Ep #31: Confidence in a Crisis

Confidence in a CrisisThe crisis that we’re facing in the US right now since the death of George Floyd has left us all confronting our biases and belief systems, and it can feel like a lot. I’m personally experiencing a lot of anger and sadness, and I’m in a state of raw emotion watching what’s happening in the outside world and within my own internal world. But my belief in my confidence to function has not wavered.

So today, I’m giving you some tools that you can use to feel confident in a crisis. This is what my superpower is and this is what my clients hire me for, so I’m not losing sight of how I can best serve you all. Confidence isn’t about doing the easy things but rather the uncomfortable, hard things, and it’s definitely not a perfect process either.

Join me today as I share the four steps you can start taking today to feel confident in a crisis. People are going to have opinions about what you should be doing right now, but I want to remind you to lean in and do what feels right to you. Make the best decisions for you and follow it up with actions, and I’m showing you how to start today.

I am so excited to offer you a podcast-only treat! I’ve created a five-day Unblock Your Confidence mini-course, and this is some of my best work. If you struggle with confidence and want to build more trust in yourself, stop caring about what other people think, get over your fear of failure, and start unblocking your confidence, you need to check it out. Click here to find out more!

What You’ll Learn:
  • How to be confident in a crisis.
  • Why awareness is so important in a crisis.
  • The 4 steps to take in a crisis to feel confident.
  • Why you should never lose sight of your superpower.
  • What I’m doing during this crisis for myself and for my clients.
Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:
Anti-Racism Resources:
  1. On being a Life Coach, using Thought Work, and Anti-Racism
    Listen to my mentor, master coach instructor, Kara Loewentheil
    –Free Facebook Live #1 on Using Thought Work when Dealing with Racism
    –Free Facebook Live #2 on People Pleasing and White Non-Response
    –Follow Kara on Instagram

  2. Read “Me and White Supremacy” by Layla Saad
    Me and White Supremacy: A 28-Day Challenge to Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor
    A book and workbook – so you can DO the work

  3. How and Why to Apply Anti-Racist Principles in Your Life Coaching Business

    Show Up and Serve workshop by Trudi Lebron – $97
    What it means to be a Diverse, Equitable, Inclusive Entrepreneur and Leader

  4. Make a Donation to a Bail Fund – thank you, Kara, for these links:
    –The National Bail Fund Network has a full directory of bail funds by state here: https://www.communityjusticeexchange.org/nbfn-directory

    –ActBlue’s a donation link lets you simultaneously send money to up to 37 nationwide bail funds: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/bail_funds_george_floyd

  5. Follow Anti-Racist Leaders on Instagram

    Mireille Charper (@mireillecharper) – she put many of these together
    Layla Saad (@laylafsaad)
    Rachel Cargle (@rachel.cargle)
    Ivirlei Brookes (@ivirlei)
    Ibram X. Kendi (@ibramxk)
    Rachel Ricketts (@iamrachelricketts)
    The Conscious Kid (@theconsciouskid) – great for those of us with kids
    The Great Unlearn (@thegreatunlearn)
    No White Saviors (@nowhitesaviors)
    Check Your Privilege (@ckyourprivilege)

Full Episode Transcript:

You are listening to episode 31 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where we talk about what you should be doing during a world crisis. Fun times, my friends.

Welcome to The Confident Coaches Podcast, a place for creating the self-confidence you need to do your best work as a life coach. If you want to bring more boldness, more resilience, and more joy to your work, this is the place for you. I’m your host, Amy Latta. Let’s dive in.

Hey, hey, my confident coaches. How is everybody doing out there? Honestly, that question feels just a little bit loaded. It feels a lot loaded. How is everyone doing? I mean, the world’s kind of a crazy little place right now and how everybody may be doing is probably going to run the gamut to just fine to the world is on fire, right?

This podcast episode is coming out on June 9th of 2020. It is being recorded the week before that, the first week of June of 2020. 2020, right? Can we just call it now that this is the longest year in the history of years? This is one for the history books. This is a year we are not going to soon forget.

I can’t imagine what will come next. I think about you listeners who are listening to this in the future and you know what comes next, and are you listening to me right now kind of like, gritting your teeth, like, sister, you have no idea. Strap in.

Just when I think nothing else could possibly happen, more shit happens. It’s June. We have only lived through five months this year but it feels like 10 years. And the crisis that we are in right now, at least here in the United States is not new. It is actually indicative of the very fabric that the United States was founded on.

