Ep #347: I’ve Never Done That Before

You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode number 347.

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, y’all? Alright, I might do a little rant today. I’m just saying, it could happen.

I was talking to my love last night. And yes, I’m going to be telling you a lot more about him coming up. So much to tell y’all, my friends. So much to tell you all. But anyway, we were talking and one of the things that he said was, “Well, I’ve just never done that before.”

And I was talking about something that he had said he wanted to do and he was struggling to do it. And he was basically saying, “Well, the reason why is because I’ve never done it before.” And I took issue with that, my friends because that is a thought that does not serve us.

“I have not done that before,” doesn’t add value to your model, your life, your actions, your results. It isn’t a relevant thought if you’re trying to produce something extraordinary.

I’ll say to someone, “Do you want to set this goal? Do you want to do this thing?” and they’ll say, “Yeah, but I don’t know how because I’ve never done it before.” Okay, not relevant. Not useful.

Someone’s struggling to do something, “Well, the reason why I’m struggling is because I’ve never done it before.” No, no, no, and no. That is not the reason. And we’re going to talk about it today. We’re going to go to task on it today.

And I want you to call out your friends who say this to you. And I want you to call out your clients that day this to you. I want you to call out yourself if you say this to you.

This thought is poison to your dreams, “I’ve never done that before. I haven’t been able to do it before,” or, “This is how I’ve always done it.” Past-focused garbage, excuses, stop it.

Alright, let’s review. There is past focus and there’s future focus. And, of course, there’s present focus. But your present focus is where you choose your thoughts and you can choose thoughts from the past or thoughts from the future.

Now, if you are past-focused – and most of you are. Most of us are very past-focused. We look to our past to define our future. We look to our past to define who we are. We look to our past to make sense of what’s going on now.

When you look at your past to create your identity, you create more of the same. You keep recreating the same version of yourself. You keep creating the same life.

If you only do things that you know how to do, it means you’ve done them before. It means you’re doing the same things. If you say you can’t do something because you don’t know how to do it because you’ve never done it before, you’re going to stop growing.

You have to do things you’ve never done before. Your whole life should be filled with things you’ve never done before. Not having done it should never be a reason not to do it. That’s it.

And if you’re not doing it well, it’s only because you’re not doing it well. Not because you haven’t done it before. Stop gripping to the past, being attached to the past, being attached to things you already know how to do. It’s so boring.

I want you to start living from your future. Have you not been listening? Have I taught you nothing? When you live from your future, of course you don’t know how to do it yet. You haven’t done it yet. It’s great. It’s fantastic. You’re learning. You’re doing new things. It’s called life. It’s called growth. Welcome.

People say to me, “I can only have confidence if I’ve done it before.” Confidence does not come from having done something before. Confidence comes from a thought in your brain.

Now, many of you think that because you’ve done something before, that you can have a thought that creates confidence much easier. And maybe that’s true. But you can still have that thought having not done it before. That’s how you create.

Now, I want you to think about this. Your past success is not what determines your future success. Think about it. Your current thinking is what determines your future success, not your past action. Your past action doesn’t create anything.

You know what your past action does? It just sits in the past and does nothing. You think because you’ve done something before that you can do it again, so therefore you do. You can just as easily think that you can do something you’ve never done before and do it and have confidence doing it and have your life accelerate beyond what you thought was possible because you’re living from your future.

When you envision a future you haven’t yet done, you’re going to be doing things you’ve never done before, which will require you to grow and learn and yes, my friends, fail. How do we learn how to do new things my friends? By failing. We try, we fall, we try, we fall, we try, we fall, we try, we win. That is the formula for success.

Learning as we go is the most magnificent thing. And I want to tell you why. I want to tell you why learning as we go is the secret.

First of all, you develop the skill of failure tolerance. The more you can tolerate failure, the better life you’re going to have. The more chances you’re going to take. The more risks you’re going to take. The more wins you’re going to have. It’s just a number game, my friend. That’s it.

If you fail 100 times, your chances of succeeding go up tremendously. You’ve increased your chance of succeeding by the number of tries. And that is what I want to encourage you to do.

Now, think about this. Where do all new ideas, new creations come from? Trying new things. It’s not rocket science. If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’re never going to create anything new. And thank goodness human beings are willing to try and fail and do things from their future because that’s why we have all of the inventions and all of the progress that we have.

But it’s always been just a few people creating. We should all live from that place of trying new things and creating new things. Because when we do things as a unique human, when we do new things, we learn new things, we have new ideas, new creations. You’re mixing you with something new that never has existed before.

