Ep #429: Strong Minds, Money, and Worry: Your Questions Answered

You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode 429.

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.

Well, hello, my friends. I am so happy to be here. We’ve been having such an amazing summer, all of us, me and the kids in the house. And my friends Alex and Leila are here, my friend Ryan is coming, we just went to the Cayman Islands with some of my friends, and just finished up Reinvention Live, which was insanely fun.

So I’m excited to be here. I have been going through your questions for me that you submitted through the podcast text number. And first of all, I just want to thank everyone for such beautiful messages that you sent, and for such amazing things that you said about how my work has changed your lives, and what you’re doing with your lives, and how the podcast has helped you.

They were very, very fun to read through. So I’m going to go through and answer as many of these as I can within the next 20 to 30 minutes. And if I need to do a second one, I will.

I picked the questions that I thought were the best questions to address, mostly everyone that listens to the podcast. And there were a lot of really specific questions about coaching and needing one-to-one coaching on certain things.

I highly recommend that if you submitted a question that was really specific to a problem that you’re having, that you definitely join me in Scholars and let me coach you on that question so we can have some back and forth, versus me just answering a simple question on the podcast.

We are also answering many of these questions on social media, on short snippet videos that we’re creating. The boys have been playing over there with some social media videos and social media Instagram and all the things, trying to answer some of these questions and get some more content out to you. So make sure you check that out, as well.

So the first question is, “How do you stay so strong-minded?” And it’s so interesting to get this question today because I’ve been having a not-so-strong-minded couple of days. And I think sometimes when I’m in the spotlight, when I’m presenting and when I’m teaching and when I’m coaching, I’m in a space where I’ve already coached myself and I’ve already gotten to the space where I can be available to you all as a teacher or as a coach.

And so it’s very important to know that I don’t always stay strong-minded. I feel like sometimes I don’t want to feel my thoughts, if you know what I mean. My thoughts are definitely not strong and they’re painful and they’re weak and they’re worrisome and negative for sure.

So I don’t want anyone to be under the impression that I have strong thoughts all of the time. I don’t. I do coach myself regularly. I do have faith in my ability to manage my mind and manage my emotions and pull myself out of dark spaces, and to really process through the emotions that I’m going through.

And so that’s very useful to have the tools, to have the Model to be able to do that. And the other thing I want to say about that is I don’t always want to be strong-minded. I want to be able to fall apart when I need to fall apart, and I need to be able to cry and be in a space of weakness when that’s appropriate for me. And I do do that. I just actually recently did that - it was with my girlfriends actually.

I was able to just fall apart with them and it was very cathartic and felt amazing. I wouldn’t say that falling apart and crying makes me not strong. I actually think it is part of being strong. But it doesn’t obviously appear strong when I’m experiencing the other half of life. I’m experiencing the part that I struggle with as well.

So I know from the outside, many times it can seem like people that are in the public eye, or people that are teaching, or coaching, or in that space, that they’re strong all the time. And I think sometimes we look on other people’s social media and we think, “Oh, they’re always smiling, they’re always happy, they’re always doing so well.”

We just have to remember that that’s not always the case. We all have a life of 50:50, including me. I’m definitely not always strong. But I also think you’re asking maybe how you can be strong-minded and how you can - maybe it’s something that you want to work on.

What I would recommend for anyone who wants to be strong-minded is to remember how capable you are and to practice believing and practice thinking thoughts that help you remember what you’re capable of in your future, and to let your future self pull you into that place.

And we talked about this in our live Reinvention class. It’s not enough to just have a positive thought. It’s not enough to just change your thought. You actually have to practice being strong. You have to actually practice new thoughts to believe in.

And so I think sometimes when we have negative thoughts come in - one of the other questions that we had was, “How are we going to deal with this recession, this impending doom that’s coming our way? And how are we going to manage our minds around that?”

And I think one of the things that we can do is ask ourselves, how do we want to deal with certain circumstances? Circumstances are opportunities for us to strengthen our minds, for us to strengthen our resolve, to strengthen our emotional lives.

And when we utilize the circumstances of the world to evolve ourselves and to become more of who we want to be, and to connect more with who we want to be, I think that’s one way that we get better, and therefore stronger at doing that.

So if you have something in your life that you feel is beating you down, or you have something in your life that you feel is making you feel weak, just remember that that is also an opportunity for you to practice the skills of being strong, practice the skills of having strong-minded thoughts, and creating emotions that will help serve you in your life.

The next question is, “Why don’t more people talk about the money they make?” And I think this is a funny question for me because I get so much flack for talking about money all the time. And people accusing me of being - only caring about money.

So here’s my philosophy on this, and those of you who have been listening to the podcast for a while, you will understand this. I love money as a goal because I think it is a powerful way for us to present obstacles, to pull up obstacles into our awareness that we can work through in order to overcome those obstacles, to see that we’re quite capable of creating much more than many of us know in our lives.

