Ep #225: Thoughts to Believe

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. How are you guys today? I am so excited. So starting tomorrow and going for like, the next five days, it's like game on around here. So we are doing our quarterly team meeting tomorrow at our office, then I'm going to do a whole day of masterminding with my coaches. We do our certified coach mastermind once a year, totally excited about that. That's actually two days. I speak for one day and then some of my coaches from my millionaire mentoring are going to speak the second day.

Then I'm going to do my millionaire mentoring day with those coaches that I'm working with who are all working on the two commas, trying to make it to a million dollars and getting very, very close, most of them, and then the next day I do master coach training. So it is game on, my friends.

So I am super excited. I just talked to my team in our team meeting and everyone's jumping on a plane to get over here so I can't wait. Can't wait to see them. So fun. I love spending a day planning the next quarter and talking about what we've accomplished so far in this quarter.

So today I'm going to talk to you about 10 new thoughts to believe and one of the tools that I've been working on a lot lately is how to believe something you don't yet believe. And I'm always talking about the first step to doing that is always becoming aware of what you already believe. Before you can start believing new things and thinking new thoughts and practicing new thoughts, it's important to understand what is your brain already thinking.

So if you think that - you remember, your brain likes to be efficient. It doesn't like to think new things. That takes a lot of energy. It likes to think things it's already thought before because it has those super highways. Your brain doesn't judge between thoughts that are positive and wonderful and lovely. Your brain wants thoughts that are familiar.

And so it doesn't filter it out. It just says, well, we've thought that a lot so let's keep thinking it. And the thought may be "you're not good enough", the thought may be "you can't grow, you can't lose weight, you can't stop drinking." It may be something like "you're never going to amount to anything." Any thought that maybe you were introduced to as a young child, you may have been thinking for years and years and years and you may not even realize that it's a thought. You may think that it's just an observation. You may think that it's just "reality."

So the first thing you want to do is really become aware of those thoughts that you're thinking and then you want to practice on purpose thinking new thoughts that will serve you. A lot of people ask me what are the thoughts that I practice, what are the thoughts that I believe, and I expose you to a lot of those thoughts on the podcast, but I'm going to expose you to 10 more today. 10 new thoughts to believe, and some of them will be a review for those of you who have been listening to the podcast for a long time.

And a review is good, especially when it's thoughts that you want to believe. And for some of you, this may be brand new. So I'll go through and tell you what the thoughts are and then I'll give you a little bit of background on why I think they're very useful to believe.

Thought number one is you are 100% lovable. Your lovability is infinite. It is at 100. So here's what I want you to know: when love is involved, there is the feeling of love and then there is the "object" of love. But lovability depends on the person loving. And that goes both ways. So how much I love you does not depend on you. It depends on my capacity to love.

My capacity to love you will determine how loveable you are for me. Now, what is beautiful about this is there is nothing that you can do or not do that will make you more loveable. The only thing that makes you more loveable is me increasing my capacity to love you. That being said, if you are incredibly loveable, that doesn't mean that you will feel the love that I am feeling for you.

So here's how it works: your lovability depends on my capacity to love you. If my capacity to love you is huge, then I get to feel super loving all the time. You don't get to feel my love. You can only feel your love. You can only feel the expression of your own mind believing in love and then feeling that.

So the thought, "I am 100% loveable at all times," is an invitation for you to increase your capacity to love yourself. If your lovability is infinite, then your capacity to love yourself can be infinite as well. And when you learn how to love yourself at the highest level, then you are able to transfer that experience to everyone else around you. Most of us have the hardest time loving ourselves. You find other people easier to love. We love movie stars more than we love ourselves, some of us.

So the work that you do to increase your own capacity to love yourself is made much easier when you recognize that you are 100% loveable and there is nothing you can do or be or say that will make you more worthy of love. Period. You are already completely 100% loveable no matter anything you've ever done, anything you've ever said. None of that has diminished any part of your lovability, no matter what anyone has said to you or done to you has never touched your lovability. It's always been the minute you were born, 100%. And it will always be 100%.

Number two, a great life is determined by the amazing goals you commit to, not necessarily achieve. What? This is a new one that has really rocked my world that I want to invite you to consider. I have recently set this huge amazing financial goal for myself, which is to make $100 million in one year, and ever since I set this goal, my life has improved tremendously. It has exploded and expanded in so many amazing ways.

