Ep #385: 5 Insights for My New Friend

You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode 385.

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.

Hello my beautiful friends. How are you all? I am amazing. It’s so fun, I just got back from Lake Tahoe where we celebrated my 49th birthday and my son’s 21st birthday and we were there for 10 days. And I was there with both of my sons, my boys’ dad Chris, my parents were there, all the kids’ friends, my friends were there. We tore it up.

We had such a good time on the boat and with each other and playing games and laughing. So much laughing and celebrating. It was really an amazing time for me and my family and especially for Christian. It was such a huge birthday for him.

So happy birthday, my beautiful baby boy. And who knew that in my late 40s, I would be having the time of my life? Literally the best time I’ve ever had in my entire life.

It’s like all of the work that I’ve been doing on myself my whole life is coming together and clicking. And I feel a sense of joy and a sense of excitement about my life that I’ve just never had before. And I’m just enjoying the heck out of it. I’m truly living the best version of myself, the best version of my life I ever have.

So I want to share a little bit of that with y’all. I recently spent the weekend with a new friend who wasn’t familiar with me, wasn’t familiar with my work. And whenever I’m with someone and I’m with them for an extended period of time, and there’s intimacy involved in the communication, I can’t help myself.

I have to share my insights. I have to share what I know because I feel like it’s so important, and I forget that not everybody knows this work, and not everyone understands the way that I look at the world and the way that I teach people to look at the world that creates so much joy and so much more freedom.

And so I thought I would share the insights that I shared with him because I think that many of you who listen to this podcast already have this insight, but you may want to share insights with your friends or your families that aren’t familiar with my work.

And one of the challenges of doing that is you can’t really teach someone the Model in a quick conversation over drinks, right? The Model takes a minute to learn how to use it and to start applying it to your life and to get the feel of it and to challenge it and that sort of thing.

But there are some insights I think that we can share with our friends that make sense and they definitely made sense to my friend. Let’s call him T. They made sense to him. We had really great conversations about these things and one of the things that we said is him going away from this experience was just to have seen and heard about these ideas I think once you know them, you can’t unknow them.

So the first one is rich people aren’t evil. And I’ve actually heard this several times now from people who meet me, understand my financial situation, and they’re like, “Oh, you’re the first rich person that I’ve ever met that isn’t awful.”

And I always wonder about that. I’m like, you know, I don’t know about that. I think that we have been socialized to believe that having a lot of money or being rich can be involved with corruption and with something illegal or with being a bad person.

And one of the simple truths that I told my friend was, “Listen, if you’re a bad person and you get a lot of money, you’re going to be a worse person. You’re going to be able to elevate your badness if you’re already bad. But if you’re a good person and you get a lot of money, you’re going to be able to elevate your goodness.”

And so remember, money is neutral and what we do with it and the choices we make with it can be interpreted as negative or bad or wrong or evil. But to even move the point forward, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this on the podcast but my friend Tah who’s been on the podcast too, he said, “You’re the first rich person I ever saw truly enjoy yourself and your money and be fun with it and not take it so seriously and not use it against other people in a way that was negative.”

And I think that just proves the point that I’ve always been a generous person, I’ve always been an excited person, I’ve always been a fun person, so the more money I get, the more I get to exemplify that. And the last thing I told him was I said, “We need more money in the hands of the good people.”

So if you’re a good person, it’s almost your responsibility to get rich. And if you’re blocking yourself from getting rich because you think somehow it will mean that you will turn evil, or you’ll turn bad, or you’ll do bad things with it, you just have to step back and be like, does that make logical sense?

Do you think that money will corrupt you? Only you know the answer to that. Or will you just be more of who you are? And there’s a big pile of money I believe waiting for everyone, and if you don’t claim yours, nobody will utilize it and you’ll miss your opportunity to expand yourself and what I mean by that is what does it require of you to believe that that’s possible, that abundance is possible for you, and that you’re worthy enough to receive and share your abundance with the world.

