Ep #119: Gap and Gain Actions

You are listening to episode 119 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where you learn to catch yourself in crappy actions that don’t serve you. All right, let’s go.

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.

Well hi there my confident coach. I hope you’re doing amazingly. I hope you are having a lovely Valentine’s Day week. And I have a super fun and hopefully incredibly useful episode lined up for you today. But I just have to stop for a moment because sometime in the past couple of weeks, I’m pretty sure it happened the last week of January, and this is now what, two, three weeks later, we surpassed 100,000 downloads.

That’s right, this podcast in just over 115-ish, let’s go 115, 116 episodes surpassed 100,000 thousand downloads. This puts us in the top 1% of all podcasts worldwide. And just say I’m a little verklempt.

I realize that this actually happened weeks ago, but I’m going to celebrate this with y’all Valentine’s Day week. Because this really feels like true love to me, that I make this episode every single week pulling from what I’m talking about in my Confident Coaches Mastermind, what work I’m doing in my own mastermind and the work that I’m doing with my peer coaches there. Pulling from just a grand idea that I get while I’m in the shower that I’m thinking, “Oh my gosh, my listeners need to hear this.”

Every single week for 119 weeks now I have thought about what y’all need to hear from me this week to help you keep going. To help you move forward. It’s such a love project on my end. And I can’t thank you enough for sharing this show, for sharing it with other coaches that you know, for tuning in every single week.

And here we are, top 1% of all podcasts worldwide. 100,000 downloads in just over 100 episodes. This is huge. Yeah, I mean I’m no exclusive with Spotify podcaster here, but this feels so much better. This feels like, yeah, this is it. This is the amazing work we’re doing. So I just wanted to let you all know thank you, you guys are so stinking awesome. You guys are so stinking amazing. Thank you for tuning in every single week and sharing the goods.

And when you see these podcast posts show up, so every single Tuesday you’re going to see me on the Instagrams, you’re going to see me on the Facebook, you’re going to see these posts from the podcasts, I would love to hear from you, my listeners. This is definitely like an action oriented podcast episode. Sharing what you’re getting out of this, I just love to give shout outs to my podcast listeners.

And y’all are worldwide, I have listeners in darn near every single country that I could have even imagined. So thank you all for coming in every single week and listening, I appreciate you all so much. Here is to the first 100,000 downloads, here is to 100,000 more. Thank you all for being here every stinking week.

And here’s the other thing, the reason that I’m not entirely sure when we surpassed it, I’m just pretty sure it was before my live event because I noticed I’m well over 100,000 at this point, so I’m not entirely sure when I hit it. But it was during that live event week where I was having a conversation with somebody and I was like I wonder where I am right now. I should probably look that up sometime and I looked it up when we got back.

So I also just did my very first in-person and virtual hybrid live events. So for every round of Confident Coaches Mastermind there is the Path to 100K Live Event. And that is what kicks off the mastermind. Now I’ve done the live event before it’s just been completely virtual. It was just all on Zoom.

This was the first time where we had people both in person as well as virtual. It was a thing. I’m just going to tell you all right now I could definitely do a podcast just on how that went down and how you’re capable of so much more than you think that you are. But Mother Nature dumped a foot of snow on St. Louis the day everybody was flying in, had to rearrange – 

Every every single person that was flying in had their flights canceled. Every single person. I think we ended up with six people flying in. Every single person had to rearrange flights and figure things out. One person didn’t get there until end of day Thursday. So she attended most of Thursday virtually, and then was there in person for the last two days.

I mean, I rearranged the entire program, everything. And it was amazing. Of course it was, I can’t even tell you. I can’t even tell you, like the city of St. Louis shut down. Nobody was cooking, the staff was staying at the hotel with us because there was like one restaurant serving lunch on Thursday and they were not offering deliveries. So the hotel manager actually went and picked it up for us.

All of the restaurants were canceling dinner reservations. And the hotel restaurant that we ended up at, they were closed and they were just serving us from a very limited menu. I mean, it was a thing. So I will be talking way more about lessons learned from that and the importance of confidence. The importance of having a program like Confident Coaches under your belt in order to handle that.

