You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo episode 415.
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 friends. I am so excited about this podcast. I haven’t been this on fire in a long time, my friends. I am in the process and have been in the process of creating a new course.
I haven’t sold a course outside of Scholars or Certification in like five years. And this is a course that is going to be one of my flagship courses. This is going to be one of the ones that I think is going to have the most impact on the world for advanced students.
So, I want to talk today about reinvention. And then, at the end of the podcast, I’ll talk more about the opportunity for advanced students to join me in this reinvention course. We’re calling it The Reinvention Experience with Brooke Castillo.
But first of all, what is reinvention and what does it mean to reinvent yourself? So many of you, as my students, have reinvented yourself with maybe not even calling it that. I, literally today, was coaching a woman. She was a Diamond Scholar. I was coaching her in the private Diamond class. And she said, “I’m a completely different person than I was when I started Scholars, completely in every way.”
And she goes, “I didn’t even see it coming. I didn’t even know that it was possible and I didn’t notice it while it was happening. But now, I can really see a year later how I’ve completely changed and how I’m showing up differently in my life.”
And this is going to be that experience but even more intensified. I have reinvented myself many times in my life, but there are two very significant things that I did when I understood the process of reinvention, when I studied exactly how you take yourself through it.
I did it first in my business when I was making a million dollars and that reinvention has brought me to today, where I’m making $40 million. And then I did it in my personal life when my kids went away to college and I got a divorce. I reinvented myself through the same process. And this has left me with the life of my dreams and I’m about to go to that next evolution.
One of my students today was talking about this idea where, if your life is satisfactory to you, if you enjoy your life, why would you change it? Why would you go to the next level? Shouldn’t you be dissatisfied to leave your current life?
And I said, “No.” I said, “You reinvent yourself because you want to be the best version of yourself and you take everything with you that you want to take with you and you leave behind anything that you don’t want.” And this is a mental experience. “These are the beliefs I want to bring. These are the feelings that I want to bring. These are the identities that I want to bring. And these are the things I want to let go.
And so, what we normally try to do and what most coaching in other schools teaches is how to improve the symptoms of your life, how to improve the effects of your life, how to improve the circumstances that you have been given, how to make those slightly and incrementally better as you go through your life.
Many people go through their whole life without having a reinvention, without having an identity change, without evolving to that next possibility of what is available to them in their life. They never claim their escrow. They never really get to see the dimension of who they really are because they’re always just treating the symptoms.
And so, a reinvention program is really not about improving yourself at all. It’s not about making yourself better. It’s about redoing who you are, reinventing from the ground up who you are.
You see, most of us go through our lives with a multiple-choice question. We’re taught and socialized a certain number of options in our life, a certain number of opinions that we’re allowed to have, a certain trajectory with certain things that we can choose from.
I use this example in my What’s Possible book where I talk about how, as little girls, we are taught that we can be a certain number of careers and we get to pick which one we want to do from a book and then we can go to school for that career and we pick the major and then that’s what we get to do.
We aren’t taught that beyond those choices, there’s an infinite number of creations that you can create, that you can invent, that you can have even though it’s not already on the option list.
So, instead of living our life from a multiple-choice question, we can write freehand and create and invent whatever we want without the limitations.
Now, the reason why this course that I’m going to be teaching is for advanced students is because what you do when you reinvent yourself is you don’t stay within a certain box or a certain arena and pick a different option from within that. It’s not like you picked A before and now you’re going to switch to B. That’s just staying within the same identity, the same invention that you already have and just making it have variety.
What we’re doing is we’re blowing off all the limitations to what we’ve currently had in our own life, and starting with what they call the blank sheet of paper, which makes us all very uncomfortable, right?
We’ve never had to do that for ourselves. If you think about it, we’ve always been told the direction that we’re supposed to go. We go to first grade, we go to second grade, we get married, we have kids, we get a job, we buy a house. There’s always been the trail. The navigation has been laid out for us.
