Ep #6: Evaluate and Keep Going

You are listening to episode six of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where you don’t quit.

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 squad. How is everyone doing out there? So I’m doing pretty dang fabulously, thank you very much for asking. I am in the midst of launching my very first group mastermind right now, and I just have to tell you – okay, so you’re going to hear me tell you over and over again that these five steps to creating self-confidence that I’ve introduced in these first six episodes of the podcast, that you’re going to need them at every step of the way.

I’ve said that a million times. I’m probably going to say it a million more because I am living that this week. This past week, what I have experienced is reminding even myself of that. I have experienced just complete vulnerability and doubt and fear and all of the things.

It’s like my brain has completely forgotten that I’ve created a – that this year, as of today, I’m recording this actually the week before it comes out, and as of today, I’ve sold over $240,000 in life coaching just this year, over $200,000 in cash revenue. My website and sales pages have glowing testimonials. At least three clients just this week have shared how their life has changed since we started working together.

I’m currently fully booked at 20 clients a week and my brain doesn’t care about any of that. The little lizard brain, the little cavewoman that lives in my head, she doesn’t care because the fact is this; success doesn’t create confidence.

And this week, I’m doing something I’ve never done before. I’m offering a group mastermind and my brain is telling me, we can’t do this. No one’s going to sign up. Or worse, only two people will sign up and they will know. Zero people is not my fear. It’s that two people and then those two people are going to know that they’re the only two people, right?

My brain is telling me I don’t know how to communicate why people should sign up with me, it’s telling me, who do you think you are? Remember that one from last week’s episode? You have nothing to add to this arena. Like, be quiet Amy, other people already got this already. You don’t have anything to add.

Like, thank you baby Yoda that I know how to create self-confidence for myself, that I have already applied these five steps at previous levels of my business because I’m doing it again. I’ve totally needed them this week to get me off and keep me off the struggle bus, to allow me to keep going, which is what we’re doing today.

So I could not, could not be happier to have you here right now learning about these steps with me, studying them with me and ultimately, applying them to you and to your business. This is why I created this podcast. Like, this is very serendipitous that we are wrapping up with what the five steps are and then we’re going to move forward in the next podcast, but that I have been living this this week.

It’s just been perfect timing and just a reminder of why I created this podcast in the first place. And the bottom line is that if you’re a life coach, heck, if you’re anyone doing anything brand new in your life, you need these steps too. And one of those life coaches, soaking in all the goodies is Confident Coaches listener Jule.

So a big shout-out to Jule right now who left this review this past week. Jule wrote, “It’s practically guaranteed for Amy to give you at least 10 plus golden nuggets with each podcast. She provides actionable concepts that we were never taught to have your confidence grow. Amy explains these concepts thoroughly and gives you action steps for you to take right now. I’m so grateful to have this podcast and this. My emotional resilience would be pretty much non-existent without them.”

My goodness, talk about what you need to hear at certain times, right? Jule, thank you so much for being awesome and let’s serve up some of those delicious golden nuggets right now.

Okay, so to recap, the five steps to creating self-confidence are purposeful belief, embracing discomfort, become your best mentor, have your own back, and evaluate and keep going. And that is what we are talking about today. The evaluate and keep going, which by the way, I want to note that I have renamed that a million times and I completely reserve the right to rename step five in the future.

So this step comes from the realization of what I have taught so far, that nothing I’ve told you yet in these first few episodes, none of this is necessarily new stuff, right? I’m fully aware of that. You have heard this stuff before. What you think is important, it determines your results. Stop stuffing down your own emotions, look to the future, not to the past. Stop beating yourself up.

This is not revolutionary. I’m fully aware of that. Friends, I am not blind to the fact that you have most likely heard these things before. But I also know this; we can just be so human sometimes. We learn this stuff. We study, we hire coaches, we take courses, and then we don’t apply it every day. I will be the first one to raise their hand on this one right here.

Or we do this big thing one time and then we think our work is done here. I did it once. Isn’t that all I got to do? No, it’s not. Your work is not done. You can’t learn these steps, do them one time, and think you’re done. You got to rinse and repeat. You learn some amazing coaching tool, like the one I use in my coaching.

I use a coaching tool called the model and I teach all of my clients how to use it too for themselves. And you think great, I did a brain dump, I put my thoughts into the model, I can see how my thoughts are creating my feelings and actions, got it, I’m good.

By the way, I do want to note, we will be totally talking about the model here on the podcast. So if you’ve never heard of that, no worries, I got you. I’ll be bringing it up in future episodes.

But the most important thing here, my friends, is realizing that no matter how enlightened you have become, no matter how much coaching you have done and how much you’ve received, no matter how much learning and studying and taking this work deeper and deeper that you might have done, you can never forget that you will never live without your human brain.