But I just have to say thank you to everybody. Thank you to the clients who showed up, the hotel staff, the video production crew that came in to make sure that the people who did not fly in, who were virtual, were able to see and hear pretty much every single thing that was going on in the room. Thank you to my amazing online business manager, Larissa Zozula, who flew in and was there with me to handle all of the details.

And y’all are going to want to be at the next one. I’m just going to tell you this right now. So we’re doing it again, first week of August, The Path to 100K Live Event, it’s going to kick off the next round of Confident Coaches Mastermind. And it was so phenomenal, it was such an over deliver. There were so many ahas, and it’s only going to keep getting better.

So just mark your calendars right now. First week of August, just plan to be at the next Path to 100K Live event and plan to be in the next round of Confident Coaches Mastermind, because y’all just don’t even know. And I’m actually going to share with you, so I’m going to share with you just a really small activity that we did at the live event here on the podcast today.

Because so many times coaches that I work with have a really hard time figuring out how to get themselves out of, like catching themselves doing shit that they don’t want to be doing. And not relating it to what they’re thinking. So we all conceptually understand that in the mastermind and any kind of coaching, you’re changing your thinking so that you can create new actions and new results.

And yet, we seem to be completely oblivious as to what our thinking is. So I actually coach my clients to become hyper aware of what it is they are and are not doing. And I taught it very differently at this live event than I’ve ever taught it before.

So to preface how I taught it this round, there is currently a book that I love. I actually gave every single person in the mastermind a copy of it, it is called The Gap and The Gain by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy. It’s a brand new book, I’m pretty sure that it just came out in 2021. If you don’t already have your hands on a copy of it, I cannot recommend it enough.

The two long, don’t read version, the hyper hyper short synopsis is to learn how to recognize when you are in the gap versus when you are in the gain. And the gap would simply be when you’re thinking about where you are now versus where you think you should be, you are in the gap. Versus the gain when you are thinking about where you are now versus how far you’ve come. Versus when you got started or even before you got started, and so that would be in the gain.

So you’ve heard me talk all the time about when you’re listening to the Helga part of your brain versus the Gigi part of your brain, when you are in an unintentional thought model, when you were thinking unintentionally, versus when you are in an intentional thought model or when you are thinking intentionally, it’s the gap in the gain, right? It’s just a different way to talk about which part of your brain are you using.

When you are in gap energy you are listening to the Helga part of your brain. You’re indulging in unintentional thought models, you are producing at a very low value. Versus when you are in the gain. When you are in the gain you are engaged with the Gigi part of your brain, you are engaged in Gigi thinking. You are in an intentional thought model, you’re thinking on purpose and believing on purpose. And you’re producing at a high value, versus that low value.

These are all different ways of essentially describing the same thing. And I will use any doorway that it takes to help you identify when you’re in the shit, versus when you’re in the gold. When you’re in the gap, versus when you’re in the gain. When you’re in your Helga brain, versus when you’re in your Gigi brain. When you are thinking like a cave woman, versus thinking about a forward thinking intentional woman. When you are in low value versus when you were in high value. When you were thinking unintentionally versus intentionally.

I want you to be going right now, “I get it, Amy,” Because so many of us will say, “Yeah, I get it,” and then you’re going to turn right back around, and you’re going to keep doing the same shit over and over and over again. So how many different ways can we help you identify that so you can stop engaging in actions or in action that is not moving you forward?

So we talked about this at the live event for the new February class because I, and you know this already, I’ve already talked about it on the podcast, I teach you the art of evaluation. And so many times when it comes to evaluating, when you’re thinking about what’s working you’re only putting down results. And when you’re thinking about what’s not working, you’re only putting down results.

Well, what comes before results? Before results comes actions. And really, to become a master at evaluating, which is what I teach you in the mastermind is that what’s working and what’s not working is really your thinking, right?

