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“Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.”

– Eckhart Tolle

I think, a lot of times when we think of acceptance, we think of giving up effort. A lot of us associate it with accepting defeat. However, if you truly work on acceptance, you’ll realize that it requires a tremendous amount of effort.

On this episode of The Life Coach Shcool, we take a look at the power of fully accepting our past and our present. We dive into what it really means to accept the things we have no ability to change and the incredible results you can expect in your life once you make this process a daily practice. Join us to discover how using the techniques laid out in this episode, you can create and extraordinary life and achieve anything you put your mind to.

Remember, everything you have the power to imagine, you have the power to create in your life. And the minute you genuinely accept it, it will be as good as done.

What you will discover

  • The update on our most recent in-person coach training.
  • What acceptance is all about.
  • The power of fully accepting the things you have no ability to change.
  • How to start accepting the things that you can’t yet believe.

Episode Transcript

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.

How are you guys? What's happening? All right, let's start with the amazing training that I just finished with the most amazing, most beautiful, most intelligent women ever. We didn't have a dude this time, which was kind of a bummer, but God, we had some amazing women in this class. We had people coming from New Zealand. We had people coming from Switzerland, people from freezing cold Canada. We had such a great group, and I will tell you, I taught at the highest level I've ever taught before. I was just whipping out all my mastery tools, and we were taking it deep, and we were just going for it. It was so much fun. I feel like every time people come here for six days it's so much easier for them to learn the material and kind of get out of their world, and have all new stimulus, and really learn in a compact environment.

I want to thank my four coaches that were there. We had Bev, and Sarah, and Andrea, and Aimee, who all there that spent the whole week there with the students. They all went to lunch and hung out and really practiced and learned and applied all of the material that I teach.

It's fun to talk to people after the course. I had someone come up to me and she just said, "I was never going to sign up for this course. I thought it was so expensive I couldn't believe it. Now, I still think that, you know..." She signed up like two weeks before the course, and she's like, "What a crazy decision that I made, and what an amazing, life changing decision that I made, and I'm so thrilled that I made it. Yes, it was expensive and totally, totally worth it. Way more than what I could have ever expected." That's super fun.

Then, someone else that had been really debating whether she was going to come or not, I asked her at the end, "Hey, so are you glad you came?" She was like, "Oh, my God. Are you kidding me? So glad I came, a hundred times over." She just really told me how much she appreciated the course.

What's so amazing about it for me is I feel like I always over deliver and I give what I would want to get. That just goes without saying. That's just who I am and what I want to do. One of the things that I think makes the course so amazing for everyone is all the other women that are there, which I can't create that. That's something that's just like-minded people hanging out together and becoming really best friends. It's like camp. That is the best way to describe it. We're all staying at a hotel together all day studying this material and then talking about it and working on it with each other.

I love you guys. I miss you. I always go through a little abandonment when everyone leaves me and goes home. I think everyone should just stay. If you are thinking about joining us for an in-person training, April is our next one. We'd love to have you come and really, genuinely, change your life forever.

We have so many cool things that we are offering as part of the training, and you should absolutely come to the website and apply to get more information. We will send you everything that we have up our sleeves.

Here's my goal: every time I offer a new training I want to make it way better than the time before, and so what we do as a team is after we do the in-person training, we get together and we gush about how amazing it was and how much we loved it, and how we loved the people and all of that. Then we're like, "How can we make it even better?" We're always trying to improve upon what we've improved upon, and that makes it super fun for me because I always like to think like, "What will blow people's minds if we gave that to them? How can we be the best in the world at what we do? If we were brand new coaches what would we want to learn? What would we want to know? How would we want to learn it?" That's how we roll up in here. So anyway, I just finished that in-person training. Amazing.

As these coaches go through their training and everything they've learned they need to practice, so if you are interested in getting some free coaching please email my assistant, Melodee, M-E-L-O-D-E-E at thelifecoachshcool.com and tell her you want some free coaching. She will hook you up so you can get some free coaching. I will have to say, we've had, I think this is such an amazing testament, there were two people in our training that the reason why they signed up for the training was because they had signed up for free coaching and the free coaching was so good. That's with our trainees, that's not even with established coaches that have been coaching for five years. Those are our trainees. Our trainees were so good, and coached them so well, that they then wanted to come to the in-person training. That is the quality of the coaching that you get, and it's free, so [email protected].

All right, now, did you notice that I said that this was episode 99? Oh, my gosh, you guys, we are almost to 100. That's where we will be next week. Holy cow, you guys. I can't even imagine. I think when we get to, what is it, 104, that will have been two solid years of not missing and being here with you all, so I'm proud of myself. Girl, I'm like high fiving myself like Conner taught me to do. My son high fives himself and that's what I'm doing. I'm so proud of the work I've done on this podcast, and the people that I've met through this podcast, and the lives that have been changed because you guys listened and applied this material. It's so amazing to me. I'm looking forward to 100.

Okay, in this one, what we're going to talk about is acceptance and how it requires effort. I was teaching one of my courses, Stop Overeating Master Class, and if you want more information about that you can go to lifecoachschool.com and click in the upper corner and you can get on the waiting list for the next one, but I was teaching that course and one of my students said, "It's just going to take me some effort to accept that." She said, "I'm going to have to put some effort into accepting it." It stopped me cold. I thought, "Wow, you know, I never really have thought about acceptance requiring effort." I think a lot of times when we think about acceptance it feels like a giving up of effort. It's like I've accepted defeat, I think is what a lot of us associate acceptance with, but when you really think about acceptance, it requires a tremendous amount of effort if you're doing it right.

