We’ve been talking about your big hairy audacious goal for the last couple of weeks, and now I want to take this work deeper. I’m taking the next couple of episodes to discuss how to create massive action to create anything you want, even that BHAG you planned at the beginning of the year, so welcome to part one.
This week, I’m introducing you to the self-fulfilling prophecy model, and showing you how it works to create the results you want. To truly go after all that you want this year, it’s going to require a mindset shift and understanding how you can manage your mind, and using this model is going to help you do just that.
Join me this week to discover how you have full control of your current situation and future results. This work might seem scary because our brains love to hold us back from creating any big changes in our lives, but using this self-fulfilling prophecy model to manage and redirect your mind, to gain more awareness of what you’re creating for yourself is the first step to getting anything you want.
To celebrate the launch of the show, I’m giving away some serious fabulousness! ONE lucky listener will win a brand-new, series 4 40mm Apple Watch, and FOUR will win a $50 Amazon gift card. To find out more about the giveaway and how to enter, click here!
What You’ll Learn:
- Why our brains are often jerks when we are going after something we really want.
- The key to getting anything you want and what it requires.
- How the self-fulfilling prophecy model works.
- Why having a coach of your own is such a gift.
- How to differentiate between a circumstance and a thought.
- Why I encourage my clients to practice doing ‘brain dumps.’
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
- To celebrate the launch of the show, I’m giving away a brand-new Series 4 40mm Apple Watch and four $50 Amazon gift cards to lucky listeners who leave a rating & review in Apple Podcasts. Click here to find out how to enter!
- Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao by Dr. Wayne Dyer
- Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
Full Episode Transcript:
You are listening to episode 11 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where you learn how to get whatever you want.
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’s all my friends doing today? I am still processing my trip to Cayman, not going to lie. In the six intensive days that I spent in master coach training… I’m not yet ready to share all I’ve learned, but trust me, my friends, this woman is not the same woman she was just a week ago, and for the better.
I’ve just experienced how to help you guys move forward, but just know, the brain of the woman you’re listening to today is different than the brain that you listened to a week ago. But even more important than that, where is this month even going? I’m looking at the date and I’m thinking, how is it already halfway over? Didn’t we just start this year?
And for the past couple of weeks, we’ve been talking about our big hairy audacious goal, or maybe your big hairy ass goal. I don’t judge which word you use. Your word of the year, tapping into commitment, how to take massive action to get there. All of these things that are all tied in together.
And so I was thinking about where to go next and there’s so many different topics that I have that I could share with you and I was really deciding to take the next two episodes to talk about how to create that massive action no matter what you’re feeling because it really is that important to really figure out how to continue to keep going forward, how to create the feelings that are going to drive that continuous action.
Here’s the thing; it’s not that hard. It requires you to rethink how you approach things. I mean, it requires you to rethink, to literally change how you think, to change the computer program that has been written into your brain for so many decades, and to install a new computer program and start operating on that.
It’s so powerful when we can learn how to do this though because it’s the key to getting anything you want. And yes, you can get anything you want. The power is already inside of you, and I’m going to take the next two episodes to talk how to tap into that.
But before we dive in, let’s give a shout-out to Confident Coaches listener Kate, who wrote this fabulous review of The Confident Coaches Podcast on Apple Podcasts. Here’s what Kate wrote. She wrote, “This is a great podcast.” Well I mean, obviously I agree with her. She says, “I learn so much with each episode. Not only thoughts and ideas that motivate, but tangible exercises that bring real results. Amy provides so much value with each episode. I can’t imagine what it would be like to actually work with her.”
So here’s what I love about this. As of this past Monday, Kate is working with me. Kate is one of my nine new clients in my first ever Confident Coaches mastermind. She doesn’t have to imagine anymore. And I’m so excited, Ms. Kate and my fellow masterminders for what we will create these next six months, when we apply this work that I share in the podcast to real in-life people. This is what we do.
We don’t just talk about the ideas but actually apply it. I’m so excited to have Kate and the eight other ladies in my mastermind. So I was thinking about this episode and 2020 and our big hairy audacious goal and our one word of the year and all of that stuff, and that BHAG that I have for my business really requires such a mindset shift for me.
I’m talking about doubling in one year what it took me to create in seven years. That’s what I talked about in last week’s episode. And I’m thinking about that, I’m like, yeah, let’s do it. Let’s dive in. Because it’s going to be totally worth it as we grow this Confident Coach squad and make connections with one another and really support one another, my big picture here is this is what I want, to grow this community. And realizing the unexpected outcomes that come from confidence coaching coaches.