So it’s like our gut reaction is just to put results into what’s working and what’s not working. But really, you need to be paying attention to actions that’s working and not working. And you need to be paying attention to the feelings that are working and not working, so that you get to the thoughts that are working and not working. Okay?

So we’re not very good at identifying thoughts and feelings all the time because we’re only looking at the evidence that’s right in the palm of our hand right in front of us. So many times we cannot see past what’s immediately in our face.

So I went through this activity, and I’m going to go through this activity with you all here on the podcast, of identifying gap actions versus gain actions. Because the concept of the gap and the gain is very simple, I’m focused on where I think I should be versus where I am. Or are you focused on where you are versus how far you’ve come? Are you focused on everything you’ve achieved or everything you haven’t achieved?

And when you are focused on the gap versus the gain, you will find your actions are so very different. So of course you’ll keep getting the same results over and over again. So I had my students in the February class create a list of all of the actions that they find themselves in when they’re in the gap. And then we created a list of all the actions that they find themselves in when they’re in the gain.

So I want you to be listening to these, see how many of them you find yourself in, and do you have any more? This is not an exhaustive list. But I want you to just recognize when you are in Helga thinking, when you are in low value, when you are in unintentional thoughts, when you are in the gap because you’re focused on where you think you should be versus where you are today. What kind of things do you find yourself doing?

Here’s some of what we came up with in our group together last Saturday. I threaten my business by saying I’m going to quit. I quit for small periods of time. I complain other people, like my friend or other coaches or significant others. I write posts from a really needy energy.

Or maybe you compare yourself to other coaches who are ahead of you. Maybe you go to their Instagram page, you check out their metrics, you’re looking at their success. You’re counting how many people are responding to their posts versus how many people are responding to your posts.

Maybe you’re looking for new business coaching programs and you’re not finishing the one that you’re already in. Uh-huh, I’m talking to you right now. Yeah, you. You’re always looking for the next solution. You’re always thinking it must be something else. Sometimes you’re doing stuff that actually isn’t necessarily a problem, but you’re doing it instead of doing work that you said you’re going to do, like take the dog for a walk or go hiking.

Maybe you find yourself snacking or drinking. Maybe you’re not sticking to the schedule that you created for the day. You stop work early, you end your day early. Maybe you find yourself doing laundry or shopping online. I can tell you right now, I bought a whole lot of stuff last year that I didn’t need because I did a lot of online shopping. Last week’s episode, what’s in the way is the way, when I wasn’t dealing with my hard work that I needed to do. Instead, I was doing a lot of cute clothes shopping.

Maybe you’re scrolling news clips on Yahoo, or YouTube, or you’re on Twitter. Everybody at the live event found out that one of my favorite things to do is to argue with my senator on Twitter. So maybe you’re arguing with your senator on Twitter like I do. Maybe you’re watching new webinars. You’re constantly signing up for new coaches and new people’s  freebies, classes, and webinars.

You can get easily sold on low cost programs, like you’re buying all the 499 and 997 programs. You’re consuming education. You’re consuming podcasts, you’re consuming business programs in hopes to find the answer. Hoping that somebody somewhere has the answer.

You’re spending a lot of time overthinking about what you should and should not be doing, not making a lot of decisions because you’re so busy overthinking. And you’re really downplaying all of the success that you really have. You’re just completely ignoring everything that’s working, and you’re only focused on what’s not working.

So those would be gap actions. These are the kind of actions I want you to be paying attention for. Do you see yourself doing these things? Are you catching yourself? I actually used the phrase, find yourself, because one time I found myself on the bathroom floor having cleaned out half the bathroom cabinet.

And that really is what it is. Gap actions are kind of where you find yourself because you’re in a sort of fugue state. You are in an unintentional energy. You are indulging in Helga thinking. You are only focused on what’s not working. And so very frequently, a lot of your gap actions are going to be unintentional actions, unplanned actions. You’re going to find yourself in the midst of something you didn’t think about doing.

