You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode number 86.
Welcome to The Life Coach School Podcast, where it's all about real clients, real problems, and real coaching. And now, your host, Master Coach Instructor, Brooke Castillo.
Hey, how are you guys doing? I want to hug you. I want to know how you all are.
I am having a day today. I am about to rock out a podcast for you all, but I just want to let you know that when I come in on Mondays, I usually have meetings all morning. I did a class this morning, and then I have the afternoon to record the podcast and take care of those sorts of things.
And I just went to lunch, and I usually go to lunch by myself when I'm at the office, and I just went to lunch, and I received an e-mail from someone that was one of those e-mails. You guys know what these are? It's like a kind of a curt e-mail, but you're not sure why, so you make up a story in your head.
You know what I'm saying?
Like they'll say something like, hey, take my name off this thing. And you're like, but why? What's up?
What do you mean? What's going on? And then you make up a story about how you're the worst person in the world, and this person hates you.
Well, at least that's what I do. If you're anything like me. And so these stories that we tell ourselves, these conclusions that we jump to, and by the way, they may be true or not, but they can create a lot of that vulnerability in those emotions.
And one of the things that I like to do when that happens to me is just let someone know that I need to know that they love me. So for example, I'll send a text to one of my friends and say, hey, I just need to know I'm loved right now. Can you send me a text?
Or I'll send it in a group text. And just hearing from those people that I know genuinely love me, tell me that they love me is really helpful. Because it helps me think about them and how loved I am and how lovable I am.
And it really, I mean, what it does is it changes my brain, but it makes it easier to change my brain when I reach out for that human connection. And that human connection is so powerful to me. And the truth is, and I've done podcasts on this, that not everyone's going to like you, not everyone's going to like what you do, not everyone's going to want to be on lists or things you're doing or even care.
Someone's not going to want to be your friend on Facebook. Someone's not going to want to follow you on Instagram. And sometimes that's harder to deal with than others.
And when you can reach out and know that there are people that love you and there are people that you love, and you do have a wonderful, beautiful, generous life, and other people are allowed to feel and think the way they want to, then it's so much easier to move on. So I just want to offer that to you guys today. For me, it was kind of an alarming experience being at lunch by myself and noticing like, holy cow, I'm not very good company when I'm spinning stories like this.
And it's challenging when not everyone in the world likes you the way you would like them to like you. So that's why the world is challenging, because wouldn't it be great if we could just go through the world and everyone was just overjoyed with us and everything that we did and everything that we said. The other thing I kind of want to offer here, as I was thinking about this the other day, some of the things that we have done in our past.
I know that a lot of you guys have things that you've done in your past that you judge yourselves for and you're upset at yourselves for and those sorts of things. And I was reading actually in Brene Brown's new book, Rising Strong, and she was talking about the benefit of regret. And although I love her book and I love all of her stuff, I do not agree with her on that because I don't think regret is a very useful emotion.
And one of the things that I like to think about when it comes to my past is that I always have my back. So what that means to me is that when I start cringing about my past or I start becoming upset about my past or something that I did in the past, it's important for me to step in and have my own back and to explain why I did what I did, to explain to myself that I was doing the best I can, to explain to myself that I really won't put up with any criticism or any judgment or degrading of myself in the past because that's me and I'm not going to allow myself to do that to myself. You guys know what I'm saying?
So I think it's important that we always have our own backs when it comes to our own brain trying to judge us. Obviously, when other people try and judge us and when we're dealing with that, it's very important. But I think even more importantly than that, like really just being like, hey, no, you're not going to talk to me like that when it comes to yourself.
And you're not going to judge me in my past because, hey, that was the best I could do. And yeah, the best wasn't great. But at that time, that's what I had.
And really standing up for myself has been really important to me to develop that relationship with myself and use that relationship moving forward. So just a couple tidbits to offer before we jump into this week's topic, which is do goals. Now, I've talked about do goals before, and we've worked on outcomes before.
But I've been using them so regularly and in a way that is so automatic for me now and is creating such a high level of productivity that I wanted to make sure that all of you guys know how to do do goals. And we call them do goals sometimes. We say them real fast together.
But do goals are not just concepts that we have in our mind of things that we'd like to accomplish, but they're actually the actions that we need to take. And we've talked on this podcast about massive action and about how important it is to take action until you get the result you want. And this is the structured way that I know of how to do that.
So I'm going to give you guys the steps, and I'm going to walk you through the process of doing this. And if you don't have any goals or you don't have anything currently on your calendar that you're working towards, this can be a really powerful exercise. So the first thing I want you to do is just sit down with a piece of paper.
