Ep #85: How to Survive Failure – Part 2: Pure Confidence

The Confident Coaches Podcast with Amy Latta | How to Survive Failure – Part 2: Pure Confidence

Coaches, welcome to part two of a super juicy series all about surviving failure. Last week, we dove into the detrimental effects of hiding from failure, and this week, we’re continuing on by talking about opening yourself up to experiencing pure confidence.

If you’ve been tuning in for any amount of time, you’ll know that one of the pillars of self-confidence is the belief that you can do something you’ve never attempted before. Pure confidence on the other hand? It requires the belief that you can do something you’ve failed at over and over again. But how do we get to this place?

Join me this week to discover what pure confidence is and what it isn’t. I’m guiding you through the easiest path to getting to a place of solid, grounded assuredness in yourself, and a visualization tool to help you step into your highest self, even in the face of your biggest failures.

We are enrolling in the July class of Confident Coaches Mastermind, where you will learn to feel confident in yourself no matter what: no matter how much engagement you have, no matter how many haters you get, and no matter how many consults are on your calendar. That is pure confidence, and you can click here to get it.

I’ve created a brand new free training for you called Stop Overcomplicating Confidence. I see my coaches making the process of cultivating confidence way harder than it has to be, and in this training, you’re going to learn exactly how you might be overcomplicating it, what’s creating that, and how to stop. And the best part of it all, it’ll take you less than an hour. So what are you waiting for? Click here to get it!

What You’ll Learn:
  • What pure confidence is and what it isn’t.
  • The easiest path to pure confidence.
  • What is required of you to build the skill of pure confidence.
  • How pure confidence feels in your body.
  • A tool to help you drop into solid, grounded assuredness.
Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:
Full Episode Transcript:

You are listening to episode 85 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where you learn how failure leads to pure confidence. That sounds delicious. 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.

Hello confident coach. How are you today? So first of all, I want to be clear that today’s episode might be one of my juiciest concepts I’ve ever created, but it is also a part two. So this episode is How to Survive Failure Part 2. You can listen to it on its own, on its own standing, but it will probably make a lot more sense if you listen to How to Survive Failure Part 1: No One Can Know, which is last week’s episode.

So it’s super good and super delicious. I want to offer you that this episode might just be the golden ticket that we’ve all been looking for. But it will make sense if you’ve listened to part one first.

So in last week’s episode, I talked about no one can know and how to let go of that thought. How it’s our instinct to hide from failure and pretend it’s not happening, and not getting the help we need and keeping it from other people, which is ultimately keeping it from ourselves.

Like no one can know means we don’t know. We don’t know us, we don’t know what went wrong, we don’t know how to move forward. And therefore, we’re shutting off any possibility of growing and learning from a failure that we might have experienced.

So once you see why that’s important to stop hiding your failures from others and from yourself, then you open yourself up to experience pure confidence. Now, what is pure confidence? What the hell is Amy talking about? This is what we do.

We come up with brand new concepts and then we got to go explain them, and people are like, “What does she mean? Never heard of this before.” So pure confidence is how you will keep going after failure. Pure confidence is confidence in the face of contrary evidence. It’s confidence you will succeed when all evidence, all data points say you won’t.

Let’s be clear the difference between just confidence and belief I can do something I’ve never done before and pure confidence and pure belief that I can do something I’ve done before and failed at and I have less than zero evidence that I can do it again.

Belief without evidence is you’re new and you just don’t have much if any data to show that you have the right to be confident, right? But pure confidence is you do have data and the data says this isn’t working.

There’s a difference between the self-confidence you need to run a webinar for the first time, and the difference between the pure confidence required to run a webinar, literally no one shows up, and to do it again and again and again until you get the result that you want, even if no one shows up five times in a row, 10 times in a row, three months in a row. That’s the difference between the confidence and pure confidence.

And we only get to pure confidence by having experienced a failure. This is why to reiterate what was in last week’s episode, we don’t need to fear failure. Because on the other side of failure isn’t just more growth, isn’t just more learning, but we open ourselves to a level of confidence that is not available to us otherwise.

So you ran the webinar and literally no one showed up. You launched a group program and only one person signed up. It’s not so much a group program when one person signs up, right? How can you possibly still be confident?

Or for me, you come up with an amazing training and no one showed. Or for me, I had a consistent evidence that people show up for my trainings, and I put one out there that no one showed up for. So I had success and then failed, and then I dropped.

How can you possibly still be confident in your ability to be successful, in your ability to keep going, in your ability that this is ultimately going to work out for you, that you will eventually get the result that you want? Pure confidence. That’s how.

So here’s the thing; you don’t get to six figures or multiple six figures, definitely not seven figures and beyond without failing. Failing will give you evidence that what you want isn’t happening. Evidence that tells you you don’t have a right to believe, no right to feel confident.

