father, I see a common thread come up with husbands and fathers: we tend to feel like we're being disrespected in certain situations, and that's what really tips us off pretty consistently. We feel like we're being threatened somehow or undermined or something like that. We tell ourselves stories that make us feel this way sometimes. Like if your wife follows up with you about some type of housework thing, maybe, for example, or it could be anything. Maybe you left your cereal bowl sitting out, or maybe you didn't wash the dishes quite in the way that she has found to be best practice, you know, whatever. Stuff like that. These are silly little things, honestly, to get irritated about, and yet I have been irritated in these situations in the past. Or your kids are not listening to you about similar things that you've followed up with them about. You feel like you're not being taken seriously, and so you get upset.

We think that our kids or what our wives are following up with us about caused us to feel this way, that they shouldn't have said that or done that, it was a disrespectful thing, and then we end up in a mood.

I love the CTFAR model because it shows me how I am in control of my own emotional state. Other people don't have control over my emotions, and that's great news! Great news! We don't have to rely on other people for our emotional state. That's our job. In the next installment of my foundation series, we'll go into some more detail about why we want it to be other people's problem, why we want to blame other people for our emotions. But that'll be next time.

Practice the Model

I really urge you to sit down and write out some models, some CTFAR models. Look at the circumstance. What are you thinking about, and how is it—what emotion is it creating for you? What is the action you are taking because of your feeling, and it could be something you're doing or not doing? And what is the result? What appears to be the result? Start working through that.

What is an alternative thought you could have had about that situation, and how might you have felt differently and therefore acted differently and therefore the result been something different? How would you need to feel in order to act the way you want to?

And I'll point out also—I'll go into more detail about this in the next episode—but our brains like to react the same way to situations. They like to automate so much to the point where we think that our response to any particular circumstance is the only correct way to respond. Our brain wants to be right about how it's been choosing to behave regarding any particular circumstance, and it wants to just respond in the same way all the time. And so a feeling of disrespect somehow had been ingrained in me over the years of, "Oh, my kids are being punks." You know, I actually have really great kids, not to brag. But there were times when I felt disrespected, and it was an easy place to go for me. It was sort of etched in my mind.

But if I could tell myself different stories about what's going on, then those emotional playlists, those emotional grooves in the record, so to speak, could be kind of filled in and new things made. I hope the CTFAR model is something you can spend some time with. It will change your perception of the world because it brings awareness to what's been going on all along, all along. And once we begin to see the power of the stories we are telling ourselves, we can start to rewrite the script, and we get to take a new angle with things. This is very good news. This is great news for all of us.
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If you'd like to learn more about the model, I invite you to check out BrycePeterson.com. I've got a whole page going into detail about it. And if you have questions about this, I'd love to talk to you about it. Send me an email at [email protected], and I would love to discuss any particular thing that you're trying to work through. Wishing you all the best in this new year of 2025! And that's it for now.