And what I have realized and what I've been trying to teach my clients to realize is that our imagination and our potential and our anticipation are what determine how amazing we feel about our life. Our belief in what is great already and our belief in what we can create and in what the future holds is what makes our present moment thrilling, exciting. It's what makes us anticipate the greatness and the amazingness of our life.

So many of us think what makes our life amazing is the circumstances of our life, it's what's happening, it's how much money we have, it's our relationships, it's our children. But really, what makes our life amazing is what we think about. And when we think about an amazing future, when we think about our life becoming and being even better than it is now, from a place of abundance, we get to create that experience now.

And so, don’t wait until you achieve your goals to experience the effect of them. The effect of your goals is experienced when you set them, not when you achieve them. When you commit to them, when you believe in them, that's when the magic starts to happen.

I often use the example of Christmas. Christmas feels amazing before Christmas comes. The anticipation of Christmas, the anticipation of the present is often where the magic is. Not in the opening of the present, not in the playing with the toy. But in the imagining what it will be like, in the trying to close your eyes before you go to bed the night before Christmas. That's where the magic is. And that's what's true for all of us in the goals that we commit to, not necessarily that we achieve.

Number three, money is awesome. That's a hard one for a lot of people, and a lot of times you'll hear me talk about the thought, I love money. A lot of my students have a hard time with that one because of the biblical reference of it, so I switched it to money is awesome because money is awesome. Money can solve so many problems. I love the way Dan Sullivan says if money can solve the problem, you no longer have a problem if you have the money to solve it. It's so true. I will tell you that money solves so many time problems, when you can hire people to help you. Time is our most valuable asset and money is second, and money can buy us time.

Money is awesome. The more you think that thought, the more you will attract it, the more your relationship with it will improve, the more excited you'll be with the money that you have, and the more money you'll actually keep instead of spending. Money's awesome, you don't have to get rid of it right away to buy some stuff. You can actually just let the money be in your presence because it is awesome.

Number four, the discomfort of growth is always better than the discomfort of stagnation. Here's the thing - and I've taught you guys this. Life is 50/50. So the most happiest person in the entire world still has the balance between their happiness and their sadness, their creativeness and their boredom, right? So if you're going to feel uncomfortable 50% of the time, you can either feel uncomfortable growing or you can feel uncomfortable stagnating.

And I would say that when people say well, why do you have to choose, you don't. I guess you do have to choose. You either choose not to do anything. I think it just changes the flavor of discomfort so it's not just rinse and repeat, the same discomfort that you feel every day. You get to actually feel it on a different level and have a different experience of it, which is more novel and exciting for most of us.

But the real reason why the discomfort is better, in my opinion, is because it keeps us evolving, it keeps us moving forward, and I think when we are living in alignment with the purpose of our life, it is and has always been to evolve and grow. And so there's something very right about growth, there's something very right about change and becoming the better best version of ourselves. And if staying the same - it's not like, oh, I'm going to grow and that will be uncomfortable, or I'm going to stay here and be comfortable.

No, it's not like that. You can stay there and be familiar but there will always be the discomfort of not following that urge inside of you to become more. There is their own flavor of discomfort from that. Otherwise, none of us would do anything, right? We'd all just sit safe in the cave, we'd never come out, we never would have built a house because we'd just be comfortable in our lack of growth, and there's a reason why our human instinct is to grow, to leave, to move, to create. And when we honor that, we feel more alive, in my opinion.

Number five, adults are allowed to behave how they want. This doesn't mean you have to like it. Doesn't mean they won't go to jail, doesn't mean there won't be consequences. But the way that this world is set up is we're allowed to do whatever we want, and you think about that in a way that serves you, in the sense that you can do whatever it is you want with your life, but the way that I mean it here is stop trying to control other people because they're allowed to do what they want to do.

They are allowed to behave how they want to behave. You can make suggestions, you can make requests, but ultimately, the decision is theirs. And knowing that will set you free, will send you into some acceptance. You won't feel responsible for how other people think, feel, or behave anymore. You can only be responsible for yourself and only be in control of yourself.

And when you recognize that most people do what they're doing to do and we can't change them and they won't comply and they won't follow our manuals, we can feel so much more free. Knowing that they get to be and do whatever they want, then what? Adults are allowed to behave how they want.

