You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode 372.
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.
Pavel: Hello, my friends. This is Pavel Amelishko again. I am the producer for The Life Coach School Podcast and today I am very excited to present to you part two of the best of the podcast. If you haven’t heard last week’s episode, which was part one, you may want to check it out first because it mainly focused on the general themes of awareness and discomfort, which I think are a great lead into today’s topics.
And in today’s episode, you’ll hear Brooke talk about concepts and strategies for leveling up your life, your money mindset, and also setting future goals and staying committed to them no matter what. This content is so good here so you may want to grab a pen and a notepad to take some notes. And I just can’t wait for you guys to jump in and listen.
And just a quick heads up, this episode is also going to be long, so please get comfortable and enjoy. Okay, let’s dive in.
--
Brooke: So, if you think about overeating, we are using externals to feel better. So, we’ll look for food or we’ll look for a comfy couch or a hot tub or a cuddle from a friend or something external that can provide us with a different experience. But what I want you to do is to be able to generate that from within, to experience your body from within and be able to be present with whatever is going on within your body from a neutral experience and be able to change that as needed, if wanted, from the inside out.
So, one of the best ways I know of how to get present within my body and not be focused on my thoughts about my body, thinking that that is the truth of my body, but actually being inside my body and experiencing the truth of my body directly.
The best way I know how to do it is to write. And I write about the sensations in my body with very clear description. I record them directly and then I keep an eye on my mind and notice if I slip into interpretation or opinion.
So, for example, if I’m sitting here and I experience hunger, I can simply describe what that feels like in my body, where it’s located, whether it feels hot or cold, what the experience of it is. That doesn’t include any judgment, “I shouldn’t be hungry. I just ate. I should eat later. Of my gosh, I should get some food. I’m really hungry for this food or that food.” That’s all just thoughts, mind stuff.
When you experience hunger, you’re simply just conveying the facts of what your body is doing and what it feels like when your body does that. That is being in your body without judgment. Being in your body is not positive or negative. We create positive and negative with our brain, with our interpretation, with what we should look like or how much we should weigh or what we should feel like or should we be comfortable all the time. That’s all mind clutter.
When you’re in your body, you’re simply conveying what’s going on in your body without judgment. So, the way that I want to describe this is you are becoming the watcher and the feeler from within instead of just being the watcher witnessing yourself, you are being the watcher and the feeler to fully experience what it is like to be you.
Eckhart Tolle, I love the way that he describes the experience of nature. Because he talks about how because we have language, we go into the world and we look at words in our brain and confuse those words for the experience of the thing.
So, for example, if I go outside and I see a hummingbird and I say, “Oh, that’s a hummingbird,” and I label it, I actually am seeing the words and how to spell hummingbird and what I know about hummingbirds and what I’ve learned about hummingbirds and I’m interpreting seeing that hummingbird with all of those language-y things that are creating my experience of the hummingbird.
But if I go outside and I look at a hummingbird and I don’t know it’s a hummingbird, I don’t know how to label it, I don’t know anything about hummingbirds, I haven’t read anything about it, I don’t have any language around it, then I experience it directly. And that is exactly what we want to practice doing from within our bodies.
We want to start experiencing firsthand, not secondhand, but firsthand what it means to be in our bodies. It’s kind of a trip to think about.
So, it’s like, the difference between seeing a hummingbird and then interpreting it with all of the thoughts that we have about hummingbirds, so we’re experiencing actually our knowledge of a hummingbird instead of the actual being present with the hummingbird. But then there’s also our bodies.
So, we experience our bodies based on our thoughts about it. It’s all very secondhand versus just being in our body. Experiencing our thighs from within. Experiencing our stomachs from within. Experiencing our wrinkles, our sagginess, our skin, our faces from within without judgment. That is the ultimate in presence. That’s being able to be in your body without letting all of your thoughts interfere with what it means to experience being alive.
--
As a scholar of yourself, you have to be aware of what you’re saying and also what you’re hearing from your own self. And that is a skillset that you have to develop and it’s something that I’ve taught you all over this podcast. But I also want you to recheck with your awareness.
Because what I notice with my friends is they’re saying these thoughts out loud and I can tell the reason they’re saying them out loud is because they think they’re true. And the reason they think they’re true is because they’ve thought them so many times. They don’t even realize that they’re just reiterating a thought. They think they’re just telling me the facts. And they think it’s a fact because they’ve thought it so many times that it’s just naturally running through their brain.
So, the first one is, “I need to get better at…” or, “I’m getting better at.” Sounds innocent enough. It’s not. Do not go into thoughts like that for yourself because the underlying thought is, “I’m not good enough at it yet.” So, don’t tell yourself, “I want to get better,” at something.
The next one I hear a lot is, “I’m trying to… I’m trying to,” is not a useful thought. “I’m trying to…” put anything after that and then ask yourself how you feel. It’s not going to be good. Don’t try to do anything. Just do it. Don’t say, “I’m trying to make more money…”
“I am making more money.” Feel the difference, you guys. Put that in your T-line and feel the difference between those two thoughts, “I’m trying to make more money” versus, “I am making more money.”
Even when I say, “I am making more money,” I can feel the energy behind it. I can feel myself being ignited by it. Versus, “I’m trying to make more money,” is just deadening.
The next one is very similar to that one, “I’m working on it.” I’m working on…” and then whatever it is. “I’m working getting better at attracting more money. I’m working on my thoughts around money. I’m working on my funnel so I can make more money.”
A lot of times, I’ll hear my friends and students say things like, “I’m just not good at that,” as if it’s a fact. Now, here’s what I want to tell you. Even if it is true that you are not good at something, it is not useful to think you’re not good at something. It’s not a good use of your brain energy to tell yourself you’re not good at something, even if you aren’t.
For example, I’m not good at dunking a basketball. Facts. Not good at it. But I don’t spend any time thinking about not being good at dunking a basketball. It’s an irrelevant use of my mind energy and my mind space. So, if you’re not good at something, that’s fine. Either get good at it, if you want to get good at it. Or just don’t talk about it anymore.
Another one I hear a lot of – and this is a very innocent one but it’s so poisonous. And I hear this a lot when I’m coaching people and I point out to them mistakes that they’re making or things that they’re doing that are interfering with their ability to create a result they want.
And instead of just acknowledging, “Whoa, I am not good at doing that, I’m trying to do that,” all these negative thoughts that we have instead of doing that. When you’re being coached on something, just acknowledging it, letting it go, and moving on. Instead of saying, “I’m so much better than I used to be.”
