Ep #193: What I Teach and Why

Welcome to The Life Coach School podcast, where it’s all about real clients, real problems, and real coaching. And now your host, Master Coach Instructor, Brooke Castillo.

Hello, my friends. What's happening? Oh my god, so good, right? Everything is so good. Or not. I know some of you are like, "Listen, I don't want to hear you say happy things right now, Brooke. I'm mad, I'm angry, that's why I'm listening to your podcast to make me feel better."

I hear you. I totally hear you. So this podcast is going to be fun. I'm going to talk to you all about what I teach and why I teach it because as this year comes to an end, it's a great time for me to kind of re-evaluate my contribution and my energy moving forward. What is my legacy? What is it that I'm going to teach?

I had like this crazy thought the other day and you guys should all think about this because this is crazy. That when I die, there is going to be such a record of me teaching. Right? Like, I would give anything to be able to watch videos of my great grandfather teaching my grandfather who was the one that was an entrepreneur life. And my kids’ kids’ kids’ kids’ can watch a video of me. I mean, endless hours of video of me teaching. That makes me so happy.

We are in the process of doing some estate planning, which of course everyone should do. It's very important, and typically when you go to an attorney to do an estate plan, they have you - I mean, obviously, they want you to write a will and talk about like who's going to get what in terms of money and houses and stuff like that. So that's important. And it's very important to have a will and a trust so that all of your stuff doesn't go through probate and the government decides on it or people fight over it or whatever.

And this is true - I want to say this you guys, this is true if you have a little, tiny bit of money, or a lot of money. It doesn't matter. It's a gift that you give to the people who are left behind to have a really clear direction on how your money should be allocated. And I have to say this, my brother passed you know, when he was in his 30s, early 30s, and he had a will and it was all very clear and it was just such a relief to have it be not negotiable. It was perfect because he was married and had a wife and he had a trust and the way that he wanted his money to be allocated was really clear. So really, really, really important.

So, but we're going through this process, one of the things that they teach at the Wealth Factory and it's such a nod to Garrett Gunderson about this is he talks about how important it is to not just leave money to people and to your kids and to their kids, but to leave knowledge and to leave wisdom and to leave stories.

And so I've been thinking a lot about this, like why do I teach what I teach, and will my great great great grandkids be able to watch it and glean something from it? And it's really kind of a miraculous thing to believe and know that what I'm teaching my students, what I'm teaching in the world is what I want my great great great grandkids to know.

I'm picturing my - let's do four greats, right, my great great great great granddaughter is going to be nineteen years old and she's going to be struggling with something, and I want her to be able to watch any of my videos on any of the topics that I teach and be like, "Dang, grandma Brooke, she knew what was up."

Right? Isn't that fun to think about? And so when I approach my work and my contribution from a legacy point of view and what I wish I would have known when I was eighteen and how cool it is for me to be able to teach that to my great grandkids is awesome, right? All the videos and all the audios and all the podcasts. They want to listen to me.

I mean, wouldn't that be cool, you guys? Think about this. Wouldn't it be cool if you could listen to your great great great grandfather or grandmother talking on a podcast for hours, and just get to know her and what she believed and what she was doing in her life? Isn't that amazing? Like I'm going to be gone, long gone and they're going to be able to be like, "She used to have these dogs that she talked to all the time." And like, I'm going to be gone, and you guys are all going to be gone, right? So our relationship they will learn from, and they will learn from you know, how I talk to you guys and the feedback that you give me and the courses that we all do together. Kind of cool, right?

So that's what the topic of this podcast is. I want to talk to you about why I teach what I teach. What I teach specifically, the topics that I teach and why I teach them. In the meantime, both of my dogs are like giving themselves baths. I know you guys can't hear them, but it's funny, it's distracting. We got to leave that in, you guys got to know what's going on with the puppies.

Okay, so in my work life, I'm a teacher and a coach. And I feel very compelled to make sure I teach the things that have impacted me the most. And here are those things. The first thing is the importance of mental health. I think it is the most important thing that any of us can spend our time and our money on. I believe in coaching, I believe in hiring coaches, I believe in therapy when it's needed, I believe in mental health being the most important thing.

