Ep #48: How to Face Plant

You are listening to episode 48 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where we talk about how to mess up without beating yourself up.

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? We are so good, but I’d really like to know, how did it become October? Here’s the crazy thing. The first eight months of this year, guys, we’re still in 2020, right? This is the same year.

The first eight months of this year, each of those months felt like they were a year long, and then September just flew by. I’m pretty sure it’s probably because my kids are in school and we kind of have a glimpse of that pre-COVID life. It’s not 100% back to normal by any means. But it feels like I blinked and September’s over and now it’s October and how did we get here and what year is it and what month is it? Just me? No? Okay.

So this is actually pretty fabulous though because that means if September is already over and it’s already October, that means another Confident Coaches Mastermind class starts next month. We have another class starting in November. And application and enrollment will only be open for a short time during this month, during October.

I have to tell you guys, my assistant and I are working our butts off on some really good new stuff for this next class. Like new swag and an up-leveled welcome box, a fully printed workbook. I’m so excited about that. I already have worksheets as part of the member site, but now I’m fleshing that out. It’s going to be even more precise and even better as far as getting – it literally will have everything you could possibly need, fully printed, plus a couple of new coaching concepts that I’m adding to the member site. So fun.

Because I love showing my confident coaches love, right? So if you want to know when the doors are going to open and when they close on the applying and enrolling for the November class, make sure that you sign up for the free training that I talk about at the end of this podcast and you’ll be in the know when the doors are open.

Because you know you want in on some of that love. And listen, some of that love goes way beyond just fun swag and coaching concepts. That’s not why people sign up for mastermind. That’s not why you sign up for a mastermind is I’m going to learn coaching concepts and swag.

That’s fun, but just today, a member of my May class, Wendy, she shared with me that since we began Confident Coaches, this is what she sent to me. She said, “I no longer believe that I don’t have a voice. I’m willing to feel the discomfort. I’m willing to feel failure. I’m willing to really evaluate my results and take 100% responsibility.” That’s been a huge shift for her.

And she’s really stepped into the belief that she is a $50,000 earner and a fully booked coach with loving and sufficient and courageous energy. Because Wendy works full time in a completely different job. This is her separate business that she has from her main employment.

That was her goal, was to be fully booked. Her version of fully booked is different than somebody else’s vision of fully booked, and she’s so in that belief. And if I can even say the biggest shift that I’ve seen in her is her willingness to take complete responsibility for the results that she’s getting because only then can she actually change the results that she’s getting.

It’s been so, so fun to watch her have these transformations this year. And I really just can’t wait to see what Wendy creates in these last 90 days of the year because this is the work that she’s been doing. So much fun.

And that one part in there that Wendy shared, “I’m willing to fail,” there’s been a few things swirling around that prompted this episode today, and that was one of them, plus some coaching that we’ve done inside the Confident Coaches Mastermind, plus an entirely different podcast that I listen to.

I kept coming back to this whole idea of how to face plant. You might also call this – by the way, the unspoken name of this podcast episode is how to fuck up without beating yourself up. So there’s a couple things that we’re talking about here.

So first of all, I’m talking about your willingness to face plant, to fall flat on your face, to fail on purpose, with intention. Because you understand that failing, learning how to fail, and growing from that failure will create an unprecedented level of confidence for you. And that’s how you’re going to create the results you want.

We’re also talking about when you face plant, as in you fuck up. Not on purpose. Because you weren’t being honest with yourself or you quit on yourself, you showed up as an asshole, you were a jerk, there was something you were trying to avoid and there just wasn’t avoiding it. There’s that kind of face planting.

So there’s face planting on purpose and there’s face planting not on purpose, and we’re going to talk about both of those things in this episode. So let’s dive into the first one, and that is face planting on purpose. Now, why the hell would we want to do that? Because that’s where your growth is.

I always visualize like, let’s not forget that you are now a human being who walks in the world. But you did not come out of your mother’s womb walking. This is such a simple analogy that we even will roll our eyes sometimes, but it’s so true. Why do we overlook it?

You were not born walking. You had to learn how to hold your head up, you had to learn how to sit up, you had to learn how to crawl, you had to learn how to scoot. You had to learn how to do that thing where you walk but you’re always – there’s an actual name for it and I’m totally blanking on it. You know when you’re walking but you’re walking from table to table.