And people say, “Well I’m just trying to give myself some credit. I’m trying to give myself some credit for my progress.” This is not useful. You don’t want to be identifying yourself in relation to your past.
So, when I say, “I’m so much better than I used to be,” I’m looking at my past to define myself now. And my standard in my past was so low that I’m feeling good about myself now because of the progress that I’ve made. But I’m missing out on the opportunity to identify myself from my future instead. This is who I am now.
So, instead of saying, “I’m so much better at thought work than I used to be,” when you find yourself coming up short on thought work, just let that thought go. And just say, “I am a master at thought work.” Feel the difference in those thoughts. It’s so subtle but so huge.
And the last one is, “It’s going to take some time. These changes are going to take some time.” I think we say that innocently to give ourselves some space and to reduce our own anxiety, but we also perpetuate concepts that aren’t necessarily true.
Many changes can happen in an instant, in a decision. You don’t have to wait. It doesn’t have to take a bunch of time. It can just be done.
--
People in your life that ask you how you are, tell them how you really are feeling. Tell them in a way that they can connect to. The truth and the authenticity of where you’re at emotionally will deepen that conversation immediately.
And even with strangers at parties and dinner parties and stuff like that, find a way to answer their question, “How are you?” in a way that’s interesting and different than just, “Fine…” or, “I’m okay…” or complaining; tapping into how you’re feeling emotionally.
Now, strangers that ask you this question are not inviting you to have a therapy session with them. So, I’m not suggesting that you unload on them. But I am suggesting that you possibly do this in your more personal relationships so that you be more honest about what’s going on with you emotionally with your partners and maybe with your kids, maybe with your parents, maybe with your friends, to really tap into what’s going on, and to say, “Well, to be honest, this is what’s going on for me. This is what I’m feeling right now.”
Now, when you ask someone how they’re feeling – for example, let’s say you ask your son, “How are you feeling?” And he says, “I’m frustrated.” Our inclination for most of us as humans is to solve for that emotion.
So, if someone’s sad or if someone’s frustrated or if someone’s angry, we want to help them not be those things. And I know for me especially with my kids, I want them to be happy all of the time, so I’m always trying to solve for any negative emotion. This is not advised. It’s not useful.
First of all, you can’t solve other people’s emotions. And it almost invalidates the experience by trying to get them to get to a different experience immediately. So, don’t try and solve people’s problems. Don’t try and solve their problems, or thinking of their emotions as a problem to solve. And don’t try to talk people out of their emotions.
Be with them and hear them where they are. So, when somebody like your son or my says to me, “I’m frustrated.” Can I just be there with his frustration?
Now, here’s what I’ve noticed. If I say, “How are you feeling?” And they say, “Frustrated,” and I don’t say anything after that immediately, I just look at them and I’m silent, or if I say, “Huh…” or sometimes I’ll say, “Why? Tell me.” Then they’ll offer it. They’ll offer the reason why. They’ll offer a lot more information about the frustration.
And if I still don’t try and solve it or I still don’t try to override their thinking about it or try to fix it, there’s more space for them to just open up and talk about it.
And what I have found is that when I do that, I’m not trying to coach them, I’m not trying to help them, they haven’t asked for me to do any of that, I’m just hearing them, I can leave that conversation with nothing having been solved, nothing having been fixed, just my son telling me that what he’s feeling right now is frustration, and feel a much deeper connection with him.
--
“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 I want you to call out your friends who say this to you. And I want you to call out your clients that say 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.
Many of you think, 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. But 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.
--
Decisions are always made in an instant. Thinking and pondering and discussing only seems necessary. All it does is prevent you from making a decision until you make a decision.
So, a lot of times people will say, “Oh, I took a month to make that decision.” No, you made the decision in one minute, you just waited a month before you made it. Do not confuse yourself with this. Decisions are made in a second. And when you keep changing your mind back and forth, you make a decision, you unmake a decision, that is the opposite of making a decision.
So, I want to encourage you to make a decision and then stop all other options. Have your back. Follow through. Honor your decision no matter what. The only time you change your mind about a decision is once you have taken action and gotten more information and you feel positive about that decision.
A lot of people will make a decision, they’ll take a little bit of action, they get scared and doubtful and they want to go back into confusion. That’s not the same as making a decision, taking some action, realizing something was not what you wanted and then making another decision. Instead, we just sometimes go back on our own decisions and then we don’t have our own back.
So, the question that you may have in your mind is, “How do I decide? How do I get out of confusion and make a decision?” And I’m going to give you some guidelines.
Number one is I want you to consider everything. And here’s what I mean by that. A lot of times, when we’re making a decision, we have self-imposed limitations on it. So, someone will say, “I can’t decide whether I should call them back right now or not.” As if they’re considering all of their options.
And I’m like, there are so many things that you need to consider, so many different options at this point and you’re only giving yourself these two, so step back for a minute and consider this; would you choose it now if there was no history bias?
So, if you were starting brand new, would you choose whatever it is that is the status quo? So, for example, if you are deciding whether you should leave a job or not, redecide whether you want to take it or not. If you are deciding whether you should keep an employee or not, ask yourself, would you hire this person again? Would you marry this person again? Would you buy this house again? Would you spend this money?
Whatever it is, consider all your options and ask yourself, would you choose it now, by removing your history bias. A lot of us say, “Well, I’ve just been doing it for so long.” That may not be the reason that you want for choosing something. And remember, when you make a decision, you want to make sure you like your reason for choosing it.
The next thing you can do is – and this is one of my favorite tools to give to my clients when I’m coaching them, when they’re trying to decide between two things, I say, “I want you to imagine that both decisions turn out amazing. You succeed at both of them. Then which one would you choose?”
One of the reasons why some of us don’t choose one option over the other is because we’ve played it out and we’ve already anticipated failure. We’ve already anticipated that we won’t know how to do something or we’ve succumbed to our own doubt about something.
And what I want you to do, when you’re making a decision, you’re trying to decide between one thing or the other, if I stay married, the marriage turns out amazing because I make it amazing. And if I leave, my life is amazing because I make it amazing. So, knowing that either way I could have an amazing life, which one do I choose? It clears up decision-making so quickly.
The next thing I want you to consider as you’re making a decision is what if failure is no big deal? What if you’re just either winning or learning? If it didn’t matter if you failed at it, would you do it? If it didn’t matter if you failed at trying something or quitting something or moving out into something, would you do it if failure didn’t matter?