I mean, if you are living without a human brain then you’re a zombie and we have entirely different issues. Friends, you have a human brain and your human brain is wired for safety. Your brain wants you to avoid pain and seek pleasure and exert as little energy as possible, and you’re never going to be without that brain, even if you are a trained life coach.

Sorry, your brain gets to come with you. It comes with you all of the time. So this not a one and done action. You will always need to be doing your own work. Especially as you keep doing new and bold things, because that human brain is going to be along for the ride at every step of the way, and the entire time telling you like, this looks dangerous, I’m not sure about that.

Your brain is like, it’s a lizard brain. It’s your lizard brain, or you have a cavewoman living in there and it’s like, get back in the cave, it’s dangerous out there. That sabretooth tiger is going to totally eat us when you decide to pick up the phone and call this person. Our brain is still operating on that level, so you have to continue to do the work, especially as you keep doing new and bold things, right?

So another struggle us coaches can have is you get all of this intellectually. Like, none of these concepts is all that hard to understand, right? But you don’t get it in practice. So you know you do not want to fear failure, but you still do. You know you do not want to beat yourself up, but you still do. And you are not actively doing the work to change that.

It’s like walk into a health workshop on eating less and moving more, and you’re like, oh yeah, got it. And then you go and do the exact opposite of what you know. We do this all the time too. You know what you’re supposed to believe in order to see, but you don’t actually do the practice of sitting in belief. Or you define future you, but you never talk to her and instead you still sit on the fence and you don’t make powerful decisions.

Or you still worry about what other people think of you, even though that’s not a good use of your time or energy. It’s like all of this stuff that you learn as a life coach, all of the stuff that I have shared so far in this podcast, you keep it all up here in your head and not at all down here in your body. You never really step into the work. You just keep it on a very intellectual level.

And you know you’re doing this if you hear yourself say, “I mean, I know it’s just my thoughts,” or, “I get it intellectually but,” but what? The bottom line is if you catch yourself saying that, what you’re saying is I want to believe it, but the bottom line is I don’t believe it. Otherwise, if you truly believed that it was just your thought, if you truly believed that all of this was optional, you would stop keeping it on the intellectual level and you would actually start the practice of believing, the practice of feeling, of deciding, and of taking action. Period.

And you’ll listen to and absorb everything that I share and then you’ll jump onto another coach, or then onto another expert, all while you keep waiting to feel confident. And that doesn’t work, which I hope seems incredibly obvious at this point. You have to actually do the work. You can’t just keep it up in your brain. You actually have to apply it to you.

So what should you be doing, my dear coach friends? What does keep going really mean here? You have to know that you’re going to show up for yourself every day. You have to start building that trust with you.

There’s some good work here in the future here too. Like, I just found another great podcast episode about integrity, trusting that you’re going to show up for yourself. It’s really the trust that you will show up and do the work, even when you would rather watch the next season of Queer Eye or The Crown or whatever the hit show is this week.

That means not expecting perfection from yourself too. I want you to embrace the idea of team no-streak and realize you can hit the reset button at any time and any day. We really love to applaud those who check off all their boxes every single day and set new consistency records, but the problem with that is, if we miss a step, we can make all those days where we did show up mean nothing, simply because we didn’t show up one day.

It’s not about the number of hours or days you show up for yourself in a row. It’s realizing that. If it’s noon and the day has not gone as planned, you can hit the reset button. If it’s Wednesday and you haven’t done crap all week, you can still hit the reset button. You don’t need a new day, or even a new hour, or a new week or a new month, or a new year, which is coming up.

You don’t need a new something before you can pick up form where you are and just take the next step. Keep going means just that; you keep going, no matter what was happening for the past five minutes or hours or days or weeks or months. Like, been there, done that, I’ve written that story.

No matter what you’ve done for the past five minutes or days, you put these first four steps of practicing self-confidence into practice every single day. A great way to do this is to challenge yourself with a dare of the day. Pick something to do each day that you’re just going to try.

It’s okay if you don’t know if it’s going to work, in fact, even better if you don’t know if it’s going to work. The goal here is to not to get a win every single time. The goal is just to keep you moving forward. Like, make it the goal to actually get the no, not the yes, right? Get some practice in purposefully believing in yourself and feeling uncomfortable and making decisions that you think future you would do and having your back no matter what.

Learning to plan your days around doing what scares you will create self-confidence like you’ve never felt before and it will be taking more action than you ever have. And if you want to get even more practice with this – this is a really fun thing to do in all areas of your life – ask for the discount at the store. Ask for the table that you really want. Go ahead and ask for that testimonial from your client.

Try asking for what you really want, not with the purpose of getting it, but in the purpose of practicing those steps of creating self-confidence, those steps one through four. And here’s the fun thing; sometimes, you will find out that you’re actually going to get what you really want and that’s just a fun bonus, right?