I don’t know what else to say sometimes. This specific incident, a black man, George Floyd was in police custody when he died. And all of it on videotape, of a police officer with his knee on George Floyd’s neck and he killed him right there. In less than nine minutes.

It’s all on videotape, you can hear him crying out. People are videotaping it; you can hear them begging the officers to let him go. It’s not the first of these videos we have seen, it probably won’t be the last, and it’s indicative of how many times that has happened and there wasn’t video.

And because of that, there’s this tipping point. It feels like that. When there are protests literally all around the world happening this week. I don’t know what’s happening when you’re listening to this. There’s looting, there’s protests, everyone yelling at one another, people trying to understand, people having to confront their biases, people trying to confront their belief systems that are the very fabric of how they function in the world.

And it kind of does feel like the world is on fire, literally and figuratively. Now, full disclosure, I feel spent. I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m really raw over here. I don’t know if you remember last week’s episode. It seems like 10 years ago, but just last week’s episode, I talked about when life hits you.

The irony is I recorded that podcast episode weeks ago and it actually came out, it was just released yesterday, the week that all of this is happening. I could not have known that so much would change in just a week or two.

But it was talking about a personal thing that happened to me and my family that brought up all these feels and I shared how I struggled with that and how I worked through that struggle. Well, guess what? Those feels are still there.

That incident triggered a lot of my, this isn’t fair and this is an injustice, somebody I love so dearly accused of something that they did not do, the other party even acknowledged that he didn’t do it, and yet, they still rendered a decision that affected him. And there’s this fairness, anger, sadness, and that’s just what’s going on in my personal life.

Then watching all of this and just all of the coverage, learning about other stories, remembering stories that we’ve unfortunately and painfully and regretfully already forgotten, but then we’re like, oh, no, we can’t forget these stories. Reading so much about our history that we were never taught in school.

For me personally, injustice, the unfairness of it all. I got coached today from my own coach and just immense sadness and crying. That’s where I am recording this podcast episode. This podcast episode is called Confidence in a Crisis and there’s a reason that I can still be in this state, this raw emotional state of what I’m seeing outside in the world, what I’m seeing in my personal world, and everything in between, and yet my foundation, my belief in my confidence to function in a crisis, that is not in jeopardy.

And I want to stress this more than anything. I’m going to give you some tools to use today in this podcast episode. I’m going to be sharing with you things to think about, things you can do, how to move forward, how to make decisions in a crisis. But I think it’s so important to know that that doesn’t mean you have all the answers and you feel amazing.

Confidence isn’t necessarily feeling amazing. It’s feeling however you are feeling and still having the ability to make decisions and move forward and know that you are going to be okay. That is where I am in this moment, that I can feel all of this, with the tears right there. I’ve kind of cried a lot, I’m not sure I can really cry anymore. I don’t think that’s necessary for this episode, but it’s all right there and I can still serve you.

No matter what you are going through, you can still serve your people no matter what state you are in if you’re willing to feel the emotion and do it anyway. Now, there’s a lot more to that and we’re going to get into those steps, but I think that’s so super important for you to remember.

This is not about perfection, this is not about looking super clean and polished. That’s not what confidence is. And here’s the thing, people are going to have so many opinions as to what you should do, and I always see the good in learning, in researching, finding out what you don’t know, leaning in when you hear something really uncomfortable.

But that doesn’t mean letting other people tell you what you should and should not do. Now, some may not like this. I mean, I’m a white woman on the podcast airwaves telling you what you should do by telling you you shouldn’t let other people tell you what to do.

What I’m telling you is don’t let others, including me, tell you what you should do. You get to take what you want from this. You get to take what you want from me. You can leave the rest on the table. Take what you need and move forward with it, but understand that you are doing this for you and making sure that you like your decisions. Not someone told me I have to or I should, so I better go do it.

There’s room for everyone in a crisis, including you, and you can feel confident doing it. But the confidence that you are hoping it’s going to be and what it’s actually going to be are probably two different things.

So question that my coach asked me today, well, she asked all of us. I coach in a group mastermind. I’ve probably said that about a million times. I keep reiterating it. I am in a group mastermind of 30 women plus my coach. So I am one of 30 masterminders and our coach, and we get coached.