And what I want to start showing you all how I’ve changed my life into such an extraordinary life is by putting all of that aside and using my brain to design, to create, to invent something new. There was nobody that had this life that I then aspired to and created.
But notice how many people have followed and seen this opportunity and utilized it, how many coaches have now – I mean, there’s so many of us, it’s insane how many coaches are making millions of dollars now because the possibility was created for all of us to reinvent ourselves.
When you think about your current life, you have a program that you’ve been running, an identity that you’ve been living that has created the level of success that you currently have. And one of the things that is so challenging for us when we reinvent ourselves is we have to let go of what is working in order to go to the next level.
We have to let go of our current level of success to invite a new level of success. We have to give up good in order to be great. We have to give up a million dollars in order to have $40 million. What we did to get to here will not take us exponentially to the next version of ourselves. We can keep improving. We can keep getting that 10% raise or the 2% raise, depending on where you’re working, or we can 10-times our income. We can blow our own damn minds.
The problem that most of us have with reinvention is that the human brain is resistant to change. If you remember, if you’re in Scholars or you’ve been listening to this podcast a long time, you know that the way that the brain is designed is for survival. It’s for protection.
And if what we’re doing now is working, if what we’re doing now is comfortable, if what we’re doing now brings us pleasure and keeps us safe, the brain sees absolutely no reason to change. This is why most people only change when something tragic happens that threatens our survival.
We have to have a catalytic event in order to change because it is against our own nature to change. It is against our own nature to seek something outside of us that isn’t comfortable. And because now it’s even harder than ever to change because there is so much comfort and pleasure in staying the same.
We have designed life to be very comfortable now, to be very easy to just rinse and repeat. So, when you recognize that you have this resistance to change, you’ll also notice that your current life seems to invite you to stay. And there’s a lot of teachings that teach this, “Accept what you have. Don’t want for more. Be at peace. Be in the present moment. Don’t push yourself. Don’t hustle. Don’t stress yourself out. Just relax and enjoy your life.”
But so many people trying to do that are feeling that urge inside of them to be more. And I’m so glad for that because that is how we have evolved as a species, literally. That nudge, that urge, that desire to create and evolve and to grow and to literally put ourselves in harm’s way is what has made the impossible possible.
When you look at what has been created, it was all once impossible. I look at a window right now. When did that become a possibility? Remember when it wasn’t possible to have a window? I don’t either, but there was a time when a window wasn’t even something someone knew to think about. They didn’t know what they didn’t know.
What is it that we don’t know to think about? What is it that’s possible in our own lives that we just haven’t thought about yet because we didn’t even know we could? That’s what happened to me. That’s’ what has happened to me when I’ve approached my life from this perspective that I could reinvent myself by expanding my mind into what is possible for me.
The cognitive dissonance in reinvention is very challenging because you have a certain set of belief systems that you have believed and confirmed and have tons of evidence for. And when you start thinking new thoughts that are in contradiction to those thoughts, it will be uncomfortable. That cognitive dissonance will create more resistance.
You already have the resistance to change because of your survival mechanism. And now, you have the discomfort of cognitive dissonance, which will prevent you from changing as well because so many of the belief systems that you have based on your current success will make it very difficult for you to let them go to have further success, bigger success, mind-blowing, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe this is my life,” success, success that people will look at you and be like, “How in the world did you do that?”
And it’s almost like I want to say. “I didn’t stay in your world. I came out of your world in order to create this for myself.” That’s why my success is out of this world, top 0.0001%, whatever, it’s insane what I’ve been able to create because I didn’t stay limited by what other boxes, other possibilities, other realities told me I could do and I stepped out of that and reinvented a world for myself outside of that. And that is what I’m ready to teach you all how to do.
By releasing the multiple choice of your current life, by releasing the current success and what you have been taught is the formula for your success and recognizing that that is what is limiting you now. That is what is preventing you from finding that next version of yourself that blows your own damn mind.