Anybody that works with overeating or over drinking understands this kind of work, right? We just kind of find ourselves with our hands in the bag of chips. We don’t even really remember how we grabbed the bag of chips. Where are you doing that in your business? What kind of unintentional actions do you find yourself in? These are gap actions and I just want to bring awareness to you so that you can pay attention.

When you find yourself in some sort of these actions that’s your opportunity to say, “Wow, okay, wait a minute. I’m not going to beat myself up. I see that I am here scrolling Facebook endlessly looking at other people’s posts and comparing myself to them. Why am I doing that?

Okay, this would be one of those gap actions that I listed after Amy’s podcast episode. If this is a gap action, that means I’m in gap thinking right now. That means I’m focused on what’s not working, I could choose to focus on what is working instead. So let’s just acknowledge that I am creating this.”

Do you see how knowing what your gap actions are is such an invitation for you? It’s an invitation to ask yourself, “I wonder what’s going on here? Why am I in the gap? What’s the thinking and the feeling that’s leading to these gap actions right now?” Because then you can solve it. Because then you can do something about it.

So many times we want to ignore being in gap action. So many times you want to ignore how we got there. And instead I want you to see this as an invitation, like this is where your coaching is. This is what you need to bring to a coach. This is what you need to sign up for Confident Coaches Mastermind and then go get coached on. This is what you need to raise your hand for. This is what I need coaching on. How do I know? Because I found myself doing these things and that was my indicator. That was my litmus test.

I want you to listen to this podcast episode and know what your litmus tests are, that you can identify where your coaching needs are so you can get coached and then move forward. And be really clear, it’s not eliminating gap actions. That is not – I want to be really clear that eliminating gap actions is not the goal here. The goal is to reduce the amount of time you are spending in gap action so that you can catch yourself.

For you to truly completely eliminate gap actions would be denying probably being human. You know, you could still definitely say – I was in fetal position for like 20, 30 minutes last week when the snowstorm was coming and all the flights were getting canceled, and I wasn’t sure what to do. Being in fetal position for 20, 30 minutes wasn’t in my plan last week, you could definitely say that was a gap action.

But it was only 20, 30 minutes, right? It’s not about eliminating these things, it’s about being on to yourself faster so you can get out of those gap actions, and then move into gain actions. Okay? So gain actions, same thing, only these are the actions when you are focused on what is working, when you are so proud of how far you have come.

When you’re in gain energy, what did those actions look like? Because we want, like let’s bring on a hell of a lot more of those, right? Let’s spend more time in the gain actions. Remember, if the goal is not to eliminate gap actions, it’s just to catch yourself faster so that you can move into the gain actions because it’s the gain actions that are going to create the results that you really want.

And it’s the gain actions where you’re going to find that confident foundation, you’re like, “Oh, yes, I know, this place. I know how to do these things.” So what would be gain actions for you?

So this was the list that we came up with, that my clients came up with, at the live event over the weekend. To write great content. If you are in gain action, you are writing really great content. You are producing content, you are producing valuable work that helps other people. You’re creating time to work on your business. You are intentionally consuming podcasts and business courses. Intentional learning, versus the consuming you do in the gap.

You’re going to see that some of the stuff is not unsimilar. It can be very similar actions, but it’s the energy and the intention with which you’re doing it, right? So you’re going to be posting more, going live more, showing your face more, and attaching that with the great content that you are creating because you’re in the gain.

And I loved this one, enjoy my life more. You will actually be walking the dog, and watching Netflix, and doing laundry, and shopping online, and going hiking because you’ve put your business down and you’re not always thinking about it. You go, you do what your business needs, and then you are also enjoying your life. That’s how you know you’re in gain.

You’re going to start conversations with potential clients, in person, or on Instagram, or online in any number of places. You might spend time improving your program. And what we mean by that is implementing new tools. You know, you’re coaching one client here and you come up with a great idea, so you go and you go share it with all your other clients. You’re improving your coaching across the board.

You are evaluating. By the way, everybody in the room was coming up with all these actions that they do. And I had to remind them, do the actions of confident coaches. Hi, we evaluate what’s working and what’s not working. And what we can do differently. We’re celebrating wins, right? We’re celebrating and truly being marveled by what we are creating.