Number six, your spouse's only job is to be there for you to love. They are the object of your love. And I see this so clearly with my puppies. My expectation of them is just to be there so I can kiss them. Just be there so I can love them. Be there so I can grab them unexpectedly and kiss them all over their heads whether they like it or not. That is their job. I always tell my dogs, I'm like, "Listen, I purchased you so I could love you, now you're just going to have to suffer through it."

And when you can think about your spouse that way, it just sets you free. Their only job is to be who they are. Their only job is to provide you an opportunity to love. To love deeply and madly. To find your way to love. To work through all the issues that prevent you from loving. And if you can think about your husband that way, or you can think about your wife that way, you will have such a wonderful experience of being married.

People say to me all the time, "Well, I would love my husband all the time if I was married to Chris," and these are people that don't know Chris. Their only experience of Chris is my explanation of him, or my thoughts about him, is my story that I tell about him. The story that I tell about him makes people fall in love with him because it's a good story. It's a story I tell myself that makes me fall in love with him.

And I'll tell you what, it's really easy lately. He went to Nordstrom and got a personal shopper, a person that helps you like, get all your clothes. And I told him, I'm like, "You should be a little bit fancy as the owner of The Life Coach School." So he's like, "I'm in, I'm going to Nordstrom." And they helped him get all these clothes and oh my god, every morning he comes out of the bedroom like, dressed for work, I'm like, "Damn. He is so freaking cute."

And he's just such an amazing man, such a good man, and I just love him so much. And I think about how blessed I am to be able to experience that emotion of love all of the time because he's here. As most of you guys know, I suffer with crazy anxiety and my kids recently went with their dad on a camping trip and they were out of cellphone range for four days, and my brain conjured up some very elaborate stories about how they had all been eaten by bears and were never coming back.

And I remember thinking about Chris, of course, my children, and thinking about how much I love them, and how when they're here, when I look at them, I get to think about how much I love them all of the time. And the thought of not having them in my life like, really renewed my commitment to loving them even harder and to experiencing that love that I have for them even more.

And so his only job is just to show up and let me love him. Now, he would say that we often give him a hard time and use him to make jokes and laugh hysterically because - I'll give you an example. Chris told us - my boys both grew out their hair very long, and he had heard from a hairdresser one time that when you cut your hair, it makes it grow faster. And so we are relentless in bringing that up to him and talking to him about how cutting your hair makes it grow faster and how the shorter you cut it the faster, the longer it gets.

So he would say that he feels like that's his job is to provide us with entertainment, which we would totally agree is true as well, but we all three, me, and Connor, and Christian love their dad madly. He's the best.

Number seven, you create your experience, it doesn't happen to you. This is hard for most of us, right? We walk around talking about what our bad day is and how we've had such a terrible life and how our experience at a certain place was terrible, but really, whenever that goes on through my head, whenever I have a judgment of an experience or a situation as negative, it's so easy to get wrapped up in feeling at the effect of that experience, and just to always remind myself that no matter what happens in the C line, I create my experience.

I can make it worse, I can make it better, I can make it horrible. Once the boys got out of camping and I realized that they had not been eaten by bears, I was very relieved and excited and I told them so, and then the next day Chris called me in the morning and said - like, really early and said, "Hey, we've been in the emergency room all night. I've been in the emergency room with Christian."

And immediately my brain went, "See, I told you, everybody's going to die." And Christian had been in the emergency room and they thought he might have meningitis, and he was really, really sick and he had a really bad fever and they were trying to do a spinal tap and they were unable to do it. It was causing him so much pain and they didn't know what to do with him and his throat was closing up.

Anyway, so Chris said he had to go and talk to the doctor and hung up the phone. And I decided at that moment that he just had the flu. I just made a decision. Now, people would say that's delusional, that's illogical, you didn't know that that was true. But here's what I decided: I decided that I didn't want to be in I don't know energy because I don't know energy creates fear and confusion.

So I was going to decide that he had the flu until I was told otherwise because they said that his right leg was going numb, and that's why they thought he had the meningitis because of the swelling in the brain. But I decided that was not a symptom of meningitis, that it was a symptom of the flu and that he had the flu, and I called my friend, Chris Plachy, and we were talking about it and I said, "Oh, he has the flu and he's just achy and that's what's going on for him." I just decided it and I had this huge sense of relief that he didn't have meningitis, and I was able to just enjoy my time.