That possibility of you having never done something and then doing it creates a new experience that didn’t exist in the world. If you keep doing everything you’ve always done, you’re just repeating what already exists, which means there’s no progress. There’s no evolution. There’s no new creation. There’s no new idea babies.

By failing and learning and repeating and failing and learning and repeating, we create a new world. Exposing yourself to new experiences, new attempts, new tries will keep you young. It will keep you growing and alive. It will end stagnation.

The only skills you need to do this are the model, and you need to know how to process and manage emotion because failure sucks. It feels bad. I highly, highly recommend it. I’m selling you on the pain, my friends. I’m selling you on the discomfort because it’s so worth it.

I give you a goal, I say, “Hey, do you want to try this thing?” And you say, “Well, I’ve never done it before.” I will cry inside, “I don’t know if I can do that. I’ve never done it before. I don’t have the confidence to do that. I’ve never done it before. I’d rather do something I’ve already done because then I’m safe, then I feel confident, then I feel like I can do it because I’ve already done it. It’s an easy win to just keep repeating the same life I’ve always had.”

Now, obviously there’s going to be things in life that you want to repeat that are great, that are fantastic. But you also need things in your life that are way beyond your reach. So, you require yourself to grow and evolve and move and not get stagnant.

Way too many of you are coming to me and telling me that you can’t take action, that you can’t do anything new because you still need to figure it out. It makes no sense.

That’s like saying, “I can’t start working until I start working.” You’ve got to go do it. You’ve got to go jump in, make it happen, fail, learn. Especially if you’ve never don it before, that’s when you should do it, try new things, look silly, fall on your face, have an amazing life.

Our reference point to our past, looking at our past to influence and direct our future is the biggest mistake I see people who want to live extraordinary lives are making. I want you to imagine a river flowing fast. Where is it going? What is it going to create?

And then, I want you to imagine that the river is like a person, is an entity. And it keeps trying to turn back upstream so it can flow where it’s already flowed before. It’s a hot mess. And yet, that’s how many of us are living our lives, referencing what we’ve always done, even though so many of us don’t even like our lives.

We don’t like the results of our lives. We don’t like the actions we’ve been creating. And yet, we cling to them and say, “This is what I know, so this is what I’ll do.”

This is why I spend so much time wanting you all to know your future, to envision your future, so you can start knowing that and becoming familiar with that vision so you’ll start taking action from that vision.

“I’ve never done this before, therefore I must do it.” Don’t base what you do on your past. Base what you do on your desire, your vision, your possibility. Don’t be afraid to dream new dreams that you have no idea how to achieve. That is the creation of possibility. Possibility is created in your mind first.

Have you ever considered doing something that you’d never considered before, but once you considered it in your brain, that possibility existed and then the pieces started to flow, they started to come together? What haven’t you allowed yourself to consider for yourself?

“What if?” is such a way better question. “What if I could do…” whatever your dream is? “Is it possible?” Yes. Those are the thoughts I want to encourage you to think and to ask over, “I’ve never done that before.”

If you knew that you would go after a dream with full on tenacity to create the result that you want in your own life, what would it be? You don’t have to tell anybody. That’s what’s so fun. You could dream like the biggest dream privately, the possibility now exists in your brain, which means it exists in energy, which means now it is something.

And once it’s something, then the energy can start flowing. As long as you don’t block it with thoughts like, “I’ve never done that before,” and you start opening yourself up to, “I’m open to new things. I will try this. I will make this happen. I will create this. I have a unique skillset I can bring to this.”

What you will notice is that your future rushes in. It fills you with desire and confidence and excitement, not based on something you’ve ever done before, but based on a vision you’ve created in your mind.

My vision is always flowing into my life. My future is always rushing into my life, to energize me to create in the present moment. I use my future as a tool, as an emotional tool to ignite and excite me. I don’t ever ask my past what’s possible. My past doesn’t know. My past is done. My past is tired.

I ask my future because it’s vast and unlimited and it wants to be realized and it loves my excitement and it loves my energy. And it fuels me instead of defeating me.

Watch yourselves, my friend. Do you say, “I’ve never done that before?” Do you say, “I don’t know how because I’ve never done it before?” or, “This is how I’ve always done it” If you do, stop it. Change it. Create from your future, my friends.

Look towards the future and ask yourself, “What is the possibility that I want to create in my mind first, my emotions second, and then take action from that energy that I create?” And then go get it done. Have a great week, everyone. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.

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