Ep #123: Stop Beating Yourself Up

You are listening to episode 123 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where you stop beating yourself up when you faceplant. Because we’re all going to faceplant. 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.

Oh my goodness coaches. Hi, how are you today? Amazing? Fabulous? You sneezing? I’m getting a little sneezy. Yay for spring. Like Boo for spring, but yay for spring. Getting a little sneezy out there. But the first thing that I was going to say is like, can you feel it? And then I thought, not your itchy eyes and your runny nose?

But can you feel the energy? Can you feel it? Coach, we are one week away from the doors opening to Free To Paid Coach. Now if you’re in the future Free To Paid Coach is already open. Okay, if you are not listening to this podcast in March of 2022, Free To Paid Coach is already open. Like go run to the website right now and go get your booty signed up.

But right now, one week, one week away, Free To Paid Coach. The funny thing is, is the more I’ve been talking about this with people, the more I’ve been writing about it and getting my thoughts clear around talking to you guys about it I’m like this is what so many of you have been asking for.

So many of you who have emailed me over the past three to four years, who have gotten on consult calls with me in the past three to four years have said, “If only you had a program for somebody that was brand spanking new. If only you had a program that just taught the super basics. I just want to get my first paid clients under my belt. I’m not ready, necessarily for that mastermind level.”

This is it. This is what you’ve been asking for. This is literally everything that I wish that I had when I started. That I needed when I started, in a format that is accessible to everyone in the industry. I have done everything I can to make the barriers to entry to Free To Paid Coach as easy as possible for you.

If you want to be a confident paid coach, there simply is no other program out there for you to be in. Now we’ve been talking about Free To Paid Coach for the previous three episodes. Exactly what the five steps are that you’re going to learn inside the program, why you need them, and how to use them to get you paid.

You don’t have to have listened to the past three episodes to jump in with us today, but if you want to like really understand why you absolutely must enroll in Free To Paid Coach when we go live on March 21st, you might want to. If you want to better understand what you get when you enroll in the program, these are the five episodes that I’m laying it all out on the line for you.

I mean and Free To Paid Coach is simply the program that every single coach needs in their toolbox. Because there are a lot of y’all humans out there, some of you are thinking, “I’m a pretty confident person already.” You feel pretty confident until you’re building a life coaching business from scratch and you realize, you finally have the realization, oh, the way, I’m going to attract the best clients and not have to constantly seek them out is to be 100% authentically myself.

You’re going to have to remove all of your filters and you’re going to have to not be afraid of anyone’s judgments. And you’re going to not need clients on the books in order to believe you’re really going to be successful at this. How many clients have come into my programs in the past who have said, “I’ve always thought of myself as pretty confident until I started this entrepreneur life coach journey? That has challenged everything I knew about myself.”

I’ve seen too many people come into Confident Coaches and be like, “I’m so confident in other areas of my life, I was so confident selling for somebody else. I was so confident in my job or someplace else. But this entrepreneur life coach thing, this is a different bird. This is really testing my ability to be 100% me all of the time with no apologies.”

And some of you, if you’re like, “For sure I’m going to feel fabulously confident when I’m fully booked and making six or even seven figures.” Think again. No, there is no, listen, listen I’m saying this with so much love and I’m yelling at you. There is no amount of money in the bank or number of clients on your calendar that can take away your human brain. That’s just not how your brain works. That’s not how any of our brains work.

And so many of my clients do not believe me. They’re doing the confidence work, but they’re secretly sure that when they make the money, when they have the clients, they’re going to feel better about themselves. Until they hit that first $5,000 or that $10,000 and they are stunned, stunned that all of that bullshit in their head is still there. Of course, it’s still there because money and clients don’t take away your human brain.

This is the foundational competence that every single life coach needs. Better yet, this is like so much, like I know, I know what it feels like to have foundational confidence. And it’s like knowing that, I want so badly for everybody else to have that because I just know what that feels like, and the safety and security coming from inside of you rather than outside of you.

But listen, it’s going to get you paid. This is how you become a paid coach. This is the program that’s going to get you paid, plain and simple. And the steps are super simple, we’ve been going over them for the past few weeks. Believe you’re a paid coach, learn how to handle the discomfort of asking for money, relying on yourself instead of others, stop beating yourself up when you fail. And then keep going until you’re a confident paid coach.

