Ep #416: 100 Fails

You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo episode 416.

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. I’m so excited. I’m about to get on a plane from Scottsdale to Austin to do my mastermind event. We have about 1600 people coming to Austin to celebrate being coaches and being part of The Life Coach School and all the success that we’ve had. And I cannot wait.

I have some fun surprises planned for everyone. I can’t wait. So, by the time you’re listening to this, we will probably be all together in a room loving on each other. So, if you want to come next year, make sure you become a certified coach so you can come hang out with us at mastermind.

What I wanted to do today is share a portion of a class I taught in Scholars, part of the Possibility Formula, where I talk about fail 100 times. And as I was talking and teaching this today in this course, I thought, “Oh my gosh, this would be an amazing podcast. Everybody needs to hear this message today.”

So, this is my special treat to you. If you haven’t been in Scholars and seen the Possibility Formula, we are about halfway through it. If you want to join, you can get all of the classes that we’ve already taught on it and you can get the upcoming live classes on it.

I think it’s one of the best courses we’ve ever taught in Scholars. It also includes the Coach Week Possibility Belief Systems that we taught in the first half of the year, and then also you get the full What’s Possible book and the audiobook for both of them when you join Scholars.

So, just go to thelifecoachschool.com/join if you want to join us for that. Otherwise, please enjoy this course on failing 100 times as part of the Possibility Formula.

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Today, we’re talking about the possibility formula and we’re talking about failure. And I’d love to coach you all on failure. And the ideas and the concepts around failure need to be internalized.

So, here’s what I want you to know about failure. Failure is nothing. Failure is an experience that you have of a thought and feeling combination. Failure is subjective. It’s something you make up in your brain. And yet, it is the reason why most of us don’t access our human ingenuity. We don’t access our creativity. We don’t access our ideas because were so afraid of failing.

And here’s what I mean by that. When you are afraid that you won’t win, when you’re afraid that you won’t succeed, you stop yourself from creating results. You’re a perfectionist, so unless the result is a positive one, unless the result is something that’s going to get you what you want or make you look good or get your approval or make you money, you don’t want to do it.

So, what you end up doing is not producing results. You end up not producing any kind of progress in your own life because if you are willing to fail, you’re also going to learn. You’re going to learn at a rate that is going to be so much higher than if you insist on succeeding all the time.

See, succeeding is easy when you stay within the confines of what you already know how to do, when you are following a predetermined set of expectations that you know you can meet, you’re constantly succeeding. You’re succeeding at your own limited life. And you’re like, “I’m a winner. I’m a winner.”

But you’re a winner only in this perfectionistic way of delivering your life. And that’s why you don’t make progress. So, you’re rinsing and repeating in a way that’s comfortable for you.

But if you’re willing to fail, which means you know how to monitor your mind and you know how to process your emotion, the trajectory of what you will be able to do, the contribution of what you will be able to create will be tenfold.

It’s not just a little bit better. It’s tenfold what you could do otherwise.

If you look at all of the people in the world who have contributed the most to the world, to us, to success, to the benefits that we have now in the world, they’re the people who failed the most.

They tried some shit and it didn’t work, and they kept trying. And as they kept trying, they became stronger and more knowledgeable and less afraid. And because of that, they were able to ultimately create the lightbulb, an airplane, a home, an electric car.

So, where are you in that trajectory? Where are you in terms of creating what you want to create for yourself? So, as you make a decision to not be afraid of failure, you will know that you’re in that place because of the number of results that you will create.

Now, I’m not talking about busyness. I’m not talking about doing things that don’t require any risk. I’m talking about creating a result that ends up with a W or an L, with a win or a failure, a win or a loss, right?

Are you risking failure? Are you putting yourself out there in a way that risks it? And if the answer is yes, my guess is you are learning. And the people that I know that will be the most successful, when I see my students come through, are the ones that are producing the most results. Not the most successes, but the most results.

So, they’re winning, they’re losing, they’re doing it consistently. They’re creating those results consistently. Those are the ones that are ultimately going to access their own creativity and access their own ingenuity.

Because think about this. You try something, it doesn’t work. You try something, it doesn’t work. You try something, it doesn’t work. Then you’re left with, “Huh, what do I try next?”

That’s when you access your brain in a way that you won’t access it otherwise. But if you need someone else to tell you how, if you need someone else to give you the prescription on how to get something done, you’re not even accessing your own brain. You’re borrowing someone else’s brain.

And that doesn’t mean you don’t follow a process. But it also means that you’re willing to try new ways and different ways and harder was and bigger ways, so you have to access your own brain to figure out how you’re going to create your little carve out of the world, your contribution.

Your contribution isn’t just about you executing someone else’s ideas. It’s about you accessing your own. Because if we don’t access what’s in your brain and your ideas, we’re going to miss out.

This is what I say when I meet with my assistants or I meet with my team and I say, “Listen, if we have this meeting and you’re just asking me a bunch of questions and we’re only using my brain here to create, we are missing out. I have four assistants. There’s five brains here that we could be using. And if we’re only using mine, we miss out on your brain. So, I need you to tell me what you want to do. I need you to tell me what you think the answers are.”

