Ep #64: How to Unbelieve

You are listening to episode 64 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where you learn how to unbelieve. Let’s do it.

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, hello my confident coaches. How’s everybody doing out there? My Latta loves. I’ve been singing a song. What a ride it has been, right? It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, and I’m feeling good. You’re welcome. I know, did you know you were going to get singing from me today? Just throwing out a little Nina Simone to y’all, feeling refreshed, feeling new, definitely feeling like the kind of new dawn, new day, where do we go from here, let’s go kick some butt this year kind of mojo and energy.

And I’m really excited to share with you all today a brand-new concept that I have created that came out of – well actually, the concept itself is something that I created over the course of last year working with clients. But when I really put it together, the way you’re going to hear it in this podcast, that came out of the mastermind launch that I just did.

And if you have not listened to episode 63, lessons from a failed launch, I cannot recommend it enough to go back and really see how I mined my own brain for gold. One of the things that I created that happened, if you listened to the episode, you know step by step, all the questions that I asked myself to make this launch that was not working.

By the way, the too long don’t read on the podcast episode is I had one client in five applications by the time my doors “closed,” but I ended up signing 10 clients and sold the whole thing out. And how did I do that? Well, one of the things that I did was I asked myself a series of questions. And one of those questions was what is it that I teach the most? What is it that I coach on the most?

And so once I was able to outline here are the three things that I coach on the most, and I talked about that in the Confidence Scale episode, then I went about how can I teach it simpler and easier than I ever have before. And when I asked myself those two questions, the Confidence Solution training, which I ended up running in that week between Christmas and New Year’s, which I had planned to take off, but that’s not what happened because the launch didn’t go as planned.

That is what I created in response to those two questions. So what I’m going to teach you about today is one of those three things. The how can I make what I teach in response to the three problems I coach on the most, how can I make what I teach even simpler and easier than I ever have before.

Because here’s the thing; I want to challenge each of you guys to really think about it. Really pay attention to the two questions that I asked. Any of you can ask this question of yourself. What is it that you coach your people on the most? This is what you want to talk about in all of your marketing and your advertising and when you are sharing hero’s journeys and your story and client stories.

What is it that you coach the most on? Because that is most likely what your audience needs the most coaching on. So then once you have that, once you have their most common problems, what’s your solution? And here’s what they want to know. They want to know that you have a solution and they want to know that you are the best person to offer that solution.

But most importantly, that the solution is simple. They don’t want 27 steps. They want five. Three would be better. And that’s what I did. So if you’ve been listening since the dawn of time around here, if you’ve been listening since the beginning, you know that I have five steps to creating self-confidence. The backbone of my program. It’s episodes two through six of this podcast. I tell you exactly what the steps are.

But how can I make it even simpler? I came up with three completely new concepts. Now, they weren’t completely new but the way I presented them was completely new. You can do this. Any of you can do this. Any of you can right now think about what do you coach on the most, how can I solve that problem simpler and easier than I ever have before. Any of you can do that. It’s a great coaching tool right there.

Right now, I could just turn off the microphone. Y’all, go do that work. Alright, now go ahead, stay with me, let me teach you about one of the things that I created. So I took my five steps – here’s the thing; when I simplified it down to three steps, it’s still the five steps. I just kind of regrouped it. I just zhuzhed it a little. I just made it a little bit more digestible.

So that’s what I want to offer you right here. So really, what did I come up with? I came up with the realization that people need to learn how to stop believing the crap that’s stopping them. They need to learn how to believe new stuff that would fuel them, and then they need to learn how to make a decision.

And what we’re talking about today is how to unbelieve. Now, I came up with the concept of unbelieving last year. I even pitched this as a podcast topic to my big mentor in the coaching industry. And she didn’t pick up on it, so I’m sharing it with you guys because it’s too good to pass up.

How do you unbelieve? What do I mean by that? I’m talking about how do you stop believing what you currently believe as true? How do you actually stop believing? We hear it all the time, right? We life coaches intellectually understand that our thoughts create our results.