The doors open on March 21st and between now and then you’re going to know exactly what to expect from the program. So believe you’re a paid coach, handle the discomfort of asking for money, relying on you and what you already know. And this week, stop beating yourself up when you fail.

True story. Some of you right now just said, “Well, I just won’t fail. I’m just going to do whatever I can to avoid failure.” There’s going to be a lot of, “Sorry, wrong answer” in this episode. Yeah, actually, you will. 100% you’re going to fail. 100% you are going to faceplant. 100% you’re going to have to face some public humiliation.

If you don’t, are you even a businessperson? Like are you even an entrepreneur, bro? Right? Name me one massively successful business or business owner who hasn’t had a public faceplant? Like you can’t. Everyone has bombed at one point or another. Everyone has failed massively at one point or the other. They wouldn’t have become successful if they hadn’t.

Everyone has haters who judge them. Publicly judge them on their Facebook page and their Instagram comments. You’ve read them, right? You’ve seen them. Think about this, your most admired or most respected business leader, people you would have on your board of directors if you could, they have people who hate them.

I know. It’s crazy, right? I think about how I’d have Michelle Obama, and Brene Brown, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg on my board of directors because I admire them so much and I see so many qualities in them that I know that are in me. And there are people who downright hate them, which is so weird to me. So of course, you’re going to have to experience that.

Okay, so now, some of you, some of you, I hear you. I hear your little brains. I hear your little Helga brains, let me rephrase that. You have a giant magnificent brain, but you’ve got a little Helga brain in there too. Some of you have just gone from I’m not going to fail to, well, I just won’t get that big. I’m just going to stay small.

And you want to know what I have to say to that? The fuck you will. Sorry, channeling a little Marty Bird from Ozark, or was that Ruth, “The fuck you will.” I do a really great Ruth impersonation, by the way, if you all watch Ozark. Side note, I digress.

Listen, coaches. Listen, my friend, you cannot have it both ways. You can’t be over here, I have this desire to help people and be a life coach and get paid as a life coach, but I don’t want to face rejection, or humiliation, or failure, or have to deal with super uncomfortable conversations around money. So I’ll just dip my toe in a little bit. No you won’t, that’s not how this works.

Dipping your toe in just a little bit doesn’t create a life coaching business that gets you paid. Unless you’re okay with just a little bit here or there. Unless you’re okay to not feel empowered on how to create clients when you want them. Unless you’re okay to taking a backseat in your own business and just letting things happen to you rather than learn how to create them for yourself.

You can’t have both things. But Free To Paid Coach teaches you, and specifically this fourth step of stop beating yourself up is that you don’t have to avoid failure, and humiliation, and rejection. Like over here the way you’re going to have clients clamoring to sign up with you, the way you’re going to draw your ideal people in, the way you’re going to take a front seat in your coaching business is going to require failure, humiliation, and rejection.

And here’s the best news, you don’t have to avoid it anymore. Because stop beating yourself up inside the Free To Paid Coach is going to teach you how to handle all of that. You can actually learn how to experience all of those things and it not have to be the devastating thing that it’s always been. And that is what’s actually going to make you confident as fuck. Confident AF. I am dropping some F bombs today.

This topic right here, I’m so stinking passionate about. Like just today, just today inside the mastermind I coached a client on something. It wasn’t quite the same topic, but it came down to the same thing. She was having an awful, terrible, no good, very bad day, right? And she said, “I just feel like shit. And I just think life would be better if I didn’t feel like shit. Feeling this, I’m going to get stuck here and I’m going to drown in it.”

And when I asked her how that felt, she was like, “It feels like I’m in a prison.” She had this heavy, oppressive feeling on her. This thought that I just think my life would be better if I didn’t have to feel this way was creating this heavy feeling on her chest. Like she was actually like illustrating like heavy prison bars and weight on her body.

So I coached her to this place where she entertained the idea of how might life actually be better or richer if she was willing to experience the shit? And you could feel the air whoosh out of the room. She immediately felt lighter, you could see her body immediately raise up.

And I asked her why. And this is what she said, and here’s the point of the story. She said, “If I can feel this and experience this, there isn’t anything I can’t experience. Which means there’s nothing I won’t be willing to try or willing to do.” And it was like, boom, bingo. Yes. Yes. That right there.

When you realize you don’t have to avoid feeling failure, humiliation, rejection, that’s when you realize, oh my goodness, bring it all on. I can do any of this. You think so many of us think confident is avoiding anything bad. And I’m like, no, confidence is saying I am strong enough to handle whatever comes my way. I can handle whatever comes my way.