It’s not just a bunch of teaching and maybe you get to speak up a little bit. No, if you need coaching, you raise your hand and you get your mind and your ass coached. What are you thinking? What are you feeling? When you feel that way, what do you do? When you do that, what’s your result? Do you like this? Do you want to hold onto this? Why do you keep choosing to believe this if you see what it’s creating for you?

That’s what we’re doing in my mastermind. That’s what we do in my masterminds. I run The Confident Coaches mastermind, which is based all around The Confident Coaches program that I created, which is built all around my five-steps to creating self-confidence. I have multiple groups running at a time and this is what we do in my groups also.

So the question my coach asked our group today, and I’m going to ask you, are you waiting for your mentors to lead before you lead? Because if you don’t realize it yet, let’s be clear now. You are a thought leader. You are a leader. If you are a life coach, you have a gift to share with the world. You have tools that can help people feel better, get unstuck, move forward, lose weight, sign clients, whatever it is, feel more confident.

You are a leader and are you waiting for other leaders to do what they’re going to do before you decide what you’re going to do? I actually had a client today say that she was waiting for someone to tell her what to believe in because she has so much in her brain.

One of my fellow masterminders, Lindsay, she said, “It’s like a dump truck came into my brain and dumped just a ton of circumstances and thoughts in my brain.” It’s kind of like what my client was saying like, there was so much in her brain she just needed someone to tell her, what do I believe.

But that’s not actually true, right? It’s just there are so many mixed messages about maybe this is what you should believe, maybe this is what you’re believing, you shouldn’t be believing this. How many times am I going to do that? That should be the title of this episode. I don’t know how you’d type that.

So there’s a lot in our brain, right? So where do we start? Step number one, awareness. I know, I’ve talked about awareness before. Awareness is not always sexy. Awareness can seem kind of lame, but awareness if half of any battle. When you are a life coach and you’re working with your clients, bringing them to a state of awareness is going to be half of their work, just becoming aware of what they are creating in their life.

And they get to actually do the rest of the work, but half of it is just awareness. The same thing here. In a crisis, there’s no room for hiding. Become aware. Lean into the crisis. Any crisis. Read up, listen. Confidence does not come from doing the easy thing. It comes from doing the hard things.

Be willing to listen to opposing views. You are a citizen of this United States or of this world. I do not want to leave out my international listeners, even though the incident that is causing this is a United States incident. Become aware of what’s happening. And here’s the reason why awareness is so important. It’s affecting your brain and it’s affecting your clients’ brains.

Saying this isn’t really something I’m super passionate about, so it’s not that big of a deal, you’re discounting the fact that it might be a big deal in your clients’ brains and who you’re serving. When we’re talking about national or a worldwide crisis, these things are impacting our minds and it’s very possible they’re hurting you, maybe on a subconscious level, and if not you, your clients.

So being unaware is not a virtue here. Lean in. I’ve long held the belief that you cannot understand your position until you understand your opposition. I’ve said that since college, and friends, I graduated college almost 25 years ago.

Listen to what you don’t understand. Listen to what makes you uncomfortable. If you’re white, listen to the black women and people of color and the influencers in the life coaching world right now. Listen to them in your community, on social media.

I’ve been moving forward with a real ears open, mouth shut mentality. This isn’t like, life coaches listening to this, you’ve been doing everything wrong, go listen to other people so you can learn how to do it right. No, this is about increasing your awareness.

And it all goes back to you can’t understand your position until you understand your opposition. First of all, we find out quite a few things. We may not be that different from what we think is our opposition. It’s acknowledging we do always have more to learn.

The day you think you don’t need to learn anymore about something is the day you shut yourself off from growth, and why would you want to do that? The worst thing that’s going to happen is you’re going to become sharper in what you already believe in. Perfect. And it’s also possible that you might have a better understanding of people who aren’t like you.

Not all of your clients are going to think the exact same way. I got a story to tell you about that in just a second. Alright, so the next thing, when there is a crisis, don’t stick your neck in the ground. You don’t have to consume everything. You don’t have to be on Twitter 24 hours a day.

In fact, I do not recommend that, but be aware. Know about the things that are affecting your mind and your clients’ minds. It does you no good and it definitely doesn’t do your clients any good to hide. Step number two, pay attention to fear, anxiety, defensiveness, overwhelm, sadness, anger, helplessness, despair.