Now, I can't even tell you that blank piece of paper, whether it's lined or unlined, is just a beautiful thing. And so I always try and start with a blank piece of paper every day when I'm at work. I come in and I just want to start with that blank piece of paper to take notes, to write down my ideas, to do a thought download, any of those things.
I got a question recently, actually, of what a thought download is. And it's basically you're just emptying your brain onto a piece of paper. And you can do that just randomly, like just empty everything out, or you can do it in a guided way.
So one of the things that I like to do is sit down and make a list of everything I want to do. And that's in terms of the big picture, right? So it's a structured thought download.
I'm answering the question, Brooke, what is it that you want to do in your life? And I just start writing. And give yourself a full 10 minutes.
So if there are accomplishments you want, things you want to do, results you want to get, anything that you want to do and create and accomplish in your life, just write it down. And it's okay if like little random to do's come in there, anything that comes to your mind, just write for 10 minutes. And even if you have things that mean the same thing, it doesn't really matter.
Just give yourself the space to write down what you really want. Now, I have another exercise that we do with this that's really powerful, where we don't have it be directed, where you just write down everything you want in your life. And it can be like Alexis, and it can be a million dollars, and it can be a business, and it can be a new friend, right?
And we do that whole kind of free for all want. And one of the powers of that list is then you also add to that list everything that you want, that you already have. And that's more of an abundance exercise.
But in this case, what we're doing is we're really directing our mind to only focus on things that we want to do and accomplish, not necessarily things that we want to have. These are things that we want to do. So we're going to make that list for 10 minutes.
Then when we're done with that, we're going to like take a break. Sometimes I work with clients who have stopped believing in themselves, and they've stopped dreaming, and they've stopped thinking that they can accomplish anything. So it's a very painful exercise to do.
If that's you, I want you to acknowledge that that's you, and then give yourself this question. If I weren't so defeated, if I were still dreaming, what would I dream about doing? Then put those on there, and then write it down.
Give yourself a back door way around your current thinking. Okay, so once you have that list, what you're going to do is you're going to go through the list and prioritize it. Now, if you've written for 10 minutes, it will be a very long list.
So what I like to do is go through and get the big priorities out of there. What are like the top three priorities? And what I've noticed when I do this is sometimes I'll get one of the priorities, and then there'll be a bunch of other things that I want to do, but they're all kind of underneath of this one priority.
So I write down the top three priorities, and then anything else on the list that can be categorized underneath it goes underneath that priority. Okay, so if I want to build a business to $5 million, and part of that is building or is hiring five new people, or if part of that is writing a book, or if part of that is creating a new program, all of those things that are directly related to that outcome would go under that priority. Okay, so you want to go through and prioritize, and recategorize as needed.
Now, as you go through and you get your top three priorities, one of the things that I like to do is look at those top three priorities and say, if I were to accomplish these three things, is there anything on this list that I would be able to eliminate? Right? It would make it so it's not even relevant if I were able to accomplish this bigger thing.
Okay, and then I go through and cross off those things because they're no longer needed. Okay, so what I'd like you to end up with after you've done kind of that brainstorm, and by the way, do not be thinking about this while you're doing the brainstorm. Allow yourself to just go nuts on the brainstorm.
Don't try and edit as you're going, okay? Then once you go in and you have your top three priorities and you have everything on that list categorized under one of those three priorities, you want to pick one of those to focus on, one of those goals that you want to get started on, you want to start taking action on. Take that priority and write it in a 90-day measurable outcome.
So what that means, so maybe your big goal is, I want to have a business that's worth $5 million. Okay, well, towards that end, what can you do in the next 90 days? What can we measure in the next 90 days?
And let's say you're a business that is at $100,000. So if you're trying to get to $5 million, then a good goal for 90 days might be to make another $50,000. For example, how can I make $50,000 in 90 days?
And that could be your 90-day goal, if that's something that's feasible for you, if you're on your way to $5 million, or maybe it's lower than that. Whatever it is, you pick something that is measurable, that you can put a measurement on it for 90 days. If the goal is to meet the man of your dreams, maybe the next 90 days, your goal is to go on 25 dates, okay?
So you want to have something that's measurable, that you can quantify, that you can do in the next 90 days and be as clear and specific as possible. Then the next thing you're gonna do is write down everything you need to do in the next 90 days to make sure that you accomplish that goal, okay? So this is a whole nother brainstorm.
I want you to sit down and write down every single thing that you have to do, that you need to accomplish, that you need to delegate, that you need to learn about, the steps you need to take, everything as much as you can write, in as much detail as possible. So for example, if your goal is to start your business in the next 90 days and you know that you need to get a website up, but you don't know how to do a website, one of the things that you would put on that list is learn how to do a website. And then underneath that list, you would put even more action.
