Ep #98: Questions and Answers

Welcome to the Life Coach School podcast, where it's all about real clients, real problems, and real coaching. Now, your host, Master Coach Instructor, Brooke Castillo.

Oh my gosh you guys, what an amazing, exciting, wonderful week it has been for me. I have so much going on, and I'm so blessed and excited. Here's the best news: I can count on one hand my evolutionary moments when I have changed from one person to another, where I have evolved into the next best version of myself.
When I go back to those defining moments in my life, they blow my mind. I am going through one of them right now. The strategic by-product of that is that I am creating so many great, new ideas for you all. I am in a highly creative space right now. I have so many ideas that I'm making into tools, that I am making into exercises, worksheets, and concepts to teach all of my students. I feel this heightened sense of momentum in my life. The opportunities that keep flowing in, the conversations and the people that want to speak to me, and the opportunities that I have are ridiculous. They're off the hook.

If I would've told myself 10 years ago that the people that are calling me these days wanting me to work with and for them were calling me, I wouldn't have believed you. I feel so excited, and I'm so excited that you're here with me and that we're doing this together. At the end of the day, I love success. I think it's super fun. I look at it like a game, what can I create in the external world with my mind? The most important thing for me is you, because I always identify with myself when I was trying to figure out how to feel better, trying to figure out how to create a better life for myself, feeling lost and discouraged. I didn't have someone that could guide me. If that's you, I don't want you to worry that I'm going to get preoccupied with trying to create success for myself. That will never happen. I am dedicated to my students, especially my students who are suffering that are willing to put in the work to change that for themselves. That is my number one priority.

I just met with my team. We talked about 2016 and what our priorities are for each other and for the school. We have a common, dedicated purpose of creating less suffering in the world, creating a contribution to the planet. We all feel really good about the work that we're doing in the world, and it's because our main priority is to make sure that the people who need the life-changing information that we have, get it. Please know that you putting your comments in the comment board, and you being present in my class, and you coming to my trainings is the most important thing for me. I'm about to start January 2016's class training tomorrow. We'll be doing that for six days. I have 27 people coming to that training, 27 souls that will never be the same. Every time we do a training, we know that there has never been a group of people that is exactly this at this time with the instructors, there's five of us instructing, that will learn the same things that we will learn. People will leave knowing more things than they did when they came. They will be changed emotionally.

That has been our history, and that is our intention. I'm really excited to meet all of them, and I will for sure tell you all about it in the episodes to come. Today, what I'm doing is going through all of the questions that you guys put in the comments box. For those of you who email me, or try to email me your questions, I usually just reply and say, "Please put it in the comments box" because that's our process for filtering all of our questions through and making sure that we get them answered live. I'm going to go through the questions that we have and answer them. I know that there's a few questions that were there that were so specific that they didn't really apply to everyone, so I answered those privately. The questions that I think generally will serve everyone, I am going to read aloud and answer here.

Let's go ahead and start with this one: "Hey Brooke, I love your podcast. I love learning more about our brains, thoughts, feelings, actions, results. My question is this: since I have granddaughters, I'm wondering how to teach them about not hurting other people's feelings. Riley would not say goodbye to her papa, my husband, for whatever reason. Sometimes, she just doesn't want to talk. I wanted to say, 'Riley, you are hurting Papa's feeling when you ignore him', but I didn't." Oh, I'm so glad you didn't, Debbie. "Instead, I asked her why, but as usual, she refused to answer. She's four years old, so what are your thoughts on teaching children this concept? I know I said, 'Papa loves you and it is respectful and nice to answer him.' Then, I let it go." Debbie, what you're asking me is how do you teach them the concept that they have the ability to hurt other people's feelings, and I would never agree that you should ever teach anyone that concept, especially a four year old.

