Ep #32: Dream Worst-Case Scenario

You are listening to episode 32 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where we talk about this worst-case scenario you keep daydreaming about.

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.

Hello, my Confident Coaches. How’s everybody doing out there? How are all the feels? How are all the feels you guys are feeling? Are you sitting around waiting for the locusts to hit, the frogs to fall out of the sky? I mean, I think at this point we are, right.

What are we, second week of June? Yeah, I mean, at this point, I think it’s fair to say we should just expect literally anything, anything could happen. And here’s the interesting thing. I was sharing this with my clients. So, not only do we have the most recent, the murder of George Floyd, so apparent, so obvious.

This is nothing new; the outrage, the subsequent protests, and not just the subsequent protests, but now the call to do the movement that should be here, not just a moment. The anti-racism work, all of this work. So, you have all of those feels of that going on in the world. Plus, I don’t know if you all know this, but the coronavirus is still a thing. That’s still out there rearing its ugly head.

I was just reading about Missouri, which is where I live – I don’t know if you guys know that. I’m in the suburbs of Saint Louis, Missouri. Hey-hey, we’re in the top 10 states for surging cases right now. Yay, thumbs up, way to go, Missouri.

So, even on top of this extraordinary stuff, we still have every day normal life shit. You know a trip to the ER, a client who had to go to the ER. She’s not sure – and actually, she was supposed to find out today, so I need to touch base with her if she was either having a heart episode or an anxiety episode. She’s not really sure.

Another client whose fiancée lost their job and they’re having to move. And then, she just found out that she’s having a baby. Now, first of all, I was super-excited because this is the very first Confident Coaches baby. But she needed to be talked off a ledge.

Not because she doesn’t want to be a mom, but just because it doesn’t fit into, like, “This was not the plan,” right? This is a year too soon, right? I personally am like, “This is the best news ever.” And she’s like, “I’m pretty sure it’s not.”

So, lots of coaching around what to do when life doesn’t go as planned. Because your clients right now, your clients right now have regular, normal, everyday shirt not going as planned.

Another really good friend of mine, her entire house literally just burned down two days ago. One of my closest coach friends, mom friends lost everything. So, that kind of stuff that happens all the time is still happening, plus this extraordinary stuff.

So, how are you doing? Are you getting coaching? Are you taking care of your brain? I’ve been offering up lots of good stuff for you guys. The past couple of episodes, if you have not listened to them, episode 30, What Happens When Life Hits Your Business, episode 32, Confidence in a Crisis.

Make sure that you’re listening to these resources for you. Pus, in the episode 31, if you go to episode 31’s webpage, you will find anti-racism resources there also. Plus, if you’re following me on Insta stories, I’m constantly sharing a mixture of how I can help, what y superpower is, which is coaching confidence and then resources for those things that aren’t my superpower.

So, make sure you’re taking care of your brain because crazy life shit happens. And this podcast episode is actually going to be a twist on this crazy life shit in that some of you all are waiting for crazy life shits to hit – that sounds weird; life shits.

You’re waiting on a certain kind of scenario to happen so that you’ll finally start taking the action you keep saying you want to take for your life coaching business. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. I’m going to share with you a concept that’s right out of my Confident Coaches Mastermind member site.

So, if you guys don’t already know, I have a member site that’s part of the Confident Coaches Mastermind group that I start every other month. It’s the actual Confident Coaches program, the actual program that I have fleshed out and completely outlined. It’s self-confidence basics plus the five steps to creating self-confidence that I have talked about throughout this podcast.

And in each section, I have short videos and a short workbook to teach all of the concepts, all of the tools that you need to create your own self-confidence. The awesome thing is, the entire member site will take you less than six hours to watch. It’s not like it’s a months-long course or anything like that.

It’s pretty easy to work through. Most of them are in the six to seven-minute range, including the one that I’m going to share with you today. It’s one of my modules in the fifth step, which is Keep Going. And it’s a concept that I call the Dream Worst-Case Scenario.

Now, here’s the interesting thing; in that coaching call with my current Confident Coaches Mastermind that I coach on Mondays, in that, we were talking about these crazy life scenarios that come up. And one of my clients said, “So, Amy, I was reviewing the modules over this past week. And did you know that your dream worst-case scenario happened?”

Say, what? So, let me tell you a little bit what it’s about and then I’m going to throw in a little plot twist here. So, this concept of worst-case scenario, this is something that I know I used to do a lot before I hired my own coach a couple of years ago. And it’s something that I’ve seen easily in over half of my clients over the past four years since I’ve been certified.

Here’s how worst-case scenario plays out. When you’re doing all of the other work I present in Confident Coaches, whether you’re in the program, in the mastermind, in this podcast, I share much of the content that’s in the program. No matter how you’re consuming Confident Coaches and you’re doing the work, you’re applying the work that I’ve shared.

You’ll start thinking, “You know, if only…” insert really horrible thing, “Would happen, then I would finally get my shit together and I’d get this done. Then I’d do all the things that I’m not currently doing. If only this horrible thing would happen, this worst-case scenario, then I’d finally show up for me because then I’d have to.”