Because remember, failure is just the way you think about it. And if you’re only winning or learning, then there really is no failure. Nothing is a failure. So, when you take out the thought that failure ruins everything and that you could fail, which one do you do?
The next thing I want you to consider is can you say yes to both things? A lot of times, when we’re making a decision, we sometimes think that if we’re saying yes to one of them, we’re saying no to the other. And sometimes, we don’t want to say no to the other and so we don’t make a decision.
But what if you could say yes to both things? Maybe a timing thing. You may be able to have both things. Like, should I leave my job to become a life coach? Well, what if you could keep your job and become a life coach in the evening? What if you could have both? Would you choose both instead of saying yes to one and no to the other?
I always want you to consider that you don’t have to make a decision and you can really make a decision to have both things that you’re trying to decide between.
The next question that I think is helpful is, 10 years from now, what does your future self say and why? When I’m making big decisions in my life, I always ask my future self, what should I do and why? My future self always seems to know exactly what to do. I’m so much wiser 10 years from now, I always have the best answers.
--
A lot of people like to think about success as though success is the only thing that moves is forward. But here’s what I want you to see. Attempts are what move us forward. We learn by our attempts. We learn by our actions. Our actions move us forward. Whether we get the result we want or not, we are moving forward.
So, when you’re able to look at your R-line and recognize that your R-line is just an effect of your action and it becomes your new C-line, then you recognize that it’s just neutral. Until you interpret it in a way that’s painful, it’s just data.
“I made an offer. Someone said no. I stayed on this protocol. It didn’t work out. I tried to stay on this protocol and I didn’t.” That’s it. What can you learn? Take the data? Move forward.
If you find yourself in, “I don’t know what to do. I’m confused. I need someone to tell me what to do,” just remind yourself, all you need to do is find out something that you can try. Try that thing. If it works, keep doing it If it doesn’t, it’s a fail. Fine. Do something different. That’s it. Do something, if it works, keep doing it, if it doesn’t, try something different, and try something different, and try something different, and try something different. It’s called massive action. You try different things in different ways until you get the result you want.
So, for example, if you’re trying to sell something, you ask someone, they say no. You ask someone else, they say no. You ask someone else, they say no. You change the way you’re asking, they say no. You keep going until you get to the yes. That’s it.
We want to make it complicated, “Well, I’m very confused about this.” No, there’s nothing confusing about it. How do you do something? You try things until you find the thing that works.
This is a self-correcting process. Here’s what I mean by that. If you do something and it doesn’t work, try something else until it works.
So, if someone says to me, “That process doesn’t work,” of course that’s not true because the whole process is to keep going until it works. So, if you say that it doesn’t work, you just haven’t been doing it long enough. That’s it. What if I’m right? What stops us from moving forward is we have a low failure tolerance. We make it mean something super negative about us.
--
My whole life, I’ve had the experience of waking up anxious. I have underlying anxiety. I believe that it’s biological. It’s like an underlying hum in my own life. And I have learned how to utilize that energy to be productive because otherwise, it builds up. I get like a buildup of anxiety and I lash out and freak out and use it against myself, and then end up having to resist it.
And when I take that energy, when I take that anxiety, when I take that fear after I’ve processed it and I put it into my work, I produce at a very high level. I get a lot of work done. And it gives me a sense of relief from that anxious energy.
Now, it requires focus. It requires a channeling of that focus because the pull will be to pay attention and focus on whatever you think is scaring you, to watch the news, to pay attention to whatever’s coming, you know, what are the latest stats on COVID? What’s going on with the hurricane? What’s going on with the election? What’s going on with the riots in the world? I need to know everything that’s going on.
And so, we spend our time just filling our brain with more information that freaks us out even more. And although I think it’s important to be informed and to know what’s going on, and once we are aware of that and we’re aware of our thoughts about that and we’ve made decisions on what we want to do with that extra energy, how can we help, how can we serve, how can we produce, how can we be useful, instead of just sitting here being upset and in despair about it.
So, one of the ways that I want to recommend that we do that is we contribute to the solution, especially those of you who are coaches, this is the time to be building your business, to be making offers to people wo need mental health help.
There are too many people suffering right now that don’t have the tools that we can teach them, that we can help them, that we can coach them. And when we channel our fear and our anxiety and our worry into our work, we end up producing something with that energy that serves not just the world, but ourselves.
So, you have to take the focus of that energy and really use your mental energy, your mind energy to go to work and to take the anxiety energy, the fear energy, and literally transmute it into something that helps instead of harms.
When you think about the increase attention you can have when you’re alert because of something, that energy is actually very useful. That energy can be applied to your work, to your business, to what we’re calling doubling your business in three months.
What I want us to do is to be able utilize that 50-50, to utilize the contrast to understand what it is we most want right now, and to then funnel our energy and our focus into creating solutions and answers and contributions instead of only focusing on the problem and becoming worried or in despair or depressed about it, we want to focus on solutions to the fear and how can we, once we process that fear, provide what it is to ourselves that we need in order to feel more safe.
I love the teaching that talks about how when you find you what you don’t want, instead of pushing against it, we want to focus on what we do want. And it’s a subtle difference. When we push against what we don’t want, we actually create more tension in our body.
When we focus on what we do want, which is the opposite of what we don’t want, we create motivation, contribution, energy, service. So, what is it that’s making you afraid and what does it make you want instead? And can you take that energy and transform it into the energy that you want and need to create the solution to that fear?
--
All of your power comes from deciding what you want to believe. And you can see how that will determine how you live your life. You can see it if you look at your life right now, whether you believe in religion or not, whether you believe in your own success, whether you believe in yourself, what you believe about money, what you believe about your health will determine your life.
And a lot of us are living on automatic belief systems that we don’t even understand our belief systems because the volume has been so low on them. And so, now that the volume has been turned up on your belief systems, it’s a great time to question them. But it’s also a great time to decide what you want to believe and start inputting them, and doing it actually quite aggressively.
“No, no this is what I want to believe. This is what I think is true. This is how I choose to live my life.”
So, I’ll coach someone who will say, “I’ve never been able to do that,” and they’ll just say, “That’s true, I’ve never been able to do that, so, that’s a thought that I think all the time because it’s true.” And I’ll say, “Okay, maybe it’s true that you’ve never been able to do that, but is that thought useful? Who cares if it’s true? Is that thought useful to you? Does it produce anything of value for you to think, I’ve never done that before?”