You’re not just signing more clients and creating more successful businesses, when I’m thinking about my confident squad here, I’m talking about encouraging you and helping you see how to have more powerful conversations in your life and taking care of yourself in a way that you’ve never done before.
Not only are you signing more clients and your business is improving, but your health is improving and your relationships are improving. Our lives as a whole just continue to get better and better the more we apply this confidence work to our businesses and to ourselves.
So as I thought about this how to get anything you want episode, I realized I don’t want to just help you all sign more clients. I really want you guys to thrive in your coaching business, yes, absolutely, sign those clients, make more money, but also in relationships and in health and in spirituality and whatever areas you have that you would love to see grow and expand.
And the thing is that they’re different for everybody. Some of those areas, some people, they’ve got that down. But when you really realize that when we apply this work that I’m talking about here in this podcast, it has the ability to help every area of your life. This is so much more than just The Confident Coaches Podcast. We want confident coaches kicking ass. Confident coaches finding peace in themselves and dominating in all areas of your life.
So I have all of that in my head, and then of course, guess what happened. My brain just started kicking in. I’m sitting there, I’m thinking about all of these things, and I’m feeling all of this excitement and this motivation, and here’s what I started hearing coming out of my own head. “Amy, that’s an awful lot. I’m not sure you can really do that. I mean, you’re special, but you’re not that special. There are other people already helping in the world. The world doesn’t need your voice too.”
I know, right? You hear that crap? But it’s really important to remember, our brains are kind of jerks. And the jerkiness always shows up right at the cusp of us going after something that we really, really want. This is like, self-sabotage 101. It’s not because you’re undisciplined or there’s anything wrong with you or your ideas aren’t good. It’s just because your brain is a little bit of a jerk.
I mean, even that’s not entirely true. Your brain is not an asshole. Your brain is not a jerk, though it certainly says some pretty jerky things to you. Your brain is actually trying to protect you. It’s that pesky little amygdala, that fight or flight response that we have hardwired into our anatomy. That primitive area of the brain that isn’t entirely sure we don’t still live in a cave and there aren’t sabretooth tigers out there waiting to pounce on us as soon as we step out.
Except the sabretooth tigers are now just change, any change. But especially big change. So all that big hairy audacious goal stuff, all that commitment and massive action. To your brain, that sounds like change and that sounds terrifying.
It happens so often that when we’re faced with a possibility of going after anything we want, our brains start shouting, “Why change? Sure, you’re miserable now, but you might be miserable when you get there, and why not just stay with the misery we know,” right?
The key to getting anything you want is realizing that we can learn to control that pesky little brain. We control our reality. There’s this self-fulfilling prophecy model at work, even if we aren’t paying attention to it. So how do you get anything you want? It’s all about learning to manage that brain of yours, that brain that is hardwired for protection and hardwired to freak out and hardwired to tell us everything that is not going to work.
We can learn to calm it down and manage it and redirect it. That requires a shift from being completely unconscious as to what’s going on upstairs in that brain of ours, to becoming conscious. And it ain’t always sexy and it ain’t always super marketable, but awareness is half of this process.
The simple act of realizing that everything that’s going on in your brain and not even trying to change it yet is huge. Most of us have lived unconscious for most of our lives. Honestly, most of us will die that way. Most of the people in your life will never become conscious enough to realize that they create their own reality. They will not learn to take emotional responsibility for themselves, and here’s the thing; that’s totally okay. This shit is hard and not everyone here is going to do this work on this run around the sun.
But you, my friends, are. If mean, if you’re listening to this right now, if you haven’t shut me off, that’s why you’re here. My confident coaches, right? So in this part one of how to get anything you want, we’re really looking at the main coaching tool that I use called the model. It’s self-fulfilling prophecy at its best.
It’s a great framework and when you truly understand it backwards and forwards, you will see that you can create anything you want in your life no matter what is happening. So I want you to grab your pen and your journal and write this down. The parts of the self-fulfilling prophecy model or just the model are this. C for circumstance, T for thought, F for feeling, A for action, and R for result.
It’s pretty simple. So your circumstances create thoughts. What you think about your circumstance. And what you think creates a feeling. A one-word emotion. That emotion stirs action. What you do or don’t do when you feel that way. And your actions always give you your results. What’s super fun and what makes it self-fulfilling is that your results can always be traced back to your original thought.
