Ep #488: 10 Ideas About Life

You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo episode 488.

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.

Hey beautiful friends. How’s everyone doing today? I’m doing amazing. I am in San Diego right now with a group of my friends. We came here a couple weeks ago with my kids, they were all here, we had so much fun, and then I’ve just had groups of friends coming in and out.

We rented a huge house here, and so we’re just spending some quality time here working and hanging out with our friends. It’s been amazing. It’s beautiful here and the pickleball here is off the hook. There’s lots of places to play and the people here are so good.

So we’ve been playing every single day, trying to get better, trying to handle it when I play with these young kids and my kids and they slam the ball at my face. So loving, loving, loving it.

I’ve also been preparing for my mastermind event that’s coming up with my coaches. I’ve been working on a speech for that. So I’m excited to see everyone in Dallas, that’s coming up. And I’ve also been teaching a workshop with many of my students called Create Your Work for the World.

And this class has been one of the most exciting classes I think I’ve ever taught because the people in the class are all creating such awesome work and it’s all so varied. What everyone wants to kind of bring and contribute to the world is so unique and so different, and every single person has such an amazing approach to contribution.

And I didn’t realize I was going to love this class so much, but I really am enjoying it, and I’m enjoying seeing everyone’s work and what everyone is putting out there into the world. So, super fun time I’ve been having with both work and with play, doing both pretty hard here.

In this podcast, what I wanted to talk about are 10 ideas that will change the way you think about life. And I think we titled it 10 Ideas About Life. And I want to tell you a little bit of how this podcast came about because I was thinking about my customer base. As a business owner, I was thinking about the people that I work with most of the time, and the people that I think about most of the time.

So as a business owner, I’ve talked about this before on the podcast but it’s really I think an important concept for everyone to understand, that for example, when you’re teaching a class, like I’m teaching this class I was just telling you about, Create Your Work for the World.

There is the time I spend actually teaching the class and actually prepping the class and doing research and getting ready for the class, but there’s also the time I spend thinking about the class and thinking about the students. And we often don’t account for that amount of time when we’re creating courses or creating content or building businesses.

And so one of the things that I was kind of analyzing within my own brain is how much time and energy I spend on certain things, just thinking. So those of you who’ve done Monday Hour One within Get Coached in Scholars, you understand that you can break down your entire day and how you spend your activities of the day in a way that makes you so much more productive.

A whole other layer to that is breaking down how you utilize your brain and the time you spend thinking about different things in your life. For example, if you spend a lot of time worrying, that’s not going to be, for most of us, useful time spent. If you spend a lot of time daydreaming, if you spend a lot of time judging, if you spend a lot of time analyzing and perfecting, you may not be utilizing your brain at the highest level.

And so it’s a very useful practice to pay attention to your brain and what you spend your time and energy thinking about. And you can take it down to levels too, so you could say, “How do I utilize my thinking brain when it comes to my family? How do I utilize my thinking brain when it comes to my partner? To my friends? To my lifestyle?”

In this case, I was analyzing how much time I spent thinking in terms of marketing my business and who I spent the most time thinking about. And this is for all of you who are entrepreneurs and business owners. This was a really intense a-ha moment for me.

What I realized is that I had been spending the majority of my time thinking about my clients that had been with me for a long time. And this is a beautiful thing because my clients that have been with me for the longest time and that I have the deepest connection with are my best customers. So I’m always trying to think, “How do I overdeliver to them? How do I service them better? How do I make sure I’m giving them new amazing content?”

But what I realized is I hadn’t been spending much time thinking about people that don’t know me at all, and people that don’t know my work at all, and people that maybe don’t understand life coaching at all. And why this matters is there are so many people that haven’t been introduced to our work yet.

So many people that need what we’re teaching, that I want to find and introduce to this work and give them the opportunity to change their lives like so many thousands of my clients already have. And so I’ve been very deliberate recently in thinking about brand new people that I want to invite into learning the Model and learning about life coaching.