We don't have the ability to hurt other people's feelings. The truth was Papa's feelings weren't hurt, were they? Did Papa get upset and have his feelings hurt because his four-year-old granddaughter did not say goodbye? My guess is that did not happen. Not only would it have been not a great things to teach her, but it probably would've been untrue. Because it's something we're programmed to do, teach, and know, we don't think about it that way. One of the things that we have to differentiate between is manners, teaching proper manners, why we have manners, why we acknowledge people when they speak to us and those sorts of things. The reasoning behind it is not because it'll hurt other people's feelings, because we're truly not that powerful. We put our napkin on our lap and we chew with our mouth closed, not because we don't want to hurt other people, but because we want to have nice manners in the world and show up in a way that is representative of who we want to be. What I would do is if you want to teach her to not ignore Papa when he's talking to her, you don't make the reason be because of Papa. You don't make the reason be because of Papa's feelings. You teach her how to acknowledge someone when they speak to you the exact same way that you would teach her to put her napkin on her lap.

The reason behind it doesn't have to be untrue, right? You can just say, "It's polite, it's nice, it's what we do. We acknowledge people when they speak to us." That is manners, that's good manners. Teaching her that is powerful. Sometimes, we teach something that I think goes beyond good manners, where we teach our children that they have to hug someone, even when they don't want to. We teach people that they have to say I love you back, even if they don't believe it. I don't know where you are on that spectrum, that's completely up to you of how you teach your children and your grandchildren how to behave. I think it's something that you should put some thoughtful effort into in deciding what you want to teach and why. What is the reason behind it? Is it for the sake of Riley? Is it for her sake? It's not for the sake of Papa, we don't need the four-year-old to take care of Papa, right? We need Riley to get everything she needs to have an amazing life. Give her all that foundation that she will then decide what to do with, but we have that programming now.
Remembering that she's four years old and you're teaching her manners, give her the reason behind everything that she does that empowers her, instead of disempowering her. If the reason why Riley talks to Papa is because she doesn't want to hurt Papa's feelings, that's going to end up being a false relationship where she's trying to manipulate Papa's feelings with her actions. If the reason she doesn't ignore Papa is because she wants to feel good about herself and because she wants to have good manners in her own life, and she wants to be respectful, especially as she gets older, that will be a very different intrinsic reason. Most importantly, Debbie, most importantly when somebody ignores Riley, she won't get her feelings hurt. She won't make it mean something about her, she'll make it mean something about them, probably that they don't have very good manners, which would be much more powerful than her feeling like they had the ability to hurt her feelings. Great question Debbie, thank you so much for asking it. Keep us updated on how that goes.

"Hi Brooke. I'm loving your podcast, and it's really rewarding to catch myself applying what I've learned in real life situations. Do you have any advice for feelings of envy or greed when others are successful, profiting by ripping off or being a little too inspired by your hard work? Your advice and teaching is changing my life, I cannot thank you enough for what you do." Let me make sure I understand your question, Jen. You're saying, "Do you have any advice for feelings of envy or greed..." My guess is you, Jen, are the one that is feeling envy and greed towards other people who are very successfully profiting by ripping off your hard work. First and foremost, let me remind you that all of your feelings come from your thinking. It sounds to me, if I'm reading your question correctly, and I apologize if I'm not, but if I'm reading your question correctly, you are applying your feelings to what other people are doing, and that's never the case. It's your feelings are being caused by what you're thinking about what others are doing.

My guess is they're ripping you off, it sounds like. Like you're working really hard, they're ripping you off, and they're becoming very successful. I'm going to tell you my theory on this, because it's something that comes up a lot for me in my industry and the work that I do. Then you can come up with your own theory. I create a lot of work in the world, and I put it out there very freely. Very often, very very often, people take my work, teach my work to other people, and charge money for that. Now if you are one of my coaches, you are licensed to do this, and you absolutely should do this, and you for sure have my blessing, and legally are in all ways able to do this. If you are not one of my coaches, if you haven't purchased a license by going through my training to use my stuff, you're literally doing this illegally. You're taking my work, and like you said, they're ripping it off and profiting from it.

Here's my theory on that: it's okay with me. It's totally okay with me. First of all, the alternative is it's not okay with me, and I'm going to go police these people. I'm going to spend my time chasing them down and yelling at them for teaching my material in the world. The reason why I do my work is to reduce suffering. When I say reduce suffering, I imagine myself when I was really struggling with my own weight. The amount of suffering I had was extreme. Often, when I'm having conversations with colleagues, and we talk about charitable contributions and the impact we want to have in the world, the conversation many times will go to people that are starving. People that are without homes, truly do not have the basic needs in life and are truly, physically suffering. Of course, my heart goes out to all of those people. My intention would be, of course, to help them in any way I can.

