Ep #226: Believing Hard

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.

What's up, friends? It's hot here today. I like talking about the weather because my friend, Tonya Lee is always telling me to stop talking about the weather. Hey Tonya. It's hot here, 100 degrees today. Humid. It's so funny when I lived in California I never talked about the weather because the weather's perfect there and then you move somewhere else and you realize how spoilt you once were. You pay for that weather though.

Alright, here's the thing. Today we're going to talk about believing hard. I decided to do an episode on this after I taught one of my certified coach trainings and I told my students that they weren't believing hard enough. And for some reason, that blew their mind. Like, I say that all the time. You have to commit to believing, commit to believing, but I guess I said it in a little bit of different way that they heard in a different way. Like, you need to believe hard so I'm like, maybe I need to tell all my students that, all of you guys that believing hard is so important.

And let me tell you what I mean by that. I want you to imagine that you're looking at a piece of paper and there's a little stick figure that is you before. And then on the other side of the page is a little stick figure that is you after. So before is actually now, that is where you are right now. You are the before version of who you're going to be, and we're always going to be evolving. There's always going to be a before version. I am the before I make a $100 million version of myself right now. I am the before version of being a grandma. Hopefully not for a long time.

So before and after. And then I want you to imagine the difference between your before and after. So what is it that you believe now, what is it that you feel now, what is it that you do now that will be different than the you that is creating a different result, a different goal in your mind? So if you want to lose weight, there is the before and after. If you want to quit drinking, there's the before and the after. If you want to build a successful business from zero to a 100K, what is different with you now than you will be in that after?

And one of the recommendations that I have is that you do a thought download on each version of yourself. The before version and the after version. So what do you think, do, feel, create now and then do the after version? And then reconcile them. What is the difference between them? What do you believe differently? How do you act differently? How do you make decisions differently in each of the before and each of the after scenarios?

And the goal is to start believing the thoughts that you will believe when you've achieved that goal. And I've talked about this a lot on the podcast. I'm just talking about it from a different angle so maybe you'll hear it in a different way.

The most important thing when it comes to a goal is to identify as the person that believes in the achievement of it. Committing to believing something is more important than actually achieving it. Wait, what? Repeat. What did you say?

Do you need to scroll back like - committing to believing something is even more important than achieving it. Thinking the way you will think, feeling the way you will feel, and here is why: the only reason why you want that thing is because of how you believe you will feel in the achieving of it. And in order to achieve that thing, you need to feel that feeling now.

Now, you guys know me. I'm all about the achieving. I love it. Get the result, create it, why not? Super fun. Show yourself how the world works. But the most important piece is not when you achieve it. The most important piece is when you commit to believing it and you believe it hard no matter what. No matter what.

And this is why the how always interferes with that believing. Because usually if you know how to do something, it's not a big enough goal. It doesn't challenge you enough. And even if you have a path to how, it probably won't work on the first time. If it's a big enough goal that's worthy of achieving, it's going to require some failure. All great successes are built on a pile of failures.

So when you think about committing to that thing that you want so much, you have to recognize that you have to keep committing to it when all the evidence is to the contrary. When all the people tell you that it's not possible. When you keep reminding yourself that you've never done it before. When your brain keeps telling you that you're not good enough and you're not capable and you don’t have the time, you don’t have the money and you're never going to be able to do it.

That's when believing is the most important, and that's when most of us stop believing. Most of us believe in the how, and when the how doesn't work the way that we want it to work, then we stop believing in the whole goal in the first place.

Are you willing to believe in something when all evidence is to the contrary? When giving up seems like the best option. When you fall down in the middle of a race and everybody passes you and it takes you a long time to get up. That's when you need to believe in the winning. Not when you're running in first place. The most important part of believing, the most important time to believe is when the evidence is to the contrary.

That's when you have to rely on your own grit, your own strength of your own belief in yourself, and I watch this with my students. Sometimes they borrow my belief in them, which is fine. I believe in them 100%. There's never a doubt in my mind that they can achieve what they want to achieve. But my belief won't hold them steady when they're not right next to me. And I want their belief to hold them steady. I don't want them to rely on anything external for their belief.