And I do feel like money is a beautiful way of doing that. Of course, I like making money through coaching and serving my clients. And other people make money in different ways. But for me, it’s a win-win. I get to help other people in their lives and create a business where I employ people, and also help them make money and make myself money.

I am really dedicated to helping women especially blow their own minds with how much money they can make. And so one of the ways that I have attempted to do that is to bring to the forefront the idea of making more money and talking about money in a way that normalizes it for women.

One of the biggest influences that I had was when Amy Porterfield talked on her podcast about making a million dollars. It hadn’t even occurred to me to want to make a million dollars in a year. It was one of the most powerful things that happened to me, to hear another woman talking about her income changed the trajectory of my life.

And I have had many, many, many other women tell me the same thing, tell me that they have changed their incomes, they have changed their family legacy literally because of hearing me talk about money in the way that I do.

And so I think the question is why don’t more women talk about how much money they make. I think it is a way that we are socialized. I think it is a way that we are taught that how much money we make is private and we shouldn’t brag about how much money we make, and we shouldn’t talk about making money as if it makes us better than other people.

And I would absolutely agree. Of course, money doesn’t make you better than anyone. It never will be able to. It won’t make you any more worthy than you are because you’re already 100% worthy. And having more money will not make your life better so you don’t have the 50:50 experience.

You will still have the 50:50 experience as you increase your income for sure. You will have different issues to deal with and different balance of emotion, but you will still have that 50:50 experience in my opinion.

So I think that of course it’s everyone’s choice to talk about how much money they make or not. And I do think that the more we talk about it, especially with each other and being encouraging with each other, I think the better.

Sometimes we can get into trouble when we start talking about money in a way that is comparing and despairing or competitive. And one of the things that I have always really tried to encourage in my community and with my friends and with the people that I know is how amazing it is to see other people win when it comes to their dreams and making money and in their businesses.

And I like to think about the more we all make, the more we all win. So I like to look at the collective as well. I have very big goals for myself personally, but my financial goals for myself personally are really based on being an example of what is possible with the Model.

And so I really am trying to show that anything really is possible in your life if you believe in yourself, if you have good intentions, if you want to make a contribution. There doesn’t have to be some artificial limit that we put on what we can do. And so the more we talk about that with each other, the more inspired we can be by each other, I think the better.

The next question was, “How can I stop worrying so much?” And I think this is a great question. I actually have quite a few podcasts that talk about indulgent emotions. I think worrying is an indulgent emotion. It’s one of those emotions that we tap into and we experience that doesn’t move us forward when we process it.

It doesn’t take us to the next level. And so you’ll hear me talk a lot about processing emotion, but you’ll also hear me talk about indulging in emotion. And worry is one of those emotions that we indulge in, and we choose to worry instead of make progress.

And so one of the things that I would highly recommend anyone do who’s experiencing a lot of worry is first of all, remember that you’re just feeling your thought. That’s it. You’re having a thought in your brain that’s causing you to worry.

And you’re having the thought maybe compulsively or repeatedly, and perpetuating your own worry. And when you can separate out the facts from the story, you will recognize that the facts are neutral and the worry is only pretending to be necessary, as Eckhart Tolle would say.

And the worry is not helping you, and it’s not progressing you. So when I’m experiencing worry or for me, I experience a lot of anxiety, I recognize that that emotion may be there and I may need to continue to feel it and process it and have it there. But not in a way that holds me back or gets me stuck.

And so when I can’t change my thought or I can’t let worry go, I just carry it around with me like a heavy purse and move on with my day. I don’t take it seriously. I don’t pretend that it’s important. And I don’t indulge in it any more than I can help myself to do.

The first step I would do is separate out the facts from the story, recognize that the story is optional, and tell myself a new story about it. A lot of times, when I’m experiencing worry, I try to back up from my life. I try to get out of the details, get out of the weeds of my life that make me worry unnecessarily, and breathe in fresh air and say, “None of this is that big of a deal.”

So if you’re worried about something that someone else is doing, or you’re worried about your career, or you’re worried about your business, you can step back. And especially if it isn’t something that serious, which a lot of us who are worrying chronically are worrying about things that aren’t that important, we can step back from those things and take a deep breath and look at it with fresh eyes and remind ourselves that none of this really matters when it comes to who we are as human beings and our own worthiness.

If you are having worry because of a very significant acute event in your life, I find that in situations like that, instead of indulging in it and feeling like it’s somehow serving a purpose, I like to back up, separate out the story from the fact, and remind myself that this is an opportunity for me to be who I want to be.

If something is happening that is inviting me to worry, I can decide instead how I want to show up in a way that is responsible and it is helpful and is useful to me.