Buddha knew this, Aristotle, it’s in proverbs, Marcus Aurelius, they all knew that. I have a laundry list of quotes across time of how your thoughts create your reality, what you think is. This is not new, right? What we think creates our experiences is a truth as old as time. But we still insist on believing our shitty thoughts.

We get it intellectually, but we keep doing it. We keep doing it my friends because no one has actually taught us the simple steps of learning how to not believe something that you believe to be true.

Because as soon as you say, “I know it’s my thoughts, but let me tell you how it’s fact,” that’s your tell. I actually got an email today. This is a side story that I’m going to pick up for a future podcast. But I got an email today from a former client that told me everything that she believed to be true and why she was struggling and inserted a line, “Please be aware that I know that this is just my thoughts.”

Yeah, you know it’s your thoughts, but you still believe all of it and you don’t have to. And if you didn’t believe all of it, it would put an end to your suffering. So acknowledging I know it’s my thoughts but I’m still choosing to believe them. That’s the unspoken line right there.

When you hear those words, you don’t actually believe that it’s just a thought. You don’t actually believe that they’re optional thoughts. You may have learned to become aware of your thinking, but you haven’t learned to stop believing your thinking. And you can learn how to unbelieve and I’m going to tell you exactly how to do it in this episode.

So there’s three steps to unbelieving. I just decided I’m going to make everything threes. What are the three things I coach on the most, what are the three steps in order to solve that problem, and then under each of the three steps, what are the three steps to learn that one step. We’re just going to do threes all the way around. It just makes other – something about the number three, right? We love it. Us humans love thirds.

So step number one is understanding this. Just because you think it doesn’t mean you have to believe it. Say it again for those in the back. Just because you think it, just because it’s in your head doesn’t mean you have to believe it.

One of the biggest hangups of all life coaches is thinking that because you ran a coaching model, because you found a thought that kills your confidence, you think your brain should never think it again. This is literally not how your brain works at all.

You have a primitive brain. We’ve talked about Helga before. By the way, I have my first male client inside CCM, he calls him Hank. He’s got his Hank brain. So your Helga brain, who shouts and whispers crazy crap at you all every day, all day, with the hopes of keeping you in the cave.

It doesn’t matter if that cave is slowly suffocating you. You know this cave and she wants you to stay put. So the presence of the thought is not a problem. That’s just your Helga brain talking to you. And it doesn’t mean you have to believe it.

We think I ran the model, the thought should never show up again. I’m like, why? Why should it never show up again? Do you want to turn off your primitive brain? Biology literally does not work that way. What if you just decided the presence of it doesn’t mean you have to believe it?

Confident coaches don’t believe every thought in their brain. They are skilled bullshit detectors. Just because you’ve determined a thought doesn’t serve you, it doesn’t mean it won’t show up again. The presence of a thought doesn’t mean you have to believe it. That’s the first thing you really need to own and understand. Become a skilled bullshit detector. There’s a thought in there that I don’t have to believe. The fact that it’s there is not a problem.

So number two, understanding this, the call is coming from inside the house. Stop answering the damn phone. I love this concept of the call is coming from inside the house. It’s one of these things that I say all the time inside Confident Coaches Mastermind sessions of like, wait a minute, it’s just a thought.

I’m like, yeah, that call that’s coming in, it’s coming from inside the house. If you grew up in the 80s, you know when a stranger calls back, it turns out that there’s this guy that’s been stalking the babysitter and the call’s been coming from inside the house the whole time. The danger was always inside the house.

Your thoughts are the danger, and they’re coming from inside the house. It is not coming from out there and something that someone has said or done to you. It’s coming from inside your head. You’ve just got to learn how to stop answering the damn phone.

There is in fact a practice, a how-to to unbelieving. We have to know that the thought is there, we have to see what that thought creates for us, and we have to stay in the observance of what that thought creates long enough that we can no longer deny that it’s us creating it.

Picking up what I’m throwing down here, my friends? In other words, the call is coming from you and you keep answering the phone and you can stop it. You can learn how to stop answering it by learning to recognize its ring, remembering what answering creates for you, and stop engaging in it.