I mean, these are the real good ones, right, my friends? You’re sitting there going I don’t want to feel any of that, Amy. I understand that everything that I just listed right there, those are all feelings. Those are all emotions. And what thoughts are creating those emotions for you? What thoughts are you having? What thoughts are you entertaining?

Those emotions aren’t coming from the circumstances of what’s happening in this crisis. It’s coming from all of your thoughts about them. Your work is to own all of your thinking and your emotions. Rather than all of this out there is causing this to happen to me in here, remember that it’s your thoughts that are creating all of those emotions.

This does not mean that your thoughts are wrong. This does not mean turn that frown upside down. This right here that I’m getting ready to share with you comes from my really good friend and fellow Life Coach School coach Brig Johnson, that people often mistake putting your thoughts and feelings into a model as like, we should feel neutral about everything.

And that’s not it at all. It’s about passing through neutral to get to a place where you can then decide on purpose how you want to think and feel. Putting things into a model and getting to a place of seeing that it’s the thought and not the circumstance that’s creating your feeling allows you to calm your primitive brain the fuck down so that you can see what your primitive brain is creating, accepting that, and then deciding what do I want to think and feel now.

And instead of fear, anxiety, defensiveness, overwhelm, sadness, all of those feelings, what about empowered, motivated? You can still believe that the shit that’s happening in this crisis is terrible, but come at it from a place of feeling empowered or just wear you the hell out.

Do your own coaching. Get coached. Make sure you have somebody helping you manage your mind so that you can choose thoughts that are going to create an empowered and go out there and kick ass feeling if that’s what you want. And be aware of what actions you are taking from those really crappy emotions versus the actions you could be taking from a more empowered place because you were willing to be coached.

Next, what are we on? Three? I don’t even know. I didn’t number this list. Remember your superpower. I talk about your superpower in self-confidence step number three, Becoming Your Own Best Mentor, and I teach my Confident Coaches masterminders exactly how to define their superpower in a module that’s in our member site.

My superpower is confidence. It’s coaching on confidence. That’s what I bring to the table. I coach confidence, why we do what we do, and how we can use our brain to better the world. My superpower is thought work, using the model, master level coaching.

You want to know what I found out? My superpower is not race relations. It’s not what the government should or should not do. It’s not paramilitary policing. I may have a lot of opinions on all of those things, but that’s not my expertise. That’s not my superpower.

And I really pissed off a couple of clients this week. No worries, we’ve worked it all out. But we worked it all out because I remember what my superpower is. It’s my coaching. But I inserted some of what I was learning in reading up on the resources and a client who did not ask me to, I started to explain what I had learned to them about race and white privilege and anti-racism, and guess what friends? That’s not why they hired me.

They hired me to coach their mind. They hired me to help them create confidence. Now, I do stand by what I was attempting to teach and did help me see that it was better for me to lead them to the resources than to try to say here’s what you should just know, because that was not my area of expertise.

My superpower, what I bring to the table is coaching. And specifically, coaching on confidence. How to believe you can do what you’ve never been able to do before, how to take action while feeling uncomfortable, how to lean on your own best mentor, how to be your own best mentor, how to have your own back and how to keep going.

That’s my superpower. So remember what yours is. Remember what your expertise is and lead with that. Alright, and then from there, you get to decide what you want to do. You’ve checked your awareness box, you’ve gone out and you’re learned some things, you’ve leaned into that uncomfortable stuff, possibly had to face some resistance, possibly you’re working on, oh, these are things I did not know, oh, nope, this just reiterates what I already believed in.

You’re getting coached, you’re doing your own work, you’re remembering what your superpower is. Now you get to decide what you want to do. You get to decide how you will react. You get to decide what you want to do.

And here’s a guarantee. You’re probably going to fuck it up. I did. I kind of forgot my superpower for a moment and I inserted something my clients weren’t asking for and it really upset a couple of them. I messed up and I didn’t die. I’m still alive to talk about it. That’s confidence.

It’s not doing it pretty. It’s doing it messy. Be willing to do it anyway. You may make mistakes, but no matter what you decide to do in a crisis or what you decide to say or how you’re going to move forward, this is like any aspect of growing a business.

If you are a life coach who’s wanting to feel more confident and sign more clients, that tells me that you are a business owner and all businesses all around the world have to figure out how they are going to act in a crisis. You are the CEO of your business. You’re the one that gets to decide.