One of my quotes that I love is from Eckhart Tolle and he says, "Whatever the present moments contains, accept it as if you had chosen it." "Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it." Now, if that doesn't take effort, I guess it depends on what present moment you're dealing with, I don't know what does. If you apply that to your past, let's change it up a little bit, whatever your past contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. That would take some effort. "As if you had chosen it." When you look at the definition of acceptance it says the action of consenting, and I just love the idea of being in every moment with every emotion, with everything that's happening to us, and for us, and with us, that we could say, "I consent," to whatever it is, "I consent."

I know that some of you are thinking about, "Well, what if you are being physically abused?" Or, what about something that's like really off the deep end, just stay with me. Most of us, during our day, do not have those issues, so if you automatically go to something like that, then come back to your regular day. If everything within that day you could say, "I consent. I consent. I consent to my kid being upset. I consent to him not doing well on a test. I consent to my husband being late. I consent." If you could genuinely consent as if you had chosen it, would your life be so much better if you agreed and accepted everything that happened in your life? It's just like for some of you this may be really challenging, but I want you to explore the idea of it.

For some of you, I want you to use the example of just your body. What if you could just look at your body and say, "I consent. I accept this body. I consent." Oh, my God, you guys, it's so good. Think about the things that would really set you free if you were able to accept them and if you're willing to put the effort into accepting it.

Let's start with the past, and let's start with how much effort it would take to accept that the past is as it was, to consent to it, and then possibly let it go, to not argue with it, to not think it should have been different, to not think it should have been better, to not negotiate with it, see if we could get a better outcome, but just to accept it, to consent to it. Right? I mean, it would take some effort, but would it be worth it? How would you feel if you could genuinely believe that everything in your past you consented to? I've been through some gnarly stuff in my past, you guys, but I feel like when I can accept it fully, I live a very different life than when I try to argue with it.

Another thing I want you to consider accepting is this, other adults and their behavior, always. What if you could always accept, because here's the thing, a lot of you are saying, "Well, I'm not going to consent to what other people do," but where has your not accepting gotten you? Anything? Have you been able to control that person's behavior? No. When you accept someone's behavior it doesn't mean you have to stay. It doesn't mean you have to applaud. It doesn't mean that you have to tell them, "Hey, this is great. Keep doing it." What if you just accepted that adults get to behave how they want to behave, that adults get to be who they want to be, adults get to do whatever it is they want to do without your input? What if you just genuinely accepted that? It think that would be an amazingly powerful thing to do, and amazingly beneficial in your life, to be able to consent to things that you have no control over. That is ultimately what I'm asking you to consider. I'm asking you to consider accepting all of the facts of your life, all of the circumstances in your life that you don't have the ability to change, to consent to those things, other people's behavior, to your past, to things in your life that you can't immediately change, like your current body, and are you willing to put in the effort to accept those things.

Now, the reason why I'm suggesting that you practice with those things is I'm going to throw I a super awesome bonus challenge. Can you accept that everything you have in your life is because you created it? Can you accept that the reason why you aren't thinner is because you have been unwilling to consent to being thinner, to believing in that for yourself? Now, that will make your mind freak out.

One of the things that I like to talk about with my students, and I've talked about it on the podcast before, is this idea of the capacity to have. What is your capacity to have all the money that you want in your life, all the joy, what is your capacity to have? Have you accepted all of the things that you want in your life? If you learn how to accept and consent to what you have in your past, if you learn how to consent and accept everything that you have in your present, it will become much, much easier for you to accept and consent to everything you want in your future.

I'll give you the example of your weight. Can you accept that you could be 50 pounds lighter in your future? Can you accept and consent to that? Now, many of you will say, "Yes, that is so easy. No problem," but it doesn't come easy. Acceptance of something like that requires your effort. It requires your effort to believe. It requires your effort to let go of all the contrasting thoughts that you have about it. That's true for our past, and that's true for our present, but if we are able to accept everything that's ever happened we will get better at accepting, and we will start to accept the things that we can't yet believe. That is really where I find the most powerful use of this skill of accepting. It's not arguing with anything that's ever happened, and not arguing with the possibility and the potential of what's in our future.

When you hear people talk about accepting, I want you to really question what that means for you in your mind. Does that mean giving up, or does it really require effort? Does it really require that we go to work? It's easier to accept, much easier to accept everything that's unconscious within us. It's just always been there. We accept it really without any deliberate choice, but accepting those things that aren't unconscious, things that we've argued with our whole lives, the things that we've argued with in our pasts, the things that we argue with in our present, and most importantly, the things that we argue with in our future. What will it take for you to accept that the past was perfect? The present is only here to teach you what you need to know, and the future is your property. All you have to do is claim it and accept that anything you want is possible. Anything you have to power to imagine, you have the power to create to create in your life, and the minute you genuinely, truly accept it, it will be as good as done. I promise you, promise you that, so put that effort into accepting. Put that effort into consenting, and see what you can create in your life.

I love you guys so much. I can't wait to see you in the next episode; number 100. 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 deeper 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 it in intellectually. It's another thing to truly apply it to your life. I will see you there. Thanks again for listening.

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