So what does it mean to learn? You'd have to go spend some time googling. You'd have to go spend some time talking to people, meeting with people, right?
Whatever it is you need to do to get it, so you could get that website up. You may not know enough right now. So on that action list, you put what you need to do in order to find out, okay?
So that list is just going to be on and on and on and on and on and on all the to-dos. Now, when you look at all those things, very specifically, every single one of them plus every single other one of them should equal accomplishing the 90-day goal, okay? So one of the things that I like to do is make success inevitable.
And the way that I do that is I make my massive action, which means my do goals way exceed the result I want to get. So for example, if I want to sell eight spots in an upcoming course, I'm going to have sales calls with 80 people, right? If I schedule sales calls with 80 people, I'm probably going to sell my eight spots.
So the massive action is huge and it makes the result inevitable because the percentages are on my side, okay? Versus just meeting with eight people and hoping that they all want to do a program with me, okay? So make it inevitable by creating do goals, right?
That's what this list is, do goals that make the result inevitable. Now, once you have that list, you want to put them in order of execution and you want to make them as clear as possible and as specific as possible. Once you have that list of do goals, that if you do all of them, you know you will get the result you want, then it's time to calendar them.
And I like to do my calendar in two week increments, but I schedule the whole 90 days out. So what I do is I look at what actions need to be taken, and then I look at the next two weeks and I schedule everything that I think I can do, with those actions in the next two weeks. Then once those two weeks are filled up with the time that I have available, then I move on to the next two weeks, right?
So I look at everything two weeks at a time. I keep scheduling things to have happen until I get to the 90 days. Now, this is a time-consuming process.
You need to sit down and schedule it, but once you've done this, once you've made all those decisions ahead of time, it's as good as done, right? Because you know if you take all those actions that are in that calendar, you know that you will accomplish your goal. So for example, those of you who have ever trained to do a marathon, or if you have thought about running a marathon, there are tons of training schedules that are already out there that start you out a year ahead or six months ahead of when you're going to run a marathon.
And if you do everything on that training schedule, you will be prepared to run a marathon when the day comes. The secret is, are you going to do everything on that schedule if you put it on your calendar? And this is where I think it starts to get really interesting.
First of all, having the discipline to sit down, write down all your do goals, and then schedule them on your calendar is an accomplishment in and of itself. But it feels great, I'll have to tell you. Whenever I have a goal and I'm nervous about achieving it, and I map it out on my calendar, I see how doable it really is.
Then the second piece of that that's really important is honoring what's on my calendar. Honoring those appointments that I have made with myself ahead of time. And I know that if I do honor those commitments, if I do follow through on what I said I was going to do, that I will accomplish my goal, the date that I said that I would accomplish it.
And I will say this is the closest I've ever come to rubbing that genie bottle and making a wish. Because if you make a wish, and then you make a plan, and then you execute the plan, you can have it. You can have what it is you want.
You can create that for yourself. The trick is, are you willing to do that upfront work and monitor your own progress? And are you willing to keep your word to yourself?
And I think this is one of the most important questions any of us can ask. If we don't have the results we want in our lives, is it because we're not capable? Is it because we don't have what it takes?
Is it because we're just too busy? Is it because we don't have the support we need? Or is it because of our relationship with ourselves, our integrity that we have with ourselves?
Are we not following through on those commitments that we have made to ourselves? So I think that it's a deeper, more important question when we're doing our goals to ask ourselves, do we have our own backs and do we follow through? So when I go to a Wednesday and I see that I have scheduled on there, a phone call that I need to make to my guest speaker, who's going to be speaking at my event next May, it may be easy for me to cancel that appointment.
It may be easy for me not to want to do that. But I know that if I just do everything on my calendar as I have it scheduled, by the time May comes, that event will be prepared and ready and I won't have to worry about a thing. It will just be done.
And there is nothing better than that. I walk in sometimes to these events that I've created for myself. How did this happen?
I don't remember stressing out about it. I don't remember freaking out about it. I don't remember worrying about it.
Because I didn't, because I planned it ahead. I put it all on the calendar and then I honored those commitments. Now, one of the things that I notice is that I will often come to that day and negotiate with myself and not want to do the thing that I said I was going to do and try to come up with lots of excuses and lots of reasons not to.
And that's just reflective of my relationship with myself. Like, who's really in charge? Is it the part of me that wants that instant gratification, or is it the part of me that wants to take care of myself for the future too, and not just for this immediate moment?
And the better my relationship gets with myself, the better I am at taking care of myself in the future and not making mistakes. And the more I get to a benefit from that sense of accomplishment of getting something done in the most effortless way I know over the long term. If I can just stay committed to those do goals that I made, okay?