And the last piece of it that is really challenging is the identity releasing that’s required. So, if you’ve been around me as one of my friends or someone that I’ve been talking to or listening to this podcast a lot, I’ve been telling everyone that I’ve been having a fantastical midlife crisis.
And people will say, “Don’t use the word crisis. It’s not a crisis.” But it is a crisis. It’s a crisis of my old identity and releasing it for a new identity, a new version of myself, that next evolution. I have basically redesigned who I am, reinvented who I am as a person in the past few years on purpose through a process.
And now, I feel like I am more of myself than I’ve ever been. I’m at the highest functioning space that I’ve ever been. I’m having the most pleasure that I’ve ever had. I’m having the most fun that I’ve ever had. I’m having new and wild and interesting experiences with no apology.
The level of aliveness I feel is crazy fun. My friend Aprille, she’s like, “I do not understand the amount of energy that runs through your body. I do not understand how that’s possible.”
And I basically have told her, I think it’s because I’ve released any of that resistance to change. And so, I keep reinventing what is possible for myself physically and mentally and socially.
So, part of the process is understanding your resistance to that change, your resistance to being that next version, even though it sounds amazing and you want to do it and you want to go for it, you may not understand why you feel that resistance.
One of the ways that I like to explain this – and the thing that’s interesting about reinvention is it requires a lot of deeper intellectual work than you would expect. And a lot of the processes that I’ve gone through in order to recreate myself a few times, to reinvent myself a few times, it’s been intellectually challenging.
It has required me to imagine something that I didn’t know how to imagine. It required me to believe something that I didn’t yet know how to believe. And so, it’s kind of like wrapping your mind around a new concept. It’s like learning a new level of algebra. You have to push your brain to expand. You have to push your brain to go to that next level and suspend the disbelief that you’re so attached to as part of your current success formula.
So, one of the ways that I like to describe it is if you were going to start over again, your entire life at the age you currently are, what would you do? How would you redecide your life? How would you reinvent yourself? How would you rediscover your power?
What I realized when I went through this process the first time was that I had so much power inside of me that was underutilized. I had so much access to my brain, to my imagination, to my beliefs, to my energy that I was not accessing.
And as I understood, kind of – and this is why this class is for advanced students. Level one is we just have out figure out what our thoughts are doing. That’s what all the work in Scholars is and with the Model.
But once you understand how that’s working, then you can really evaluate, what is the world, literally, that I am functioning in? If the world is a circumstance and I am creating the interpretation of the world with my mind, what are the raw ingredients to that interpretation? And have I evaluated it? Have I looked at that recipe?
Most of us will never do that our entire life. We will simply accept what we have been given as ingredients for our reality. But we can question them. We can question those ingredients. We can look at them and be like, “Wait, is this how I want to interpret the world? How do I take my education, which we can put in the C line, and then interpret my education in a way that makes the impossible happen, that makes me reinvent myself into a more powerful version, a more powerful creator for what I want in my life?”
When you create a future that is beyond your wildest imagination, your future reinvents you. That’s from The Last Word on Power. When you create a future that is so much bigger than your current future, just creating it in your mind, it reinvents you because your future is what you’re compelled to become.
Your future is where you’re being pulled towards. And if you don’t do that consciously, you will simply stay in the same place and incrementally get better. But only if you’re putting effort in.
But if you shift your mind to a whole new possibility of a future that is beyond anything you’ve ever imagined, you will become the person that you need to be in order to create that. Your future will reinvent you. This is what I did with my business. This is what I did with my personal life. And this is about what I’m going to do with my business again.
So, I was telling my friend Kris Plachy about this idea. And I told her, “I’m going to go through this process again.” And she’s watched me go through it. She’s been really close with me going through it the first two times that I did. And she said, “Send me the link to that class. I want to sign up.” And I’m like, “Yes, I will.”