What you think is what you get. All the time. Even if you don’t want to admit it. So how do you get anything you want? How do you get any result you want? You learn this model. Friends, it’s self-fulfilling, and it’s always working so use it in your favor instead of against you. If you are living unconscious, the model is still working. You’re just using it against you. Kind of like punching yourself in the face.
But when you become conscious and really bring awareness to what you are thinking, you can start using it for you instead of against you. If we’re creating everything in our life, we might as well use it to create what we want, right? What do you have to think about your circumstances in order to create the feeling needed to drive the actions you’re going to have to take to get the result that you want?
Now, all y’all that checked out and you’re like, yeah, yeah, heard it, done there, you’re going to nod your head, right? You get this intellectually. This is not new thinking. This is cognitive behavioral therapy in the psychology world. This is change your thoughts, change your life stuff by Dr. Wayne Dyer.
This is Napoleon Hill in his Think and Grow Rich book from over 100 years ago. Crap, it’s older than 100 years ago. Even Aristotle way back in the 300s, before Christ 300s said, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it,” because our brain will think things that do not serve us. I say this all the time.
What does not serve you? It’s not that thinking is good or bad, it’s not that your habits are good or bad. It’s whether or not they serve you. And this line of thinking, it’s as old as time. I’ve got Marcus Aurelius quotes, quotes from the Bible. I mean, I have spent time grabbing quotes from across time of this idea that how we think creates everything in our life.
So this isn’t new, CTFAR is not new. It’s just a simple mathematical model that we can use to create what we want to create. So it’s like, ancient thinking and a modern-day tool put together. This is how we create everything we want. And in order to get anything you want, you got to let go of what no longer serves you because that is helping you create what you don’t want.
And your brain will think things that don’t serve you all the damn time. All the time. Because it’s trying to keep you safe from the big bad monster outside the cave called change. So none of this is a new concept and you’re a super smart life coach so you will absolutely get it intellectually. You’ll get it in your brain. But getting it in your bones, moving it from that abstract motivational meme you see on Monday mornings to actual reality. That, my friends, that takes practice and it takes daily practice.
If you want to truly get anything you want, you will have to learn to manage your mind on a regular basis, and you’re going to fail at that. You’re going to fail at that a lot. I know, I do often. Like, masters and beginners alike will struggle to separate circumstances, facts, from your thoughts. I just did that intensive week of deep coaching with 21 master coach candidates and it was so obvious that we will never be without our human brain that confuses the two things.
Like, we’re all brilliant coaches. There was even a moment where one of the master coach instructors, she teaches us how to be master coaches. She’s that good, and she got called out on a thought that she had that she really believes is fact. Even though yes, intellectually speaking she knows that’s not true, but she’s still choosing to think it.
There’s no point at which you are ever going to be without your human brain, so there’s no point at which you’re just automatically going to always choose the right thing to create exactly what you want. That’s just not how this thing works.
And this is by the way, one of the biggest reasons to have a coach of your own, because having someone be your mirror as you figure this out, it is simply the greatest gift. You will hear my coach others and you will see it so simply and easily and yet you’ll struggle to see it when it’s you working through your own model.
This was so apparent last week in master coach training. It doesn’t matter how genius you are, how intelligent you are, how much you teach other people, how much you coach. You will always have that brain screwing around in your head.
And this happens all the time with my own life coaching. When I feel stuck, when I can’t seem to create what I need, it’s so obvious to others in my small group coaching. But it takes one of my coaching friends to say, “Hey, do you not see this thought is completely optional? You don’t have to think this.”
“Oh, you know what, I didn’t see it. I’m a smart woman and I’m a great coach, but no, I didn’t see it, but I do now, thank you.” And it’s okay not to see it all the time. Being willing to study this and practice it and fail at it and try again.
So, let’s try some right now. Let’s really dive into what each of those parts really means. So, your C is for your circumstances. These are the facts of your life. You will think these are your thoughts. They aren’t. If you ask anyone on the planet, they have to all agree.
So, I have the litmus test of, would all seven and a half billion people on the planet agree with the circumstance here or the triggering event that happened? So, I don’t have enough clients, quote unquote. That’s not a circumstance. That is a thought. Because, what’s enough? It’s so open to interpretation. All seven and a half billion people on the planet would not agree with that.
