Ep #438: Secrets of My Success

You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode 438.

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, beautiful friends. I am so happy to say hello to you, to drop in, to see how you all are doing. I just got back from five days in Jamaica with my friend, Aprille Franks. Look her up, @epicaprille on Instagram, she’s amazing.

We just had five days of pure paradise. We had so much fun. And I’m now home, home in Austin, and I am excited to have two full days of working. I have a lot of work to get done, and for some reason, when I’m in Austin I can get so much more work done than I can get anywhere else.

I think it’s because I live in a penthouse up here and the view is so extraordinary, it makes my vision feel bigger, it’s really bright in this room, I have a beautiful stand-up desk with lots of space. There’s just so much that I’m able to do and so much I’m able to get done, so I’m excited for those two days.

And then I’m going to Coeur d’Alene. I’m flying into Spokane and going to Coeur d’Alene in Idaho to look at possible properties there. I have never been there, but I am excited about possibly buying a place there. So more on that in the future. We’ll see how that goes. I have some other fun things happening in my life that I will share with you in the coming episodes on the podcast.

But what I want to talk about on this podcast are the secrets to my success. A lot of people have been asking me how I became so successful, and we laugh a lot, me and my friends, that I’ve lost the plot because sometimes I don’t realize, I don’t really think about the amount of success that I’ve created because I talk about it all the time and everyone around me kind of knows about it.

So when I meet new people when we’re traveling, it’s kind of shocking to a lot of people the level of success that I’ve been able to create, and they want to know what my secrets are. How did you become so successful? What are your secrets?

So I thought I would go through in this podcast and share my secrets. The first one obviously is the Model and having the Model and managing my mind. You all know this. You all do this. But I think it’s interesting how underplayed this can be after I tell people this.

So for example, I just spoke at a live event and I was sharing how I went from seven to eight figures with a group of people. And I was saying, “It’s mindset. Mindset is really the thing that will get you to win.” And they’re like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but, but, but, what about the tactics? What about these other things?”

And I’m happy to share all the tactics, and there are a lot of tactics that I can share, but without mindset, they don’t matter. There’s a lot of people in the world that have access and know about tactics that aren’t winning because they’re not managing their minds.

And even sometimes my own students, when I’m working with them and they come to me and ask me for help with things, I’m like, “What is your thought about this? What are you actually thinking?” And this is with my friends, this is with everyone who knows all my work.

When we uncover the thought, it’s like, “Oh, well, no wonder this isn’t working. It doesn’t matter that I’m doing the tactic when the thought is there.” So these secrets - it’s not a secret - the most important secret to my success is the Model and mindset.

I’m going to do a little commercial here for my own stuff. If you are someone that has been listening to the podcast for a long time and you haven’t actually been doing Models, you haven’t actually been doing the work of CTFAR, putting it down on paper and doing the Model, you should come to the live event in Scottsdale and really learn how to do this.

I’m going to be teaching it in a brand new way I’ve never taught it before. There’s going to be quite a few of my coaches there and I want to make sure that the content at this live event is going to be interesting to them too. And so I have really created a whole new approach, a whole new evolved way of teaching the Model.

We just redid our certification program, and so I’m going to be talking about it at this live event. So this is just a little plug for those of you who haven’t really been using the Model. You like the idea of it but you haven’t really been using it, come to the live event and let’s work on it together.

So, that’s the most main obvious one. You have to do it. The second one, when I really think about why is it that I am personally so successful is shame resilience. I have an ability to open myself up to the possibility of shame and then process through shame when I experience it.

Now, here’s the rub and this is what most of us don’t really consider. When you really sit down and think about this stuff, you have to remember that shame is an emotion that is created with our own brains. And so a lot of times, we think that because we can control our brains, that we can somehow control our shame.

That has not been my experience. I would say that I have a very solid mastery of thought work and I am unable to control thoughts that produce shame often. So instead of trying to be tricky and trying to be over-intelligent about this and anticipate thoughts of shame and try not to think them, or when I do think them change them immediately, I instead have embraced the notion that I will be experiencing shame on the regular if I want to have an extraordinary life.

And this gives me an incredible sense of freedom and control over what I decide to do with my life. Most of us do not experience our true potential as human beings. Most of us do not try and do the biggest thing we’re capable of because we are terrified of shame.