And most people will say no. In fact, it gives them the opposite effect of what they want. So, if you switch a thought form, “I’ve never been able to do that before,” to, “I’m going to try this as many times as I need to try it to make it work,” equally true thoughts, equally true options of what you want to believe. But one is going to give you a lot more energy and momentum, and one is going to shut you down.
But if you don’t know that, “I’ve never done that before,” is an optional thought, you think it’s just a fact in the world and something that you’re actually required to believe because it’s true, that’s the other thing people think, “Well because it’s true, I’m required to think it.”
No, you don’t even have to think anything you don’t want to think, especially if it’s not serving you. What you focus on, you will create more of. What you choose to think about will give you results based on that.
So, you can decide not to think a thought. Now, it’s really important to remember you have to process the emotion, become aware of it, be fully aware that it’s a thought you’re thinking and an emotion you’re creating and process it through.
But once you’ve done that – I’m not talking about denial here. I’m talking about awareness, the opposite of denial, awareness of that thought and feeling it through, and then deciding that you want to think something different you want to believe something different.
And it doesn’t have to be in reaction to a negative thought. You can just choose a brand-new positive thought and practice believing it right now. Your brain is turned on. It’s alert. It’s ready. It wants new information. You should be the one providing it. You can tell it what you want it to think.
So, you decide right now, what do you want to think and believe about the world and about yourself? The world’s not changing. The world just is what it is. And without any thoughts about it, you’re in a neutral place.
So, look inside your mind. Get visibility on those sentences and decide on purpose what you want to believe. And I’m going to leave you with this. The coolest thing about being a human in the world is you can choose to believe anything you want.
And people might tell you that you’re delusional. But here’s the truth; you’re delusional anyway. Any thought you choose to think is an illusion, is a delusion anyway. You might as well choose to think something that gives you the feeling and promotes the action and gets you the result that you want.
--
So, I teach you guys a lot about unconditional love. What if you had unconditional belief? What if believing in something didn’t have conditions? Many of us do believe in things that don’t have conditions. We believe in God, no matter what. Some of us believe in universal energy, no matter what. Some of us believe in Buddha, no matter what. Some of us believe in Jesus. Whatever it is that you believe in, that nothing will shake your faith or your belief in.
We don’t have to limit it to those things. We can choose what we will believe in no matter what. And notice, when you believe in something no matter what, notice the certainty, the security it gives you.
“I don’t know much, but I know that I’m going to do this thing. I know that I’m committed to believing in it, no matter what anyone says. I will not quit. I will not change my mind; I will not make excuses.”
And the more you commit to something, the more massive action you will want to take to prove it true. And the more you will ignore all the evidence to the contrary. It won’t even matter. That evidence won’t matter. It won’t be relevant.
It won’t be important to you. It doesn’t matter that you failed that launch. That’s not relevant, “All I need to learn from it and see what I need to do to create this answer.” And I’ll leave you with this. I like to imagine that you’ve already gone to the future, that you and I have gone to the future and we’ve seen it. We already know that you succeed at this thing.
So, let’s go to my future together. Let’s go to this place where I’m on this podcast talking to you guys and I’m like, “Whoa, you guys, seriously, how cool is this? I just looked at my P&L and for this year we made $100 million in revenue. We did it. I made it. I believed in it, I created it, and then this is the result.”
That happens in the future. And so, what I know to be sure is when I say that, when I do that, I won’t remember the failures that I think now are so important. None of that will matter even a little bit. The only reason it will matter is from what I learned from it so I could create that result for myself.
So, let’s go to your future, where you’ve lost all the weight. And if we go there and you and I have a conversation about it and we say “Look, here you are, you achieved this goal,” now look back on that day that you overate on Tuesday. How relevant is that to you now? Aren’t you glad that you didn’t quit because of that? Aren’t you glad you didn’t quit when the scale went up five pounds? Aren’t you glad you didn’t quit when you didn’t lose weight for six weeks? You’d be like, “Yeah, we’ll laugh about it.” It won’t be a reason to give up.
So, my friends, how committed are you to believing? How hard are you believing in your dreams? The harder you believe, the less hustle you have to do. Because the harder you believe, the calmer you will be, the less hurried you will be to create the result because you know it’s coming. It’s in the mail. They’ve already shipped it. You’re just waiting for it to arrive.
That is how the commitment to believing something works. And I want you to practice believing in the thing you want, in the belief that you need to believe in and thinking in that way. It takes practice. You have to teach your brain that this is our reality now.
My brain is still very confused. My brain doesn’t think that we’ve made $100 million yet. I know we have. So, what part of me knows that we have if my brain doesn’t agree? That bigger part of me. And which part of me is more powerful.
Now, the tool of my brain is extremely amazing. But what I’m so interested in is the part of me that isn’t my brain that supervises my brain, the part of my brain that watches the other part of my brain. That’s the part that can decide to believe in something no matter what. And that’s the part that is more powerful when it comes to commitment and believing in something.
And I will tell you all, that is how I’ve been able to create all the results I’ve already created and it’s how you’ve created all the results you’ve already created. Think about it. Every amazing thing that we have in our world right now is because of a brain that created it, because of an idea, because we imagine something that didn’t yet exist. We did something that we have never done before.
--
As you begin to practice this new Model, you will be uncomfortable. Your brain will tell you that it’s dumb. Your brain will produce and sabotage you to create evidence to prove that you will never be able to make $100,000 or lose weight or public speak or quit your job or find the man of your dreams or get pregnant. Whatever it is you’re trying to do with that new model. Your brain will immediately tell you why it’s impossible and you will try something to prove it true and you will not be able to produce that result at first and you will feel so uncomfortable that the ultimate answer will be to give up and go back to your current model, which feels tried and true.
It feels like an old pair of jeans that you can just slip right back on and say, “Yep, you were right, brain, I can’t do that thing.” So, decide what you want and practice believing it, even though it’s super uncomfortable, even though you’re experiencing cognitive dissonance. Allow it to be there. Plan on it being there.
The next step, what you want to do is you want to start disproving that old belief system. So, the belief system that you currently have we’re going to call the old one. So, if you’re someone that wants to lose 50 pounds, let’s say, and you have a belief system that it’s impossible to lose weight, that there’s something physically wrong with you, you’re going to have face the reality that as long as you keep believing that and you believe that you can lose weight, you’re going to be in a lot of mental anguish.