My main focus and my main priority is on people who have all their basic needs met, and in fact, more than all their basic needs met, and their emotional suffering is equal to, or sometimes worse, than those who don't have all their physical needs met. I think there's something to be said for people who are physically suffering because they have no food and shelter, or have no family. I think in some ways, that suffering makes more sense to someone who's having it than to someone who has all their basic needs met and it still truly, emotionally suffering.

If you look at someone who is starving to death because they literally don't have access to food, or someone who is starving to death because they are anorexic, I don't think you can compare the suffering as one being worse than the other. I think that they're different, and I think the woman that is suffering from anorexia, it's much more complicated suffering because there is food available. The solution is available, it's right there, and she's not taking it. It feels like a more complex problem to solve, and that may be why that's my focus and my interest.

We all have our focuses and the problems we want to solve. It's a long way around to say that I really have the intention of getting my work to as many people as possible. If my work gets to someone and helps alleviate their suffering through someone who stole my work and is sharing it and profiting off it, I'm okay with that. I really am. A lot of my friends, this makes them nuts. They get crazy about this, but I really do genuinely feel that way. I don't want to put any energy into chasing anyone down that is selling my stuff and profiting from it. And, in order for me to feel greed and envy because they've taken my work and are making more money off of it, that means that I am not doing as good of a job as they are.

Jen, this is the truth of the situation. If someone can take your work and profit on it more than you are profiting on it, you're not doing a good enough job on getting your work out into the world. That's just the truth, and that's probably why you're upset. That's probably why you're envious. They've taken your work, and they're able to profit more than you are with it, is what it sounds like. Here's the good news: if they can do that, then it's possible and you can do it, too. In fact, you can do it legally. You can do it with a pure heart, and you can do it from a place of abundance.

My suggestion to you, Jen, is not to worry about other people stealing your stuff. You can make that mean that your stuff is good, it's worth stealing. If nobody steals your stuff, if nobody rips you off online, it's because your stuff isn't good. If your stuff's any good and you put it out in the world, someone will steal it. As soon as someone steals your work for the first time, you're going to know, "Damn, I'm good." You can think about it that way. The second thing you can do is look at how they're putting it out into the world and profiting on it and know that that's a possibility for you. People are buying your work from them, so people want it.

Instead of feeling envious, greedy, judging them, or being upset with them, I would completely let them go and focus on what it is you want to create. How you want to profit and how successful you want to be. Then get your little butt to work doing that. Put all your energy into that, instead of brooding over what these other people are doing. I believe that everybody gets what they create in the world. If you create through stealing from somebody else, it will come back to you in ways that you can't even anticipate. If you create by hurting someone else, you will be hurt in ways that you can't even anticipate. If you create from a place of pure abundance, pure job, and absolute dedication to helping and giving people in the world, it will come back to you in ways that you can't even imagine. Jen, you have a lot of hard work, you have a lot of great stuff in the world. Be proud of that, focus on that. High-five yourself for that, then move on and see what else you can create and how much harder you can work.

Here's the thing: the benefit of hard work is feeling proud of yourself, and you deserve that, right? You've been working hard, you deserve to feel proud of yourself. The last thing you deserve is to feel envious or greedy. Own your work. Forget about everyone else and what they're doing in the world, that's really not your business. Even if they're stealing your stuff, you can chase them down and put your energy into that. Or, you can put your energy into creating even more amazing stealable work in the world, and that would be my recommendation.

"Hi Brooke. I love your podcast, cannot tell you how much your work has touched my life. As insightful as all of your podcasts and resources are, I have one area that I'm dealing with that I'm having a hard time with: grief. How can I help walk myself, and potentially others, through these difficult feelings and reactions surrounding losing loved ones? For some reason, apply the model, which makes sense, doesn't seem to help. I'm at a loss."

Love this question, Valerie, because it's so important and it brings up a really important point when it comes to the model. I think there is an assumption when I teach this work, and I know it's an assumption because I do not teach this, is that the goal is to get out of negative emotion as soon as possible. An emotion like grief is one of those emotions that when we resist it, when we ignore it, when we react to it, it persists. It's something that we have a hard time healing from.