Look at all this bounty of evidence that I’ve already done it throughout my life. And then it becomes that’s why I’m willing to try anything, to say anything, to test, and fail, and faceplant over and over again until my clients are coming to me and I am a paid coach.

Listen, there will be some coaches who just have everything go right for them. They’ll open their doors and get hordes of people wanting to sign up with them. They’ll raise their prices and they’ll get even more people and everything will just be taking off like a rocket. Also, those coaches are like the 1% of the 1% of coaches, okay?

I think something only like, I don’t know, I’ve read a variety of statistics, 1, 5, 6, 10. Let’s even be super generous and say 10% of all life coaches can have a six figure business, which I don’t think the percentage is that high. But let’s be super generous and say that it is. Like 1% of those people, like the 1% of the 1% experience a super easy path where everything goes right for them.

But even then, even then, they will hit a wall of struggle somewhere. Because some part of them did think the money in the clients would take any bullshit in their brain away and it just doesn’t. And they’re sitting on a mountain of cash and clients and terrified that it’s all going to go away.

You ever see super successful people get everything they ever wanted and then they’re not okay? It’s literally the basis of every True Hollywood Story. That’s literally the plot of every VH1s Behind The Music that I just shared with you right there. Without the foundation of confidence and knowing how not to beat the shit out of themselves when they mess up, they’re a wreck.

And Free To Paid Coach is going to teach you how not to be a wreck. It’ll feel messy, but it won’t be a wreck. And honestly it will only feel messy because it will just feel new.

You’ve managed to overwork, a runaway, or overeat, or over drink, or Netflix your way, or Facebook or Instagram your way up way from having to feel any of those feelings. And you’re going to learn how to figure that out. You’re going to learn how to have your own back. You’re going to learn how to stop beating yourself up inside Free To Paid Coach. No worries, this is my specialty. Like, this is what I do, this is my jam.

This is why Free To Paid Coach is a program unlike any other out there. This program over here is going to help you sell. This program over here is going to help you coach. This program over here is going to help you market. This program right here, Free To Paid Coach, it’s going to teach you how to love yourself when you fuck up. It’s going to teach you how not to make the mistakes in your life mean that you’re a piece of shit.

And when that happens, there’s no limit to the amount of clients that you can sign. Damn it if I’m not getting a little emotional over here, that’s how passionate I am about this. So inside Free To Paid Coach, inside stop beating yourself up when you fail, there’s a couple of tools that you’re going to learn.

You’re going to learn how to have go-to thoughts. Now I actually have mine on colored postcards in my desk that I created like five years ago when I first got certified. They’re literally thoughts that you keep in your back pocket to remember about yourself, or about your business, or about your capability, or about your clients when things aren’t working the way that you want them to.

Like when you mess up these thoughts are available to you. You’ve pre-planned them in advance, you don’t have to go search for them. You don’t have to go do some model work and do some self-coaching. You can just have them at the ready.

Oh yeah, that’s right, there’s a super fun exercise that we’ll do in Free To Paid Coach, I don’t know how often we’ll do it because Free To Paid Coach is an ongoing program. Like once you join, you’re in it forever so there will be people always joining. So I don’t how often we’ll do this, but there’s this exercise that’s super fun to do with these go-to thoughts.

It’s one of my favorite exercises that I first learned when I first became certified as a coach. And we’re going to be doing that on the semi-regular in the weekly coaching calls. But you’re 100% going to have to join Free To Paid Coach to find out what that exercise is. It’s super fun, it’s very interactive. And it will break your brain when you realize that your go-to thoughts are available to you even when you make like a horrific horrible mistake in your business, which you’re 100% going to do because we all do.

You’re also going to rediscover your self-worth. This is also one of my favorite tools, actually all of these tools, well, we’ll get there in a second. I’m jumping ahead of myself. This is one of my favorite tools inside Free To Paid Coach, which is the worthiness scale and my worthy statements. It’s like part affirmation part Jedi mind trick. I have had clients pull themselves from the depths with just this one tool alone.

This is the one tool, because I’ve been coaching for six years now as a certified coach, this is the one tool that I have had the most number of people use. It’s super simple and it’s super effective. The worthiness scale, it is a game changer. You’re going to need to have this, you’re going to want to have this.