So I was thinking about an example. There's so many movies where people get falsely accused of something. And all the evidence seems to show that this person did this horrible thing. And we in the audience seem to have some understanding that they didn't do it, so we're rooting for this person for the truth to come out, like, to prove them innocent. We don't want them to go to jail, we don't want them to be convicted, we don't want them to go to prison. They're innocent.

And we can see how everyone else thinks that they're guilty but we know that they're innocent even though the evidence isn't there. And we don't stop believing that that person, that justice will be done for that person. And often justice isn't done, right? Usually in the movies it is because we need that relief, but that's kind of the same thing I want you to consider for yourself is believing in your own - not your own innocence, but in your own competence, in your own ability to achieve something even when the evidence is all to the contrary, even when nobody believes in you but you.

When you're the only one that believes in you, can you believe hard enough to create that for yourself? Now, here's the thing that I have found really interesting is you teach people how to believe in you. Did you know that? You might have known that you teach people how to treat you by how you behave, but did you also know that you teach people how to believe in you?

I found this out. When I first wanted to become a coach, there was no such thing really yet as life coaches. It wasn't like, a viable career that people were doing and that it was an obvious thing that you could make money at. And the people around me were kind of questioning like, what I was doing and whether it made sense. And especially when at first it wasn't working and I wasn't making as much money as I'd wanted to and I was putting a lot of money in and not getting a lot of money out, I believed anyway.

And I believed because I wanted my life to be about self-help. I wanted to believe that I could have anything I wanted to have in my life and do anything I wanted to do. I wanted to believe that so fiercely that I made it true. That's what I wanted.

And so when a lot of the evidence, in the beginning, wasn’t serving that, I kept telling everyone, "Just be patient. Take notes, watch how it's done. I'm going to blaze the trail here." At the time, I didn't have anything propping up that belief for me. I wasn't like, "Ooh, I know a secret," or, "Oh, I'm going to figure this out." What I did know is that I had read a self-help book and it had changed my life forever. And I knew that I could provide that same change for other people. I didn't know how, but I believed that it was possible and I believed that it was the purpose of my life.

And so I committed to doing that no matter what. No matter what happened. I stayed focused on that. And there were bumps in the road and I went through doubt, but I always came back to that belief. And when I accomplished that for myself, then, of course, that was my new before stick figure, and I had a new after.

Because here's the thing: when you live your before, when you change your before and you start living the after, before you've created the result for it, by the time you create the result for it, you've been living that identity so long that it feels normal. So like, for me, I've been living in the identity of a woman, a businesswoman who creates $100 million a year. I'm living that right now.

Now, I don't have that in my bank account yet, but when I do, it will seem obvious because I'm already living that person now. I'm already believing that so hard now that when the reality is there, it will be like, of course, that is the obvious result.

So that's what I'm inviting you guys to do. I'm inviting you to believe in something that maybe isn't reasonable, that maybe is impossible at this time for you, that maybe there is no evidence for, maybe that nobody else believes in. And when you first think of that, it might feel scary to believe in something like that, it may feel scary to put that stake in the ground because what if you fail?

But here's what I want you to remember: it's much more important what you commit to believing than whether you achieve it or not. I am enjoying so much being a person who creates $100 million a year, and here's what I want to tell you about that. The anticipation of that, the creation of that, the level of thinking that that requires of me is such a powerful experience in my day-to-day right now.

The idea of what I can do for our industry, what I can do for my employees, what I can do for my coaches, for my students, my ability to be able to help fund other businesses and other organizations and to employ coaches to work for me, and to be able to support other coaches financially to build their businesses and to build many more of my own is so freaking exciting. It's like Christmas is a week away and I'm five years old.

That's what it feels like right now. I think the anticipation of Christmas is better than Christmas day. I think the anticipation of goals that you believe in are actually just as good as achieving them. I think anticipating my trip to Australia is just as exciting as it's going to be to get on the plane and be in Australia.

And so I'm enjoying my goal all the way up to the point where I achieve it. And if I don’t achieve it, if for some reason I don't hit $100 million in a year, it won't matter at all. Because I will have already lived it so hard that that actual number isn't the point.