And I’ve even seen people be in mental anguish hold both of those beliefs true, lose the 50 pounds, and gain it all back so they can back to their old belief system. It’s crazy. But if you’re aware of it ahead of time and you recognize that your brain will always want to keep proving its original belief true, then you can circumvent it.
So, you have to start disproving that. You have to be willing to be wrong. So, one of the ways that you can do that is by backing away from your own mind and recognizing that what you believe now is simply a sentence in your mind.
All beliefs are just simply sentences. So, if you back up and you look at this sentence, “I can’t lose weight,” and you see that that’s optional, it’s not a fact, it’s not something you have to believe, then you can decide ahead of time that you don’t want to believe that anymore and you are going to go about and prove it wrong.
And that, my friends, is what’s crazy about this. So, if you think about this belief, “I can’t lose weight,” you would think, “Eew, that’s a gross belief. I want to get rid of it. I don’t want to keep thinking that.” But that is not true. Your brain really likes that thought because you’ve been thinking it so long and you’ve proven it so true and your brain is very efficient at it and it feels protective.
It doesn’t want you to go out there and try and lose weight and fail at losing weight. It wants you to keep you in the comfort of the cave. So, you have to know that that’s what’s coming. Whenever you set out on some big goal and you have to start proving it untrue with everything that you have.
Then you start proving the new belief true. Now, if that seems too extreme, if it seems like you just can’t wrap your mind around it, if there’s so much mental anguish that you can’t even get there, that’s when it’s appropriate to create a bridge thought.
That’s when it’s appropriate for you to create a ladder thought between the two thoughts, “I hate my body,” “I have a body,” “I love my body.” Or maybe it’s, “I can’t lose weight,” “I am losing weight,” “I can lose 50 pounds, “Losing weight is possible.”
Or one of the bridge thoughts that’s really powerful is, “I am willing to consider that I can lose weight.” Going from I can’t lose weight to losing weight is a possibility. That is true. Losing weight is a possibility. You may not be able to get to I can lose weight, or I can lose 50 pounds, but losing weight is a possibility is a nice middle landing thought.
Making more money is a possibility, it’s likely that someone like me could make more money. See what I’m saying? It’s like you’re gently easing yourself into that river of misery so you can let go of the shore of that old belief system and kind of let it float away and move towards the new belief system.
—
When is enough enough? A student asked me the other day. Why do I keep pushing? And what I told her is there’s nothing wrong with continuing to push, there’s nothing wrong with continuing to strive and go for more. What happens is when we’re going after it for the wrong reason, we exhaust ourselves.
When we’re going after growth in order to find happiness at the end of that rainbow, we will constantly be exhausted and it won’t be sustainable because there is no happiness there. There is no arrival where then we are happy and content.
Happily ever after isn’t because we’ve achieved something. It’s because our brain changes. It’s because our mind changes. We don’t have to achieve anything to have happily ever after. All you need to do is change your mind.
But if you’re like me and you probably are because you’re listening to my podcast, there will be a yearning inside of you for more, for growth, for movement, for flow, for aliveness. You will want to let go of your contentedness, let go of your happiness in order to be uncomfortable enough to grow to the next level.
That is the price we’re willing to pay for a life of aliveness. Aliveness means we show up for the dance, which means we show up for the negative 50% of life as enthusiastically as we show up for the joy and the happiness and the ecstasy. We’re willing to open to both.
And because we’re willing to open to both, we open up the expanse that is our emotional capacity. And when you open up your emotional capacity, you open up the number of experiences that we’re willing to put yourself in front of, and when you do that, your life is bigger.
It’s much more alive. You say yes more often, you fall down more often, you’re in pain more often, but you’re also in ecstasy more often. And you can look back at the pathway, you can look back at the journey and you will see that it has made you more you.
If you don’t use it as an excuse to quit because you’re not feeling happy, you will find yourself on that journey. You will find out what you’re made of, you’ll find out who you are. And you will most likely be delighted by what it means to be you right now in this world.
This is you as a human. We don’t need to fix the world for you to have an amazing life. In fact, the world is not perfect on purpose. There is contrast on purpose. So we can come and evolve, and as we evolve ourselves within ourselves, it is displayed in the world for all of us to enjoy and for all of us to see.
That’s what I think is so magical. When you, my friend, evolve your life, when you’re willing to take that risk, when you’re willing to put yourself out there, when you’re willing to grow, it has the effect of growing the world. Literally.
Think about all the inventions, all of the things. Look around you. Everything we get to experience and enjoy and consume and be is because of the people that went before us that risked evolving, risked growing, risked going beyond just surviving.
Otherwise, we’d all just be sitting around eating what was available. We wouldn’t have farms. We wouldn’t have grocery stores. That human ingenuity comes from letting go of sitting in the warm cave by the fire. And metaphorically, that’s what I’m inviting you to do.
Come out of the cave. Risk yourself. Risk your happiness. Risk your comfort for the sake of aliveness, for showing up for something that maybe you’ve never done before. Asking your brain for more than it’s had to produce for a while. Letting it learn something new.
Putting yourself in what I call harm’s way, embarrassing yourself, on purpose. Dancing when the music’s on, regardless if anyone else is dancing, regardless if people are making fun of you, regardless if people think you’re doing it wrong, dance.
—
Yes, you care about the money and you need to care about the money, especially if you’re a business owner and you’re trying to run a business. The money matters. You need to care for it. You need to care about it. And if you’re running a business, you need to be in it for the money. A business is defined as a company that makes a profit.
The goal of the company is to make a profit. So if you don’t care about money, don’t start a business. If you’re not in it for the money, don’t start a business. A business is about creating revenue, creating profit. So I think it’s a well-intended statement. I think it’s a qualifier that people say because they want you to be clear that money isn’t more important than people to them.
And so if they just say I don’t care about the money, then it’s very clear that the reason that you’re in business is not because of money. And even this guy, when he was talking to me was like, “Well, for me it’s about the game.” And I’m like, but the game is money. Money is how you keep score of the game.
So it’s like saying well, I love sports but I don’t care about the score. What? Yes, you care about the score. Yes, we care about the money. So I want to give everyone permission to care about the money. To care and make it about making a profit.
And to not make that mean that you don’t care about people, or that you care about money more than you care about people, because that is not the case. That’s not the case for me, that’s not the case with most of the people that I discuss business with.