So, here’s how this played out for me. My husband has a good job, a solid construction career through a well-established union. My husband is third-generation union pipefitter. He’s worked for the same employer for 15 years. And before my coaching business took off and I started making multiple six figures, we were still good. Not extraordinarily wealthy, but a solid high five, low six-figure salary, depending on the year if you know how construction works, for a family of five in the very cheap Midwest.

We’ve got a lovely ranch home on a half-acre of land living a lovely suburban life. My kids go to great schools. We have cars. Our life is good, right? I stayed home for 10 years. I was a stay-at-home mom. I’m a former corporate marketer, but when I was pregnant with my son, I lost my job and I never went back to work so I stayed home for 10 years.

And no, we weren’t taking exotic trips or maybe we weren’t able to donate to all the causes that we wanted to. No massive amounts of money in the bank for rainy days or college funds or whatever. But we can live this life. It was a good life.

And so, I used to think, when I wasn’t taking action, when I was out of belief, when I was quitting on myself every afternoon to watch Supernatural on CW, yeah, true story. And I know you know. I know you know. I know you have that show that you indulge in that’s not on your plan for today, or whatever it is you indulge in, right?

So, I would catch myself saying, you know, “If Tre lost his job, that would get me off the couch. If all hell broke loose and the only option between me and my family and where we are now and us living in a cardboard box on the street, then I would finally start taking action. Then I would keep going when it starts to suck.”

You know what I’m talking about? Because, as I said, at least half of the clients that I’ve worked with over the past four years do have some variation of a dream worst-case scenario. I think it’s incredibly normal. Like, be really clear, there is no reason to throw a shame blanket on top of all of this because having a dream worst-case scenario, that’s just such a human thing.

Our brains look for that dread, that horrible thing that can happen. Our brain is wired to fantasize about this terrible thing that could happen and start to plan how we would work through that in case it does happen. In case that sabretooth tiger comes inside the cave, we’ve got to be ready, right?

There’s nothing wrong with your brain. In fact, that’s how your brain functions. I teach all about having your own back in other modules of the Confident Coaches program. And I’ve talked about it here on this podcast. But just really be aware that you have that inner cavewoman, that primitive brain, that lizard brain.

Now, I have my clients name their inner cavewoman. I call mine Helga because Helga just sounds like a horrible, awful cavewoman, right? She’s the one that’s wanting to lounge on the couch, or whatever your non-action looks like, and fantasize about this worst-case scenario that would finally get you taking action.

You know, those offers a day that you’re supposed to be making, those daily asks so that you can build up your failures, build up your fail stacks. Here is why, however, the dream worst-case scenario doesn’t work. It doesn’t work, my friends. It’s not actually going to work, so quit dreaming about it. And here’s why.

Taking action that stems from desperation, it might work in the short-term, but it does not work in the long-term. What’s wrong with the dream worst-case scenario is that you’re trying to fuel your action from this terrible emotional place of desperation and awfulness.

Like, desperation live-or-die energy, that feels terrible. And here’s the crazy thing; even though it feels terrible, it will work for the short-term. Kind of like – we’ve seen this play out in other places, right? Kind of like hating your body in order to lose weight, hating what you see in the mirror and being disgusted by it so that you’ll finally lose the weight.

And, of course, it’s through sheer willpower for the short-term. That’s the total white knuckling, grin and bare it because I’ve got to get this weight off because I feel so terrible that I look so terrible.

But what happens when we lose that weight that way? You cannot maintain the suck, my friends. You cannot hate yourself thin. You cannot willpower it off because you can’t sustain that awful desperation gross feeling that fueled it in the first place.

And if we can’t do that for weight, what makes us think that we can do it for our business. We can’t. And I guarantee you, it doesn’t actually create the confidence that you’re seeking in the first place because one of the key pillars of creating confidence is the willingness to allow uncomfortable feelings, which is very different than fueling all of our action with uncomfortable feelings.

Because you’re not going to be taking action from a place of the willingness to experience the discomfort of doing new things. That’s what you’re avoiding right now. You think you’re going to be able to maintain action when you feel like complete piles of dogshit? You don’t even like taking action now and it just feels a little uncomfortable. Imagine when it feels really explosive, we’re-going-to-end-up-on-the-streets uncomfortable. It doesn’t even make sense that we argue this in our brain. It’s not even logical.

So, a fun side story. When I first became a weight coach – this is like eight years ago easily, long before I got certified in actual life coaching, I used to sell a direct sales weight loss product. So, it was one of these things, you go and you sell the product and then you called your person every single week on the phone to coach them.

Now, it wasn’t coaching the way I do it now. It was all action-line, result-line coaching, there was no thinking about thoughts and feelings. But I really loved the calls. I hated selling products, but that’s how I got paid. I got paid on commission.

So, people weren’t paying me for my time the way that they do now because I was earning the commission. But I loved that coaching, talking to them on the phone every week. And I remember my upline, you know, the person that I signed up under, I remember her telling me, “You need to tap into their despair in order to build this business. You need to tap into their despair so that they can’t do anything but act with you.”