But pure confidence is a skill that anyone can learn and you will need it to survive failure. There’s this scene in one of my favorite movies called Trading Places. This is early 80s classic Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, watch it at Christmas time, you will thank me later. It is a classic and it’s hilarious and it’s funny. Not everything translates but it mostly holds up after 40 some odd years.

And there’s this whole stock market scene at the end, these two characters have concocted a plan to not only defeat the guys that screwed them over by having them lose all their money, but they’re also going to win by earning a ton of money. It’s very 1980s where everything’s all about money.

So there’s this whole stock market scene at the end where they’ve artificially driven up the price of orange juice. Don’t ask. You just have to watch. Only then to make the price fall. And there’s this moment, there’s this moment where the price is falling and it needs to hit a certain place before they start buying again.

The price falling is what makes the other guys lose their money, but in order for them to make their money, they have to wait until this certain moment. And Eddie Murphy’s character, this is new to him, and he’s just not so sure. He’s the naysayer. He’s not full understanding how this is going to work out.

And they’ve not succeeded before at this point. They have failed and tried multiple times at this point already. So he’s getting nervous and all evidence says this isn’t working. The data points are saying we aren’t making the money that we said we wanted to make.

But Dan Aykroyd’s character, now, he’s got pure confidence. So even though the numbers don’t look in their favor, he tells Eddie Murphy, “Wait for it, wait for it,” and then boom, it does happen. I actually don’t understand the stock market-ness of this scene. This is not my zone of excellence, genius, or even competency.

But all signs pointed to this not working but Dan Aykroyd’s character has this pure confidence that it will. Even though Eddie Murphy is standing right next to him going, “I don’t think this is going to work.” Imagine that’s what’s happening in your brain.

You have one side of your brain going I don’t see how this is going to work, in fact, I’m looking around and I have all this data that it’s not working, we are failing, we need to bail, this isn’t working, but there’s this other side of your brain that believes even more with the more evidence that it’s not working. What? How is that possible?

Pure confidence is where other people are walking away and your Gigi brain is saying, “Wait for it, wait for it, what you want is coming. It’s right there. It’s right around this corner, even though this corner might look a little shady.”

I find that the easiest path to pure confidence is through your feelings. Because a lot of times, what we do in coaching is what do you need to think in order to believe that you can do something you’ve never done before? And a lot of times, it’s just not available to you.

The less evidence you have, and particularly when you have evidence that tells you the contrary thing is true, sometimes our Helga brain does not allow our Gigi brain to speak. Our inner cavewoman does not allow our inner evolved woman to speak.

She might be saying wait for it, wait for it, but it will not be clear on what it is we’re waiting for on that thought or that belief we really need to sit in. And yet, pure confidence is what is going to allow us to keep going after we’ve massively face-planted. After we’ve got over the no one can know and we’ve started to get coaching, it’s time to decide what we’re going to do next, pure confidence is that golden ticket that’s going to step in and that’s going to tell you, wait for it, it’s right there.

And I find because our Helga brain is particularly loud in this instance, that the best way to get there is not through the thinking line but through how I want to feel. Pure confidence is going to require you to really learn how to get into your body.

So many times, when we are coaching, it’s like okay, here’s the thing that’s happened, here’s what I want to think about it, here’s how that’s going to make me feel, and here are all the things I need to do. We want to focus so much on all the things we need to do and the thought that’s going to drive that, we kind of – the feelings line is a checkbox.

And when it comes to pure confidence, the feelings line is the holy grail. It’s the golden ticket. It’s the way there. It’s the how. The how is through the feeling in our body. It’s belief in our bones. It’s belief in your gut, in your intuition.

And you get into pure confidence by tapping into that energy, that spirit. It’s hard to know the thought that will create that feeling for so many of us because all we see are all the reasons why we can’t believe, why we can’t be confident. So let’s drop into our bodies first.

Let’s, for a moment, put our brains on a shelf. For a moment, let’s tell our brains to check out and let’s just get into our body. Let your shoulders drop down. Let that chest rise. Feel the sensation that’s been up in your chest and let it drop down into your gut.

And not that sinking pit of your stomach feeling. This isn’t nauseousness. This is a grounded gut feeling. It’s firm, like you are on solid ground. Pure confidence is calm. It’s not overly excited. It might have twinges of anxiousness, but it’s not anxiety. It may have flutters at times, but you will practice using the tools of dropping back into your certainty, even if you can only hold it for a moment.

Like I want you to imagine that pure confidence is going into that deep gut grounded emotion and you might flutter back up and get excitable and start to get anxious. It doesn’t matter if you can only hold it for a moment. Your work will be to practice holding it longer and longer.