Without your mental health, you are not going to be able to create the life of your dreams, and I think creating the life of your dreams is important because I think your dreams are important. Really important. So if I was going to teach that to my grandkids, if I was going to teach it to you, this is what I would say. The most important investment of time that you will make each day is in making sure that you have solid awesome mental health. Period.

The second thing that I teach, the second most important thing is the model. And I want to be clear that I created the model in its current form and as a tool as the way that we use it, but the model isn't something that I created. So it's kind of like there are ways to measure gravity, and there are people that create tools to measure gravity, but they didn't create gravity, right? And so when people say to me, "Hey, the model is just like this other thing." I'm like, "Well, yes, obviously, because it's the truth of how the world works."

So my tool, of course, is going to be just like another tool, which is just like another tool, because it's all the same teaching about the world. I created my tool in a way that's easy for me to use and understand, but I didn't create the idea that thoughts create feelings. Thoughts just do create feelings. Feelings just do drive our actions. I didn't make that up. That is just how it works in the world. I just put it in a way that's visual that you can understand in a tool that you can use.

So I want that to be really clear because when people say to me, "Hey, someone stole the model" or "It looks like someone else is using it", for me it's like, well, the model is the way everything works. So you can't steal gravity. You can't steal the concept of gravity, right? So it's like when someone says, "This is what gravity is", you don't say, "Well this other person's describing it just the same way you are." Well, yes, because gravity is gravity.

So I think it's really interesting that you know, people want - are like really worried about my Self-Coaching 101 books because I say share it with everyone because like, what if someone steals your idea? It's like, it's not my idea. It's not. It's the idea. We're just all interpreting it in a different way. We're all using the tool in a different way, but it is the truth of how the world works, that's why I feel so confident with it.

So I think everyone should learn the model, and when I say that, I mean the lessons of the model. It doesn't have to be the exact model the way I teach it, although I think it's the easiest way to learn it, there are many teachers that teach it in very different ways that are teaching the exact same thing.

The third thing I teach is emotional management and maturity. And what I mean by that is that you take full responsibility for all of your own feelings because you truly understand that your thoughts cause your feelings. When you get a hold of that, then you start taking responsibility for your life that you get all of your power back, and that's when you really start making magic. Because when you're responsible for everything, you don't get banged around by life. You don't have a victim mentality. You don't blame other people and give all your power away.

So when you can learn how to process and manage your own emotions, you are so far ahead of any reactive kind of life and when you can step into emotional maturity and take responsibility for it, there's nothing you can't do, because the worse that can happen is a feeling. That's the worse that can happen.

The next thing I teach are about relationships because our relationships with other people are so important, but so is our relationship with our self, because our relationship with our self determines our relationship with other people. There's three main topics I teach within relationships. One of them is boundaries. It's so important to be able to set up boundaries with people and a boundary is not controlling someone else, a boundary is controlling you and yourself and what you will or won't do when other people are allowed to be and do what they are. That's so key. Setting boundaries prevents resentment. Setting boundaries allows you to love someone without trying to control them.

The second one is manuals. I have this concept that so many of us have manuals for how we want other people to behave, we have manuals for what we want them to do so we can be happy, and in doing so we give all of our power away, and people never follow our manuals. Terrible at following our manuals. I don't know why, it's very clear exactly how I want you to live your life so I can be happy, I don't know why you're not following it.

And then I teach - the third concept I teach is unconditional love, and I teach that love is something that we do for ourselves, and that everybody is always 100% lovable. There is no one that is more lovable than another person, and lovability is determined by the lover, not the loved. When you get that, there's no one you won't be willing to love, especially yourself.

The next thing that I teach about are belief systems. I think this is a huge, huge, huge area of progress but also a lot of opportunity. So many of us think that our thoughts that we have in our brain that we've thought over and over and over again are just true. We don't know how to question our own thinking because we're so familiar and we're so ingrained with believing our beliefs. And I think this is one of the problems with people that are raised with prejudice or people that are raised with low self-esteem, or people that are raised to be limited. The most important thing we can do I think with any kind of social issue is to help people think in bigger ways, to help people believe in themselves, in their capacity and their capability, and to believe things that feel good and serve us is our birthright.