And so I think it was really cool for us to hang out together and talk about what it’s like to have a lot of money and still have your life be 50/50, to still have it suck half the time, that money’s not going to solve everything, but it’s also not going to make you any less of a person. It’s going to make you more of who you already are, so that’s number one. Rich people aren’t evil. It’s not a good belief system.

The second insight that I had for him was to receive love, you have to love yourself first. We talk a lot on this podcast about the ability to love and your lovability is 100%. You’re already 100% worthy and your lovability has to do with the other person’s ability to love you.

And there’s nothing you can do to make yourself more lovable. You’re already 100% there. And I believe that so thoroughly in my heart. But in order to receive someone’s love, in order to experience it and connect with it, you have to believe you’re worthy of it. You have to believe that you deserve to open your heart to experience it.

And the reason why this is so important is love is an emotion that you’re going to create. So when someone is “loving” you, it’s not like their love is jumping from their body to yours. You have to be the experiencer of it. You are the one creating it through your thoughts and through that experience with that other person.

And you will be very disconnected if you don’t think you’re worthy of love, if you think you have something to hide, if you think that you’re somehow damaged. I think a lot of times what many of us do is we believe that if someone truly knew us, if someone knew our deepest, darkest, ugliest secrets, the things we had done in the past to hurt ourselves or hurt others, that we would be deemed unlovable.

And I think that what the work we all do is understanding that there’s nothing you can do to make yourself less lovable. There’s nothing you can do to make yourself less worthy as a human being.

And so when you know that about yourself and someone recognizes that and appreciates that and wants to connect and love you, then that’s when the magic can happen between two people. That’s when the love flows in a way that I think is beyond what you can appreciate just sitting in a room alone.

And so what does that require? What does it require for us to love ourselves enough so we can show up to be loved? And I think it’s understanding and forgiving yourself for what you think is your unworthiness, what you think is your damage, what you think isn’t good enough about you. It’s all nonsense.

And I think many of us show up to new relationships and to meeting new people and we present ourselves in a way that prevents that. We lead with the way we look, or we lead with our accomplishments, or we lead with trying to pose to someone how great we are and how amazing we are and how well-intentioned we are.

And sometimes I think if we would just show up and just be like, yo, this is me, this is who I am, this is what’s true for me, and be willing to be vulnerable in a space that includes all of your accomplishments, it includes how you look, it includes all of that but it also includes that you’re a human being, and I think about this a lot in relationships.

We all really just want to love and be loved. And if we would just get rid of all the nonsense in between, we could just get right to it. We could just get right to the part where we can touch those tender spaces within each other and share that experience of acceptance and vulnerability and love.

So in order to get there, you have to spend a significant amount of time loving yourself. It is not self-indulgent to do so. It brings more love into the world. It increases your capacity to love and to be loved, which ultimately, I think is the goal is to literally open ourselves up to more love in our lives.

Number three is don’t let your “negative” past define you. So I was talking to my friend about his life and about his past and a lot of his references and the way that he told the stories about his past were very negative. And a lot of times when we’re doing this, we don’t even understand that that’s a choice.

The way we tell our stories can either have a negative spin or a positive spin to them. And I think sometimes people tell a negative story about their past and then they tell what they learned from that negative story. And I do think that’s better than not having anything to learn.

But one of the things that I teach is how to rewrite your past, how to write it in a way that doesn’t bring up negative pain and doesn’t bring up negative emotion towards other people. And doesn’t bring up anger and doesn’t bring up bitterness.

And so when you reference even a job that you had, or a relationship that you had, or an experience that you had in the past, and when you identity yourself as the poor victim in the story and you identify yourself as being in a situation that was against your will and that was very negative when it wasn’t necessarily that way, you diminish your ability to create positive emotion for yourself.

You live as if your life is happening to you, as if your past happened to you, and even that your past is continually happening to you. And you end up using it as an excuse to not pursue the biggest version of yourself.