And that’s what I’m going to teach you today. How to stop engaging with that thought. First, we realize, okay, just because it’s there doesn’t mean I have to believe it. Now, what do I need to do next? You need to stop engaging with the thought. You need to stop entertaining it. You need to stop playing tickly with it. You have to stop playing grab-ass with your thoughts.

And then the third step to unbelieving is introducing possibility. And this is the bridge into how to believe, which we are not talking about today. But you want to introduce the idea that something else is possible. When you stop fighting the thoughts being there and you stop answering the phone and you stop engaging with it, you get to introduce possibility.

Your gut is to find the exact opposite thought and insists that you believe that instead. That doesn’t work, right? We want to go from one side of the Helga thought spectrum all the way over to the other side of the Gigi thought spectrum.

And our brain’s like, no, I can’t believe that. Helga is a bit of a wild beast and she just doesn’t put up with that stuff. However, possibility tames that wild beast. It’s possible that this bullshit thought I keep thinking isn’t true. It’s possible that I don’t have to believe it. And eventually, you don’t believe it.

This is the work you do week in and week out to unbelieve. So we’re going to put all these pieces together. Process of unbelieving is to understand that just because it’s in your head doesn’t mean you have to believe it, that the call’s coming from inside the house and you need to stop answering the damn phone and introduce the possibility of believing something different.

So here’s what I want you to do. What’s the biggest thought struggle you’re having right now? This could literally be a million things, so right now, I just want you to think about you and your ability to sell your coaching. Right now, I’m just going to pick a common one, like me and my ability to market my coaching business.

And your thought might be I don’t know how to create consult calls. I want you to think about what is your biggest marketing or sales or coaching obstacle that you have right now. But for the sake of example, we’re going to use the circumstance is me and my ability to market my business, and my thought is I don’t know how to create consult calls.

So then I want you to run the rest of that model. When you think I don’t know how to create consult calls, when you’re thinking about me and my ability to market my business, what kind of feeling does that thought create? I don’t know how to create consult calls for me creates an inadequacy.

Alright, so when you’re feeling that thought, for me it’s inadequacy, for you it might be something different, what do you then do? What does your action line look like? Here’s the thing; I don’t want you to be vague here. Everybody always wants to be so vague on the action line.

Well, I just don’t show up or I shut down. I don’t know what that means. Get so specific. You want to get really, really specific on the action line because here’s why. Do you remember step number two? The call is coming from inside the house and you got to stop answering the phone. It’s because you need to recognize the ring. That’s the action.

You need to recognize the very specific actions that you do and do not take when you’re feeling that way because you’re thinking that thing. Like, don’t just like, I space out. How do you space out? Do you space out by scrolling Instagram? Do you take the afternoon off and watch Netflix? Do you go clean? Is it doing the laundry? What specifically are you doing?

What specifically are you not doing? Are you not putting out more offers? Are you not writing that email? Are you not creating a new funnel? Are you not creating a new email sequence? So specifically what you’re doing and specifically what you’re not doing.

Because when you can get so specific, you can catch yourself in the act of it. You may not be aware of the thought, but you’ll know that next Tuesday when you said you were going to write that Facebook post and instead, you’re reorganizing your Dropbox, or you’re cleaning the kitchen sink, you can be like, “Oh, there’s that ring. I know this ring. I see what I’m doing here. This is one of those things that I do when I’m believing my Helga brain.”

Your life coach brain is going to want to jump into the happy feel-good model. Nope, not yet. Let’s not do that. What we want to do is we want to do in that moment the process of unbelieving. So the process of unbelieving is very simple.

You want to catch yourself in that action of disbelief. So right here, I’m actually going to show you the actual process of unbelieving right here, so you have that model. You’ve created that model; you’ve created all the different actions you do and you don’t do.

Specifically on a Tuesday at one o clock, what am I doing or not doing when I’m believing that model? And you’re so specific on specifically the things that you do, right? So then you get to begin the process of unbelieving.