Grief, in and of itself, is a very clean emotion that offers healing. It's one of the most beautiful emotions because can you imagine if when someone very close to us died, we didn't experience grief? It would be awful. Can you imagine? You're like, "Yeah, my husband died yesterday. What's for lunch?" It would be awful. I think that there is an expectation that we get to experience grief when someone dies, and that it heals us. It allows us to get to the other side of it.

What a lot of people do when they struggle with grief is they reject it. They try to push it away. Or, what they're really experiencing is something that isn't grief that they're calling grief, which may be regret, resentment, frustration, or anger. First and foremost, Valerie, what I would suggest that you do is you really look at what is genuinely causing the grief. It's easy to say the person's death is causing the grief, but that is not the case. What is causing the grief, and what causing all emotions, is what we think. That's not to say we should change what we're thinking so we don't experience grief. If my husband, child, or animal were to die, I would want to experience grief. I would embrace it, and I would allow it to be there for as long as it could be there. The thought that I would be having is, "I will miss their presence in my life, I can't imagine what my life will be like without them." That creates genuine grief, where we can really go through the process of experiencing it.

Other thoughts may be, "I should've done something." "I should've made it different so they didn't die." "I should've said something to them before they died." Or, "I should've had a different relationship with them." Or, "I won't be able to function without them." Or, "I'm not good enough to handle this." That isn't grief. Those thoughts that are attached to that situation are not thoughts of grief. They're thoughts of something else that you may be calling grief. You want to make sure you separate those things out. When you experience pure grief, when you allow it in and when you are present with it, you don't need help with it. When people resist grief and struggle with grief, that's when they need help. They don't need help when they're feeling it. They need help when they can't. They need help when they're mired in other emotions. Separate those out, and I think it will become very clear to you how the model is a beautiful reflection of grief, and that there are models that don't need changing right away.
Eventually, I think about the latest grieving that I did was for my dog, Zorro, who passed away. He was a dog we'd had for 16 years. There was so much grief, but it was beautiful. There wasn't a lot of resistance around it, and there wasn't a lot of ugly thoughts around it. It was all just beautiful. We still grieve for him, and we still talk about him, and it brings up tears. Even just now, when I mentioned his name, I felt the tears come to my eyes. That's a beautiful thing, that's not something that I think has gone wrong. I think that's something that's gone beautifully right.

"Brooke, I've been enjoying your podcast. Who wouldn't?" Thank you. "I absolutely love what you have to bring, the value is incredible. Thank you for your time, encouragement, inspiration, professionalism, and transparency. I love your adoration for your husband, it sounds like we married a similar caliber of man." Oh my God, can we just stop for a second and gush over Chris, my husband, for just a minute? I was thinking about this today.

Yesterday, I made a huge pan of mushrooms, love mushrooms. I cooked them, and Chris had brought home a pizza for the kids. I had left some of the mushrooms in the pan for him, in case he was going to want some. I wasn't sure what he was going to bring for dinner. I notice, when he got home, that he just had pizza. He wasn't going to eat those mushrooms, then I totally forgot about the pan. I went to bed. I woke up in the morning and he had cleaned the pan, cleaned the counters, and taken care of everything in the kitchen without even mentioning it to me. Without saying, "Hey, you know you left your pan with all the mushrooms in it." It never even occurred to him to bring that to my attention, and to let me know what he had done for me. I find that astonishing. That's not how I am. I would be like, "Yo, you left your pan. I cleaned it, where's my standing ovation?" It's so funny how different we are, he's just such an amazing good person. I know that I'm a good person, I'm just a good person in a very different way.

I so admire his selfless giving. Really genuinely from his heart, where he doesn't need acknowledgement or credit. I could've totally easily forgotten about that and never would've even acknowledged him, noticed it, or whatever. I just told him I think that you're just an amazing person, and I love that about him. Anyway, yes Jackie, I am obsessed with my husband. He genuinely is the best person I know. "I have a few questions and show ideas for you. First, I'd love to know your take on the system Isogenics for Weight Loss and Overall Lifestyle. What have you seen from the people that you coach?" I do know a little bit about Isogenics, I do have some of my coaches who sell Isogenics. I do have some commentary on it because my husband did it, and I'm always making ... So funny, I'm always having Chris test things for me. Initially, when one of my coaches had had me check it out, it's not in-line with what I teach, so it wasn't something that I felt like I could, or even wanted. Not that I couldn't, but I didn't want to integrate it in.