People can do stuff to you, people can hurt you, but nobody can tell you what you can believe. And when I say people can hurt you, I mean people can hurt you physically, people can abuse you, all of that, but nobody can get into your brain and tell you what you can or can't believe. That is the most powerful thing I can ever tell you. Someone can tell you that you're a terrible person and that you're worthless, but only you have the power to decide whether to believe it or not. That is our most powerful stance. Someone can say to you that you're not good enough, someone can say to you that you're not as valuable as somebody else, someone could say that you don't have the opportunity that other people have, you can't do something, and you can listen to them but you don't have to believe them. They cannot make you believe them. Isn't that amazing?

The next thing I teach is time management. This is something we spend a lot of time in Scholars because people don't know how to use their 24 hours in a way that serves them, and the key to managing your time is managing your mind, of course. People think they need to manage their calendars better but what they really need to do is manage their mind better, and I think using the concept of time to get ahold of your mind is really powerful. When you see that model at work as it comes to what you are able to produce in a 24-hour period, you will start to understand the power that you have. You are incredibly powerful as it applies to your mind.

The next thing I teach is money management. And I love money and I love talking about money and I love making money and I love giving money away and I love that money can solve so many problems. Somebody said, "Money can't solve problems." I said, "If you're in a job that is abusive to you, money solves that problem immediately. You don't ever have to stay in a job. You don't have to stay in a job anyway that's abusive, but money solves it. Money prevents you from ever having to do something like that." I love that we can create money, and for me, money is really just an indicator of where my brain is at. How powerful am I living?

I've told this story before where someone said, "Well if that model works so well, why don't you go make a million dollars?" I'm like, "Hey, not a bad idea." Let me just show the effect of that model, and money really is a result that we can create that really does prove the effect of our thinking. My goal is to be an example of what is possible and I try and do that in many ways. I try to do that in the way I show up in the world and what I teach and who I am and not drinking and not overeating, all of those things, but I think the most significant indicator for many people who are watching me and learning for me is the amount of money that I'm able to produce. And so why not? Super fun. Super fun to go in the world and play with money as an effect of thinking. I love it, that's what the law of attraction is all about. Just don't skip the action part.

The next thing I teach are outcomes and goal setting. I teach outcomes because it's so important for us to give our brain something to focus on and something to work towards. Your brain is the hardware and when you put a program in there of software, that's what it works on. So you can put whatever you want in there but your brain's going to be working. It's the most powerful tool that you have. When you create an outcome and a goal for it to work towards, it does it. It does do that. It just needs direction.

If your brain doesn't have direction it's like a toddler with a knife. Very innocently causing lots of trouble. When you give it a goal to focus on it goes to work for you. It's like a paid employee that's like A player, always serving. The other piece of outcomes and goals that I think is really amazing is when you focus on an outcome, when you focus on a goal, you can ask yourself to become more of who you are. When you set a goal that stretches you, that requires you to change your capacity and your ability, then you really are able to I think, enjoy the experience of being alive more because you get to experience more facets of who you are at different levels.

I teach the concept of taking massive action and what that means is you take action until you get the result you want. You don’t take action until you exhaust yourself into a heap of tears and overwhelm. That's not what massive action is. Massive action doesn't mean you burn yourself out or work yourself to the bone. Massive action means that you take action despite being very uncomfortable. You take action despite your doubt and fear. You keep taking action to get the results that you want in your life.

I teach about purpose and contribution. I think a lot of people prevent themselves from living the life that they could be living because they're waiting until their purpose becomes clear, and I think the way your purpose in life becomes clear is by following every little desire all the way to that main purpose. For some of you, your purpose won't be clear until you're looking back at it. But don't prevent yourself from living a life of purpose because you're waiting for some significant venue to do it. You can live a life of purpose every single day.

I teach a lot about contribution. I teach a lot about creating value in the world because we all have the ability to create that value and to receive that value in the world, and I think that's the game of being human, right? That's what makes it super fun. Think about this. All value, all inventions, all creations came from someone's brain. When I look out my window here I see like two trucks and I see a brick house and I see a play structure and I see a trampoline and I see beautifully manicured grass and a paved road. All of those things came from a human brain, creating value in the world.