And then those two tools plus just learning how to love yourself even when you don’t feel very lovable, like such a key. And listen, this may be step four in the process, but why I’m so passionate about it and why all of these tools are my favorite, this is my favorite tool. No, this is my favorite tool. This is the first step I had to work on.

So six years ago when I was starting out, this is the work that I needed. To stop treating myself so terribly. To stop making every little mistake mean I couldn’t do any of this and I might as well quit. Like to stop spending so much time divulging in whether or not I was deserving of this business or deserving of these clients.

This was my biggest work, this episode right here. This step right here, this was my most important work. It may not be the one you need the most, but for so many of you, this is the piece of the program you for sure do not find in any other place because it’s so integral to my confidence journey, and I just don’t see it in other people’s work.

And just understand, being the owner of a life coaching business inherently means sales calls that go sideways, public posts that people will absolutely take issue with, webinars where no one’s going to show up. It’s going to happen. So stop putting off that webinar because you’re afraid it’s going to happen.

Sign up for Free To Paid Coach, learn how not to beat yourself up, and then schedule a webinar every single week for the next 12 weeks so that you get really damn good at them. And then you don’t have to make yourself mean that this isn’t going to work or you’re not very good at this when you have the one, or two, or five webinars where people don’t show up, right?

Every coach is going to have that coaching program where only a few clients get results that you promised. And you’re going to have to retool it, and you’re going to have to solve for why. You can only do that if you’re not beating the shit out of yourself, you see? You are absolutely going to have clients who fire you. Oh my gosh, are you going to have clients who fire you.

Or you’re going to have clients who publicly tell other people, “You want to know what? Working with Amy was not worth it. I regret investing with her.” I know that that’s happened because I’ve had people email me and say, “I’m not joining your program because someone told me, who took your program, that it wasn’t worth it.”

Do you see why you need to be able to not beat the shit out of yourself when stuff like that happens? It’s going to to happen. But here’s the best news, you can handle it. You can handle it when you learn how to stop beating yourself up. And your work inside Free To Paid Coach is to learn how to be okay, when those things happen.

And listen, I get it. I 100% get it. Everything about our society says we can’t fuck up. And it’s not even just cancel culture, this is not a modern issue, okay? I could do just a podcast on cancel culture because I think the whole concept is a big line of bullshit. And I’m like, “You’re calling it cancel culture, but it’s literally like society since the dawn of time.”

Ladies who country club, or ladies who lunch have been discussing the failures and the misfortune of others for centuries. Like, “Oh, did you hear how dreadful?” Yeah, I’ve been watching like tons of Gilded Age on HBO. We’ve been living under rules of how life is and is not to be lived, how you should and should not be for literally millennia.

These rules were set by the very few in power, and they gave the illusion of perfection. Like we never saw their shit that was going on behind closed doors. I mean, we are now that they’ve made TV shows about literally every dynasty that’s ever lived. But at the time, we never saw their ugly shit, right? So we thought, “Oh, the very few in power have perfect lives. There’s no failure up there on that pedestal.”

And they did that to keep the rest of us out of power. It’s like, “Oh, I’m sorry, you’ve messed up way too much for us to let you into our upper echelons of society.” What’s super crazy, like to add to that is that the few in power convinced us that their rules for society are what kept us safe. Like our safety was based on following those rules and always trying to not mess up and to not fail.

Listen, your 10th great grandmother had to learn the hard way that her life was on the line if she failed to fit in with perfection and never failing. I was just listening to a podcast today that was some side stories about the Salem witch trials. Like this was like real stuff and how they’re, you know, the story of this one woman. And no, I don’t remember the details. So like this was a real story and you’re just going to have to trust me that most of this is probably true that I’m getting ready to say. 

But the general gist of that, in this colonial society there’s a woman who was a widow. And she was a landowner, like she inherited her husband’s land. And that was not the norm and she didn’t follow the rules of society, and she kind of ran things the way that she chose to run things. And it didn’t look the way that other people always looked. And she was ultimately put on trial for being a witch.

Because obviously, the only solution in the 1600s is that if you were a woman landowner in the 1600s in colonial America and you were living life the way you thought you should be living life and not following other people’s rules, clearly you were witch. This is such a true story, they did a trial by ducking, and that’s not Siri correcting me. D-U-C-K, it’s where they like bind your hands and your feet and they throw you into the water.

Very long story short, if you’re pure, the water will accept you and you will sink and you will drown and that will mean that you’re not a witch. But if water rejects you and you live because you’re able to get out, that must mean you’re which. It was like a lose lose situation.