You got to learn how to take a few steps. But inevitably, show me a toddler who hasn’t face planted on their way to learning how to walk. It’s inevitable. It’s required. You can’t possibly learn how to walk and then run and then skip and then do all those other things without falling on your face. And you fall and you smack your head into the coffee table and you get that big giant goose egg and you cry and then you dust yourself off and you get back up again.

Every single able-bodied human being has had to do that and yet, for some reason, we think we should be able to do this thing we’ve never done before, i.e. building a successful coaching business, signing all the clients that we want, bringing in 8K a month so that we can be that six-figure coach. We think we should be able to achieve that without having to face plant. Why?

When literally nothing else we’ve ever done in our life have we been able to do that without face planting, what makes us think, what makes you think that you should be able to avoid face planting in order to create something you’ve never created before? That’s not how we work. That is literally not how humans operate.

Think of every great success story in the entire world. There was failure behind it because there’s no learning in doing it right. There’s no learning in not trying what we aren’t sure is going to work. There’s no learning in knowing 100% sure.

And if you aren’t learning, you’re not growing your ability to feel confident before you create the results. Fact, we can never be 100% sure that what we are doing will work, meaning what we are doing will create the result that we want. Never.

Even if you copy exactly what someone else does, even if you just repeat exactly what we did the last time, which most of us are trying to create something we’ve never done before, so there is no copying what we did last time, right?

Even if someone gave you the exact roadmap and told you exactly what to do, there is never a guarantee that that is going to work. That is not a thing. In business, there is too much unknown. In life, there is too much unknown. What works for one person does not necessarily work for someone else.

Copying someone else’s plan leaves out the most important factor, and that’s you. Your genius, what you bring to the table. So if you solely depend on your confidence coming from being 100%, you’re screwed because it’s just not even possible. That’s why confident coaches learn how to create confidence without knowing it’s going to work.

You create confidence not in not failing, but in failing and learning and knowing you’re going to be okay no matter what, knowing that you’re going to keep taking that next step in front of you and make decisions and implement and evaluate, and then tweak and then keep going.

Imagine a toddler that falls for the first time and they just stay down on the floor. We don’t do that. We don’t just stay on the floor. We cry, we whine, we get upset, and then somebody who loves us scoops us up, tells us that it’s going to be okay, and then we start up again. Guess what, that someone who loves you, that’s you.

In case you’re wondering, the only thing that’s different now is that the person who scoops you up, reminds you that it’s going to be okay, reminds you that you can totally do this and to get up and do it again and try again until you figure it out, now instead of that being your mom, now that’s you. You have that role now.

We’re talking about confidence that you will create the result that you want and you don’t know how you will get there. Face planting creates confidence because behind every success is a huge stack of failures. And accumulating failures and learning from them and learning that you were built to feel every emotion, that creates a level of self-confidence you could never achieve if everything worked out for you the way that you wanted it to the very first time.

So face planting on purpose is deciding you will try a new thing each day, or maybe each week. It probably won’t work because you don’t yet know how to make it work. But in the trying and in the evaluating, you will learn how to make it work. You’ll repeat that process over and over again until you get there.

That’s how you learned how to walk, that’s how you’re going to learn how to sign more clients and bring in 8K months and become that six-figure coach. Like, there is no greater skill that I can teach you in order to become more confident than to fail on purpose with the intention to learn and to feel the uncomfortable feels, to practice having your own back when it doesn’t work, to learn how to stop trash talking yourself when you do face plant hard. And you will face plant hard.

Listen, not doing, waiting for the perfect plan, not acting, that’s face planting too, but just without any growth. That’s a baby who just lays on the floor and never learns how to walk. And then you’re completely confined into the world where there’s no walking.

We’ll get in these situations where we want to – let’s say we want to learn how to go live on Instagram. We’ve just never done it before, we’ve never done live video, we’re very scared, we’re very intimidated. And we’ll put it off because we’re afraid that it won’t work or there’ll be a tech glitch, or I’m going to freeze and forget what I was supposed to say.

You’re afraid you’re going to fail so then you don’t do it. But tell me, how are you avoiding failure exactly? You’re not avoiding failure by not doing. Webinars are another great example. That’s another one that so many CCM students will get caught up in.