And I asked myself this question, “If I was going to meet someone and only have maybe 10 minutes with them, what would be the top 10 things, the top 10 messages, the top 10 insights or tips that I could give them that would make them think, would make them consider, would make them maybe make a change right away that they could apply to their life, and also understand our work and what we actually do?”

And so that’s what this podcast is. This is 10 ideas to change the way you think about life. And I’m not going to go into each one of these ideas in too much details. I mean, I’ve obviously gone into tons of detail in the podcast and in Get Coached, so if you want more information, it’s definitely available for free and if you want to have coaching on it, you can join and I’ll coach you on it.

But I think these ideas really stand alone and they’re kind of a cumulation of my work that has been simplified into the most important parts. So if you’re new to my work, this is a beautiful introduction to the concepts that I teach. Maybe if you want to introduce somebody to our work, this would be a good podcast to recommend to them.

But also, if you’ve been in my work a long time, this is a good reminder to make sure that all 10 of these concepts are alive and well in your brain and working in your life. So let’s begin.

Number one of 10 ideas that will change the way you think about life is your feelings are created by your thoughts. You first need to understand what your feelings are and how to define them. Feelings are vibrations in your body. To oversimplify them, sad, mad, glad, happy, frustrated, excited. Those are all feelings. We like to do it with one word.

All of your feelings are caused by thoughts in your mind. Why does this matter? Why is this one of the ideas that will change the way you think about life? You are not being thrown around emotionally by your life. You’re being thrown around emotionally by your mind, by your brain, and by your thoughts.

And the best news that I have for you is that you control your thoughts. Life coaching is about learning the connection between thinking and feeling, and learning about a conscious life, which includes becoming aware of what you’re thinking and deciding what to think on purpose in order to feel the way you want to feel in your life.

Doesn’t mean you’re going to want to be happy all the time, that’s not what we’re talking about. When something negative happens in the world, most of us want to have thoughts and feelings that are negative, but we want to have thoughts and feelings that are conscious. So number one is your feelings are created by your thoughts.

Number two, money is created with value, not time. It’s very important if you are someone that would like to create more money more consciously in your life, you must understand, you are not being paid for time. You are being paid for value. You cannot increase time.

You cannot increase the number of hours in a day to make more money, although some of us try. That’s what this hustle culture has become all about. Work more, work harder, work more, work harder, make more money. That is not the secret to making more money. The secret to making more money is creating more value for the world. The more value you create, the more money you’ll create. Not time.

Number three, life is 50:50. It’s 50% positive and it’s 50% negative. I actually like to say it’s 50% great and 50% terrible on purpose. The goal of your life is not to be happy all the time. The goal of the world is not to be perfect. The goal of you is not to be 100% good all of the time.

There is a balance to this universe and the more that we can accept that the external circumstances that come into our lives, the situations that we face are going to be a balance between positive and negative. And when we can accept that that balance is there, we will be less angry and sad and disappointed by the negative part of life. And we’ll be able to embrace it and accept it, not just in ourselves but in other people. This will help us be less judgmental, less depressed, less anxious, less frustrated when we understand the balance of life.

Number four, if you don’t supervise and manage your primitive brain, it can ruin your life. This concept is so important. I want everyone to understand it so deeply but I teach it very simply and that is you have a primitive brain that was formed that you have evolved with. You have brought a primitive brain with your very high-functioning brain.

And your primitive brain is determined by the motivational triad. It is motivated by reducing pain, increasing comfort, and avoiding effort. That is the survival brain. And if you let your survival brain run your life in this society, you will be over-consumed with the world, you will probably over-consume, as a verb, the world, and you will never meet up to your capacity because you’ll always be trying to reduce the effort that you put out into the world.

If you are afraid and always trying to avoid discomfort and pain, you will never set big goals for yourself, you’ll never learn how to manage your emotional life, you’ll always be trying to be happy, and there are so many neurological ways to trick your brain into thinking it’s happy. If your primitive brain is in charge, you will always be going for instant gratification, and that will not be the highest quality life that you can live from your highest brain.

Number five, it only takes one person to improve a relationship. And that person is you. Many of you are like, “Yeah, if they would just improve, the relationship would be better.” If you are a person who wants to improve a relationship in your life, you are the only one that needs to take action. You are the only one that is needed to improve it.