My husband did go on Isogenics Cleanse and he did lose a lot of weight. It's a very challenging cleanse, there's a lot more to it that I don't understand. You don't have to just do their cleanse, but I think it was a 15-day cleanse. He went on it, lost a significant amount of weight, and kept it off for a good amount of time. Then, he did it again and it wasn't as successful the second time. He lost just a little bit of weight and wasn't able to keep it off. I will say that you have shakes on Isogenics that he enjoyed, then there was some other stuff that you had to drink that he didn't enjoy. One of the things that I want to add and say is that I think if you want to give your body a break from eating and go on a "cleanse", I highly recommend that you do intermittent fasting. If doing that is easier for you when you're on Isogenics, then I say check it out. I think it's a great company. I love my students that work for them. They go nuts about it. They think it's the best thing ever. That's about the extent of my knowledge, when it comes to Isogenics. My approach is not to rely on an external product, but to create your own protocol from within. Those are my thoughts on Isogenics.

"Second, a show idea. Maybe I'm missing it, as I haven't listen to all your podcasts yet, but could you address how to break a habit, any habit?" Ooo, good question. "And include how you help your elementary children do the same? Maybe it's a habit of chewing your nails, picking your nose, exaggerating, lying, cussing, laziness, et cetera. You're a rock star, maybe I'll see you in one of your classes."

Yes Jackie, you should come to one of my classes. Let's do this! Hey, I have a class coming up February 5th, it's going to be live. The price is ridiculously low to come hang with me for a day. It's the last time I will offer anything like this. Jackie, come meet me. Let's talk about this.

Let's talk about habits, just briefly. A habit is just a model that you have done so many times that is has become unconscious and effortless. It's a thought, feeling, action that you have done so many times, you've repeated it so many times that it has become effortless.

Here are the steps to breaking a habit: number one, you have to become aware of your subconscious model, which is easier said than done because it's something that you've done so often, you may not even recognize it as a model. Think about the thing that you're doing, let's say it's nail-biting. That would be in your action line. You have to find your thought/feeling combination that causes you to bite your nails and you have to bring it into consciousness from your unconscious patterning. That's step one, you have to be aware of it.

Step two is you have to decide what it is you want to do instead of biting your nails, which it may simply be not biting your nails. What is the difference between those two models? What is the thought/feeling/action pattern that's different than where you're starting?

Then, in between those two models is going to be change. That's the process of change, which will be uncomfortable and unfamiliar. As long as you're willing to stay in that space and practice and rehearse your new model long enough, you will be able to release the old patterning and open up the new patterning. I am actually going to be doing upcoming podcasts, probably three podcasts, on this in the future. It's a brilliant show idea, we must be connected in some way, and I will be breaking it down in detail. Really, the key is to change your unconscious thinking, your unconscious patterning, in order to create something new that, at first, will not be effortless. The more effort you put into changing it, the more effortless it will become.

Remember, your brain wants to be efficient. It wants to take your action patterns, it wants to take your models and make them subconscious, and that's when we have a habit. Great questions, thank you so much, Jackie.
All right, you guys. There are some more questions that I haven't answered, but we have gone so long into this podcast, I'm going to do ahead and end it here. If you asked a question and I didn't answer it, it will for sure be on the next Q&A, so look out for that one. You guys, have a ridiculously amazing week. I will be in training all week and I'll tell you all about it next time we talk. All right everybody, have a great one. Talk to you later, bye bye.

Thank you for listening to the Life Coach School podcast. It is my honor to show up here every week and connect with people that are like-minded, wanting to take their life to a deep level with more awareness and more consciousness. If you are interested in taking this work to the next level, I highly encourage you to go to thelifecoachschool.com/howtofeelbetteronline. It is there that I have a class that will take all of this to a deeper application, where you'll be able to really feel and experience how all of these concepts can start showing up in your life. It's one thing to learn in intellectually, it's another thing to truly apply it to your life. I will see you there. Thanks again for listening.