It’s always people first, always. And in fact, the more you take care of your people, the more you honor your customer, the more you take care of the people around you that you love, the more money you will make. So let me just rant and say it is nonsense to say you’re not in it for the money or you don’t care about the money.
Now, another reason why people might say it is they want to make money in their business, they want to keep score with the revenue, they want to have that matter, but they don’t care about spending the money. And I think that’s a really valid point.
I have talked extensively on this podcast about the capacity to have money, not necessarily spend money but to have money. And so the same guy that I was having this conversation with, he’s like, “There’s nothing I want to buy. I have so much money but there’s nothing I want to buy with it, so that’s why I feel like I’m not in it for the money.”
And I said it’s not about buying things, it’s not about spending it, it’s about having it and being able to use money to help other people, to help your family, to take care of yourself, to invest in other companies, even if it’s through the stock market, to invest in real estate, to contribute to our economy.
Money is very important and it’s very important to care about. And so when you say that you’re not in it for the money, if what you mean is I’m not in it to spend money on frivolous things, then say that. Because that’s a very valid point.
So if somebody says, “Hey, I’m so excited that you’re making so much money in your business,” don’t say, “Well, I’m not in it for the money.” Say, “Well, I’m not in it to spend the money on frivolous things.” You are in business for the money, my friends. That is what we do.
—
So here’s how I want you to think about these three assets. Your brain is at the top, then your time, and then your money. And I put them in that order of importance. And when you look at those, when you look at my brain, my time, my money, I want you to consider that the way that the investment should happen is from the bottom up.
Meaning you should be investing your money into creating more time, which is more valuable, what’s more valuable than time? And then investing your time and your money into your brain to make your brain more valuable.
Now, a lot of people will make the argument with me that no, money is more valuable than your brain, you shouldn’t be spending money on learning new things, you should keep your money because it’s more valuable than learning new things.
But here’s the thing that I believe and I want you to consider is that when your brain has the knowledge to make money, when it has the skills to make money, you don’t need the money to make money. A lot of times people will say, “You need money to make money,” but that’s not true.
Because if you have the knowledge and the skill of how to make money in your brain, you can start from zero and start making money today. You could take away all of our money, you could take away all of it, and I bet we would have it back within three years because we have the knowledge in our brain of how to do it.
I have the knowledge in my brain to manage my thoughts to generate emotion, to not make it mean anything if I lost all my money. That is the skillset that produces at the highest level of value. Now, some of you may argue, okay, maybe your brain is more important than money but what about time?
But first of all, you have to remember, if you don’t have a brain, you don’t have time. A lot of times people want to talk to me about time management, they want to talk about how important it is to manage your time as a separate asset.
And I absolutely agree that that is one of the most important things you can do. You need to manage your money, you need to manage your time, you need to manage your brain. But managing your time is very easy actually, it’s managing your brain to follow through on what you’ve told yourself to do with your time that is challenging.
If it was simply a matter of managing our time, we would always do within the amount of time the thing that we said we were going to do. Productivity is only an issue when we don’t follow through, when we procrastinate, when we aren’t focused, when we aren’t using our brains.
So I make the argument that brain management is the most important investment you will ever make in your life. And I’m talking about the time you spend with your brain working on your brain, and I’m talking about the money you spend investing in your brain for knowledge and skill and management.
Bar none, I think that is the order that all investments should be done. Now, when you talk to people about their money, which is the third on the list, how many of the people that you talk to are investing their money in creating more time, in making their time more valuable, or in their brain?
The answer is very few. And I want to tell you that the people who do spend their money on investing in their own brain and they spend their time in investing in their own brain, and they spend their money in investing in making their time more valuable are the ones that have the most money.
—
One of the awards that we give is what we call the elite award, and that goes to anyone who has made $100,000 within the last 12 months or within their fiscal year proceeding mastermind. And it’s super inspiring to hear the stories of the people who are making 100K and over.
And one of the things I love about our community is everybody’s willing to share their exact amounts of how much they’re making. And so last year - I also give out an award for top earner, whoever makes the most in their coaching business.
And so last year, the woman that had won and the second place person, they were very close in the battle. The woman that won the top earner was just barely beating second place. And so we made kind of a little bit of a joke and I said, “You better watch out. She’s coming after you.” And we all love each other so much, it was just for fun.
But the second place person won this year. And not only did she win, she got the two comma club award. She made a million dollars in her business. I always have them say a little something about how they got to that place, and what she said is she said, mastermind last year, she decided that she was going to win. She decided that she wanted to be top earner.
And she wrote it in her journal every single day between those two masterminds. I will be top earner. Every single day she wrote that down. And she was the top earner. And she really needed to have written that down because the second and third place were right behind her. Very close.
And with three times as much as she had made the year before. It was so amazing and I love that she told that story because she committed to that belief 100%. How many of you are writing down what you want every single day? Why not?
Acknowledging what it is that you want and letting your brain go to work on the how. And the way that you figure out the how is by trying lots and lots and lots of different how’s. You want to know if something is going to work, try it. Don’t ask anybody. Just try it. See if it works. If it doesn’t, try something different.
But have your mind set on that goal no matter what, on that solution, no matter what. Because that is where you’re heading no matter if your launch worked or it didn’t, or your copy’s working or your opt-in’s working, it’s all just a matter of changing those things until they do because massive action means you take action until you get the result you want.
—
The only thing that you have to practice doing, and this is whether you’re working on overeating, this is whether you’re working on overdrinking, this is whether you’re working on procrastination, whatever it is you’re working on, this is what you’re going to have to learn how to do. It’s to overcome the urges in the moment.
You’re going to plan, you’re going to make decisions ahead of time, and then you got to learn how to process an urge without acting on it. Because the urge will be to not clean the closet, to not write the blog post, to not eat the kale salad, to not go on the walk, to not whatever it is that you were going to do during that time when you said you were going to do it.
You’re not going to want to do it. You’re going to want to push it around and change it, spend less time on it. You’re going to want to change your calendar. But if you follow that calendar so strictly, so beautifully, then you get your free time at the end and everything’s done.
And I’ll tell you what, when you overcome those urges for that instant gratification, to switch into the delayed gratification and to do the work that gives you the delayed gratification, that’s when your life completely up-levels. Because you start obeying and working from the prefrontal cortex, which has your best long-term interest at heart, instead of acting like the primitive toddler brain that is the loudest yelling one.