This entire thing was all around this idea that anyone that stuck out from the norm, that did things their own way, that failed. That went against the norms of society, that did anything different, that stuck out, that was facing criticism or anything, they must be a witch and we have to put them to death.

That is some generational fear that has been passed down. Conformity meant safety. That’s some generational fear that’s not only been passed down, it’s generational fear about not being perfect. And it’s a huge dream killer in the modern days. Like we’re no longer being thrown into the water with our hands and ankles bound together hoping that we sink or not sink. Like seriously, wait, if I sink, I’m not a witch, but I’m dead. So that doesn’t sound like a win for me.

There’s literally a scene in Monty Python about that thing. It’s like a real thing, it’s crazy. But that was real. And we may not be at risk of that now, but that fear is still in our brain. So of course we want to always look like everybody else looks, and we never want to stick out. We don’t want to be the one that’s seen tripping or failing amongst the hordes of people, right?

We don’t want to be the one that’s flagrantly sticking out, that’s flagrantly making mistakes, that’s flagrantly going against the norm. Because our very life is on the line, or at least that’s what your Helga brain is going to tell you because your 10th great grandmother was thrown into a lake with her ankles bound, right?

But if you can learn, if you can learn to stop beating yourself up with every fail or every mistake, not only will you be rewriting that generational pattern, you’re going to be trying like 100 more things than you would have otherwise. And you’re going to be out there making an ass of yourself.

But like my grandmother would have said or, actually, she would have said making a spectacle of yourself. You’ll be out there making a glorious spectacle of yourself and your people are going to be like, “That’s my person.” And that’s what’s going to create a confident paid coach.

This is why this work is so damn important. This is why every single coach needs to know how to stop beating themselves up. Like we’re rewriting generational fear that has kept us small, that has kept us quiet, that has kept us in line. And if you learn to stop beating yourself up, it won’t matter what everybody out there is saying, or thinking, or doing. Because you got you. You got your own back. You love you even when.

And I have a step by step process to stop beating yourself up. It works. Do not run your life coaching business without it. And on March 21st you’re not going to have to anymore. Be ready for when the doors open to Free To Paid Coach, because Free To Paid Coach is what you need, whether you’re a brand new coach, or you just want to finally become a paid coach.

It’s an ongoing coaching program, you’ll have lifetime access to the Free To Paid Coach course materials online. Which means videos, and workbooks, our private Facebook group, and weekly webinar style coaching. Free To Paid Coaches $1,000.

And my favorite thing is always about the community. It’s like a community of spectacles, that’s what we’re going to call us. The Facebook group is going to be the community of people making a spectacle, right? Come make a spectacle with us. You do not have to do this all on your own.

You can. You can do this on your own, you can go and you can do the programs where you learn how to sell, and you learn how to market, and you learn how to coach. You absolutely can. But learning how to love yourself even when you fuck up, that’s some beautiful stuff and you don’t have to do that on your own.

If you’re brand new coaches never worked with clients, never been paid, want to get consistently paid as a coach, this is the program that you need. And here’s the declaration that I am making. I’m taking 100 coaches with me to $5,000 in the next six months, that’s by September. You ready? 100 of you will have $5,000 more in the bank than you do now. And I want you to be one of them.

Let’s make this happen. Be one of the 100. March 21st, mark your calendar. And if you want to guarantee you’re going to be one of those 100, get on the wait list, amylatta.com/FTPCwaitlist. Get on the wait list, amylatta.com/FTPCwaitlist. Because not only am I taking 100 of you to $5,000, the first 25 of you, I’m going to give you a special free bonus masterclass on how to sign your next 10 clients.

It’s exactly what you need to do to sign your next 10 clients. You want to be in that masterclass because you’re going to get directly coaching from me on that one topic. Okay? So make sure you’re on the wait list, amylatta.com/FTPCwaitlist and be one of the first 25 people that sign up on March 21st.

They’re the ones that are going to get early access. They’re the ones that are going to know how to sign up first, so make sure you are on that list. Everybody else will find out later that day, okay?

And lastly, in the meantime, in the next week look for this post on Instagram and on my business page for Facebook and shout out, “I’m one of the 100.” Let me know that you are in. And, of course, bring on all of the questions. I’ll make sure they’re answered March 21st.

And listen, I love you guys. I think you’re amazing. Until next week, let’s go fuck some shit up.

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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.