And we’re not just asking for asking’s sake. We’re not just throwing spaghetti at the walls here to see what sticks. Because with each action you take, you can learn to evaluate so that whether you get the result you want or not, you’re regularly analyzing what’s working and not working, and then from that, from what’s working and what’s not working, you can adjust and tweak and decide what you’re going to do differently next time.

Evaluation keeps you from taking the same action over and over and over and over again and yet still not getting the results that you want. And evaluation of your actions is actually how future you learns how to overcome objections, right? Like, future you has done this evaluation over and over again and learns from these things that aren’t working, rather than just throws your hands up in the air and says, “This isn’t working.” So all of these pieces that we’ve talked about, they just keep tying in together over and over, my friends.

So, Mary Schmich, which I have a very hard time saying, Mary Schmich gave us the quote, “Do one thing every day that scares you.” It’s frequently attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt but Mary Schmich actually said, “Do one thing every day that scares you.”

And Mrs. Roosevelt did have a great quote. She said, “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” And this is really what we’re talking about here. The entire concept of evaluate and keep going is to be asking yourself, what would future you do? And then evaluate the results of those actions and trust that you will continue to show up for yourself every single day. And if it’s not every single day, that you’re willing to hit that reset button at any point and keep going.

Evaluating and keep going is repeating the steps one through four and then continuously putting yourself out there and you’re learning and you’re growing every single step that you go. Because all of this doing, all of this asking, it’s like the lizard part of your brain is telling you, you can’t do this. But these five steps put together and repeated over and over and over again, these things will create all the self-confidence you’ve ever needed.

And let’s be really clear; becoming a confident coach doesn’t mean you think you’re better than anyone else or that you are always sure that you know what you’re doing. Being a confident coach is actually being okay with who you are and where you are with no worries about where other people are, being able to cheer on their success without deciding that their success must mean something negative about you.

It’s about being totally okay that you do not always know what you’re doing or if this next idea will work because you are always learning a little bit more or getting a little bit better with every forward step that you take. And there is no level where these five steps won’t be needed. Remember, totally lived and breathed that this week.

Because if you’re continuing to move forward, you will always find yourself looking towards a new place you’ve never been before. And it’s all good because you will remember, because you’ve done this work before and you can do it again.

So, here’s what I want you to take with you this week. Start practicing that evaluating. Start evaluating what you’re doing. After every consult call or coaching call, or just at the end of the week, you get to decide based on where you are in your business what you want to practice this week. But evaluate.

Ask yourself what worked. Come up with at least three things that you accomplished or that you’re proud of or that went in your favor, that worked. And then ask yourself what didn’t work, what are at least three things that didn’t work in your favor?

And by all means, I’m saying three things, but come up with as many as you can, but strive for at least three. And make sure you do the what worked before you do the what didn’t work, because that lizard brain of ours really struggles to find the good after spending time with the bad, right? That’s just being a cavewoman at heart right there.

Okay, so after you do what worked and what didn’t work, what will you do differently next time? You take what worked and what didn’t work and then you decide how you’re going to tweak, how you’re going to adjust. And I love this evaluation plan because it is so simple. You can do it every day, every week, every quarter. In fact, I invite you to do that for the end of the year. And I’m even working on my next couple of episodes about the year-end and planning for 2020, so I’m sure you’re going to hear this again, but you can use this evaluation tool in so many different areas of your business, as well as your personal life too.

So, as long as you’re always evaluating, you will always find the good and the not-so-good and be able to make more powerful decisions at every step. And that right there, my friends, we are six episodes in. You now know what the five steps to creating confidence are and, from this point forward, we’re going to start applying them to different scenarios in your business, taking all of the feedback that I’ve gotten from the initial podcast insiders, their struggles, what they are working on.

We are coming towards not just a year’s end, but a decade-end and we’re launching into a new year and a new decade. We’re going to be putting these five steps to the test. We’re going to be utilizing them to get you to your next level. So I invite you to really, if there’s anything you feel like you missed, by all means, go back and revisit some of these episodes. And because we’re going to keep revisiting them, but now we’re going to be revisiting them through the lens of where you are in your business and specific things that you’re working on.

I’m so excited to do this work with you. I’m so excited that you’re coming with me. Alright, my friends, so see you next week.

Hey friends, to celebrate the launch of this show, I am giving away some serious fabulousness. Four lucky listeners will win a $50 gift card to Amazon, while one lucky listener will win a free Apple watch. No joke. A series four 40-millimeter gold stainless steel with Milanese loop. Just like the one I wear. I love it.

And those are some seriously awesome goods to five lucky listeners who subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts. Of course, I hope you love the show, but it does not have to be a five-star review. Because I want your honest feedback so I can create an awesome show that provides tons of value.

So go visit www.amylatta.com/podcastlaunch to learn more about the contest and how to enter. I’ll be announcing the winners on the show in an upcoming episode. Thanks friends.

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.