You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode 369.
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.
How are you, my friends? Oh, my goodness, can I please tell you, I am so sore. My poor body. If you haven’t been following along in Scholars, I am trying to put on five pounds of muscle. I’m in week one. My body is sore. We’ve been videoing everything as we’ve been going through it and people are really enjoying that in Scholars. So, if you want to follow along with me breaking down my muscle and rebuilding it back up, please come on in. It’s quite a spectacle.
I’m super excited about the episode today. I asked my team to go into Scholars and to pull out some of my best coaching and create an episode. And I did this for two reasons. One of the reasons is that I feel like there’s a lot of you who listen to the podcast who don’t know what you’re missing by not joining Scholars. And I really want you to go in there and at least try it for one month.
If you’re a podcast listener die hard and you haven’t been in Scholars, I really want to recommend that you go in there just for one month and get a taste of some of the coaching and to get coached yourself because the content that I’m creating in there is literally life-changing.
The people that I hear from that I’ve never even met before, that I’ve coached in Scholars, that have taken classes in Scholars are changing their lives for such a low output of money. It’s incredible. It’s much less than even intense coaching or therapy.
So, if you’ve been on the fence, you’ve been thinking about it, make a decision to at least try it for one month. I’m really hoping this podcast will help you make that decision. They just pulled coaching.
And what’s crazy about it for me is oftentimes when I’m coaching, I’m not thinking in a very conscious way. It’s almost like I’m accessing my own wisdom, like automatically. And so, when I listened back to this episode, I actually learned something. I actually learned some things about how I want to be and things I want to apply. Which is so weird because it’s my own voice telling me to do these things and I’m like, “Oh, good idea, lady.” And I’m actually talking to myself.
So, for those of you who are even in Scholars and you’ve heard this coaching before, it will be super interesting for you to hear it again. I think when it’s taken out of the coaching session, there’s a different perspective on it.
So, please enjoy this episode and thank you to my team for putting it together and pulling such great clips for every one of my podcast listeners to enjoy.
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This class is one of the most important classes I can teach. It may sound frivolous. Clutter may sound like, “Oh, I prefer to have clutter. I prefer not to have clutter.” That’s not what we’re talking about here.
We’re talking about your mind. We’re talking about your body. We’re talking about your home. we’re talking about your life. The types of clutter that we have and that we accumulate weigh us down and prevent us from evolving.
One of the ways that you know if you have clutter is by having a look in your mind. Do you have mind clutter? And if the answer is yes, you’ll see it in your life. If you clean up your mind, your life will be free of clutter. That’s how it works. But if you don’t deal with the cause of the clutter, if you don’t deal with the reason why you have the clutter in the first place, you’re just going to reaccumulate it. It’s just going to get messy again.
A lot of us have such a lack of awareness around the clutter that we have that we don’t even realize that it needs to be cleaned out. And so, one of the best ways to manage your clutter, to understand it, become aware of your clutter is to do – and that’s mind clutter – that’s to do a thought download.
Right now, you have a lot of thoughts going on in your head. You have about 60,000 thoughts you’re going to have today. So, one of the things that I want you to do is empty put your mind as best you can onto a piece of paper.
This is the equivalent of how I would want you to clean out your closet. I want you to go into your closet and I want you to take out every single thing out of the closet. Don’t leave one shoe. Don’t leave one belt. Nothing.
You’re going to take every single thing out of that closet and put it in the bedroom or put it in the living room or whatever. That’s also what I want you to do with your mind. I want you to take out every single thought you’re having in your mind; positive thoughts, negative thoughts, thoughts about things you have to do.
Anything like that, we’re going to write it down. Then, from that place, we are going to make conscious decisions about what to put back in. And we’re going to decide what we want to think and have on purpose.
So, let’s talk about this in terms of our thinking. What are the thoughts that you want to consciously choose? I want you to think about the possibility of all the thoughts in the world. Here’s the best part. This is different than your closet. Here’s the best part. Thoughts are absolutely free. You don’t have to pay.