We worry that no one’s going to show, or no one’s going to take me up on the call to action, I don’t know how to figure out all the tech that’s involved. So you delay and you delay, and you try to get everything perfect beforehand. You try to perfect every single word, you try to anticipate every possible tech failure you might have.

But not doing it doesn’t teach you how you will overcome and do it in the moment. You can’t possibly anticipate everything that could go wrong until you actually do it. You can’t possibly anticipate what will make somebody take you up on that call to action until you put some out and see what works.

So you’re not avoiding face planting by delaying and waiting for this unachievable perfection. You’re actually living in the face plant by delaying and waiting for that unachievable perfection. So you might as well face plant on purpose. You might as well believe in the inevitability of your success and feel that discomfort when your results haven’t yet caught up to your belief. That’s a real thing. I totally get it. I’ve been there before.

And to learn how to evaluate and think strategically about what small changes that you’re going to make next time. And then learn. Because when you’re willing to face plant, here’s really what it’s all about. You gain wisdom and experience and understanding and self-knowledge that you can’t possibly gain if everything just worked out because you wanted it to.

That can’t be found anywhere else. And I want to offer you that those things, that wisdom and that understanding, that that’s even more valuable than just achieving the goal that you’ve set out to achieve. The sum of the parts are greater than the whole when you willingly face plant.

And in Confident Coaches Mastermind, you learn how to evaluate and think strategically to decide what small tweaks to make. You see where the wisdom is, you walk away with that better understanding. And oh yeah, you hit your goals.

Now, here’s a little side note. If the word fail or failure, fail on purpose, any kind of that language, if that triggers you, if that makes you want to say no, I’m fine to try something and to learn from it but I’m not going to fail, I just invite you to ask why. Anything.

Now, this is just one thing, but I want to offer you this; anything that triggers me, anything I feel resistance to, that’s an invitation. There’s something there to get coached on. Anything you ever feel resistance to means on the other side of that is a point of growth and learning for you.

And if that’s part of why we’re here on earth, why not dive in there? Why not be curious? What do you make failing or face planting mean? Because it’s totally a thought and I know this is a thought because as far as I’m concerned, I 100% believe that I’m going to fail my way to a million dollars next year. I’m committed to it. I’m excited for it. I’m like, bring on the failure. Let me see what I have to learn.

What I’ve done in the past is not going to help me get to a million dollars. I’m going to have to burn that down, I’m going to have to try new things, I’m going to have to change my mind about how things work. I’m going to have to fail in order to get there. And I’m like, bring it on.

So that’s how I know it’s a thought if the word fail is triggering you because it doesn’t trigger me. I’m like, alright, let’s do it. Let’s build some more confidence. So if it creates something different for you, just ask yourself why. Because failing is important. We were never taught how to do it. We were only told that it was bad. I know I was.

Reformed good girl right here. You know that saying like, do it right or don’t do it at all? I can’t remember how many times I heard that growing up. But that mentality of do it right or don’t do it at all, it puts such a limit on us as humans. It prevents us from trying new things and growing into our next level. If you’re only willing to do what you’re good at, your world becomes very small.

Like that baby who just lays on the floor because they’re too afraid of falling again. Their world is so small, just laying there on the floor and relying on other people to carry them or never learning how to walk. Such a small world.

And you know, it’s really funny, I think about somebody else – have you ever seen those people who, they’re the exact opposite. They just go for the gusto. You know those just try it kind of people. But their world is so much wider. It’s so much bigger. And they feel so much freer because they aren’t tied up in that word fail or failure. And there’s so much freedom there.

That alone may be worth it to learn how to face plant, to just feel the freedom from ever worrying about face planting, knowing that of course I’m going to. I don’t even have to spend any more time worrying about it. Just bring it on, I’m excited for it, let’s see what we can do in this world.

So I invite you to decide now, how will you face plant this week? I’m currently committed to 90 fails in 90 days, which is an idea that I got from my master coach training sister, Krista St-Germain. So some clients do a dare of the day. Just pick something. Just pick one thing that you’re sure you will fail at that you are going to try, that you’re going to evaluate and learn from and go build that confidence muscle.

So now, what about those unplanned face plants? This is when we fuck up. This is going to happen too. In business, you may convey completely wrong information to a prospective client, you may piss someone off, you may say something, you might coach somebody not from a place of love and from a place of judgment because you weren’t clean.

