You are listening to the Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode number 534.
Welcome to part two of being a badass. In this segment, we are going to talk about the obstacles. Now, to review, in part one, we talked about what being a badass is and my definition and the components that I include in defining badassery. And just to review, they were having an incredible work ethic and having mental fortitude, mental toughness.
And so as we go into this episode, I want to talk about all of the things that can get in the way of you achieving the level of being a badass that you're going to need to achieve whatever it is that you want to achieve. So, when you think about the obstacles, to just keep it really simple, if you're not getting the results that you want in your life, it is most likely because you don't have the skill of a work ethic that produces results, either positive or negative, and you probably don't have the mental toughness that you're going to need to be resilient enough to get there.
Now, one of the things that I talk about a lot is that being able to define a problem clearly is the only way that you'll ever be able to solve it. And you want to be able to define a problem where you are responsible for that problem. Because when you're responsible for causing the problem and being the problem, then you have 100% agency in solving it.
And this is the most important thing that I can tell you. And as we move into the next episode and we talk more about tools, I'll elaborate on this, but it's important to understand that when you define the problem and you define the obstacles, then you can define the solution. And you don't have to change anybody else, you don't have to change the world, you don't have to fix anything outside of you. You can manage all of it.
So, in this episode, I'm going to be talking a lot about things that you are responsible for and you can control. And when I do this with my clients, students, friends, employees, it's very confronting. I know this because I do it with myself on the regular. And I just want to invite you to allow yourself to be confronted without being defensive. Just for this next 30 minutes, just allow yourself to consider, because I think what happens a lot of times, if I say, hey, this is your responsibility, this is your fault that this isn't working. Our initial reaction is to defend and to block that information because it doesn't feel good.
And when you block it and when you defend against it, you miss the opportunity to change it. Doesn't mean that you have to continue to believe it, but I always really want to invite you to just consider the possibility that if you accept responsibility for everything, then you have the power to change everything. And it's a lot more challenging than it sounds, but we're going to go on a journey today and we're going to explore it.
So, there's a couple things I want to start with. First, the main obstacle to any kind of extraordinary success is always going to be your humanness, which means the way that your brain was designed and has evolved works against you being extraordinary. Works against you being a badass in many ways. To review, the motivational triad, the way that your brain has set you up to survive, is to conserve your energy, is to avoid pain at any cost, and to seek pleasure.
And in the early days of humanness, this is what evolved us. This is what got us to the finish line of survival. And now that we live with all the creature comforts that we have created for ourselves, the motivational triad is still alive and well and it is debilitating in many ways because in order to become extraordinary now, you have to overcome your own motivational triad. You have to seek discomfort, you have to overcome the desire for instant gratification and pleasure, and you have to exert a lot of energy in the smartest of ways in order to create the results that you want.
So, that's kind of a bummer, right? It's like we are set up not to be badasses by our own brains. But when you know this, you also know that there is a part of your brain, the newest part of your brain, that can overcome this obstacle. And when you do overcome this obstacle, you will be able to create way beyond what you ever maybe have imagined, and also way beyond maybe something that's ever been created before. That's what to be on the edge of evolution really is, to be on the forefront of creation.
So, in order to do this, I've taught you all that it's really important to have goals that are big enough. So, one of the first obstacles that I'm going to present to you is many of you do not have goals that require you to develop your mental fortitude or your work ethic. You don't want to present yourself with a goal that you could possibly fail at achieving, and therefore you set goals that don't push you cognitively, emotionally, or mentally. And they don't require you to work as hard as you're going to need to work in order to increase your capacity.
And so, that would be the first and foremost issue. Badass people have badass goals. They have impressive goals that are scary, that are extraordinary, that are extra, as my kids would say, right? They're over the top. They seem crazy.
But as you may have seen me do in my own life, is when you set big, huge goals, the goal can start to define you even before you've achieved it. And that is really important because if you're setting really small goals, you are defining yourself by a very small goal, by a very easy accomplishment. And you know it's easy for you, and then when you don't or if you don't accomplish that goal, that is so defeating.
Versus having a goal that maybe you fail at, but you know that you're going to fail at it because it's such a big goal that it requires failure. And the more you fail, the more you produce results, the more you learn, the stronger you get, the better your work ethic. Because when you go out there into the world and you try to achieve something and it doesn't work and you don't create the result that you want, that's when you double down on your effort. And you do it again, and you do it again, and you do it again. And then eventually you produce a result with ease that once was seemingly impossible. That's badassery. That's how you become a badass.