And when I do that, we create a five-times result. So, think about that for yourself. Are you looking out there asking someone else how to do the thing? Or are you asking yourself, what could I access in my own brain? What are the solutions? What are the answers? What are the things inside of here that I haven’t accessed yet, that nobody’s accessed yet?

And what happens is, when you do that and then I do that and someone else does that, we all leverage from each other. And so, instead of it just being my ideas that we’re all following, there’s 100 of us that all have ideas that we can leverage and we can move so much more quickly.

So, if you’re afraid to put yourself out there because you’re afraid, “I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if this is the right thing to do,” you’re doing it right. If you’re afraid, if you’re frustrated, if you’re doubtful, you’re doing it right.

The Possibility Formula is about failing 100 times. It’s about understanding that failure is the path to success, that discomfort is the currency of your dreams, that if you feel uneasy and like you don’t know what you’re doing, keep fucking going because you will get to the place where you will be like, “Oh, that was it. Thank you, brain, for telling me to try that because that worked, and then this worked, and that, and now I’m going to do all three of those together and I’m going to create a formula, a process, a path that hasn’t been created before, only because I was willing to try all the things.”

When you end up with three things that work, you for sure are going to have 100 that didn’t. And if you do something and it doesn’t work, there’s two things that happen. So many people ask someone else, “What should I do?” And then they say, “This is how you do it.” And then they try that thing that this other person told them how to do.

And then, that doesn’t work. And they’re like, “Huh, well that was how to do it and I tried how to do it and it didn’t work, so therefore this probably isn’t for me and I will quit.”

Most people, 90% of people will do it like that. But if you approach a dream, if you approach a possibility for your life and you allow there to be room for not knowing how to do it, for figuring out how to do it by doing it, then you won’t be discouraged when the how doesn’t work.

You’d be like, “That was just attempt one of 100.” Right? And if you have a path to your dream already, I’m so sorry because when that oath doesn’t work – and it won’t – you are going to give up on that dream.

You will know exactly how to do something the minute you’ve done it and not a minute before. How do you end up doing this thing? You have no idea. We just keep on moving. Now, listen, don’t run in place. Keep progressing forward. Fall down, get up, fall down, get up. That’s what we’re doing. That’s how we’re doing it.

It doesn’t even matter what you try, as long as you try something and you learn form it and you keep moving. The number of results is what we’re looking for here.

So, let me take you to a place where you think, “Well, I’m just going to be confused because if I can be confused about what to do, then I never have to risk failure.”

And so many of us put on our little confusion blankies and we cuddle up with our confusion blankies and we’re like, “Well I can’t rally g out into the world because I’m very confused. I don’t know what to do. I need someone to tell me.”

Really? Can you imagine if that’s how I spent my life, just confused about what I should do? No, you can choose not to be confused. Try something. Instead of saying. “I don’t know how to do something,” say, “I’m going to try this now. I’m going to try that now. I won’t know how until I get there, so the way to get there is to keep trying shit.” That’s it.

So, when you take off your confusion blanket, you will feel exposed and you will feel cold and you will feel afraid and you will be putting yourself literally in harm’s way for your dreams. Yes, that’s what we want to do.

Are you willing to put yourself in harm’s way to live your life at the highest level? Please say yes. Please say yes to that. Please say, “I’m willing to try this thing.”

Now, I don’t mean putting a little post on social media and hoping someone likes it. There’s no risk in that. The risk has to be, “I asked for someone to pay me for the value that I created and I got a no or a yes. I created something and I sold it, I tried to sell it,” that’s a result, you’re going to get a yes or a no.

You need to count up your yesses and count up your nos. That is not the same and sending an email out or posting something on social media or telling someone what you do for a living.

It’s very different saying, “I’m a life coach,” versus saying, “Hey, I’d love to help you with this problem that you’re having, would you like to hire me? I can help you solve that problem.”

Very different than going, “Hey, I’m a life coach,” and then waiting to see if they hire you or not. That is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about going for it, asking them, “Will you hire me to help you with that problem.”

And if they say no, you say, “Huh, I wonder how I could have done that better? Did I demonstrate the value there?” And that’s on huge platforms and on small one-to-one platforms. Are you putting yourself in harm’s way?

How many times have you failed today? How many times have you failed this week? And don’t be enticed or infatuated with success because here’s what happens. Once you start failing a lot, you’re going to start winning. Because once you pile up those failures, you become so much stronger. You become so much more confident. You become so much more successful because you’re able to give yourself the chance to win.

Then that success, you start getting a taste of that and then you don’t want to do the failing stuff anymore. Be careful with that. You have to – even me right now, I’m so crazily successful. I still have to force myself to go into harm’s way, put myself in situations that are scary and challenging, so I can risk everything in order to have everything, in order to grow, in order to access the deepest part of my brain that has the answers, that is my goal.

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.