The next question is, “What do you tell people that you do when they ask you what you do? What is your elevator pitch?” She was basically saying that people aren’t understanding what she does and she’s a life coach.

I’ll answer this question because the way that a lot of people used to go about this was explain what a life coach was without saying life coach. And so for me, I am first and foremost a life coach. I love the term life coach. I’ve always wanted to be a life coach as soon as I learned the term and I haven’t stopped wanting to be one since.

So I’m thrilled to be a life coach and I always say that that’s what I do for a living when someone asks me. And if they want me to elaborate and they ask more questions, I’ll go on to say something like I own The Life Coach School and I train coaches and I also coach. But if people just ask me what I do, I say that I’m a life coach.

If somebody says, “I don’t know what a life coach is,” I basically say, “I work with people who want to take their lives from good to great, and I help them learn some tools that will help them manage their mind to help them do that.”

And if someone keeps asking, “What’s the difference between a life coach and therapy?” I’ll try to explain that therapy is better suited for people who are non-functioning, that need to go and process things from their past, and life coaching is much more about your future.

Highly functioning people already that want to achieve bigger goals or maybe clean up current things in their life for their future. So that’s how I answer. I’m very proud to answer that I’m a life coach when people ask me.

“How is your life better and worse now?” And this is referring to how I explain a lot of times that it’s not better here than there. When you get to a place in your life where you have a bigger goal than where you’re living in, you might think, “Oh, when I get there, my life will be so much better than it is right now.”

And I always say life’s always 50:50. It’s not going to be better there than here. And it’s true that in some ways, if you make more money, your life will be better in some ways because you’ll be able to afford more things perhaps. But it may also be worse in other ways because of the changes in your life that it may bring.

And so for me, I’m assuming that the question is based on - she’s saying how is your life better and worse now, I’m assuming this is referring to my business and the business growth and the success that I’ve had financially. And I will say that my life is better in the sense that I have more freedom to spend money in a lot of ways.

And that is a really cool thing to be able to do. There are a lot of things that I can buy, there are a lot of experiences that I can have, there are a lot of charities that I could help, there are a lot of people that I can help in my life, there’s a lot of gifting I can do that I wasn’t able to do before I had this much money. And that is very fun.

It’s also very fun to be able to hire people and invest in my company, and not worry about going into debt and struggling financially with my business. That’s how my life is so much better.

I will say that my life is worse in some ways than it was in terms of the amount of responsibility that I have, the amount of things that I feel like I’m requiring myself to think about and take responsibility for is a heavier weight than I had before I had all of this money.

Having a lot of employees, having a lot of moving parts in terms of my company is a piece that - it’s like a level of heaviness and responsibility that I do willingly and I’m all-in on doing, but it’s also very challenging. And it’s much harder than it was before I had money.

I’ll also say that I’m going through an experience now of growing my business kind of to the next level and feeling like there’s less and less people I can relate to, and less and less people I can talk to about the challenges that I’m going through.

And I have found that to be pretty isolating. And I didn’t feel that as much before. I felt like I had a lot more camaraderie in terms of when I was building my business. There’s something about - and I tell this to my students all the time, there’s something about the ambition for your first million dollars that is so exhilarating and exciting and motivating.

I felt like I was propelled by a fuel that was not even from my own self to get to that first million dollars. And it made it easier for me to overcome obstacles and made it easier for me to plough through all of that self-doubt.

I feel like now that I’ve had so much success, that that energy isn’t as available to me. I would say that’s one thing that’s “worse” about it is that I have to generate much more of that, and it feels like it’s more necessary.

So yes, my life is amazing and it was amazing before too, and it’s amazing now. But I’m dealing with different challenges and different things that are worse than they were before. I pay a lot more taxes, I have a lot more meetings with professionals about money and insurance, and required to do a lot of things that I wouldn’t normally choose to do in terms of how I spend my time because of my success, because of my large business, and because of my money.

I’m spending a lot of time doing those sorts of things. And it was better before when I didn’t have to do that in some ways. It’s worth it completely, but that’s what I mean by it’s not better here than there in the sense that I’m still dealing with 50:50. But I love that question. Thank you.

Here’s the next question. “How do you get over a breakup when you think it was your soulmate?” First of all, if this is your question, my heart goes out to you. I have dealt with some breakups and I know that if you think it’s your soulmate, that can be excruciatingly painful because of those thoughts in your head.

They probably sound like, “I’m never going to find anyone else like this person, I’m never going to be happy again, I wish I could get this person back, I wish I hadn’t done something, or I wish they hadn’t done something, or I wish it were different.” We argue with reality.

And so that can be tormenting pain. I just want to say that I think in so many of our breakups, we create unnecessary suffering when we tell ourselves stories about this was the one that got away, this was my soulmate, I will never feel this way again.