I have five clients. Now, that is a circumstance, we could look that up and it would eb factual. And here’s the most important thing about circumstances; it’s neither good nor bad. There’s no judgment on that C-line. It’s just what is, what happens, what was said, the facts, the numbers. For the circumstance, what is the fact, the event, with no description or interpretation, okay.
So, the second part of the model is your T-line or your thought about that circumstance. This is where the jury of your peers who all agree on the number may all have different ideas about what the number means. One coach would die for your five clients. And another coach would be like, “That’s what I sign every month, no big deal.”
This is where everything you’ve been sure is fact is actually not fact. This is where your brain starts saying, “I don’t have enough clients. I don’t make enough money. I don’t know how to talk in front of a large group, I’m not sure I can do this.” Or, “I absolutely can do this. This is easy. This is hard. I’m not good enough. I’m the perfect coach for my clients.”
You’ll notice, with each of those statements, every single one of them is absolutely a thought. And you can see that some of those thoughts will serve you, and some of them won’t. When you look at your calendar and you count your consults on the book this month, you have a choice in what you’re going to think.
You have a choice in what you make that number mean. Just because you might make it mean something terrible, doesn’t mean you have to continue to do that. Like, did you know that this is amazing news? Just because, in the past, you’ve always thought that the number you see on your calendar or the number on your scale or whatever it is, you’ve always made it mean something terrible in the past, all thoughts are optional. You don’t have to continue to do that.
And when you learn to tune into what you’re thinking and you remember that everything you think is optional, this is the key to the universe right here. So, the first step is to notice what you’re thinking.
I coach my clients to do daily brain dumps, like just download all the random thinking onto paper in a journal. Like, let’s just see it all in black and white. And then, just grab one thought. When you’re just starting out especially, just pick any thought that you see. And you do get better over time with picking the thought that’s really driving everything. But if you’re just starting out, we don’t have to overthink this, even though you really love to overthink it.
Just pick a thought, like, “I need to sign more clients.” Let’s just run with that thought right there. So again, the circumstance we have here is not I have enough clients or I don’t have enough clients or anything like that. We’re actually putting, in the circumstance line, exactly how many clients you currently have.
And we’re noticing a thought, a very common thought, about I have five clients. And again, this is just pure example. A lot of my clients will think, “I need to sign more clients.” So, let’s run with that thought right there.
Notice how that thinking makes you feel, “I need to sign more clients.” Can you put a one-word emotion on what that thought creates for you? Feelings are just one-word emotions. So your thinking line, your T-line is only one sentence, and your F-line, your feeling line is only one word; sad, happy, excited, nervous, anxious, calm, encouraged, hopeful, unstoppable, desperate.
Negative thinking always creates negative feelings. You can’t get blood from a turnip and you can’t create positivity from crap. I just made that up right now and I like it. we’re going to run with that.
It’s important to always remember that emotion and feeling, it’s just vibration in your body. Emotion means energy in motion. We’re all energy, so when you’re feeling emotions, those one words, you’re feeling energy vibrating inside your body.
I love – it’s one of my favorite things, it’s one of my superpowers to help my clients tune into that emotion and pay attention to where they’re feeling it. Is it heavy or soft? Fast or slow? Where is it in your body, your head or your stomach? Do you feel it across your chest or around your shoulders?
Feelings are so much less terrifying when you realize that they’re simply vibrations and that the vibration of it all actually can’t hurt you. And those feelings are all coming from what you’re thinking.
So, when you think, “I need to sign more clients,” how does that make you feel? What’s your one-word emotion? You may have any number of words, but pick the one that feels most right that matches the vibration that you feel in your body.
“I need to sign more clients,” makes me feel defeated. It could be dread or maybe inadequate, depending on the day, but right now, I feel defeated. It feels heavy and slow, like a weight on my shoulders.
Alright, so, what’s the next line? Circumstances, thoughts, feelings, and now it’s time for the A, your actions. So, when you’re feeling however you just described, what kind of actions do you take? Your actions may be inaction.
I find, for me, negative emotion frequently creates inaction in me; hiding, laying on the couch, watching Netflix when I would rather be emailing offers to my list. So, if I’m feeling defeated before I even get started on taking any action, I’m probably not writing compelling Facebook posts or any of the actions that I could be taking to get the results I want. And it’s possible I’m doing something else too.