So, I would say that the motivational triad and small goals are the first major obstacles that you're going to run into between where you are now and being the badass that you ultimately want to be. The next one I would say is fragility. And I highly recommend that you look up on my podcast Antifragile. I did a podcast on being antifragile and it is one of the most important podcasts that you can listen to because it is a trend right now from what I can see, and I see a lot, right? I see a lot of students, a lot of employees, a lot of clients, presenting with a level of fragility that is defeating them, right? It is hurting them.
And what being fragile or antifragile means is that when you face a trauma or a challenge in your life, that is an opportunity. If you get broken down by it, it's an opportunity to rebuild and make yourself stronger in those broken places. If you aren't putting yourself out there to expose your fragility, you can never become stronger. You can never become antifragile. If you're not willing to break down the muscle, there's no way for us to build it bigger.
And as human beings, it is our nature to become stronger as we face challenges. And so if you are avoiding challenges, hiding from challenges, or becoming completely incapacitated or defeated by every single thing that happens to you out there in the world, it's going to be very difficult for you to create what you want in the world.
And so, I'm going to talk about it in the next podcast, but becoming and embracing your antifragility and using your obstacles and using your traumas and using your mistakes and your failures to make yourself stronger is that secret path to creating mental strength and an incredible work ethic.
Fragility weakens us, right? And it you'll know that you're doing it if you are constantly making excuses. Okay? So look at your life honestly. Explore your challenges honestly. If you're constantly coming up with excuses as to why you are exhausted or overwhelmed or need healing or unable to move forward, you're probably, you know, identifying as fragile and, you know, really embracing victimhood. And that's just not going to work. It's just not going to work in terms of creating fortitude in your life.
Okay, the second one, this is a huge one if you're anything like me. I call approval whoring. We are constantly seeking approval. And when you are seeking approval or applause and you're following the compliments and you're following approval of others, the delight of others at your own expense, you will never create authentic success. You will never become the badass that you can become because you'll get locked in between people pleasing and perfection.
Because you want to create something that everyone can approve of and you'll want to please all the people, so you will start adjusting yourself to the applause, to the approval of strangers, to the approval of people you don't even respect, to the approval of people you don't even want to be like, to the approval of people who are negative. And really trying to prevent anyone from getting upset and really trying to prevent anyone from saying something negative.
Thinking about this for a minute. I see this constantly. There's a group of people that you don't respect, that you don't admire, that you would never trade places with, that you don't think they have the work ethic that's required or the mental fortitude, and they're maybe not approving of you. And you can spend, people spend entire lifetimes trying to win over people that don't approve of them.
And maybe it's just a family member, right? Maybe it's like, I just want her to approve of me, my mother, my father, my sister, my husband, my wife. If I could just get them to approve. But when you look at what they're doing, which is making excuses or being negative towards you maybe and not giving you the approval that you want, it doesn't make any sense that we're spending time trying to get their approval. And listen, I have done it. I have played that game for so many years of my life trying to be the person I thought other people wanted me to be, so many different people in my life, and even when I do it really well, I still don't have their approval. Because their approval isn't about me.
It's about them. Them approving is about them and their thinking. It has nothing to do with me. So, I can bend over backwards trying to please people and that shit just doesn't work when it's coming from a place of insecurity and needing approval. So, that is one of the biggest obstacles that you're going to have to overcome if you want to have a badass result.
The third one is drama, creating drama and seeking drama. All I'm going to say about that is you have to stop. You have to stop creating drama where there is none, overreacting to stuff, overwhelming to things, making things bigger than they are, creating scenarios that are factually benign, but our brain is dramatizing them in a way that we can't even function beyond them.
So, it is important if you are someone that has a lot of drama in your life, you are probably participating and creating it by the way you're reacting. It doesn't mean that other people aren't bringing drama, but if you ignore it, if you don't engage in it, it doesn't affect you. If you get ignited by it and you want to participate in it as a distraction, it will derail you from becoming stronger. Drama will weaken you. It's a very low level, low energy game.
And I see this happen with negativity bonding. I see a lot of people who want to feel connected, who want to feel part of community, who want to feel righteous, and they want to be right. And so they get with a bunch of other people and they're all negative together and it creates so much drama, right? But it also produces this unbelievable dopamine pleasure too. So it's like it doesn't feel negative. It feels good. It feels righteous. It feels important.
But it's not. And it could be gossip about someone, maybe a family member. It could be gossip about a celebrity. You get involved in it and it has no productive purpose. It's not constructive, it's not useful, it's not making you grow. It is just sucking the energy out of you.
So, you have to be honest with yourself. Am I engaging in drama? Do I want the gossip? Do I want the scoop? Do I want to perpetuate it and spread it? And if you are that, just notice how much energy that's taking away from building your mental fortitude and building whatever it is you're trying to create in the world.
