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The concept that I have been working with lately quite a bit is one of being able to feel grateful for something that you believe you are going to have in your future. It’s the idea that you visualize your future and what you want to have in your life and then you visualize how you would feel as if you already had it.

Join us as I explain the immense benefits of gratitude ahead of time and lay out the step-by-step process that you can start using today to create whatever you desire in your life.

I can’t express how excited I am to share this information with you! If you practice this process on a regular basis, I am confident that you’ll be able to have all of the answers before you actually need them. That will allow you to eliminate worry, access a whole another level of wisdom, and preemptively get rid of all of the obstacles you might have on the way to your dreams and desires.

What you will discover

  • What the idea of gratitude ahead of time is all about.
  • The incredible benefits of practicing this process.
  • How this process actually works.
  • How you can overcome the obstacles in the way of gratitude.
  • The importance of understanding that our stories about our past or future are optional.
  • Step-by-step process of how can get started with being grateful ahead of time.

Featured on the show

Episode Transcript

Welcome to The Life Coach School Podcast, where it's all about real clients, real problems and real coaching. Now, your host, Master Coach Instructor, Brooke Castillo.

Hello, my beautiful friends. How are you guys today? I'm going through it. Somebody just said, it's so funny…somebody just wrote me an email and said, "You might be too much for most people but you're great for me." Just the fact that she said I might be too much for some people has me spinning. It's so ridiculous. Then yesterday I had what I would call a full on anxiety day. Have you guys had these days? If you haven't, you're very lucky but I'm just filled with anxiety all day and I was like looking for it. I went out looking for some anxiety yesterday. And I found it. I found all sorts of evidence that people don't like me, that my life is terrible, that I can't get by, my kids are a mess... Unbelievable what I was able to conjure up in my mind for evidence that I should be anxious and I should be panicked and I should be freaking out.

One of the things that I did is I came back to myself and I just said, "Look, Brooke, you're going to feel anxious today. Just carry that around like a purse with bricks in it." That's how I feel and that's what I did. I just walked around, I was willing to feel anxious. I went on a walk. Actually, I went on two walks. I went on a walk and then I still felt anxious and then I went on another walk because I thought that would help and that didn't. I watched all my thoughts and I did thought downloads and I did models and I just let myself be anxious yesterday. It was really powerful but that's not what we're talking about. Today, I just wanted to share with you that what was interesting is I think that I have so much evidence right now that everything is going really well and really great in my life that I'm having that, "The other shoe is going to drop," kind of anxiety.

I'm feeling it and I'm just really aware of it. I know that some of you guys are experiencing that same thing. Some of you feel the same way I do and you let me know a lot of the time and so I just want to let you I'm going through it right now. I'm okay with that. I've accepted that. There are going to be days that are going to be like this and I can focus on everything that's good and I still feel anxious. Good news is I'm right in the process of doing right now as I'm recording this, we're selling out Stop Overeating Masterclass. We just did the webinar. It was amazing. We had way more people on there than we thought. It was fantastic. We got great feedback about it and I'm really proud of it and really happy. We're about to do the April training which we are just on the process of selling that out.

We're going to do that training so actually I think when you guys are listening to it we'll probably be right in the middle of it. I'm so excited. I always get so excited to meet new people and new faces and new energy, people that are loving this work. I love spending time with them. Really, really thrilled! Maybe you're one of them. Maybe you're coming so I can't wait to see you.

All right, today what we're going to talk about is gratitude ahead of time. This is a concept that I am so digging right now, right? This idea that you visualize your future, you visualize what you want to have in your life and then you visualize how you will feel.

For example, if you're visualizing let's say you're a coach and you're teaching a class, you're visualizing a class that you want to fill up let's say with ten people. You want to teach a class with ten people on the phone. You visualize yourself having already filled up the class and having taught the class and you're just so thankful that it was such a great class and you had such amazing people and you're able to offer your work to the world. You're able to help ten people learn something they didn't know before. You really get to that place of gratitude ahead of time. I've talked a little bit on this podcast and on my other podcast How to be a Life Coach.