So let me just review. Sit down, think about everything you want to do. Write it all down.
Spend 10 minutes. Grab the top three priorities that you have in terms of things you want to do. Write those down.
Now look at that list. Is there anything on there that can be categorized within those top three priorities? Take them off the want list and put them under those categories.
Cross off anything that has become irrelevant once you've accomplished those top three priorities. Take them off the list. And anything that's left on there, can it be scheduled in a calendar to be done right away?
Is it something that's just a matter of taking care of it, just having the time to take care of, then go ahead and schedule it? And then anything else that's less than the top three priorities, leave it on that list and put it in a file folder. And don't worry about it for now.
You should only be working on one main priority at a time, in my opinion, let alone four, five, six, seven, eight. Focus on those top three priorities and make sure that you get those done. Okay?
Then what you're going to do is pick one of those priorities and focus on a 90-day goal. The goal needs to be measurable and something you will know when you've accomplished it. Then you're going to do all of your do goals, all of the steps that need to happen in order for you to achieve that 90-day goal.
You're going to schedule those two weeks at a time until they're all fully scheduled. And then you're going to honor your commitments to yourself daily, knowing that if you do that, you will accomplish all the steps you need to take in order to achieve the goal that you want. The only thing you need to do is as you go through those 90 days, you need to reset and recalibrate based on whether you're moving faster than you thought or slower than you thought.
Now, if you're moving slower than you thought because you're not honoring your commitments, that's a relationship issue with yourself and you need to do some coaching on it. If you're not going as fast as you wanted because of delays that you don't have any control over or things that you're waiting on that are taking longer than you thought, that's fine. You just readjust your do goals on the calendar to make sure everything's lined up in order to achieve it within the 90 days.
Sometimes you'll need to pick up some slack on the back end of that. I think this process, although it sounds very simple, is the secret magic to life. It's the secret magic to creating anything you want.
Can you exchange that short term need, that short term pleasure for the long term satisfaction of achieving everything that you want to achieve? And noticing that as you go through, you may want to quit, you may want to doubt, but whoops, you have something on your calendar today, so you just don't have time to do that. You need to get that do goal done.
And maybe when you get to the 90 days, then you can quit after that. But for right now, you need to honor that commitment to yourself. That's how you get it done.
That's how I get it done. So let me know in the go over to the show notes, you want to go to the lifecoachschool.com/86.
And tell me what do goals are you working on? What do you hope to accomplish in 90 days? And do all the math for that.
And then if there's any drama, that's fine, but just still stick to the math and get it done. That's how we do Massive Action. And that's how you accomplish more than you can ever imagine was possible for yourself.
I hope you guys have an amazing and amazing week. Now, I promised some of you last week, I promised all of you if you listened last week, that I would tell you about an upcoming opportunity. And here it is.
On December 5th, I am going to be doing an all-day seminar on everything I teach on the podcast. And I'm going to be covering all the main tools that I teach and doing a lot of live coaching. It's going to be an intense study hall.
Now, I'm going to invite 10 of you to join me for that. Here is the only thing you need to know about that. You're more than welcome to come and spend the whole day with me.
We'll work on all the tools and the coaching and all of that. I will be videotaping that entire day in order to create an online class. And for all of my listeners to my podcast and anyone who wants to take this work to the next level, besides just listening to it on the podcast.
So we're going to be going through the work shops. We're going to go through the worksheets. I'm going to demonstrate the coaching.
I'm going to help you with any challenges you have. I'm going to help you break through any issues that you think are in your way of your success. I'm going to be doing this with 10 people only.
It will be at the Epiphany Hotel in Palo Alto, California. I have rented a room where we're going to video there. You will be responsible for your own travel, of course, and your own hotel room.
But all I'm going to charge for the entire day is $500. And the reason why I'm keeping that so low is because you're also agreeing to be video taped. And obviously, if we're there and there's something that's video taped that you don't want included, that's totally fine.
But mostly, I'm going to be using it as educational. So we're going through all the tools and all of your questions and anything that you need clarification on. All of that will be really helpful in creating this product for me.
If you are interested in joining me for the full day, please go to the lifecoachschool.com/december5th.
And that's where you can put in your name. We're going to do first come first serve. So we will see you there.
Have an amazing, beautiful week, everybody. I'll talk to you soon. Bye bye.
Thank you for listening to the Life Coach School Podcast. It would be incredibly awesome if you would take a moment to write a quick review on iTunes. For any questions, comments, or coaching issues you would like to hear on the show, please visit us at www.thelifecoachschool.com.
