Ep #17: The Discomfort of Belief

You are listening to episode 17 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where we talk about what no one in the self-help industry really wants to talk about, and that is how uncomfortable belief is. You ready?

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 my friends, how is everyone today? Guess what? I don’t know if you’re looking at the calendar but like, it is already March. I mean, technically it’s not March when I’m recording this, but it’s the end of February and I can see March. By the time this episode comes out it’s going to be March.

And 17 days until spring, my friends. Not that I’m counting. This is where the narrator says, “Yeah, she’s totally counting.” Oh, my goodness. I am not a winter person, my friends. Already told you about my trip to Arizona and how I totally get snowbirds now, right?

Spring is around the corner, flowers will be in bloom, everything will be lush. More outside time to get fresh air, more daylight, all the good stuff, and the other thing that I love about spring is it’s birthday time. My husband and I both have birthdays the first week of April and we pretty much celebrate the entire month.

And speaking of my birthday, I’ve got a favor to ask all of y’all out there. Right now, if you are listening, yes, I’m talking to you right now, person sitting in your car or working out or washing the dishes, or whatever you’re doing right now, as you’re listening to Amy Latta talk in your ear, I’m asking for one thing and one thing only for my birthday, and that is have you left a review for The Confident Coaches Podcast yet?

Because here’s the deal. We are currently at 78 reviews for the podcast. I mean, do you know where I’m going with this? It’s March 3rd. My birthday is April 10th. We’re currently at 78 reviews, which listen, that is so fabulously phenomenal for an independent podcast. I’m just a life coach sitting in her home office in suburban St. Louis. I don’t have a huge production team. I’m not massively funded. This is just an independent podcast. 78 reviews is amazing.

But you know what would be even more amazing? 100 reviews. 100 reviews by April 10th, my 46th birthday. I know we can do it. So if you’re listening right now, I’m going to ask, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe, rate, and review. Not only will you contribute to my birthday gift this year, but I will also read your reviews on air.

So yes, we are going to totally dive into what we talked about in the very beginning intro, the realities about belief and how uncomfortable it can actually be and the great belief tool that I have to share with you today, but I have to read this review from one of my fabulous listeners because not only are y’all fabulous, but you’re pretty witty and awesome too.

So I want to give a shout-out to Confident Coaches listener Freshly Designed. I have no idea who owns that delightful iTunes account name, by the way. But Freshly Designed, whoever you are out there, she titled this review, “The one where Amy is inside your brain.”

She gets me. Have y’all noticed? Yeah. Have y’all noticed the intros? Freshly, whoever Freshly is says, “First of all, I love anyone who can reference Friends in their podcast.” So thanks to Freshly, by the way, being the first one who gave me a shout-out on the Friends reference.

“But also, Amy really shares so genuinely and with such authenticity. She creates a safe place for you to think and feel. I’m not alone. I’m not the only one who’s thought or struggled with this, and then she gives great value through actionable steps and great examples. Plus, I love her humor and her easygoing manner. Reminds me that coaching is such an honor but it is also so fun. Thank you, Amy, for showing up for us each week.”

You are welcome, review number 78, Miss Freshly Designed. Your words are fabulous. Lit me up when I saw that review come in. So if you are out there listening, leave a review on Apple Podcasts and let’s find out what number review you will be, alright? Okay.

So I promised y’all some deep thoughts on a topic that not many people talk about, but it came up in a coaching session this week, and I thought this is something that we do not talk about and we need to. We need to talk about how uncomfortable all of this is. How uncomfortable belief is. We need to talk about the discomfort of belief.

What? Yes. Okay, so let me be clear. I stand by my five steps to self-confidence. The belief that we can do something we’ve never done before. Believing on purpose. Not just because our past tells us so or not. learning to feel the feels and embracing discomfort, depending on your future self as your best mentor, having your own back, evaluating and keeping going.

Like, these five steps over and over again, you’re going to create so much damn self-confidence you’re not going to know what to do with yourself. But I would be a lying liar if I didn’t admit this shit can suck sometimes. It’s uncomfortable. And this came up in my Confident Coaches group mastermind this week.

Nine amazing life coaches that share their stuff with me every single week, we talked about the discomfort of belief. I use this coaching tool called a belief meter. It’s a visual tool. So you’re going to have to do a little imagining in your mind right now. I want you to imagine something that kind of looks like a half moon.