We’re spending time in Gigi thinking. We’re spending time using our forward brain our prefrontal cortex thinking about what do we know? What are we sure of? What can we guarantee? What are we excited about? You’re doing your belief work, you’re working on your belief plan. You’re sitting in belief and you’re really creating that belief foundation.

You’re doing your value work. You are really thinking about what makes your work valuable, how you can make it more valuable. You’re asking yourself questions like how can I say this simpler and easier than I ever have before? As you’re doing this work you are also learning to sit in uncomfortable feelings. You’re no longer shoving uncomfortable feelings under the table.

And then on the flip side, you’re also learning to feel comfortable in the celebratory feelings. You have to practice both the negative side and the positive side of emotion. So you’re doing a lot of emotional strength training on both ends of the feeling spectrum.

You are asking for coaching from your coach. You are implementing the coaching that you’re receiving, you aren’t just asking for coaching over and over and over again. You’re reaching out to peers, you’re reaching out to your coach, and then you’re actually implementing the work before you go and you ask for more coaching.

You’re allowing yourself to dream more for your business. You’re spending a lot of time with your future self, and you’re going to that place in the future. And you’re thinking about what that vision would look like. You’re spending time in those emotions with those visuals.

This is one of the most favorite things to do, spend time in that emotional strength training and attach it to that visual of future self and start wiring and firing what that vision of that future is going to look like and how it will feel in your body. The more you visualize that and the more that you feel it in your body, the sooner you’re going to be able to actually create that. Because you’re also pairing that with that gain thinking, right?

Of course this is happening, here’s all the things that are amazing. And I can see that future and I can feel that future in my body. Oh my goodness, your gain actions, it’s going to be everything that we just said, but like tenfold. It’s going to be so much more powerful.

So I want you to think about these kinds of gain actions, that gain energy, that Gigi energy, that intentional energy. How you actually show up. This is very high value producing energy that you will be in. And to just get better at learning to distinguish the difference between gap actions and gain actions. And to be able to see that all the gap and the gain actions are coming from how you’re choosing to think and feel. And these are just invitations.

And I want to even invite you, I want to invite you that when you find yourself in gain energy, be willing to ask yourself how you were there. What are you thinking and feeling there too? You want to learn how to replicate this work, right?

So even when you are in the gain, you want to ask yourself, “Why am I in the gain right now? Why am I feeling so fabulous right now? What am I believing about myself, about my coaching, and about my business, about my clients right now that has me in this gain energy?” And I want you to remember those things because when you find yourself in the gap, which you will, knowing what gets you into the gain will help you get there back again even faster.

Okay, my coaches? All right, and just know this, there’s something really big coming to the Confident Coaches world. And I’m going to be announcing it very, very soon. So no matter where you are in your business, I want you putting that Confident Coaches Mastermind on your calendar for August. And if you’re trying to figure out how you’re going to make that happen, I’ve got a way to make that happen coming really soon.

That’s the teaser I’m going to drop with you right now. Okay? All right Coaches, just know this, I love you guys so much. I am so sure that if you’re listening to me right now, the life coaching business that you are thinking about, that you are dreaming about is absolutely possible. And everything that you need in order to create it can be found in your head and in this podcast, and we’re going to do it together. Okay? Until next week, I seriously cannot wait to see what you create. And remember, let’s go fuck some shit up.

Coaches, I have created a brand new freebie offer just for you podcast listeners. I created a brand new training called Stop Over-Complicating Confidence. Because I see my coaches do it all the time, make this confidence thing way harder than it has to be.

In this free training you’re going to learn exactly how you over-complicate confidence, what’s creating that, and how to stop it. Here’s the best part, all of it less than an hour. Less than an hour of your time. You will feel more confident in less than an hour. Yeah, friends, this is the best training I’ve ever done. So visit amylatta.com/podcastgift to get yours. Again, that’s amylatta.com/podcastgift. Go now and feel more confident in just an hour.

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.