The last one here is righteousness. And righteousness is trouble when it comes to trying to be a badass because you see the world as right and wrong, and there's a lot of blaming that will happen because if you see the world as right or wrong, you're always going to want to be right and you're always going to want to be on the side of good, and that's impossible because you're a human being. Sometimes you're going to be wrong, sometimes you're going to make mistakes, sometimes you're going to do something negative and bad that you're going to feel bad about, and that's part of being human.
And if you're always trying to be right and you're always trying to be like, I'm a good guy and I'm on the right side, you're always going to have to be putting down the people that are wrong and bad in your eyes, and that amount of energy is wasted. Because no one is all right and all wrong. No one is all good and all bad. And there are degrees of it. And if you reject or become defensive over everything that you do wrong or you push away any kind of feedback about who you really could be inside of you because you're a human being, you will have a very difficult time moving forward because you'll always be trying to hide.
The fear of being exposed as the human being that you are, which is fallible, which is dumb in some ways, which is bad and negative in some ways, if you're always trying to hide from that part of you, you're not going to be able to embrace the authenticity that will create the results that you want in the world.
So be open to all of it. I really learned this from Byron Katie when she would ask that question to any kind of judgment against you, is it true? And she would suggest that we can always find a grain of truth in every single thing someone says about us. And the first act of defense is actually war.
It changed my life. So, when people say things to me, "God, you're such a bitch." I'm like, "Yes." "God, you're so nice." "Yes." "God, you're so weak." "Yes." "You're so smart." "Yes." "You're so dumb." "Yes." Say yes to all of it. Then there's nothing to defend against. There's no energy to push against. It's all true. We can all be some degree of everything. And so what? Carry on. Utilize what works for you. Accept who you are as a human being and that the world's supposed to be good and bad, clearly, because it is.
And how do we work within that? How do we work within all of the facets that we are? All of the mistakes that we make, all the failures that we have. It doesn't mean that we're bad. It doesn't mean that we're wrong. It simply means that we're human and we're on this journey to badassery. And you can be a badass and make mistakes. You can be a badass and fail. In fact, I think it's impossible to be a badass and not fail. Impossible.
So, what if you embraced all of that and released your righteousness? Stop trying to be right all the time and point out everyone else's flaws and how everyone else is less than you and that you're the good one. The problem is we are socialized to do that. We internalize that type of all or nothing thinking. And it's going to be very difficult for you to create at the level that you might want to create if you're stuck in that righteousness because you're going to be terrified of doing anything that might be considered as wrong. You're going to be terrified of making any kind of mistake, and that just doesn't work in terms of being extraordinary.
So, when you look at your life and you look at your emotional life, one of the biggest obstacles that I see for people is the avoidance of negative emotion, the rejection of negative emotion, and the buffering of negative emotion. So, as you set big goals, you're inviting a lot of negative emotion. You're inviting a lot of fear, you're inviting doubt, you're inviting embarrassment, you're inviting humiliation, you're inviting everything that comes along with failing your way forward.
And when those emotions come, you have to utilize negative emotion in order to strengthen yourself emotionally. Negative emotion is an opportunity for you to process and become stronger. And the reason you become stronger is if you aren't afraid to experience any negative emotion, you will lose the fear of fear, the fear of negative emotion. And when you don't have any fear of negative emotion, you will catapult your life because it won't hold you back.
And the way that you overcome the fear of feeling is by feeling, period. So, when an emotion comes, instead of drinking or eating or going on social media to avoid that feeling, you actually invite it in and you process it through, you digest it, you feel it, and you see that you don't die. And you see that it actually passes. And you learn from it, and you grow from it. And then the next time it comes, you're already ready for it. You're already stronger because of it. You're already used to, hey, this kind of stuff happens where I have thoughts and feelings that feel terrible and I can handle them.
And you start anticipating ahead of time, oh hey, this is probably going to be very scary to do this, putting myself out there, being on the internet, writing an article, writing a book, coaching a client, investing my money, whatever it is you want to do. And I'm ready for that fear and I can manage it. I'm not going to let it affect my behavior, because weak emotional management leads to weak behavior. And if you have weak behavior, you're never going to be able to produce results. You'll run around doing busy work trying to hide from all of your emotions. And you'll call it work and then it won't work and then you'll make excuses and then you'll blame other people.
It's a pattern. I see it in everyone that I work with. I have it in myself. But if you're aware of it, if you're aware that the way that I am stopped is always by my emotions and the way that I keep going is always by strengthening my ability to process and overcome those emotions. That is the secret.