And we know from history, we’ve all seen those businesses where you’re like, that wasn’t maybe necessarily the right thing to do, but then you correct it and you move forward. You act, you evaluate, you learn, you tweak, you act again. You make a decision and you implement it and then you find out what happens, the result that you’re going to get when you make that decision and implement it and then you’re going to tweak it and you’re going to do it again.

Some people are choosing to go silent for a week or two. Some people are just doing it for a day or so. Some people are choosing not to say anything about the crisis at all. What you choose is so much less important than making sure you like your reasons why. That’s why you got to be coaching yourself and you got to be willing to feel those feelings and know where they’re coming from.

That’s why one, two, and three are so important because here in number four where you’re deciding what you’re going to do, you want to make sure that you like your reasons why you’re doing it. That’s why your own coaching is so important.

Like for me, I still have a launch this month. I still have the next Confident Coaches mastermind class getting ready to start. Shoot, it’s just in a few weeks. Friends, I’m now the sole provider for my family. The best thing that I can do, what I do best is coaching and loving the shit out of people, showing you your brains and how we can use them to better this world.

Now, I’ve definitely modified my plans for this launch in the face of this crisis so that I can serve the hell out of my clients. Been sharing resources on my Insta stories and I’ve been educating myself. But I still have a mortgage to pay and mouths to feed and people to serve and I’m not going to stop doing that.

So I am making decisions based on those first three things, and now it’s time to put my next step forward, and that’s your work. One of the best things that I’ve read this week on the interwebs and I’ve read all kinds of stuff this week is from a poet, Lindsay Young. She posted this on Twitter and I’m going to share it with you.

So this is from a poet on Twitter, Lindsay Young. “Resistance is not a one lane highway. Maybe your lane is protesting, maybe your lane is organizing, maybe your lane is counseling, maybe your lane is activism, maybe your lane is surviving the day. Do not feel guilty for not occupying every lane. We need them all.”

That right there was so helpful to me to remember that ultimately, no one can tell me what I need to do for my clients, for my coaching business. I can have that awareness, I can listen to others, I’m going to process my feelings, I’m going to get coached, I’m going to remember what my superpower is, but ultimately, Amy Latta has to decide what she’s going to do for her business, and you, my dear, amazing Confident Coaches listeners, that’s your decision.

Like any other decision, make the best one that you can make with what you have and then follow it up in your actions. Alright, so what will you do? So this next week, if you have not already, number one, stop hiding. Become aware. I will include some resources on the website page for this podcast.

I’m also including them in Insta stories, but since those don’t last forever, I’m going to do my best to do everything I can on the website. Number two, do your own self-coaching. I explain the model and how to self-coach in a few of our episodes. If you’re a Confident Coaches masterminder, I have a full module in the self-confidence basics on how to self-coach.

But self-coach or go get coaching. Get your mind clean and clear. Remember your superpower. Lean on that. Never lose sight of that. And then number four, decide how you will show up in this crisis and the one that may very well be right around the corner. You get to decide.

If we need all kinds in every crisis, you get to decide what your kind is. You get to choose for yourself, to think for yourself. Don’t decide how to respond to things based on my thoughts or another mentor’s thoughts. Decide for yourself. And whatever you decide, make sure you love your reasons.

Remember, confidence does not come from doing what’s easy. It comes from doing what is hard and uncomfortable. Alright my friends, I love you all so stinking much. Let’s go do epic stuff.

Friends, I am so excited to offer you a podcast-only treat. I am sharing with you the five-day Unblock Your Confidence mini course. It is only available to The Confident Coaches Podcast listeners and the only way to get your hands on it is right here. Why do you need this course?

Well, in this five-day mini course, you will learn why it seems like you struggle with confidence when others don’t, how to build trust in yourself, how to get over your fear of failure, how to stop caring so damn much what other people think, and the best thing you can do to unblock your confidence today.

All of that in just five days. This is some of my best work waiting for you. Visit www.amylatta.com/unblockconfidence to get yours. Again, that’s www.amylatta.com/unblockconfidence. Go now and get started today.  

Thanks so much for listening to The Confident Coaches Podcast. I invite you to learn more. Come visit me at www.amylatta.com and until next week, let’s go do epic stuff.    

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Hi, I’m Amy.

For years, I took a ton of action to sign clients.

I learned to create self-confidence and powerfully believe in myself first, and then built a multiple six-figure coaching business.

And I can help you do it, too.

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