I've talked about the idea of results ahead of time that it's really important to me as a business woman and my marketing that I offer results to my clients before they ever pay me. That's something that I do on this podcast. I received numerous comments on the podcast and the reviews that by the way, reviews, side note, we got a 100,000 downloads a month and I have 400 reviews. Yeah, I'm talking to you. If you're downloading my podcast, write a review please. I love you. Okay, anyway giving results ahead of time to people so they can experience my work and then they'll know for sure that they want to purchase it instead of just telling them, "It's great." Then, they have to take the chance of paying me before they get the results, right?

The result ahead of time. This is a sister to that, it's gratitude ahead of time, it's being willing to feel grateful for something that you're going to have in your life and you believe that you're going to have in your life and so you visualize yourself on the other side being grateful. Now, there are some things that I think are really powerful about doing this. I was doing this on a project that I'm creating and I was picturing myself having already created the product and having already sold the product. I'm going to do an advanced training for coaches and it's not just going to be Life Coach School coaches. It's going to be all coaches who want advanced training from me. I'm going to do a course this summer where you can come and spend two days with me and get advanced training.

We're going to talk about the model and thought work and all sort of stuff like that. Anyway, I was visualizing that. I was visualizing creating the class and filling the class and working with amazing people and how I would feel afterwards. One of the things that's really important is really making sure that I do feel grateful in my visualization and if I don't, trying to figure out why. It really helps me refine what it is exactly I want in my life because it helps me like if I'm thinking about, I'm going to have this certain number of people at the training and then I can't feel grateful afterwards maybe there were too many people there. Maybe I should do it for a smaller group. Right?

Maybe it was too many days. Whatever. As I'm creating products, I practice, will I feel grateful after I've done this class? I was always picturing myself driving home from the course. Will I be like, "That was amazing. I loved it. I'm so grateful I had the opportunity and if the answer is yes then I go ahead and do it." Whatever it is you want in your life, think about it right now, think about maybe it's losing weight, maybe it's building your practice, maybe it's getting a new job, maybe it's finding someone to love. Right? Picture yourself having already achieved it, already created it in your life and then picture yourself feeling thankful and grateful for having had created it.

I think that there are really important distinctions that you can make here as well. A lot of times I talk about how important it is for me to feel proud of myself. I think that's the most amazing experience that I have. I feel proud that I've accomplished something. A lot of times I feel, like I feel proud of myself when I've done something for myself, when I've created a solution or result for myself that I really wanted. For example, when I was trying to lose weight and I was really wanting to figure out why I was overeating and my desire to overeat. Really figuring out that compulsion and I promised myself when I figured that out I would share it. Once I really did figure that out I had so much pride. I felt so proud of myself for going through the work and digging deep and doing it.

I was like, "I'm a bad ass for doing that. That was hard." Right? That's different than also thanking myself. It's something I've been doing is just, "Thank you for doing that. Thank you for being brave enough to do that." It's such a beautiful offering to yourself. You guys can do that right now. Think about something that you owe yourself gratitude for. Are you giving yourself gratitude. Okay? The way that I like to think about it in terms of projects is I have gratitude towards myself for having created something and done it and produce it and then I have gratitude towards the people who come to my programs. You guys who listen to my podcast. I'm grateful to the universe for aligning everything for me and for having the opportunity to create that and just being bathing myself in the appreciation and the gratitude of having that experience.

Now, one of the things that is important is first of all that you can get to gratitude. If you can't because you're so filled with doubt that you'll be able to create it, right? That you're so filled with second guessing yourself. Then that is your practice. Right? You find out every thought that you're having, everything that's in the way of you getting to that place of gratitude. Those are your obstacles. You're starting to think, like for me, "Will I have enough time to create the advance training? Will people who aren't Life Coach School coaches be prepared enough for the training? Will they be able to keep up? Will they be completely overwhelmed? Will I have to slow everything down to make sure that everyone is caught up?"

All of those are concerns. I don't know it might just be too challenging and so then I won't feel grateful because everyone will be so overwhelmed. Those sorts of things, if that's coming up for me I need to clean those thoughts up, get that all out of the way so then I can be in the space of gratitude. It actually reveals a lot to me when I can't get to that place of gratitude it's like I still have work to do or maybe it's not the right goal. Right? I spend a lot of time really practicing that and if it's hard for you to do that, if it's hard for you to get to a place of gratitude, one of the things that you can do is think about like I said, think about something that you've already accomplished and things you've already done for yourself that you're thankful to yourself for and see what that feels like.

