You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode number 96.
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.
What's up? 2016. What's up, people?
Holy cow. First of all, I can't believe it's 2016. Second of all, I can't believe that I'm on my 96th episode.
Oh my gosh. We are just about heading into 100. I have a woman, Kirsten, who does all of my designs for the artwork for the podcast.
So for those of you who haven't been to thelifecoachschool.com and looked under podcast, every podcast has a different image for every podcast that we do. And so I just gave her the next five episodes or including this one. So for next four episodes to go all the way to 100.
And I was debating every 10 episodes, I usually feature a teacher. And I was debating like who would be worthy of that 100th episode, like who has been my most influential teacher. And I haven't really been able to pick one over the other.
They're all the teachers that I've featured so far. I've had such a huge impact in my life. Byron Katie probably would win if I had to put them all up against each other.
But I don't know, Abraham and, you know, I mean, everyone that even Marianne Williamson, everyone that I have studied, Tony Robbins has had such a different impact in my life. It's hard to say which one's better. They're all together.
It had such an impact. So you'll have to wait for episode 100 to see what I decided to do for that episode. So in this episode, we're going to talk about what feels good.
And we've been talking a lot about feelings lately. And one of the reasons why is because of what I'm doing in my stop overeating masterclass. For those of you who are new to the podcast or don't know, I have a course that I teach on a very limited basis.
It's a very high-priced course, very hands-on daily interaction with me for people who are really serious about losing weight. It's a six-month daily program. And what we do every month is take our level of consciousness to the next level.
So really in month one, we focused a lot on why we overeat, why we want to lose weight, what was our level of commitment, what was going on with our bodies, a lot of observation. Month two, we really worked on developing the protocol that we were gonna live by and eat by and take care of our bodies by. And then in month three, which is where we are right now, we're really focused on the reason why it's difficult to stop overeating.
And of course, that reason is our feelings. Because remember, our feelings drive all of our actions and our inactions. So there's feelings that drive overeating, and there's feelings that drive not overeating, and choosing to pause, and choosing to be present, and to feel our feelings instead of reacting, or resisting, or avoiding them.
So that's one of the reasons why I've been talking a lot about feelings lately, is because I've been doing a lot of deep thinking about it, a lot of self study, a lot of research, a lot of understanding about it. And so one of the questions that has come up for me lately is what does feel good? Everything we do in our life is because of how it makes us feel.
If everything we do is because we want to feel a certain way, or we want to avoid a certain thing, one of the things that motivates us is feeling good. And so I started thinking about this a lot, especially in terms of overeating, and the pleasure that we get from overeating. And we talked about that in the last episode.
And so one of the distinctions that I think is very important for us to look at and to understand, so we can kind of hack our biochemistry, we can kind of hack the way that we were designed, and use our kind of the way that we've evolved in order to get what we want in the world. So one of the things that I know is true is that having our minds function efficiently and having our brains function efficiently, having everything kind of on autopilot feels good for us. So what that means is when we are efficient, when we are in our routine, and when everything feels familiar, that in many ways feels good to us because that's how we are designed.
I talk a lot on this podcast about how our brain wants to be good at filtering out information. It doesn't care if it's positive or negative, it just wants to be efficient, right? And when we get into a routine where we're having to expend less energy on our brain, that actually feels good in some way.
And one of the ways that I like to describe it, especially to the people in my Stop Over-Eating Masterclass. And by the way, if you are interested in that class, I will be offering it again. You can go to the lifecoachschool.com/stopovereating and put your name in to be on that waiting list.
It just occurred to me that many of you have asked me about that. So I wanted to make sure you know the lifecoachschool.com/stopovereating.
Anyway, so one of the things that feels good to us is familiarity, is things being the same all the time. And so it's important that we know that because our routine and our familiarity is getting us the results we currently have. The reason why familiarity breeds that comfort and the reason why it feels good was always fascinating to me because even when you look at like abusive situations, like even family situations that are familiar and abusive situations that are familiar seem safer than the unknown.
And one of the things that I've always been fascinated with is children that are abusive homes. They get the opportunity to leave, but they want to go back to the abuser because it's what's known and what's comfortable. And I see this so much in my clients who don't want to change the way they're eating.
They don't want to change the way they're working. They don't want to change their relationships. Even though they want something better, they want to stay in that familiar because it feels good in some way.
And knowing this is so important because one of the kind of, I think, misconceptions that we have with familiarity, and the reason why I think it's comfortable is it gives us the sense that we can predict the future. Now if I do this, I know I'll get the same result, especially if it's a routine that we have become efficient at doing. We feel like we're in more control.