And I just want to offer that if you can open yourself up to experiencing more shame and having shame resilience, being able to get through it, being able to process it, not deny it, not push it away, not resist it, but actually experience shame, you will have an extraordinary life.

I tell this story a lot about when I really first started learning how to process shame. I was on a trip in Mexico with my kids and I was experiencing so much shame. It was crazy. And I knew that it wasn’t logical, the thought that I was having wasn’t logical that was causing the shame, but I couldn’t get myself out of it. I was in a shame spiral.

And so I put myself in this place where I was just going to experience it. I was just going to allow it. I was just going to let it be vibrating throughout my body for this whole trip. And I really did take a long time to process it, but once I had consciously processed it that way once, I knew my life was going to change.

I knew I was no longer afraid of feeling shame. I was no longer afraid of thinking that there was something really wrong with me, or that I had done something so wrong that there was something wrong with me. And if you can figure this out, my friends, it’s a game-changer.

Because if you think about why you don’t set bigger goals, or go after bigger things, or put yourself out there more, my guess would be ultimately that you’re afraid that on the other end of that is some shame.

So the next thing that really kind of is a secret to my success is showing up, and it kind of goes hand-in-hand with the willingness to experience shame, but also, there’s another component to it where I show up even when I don’t feel like it.

So I’ll give you an example. I was in Jamaica this morning and I pulled out my microphone to record this podcast and I had brought the wrong cord somehow. I had brought the cord for my speaker instead of the cord for my microphone, so I couldn’t record this.

So I was unable to record this podcast, so we got on a plane, we flew home, I’m here, now I just arrived at home. I really want to unpack, take a shower, relax, but I need to record this podcast for you all.

Now, in my mind, so many different thoughts come up. Like, “Well, I could just do a re-run of another podcast, or I could wait a couple days and re-record it when I feel like it, or it can be late.” There’s so many different things that my brain offers to me as an option so I don’t have to actually do the work that I had put on my calendar to do today.

And I just don’t do that to myself. I just show up. I really do. I show up for myself, for my business, for my future self consistently. This is one of the most important things to understand. Showing up consistently is how you become successful.

It’s not figuring out complexity, it’s not solving really difficult problems, it’s not being super charismatic, it’s not hustling all night long. It’s showing up when you told yourself you’d show up, and doing the work you told yourself you’d do, and making the offers you said you would make, and writing the podcast and the articles and being there for your clients and teaching the courses and coaching.

Showing up when you don’t feel like it is a secret to success. Just like overcoming shame, the emotion of shame in your own mind, and being deliberate about that, overcoming your desire to be stagnant, your desire to procrastinate, your desire not to do the work that you’ve told yourself you would do is a mental skill worth pursuing.

Because your brain will bully you. Your brain will bully you into the motivational triad, which is seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, and exerting as little effort as possible to survive. That is the natural state of your brain. So if you aren’t strong in overriding and understanding your own brain’s tendencies, you’re going to be constantly challenged to be successful, to grow, to move on.

The fourth thing that’s a secret to my success is I just don’t compare myself to other people. I don’t compete with other people. I just don’t. I study and this is a very significant difference that I just realized that I have that other people don’t seem to have.

When I have an idea for something, it usually comes from a study that I’ve done to change myself. So I will go and try and study something in business, so I can make my business better. Or I will go study something in the brain so I can make my brain better, or I’ll study something about emotions so I can make my emotions better.

And as I do that work on myself, I come up with creative ideas and creative ways and different ways of teaching the same material. Now, it is true that there is a body of truth out there in the world that is interpreted differently by different teachers and taught differently by different teachers, and this is a beautiful thing.

Because we all need to learn the basic concepts that I teach, which are your thoughts create your feelings, your feelings create your actions, your actions create your result. This isn’t something I invented. This is how the world works and it’s taught in different ways and different approaches in different sections and different areas by different teachers, and that’s a beautiful thing.

But when I’m going out to create work, I do not go out and read other material of other teachers in order to create teaching materials. I only use other people’s work when I am changing myself, when I am working as their student.

When I step into the position as a teacher, I teach from my own creative energy and from my own mind. And that is what makes my work and my teaching unique. And because of that, I’m not comparing myself to other people. I’m not asking myself if they’re better or worse than me. It’s not even relevant.

I’m not competing with other people. I’m not feeling bad if other people do better than me ever. I’m stoked. I want everyone to win. I really, genuinely do. And I can see so many people, and I will tell you, I just recently got on social media as a person, personally. And I’m only really on Instagram by myself and I’m trying to be on Instagram.