I'm so grateful that I married my husband. I went through, when I first met Chris, I went through it. He went through it with me so he probably shouldn't have married me because I was cray cray. I went through it emotionally and really trying to sabotage that relationship. I was really scared and I had a lot of issues but I'm just so ... I was worried because he wasn't cheating on me, because he wasn't acting crazy that there wasn't enough drama…that I was mistaking that that there wasn't enough passion in the relationship. Now, I can just sit back and be so grateful like, “Girl, thank you for marrying that man and thanks for having kids and thank you so much for having the courage to start your own business and to go all in and to make lots of mistakes,” and all of those things.

I really want to spend some time with gratitude towards myself for doing all that stuff for when I can feel that way genuinely then I practice feeling it in the present that it’s easier for me to feel in the future. Now, people say, “You can’t feel things in the future, you can only feel things from the past and in the present,” the truth is you can only feel in the present, right? Your past only exist in your mind and your future only exist in your mind which I want you guys to really think about that. Your past only exist in your mind so you can make it whatever you want, you can tell the story about it however you want to. You can create it in the way that you want.

I actually was just reading a book and they were saying how inaccurate our memories of our past are. They had people like describe, siblings describe certain situations that had happened in the past and how completely inaccurate they are like we rewrite our past in a way that serves us or doesn’t serve us but isn’t inaccurate. Has that ever happened to you like you go back to a place and you’re like, “Wait, this isn’t right, this wasn’t where this took place.” Then you look at a picture and you’re like, “Wait, what? No, I thought he had red hair,” you know you’re so confused, right, by the reality of the past versus the story that we tell.

The story that we tell about our past is optional and the story we tell about our future is optional, like we get to create that future however we want in our mind, right? How willing are you to create this amazing future in your mind and be really thankful for having created? Now, here’s what’s interesting, I suggest this to my students, I suggest this to my clients and a lot of them are resistant to doing it like they don’t want to go to the place where they are creating a future that they think is too big, right? Because then they think they’re setting themselves up for disappointment as if their future is already paved for them and they’re just being grandiose about it.

No, you get to decide if you want to create that in your future. I think that’s exciting. When you go to the place where you’ve already created it, your vibration associates with it, right? All the work that I’ve done with Abraham and how a vibration attracts reality to you. Think about this, your thought is the signal that you send out into the universe and the vibration is what magnetizes it to you. When I was first studying Abraham, this is kind of interesting, when I was first studying Abraham, Abraham Hex for those of you who are new to my podcast, I learned about this idea that thinking deliberately and creating vibrations in our body will bring associated vibration.

If you’re in a vibration of gratitude, if you’re in a vibration of abundance, if you’re in a positive vibration you will attract a lot of positive things to your life. It’s like the law of the law of attraction. I started visualizing having won the lottery. I have this weird thing. I think I’ve talked about this on the podcast before. I have this weird thing where I’d like to… when people win the lottery I’d like to imagine what they’re feeling. I like to imagine their life. People that win like 100 million dollars, like does their head explode? Like how excited are they? Like people that win 10 million dollars, like what goes on for them? What do they think about? I just love fantasizing about it. I think it’s so interesting.

When I first started studying Abraham, I started doing that, I started really kind of fantasizing and acting out in my mind so I’d actually create the feeling of having won million dollars in the lottery and what would that feel, like what emotions would I have associated with that and that sort of thing. Could I create that vibration or was there so much noise and doubt in the way that I can get there? There were times when I really struggled to get to that place where I could believe that I had won the lottery but I learned so much from all of this barriers that came up to believing that.

Then I would just spend some time, think about this you guys. I want you to think about what it would feel like to win a 100 million dollars, like immediately you get a smile on your face. It’s like so fun that you start thinking of like how you would spend that money and like what you would buy immediately. Who you would send money to? It’s a really fun thing to do with your brain and you can think about like the emotions that you would feel and how grateful you would feel and how excited you would feel. Now, have you won the lottery? No. Are you still experiencing those emotions of having had won it because you’re going to that place like really literally imagining yourself what would you be wearing, what would you be doing, like really creating that in your mind you get to feel those emotions.