So when you come to 12 o clock and it’s time to clean the closet and your primitive brain is having a conniption fit, you can be like, “I hear you. Your opinion is noted. We’re going to clean this closet out.” Because at the end of the day, you’ll have the clean closet and the blog post written and the kitchen will be clean and dinner will be ready, and you will be like, yes.
And you won’t have done it in such a frenzied, panicked, exhausted way. You will just be honoring yourself the whole time. Now, here’s what I’ve noticed to be true, when you do this, it actually energizes you because you’re honoring yourself, you’re following your commitments, you’re not thinking about all the stuff that you haven’t done, you’re not worried about all the procrastination that you’ve done, you’re not rushing because you have so much urgent stuff to be done. You’re just honoring your calendar.
Now, some of you will say to me because I’ve heard you say it to me many times is, “Okay Brooke, but what about I tell myself I’m going to go to yoga, I make the plan to go to yoga, and then when it’s time to go to yoga, I just literally can’t get myself to go. I just can’t even imagine driving to yoga.”
And so what I recommend, the things that you most want to do that you aren’t getting started on doing, you have to break them down into even smaller steps. So don’t say I’m going to go to yoga at noon. Let’s say your yoga class is at noon, and you put on the calendar noon yoga. That’s easy to dismiss.
But 11:30, what you’re going to do is put on your yoga pants. I know this may sound totally trivial but I’m telling you this shit works. I taught this in my book, If I’m So Smart Why Can’t I Lose Weight, when I first wrote it 10 years ago. You want to go for a run, you want to go for a walk, step number one, at 11:30 is put your tennis shoes on.
Step number two, at 11:35 is to fill your water bottle. Step number four is to get the car keys, get your yoga mat, and go get in the car. Break it down for yourself. Your brain will do the little easy things. It doesn’t like the big hard things. Going to yoga is a big hard thing. Putting on shoes, alright, you can talk your brain into that.
So if there’s something important that you want to do and you’re not doing it, break down the steps. Let’s say you want to write a blog post, step number one, sit down at the computer, step number two, brainstorm five ideas, step number three, write three sentences. Outline the blog post. Start writing.
You break it down on your calendar. Now, you’re going to look at your calendar, there’s going to be a lot of stuff on there. But you make these decisions ahead of time, and then when you’re in the moment, you learn how to honor yourself that thought this through for you.
And here’s what’s so interesting is when you plan your day ahead of time, when you plan for your future self, you’re honoring yourself in the future, and then when you execute on the plan that you created for yourself, you’re honoring the gratification that you’re going to get for your future self in the future.
Here’s what it looks like for me. I get up on Monday, I do my thought downloads, I do my to-do downloads, I put everything in the calendar of when I’m going to do it, and then the next thing I do is the first thing on my calendar and my brain doesn’t want to do it and it throws a fit about it, but I’ve gotten really good at overcoming urges.
I’ve gotten really good at noting what my brain wants me to do and just doing my work instead. And I’ve become a person who trusts myself. I know that I’m going to do what I put on my calendar. My calendar is the most important thing that I honor because it’s a reflection of my word to myself. There’s nothing more important than my word to myself.
Instant gratification will rob you of your future. Your ability to be uncomfortable long enough to get what you ultimately want is the secret to getting what you ultimately want.
—
We understand why we have consumer debt, right? We want something and we want it right now and we don’t care that we can’t afford it because we have a credit card. We get that instant hit of gratification by being able to purchase the thing that we can’t afford, and we now own it and it’s super shiny and exciting for about five minutes.
But what is the reason why we leave decisions unmade? What is the reason why we consume our own energy, we let our debt consume our own energy and unmade decisions? And the reason why is because we have this belief system that there are right and wrong decisions.
And we have this belief system that we should make the right decision. We also don’t want to make decisions because many of us know that once we make the decision, action will be required. Risky action that will make us uncomfortable in a lot of cases.
And so we prefer to sit in a world of debt, sit in a world of scarcity, and the discomfort of that, versus making the decision where we could be wrong. We don’t want to get married, what if it’s the wrong guy? We don’t want to quit our job, what if it’s the wrong job? We don't want to sign up for coach training, or we don’t want to sign up and go back to school because what if that’s the wrong decision?
Well, I don’t know if I have the energy to do that. And so because we’re not making the decision, we’re in this lag time of discomfort that gets us nowhere. You’ll often hear my saying to my students, “Listen, you’re going to be uncomfortable anyway, you might as well get the result you want.”
So I want you to think about what your own decision debt is costing you. And if you find yourself saying a lot of times, “Well, I don’t know what I want,” the reason you don’t know what you want is because you haven’t made enough decisions.
And I know that sounds crazy because you’re going to say, “Well, how do I make a decision if I don’t know what I want?” You have to make a decision in order to find out what you want. So for example, you may not know if you want to move in with someone, so you either need to decide not to and see if that’s what you want, or decide to do it and see if that’s what you want. And own and be present in the decision that you’ve made.
Because for example, if you decide, “I’m not going to move in with them right now,” and you leave the decision open with no timeframe on it, then you’re still living in indecision, you haven’t committed. But if you say I’m going to live on my own for one year, that is a good decision. Then you can let go of the decision, it’s not going to drain your energy, you can stop thinking about it, and you can focus on living on your own.
Or you decide I’m going to go to school for one year, or I’m not going to go to school for one year. Really deciding and then not going back and forth. I had a conversation recently with a student who was debating whether she wanted to sign up for my coach training and become a certified coach.
And what I told her was that the decision to do it or not do it is neutral. So if you sign up for my coach training, that’s a neutral decision. It’s not right or wrong, it’s not good or bad until you decide that it is. And if you don’t sign up for it, it’s not good or bad.
Either way, and this is how I always recommend everyone make decisions, either way, you’re going to have an amazing life. Either way, you’re going to be happy. Either way, it’s the right decision. So when you believe that, then which one do you do? And it clears it up right away.
Because all of your garbage about needing to be right, needing to be good, needing the decision to make you happy is off the table. And then you can really tap into what it is you want. If I’m going to be happy either way, if I’m going to be happy married to my husband or happy not married to my husband, I want to be married to my husband.
I’m not married to him because I think that’s the only way I can be happy. I know that I can be happy without him, but I’d just rather be happy with him. And that’s how we make decisions. Take off the right or wrong or happiness. Stop putting all the pressure on the decision and then make the decision and then also decide that it will be a good decision.