So a flat line with a half circle on top, and then on the left side of that flat line is 0% belief, and on the right side of that flat line is 100% belief. And I want you to imagine points in between that have circle, not unlike a speedometer. A needle that’s in the middle that moves back and forth along that half circle.

So the needle is pointing at 0% belief, then 25%, 50%, 75% belief, until we’re at 100% belief. Do you have that visual? And actually, as I’m describing this, I’m thinking that it probably wouldn’t be that hard to have my designer create a visual for me.

So how about this? When you sign up for the new free course I’m offering you all at the end of this podcast, I’ll include it in a second email to you. So if you want to see the belief meter and actually have the visual of what I just described, follow the sign-up instructions at the end of this podcast.

Alright, so anyway. I want you to imagine this belief meter. This half circle speedometer looking thing with a needle that’s moving back and forth between 0% and 100% belief. And at any moment of the day, depending on what you’re thinking, that will influence what your belief meter is reading.

And I illustrate to my client’s possible thoughts along that belief meter. So 0% belief would be I can’t. Say, 25% belief would be I could. 75% belief would be I will, and 100% belief would be I am or I have. So let’s make this something that feels a little bit more tangible.

Let’s use the example of signing the number of clients you need for a full coaching practice. That’s typically about 20 one-on-one clients. So 0% belief would be I can’t have a full coaching practice. 25% belief would be I could have a full coaching practice. 75% belief would be I will have a full coaching practice. Like you know it’s happening and you’re just not there yet.

Can you even feel how the belief is going up with each sentence? And 100% belief is I have a full coaching practice. Now, you won’t be at 100% belief until you’ve actually created the result that you want. And depending on the thought that you’re practicing believing, you want to choose the highest percent thought that you can, that your brain doesn’t challenge or kick out.

I share in episode two, I’m pretty sure, my practice of sitting in belief, where you repeat the thought you want to belief out loud and you take deep breaths into it and you allow the feeling of that thought to settle into your body and take root into your gut. And if you truly don’t believe that you will have a full coaching practice, it will never really settle into your gut. You won’t be able to get there into that gut-rooted feeling.

So instead, you can practice believing that you could have a full coaching practice. So you see that illustration of how you can choose a slightly lower percentage thought that your brain doesn’t kick out. You can actually get it rooted into your gut. And really understand that your brain won’t be at 100% until you see the result and it will want to slip back to 0%.

So I’m imagining this, that you’re sitting in belief first thing in the morning, and then you go about your day. And y’all think that your belief should stay high, and I’m telling you that your belief meter is going to fluctuate. So the first thing to understand about belief is that it’s not constant. That needle moves up and down the belief meter. Where you are in the morning may be different than where you are in the afternoon.

So be willing to recalibrate that belief meter. You may need to take a few moments throughout the day to check in with yourself and see where you are on that. You might still be allowing specific circumstances like three no’s in a row or a no show to that consult call or not actually connecting anybody at that networking event or having an ad rejected by Facebook or whatever step you are in your sales process with potential clients.

If you get a result that isn’t what you want, you might still be allowing that to affect your belief. That circumstance will trigger a thought and your belief meter might drop back down again. And you’re going to need to keep purposefully bringing that belief meter back up.

We think it should just stay where it is because we sat in belief for a few minutes in the morning, right? No, sorry friends. That’s not how the human brain works. I know it would be so much easier if only we could be like, I thought my positive thought today, my belief meter is up and it should just stay high all day long. Unfortunately, that’s not how our brains work.

And there’s nothing wrong with your brain that your belief meter will move up and down throughout the day. In fact, that’s proof your brain is operating exactly as designed. So congratulations, you’re entirely normal if you have a belief meter that swings around town all day long. That’s actually a sign of normal brain function.

So nothing is wrong with me. And I also want to point out that 0% belief is awfully enticing to your brain, because that’s where the evidence is. You’ve thought that more than you have thought your 100% belief. You have thought you can’t have a full coaching practice for longer than you have thought that you will have a full coaching practice.

So your brain’s natural desire is to want to go back down to that 0% because it’s been there before. If those thoughts are grooved neural pathways in your brain – yeah, I’m going to throw in a little brain science with you guys here, and that’s exactly what they are.