You can grab a thought, “I am beautiful…” free. It doesn’t cost you anything. You just have to drop into believing it. You can grab a thought, “I deserve love. I deserve joy. I am happy. I love myself…” completely free.
You get to choose. As I put these thoughts back in my brain purposefully and I think about them on purpose because I love them and I find them useful and I find them purposeful for my life, my life begins to change.
For many, many, many of us, the clutter that we have in our brain is from a lack of planning, is from a lack of taking the time to empty out the brain with a thought download and to do Monday Hour One.
As part of Self-Coaching Scholars, you get my calendaring program called Monday Hour One. And in that program, you take an hour every Monday – some people do it Sunday night, some people do it first thing Monday – and you plan every single thing that is taking space in your mind, all the things that you need to do, that you want to do, that you have to do, that you’re holding in your mind’s eye so you don’t forget.
And when you hold those things in your mind’s eye, you create clutter, which means you have no awareness of all the other thoughts, all the other junk that’s in there. You’re not choosing what to think consciously.
So, when you empty out your brain of all the things you need to do, your entire to-do list, from now until eternity and you empty it out and you take every single ting on that list and you put it on the calendar for a later day, it’s as good as done. You put it on the calendar and you throw that list away and then you can let go of hanging onto it in your brain because now it’s on your calendar.
Now you’ve freed up your creativity. You’ve freed up your space. I want you to invite in new thoughts to believe, new things that you want to create in your life because you’ve gotten rid of the clutter that is preventing you from living a more conscious life.
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One of the keys to happiness that I’ve discovered is to be happy with the whole collection of unhappiness that is half of our life. So much unnecessary suffering comes from being unhappy about unhappiness. We compound it.
If we could look at it and understand there is joy and there is pain and I can be content in knowing that that is the balance of my life, I will have eliminated half of my unhappiness and created more joy. And if I’m willing to experience and show up for all of it, for my whole life, for the full contrast of my whole life, all of the emotions, all the happy emotions and all of the unhappy emotions, I’ve now expanded what is possible for the experience of my life.
So, ask yourself, what is it about happiness that seems like the answer for you? Or do you want something different?
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Why are you asking that question? “Where is my doubt coming from?” not a great question. “How am I going to get this job? Why am I the best person for this job? How amazing am I for this job? This is so exciting. Why do I deserve all this extra money? Why do I deserve to be the executive?” Those are all the questions you should be asking yourself. Not, “Why don’t I believe in myself? Why do I have so much self-doubt?” Those are not good questions.
Do you see what I’m saying? You’re good enough for the job but you keep asking yourself why you’re not good enough for the job. And you’re telling yourself you’re evaluating the risk, but really, you’re just putting yourself down.
Like, this could be fun. You could actually enjoy getting this job. Enjoy the possibility of this job. There is no downside to getting excited about something, even if you don’t get it. You’ve been excited. Nothing wrong with having a period of time where you’re excited. Show up to that interview excited versus disappointed ahead of time, chances of you getting that job are so much higher.
Just be like, “I’m going to go all in, do my best to get super excited about getting this job. And if I don’t get it, I’m going to move onto the next thing. I’m not going to beat myself up or worry about not getting it or any of that.” There’s no upside to any of that, “This is a great opportunity. I’m going to go all in for this opportunity. And regardless, fully experiencing this opportunity moves me forward, whether I get the job or not isn’t as important as whether I show up fully with anticipation of getting it for sure.
It’s okay to believe that you can get that job.
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Whenever I’m thinking about any goals that I want to set or anything that I want to start to achieve, the way that I do it is I look at my life and I ask myself, “What is working? What isn’t working? And what do I want?”
A lot of times, we don’t want to look at what isn’t working because we use it against ourselves. In the context of this class, I want you to look at what isn’t working as an opportunity to develop a goal or develop a want of something that you want to create in this month.
One of the things that I want you to do as you’re going through this process is you’re going to ask yourself, “What is it that I want to change based on what isn’t working?” Or something that you want to work better.
And I want you to be very specific and measured in what it is you want to change. I want to be able to measure whether you’ve made that change and you’ve created that result that you want in your life or not.