This isn’t like, betting in Vegas on your life. There’s no wheel that’s going to say winner or not winner. You are the one that still has to deliver your life to yourself.
—
Thinking about your future self is a skill that most of us develop as we establish more maturity. So when you think about what are the gifts you want to give your future self and what do you need to do now to do that, now, a lot of them are unconscious.
So a lot of them are you’re saving money for some of you, you’re paying your mortgage, you’re fertilizing your lawn, you’re going grocery shopping. All those things that you’re doing, you’re doing for your future self. I want you to think about them on a bigger scale.
What do you want to do for yourself a year from now? What do you want to do now for yourself five years from now, 10 years from now? What will you be grateful for, what gifts do you have to offer?
And so I’ve been thinking about this a lot for my kids too. It’s like, what can I do now for them financially? What can I do now for them emotionally that will serve them in their futures? What can I do now for myself 10 years from now and consistently?
I like to think about them separately. I like to think about this is what I’m going to do for my business self, and this is what I’m going to do for my personal self. Now, here’s what I want to tell you. The best gifts that you have to give your future self are super dull and boring right now. That has been my experience.
So being responsible with my health, exercising, doing yoga, getting my health checkups regularly, taking care of my teeth, taking care of my bones, eating a really healthy protocol diet, saving money in an account, all of those things personally that I’m doing for myself is because I love myself in the future.
And in the future, I will be delighted that I did all the boring things. And as it applies to my business, there’s a lot of things that I’m doing in my business that aren’t sexy and fun and awesome right now. I’m applying a lot of constraint to the products and the things that I offer and the things that I do in my business and that makes it so my business is scalable and simplified.
I’m spending a lot of time hiring the right team and making sure we have the right people. It would be much easier just to throw people into the business and be like, “They’ll be fine,” but I’m being really careful and really practical.
I’m delaying a lot of financial gain to the future. I’m not trying to cash out or pressure my audience or pressure anyone to buy anything from me at all because I know that in the future, my most important asset are my customers and developing a relationship with them and helping them and giving them results ahead of time is the ultimate long-term play for myself.
I’m not burning myself out. I’m taking very good care of myself mentally and planning my time. I sit down every week and plan my time for the week, and then I honor that time for the week because I don’t want to procrastinate and put that on my future self. I want to take care of my future self.
One of the best ways of doing this is to think about your future self as someone you love and care about because so many of us, what we do to our future selves we would never do to our best friends. We would never do that to them. We’d never say that we were going to do something and then just not show up. We would never put them off and not contact them and ignore them the way that we do to our future self.
We wouldn’t not plan something for vacation or something, we wouldn’t just wing it. And I think a lot of us are doing that with our future self lives. We haven’t thought about what can I give as a gift to my future self now. And the longer ahead you think into the future, the more elaborate you can be, the more exciting those gifts can be.
Because if you think that 10 years from now is a long time from now, you won’t ever get around to doing what you could easily do in 10 years. We like to think about what we can do in one year but here’s the thing; what we can do in one year pales in comparison to what we can do in 10.
So if we start thinking about 10 years from now, in 10 years from now, my future self is going to be so stoked that I started thinking about a 100-million-dollar business now.
—
If you want to know what someone’s thinking, look at their life. If you want to know what you’re thinking, look at your life. So when people come to me and they tell me, “Here’s what I’ve been thinking,” I always say no it’s not. I know that’s not what you’re thinking, you know how I know? Look at your results.
They’re like, “This is what I believe.” That’s not what you believe. You believe the opposite of that. Look at your results. So then they want to beat themselves up for not believing correctly. It’s just simply math. Don’t beat yourself up over a math problem. Just notice the reality of it.
What believe right now, my capacity for believing something right now is evident in the result I’ve created. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s a great thing to know. You must examine your mind. You must become aware of what it is thinking about.
You must supervise it, you must direct it. Because if you don’t, it will take you on a wild carpet ride based on old evolved ideas about what’s out there in the world. You have to educate it and train it in a way that serves your highest purpose.
You must look into your mind because it’s always the map of where you are headed. When you see what you think about, you see where you’re going, it’s almost like looking at the GPS. You want to know where you’re going, look at your brain. It will tell you. What do you think about all the time?
It’s the thought factor. You can’t escape it. So you may say I have this goal but all I do is think about how hard it is, think about how I can’t accomplish it, think about how uncomfortable it makes me. That’s not going to work. You can’t think about your goal in terms of how you can’t get there and expect to get there.
You have to think about your goal as if you are already there. And then you have to go out in the world and lift the weights to be strong enough to step into it and manifest it. I like to think about my own life in terms of a completed thought, which means there was a time where I believed something that hadn’t yet manifested.
For example, I believed that I would marry a wonderful man. When I aligned my model with that result, that thought was complete. That thought was manifested in my life. I saw the power of having thought that thought and then created that result. That’s a completed thought.
So there will be times when you are in the midst of that completed thought, where that completed model hasn’t actually manifested yet. So for example, right now when I think about making 100 million dollars, that thought has not completed. It has not shown up yet visibly to y’all. It’s completely visible to me. It just hasn’t manifested yet.
So I’m thinking it, I’m feeling it, I’m acting it. The result isn’t there yet, it hasn’t fully been completed yet, but I am in that thought process. So I think it’s useful sometimes to look at thoughts that were once in the past that have now been completed that have now been fully aligned, to see the power of hey, I remember when I first had that thought and I remember now when that thought result was manifested.
Because when you see all the evidence, there is no evidence against it, when you see all the evidence in your past about how your thoughts created the results, look at all the results in your life, find the thought that caused it. It is magnificent to see how powerful you are.
And then you really get nervous about wait a minute, what are the thoughts that I’m thinking now? Because I’m going to see them be manifested. I’m going to create them in my life. I’m going to have that result in my life, so I need to think about it.
So change is hard because it requires us to be aware. It requires us to be uncomfortable. It requires us to give up and sacrifice the life we have now, the thoughts we have now, the beliefs we have now for the life we want to have, which means we have to completely obliterate our identity over and over and over again.
The core of who you are will always be worthy. But this game of humanness is ever evolving. And you’re either moving towards more of what you want, or you’re just repeating more of what you don’t want, or more of the same if you don’t want to grow.
—
Pavel: Well, there you have it. Thanks for listening and if you haven’t yet subscribed or followed this podcast, please make sure to do so in the app of your choice and please leave a rating and a review. Have a great week.