So if you’re saying, “Well, this happened to me, I got my heart broken in this situation and that’s why I can’t show up fully here,” or, “I had a job that I didn’t - my values weren’t aligned with, so therefore I can’t ever work for corporate America again,” or, “I had this experience with a friend or someone being negative to me or someone hurting me, so therefore I need to be super careful and keep people away from me and my future,” you’ve created a false narrative about what’s true.

Because what’s true is you get to create your future. You get to create whatever you want in your future not based on your past. And you can tell stories from your past in a way that empower you and excite you and ignite you to do more, instead of requiring you to buffer, and feel sorry for yourself, and point fingers because we all know that doesn’t get you anywhere.

So number three is don’t let your “negative” past define you. You get to be defined by your future. You get to be defined by where you’re going, by who you want to be, by how you want to show up, by what your possibility is. And not by the experiences that you’re interpreting from your past.

And one of my pieces of advice here, one of my insights here is to go back and rewrite that story in a way that makes you the hero, in a way that makes you feel great about the experience that you had, how you showed up, how you recovered from it, how you are going to create from that enriched soil of your life.

So many of us have this idea of how our lives should be. This idealized version of being born to perfect parents and having them raise you perfectly, and then going to the best colleges with your D1 scholarships and graduating with honors and meeting the person of your dreams and getting married and have perfect children and growing old together in rocking chairs.

And nobody questions that life. We just think, oh, that’s how life is supposed to be. But what I’ve noticed is that’s not how life is for 99% of the people in the world, and yet we use that story or some version of it as a way to torture ourselves.

And if instead we were able to look at our lives and realize they’re happening exactly as they’re meant to, I’m pretty sure nobody is meant to have a perfect life. That’s not the point.

The point is clearly to struggle and to have challenges and to have obstacles and to utilize that to make the best life that you can, but I just don’t see the logic in believing that life should be easier than it is because it’s not for anyone that I meet.

I have an amazing, incredible, blessed life. And it still sucks 50% of the time because it’s supposed to. Because my goals are big, because I want to grow, because I’m willing to do the hard work to get to the next level of my evolution.

Number four, be aware of your attitude. So I would say that my friend would have thought before he came to hang out that he had a positive attitude. And that he had a positive outlook on life. And as we spent more time together, I pointed out gently like, hey, notice what you said here, notice how you're approaching this, and notice how you address that, and notice what you said here.

And I was just kind of exposing his mind to himself, which is what we do in coaching all the time. And I was like, you notice how you said this and how it’s affecting how you feel, it’s affecting how you’re showing up, it’s affecting the dreams you’re pursuing, the opportunities that you’re showing up for, it’s really affecting our success because of this unconscious negative narrative that’s running under the surface.

So the question then becomes how do we become more aware of the unconscious bias, the humming of negativity that’s going through our brain. How do we shine a light on that when you don’t have someone with you that’s pointing it out to you?

And I would say that one of the best ways and the way that I really did this for myself was journaling, was really writing down and doing thought downloads, which was just emptying out my brain on to paper. Even now when I do this work, I’m so surprised at how much negativity goes on in my brain, at how many painful thoughts, how many mean thoughts, how many unnecessary thoughts are going on in my brain that aren’t serving me, and how many of them are negative.

And a lot of us, what happens is we don’t even realize that we had these negative thoughts and these negative attitudes and these negative ideas, and then we go about proving them true and justifying them to ourselves because then we can feel righteous and correct. But we lose the opportunity to create more value for the world and for ourselves when we’re walking with that negative self-talk going on.

If you think your negative self-talk is just a personal thing that you’re doing to yourself, I want to tell you you’re wrong about that. That negative self-talk is affecting every single person you come in contact with. They are missing the best version of you if you’re showing up with that.

And when you’re hiding and lying to people and not telling them the full truth and trying to cover up what you think are your shortcomings with a bunch of crap that you want people to know that aren’t true about you, you’re doing it the hard way.