So, I should be able to look at your life and be like, “Yep, or no.” Without talking to you and just looking at the results in your life. It needs to be measured. I want you to pick a result that if you accomplished it within the next 31 days, it would change the trajectory of the rest of your year.
Every reason why it’s not possible and it won’t work and you’re going to let yourself down is going to come to the surface. Now, most people make the mistake, as soon as they set this goal and they have all this negative emotion come up, they change the goal, so it will feel better. Or they give up on the goal. Or they decide they’re not going to do it.
I just want you to be aware, when you set the goal, that is going to happen. That’s part of the process. That’s the resistance of your own brain. Because your brain wants to keep everything the same.
Remember, the primal brain likes to keep everything the same because if everything stays the same, we’re going to stay alive. We’re not dread. Everything’s working. We’re surviving. That is as much as your brain is willing to motivate you to do, is just to survive.
But what you’re going to do is come in and ask for more. And your brain’s like, “Wait, that my threaten my survival, going and doing all these different things that I don’t understand,” your brain’s actually going to try and bring you back.
So, just know that’s part of the process. You set a big goal, “That’s going to be too much work. That’s going to hurt. You’re probably going to fail. You shouldn’t do it. You’re not good enough.”
Notice what comes up. That’s step two. Notice the lies and the obstacles that come up, “That’s too hard. You aren’t going to be able to do it. You’re not going to feel like doing it. You’re not going to be able to have the discipline to do it.” All those messages and all those lies.
Now, listen, what you’re going to want to do is ignore all of that. You’re going to want to push that away because you’re going to see that as a threat to achieving your goal. But it’s still going to make you feel negatively even if you don’t acknowledge those thoughts are there. That’s why it’s important to write them down, to look at them.
Because each one of those obstacles, each one of those lies is an opportunity for you to build even more strength towards your goal. If you anticipate every single one of those obstacles ahead of time, every single thing that could get in the way of you achieving that goal, and you already have an answer for it, you already have a plan for it ahead of time, your primal brain has no chance against it.
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The best part of losing weight, the best part of getting skinny, the best part is that it requires you to learn how to feel your feelings. Getting skinny, not important compared to feeling your feelings, not even close.
Losing weight just makes your body smaller. That’s all you can do. The process of losing weight makes you a better human being, literally, a higher-functioning human being, a more evolved human being.
The losing weight part is the best part. The skinny is just the bonus at the end. For me, I needed to want to get skinny in order to do that work. I’m thankful that I had that desire. Because I had that desire, I went through and did the work required for me to become a more aware, conscious human being. That’s how I got started on weight loss. I wanted to be skinny.
And following that desire led me to the work that I’m now doing in my life. I want to make sure that you all understand the breadth and extent of what is included in the Study Vault for weight loss.
If you go into Self-Coaching Scholars and you go to the main page and you click Study Vault, it will take you to a bunch of topics that we offer in Scholars. One of them will be weight loss. When you click on weight loss, there is a treasure trove in there.
I think the most important class for you to take would be Stop Overeating Workshop. That basically covers, in detail. My philosophy with weight loss. I teach a lot of information in there.
We do have a Stop Overeating Advance that I taught live to Scholars. We also have the Urge Jar class that talks about urges and managing urges. And then we also have Eight Pounds Down, which is a class that I taught about losing eight pounds within a month period.
One of the things that I want to recommend that you all do is go through those courses. Download and listen to the calls, getting that information so you understand it, it’s deep in your bones, you know what the concepts are, you know what the ideas are. So, as you’re going through the process of losing weight, you can access those resources.
That is what I did, the whole process through losing weight, is instead of consuming food and sweets and sugar and flours, I consumed information about my body and how to take care of myself in a better way. And I lost the weight permanently. My intense desire for overeating and sweets and food and all of that is completely gone away. And it’s because of the work, the exact work that I teach in Self-Coaching Scholars.
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A lot of us go through this process where we think we’re stuck. We think we’re not moving forward. We’re not living the life we’re meant to be living, that there’s some other version of ourself that’s out there.