Now, all those positive emotions, that abundance, that excitement, those emotions are what the law of attraction responds to. The more you can play with that the better and so I like to picture my goals in my life having already achieved them and feeling that gratitude ahead of time and creating that vibration and being so excited about it, right? Have you ever like plan like, “Hey, I’m going to go visit one of my friends,” and you’re like, “Oh, my god, thank you so much for inviting me,” like you’re not even there yet, you’re just so full of gratitude already, you’re so sure you’re going to be there, you’re so sure you’re going to have a good time, you’re so sure that you’re going to appreciate everything that happens that you’re already feeling gratitude ahead of time.

You’re already in that space and when you come from that space, one of my girlfriend Suyin is always in a place of gratitude about whenever we spend time together she’s like, “Oh my god, I’m so excited to see you. Oh my god, I’m so glad to see you. Oh my god, that was so awesome seeing you.” She’s such a breath of fresh air to be around because she’s in such a place of gratitude all the time and she’s looking for it too. Even when we are together she’s like, “Oh my god, that was such a good meal and that was so fun and we look at the beautiful day it is,” like she’s such in positive, wonderful energy. It’s so wonderful to be around her.

I love being around her because she creates that space of gratitude but it always starts beforehand like she’s always in so much grace and gratefulness before she even comes. I think that if you can find your way to gratitude then you almost ensure whatever it is is going to happen you create it in your own mind. When you think about that thing that you want and you think about being grateful for having had it. One of the things that you can do then is memorize that feeling, memorize what it feels like then when you go about your day and you’re like for me then I go back and I’m creating this advance training right now and I’m thinking about the content and I start having doubt, “Oh, is it too much? Is it not enough? What should I do? Oh my gosh, am I’m going to have two different kinds of students in there?”

When start going on my doubt then all I have to do is refocus my mind to that place of gratitude, refocus my mind to the place where all was wonderful and I’d loved it and it was such a great experience and it totally changes the way I’m feeling and then I know exactly how much content to put in. I know exactly who to invite to the training. I know exactly what to stipulate. I know exactly what to charge, right, because I’ve gone there before so I already know all the answer. My future self who’s already grateful already knows all the answers to those questions. I have so much wisdom and I don’t have to worry about anything, it completely eliminates worry because no it’s already done and we’ve already grateful about it, it’s already amazing, okay.

You can access a whole other level of wisdom and again if you’re not being able to get there you’ve access all the obstacles that might be in the way and you’ve clean them all up. Okay, here’s what you’re going to do. First, you’re going to fast forward to it’s already done, okay, and that’s one of things that Abraham says all the time, “Fast forward to what’s already done. Consider it done.” Sometimes I like to say the FedEx package is in the mail, you’ve already received it, you’ve already opened it, you already love it. Then you practice, literally practice ahead of time, practice feeling gratitude, it’s like you’re preparing yourself for the big day when you’re going to be so grateful. You start practicing gratitude. Think about that like, “What do we practice?”

I practice webinars, we practice our lines for a play, we practice how we’re going to walk, how we’re going to smile, how we’re going to be in certain situations, right? I want you to practice this emotion of gratitude, practice it ahead of time. The third thing you’re going to do, first was fast forward, second is practice, third is notice what interferes. What thought interferes with you feeling grateful and work on those? Then pay attention to how you feel, okay? One of the things that you’ll be able to do as you’re going through creating anything in your life is you’ll be able to look at the results you’re getting and the actions that you’re taking in relation to this. If you’re not feeling positive emotion and if you’re not creating the results that you’re grateful for, you know that all you have to do is reset your emotions.

You have a model that you need to interfere with that’s creating an emotion that’s not producing the result you want. Just take a minute. Go back to gratitude. Go back to that space where you are creating the result that you want, where you are feeling gratitude for having created it and that will give you a beautiful reset in order to create whatever you want in your life. I'm totally grateful that I’ve created this amazing advance training and that so many of you all came to it and loved it so much that you want me to do another one. I can’t wait to do the next one. That’s the space of gratitude that I’m in right now. Makes sense? All right you guys, have an amazing week! I love you all. See you next week. Bye-bye.

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 the lifecoachschool.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 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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