What you need to do is just stop talking about anything that isn’t true and find the true truth within you. What you will find is that the truth of who you are is so much more spectacular than the crap you’re making up about yourself to other people.

Who you really are is tremendous, magnificent, so beautiful. So much more beautiful than just your face or your body or your charisma. Who you really are, the truth of who you really are, which includes all that brain activity that brings up all that negative stuff, that’s what’s super attractive. That’s what we all want to connect with. That’s what we want to know about.

We want to know about the part of you that is struggling to be a human. That’s interesting. That connects us. Because oh, you’re struggling? So am I. You have this situation, so do I. And it doesn’t mean you buy into it, it doesn’t mean you believe in it, it doesn’t mean you continue it, it just means you acknowledge it.

You tell the truth, and you don’t pretend, you don’t ever have to pretend you’re better than you are. Because who you are is already amazing. So stop all the pretending around it and just be aware that your negative attitude can be changed. Your negative thoughts about yourself are not true. And you can clean that up and just show up as that gorgeous version of yourself.

And the last insight I had for my friend is actions matter more than words. When I meet someone, I listen to what they say to me and what they tell me and what they believe and what they want to do. But way more than that, I watch what they actually do.

And here’s why this is so important, and I’ve talked about this on previous podcasts but I want to make sure you all understand this. There are thoughts you want to have, that you want to believe, and then there are thoughts that you actually believe.

And the difference between those two is the ones that you actually believe are the ones that are activated, that create the emotion that drive the action. So if I think I want to want to do something, I want to work hard on my business, I want to provide for my family, I want to create this production, or I want to create this show, or I want to create this piece of music, there’s that thought that you have in your head, but to know if you believe it, you have to look to your actions.

And you’ll know if you believe it if there’s actually results you’re creating from that belief. And if there’s not results you’re creating from that belief, you’re actually not believing the thought.

So I recommend this for anyone who’s in a relationship with someone. If somebody says, “Listen, I want to spend a lot of time with you,” or, “I want to love you,” or, “I want to have children with you,” or, “I want to move in with you,” or whatever it is, listen to what they’re saying but then make sure, is that thing they’re saying activated? Can you see the results of that thought in their life? Can you see the actions of that thought in the world?

Because that person may be lying to you but not even realizing it. They may not even realize that they’re lying to themselves because they want to believe the thought so much they don’t recognize that they don’t yet.

And the easiest way to have this conversation with someone is to say, “Hey listen, this is what you said, and I think this is what you believe, but that thought is not activated because there is no evidence of it in the world. You haven’t taken the action of it; you haven’t created a result that reflects back on that thought. And so it’s important that you understand that when you say that to me, I don’t believe you, and you shouldn’t believe you either until there’s results, until there’s evidence of the actual thought that you’re thinking.”

Now, it may be that somebody just hasn’t produced the results yet but they’re working on them, but typically there will be evidence of that action. And so that fifth insight is actions matter more than words.

And it’s not because the words don’t matter. It’s just because the actions prove that they’re actually activated words. They’re actually activated thoughts, they’re actually the truth.

There’s a difference between wanting to do something and actually believing that you will. And the difference is results. And as someone in a relationship, even a new relationship with someone, even dating someone, just meeting them for a new friend, or being married to them for 50 years, you’re always going to be able to understand if the person is telling themselves and you the truth by the actions that are apparent between the two of you and in their life.

So that’s what I have for you today, my friends. I’m so happy to share my insights. I’ll be very happy to be able to send this podcast to my friend for him to kind of revisit all of the things that we talked about. And also, for you to maybe share it with some of the people in your lives that don’t know the Model yet.

Hopefully they’ll be enticed to learn it. These are some simple insights that come from understanding the work that we do and they’re insights that are easy to grasp and easy to test and easy to apply right away. Have a beautiful, wonderful, amazing week everyone. Talk to you soon. Bye.

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