I’m doing Rules for Life, I’m going to do 50 Rules of Life for my 50 years that I’ve lived. And being on Instagram has really shown me how much everyone is trying to compete with everyone else, and everyone’s ripping everybody else’s stuff off.

And it’s just so unnecessary, and it’s something I just don’t do. I never have done it and I never will do. I want to be in my own lane, thinking about my own thing, and creating my own materials. I don’t want to be competing or comparing myself with anyone else. I want to really find answers from within my own brain. I don’t want to look around me to see what’s possible. I want to define what is possible.

And if I’m constantly looking to other people, or comparing myself to other people, I won’t be able to come up with new ideas on how to redefine the industry, the content, the tools that I use in my life, and that I end up teaching to you.

The next secret to my success is that I allow myself to feel panic and stress. And when I do panic and stress, I utilize that energy to keep moving. And I think a lot of people when they panic and they feel stressed, they shut down. I think that one difference is the difference between seven and eight figures, for sure.

Because I think a lot of people start to panic and stress, and they try to resist it and they try to hide from it, and then they get exhausted, and then they give up on it. But if you can utilize that energy, that panic and that stress is coming from the desire to win.

If you can utilize the energy that comes from panic and stress to get your work done and not in a beating yourself up way, and not in a hustle way, not in a way that keeps you working long, crazy hours. That’s not what I’m discussing at all.

What I’m talking about is when you wake up and you’re worried and you’re panicked and you’re stressed, that you do not use that as a reason not to get your work done. You use it as a reason to get your work done.

On that same note, I never hustle at my own expense. I just don’t. Anyone around me will see this. Anyone I work with will see this. We work hard and we hustle, but we never do it to the point where we can’t take care of ourselves. This has to be fun, or we’ve got to forget it. When we need to take our foot off the gas, we do. I never want to.

I just read this book and it was talking about how the speed of implementation is so important in a company. The ability to have an idea and implement it. So that causes a need to hustle, to move quickly. But we never want to do that at our business’s expense or at our expense so people just aren’t functioning well, or people aren’t taken care of.

And there is a fine line because at The Life Coach School, we work hard. Everyone on our team is hustling, but never at the expense of our company, and never at the expense of ourselves. And if that does happen, we try and eliminate it immediately.

And so I think one of the reasons why we’re able to do this is we have the perspective that it’s not better there than here. There’s no hurry to get there because we’re still going to be 50:50. And it’s not like we’re going to get to this place where all of a sudden, we’re no longer going to have to hustle.

So whatever we’re doing now, we’re just scaling that. So we need to make sure that we take our foot off the gas when we have to, and I never want to. It’s only when we have to that we do. And so a lot of times I’ll ask my team, “What do we need so we can keep moving fast and people aren’t getting burnt out?” It’s a really important question.

There’s two more. The next one is I remember that I’m going to die and that none of this really matters. This is so important and I tell my students this a lot. I’ll tell them this dichotomy between this is so important and this matters so much, and also it doesn’t matter at all. We’re all just going to die.

And when you can step back and just be like, at the end of the day, we’re all going to die so I might as well kick ass while I’m here, I might as well go all-in on myself, I might as well take that chance, I might as well take that risk, because if I die today, I’m going to want to have done that. I’m going to want to have lived at the highest level, at the biggest attempt to be who I can truly be at my highest evolved state.

And when I go there, I just want to do big things. I want to think in big ways. I want to take big chances. And I think it’s very hard to reach a level of success that is beyond reason if you don’t get that perspective.

When you get the perspective that your life really, on so many levels, doesn’t matter at all, it ironically, paradoxically, makes me have a bigger life because there’s nothing to lose. I just want to go all-in. And if the point of my life is just to evolve to the highest version of myself, I got to do the hardest things. I got to try the hardest things.

So that’s another really good tip. Remember that you’re going to die and none of this matters. You would think that if you really thought that through that it would be, “Well, if none of this matters, I’m just going to lay around all day,” but it’s the opposite. If none of this really matters, then none of the shame matters, the failing doesn’t matter. Let’s see what I’m made of. Let’s see what I can do. Let’s see how far we can ride this train. So fun.

And the last one that I think is probably the most important one for you coaches that are my students is it’s not about me. It’s about the people that I’m helping. And if I can help one person with my work, if I get up every day and someone has a better life because I existed, I’m going to keep working.