Now, that doesn't mean that I don't believe in it hard, it doesn't mean that I won't go after it as hard as I possibly can. But I also know that I would never use not achieving it as a reason to be upset because I just haven't achieved it yet. I'm still enjoying the process. It wasn't in the timeframe that I thought and that's okay. But I don't believe that will happen. I believe that I will get to $100 million in a year within 10 years.

And how fun is that to talk about with y'all and with everyone and with all my coaches and to think - my brain is like, working on this thing. It's so amazing how big my life has become since I started believing in that.

Now, here's what happens with so many of my clients, so many of my students is you guys set a goal and then you start trying to believe in the how. You start trying to create the how because you think if you know the how, if you have the path, if you get some success, then you have permission to believe in the thing you most want to believe in. And I'm giving you permission to believe in that now.

I'm giving you permission to believe in that result that you want right now no matter what your current evidence is. And especially if it's not supporting it. That's when you need the most belief is when the evidence isn't supporting it. So when something goes wrong in my business, something goes the opposite direction, I lose money instead of make money, I could use that as a reason to believe that I wouldn't make $100 million. But instead, that's when I believe harder.

I'm like, this isn't important. Losing $25,000 in my business doesn't matter because I make $100 million. This is just a little tiny blip. This is just something I need to consider. This is something I need to pay attention to but it's not something I need to freak out and worry about because my goals are bigger than this. The way that I think about stuff now is different.

I was just talking to one of my employees about this, and I think it was about two years ago now I had a student who signed up for a training, and she decided that she didn't want to do the training and she wanted her money back. And I had told her that you know, there were no refunds, that I didn't give her money back. I had quite a bit of angst over this situation, and it's so interesting now, I'm such a different person. The way that I would handle that situation would be so different.

And I know that in another five years, the way that I'm handling situations now I will handle much different, and I'm trying to anticipate what those things are ahead of time. To be able to handle them from that place in my future in order to create that place in my future more quickly.

So what are you using as an excuse not to believe? What do you need to change in your mind in order not to indulge in not believing? If believing in your goal is the most sacred thing, is the most important thing, then you have to practice it.

We have a mastermind group that all of my certified coaches come to once a year. And in that mastermind group, we give out awards to our active coaches. And one of the awards that we give is what we call the Elite award, and that goes to anyone who has made $100,000 within the last 12 months or within their fiscal year proceeding mastermind.

And it's super inspiring to hear the stories of the people who are making $100,000 and over, and one of the things I love about our community is everybody's willing to share their exact amounts of how much they're making. And so last year - I also give out an award for top earner, whoever makes the most in their coaching business.

And so last year, the woman that had won, and the second-place person, they were very close in the battle. The woman that won the top earner was, you know, just barely beating second place. And so, we made kind of a little bit of a joke, and I said, "You better watch out, she's coming after you." And we all love each other so much, it was just for fun, right?

But the second-place person won this year. And not only did she win. She got the Two Comma Club award. She made a million dollars in her business. I always have them say a little something about how they got to that place, and what she said is she said, mastermind last year she decided that she was going to win. She decided that she wanted to be top earner.

And she wrote it in her journal every single day between those two masterminds. I will be top earner. Every single day she wrote that down. And she was the top earner. And she really needed to have written that down because the second and third place were right behind her. Very close.

And with like, three times has much as she had made the year before. It was like, so amazing, and I love that she told that story because she committed to that belief 100%. How many of you are writing down what you want every single day? Why not? Acknowledging what it is that you want and letting your brain go to work on the how.

And the way that you figure out the how is by trying lots and lots and lots of different hows. You want to know is something's going to work, try it. Don't ask anybody. Just try it. See if it works. If it doesn't, try something different. But have your mind set on that goal no matter what. On that solution no matter what because that is where you're heading no matter if your launch worked or it didn't, or your copy's working or your opt-ins working. It's all just a matter of changing those things until they do because massive action means you take action until you get the result you want.

So for her, it was to be top earner. For me, it's to make $100 million in a year. Not because I want $100 million. That is nowhere near the reason. My reason is about wanting to create possibility by using the model, being an example of what is possible. And I started with, what if you could make a million dollars as a life coach? And then I traded that to what if you could make two, what if you could make three? Why not five million? Why not 100 million? Why not?