Like, grooved path through the woods. Whatever you think over and over again becomes a grooved neutral pathway in your brain. So when you sit in belief that you could or that you will or that you have or that you are, it’s kind of like, pulling a rubber band into that new groove, that new pathway, what you want to believe.

It’s like that needle on that belief meter has a rubber band on it and its desire, your brain’s desire is to snap back to zero. Not snap to 100. So even if you sit in belief every morning and your belief is really high on that belief meter and it’s really close to 100, maybe it’s in the 75 to 80 range, it’s still going to naturally want to snap back to zero instead of dropping to 100.

So you have to intentionally and purposefully go back into belief, stretch that rubber band closer to that 100% side. The more you do that, the more you practice intentionally believing and purposefully believing that rubber band will get looser and you will eventually get there.

So here’s the other thing about that belief meter. That space between I could and I will, that space between say, 25% and 75%, plus or minus. All of these numbers are kind of plus or minus. Individual results may vary. I call that space the grey area. That’s the grey area of cognitive dissonance.

Now, cognitive dissonance occurs when a person, that’s you, holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, values, or participates in action that goes against one of those. And you experience the psychological stress because of that. That’s why belief is so damn uncomfortable.

Sitting in belief and allowing it to take root into good feelings in your gut that may feel good in that moment, but as that belief meter goes back and forth and back and forth between zero and 100%, you’re in cognitive dissonance. You don’t believe, but you also do believe. And that space in between is incredibly uncomfortable.

This is the discomfort of belief. That space in between that 25% and 75%, which is where you’re going to spend most of your time, and that needle is moving back and forth and you have this general uncomfortable feeling. It’s kind of nondescript and kind of like, I don’t really like this, and you can’t quite put your finger on it.

We want to think that means that something’s wrong, but nothing is wrong. You’re just experiencing the discomfort of cognitive dissonance. You’re experiencing the discomfort of purposeful belief. It’s the side effect of life coaching and personal development and self-help that not many people want to talk about.

We want to make it seem like we’re just going to sit in belief and it’s going to be all rainbows and daisies and you’re going to feel like a magical unicorn, farting out rainbows all the time. I sat in belief and I should feel amazing all the time because it’s positive and it’s powerful.

But we’re not taking into consideration that belief meter that’s fluctuating back and forth between believing and not believing and our brains are not designed to like that. It’s designed to not like that. It’s designed to stay believing what it’s always believed, and you’re asking it to form a new neural pathway inside the brain. It doesn’t want to do that, but that is where your growth is.

That is where your dream life coaching business is. That is where doing the thing you’ve never done before is. Growth is uncomfortable. Believing new thoughts is uncomfortable, and it’s not because anything’s wrong. It’s because believing you can and you can’t at the same time is uncomfortable and it’s going to naturally want to snap back to 0% because if it has to choose between 0% belief and 100% belief, if it has to choose between a place it’s been before and a place it’s never been, your brain’s going to choose the one that it’s been to before.

And it’s been to 0% belief, it’s been to I can’t have a full coaching practice. Your job, my friends, should you choose to accept it, is to purposefully and consistently keep moving that needle closer to the 100% mark through sitting in belief, sitting in purposeful belief, learning to embrace that discomfort, mentoring with future you on what to do next, having your own back and not trash talking yourself when something doesn’t quiet go right.

Like when you find yourself at 0% belief. And evaluating, keeping going no matter what. That needle moves closer to 100% each time you sit back in belief and you follow it up with action and you evaluate that action and you keep going with each next best step.

Alright, so you getting this, my friends? You have a belief meter. I can’t, I could, I will, I am, or I have. You will be highest on that belief meter when you practice the highest-level thought that you can sit in belief with. And then your belief meter will fluctuate throughout the day, and there will be a general feeling of discomfort as your brain tries to believe two opposing things at the same time.

That is the discomfort of belief. It’s real, it’s normal, and it’s all part of becoming a more confident coach. Nothing has gone wrong here. So this week, I want you to practice visually, that belief meter in your head. And stop yourself throughout the day and ask yourself, where is my belief in this moment? 75, 50, 25, maybe it’s in the shitter?

No worries. Check in with yourself. You know what to do to bring it back up again. Sit in belief for just a moment. Now go take that next best step in front of you. Go take some action no matter what. You got this, my friends? You got it. Alright, until next week.

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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.