And if you think about all of the value that has been created that we get to enjoy, like we get to enjoy houses because of our ancestors thinking first of making fire and then thinking of construction, all the way through. There's the people that were here just hundreds of years ago, thousands, right? So think about the brain being able to create and produce, and I think that is an important purpose to just remember. Like what can your brain create and produce? Maybe it's a little thing, maybe it's a huge thing. But as long as you're producing, you're going to feel much more alive than when you aren't.

I teach about eliminating buffering. I think this is one of the most important things that I can teach because I think we live in a society right now where our brain hasn't caught up, our brain is still functioning in a seek pleasure, avoid pain mentality, and there's way too much pleasure to be sought and found here. And I think it stalls us out and prevents us from contributing, from living a live of purpose because we are thought looping on false pleasures. And so buffering is where we use false pleasure to disconnect from our consciousness and to not contribute, to not produce.

And so two of the main focuses that I focus on when it comes to buffering are stop overdrinking and stop overeating. I teach a way of not drinking as much as will have a net negative consequence for you, and I also teach to stop overeating in the same way. Stop using food and alcohol and drugs as a way to escape into false pleasure instead of learning how to process emotion and use your human experience of negative emotion to create value in the world.

It's very tempting to buffer. Believe me, I've been there. I went through with an overeating issue, I went through the overdrinking issue. I totally get it. But I want to offer that when you eliminate those things from your life in a way that isn't controlled by willpower, but in a way that actually eliminates the desire for buffering, you start to live a life that is so much more pleasurable and sustainable pleasure.

And the last thing that I teach is entrepreneurship, and that's kind of by default, and I feel like I teach entrepreneurship by the way that I build my business and in the way that I run my business. I think people learn by my example, but I also teach it within Scholars and I also teach it in my certification program. I think being an entrepreneur is the most amazing opportunity and privilege that many of us have, and I think it's the deepest self-growth experience any of us have. You are your employer and you are your employee and that relationship between yourself and yourself is probably one of the most challenging relationships you'll have. But if you can figure it out, it's also the most rewarding. To be able to create something of value and to benefit from it and to be able to offer jobs to people and to offer experiences to your customers that change their life, there's nothing better. In my opinion, nothing better.

Entrepreneurship has a measuring stick of money, which is fine, but that's just the indicator. Money is just the indicator of how you're thinking and what you're creating and what you're doing. It isn't the reason to do it. It's just part of it.

So here's what I want you to do. If you're in Scholars, I think it's important that you understand all these things that I teach so you can really know that this is what I'm offering to you and learn it all in the deepest way possible. And if you're not in Scholars, what's great about all of these topics is that there's a podcast within one of these 200 podcasts, there's one where I have taught this concept and you can learn more about it. And most importantly, I hope you'll apply what I teach you because I think if you can get these things that I teach, if you can get your head wrapped around them and apply them in your life, you're going to be able to live much more accelerated life and much more exciting life than without them.

So that is pretty much the legacy that I'm going to leave to my great great great great granddaughter and my great great great grandson, and I really do hope that they will listen to these podcasts and apply this stuff that I'm teaching because I think it will accelerate their lives. I've spent you know, 25 years figuring this stuff out. They can learn it in a couple hours listening to me in a podcast, and I think that's what human ingenuity is, right? It's we don't have to go and create the wheel again in order to have a car. All that stuff's already been created and we just are building on it.

And for me, I want to make sure that we do that with mental health. I want to make sure that through the rest of my lifetime I am just building on the knowledge and deepening the knowledge and applying the knowledge that we already have about mental health, because I feel like the opportunity to learn even more, to be able to live a human life in a way that isn't filled with unnecessary suffering. That is what I most want to teach.

I hope you guys have a beautiful week. I'll talk to you next week. Bye-bye.

Hey, if you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out Self-Coaching Scholars. It's my monthly coaching program where we take all this material and we apply it. We take it to the next level and we study it. Join me over at the TheLifeCoachSchool.com/join. Make sure you type in the TheLifeCoachSchool.com/join. I'd love to have you join me in Self-Coaching Scholars. See you there.