And yes, sometimes that might mean leaving it. But most of the time, when I coach my clients, it’s not leaving it. Most of the time, in order to improve your relationship, you simply need to change your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions within it.

A good tip here is to ask yourself, “Are you being the person you want to be in all aspects of this relationship?” And if you aren’t showing up 100% the way you want to show up, that is your work. Your work is not to change other people. I have tried, it is impossible.

Number six, you’ve been taught your whole life about ability when what really matters is capacity. This is a big one. I wrote a whole book on this called What’s Possible because our whole life, we are given a limited number of options based on what someone perceives our current or past ability to be, and then makes an equation that that’s what equals are future. And I want to flip that around for you.

Your future is not determined by your current or past abilities. Your future is determined by your capacity and how much you are willing to explore what you are capable of, and what you are capable of is way beyond your current ability. Your current ability is important, but it is not what you need to learn about in order to grow and have the biggest life you can. Explore your capacity, not your ability.

Number seven, what you personally want in life matters more than other people’s expectations of you. Now listen, you may think you are someone who doesn't live their life for other people’s expectations, but I want to tell you that if you believe that about yourself, you are one rare exception.

As humans, we are programmed for community and acceptance and approval. And we spend an inordinate amount of time seeking out other people’s expectations of us and trying to meet them. And I really want to offer that what you want in your life is the map to your destiny and what you are supposed to be doing with your life.

Other people’s expectations of you are about other people. And if you live your life based on your parents’ expectations, your friends’ expectations, your customers’ expectations, your kids’ expectations, you will be living someone else’s life. The only way to know that you’re truly living the life you’re meant to live is to know what you want and to live into that with authenticity.

Number eight, the skill of emotional maturity creates results two times faster than if you don’t have it. Emotional maturity means you take responsibility for your own emotions and you actually feel and process your emotions without being afraid.

Emotional maturity means you aren’t afraid to admit what you’re feeling to yourself, to process that emotion, and to seek out discomfort when you know that it will help you achieve your dreams. When you have emotional maturity, you will win two times faster than without it. I have watched it happen in client after client after client.

When you blame your emotions on other people or you avoid your emotions by buffering, you slow the progress of your life down. Learning the tools of emotional maturity I think is the most important skill that you can learn in order to start living into your own capacity.

Number nine, how you think to and about yourself determines the quality of your life. Hear that. How you think to and about yourself determines the quality of your life. Your car, your house, your money, your family, your friends, they do not determine the quality of your life. What determines the quality of your life is how you think about those things and how you think about yourself and how you think to yourself.

The skill of thinking and having mental consciousness and mental awareness and being able to think on purpose thoughts that you have chosen for your life creates a conscious life. That’s what determines the quality of your life. The higher quality that you’re thinking, the higher quality that your life will be.

And finally, my friends, you are and always have been 100% worthy. Nothing can change that. Of all the things I teach, this might be the most important one. I have had literally hundreds of people tell me through emails, when I see them, through letters, that I was the first person to ever tell them about their own worthiness, and that there’s nothing that’s ever happened to you, nothing that you’ve ever done that has ever touched your worthiness and made you less worthy.

Not even one point of 0.00000% of your worthiness has ever been affected by anything in your life. And that is true for you and every single human being on this planet. And when you truly believe that, you will live your life differently. You will show up differently. You will be more of who you genuinely are, which is always 100% worthy.

So number 10, you are and always have been 100% worthy. And nothing you do or don’t do can ever change that. Those are my 10 ideas to change the way you think about life. Take them into your lives, share them with your friends, debate them, do all the wonderful things, conversations about them, try them on, test them.

If you disagree with me, try it on for maybe five minutes, maybe a day. I could be right, and of course, I could be wrong. Maybe this isn’t what you believe but these are the ideas that have changed my life and the lives of so many of my students, so I at least want you to try them on like clothes in a dressing room and see what you think.

Have a beautiful week, my friends. I’ll talk to you next week. Take care. 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.