I don’t think this is a problem. I think this is the most beautiful thing that happens to us as humans, is that nudge inside of us to pursue our dreams and to become ultimately who we are and who we want to be.
We get into trouble when we start asking ourself questions like, “Why are we stuck?” It doesn’t matter. What do you want and are you willing to go after it?
If you’re taking the steps and you’re already moving towards it, don’t talk about being stuck. Don’t talk about not doing it. Talk about all the things you are doing to do it.
And a lot of times, what happens is we start getting some emotions about this forward momentum and then we start going, “Oh, I hope I don’t do what I did last time and sometimes I do this and sometime is do that.” And we think that we’re somehow being protective of ourselves because we’re looking back at the past to how we behaved and being preventative. It’s not.
The most useful thing you can do is to focus on where you want to go and to keep moving forward towards it, even if it’s small steps, even if it’s just changing your thought patterns around moving forward towards it.
Because a lot of times, we’ll say to ourselves, “I’m stuck.” But really, we’re not stuck. When we look at that reality of it, we’re moving towards that goal that we have. Maybe it’s not as fast as we want to go, but it’s really important to acknowledge the momentum that we do have because that’s what will build more.
And listen, if you find yourself just making excuses for your not having your dreams, I don’t want you to beat yourself up over that, but I do want you to acknowledge, you’re denying yourself your dreams.
Your dreams require thought discipline. They require you to focus on what it is you need to believe to keep feeling the way you need to feel, to keep taking action to get the result you want.
And if you let your mind slip and you start thinking, “Oh, well the kids, I live in Austria, I always have done this in the past…” you’re pulling yourself away from your own dreams just with thoughts. And then you’re blaming all of these circumstances when it has nothing to do with that.
So, instead of you saying, “Oh, I get stuck. I have certification bur I’m stuck,” you just say, “I’m taking certification. This is where I’m going. These are the dreams that I have, these are the steps that I’m already taking for it.” You keep your mind focused on that future.
Your brain will pull you to the past. You just redirect it back to the future. And this is why I always think people should have very big goals. Because very big goals grab our attention. They grab our brain’s energy because we have to focus on them and then constantly focusing on the big goal and the questions that we ask are all about, “What can I do to believe this? What can I do to feel this? What action can I take to keep this going?”
And your brain will be like, “But what about your past? You didn’t do so well back then. Do you really need this?” And you’re just like, “No, come back here.” And then we go focus back on the goal.
It’s very normal for our brain to be primal and to question everything. There’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t make it mean anything. Just redirect it back to the game plan.
That is for everyone. That is for all of us. Do not make this more complicated than it is. Do not make this more difficult.
A lot of times, what we tell ourselves is we can’t get there because of our past or we can’t get there because of our thinking. That’s never the case. We can always just tell ourselves, “We’re not there yet. It’s fine. We’re moving there. We’re taking steps today. We’re talking in a way that’s shifting our attention back to the future, back to where we want to go, back to what we want to create and takes it off of what could possibly go wrong or what has gone wrong in the past
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This is what I believe. If you lived your life based on your true desires, you’re accessing your alignment with the universe. Whether you think that’s God or spirituality or whatever. And when you get that aligned, your life has so much meaning and so much purpose and so much contribution.
At the end of life, you don’t want to go back and go, “Well, I lived my life for this person and this person and this person I didn’t even like and all these strangers that I thought might have an opinion of me. I lived my life for them, for people on Instagram.”
I want you to think about, if you told everyone the truth and you stood out there in your life in that truth, it won’t matter what people think. You’ll have so much relief because you’ll be in a space of being true to you. And when you have that, there’s so much strength in that.
So many of us going around living our lives not even for anyone specific, just, “I want people to think I’m a good person,” and not honoring their own truth.
This is what I’m asking. Find out what your truth is. And then, if you’re going to dishonor your own truth, tell yourself the truth about it. Stay with the truth. Don’t lie to yourself.
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I don’t want you to think in reaction to your worry. I don’t want you to be like, “Oh, okay, you have the full-time job as the worrier, I will respond to that.”