And so I’ll tell you what I think about when it comes to soulmates. I think I’ve had many soulmates, and I think we can all have many soulmates. I know that not everyone agrees with that definition, but I do. I think I’ve had people come into my life that I was meant to meet on a soul level, and some of those people will be in my life forever.

They’re my soulmate sisters, my soulmate brothers, they’ll be in my life forever. My chosen family, in some way. And for some of them, they’ve been romantic relationships that have turned into friendships, but for some of them, they’ve been romantic partnerships that have completed.

And it sounds to me like that may be what’s going on for you. So your question is how do I get over the pain? How do I get over this? And I do think time does help, but time doesn’t solve it if you’re not doing the work on yourself.

And so if you can understand that maybe this person was in your life for the period of time that they were, and maybe now that that’s complete, and that you are ultimately your own soulmate, you are ultimately the one that is meant to traverse through this life meeting people so that you can evolve who you are as a human.

And it’s important to be able to process the pain and the grief of that breakup, but also, to understand what is it about that that seems so important to your life? And what do you feel like is missing when you’re alone?

This is work that I’ve done a lot on my whole life is when I’m alone, what do I feel is missing? And can I be alone and feel fully complete? Especially when you’re going through a breakup because my guess is you’re not going to get back together with this person, and you’re probably not ready to be in another relationship yet. So you are going to be alone in terms of your romantic life.

And what is that like to not have a romantic companion? And how can you feel complete at least for this period of your life without it? For me, one of the things that I say to myself is, “This is an opportunity for me to discover myself.”

One of the questions that was asked, that I asked in the Reinvention in-person experience was, when do you most feel like your real self? Truly your real self? For me, the answer that came up that was so fascinating was I feel the most real when I’m alone and in pain.

A lot of people are like, “Oh my god, that sounds terrible,” but I will say, I feel like no buffering, no distractions, no escapes, just me with me in pain feels like the truest truth for me. And I do feel the same way when I’m in joy by myself, when I’m hiking alone or with my dogs, and I’m hiking in the hills, I feel that same level of realness in joy. But it’s not as acute as when I’m in pain.

I feel like, “This is what it’s like to truly be me without any kind of buffering.” And so I do think when we’re going through really difficult challenging times, like what you’re going through right now, that’s an opportunity for you really to get to know yourself. I mean, really get into the crevices of what is it like to be you in this situation.

What is it like to be alone? What does it mean for you to be alone? I think there’s so much rich opportunity there. And the desire not to suffer is so strong, and to see what your relationship is like with suffering, are you creating unnecessary suffering? Are you resisting the pain? Or are you allowing it to flow through you?

So my heart goes out to you. I really do know where you are. I’ve been there. I understand what that’s like. And also, I invite you to introduce yourself to yourself in a new way.

Okay, the next question is, “Why did you decide to do the social media adventure with your kids?” This will be the last question that I’ll answer on this one, and I’ll definitely do another one because I have a lot more questions to answer.

But what I want to offer you is that I wanted to spend the summer with my kids. I wanted them to be exposed to all of my material, to watch all my videos, to learn from me, which is what they’re doing as they’re going through all these videos and recording them and editing them and posting them on social media.

I wanted to do some videos with them and have them capture some of my behind-the-scenes life and some candid stuff. I wanted to give them the opportunity to fail and to mess it up and to have it be okay, and have them feel the pressure of that and not worry about it.

I wanted them to learn how I run my company. I wanted them to see me at work, I wanted them to understand what it’s like to work in a company like mine, and how we run things. I wanted to teach them how to think independently, which is something I don’t think is taught in school very often.

And so I’m teaching them all about my entrepreneurial filters and how we communicate and how we make decisions. And I wanted to just love on them all summer, so that’s why we have been doing this social media experiment. We’ve been having so much fun. They’ve been really running with it and working with my social media team and trying to figure it all out.

I’m not much help there. That’s not really my area of expertise, and so it’s been really fun to just be part of this process with them. It’s been fun to connect with you all in a new way and see you all in a new way.

So that’s why I decided to do it and I’m so glad that I did. We’re about I think halfway through here. So I hopefully have seen all of their setup downstairs with all of their computers and I go down there during the day and they’re all hardworking, and then they go golfing in the afternoons and workout together, so it’s just been an extraordinary experience.

So I hope you’re enjoying it on the other side of the Instagrams as much as I am from just being with them all summer and having them kind of see what it’s like to work with me. So that’s all the questions I’m going to go through today. I will do another series.

I have another whole page of questions that I want to go through and answer. And we will also be answering many of these questions on Instagram and TikTok and all of the things. So make sure that you check us out there. If you asked a question, hopefully I will answer it there.

Have a beautiful week everyone. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.

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