We feel like we have more structure. We feel more safe because we know what's going to happen. Now what's amazing about this, and this is kind of like that abusive situation.
Even if the situation is violent and terrifying, it's still predictable. Even if we're torturing ourselves, say with overeating or bulimia or anorexia, it's predictable. We pretty much know that we're going to get the same result.
We are going to remain overweight. And there is something, it's like the illusion of safety because it's the known. At least I know what is going to happen.
Now, this is very common when we have an underlying belief system that our life is dictated to us by the external world. So, so many of us, and I talk a lot about this in my course, How to Feel Better, so many of us try to create our emotional life. We try to feel better by controlling the external world.
And even though that is most of the time impossible to do, controlling the external world, because there's so many things that we can't control, that slice of the world that where we can create routine, where we can do the same thing all the time, where we can have that familiarity, gives us the false sense that we're in complete control. I mean, someone could drive a car through our house, right? We have no control over that.
But when we're able to repeat the same day over and over and over again, even if it's a day we don't want to have, we feel as if we are somehow creating a predictable life, a life that we have control over. So even though it may not be the exact life we want, we know that it's predictable, and there's some comfort in knowing that. And it's one of those tricky things because here's the thing, when we start wanting to change our lives, we have to get out of the efficient brain, we have to get out of the neural pathways that are really conditioned and practiced, and we have to do something completely awkward, new, unknown, and uncertain.
And that does not feel good to us. That feels uncomfortable. That feels awkward.
Now, here's the ironic piece. Here's the rub, so to speak. When I think about personally, what makes me feel great, the emotions that make me feel the best in my body, I would say accomplishment, pride, right?
And I get those feelings when I acknowledge myself for overcoming something that is uncomfortable, that is difficult, that is awkward. That is my ultimate feeling. So I want you guys to think about this for a minute.
So if it feels good to be familiar, it feels good to stay the same for most of us, right? That's on one end of the spectrum. And then on the other end of the spectrum is feeling proud of yourself, feeling like you put yourself up against a challenge and feel that sense of accomplishment, feel that sense of momentum, feel that sense of evolving in your life.
You're going to have an issue, right? Because in order to get from feeling the comfort of familiarity to getting to the feeling of pride, there's that in-between spot where you don't feel good, right? So one of the things that I teach, and this is kind of an interesting thing to wrap your mind around, is if, let's use the example of weight, if you want to lose weight, and if you want to be at your goal weight, say it's 120 pounds, okay?
The way to get there to the weight of 120 pounds is to feel the way that you believe you will feel when you've arrived. So Abraham would call this matching up to the vibration of the outcome, okay? And I talk about this a lot when I do outcome work.
If you want to know the outcome you're going to get, if you want to know the result you're going to get, ask yourself how you're feeling right now. So you have to align yourself, as Abraham would say, with the result and be the person that would be able to accomplish that. Well, that's challenging, right?
Because here I am in this very familiar, comfortable place that is not an equal vibration to the result that I want. And you're asking me to align myself with that result that I want. But the path there is a very uncomfortable, awkward feeling, something that I want to not feel, something that I would like to kind of keep away from myself, those feelings of being awkward and being uncomfortable, right?
So you can see how, in so many ways, most of us, I mean, it's such a low percent of people are willing to feel that awkwardness, are willing to feel that discomfort long enough to make your new familiarity the result that you want. So for example, right now, if you weigh 200 pounds, that is your familiarity. So even though you don't want to weigh that, even though you feel uncomfortable, everything in your life is supporting you at that weight.
So in order to change that, to weigh 120 pounds and to align yourself with that new emotion, you're going to have to go through this place of awkwardness and discomfort and being out of your habits and creating new neural pathways, and being uncertain and being in the unknown. And nine times out of 10, people get out of that comfort zone. They get into the place where they're not eating as much, where they're having to feel their feelings, where they're not able to do their routines of eating the breakfast they always eat, and the lunch they always eat, and the dinner they always eat.
And they get out and they get into that discomfort zone, and they say, hell no. I don't want to feel this way. I want to feel the way that I'm going to feel at 120 pounds, but I don't want to go through this awkwardness in order to get there.
And knowing that the 120 pounds, making that the new normal, making that the new familiarity, will be so much better than the familiarity that I have at 200 pounds here, but I'm not willing to go through that space of uncertainty. Now, that's if you're conscious of this concept, which most people are not. Most people are not conscious of this idea that we want to stay the same, that we want homeostasis.