In your personal life, man, the examples are endless because that’s what being human is, right? You’re an asshole to someone, you lie to someone, you say something unintentionally offensive and then wish you could pull those words right back in your mouth. I mean, hi, raise your hands, my friends.

I have literally heard words coming out of my mouth and wish I could immediately stuff them back in and then feel that just like, oh, I totally just face planted. I’ve been there. I know that feeling. And sometimes, sometimes our fuckups are even deeper than that.

Like, what if it’s cheating on a spouse or talking about a friend behind her back? Something that someone might describe as a betrayal. One of the things that actually spurred this podcast, this one that you’re listening to was a recent podcast by one of my faves.

Now, first of all, you should totally listen to this, my podcast, first and foremost. But one podcast that I absolutely love is called Armchair Expert. It’s hosted by Dax Shepard and his business partner and co-host Monica Padman.

Now, Dax, if you don’t know, is a successful actor and writer and director, and he’s married to Kristen Bell, an even more famous actress and writer. They are considered a Hollywood power couple. And it’s well known that he’s a recovering drug and alcohol addict.

Like, that’s part of his story. We hear about it all the time that I’ve been sober for 16 years, it’s part of his thing. It’s something that is talked about in the podcast all the time. It’s something that’s talked about in interviews very often.

Now, in the three years of his podcast, he is very famous for being very open and very honest, admitting his mistakes, and really owning his humanity. But just a week or so ago, he released a bonus episode called Day Seven. And any of us that saw the title, we knew. Us Armcherries, that’s us diehards. We knew it wasn’t good. We knew when we saw that day seven, we knew what it meant before we even hit play.

And in that episode, Dax admits a relapse. He admits to a recent addiction to prescription painkillers, to opioids. He admits to lying to Monica and to Kristen. He admits to gaslighting them. He talks extensively about how it happened, what his mindset was, what his justifications and his excuses were.

He even admits that he was high on opioids the day that they celebrated his 16th sober birthday party just a month ago and how that hour was the worst hour of his life. He face planted big time. And he knew though that a key to his sobriety was honesty.

Seriously, this one podcast episode is a master course in humility and honesty and navigating shame and judgment. And Monica, his cohost and one of his best friends is a case study in unconditional love. She walks him through the episode, shares how she felt, shares how she was hurt, and how she still loves him and is there for him.

And that, my friends, that is how you handle an unplanned face plant. To be aware of the shame and the judgment that will be there. My Confident Coaches program, CCM, has an entire section on learning how to love yourself even when, no matter what, how to find your worth even at your worst and at your best, to teach your brain that there’s no difference, your value and your worth as a human being can’t be changed no matter what you do.

I teach a concept of having high expectations and unconditional love at the same time. I see it like parenting. I know that there’s nothing any of my kids could ever do that would make me stop loving them. I won’t make excuses for them. I won’t take excuses from them, but they will always be just as worthy and valuable to me and I will always love them no matter what.

And what I was struck by when I was listening to Dax talk was how easy it was for me to find that for him, this man that I don’t even know, but I do listen to him every week for the past two years, so I do kind of feel like I know him.

And that even though I felt disappointed in him and I felt sadness, there was so much love, and how easy that was for me to create for him and yet, how hard we make that for ourselves. And that’s your work, my friends. To learn to set high expectations for yourself, to shoot for those expectations, to know that you’re going to fuck up and to totally have your own back on your way there, whether it’s a planned face plant or an unplanned face plant.

The way you would for a friend, the way you would for your kids. You can do that for you too. In fact, I want to offer you that there’s no more important relationship in your life than the one that you have with yourself. Alright my coaches, so here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to face plant. You can’t avoid it, so you might as well plan on it and make as many of those planned face plants as you can.

Commit to doing a dare of the day, or maybe one big fail a week. Practice your belief, build that feelings muscle, evaluate and learn from what you’re doing. Find the confidence in knowing that you can handle whatever comes your way.

And then when you royally face plant, when you hurt someone or when you let someone down, or when you don’t trust yourself or lose integrity in yourself, learn how to love yourself even when to find your worth in your best and at your worst. Because that’s what being human is.

Find the beauty in that because that is why we are here. Alright my friends, I can’t wait to see what you create. My confident coaches, remember, until next week, 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?

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