I’m going to keep doing what I do, I’m going to keep creating content, I’m going to keep figuring out different ways to teach it to different people. I’m going to figure out different ways to market it to reach more people. I’m going to think about bigger stages that I can stand on, to think about those people that I’m helping.

A lot of people don’t want to speak on big stages because they’re thinking about themselves. They’re thinking about being afraid or stage fright or whatever, instead of thinking about look at all the people you could probably help.

They’re worried to coach that one client because they’re worried that maybe that client won’t like them. It’s not about you. Remember that. It’s not about you. It’s about the people that we are here to help. And we have to believe in those people.

I was just talking to my friend Aprille, when we were sitting on the plane, I was talking to her and I said, “Listen, I will never hard sell anyone to buy any of my products. I won’t use any sales tactics or shenanigans that manipulates anyone into buying something, especially if they don’t want it or they can’t afford it. Ever. I will just never do it.”

But if someone’s not buying something because they don’t believe in themselves, I’m coming after them. I am going to come get you and do what I can to help you believe hard in yourself. I will lay myself flat to let you know that you’re worthy of taking a chance on yourself and that you can have all the things that are available in this world.

I get a lot of criticism for telling women that they can make as much money as they want. I think it’s the craziest thing. People on my staff will come to me like, “They wrote this article on you and they’re saying that you’re giving people false hope.” I’m like, “It’s ridiculous.”

They’re accusing me of telling people they can make as much money as they want? Well, they’re telling the truth. That’s not false hope. That is literally what is possible for us and I will never stop telling my clients that, ever.

Now, if somebody goes through my school and doesn’t make money, I never stop believing in them that they can. They have the ingredients. They may choose not to, they may choose not to do the work. That’s their choice. Free will.

And they may stop believing in themselves because they failed a couple times, but I promise you, I will never, whether you’ve gone through my school or you haven’t, I will never stop believing in the possibility of you being able to make as much money as you want to make, to live the way you want to live, to grow the way you want to grow, and evolve the way you want to evolve.

And so many of the people coming to me want to help people. That is not hard for me to believe in. If you come to me and you want to help people and you want to grow as much as you can helping people, let’s go.

So I’ve decided I’m probably going to buy a jet, which is insane. That’s an insane sentence I just said. I’m going to buy a jet. Who says that? So crazy. And we were talking about what we should put on the jet, like on the tail. Should we put the Model, should we put The Life Coach School logo.

And Aprille’s all, “You should put LFG on there.” I was like, “Oh my gosh, that’s exactly what I should put on there.” That is kind of my motto for life. Let’s effing go. What is holding you back from that success that is waiting for you that you have the potential to create?

Are you afraid of shame? Are you afraid of showing up? Are you not thinking big enough? Are you not managing your stress? Are you really remembering that none of this matters and that it all matters? Have you not gotten me to help you in a bigger and deeper way or hired another coach to help you in a bigger, deeper way? We all need help, we all need coaches and support.

I am a woman who started this business when people were laughing at me, making fun of me, literally for being a life coach. And now I’m buying a jet. It’s insane. It’s magic. And it’s hard work, and it’s shame resilience, and it’s being willing to put myself out there and show up every single day, even when I don’t feel like it.

This is available to every single person. Is it harder for some people than others? Absolutely. But it doesn’t mean it’s not possible. If it’s harder for you, that’s okay. Let’s go. That’s even more reason we got to get to work. We don’t have time to sit around and complain that it’s harder for us because we’re women, for example.

We don’t get as much opportunity, we don’t get as much respect, we don’t get as much support. Yeah, okay, it’s harder. And now what? That’s not going to make me quit. That’s going to make me work harder, better, smarter.

I want success for every single one of you who listens to my podcast, who is one of my students. Success is the coolest shit to share. I love being around other people who are winning and working hard and succeeding and even failing, as long as they’re showing up every day and managing their own shame and opening themselves up to harm’s way so they can be the best version of themselves.

Take some of my secrets to success if you want success too. Apply them to your own life and let’s effing go. To success, my friends.

Hey, if you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out Self-Coaching Scholars. It's my monthly coaching program where we take all this material and we apply it. We take it to the next level and we study it. Join me over at the TheLifeCoachSchool.com/join. Make sure you type in the TheLifeCoachSchool.com/join. I'd love to have you join me in Self-Coaching Scholars. See you there.