How much negativity you experience from your own brain will be dependent on how many huge goals you have, right? Fear, doubt, insecurity. It's all going to come up guaranteed if your goals are big enough, that's what's going to happen. But you can utilize it to make you stronger. The biggest obstacle is when those big emotions come up and you use it to make yourself weaker, more righteous, more approval seeking, more blaming, more fragile. We want to use those emotions to make ourselves stronger.
I'm going to do a whole separate podcast on this, but I'll touch on it briefly here. There's a huge difference between self-love and self-coddling. And what I see is a lot of people coddling themselves, and that's weakening them. Because if every time I have a negative emotion, I, you know, need a week off. And I need to rest and I need to heal from these terrible, awful, scary emotions that I'm having, I'm going to perpetuate the idea that I'm not strong enough to handle life, that I'm not strong enough to create amazing things, that I'm not strong enough to overcome my own primal survival brain. And the more I perpetuate it, the more that will be true.
And so, self-coddling really creates a lot of behavior weakness, where you're not managing dread well. And work ethic, having a strong work ethic is really about how much dread you can handle, how much you can actually obey yourself, how you can create the inertia that you need to overcome your desire to conserve energy. And that's going to require you to go to work. But it's not the kind of work where you're forcing yourself and you're overworking. It's the kind of work where you access your power of fortitude to be able to manage your emotional life.
So, when you are able to define and own your own problems, you will see that the biggest obstacle that relates to everything here is a mismanaged mind. If you are not managing your mind, you will have all of these negative emotions and you will have all of these negative thoughts that create them. And they will just be running in the background. And when you see other people that mirror that negativity, you're going to be delighted and you're going to want to spend time with them, and you're going to want to perpetuate it and you won't even realize that you're doing it.
You'll be like, "Why do I feel so good with Jenny? Because Jenny hates this as much as I do. And Jenny agrees that this is too hard and agrees that this isn't a good idea, and agrees that, you know, we need more rest and relaxation and healing and escapism." Or, "I want to hang out with this person because they like to overeat and they like to overdrink and they like to party and that's a nice escape for me." And you won't even realize how much drama and negativity you're creating without even knowing it.
And so, when you look at your life honestly and you look at everything that I've talked about here, all the obstacles that I've listed here, you will for sure find yourself in them. You will know, yeah, I do that, and I am doing this. And I want you to not use that against yourself, but use that for yourself.
Hey, what would it be like if I didn't seek out drama? I didn't seek out approval. I didn't use circumstances and situations and my past to weaken myself. And instead, I used it to strengthen myself and grow myself. And I used all of the weights in my life, as the metaphor is all the weights in the gym that I had to lift to make myself stronger and to make myself work harder and smarter and produce results. The goal is to produce as many results as you can. Half of them will be terrible, and you will use those terrible results as an opportunity to strengthen your emotional and cognitive life and to go again.
That's as simple as it is. You're either going to use your failures to weaken you or your failures to strengthen you. Antifragility means you use your failures to strengthen you. Okay? If you need a metaphor for this, picture the little kid learning how to walk. The only way they ever learn how to walk is by failing a thousand times. The failures, the falls is what makes them strong because they have to get up. And if they just give up and sit on the ground, they'll never learn to walk because they'll never get the strength that they need.
So, you know in your deepest knowing if you are doing this to yourself. And if you really want to see how badass you really are, we're going to give you tools in the next episode to overcome all of these habitual patterns, all of these obstacles. And if you apply those tools and you're consistent with them and you get feedback and you look at your life from the perspective of a playground where you're learning how to walk, and it requires you to fail. You're not going to be great on the first time on the jungle gym, right? You're going to have to learn how to do it.
Then you can create the most badass results and become such a badass human being that goes into the world with mental fortitude and a work ethic that can create amazing things. What happens when you really build up your work ethic and you really build up your mental toughness, then when you have a desire, it's real already because you're like, I know I'm strong and I know I'm capable of creating this, so I will. And you get to enjoy the idea of it like you're enjoying a planned vacation, because you know that you can create the result. It may take longer than you think, may take more failures than you think, but you know you'll stick with it, you know you're resilient, you know that you're strong.
That's a really fun, badass life, my friends. It's not for everyone. Not everyone is going to step up to the plate and be willing to do that. And that's okay. But this is for those of you who are, who want this, who need just a little bit of knowledge, just a little bit of instruction in order to take your life to the next level. Those are the people I want to work with. The people that are already badass but want to become more badass. The people that are already strong, they're already working at it, they're already going for it, and they want to go to the next level.
So, join me next week in the next podcast where I'm going to talk about the tools that you need to start practicing and start utilizing on the regular basis to overcome all the obstacles that I just talked about. So, I hope you have the most beautiful week. I'll talk to you next week. Take care. Bye-bye.