That is at the heart of pure confidence, that you’re holding it for as long as you can and also not judging yourself if you can’t hold it all of the time. Because it’s like knowing that the sun will rise tomorrow, even while you’re in the midst of a hurricane.

You’ve had moments like this in your life, right? I want you to think about them now actually. What moments have you had when all the evidence pointed one way and you came out the other side, seemingly in spite of it all?

Maybe it’s a relationship where you weren’t sure how it was going to resolve, a job loss, or a situation at work that you didn’t think you were going to be able to get over. I know I have had plenty of them. Friendships that fell apart and I felt all alone, I didn’t know how it would work out and yet Gigi was there, whispering, “Wait for it, wait for it.”

I knew in my gut, in my intuition that the situation would pass and I would not be alone and I would have loving friendships again. I have had that broken heart where I was in a ball on the floor, listening to The Heart of the Matter by Don Henley over and over again because you just don’t love me anymore.

And yet there was that whisper of that wait for it, wait for it, that knowing in my gut that I would love again. And I’ve literally been in the basement of my house during severe storms and tornado warnings and yet still confident that this will pass and that sun will come out tomorrow.

So the difference between that and pure confidence is pure confidence is resolving the seemingly unresolvable, but this time with intention, with purpose. I can resolve what seems unresolvable, and it starts with feeling it. Getting into my body, let your shoulders fall back, let your chest rise up, let your gut drop, two feet on the floor, solid, grounded.

And you can name the sensation if it’s clear to you. If it’s not, don’t stress too much about it. But if it’s clear to you, let’s name what this feels like. Is it assuredness? Is it certainty? What would you call it?

And then let’s deepen that gut feeling just a little bit more. There’s a tool that I teach inside Confident Coaches Mastermind about meeting your higher self from this place. So this is a concept that’s part of becoming your own best mentor.

There’s a future you, this person who already has what you want, and then there’s your higher self. And there’s a hypnosis technique that I’ve learned that I do sometimes use with my clients where you descend a staircase, you close your eyes, you’re descending the staircase, you’re regulating your breathing, and at the bottom of that staircase, you actually meet your higher self and you’re in her presence. You might even ask her what to do.

Now, you can learn the full practice of that in the mastermind, but even without the full practice and the full meditation part of it, you can learn a modified version by simply closing your eyes and envisioning what your higher self, your highest level that you can visualize and what she would say to you from this place of solid gut feeling into your body, I find when I am in that presence, a warmth comes over and any little bit of flutter comes back down and I can hold that pure confident sensation even longer.

Ground that certainty and that sureness even more. And then you can either ascend the staircase back up again or if you’re doing a modified version, you can just from this moment here add some curiosity to your feeling. Instead of I have no idea how I’m going to do this, I have no idea what I’m going to do next, I completely face-planted and I have no idea, do more of a I wonder.

I still believe I can achieve the result I want. I wonder how I’m going to do it. I could do this. It’s possible. I actually could do this. I could totally sign 10 more clients in the next six months, in the next three months. I wonder how I’ll do it.

This is the technique my client Xena used to get into her pure confidence. She talked about it in her interview with me a couple of episodes back. I could totally do another training. I wonder what it will be about, I wonder how I’ll do it, I wonder what thing my clients need the most help with right now on and what do I know about that and how can I teach it simpler and easier than I ever have before?

I wonder how I’m going to entice them and excite them and make this a training that they can’t not show up to. I can’t wait for me to figure out how I do that. Do you see that? It’s more of a curiosity and anticipation and a wonderment that you’re adding to that solid pure confidence level down there, right?

Because then, once we’ve added the curiosity, then we can go into Gigi thinking. This is the concept I love so much. One of my mentor calls it super thinking, another mentor of mine calls it intentional thought creation. I modified it just a little bit and I call it Gigi thinking because as I use it, this is what I turn to whenever I have a case of I don’t knows.

This is the answer to I don’t knows. I’ve talked about Gigi thinking extensively on the podcast before. And it’s a skill you will use over and over and over again inside Confident Coaches Mastermind.

Any time you say, “I just don’t know what to do next,” get into that body. Go get that higher self, deeper sensation. Go add curiosity to it and then you get to use Gigi thinking. What do you know? What are you sure of? What do you 100% believe about yourself and your clients and what you know that could help them? What do you know about what they’re struggling with and how to overcome that? What’s too important not to share with them?

There’s so many different question prompts when it comes to Gigi thinking. You get all of them that we have created from all of my mentors plus ones I’ve created myself when you join Confident Coaches Mastermind. It’s one of my favorite tools and it’s that next step piece to pure confidence.

Because from that place, once you’ve gone into your Gigi brain, your forward-thinking brain, from this sureness and this confidence, in this pure confident state where you’ve met with your higher self and you’ve really grounded it even deeper, now you’re going to find some answers in there, from that place.