No, I want you to change the job description of your brain to something completely different. What do you want to think about? That’s what you should be thinking about. That’s what you should be focused on. That’s’ what you should be creating. That’s what you should be working towards. That goal.
Now, the worry is going to come. I don’t want you working on the worry anymore. I’m telling you, this is what I do with my anxiety. I have chronic anxiety. It comes up and I say “Oh, hello.” I just let it be there and we channel it into work. Because listen, that worry has energy behind it. You can redirect it into thinking about your business.
You have an opportunity to create something here based on all the momentum that you have. And if you utilize that energy properly, you could offer a healing, you could offer a creation, you could offer value, take all the worry and just re-channel it.
And notice the thoughts are there. Just let it be there. That’s what we’ve got. That’s what we’re dealing with right now. And I’m going to go to work.
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What is the result you want and what do you want to do to get it and what needs to change? And you may not like the answer, but don’t tell yourself it isn’t possible. You have to be more creative in your own mind as a businessperson. You either have to raise your price or increase your offer or do it in a way that’s unconventional in order to get to the 100K.
That is, I think, better work for you to focus on in developing yourself. Like, you always want to develop yourself as a businesswoman. You want to get better at making offers. You want to get better at closing. You want to get better at selling. You want to get better at delivering.
And right now, you’re trying to adjust everything out there that’s not requiring much of you to make those adjustments. You’re like, “This is what I do.” But what you’re doing isn’t creating the R you want.
When you change that, when you’re like, “Listen, I don’t have a choice. I have one year to make 100K. I either need to do less time for more money or more money for the time I’m actually giving them.” You’ve got to be creative.
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I feel like you guys aren’t celebrating enough. You aren’t taking the time to acknowledge the incredibleness that you are before you start going to the next thing.
So, everybody, just for a second, let’s just take a minute and appreciate what we’ve done. Now, for some of you, you might have to go all the way back to third grade and just give yourself some acknowledgment for getting through that grade.
For some of you, it’s making $1 million. For some of you, it’s making $10 million, whatever, building your company. Whatever it is you’ve done, give yourself some props. And then we move on.
If you are not good at giving yourself props, you have to get good at that. You have to love yourself. You have to treat yourself amazing. I know it all sounds very soft. It all sounds very gooey. But if you want to make big dollars, you have to love yourself there.
You can make big dollars and just be exhausted. Or you can make big dollars and love yourself even more. Everything you do is either an attempt to make you love yourself more or less. And if you use money as a way to love yourself less, you are not doing it the right way, in my opinion. If you use money to love yourself and the world more, now you’re onto something.
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So many of you pick a goal, you say, “I’m going to double my revenue,” and then immediately you have to know the how in order to believe it. What you’re saying to yourself is, “I’m going to make $1 million, but let me see how I’m going to do that. Let me do the math. Let me calculate it out.”
And then, as soon as you see the math and you see the possibility of it, then you allow yourself to believe it. Now, here’s the problem. You’re depending and leaning on the how in order to believe it. So, when that how doesn’t work – and my friends, it won’t work the first time, or the second time, or the eighth time.
But when it doesn’t work and you’re leaning on that for your belief system and you fail at it, then all of a sudden, all that doubt comes rushing back in. and all that doubt that comes rushing back in prevents you from believing and zaps your energy and makes you quit.
But when you believe ahead of time and you are committed to the amount of money and you’ve tried it on and you’ve practiced it and you’ve visualized it and you’ve made decision from that future, then the hows become just trials, just offers.
You try something, it doesn’t work, “Oh well, I still believe in the goal. I’ll try something else. I still believe in the goal. I’ll try something else. I still believe in the goal. I’ll try something else.”
When the how is dictating your belief, the how gets destroyed as soon as you fail at it. And you will fail at it and this is why most people don’t achieve their dreams.
So, “How do you believe in something before you know the how?” is the question that you have to ask yourself. Can you believe in making $1 million, doubling your revenue, being where you want to be, believe in that with no evidence to prove how you will do it?