The brain and the body has evolved to be efficient at wherever it is. And so if you aren't aware of that, you will just think, and I hear this from my students all the time, my clients all the time, this is exhausting, this is just too hard, this is just too tedious, this requires too much effort, right? And it's because you have to kind of break your bond with the comfort familiarity that you've gotten efficient at.
Now, nobody wants to admit that they feel good at their current weight, that they feel normal, that this feels like where they should be. But if you're having trouble losing weight, if you're having trouble, you know, working or having trouble leaving a relationship or whatever, that may be the reason. There may be some level of comfort that feels good to you, even though you're not getting the result you want.
So one of the things that I've talked a lot about on the podcast and a lot in my classes is that your ability and your willingness, okay, think about both of those, your ability and your willingness to be uncomfortable, to feel negative emotion, to go towards it, when that's the last thing that you naturally are going to want to do, your ability and willingness to do that will determine the amount of success that you have in your life. Because if you are only willing to feel the comfort of now, and you're not willing to go through the discomfort to get to your future, your future will be your now. And you guys have seen these people, right?
They just keep repeating the same things. They have the same thoughts. They have the same feelings.
They take the same actions and they get the same results year after year after year after year. And when you see someone that has changed their model, that has changed their thinking, that has changed their feeling and their actions and their results, and you go to them and they say it was hard work. It was challenging.
I made a decision and did it differently. Right? Very rarely will you see someone that's lost 100 pounds like I was a breeze.
I don't really have to do anything. It was just nothing. Right?
I mean, even someone that gets surgery, it's such a huge change in the thinking and the discomfort and the regularity of the life. Right? So I think a lot of times people will think that allowing themselves to be comfortable, allowing themselves to stay in the familiar is a way of really caring for themselves, is a way of being gentle with themselves.
And I think that's a huge mistake. I think that as long as you are what I call dwelling in comfort, you are not creating your results with intention, with deliberateness. You are not evolving.
You aren't taking yourself to the version of yourself that you could be. You're stalling out. You're waiting.
Now, I'm not saying that that's not a nice temporary thing to do. You know, you got to stop and enjoy and you got to stop and smell the roses. But the difference between knowing if you are stalling out and evading your life by dwelling in comfort is when you look at the results in your life, are they the results that you want?
Are you creating your life on purpose? Or are you just taking what you've created from your past? Are you just reliving something that you've created in the past because it's familiar?
And don't be confused and think that you're not the one that has created your life because you are. You just may be reliving a life that you created. I mean, some people, I think they will be living a life they created when they were 22, when they were 25, right?
They haven't made any changes in their life. Now, again, if you don't want change, it may be because you're just comfortable with the familiar. And if you're conscious of that and that's what you want in your life, then rock it on.
But so many of the people that come to me want to feel better than they do, but they're unwilling to be uncomfortable and feel less better, quote unquote, until they actually get to the other side where their new normal, their new comfort, their new familiarity is something that they ultimately want in their lives. And they've aligned up with that. So really understanding what you want in your life and how that's going to feel, and that you're going to have to give up who you are now and the familiarity and the comfort of who you are now in order to become that new person, and in order to evolve and to understand that there will be some awkwardness, some uncertainty, some unknowing feeling out of control along the way, I think is the most important thing that we can ever remember or that I can teach you.
Be willing to be awkward. Be willing to be a beginner. Be willing to suck at it long enough so you can get to the other side.
It's not supposed to feel amazing the whole time. It's not supposed to feel comfortable, right? What you need to feel in order to get what you want is worth it.
It's worth it. There is no feeling that you are unable to feel, and there is no neural pathway that you can't create. As long as you are committed to practicing the new way of thinking, the new way of feeling, the new way of acting, and ultimately your new normal result, which will at some point then become familiar to you.
So let me know what you guys think about this in the show notes. You can go to the lifecoachschool.com, go to forward slash 96, go to the comments. Let me know what you think about this concept.
In the next couple of episodes, I'm going to be doing a Q&A episode. So if you have any questions for me, make sure you take them to the comments. I will answer each and everyone.
Have a beautiful, wonderful week, everyone. I'll talk to you next week. Bye-bye.
Thank you for listening to The Life Coach School Podcast. It is my honor to show up here every week and connect with people that are like minded, wanting to take their life to a deeper level with more awareness and more consciousness. If you are interested in taking this work to the next level, I highly encourage you to go to thelifecoachschool.com/how to feel better online.
It is there that I have a class that will take all of this to a deeper application, where you'll be able to really feel and experience how all of these concepts can start showing up in your life. It's one thing to learn it intellectually. It's another thing to truly apply it to your life.
I will see you there. Thanks again for listening.