What’s your next best step? What small step can you make that you’re going to decide right now? And then go make the step. Go actually implement that decision. You’ve already faced failing. You’ve already faced your biggest fear when it comes to this whole building a life coaching business thing. You’ve already faced it and you’re still here.

From the last episode, you learned how not to hide, to not fall into the “Everything’s fine,” while the house is burning down, how hiding from failure means hiding from yourself. And once you see the value of letting that go, pure confidence is your next step.

Start with that deep grounded knowing feeling in your body, get into your body, extend an invitation to your higher self to deepen that feeling. Add some curiosity and some wonder. Then ask your Gigi brain what she knows, what she knows is true, how this is possible, what you are sure of, and then make that next best step decision from there.

And you can do all of that even in the face of contrary evidence. And not just I haven’t done it yet so I don’t think I can, but I’ve done it and I’ve failed, so I’m sure that I can’t. Pure confidence is the answer to that. It may just be a moment in your day, but you can bring yourself back to it as often as possible.

I want to be really clear about what pure confidence isn’t. It’s not avoiding the negative feelings of failure. We talked a lot about that in the previous episode. And reaching out and getting help on learning to process sadness and disappointment. Pure confidence isn’t the Band-Aid you slap on uncomfortable emotions.

In fact, what I want to offer you, pure confidence might even involve appreciating that you can experience both at the same time, that you can experience sadness and disappointment and worry while also bringing yourself back into your body and dropping out of that, and you might teeter-totter between the two. Hi human being, welcome to the human experience.

That right there, that it’s not one or the other, but that how to survive failure lies so much in your ability to move between the two and not make that movement mean you’re doing anything wrong, mean that you’re going to be stuck here forever, mean that you’re never going to come up with something else and try that out and see what comes out of that.

You do not have to be in constant belief all the time in order to be confident. And you don’t have to be in pure confidence all of the time to be confident in yourself that you can handle this moment that you’re in right now.

And I actually want you to really appreciate, now that you’ve survived failure and you have tools by your side in order to keep going, how many more things are you going to try now? Because you’ve already faced the worst thing that can happen.

And you’re going to use all this evidence from your past of how you’ve been able to survive situations like this, only this time, you’re going to do it on purpose and with intention, right? So I want you to imagine what more things you’re going to try now that you’ve survived once and you’ve realized that you can do it again and again and again.

You’re going to try so many more things and your confidence level is just going to keep increasing. And you can look back and you can count yourself among the ranks of the Bill Gates’ or the Oprah Winfreys, which is what we talked about in the part one episode, or the Amy Latta the confident coach, right?

Literally any of your mentors. We’ve all done this. We have all had big failures. We’ve all figured out a way to keep going. We don’t let failure stop us from trying again because you don’t have to. And How to Survive Failure Part One: No One Can Know, How to Survive Failure Part Two: Pure Confidence are the tools that you need in order to keep going.

You will learn these tools, how to use them, how to implement them, how to try big new scary things that you’re like, I see other people do it but I don’t think I can, you will learn how to do that inside Confident Coaches Mastermind. We’ll take this not just a concept that I’m sharing with you over the airwaves but actually implement it into your coaching business.

So I’m going to ask you, what are you going to try next? Now that you know you can survive failure. I’m going to try all the things. I hope you’ll join me.

Hey coach, you actually can join me right now. We are enrolling in the July class of Confident Coaches Mastermind, where you will learn how to feel confident in you, no matter what.

No matter how much engagement you have on that post, no matter how many haters you have in that one video you posted, no matter how many consults are on your calendar right now and whether or not they’re saying yes or no, no matter how many clients may or may not be happy with you at this very moment because of the work you’re doing together. That’s confidence.

It’s not knowing how to do everything right. It’s knowing you can handle whatever comes your way, even when you feel doubt, even when you feel worry, even when you feel anxiety. You can have all of those things at the same time and that is actually what makes you a confident coach.

You’re going to learn how to do all of that in Confident Coaches Mastermind. So head over to amylatta.com/mastermind. Apply and then you’ll schedule a consult call with me where we’re going to meet, we’re going to see where you are now, where you want to be in six to 12 months, and how Confident Coaches Mastermind, how CCM can help you overcome what’s standing in your way. I cannot wait to meet you. Amylatta.com/mastermind.

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.    

Enjoy the Show?

Share this post

Hi, I’m Amy.

For years, I took a ton of action to sign clients.

I learned to create self-confidence and powerfully believe in myself first, and then built a multiple six-figure coaching business.

And I can help you do it, too.

Scroll to Top

Ready to take the actions that sign clients?

Despite your certification and investing in business courses, no one taught you what you really need. The self-confidence needed to take the actions that consistently sign clients.

I am sharing the three secrets I learned about creating self-confidence, right here.