It’s altogether possible that I am taking action, but it’s not action that’s getting me anywhere, like cleaning out my Dropbox or some other thing that makes me think I’m being productive when I’m not actually. So whatever action I am or am not taking, that’s what creates that last letter, that R-line of the model which is results. What kind of results am I going to get from taking these actions, of either doing nothing in order to feel better or doing non-productive action?
Remember, I feel defeated. And I don’t like feeling defeated. So I’m either going to numb out by watching some Netflix or scrolling Facebook or I’m going to make me think I’m doing something with a bunch of non-productive action. Either way, I’m not taking any action that helps me sign more clients, right?
Alright, so let’s go back to the top. The circumstance is, I have five clients. The thought was, I need to sign more clients. The feeling was defeated. And when I feel defeated, the action was either no action at all or non-productive action like organizing files. So I’m not taking any action or I’m taking non-productive action, the result I get, guess what, I’m not signing any more clients. Which is kind of funny how that thinking created that feeling which created those actions, giving me the result of not signing more clients, right?
The thought, I need more, gives me the exact opposite result. It’s always self-fulfilling. So, I can choose to stay stuck in that self-fulfilling circle, or I can decide to change. You can decide to change. But first, you have to see it, right? We have to be able to see what we’re operating in. We have to be able to see that model that we are circling around in before we could ever change it.
We have to be able to see how our thought and nothing else outside of us is directly creating the results that we have in our life. Now, in order to get anything we want in our life, it’s about deciding to change how we think. We create a new self-fulfilling prophecy model. And the way that we do that, we create one in which we can put anything in the result line, right? Put anything in that R-line and then work it backwards.
What’s the anything you want result that you want? What actions will you need to take in order to get that? How will you need to feel in order to spur that action? And what do you need to think in order to feel that way?
So, in part two of How to Get Anything You Want, I’m going to dive even deeper into working the self-fulfilling prophecy model the other way; how to start with the end in mind, how to start with the result you want to create in your mind and work it backwards in order to get to the thoughts that you need to start thinking.
I love putting anything I want in the results line. It blows my mind every time. I can’t wait to show you how to do it so you can actually create the result that you want. We’re going to do that in next week’s podcast.
So, for this week, really just take a look at that model and how self-fulfilling it is. What’s your circumstance? What’s the facts? What’s your thought about the facts? What’s your feeling that that thought creates, the action you take when you feel that way, the result you get when you take that action? And remembering that your results always confirm your original thought.
Sometimes, you can’t completely tune into the thought but maybe you can feel the feeling, and sometimes you’re completely unconscious to the thought and feeling but you can see the actions you’re taking.
The fun thing about the CTFAR is that it doesn’t have to be linear at all. You can come in with awareness at any place along the way. But just learning this level of awareness and just owning and taking full responsibility that you are actually creating everything in your life, I am not exaggerating, it is life-changing. It changes everything. It has completely changed mine.
We can use this when talking about the relationship with our husbands. We can use this when we’re talking about our health and our weight. We can use this when talking about our relationships with our family members, the friends in our life, but really understanding that we create everything we have. And as soon as we focus on the negative of how things aren’t working and how we don’t know how to sign more clients and we’re not sure what to do and I don’t know if this is going to work and I don’t know what people are going to think about me.
As soon as we go there, realize, it’s the very result that we’re going to get. And when you can own that by bringing awareness to your models that you’re creating in your life, then we can actually start to create the change that we really want to see. And yeah, it takes practice, and you may not be that great at it at first. It’s totally okay.
You can absolutely get anything you want by learning the skill of managing your brain. And just like any skill, it just takes practice in order to do it. and don’t you wish they would have taught you this in grade school, by the way?
Here’s what I love. I’m the mom of a couple of boys and a 20-year-old girl and I love sharing this stuff with them. I’m teaching them right alongside me. This is how we can create change in the world together, by learning how to get anything we want, by learning how to manage our brain and teaching that to our children so that they can do the same.
This is the ripple effect. This is the butterfly effect. So please, I want to know how you’re doing with this. Is this something you’ve got down and you listened to this episode like, got it, done it, already figured this shit out, Amy. Or is this, like, brand new, like, holy cow, I think my brain just exploded?
You can leave a comment on the webpage for this episode, send me an email, connect with me. Let me know if you’re falling flat on your face when it comes to working your own models, or if you’re getting the hang of it. I cannot wait to see the work we do together in 2020 because it’s going to be so brilliant. We’ll all be unstoppable as we train together in how to manage those brains of ours.
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.
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