Now, of course, it turned out that he didn't have meningitis and he did just have the flu and it may have changed that he did have meningitis and then I would have switched to that belief system once that was told to me. But instead of believing that he had it when it wasn't confirmed that he had it and freaking myself out and like, Googling it and deciding that he was going to die, I just went to he has the flu, and I created my experience of that uncertainty in that moment.

And I just much less stress. I was supposed to meet a friend for lunch and I decided well, of course, I'm going to go meet my friend for lunch because Christian just has the flu. And I'm not going to jump on a plane and fly to Colorado because Christian just has the flu. And I just went with that theory and was able to stay like, logically sane and the released him from the hospital, told him that he had the flu and it was totally fine.

So I created my experience there and people would say, well you could have been wrong, and that would have been right, but I still would have created my own experience through there. And worrying that he had meningitis when I didn't know if he had meningitis would have serve no good solution in that situation for sure.

Number eight, nothing is too good to be true. I'm going to say about six years ago, I read this in a book. This quote, I can't even remember who the quote is from now, but I had it made into one of those stickers that you get. It's like, some obscure author, by the way, it's not like, someone that's really well known that I'm forgetting their name. It's like an obscure author.
But here's the thing: I got one of those stickers made and I put it in my office, nothing is too good to be true, right above my desk. And I looked at it every day and thought about it every day, and I am now living that every day. My life is too good to be true. Like, I am a woman who lives in America that works three days a week from her computer at home. I make millions of dollars helping people and reading self-help books. I could not imagine a better life for myself.
I have a husband who I adore, I have two kids that are ridiculously amazing, my relationship with my mother is amazing, my dad is amazing. Like, it is too good to be true, and yet nothing is too good to be true. This is the exact life I've envisioned for myself, and now I have it. And I really have reconciled that you can't dream too big. You can't ask for too much because nothing is too good to be true. So good.
If ever you hear yourself saying like, "Some things really are just too good to be true," if you hear yourself saying that, I want you to question it because nothing is too good to be true. Goodness is the truth. So good.
Okay, next one. The future is always better than the past. I love this thought, you guys, it's so good. And it can always, always, always be true because the future only ever exists in your mind, and if you can always imagine it better than your past, why not? Even if your past is spectacular, imagine your future even better. That's what gets the juices flowing, the momentum going, the excitement churning is when you imagine a future that's way better than your past.
And you can look at that on the big picture scale like your whole past of your childhood and your career, or you can look at it like yesterday compared to tomorrow. You can just imagine with your brain something better. That is, I think, one of the keys to evolving is to imagine something better.
You think of all the greatest things in the world, the great literature, the great music, the great everything is built on creating something better than you've ever created before, being something better than you've ever created before. And not better in the sense that you will be more loveable or more worthy at all, but just imagining that you're growing to that next level of deepness and capacity within yourself. I love that thought.

And the last thought that I always turn to and I say very often to myself is that the worst that can happen is a feeling. This is what keeps me going, it's what keeps me growing, it's what helps me through all of those anxiety-filled stories that I tell myself.

When Chris first called me and told me that they thought Christian had meningitis, and I thought, he's for sure going to die from meningitis, that's what immediately went into my brain, I like, calmed myself down with knowing that there isn't an emotion that I can't experience and that I can't survive. And that regardless, no matter what happens in the world, I can experience the emotion. I can walk towards it and into it and it will not kill me. No matter what happens, I'm going to be okay because the worst that can happen is an emotion and I know how to experience emotion.

It is what keeps me going through the anxiety that I experience. It is what keeps me setting really big goals for myself. It is what gets me past any of the haters that say things to me or about me that aren't true. It's what gets me through any kind of urge that I have for anything that's not healthy for me. The worst that can happen is an emotion and there is not an emotion that I'm unwilling to experience.

Alright my friends, that's what I have for you today. I love you guys so much, like seriously, genuinely love you all. And I hope that you'll come up, maybe you'll borrow some of my new thoughts to believe, maybe you'll come up with some of your own that feel true and real and good to you, and then practice believing them on purpose every day so you can integrate them into your brain as something that is familiar and useful so that your brain will think them without even you having to expend any energy. Have an amazing week everybody. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.

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