If you can put whatever you want in the R line, why not blow your own mind and all the people around you and inspire everybody? Because what I have found is that the more that I inspire myself to believe harder, the more I inspire all of my students to believe harder. And the more it works. The more money I make, the more money my students make. It is like dollar for dollar, amazing.

And that is exactly what I want to do for all of you. Not just for my students, not just for my coaches, but for all of you. I want to be an example of what is possible with the model for you. Whether it's weight loss or relationships or whatever it is, you can have what it is you want if you believe in it hard enough.

So I teach you guys a lot about unconditional love. What if you had unconditional belief? What if believing in something didn't have conditions? Many of us do believe in things that don't have conditions, right? We believe in god. No matter what. Some of us believe in universal energy no matter what. Some of us believe in Buddha no matter what. Some of us believe in Jesus. Whatever it is that you believe in that nothing will shake your faith or your belief in.

We don’t have to limit it to those things. We can choose what we will believe in no matter what, and notice when you believe in something no matter what, notice the certainty, the security it gives you. I don't know much, but I know that I'm going to go do this thing. I know that I'm committed to believing in it. No matter what anyone says, I will not quit, I will not change my mind, I will not make excuses.

And the more you commit to something, the more massive action you will want to take to prove it true, and the more you will ignore all the evidence to the contrary. It won't even matter. That evidence won't matter. It won't be relevant. It won't be important to you. It doesn't matter that you failed that launch, that’s not relevant. All I need to learn from it and see what I need to do to create this answer.

And I'll leave you with this: I like to imagine that you've already gone to the future, that you and I have gone to the future and we've seen it. We already know you succeeded this thing. So let's go to my future together. Let's go to this place where I'm on this podcast talking to you guys, and I'm like, "Wow you guys, seriously, how cool is this? I just looked at my PNL and for this year we've made $100 million in revenue. We did it. I made it. I believed in it and then I created it and this is the result."

That happens in the future. And so what I know to be sure is when I say that, when I do that, I won't remember the failures that I think now are so important. None of that will matter even a little bit. The only reason it'll matter is from what I learned from it so I could create that result for myself.

So let's go to your future where you've lost all the weight. And if we go there and you and I have a conversation about it and we say, "Look, here you are, you achieved this goal. Now, look back on that day that you overate on Tuesday, how relevant is that to you now? Aren't you glad that you didn't quit because of that? Aren't you glad you didn't quit when the scale went up five pounds? Aren't you glad you didn't quit when you didn't lose weight for six weeks?" You'll be like, yeah, we'll kind of laugh about it, right? It won't be a reason to give up.

So my friends, how committed are you to believing? How hard are you believing in your dreams? The harder you believe, the less hustle you have to do. Because the harder you believe, the calmer you will be, the less hurried you will be to create the result because you know it's coming. It's in the mail, they've already shipped it, you're just waiting for it to arrive.

That is how the commitment to believing something works. And I want you to practice believing in the thing you want, in the belief that you need to believe in and thinking in that way. It takes practice. You have to teach your brain that this is our reality now.

My brain's still very confused. My brain doesn't think that we've made $100 million yet. I know we have. So what part of me knows that we have if my brain doesn't agree? That bigger part of me. And which part of me is more powerful? Now, the tool of my brain is extremely amazing. But what I'm so interested in is the part of me that isn't my brain that supervises my brain. The part of my brain that watches the other part of my brain. That's the part that can decide to believe in something no matter what, and that's the part that is more powerful when it comes to commitment and believing in something.

And I will tell you all, that is how I've been able to create all the results I've already created and it's how you've created all the results you've already created. Think about it. Every amazing thing that we have in our world right now is because of a brain that created it. Because of an idea, because we imagined something that didn't yet exist. We did something that we had never done before. That's what makes us evolve and move forward as a species and as individuals.

So I invite you to do that. I give you permission to believe in whatever it is you want to believe in for you, and to keep believing in it no matter what because what matters is did you commit to believing in it. Matters much more than if you achieved it.

Alright my friends, have a beautiful week. I'll talk to you next week. Take care. Bye-bye.

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