First of all, you want to catch yourself in the action of disbelief. So when I’m thinking about me and my ability to market, and I’m thinking that I don’t know how to create consult calls and I’m feeling inadequate, I might be cleaning out my Dropbox.

So when I notice that I’m cleaning out my Dropbox, I’m going to bring so much awareness to that action and the model that’s creating it while I’m in it. I’m going to listen to that phone ring, I’m going to pay attention to the ring, I’m going to remind myself while it’s ringing, oh, this phone call is coming from inside the house. I’m going to keep cleaning out my Dropbox maybe, I’m going to stay in the action, but I’m going to bring so much awareness to what I’m doing.

I’m doing that thing again, why am I doing that thing? How am I feeling right now? What am I thinking right now? Is this one of those Helga thoughts? I’m feeling this way because I’m thinking this thought. When I think this thought, it makes me feel like this. When I feel like this, I do this thing. I don’t have to think this thought, I could choose to think something else. If I thought something else, I would feel a different way. If I felt a different way, I would do something different. But right now, I’m choosing to think this thought. I can decide to think something else whenever I am ready. There’s no judgment, there’s just awareness.

You aren’t immediately jumping into a happy thought. Did you notice that? I didn’t push you into what do you need to think instead? No, I’m having you stay right there and painstakingly showing your brain how the call is coming from inside the house.

You’re teaching your brain what this thought creates for you. You’re pointing out that it’s all optional and you are acknowledging that it is a choice to stay there. Do that often enough, over the course of weeks and eventually your brain’s like, “Fine, this is coming from us, I will let it go.” That’s when you get to introduce possibility.

And you can even introduce possibility before your brain’s finally like, fine. So when you are in that full awareness of what you are creating, you can continue the conversation with I’m choosing to think this right now but it’s possible that something else is true. It’s possible that the opposite is true. I don’t have to believe this thought. I could believe this different thought over here.

Now, when you’re learning how to believe, you come up with more of those thoughts. But right now, just get the concept. You’re introducing the possibility that there’s so many other options that you could choose to think in that moment and your Helga brain’s not like, no, that’s not true at all because we’re just talking about it’s possible.

It’s possible that I do know how to attract consult calls. It’s possible that I do know what my ideal client needs to hear today. It’s possible that there is someone out there right now who could use what I have to offer. That there’s so many other possibilities, I don’t have to choose to believe this.

Because when I choose to believe this, I feel inadequate. Any of those other emotions available to you, and when I feel inadequate, I do all of these different things. When I do all of these different things, it’s because the call’s coming from inside the house and I don’t have to keep answering the phone.

Now, there are so many more concepts to unbelieving. Fault obsession, hula hoop thoughts, the ICU, gradient models, you learn all of that stuff inside Confident Coaches Mastermind. I really teach Confident Coaches Mastermind kind of like here is a glorious buffet of awesomeness and every confidence-creating tool I could possibly think of. What are you going to use?

There’s so many options, there’s so many tools you can put in this toolbox right here. I just see it as an awesomeness buffet. What are you going to pile on your plate? What are you going to eat up? Take what you need, leave the rest on the table.

These three steps right here that I just shared with you today, plus your willingness to be on your own bullshit will help loosen up that wiring in your brain of this is just what I believe, this is just who I am. That is not true. That doesn’t have to be true.

This process I shared with you today helps loosen some of those wires in your brain of what doesn’t serve you so that you can then wire the beliefs of what does serve you instead.

Alright my friends, are you getting it? Are you getting how we learn to unbelieve? I love this concept. It’s one of the favorite things that I’ve created. It’s the work of taking so many different concepts that I’ve learned from all of my mentors and all of my teachers and it really boiled down to this is how to unbelieve the thoughts that you have that kill your confidence.

Practice it, use it, get your booty in the next round of Confident Coaches Mastermind in April so you can learn how to fine-tune it. Alright my friends, I cannot wait to see what you create this year. And remember, until next week, let’s go do epic stuff.

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