And so many of my master coaches and my friends want to go through this with me because I am going to reinvent myself as a business leader, which I have to do now in order to go to the next evolution.
Now, if I didn’t have this goal to make $100 million, I would just keep improving, making several extra million dollars a year on top of what I’m already doing and most people would look at me and say, “That’s a successful woman. I mean, an incredibly successful woman doing incredibly successful things.”
But it wouldn’t require me to reinvent myself. And what I have found is that when you are reinventing yourself to bigger futures, to bigger goals, you are living at the highest human potential, in my opinion, because you are using your brain to redecide in a conscious way, in a very conscious way what you want your life to be and letting go of anything that no longer serves you.
Even if you have a sunk cost into it, it doesn’t matter because your future is so much bigger than that. It’s like when I told you I gave up the $200,000 in order to make the million. I gave up the good job, the good relationship, the good friendships for something 10 times bigger and different and better for me personally. But most importantly, it’s helped me know who I am; who I am as a person, who I’m developing into by consciously reinventing.
So, there are many of you who are listening to this who are tired of being yourself. You’re tired of being this version of yourself. You’re tired of your habits. You’re tired of the ongoing buffering. You’re tired of the rinse and repeat life.
And there’s some of you that have good lives that are sick and tired of your good lives. But you’re feeling guilty because you’re sick and tired of your good life because you have a good life and you should feel appreciative of your good life.
But I want to tell you, listen, if you’re tired of being you, this version of you, let’s reinvent you. I’m reinventing me right now. I’m reinventing myself as a leader and a business woman, as a founder.
I want to show you how I’m doing it so you can do it too. I want to go to that next-level version of me. I think it’s so inspiring.
Now, this process is intense. It’s deep. It requires you to use your brain and think. It requires you to give up on, “I don’t know.” It requires you to dream in a way that hurts your brain, that blows your mind, that terrifies you, that scares you, so all of it can come up so we can bust through the limiting socialized belief systems about what’s possible for our own lives.
And it helps us navigate to something that we may not have ever even let ourselves know that we know. There are things in you that you don’t even know yet about you because you’re not putting yourself in a situation where you can know that part of you. And the way to do it is to reinvent yourself in a conscious way.
This course is open now. If you go to thelifecoachschool.com/reinvention, you’ll see the details of the course. It’s taught exclusively by me. It is my cutting-edge work. It is work, I’m kind of building the plane while we’re in the sky because I’m doing it on myself at the same time.
I have taught many of you how to strive for what’s possible. I’ve taught many of you how to create impossible goals. I’ve taught many of you about belief systems and believing harder. But I’ve never taught a course on completely reinventing yourself.
I did a group about five years ago of millionaires. They weren’t millionaires at the time. I invited some students who I wanted to help become millionaires. They were friends and students. And we all did a mastermind where everyone’s goal was to get to a million dollars.
And mostly what we did was start with burning down the house. We started by getting down, getting rid of anything that wasn’t working, getting rid of anything we didn’t want anymore, anything that wasn’t going to be able to grow to the level that we wanted to.
And that’s kind of the first phase of reinvention, is really looking at, “What do we want to keep? What isn’t working? What do we need to change?” and having the courage to let it go.
And then, the next phase is really deciding and choosing and believing in a new version of ourselves and a new possibility, in a new way of living in the world. And then the third part is executing on it, is becoming that person, being that person and watching the world around you change.
As you become that person, the world changes. You don’t change your world and then you change. You change you, and then your world changes.
If you’re interested in learning more about this process, if you want to come and reinvent yourself with me, now is the time. We’re doing it in Q2. It’s a three-month program. It’s very intense. It’s for advanced students that already know the Model. This is not for beginners. And there’s a VIP option where we do an in-person version with me at the end of it.
Come join me. Let’s reinvent ourselves, my friends. Have a beautiful day.
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.