And here’s the crazy thing. We would go to these regional conferences or national conferences and all of the success stories were like, “We were down on our luck and things were terrible and then my friend offered me this amazing opportunity and it landed in my lap. And now, here we are.”

Like, it made it seem, the only way that people could be successful is if the bottom was dropping out. And something didn’t quite settle with me. I didn’t know what it was because I hadn’t learned the model yet. I didn’t understand that thoughts create feelings and it’s your feelings that drive your actions.

So, this feeling of despair is what’s driving the action. Now that I understand the model, it’s so clear to me how that was not working for me because I didn’t want to feel like crap. I didn’t want to have to have the bottom drop out from under me in order to be up on that stage and win that award.

But that’s how it was presented to me, like this is what’s required. Everything about it, even me talking to you right now, I’m in the comfort of my office where I don’t have any of that. I have this lovely office. There’s no despair in here. But I can feel it in my body right now. It just feels terrible.

So, that feeling of despair might spark some short-term action, but it can’t maintain it in the long-term because how long do you want to feel despair? It sounds terrible. And it wasn’t working for me. And I remember thinking, “If only Tre would lose his job. Then I could build this business,” and it would be our bottom dropping out, “That’s what I need in order to get on that stage.”

But that is not the energy we want to be building our life coaching business. That’s not going to create confidence for you, my friend, to indulge in your dream worst-case scenario.

Now, here’s the craziest plot twist ever. Remember a couple of weeks ago when I said a big life event happened. It was literally two podcasts ago. Guess what. My husband lost his job. My dream worst-case scenario came true.

Now, at this point, by the time this airs, he will have been out of work for a month. And do you know how stinking grateful I am that I didn’t buy into my own worst-case scenario. And let me tell you why. Because a month ago, I became the breadwinner for my family.

Not the way we planned, sure. I didn’t retire him in the dream best-case scenario that we had for ourselves. You know, those dream best-case scenarios that we life coaches fantasize about? Yeah, this was supposed to be in a couple more years when I retired him, not a month ago when one day he had a job and the next day he didn’t.

But my husband lost his, plus or minus-$100,000 a year job. And of all the feelings I have, not one of them is worry about living in a cardboard box. Not one of them is worry about money or our finances or what happens from here for us as a family financially because I made $325,000 in the last 12 months.

So, when my husband came home and said, “I don’t have a job anymore.” I called my accountant and I told her, “Rachel, I’m giving myself a raise.” Easy-peasy.

She set up payroll. We got in touch with the state of Missouri, and the first official paycheck from Amy Latta Coaching, which more than covers my husband’s previous take-home pay, hit the bank account the day before I’m recording this podcast.

I created this by putting myself in the rooms that have been offered to me, by doing the work that’s been presented to me, even when I didn’t want to. Al of those daily asks, all of those daily offers, compiling fails over and over again, even when it felt terrible. But the kind of terrible that I can learn to manage my mind through, the kind of terrible that is really just discomfort, that actually builds confidence, not that despair terrible that isn’t maintained.

Holy crap, my friends. That’s so worth it. It’s like I started listening to a future Amy a couple of years ago and I didn’t even know why until now. My dream worst-case scenario came through. And because I’ve already done the work, it does not feel terrible. It was always meant to happen this way, even the unplanned crazy life shit.

Alright, so what do I want you guys right now listening to do with this concept of dream worst-case scenarios? First and foremost, this should not come as a surprise. If you’ve been listening to me, what’s the first step in any of this work that we do? I think it was the first step in the last podcast I recorded.

It’s awareness, my friends, right? If you are waiting on your dream worst-case scenario, you’ve got to call bullshit on yourself, my friends. If you catch yourself visualizing and fantasizing about this dream worst-case scenario that would finally light the fire under your ass, remember that it’s only going to be creating action from a place of desperation and despair, not in the kind of emotion that actually builds confidence.

And you can build all the skills that you need to build your dream business from a place of purposeful belief, from the place of practicing the feelings that are uncomfortable but they’re totally manageable and doable, the discomfort of doing things you’ve never done before, of dropping the people-pleasing, of feeling vulnerable. It’s entirely different than despair and desperation.

So, you don’t have to experience that despair of your worst-case scenario in order to take action. When you catch yourself in the dream worst-case scenario, you just need to check back in with your belief meter. Remember your belief meter from quite a few episodes ago? Do a little emotional strength training, like what we talk about in the mini quits.

And then, get yourself back into sitting in belief. And remember that the dream worst-case scenario does not need to happen in order for you to build a successful life coaching business, how you’ve designed it. It’s not necessary, it feels like crap, and it won’t work.

So, be aware of it. It’s one of the biggest things that we can do to sabotage ourselves, to keep us from going, to keep us from doing what we say we’re going to do, to keep us from trusting ourselves.

So, be on the lookout for your dream worst-case scenario. And if you catch yourself, do some emotional strength training. Where are you on that belief meter, and then go spend some time sitting in belief. Bring yourself back into belief as many times a day that you need to do it.

Alright, my friends, let’s go do epic stuff.

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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.