You are listening to the Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode number 535.
What's up? Welcome to part three of Being a Badass.
In part one, we talked about what a badass is. In part two, we talked about all those obstacles that are in the way of you becoming a badass and creating those badass results. And in this episode, I'm going to give you some tools that you can use to really step into your era of being a badass.
And it's interesting because the more I have talked about this, the published the podcast, gotten feedback, talked to other people about it, the more I realize how many people want that badass feeling within them. They want to identify that way, and how many people are ready to do it now. They're sick and tired of not living up to what they believe their potential is. So, I'm excited to give you these tools. I'm excited to help you start working on some of these concepts in your life. And as you know, I've mentioned, I'm going to be doing an entire program of coaching next year, and you'll be able to utilize some of these tools. I'll be referencing them a lot.
So, the first thing you have to do, I know it sounds simple, but you have to make a decision to be a badass. And it's a big decision because when I think about the benefits of it, there are so many. They're so exciting, it's so great. But there's also a lot of negatives that come with it. I can't think of one person, not one person in my life that is a badass motherfucker who really destroys any limitations that are in front of them that doesn't have a lot of nonsense to deal with. A lot of negativity coming at them, a lot of challenges, a lot of overwhelming things.
So that's what we're signing up for. We're not just signing up for, "I'm going to be a badass and I'm never going to have to go into battle." No, it's like, "I'm going to be a badass and I am going to lead the charge. And I am willing to go into battle. I'm willing to go into the challenge. I'm willing to face what is there for me. And I'm willing for any ridicule or any negativity, haters, challenge, anything that comes at me, including from my own family."
So, do not make the decision lightly. Make it heavily. Make it a line in the sand for yourself.
And once you've made that decision, once you've committed to it, I highly recommend you tell people. I know this sounds weird, but if you start telling people, "I'm tired of this other thing, I'm going to start being a badass. I'm going to start going after it. I'm going to start really developing my mental toughness, and I'm really going to start working harder than I ever have in a way that produces results."
And so that's really what the decision is. You're deciding to identify as a badass, which includes, you are going to do the work that creates the results, and you're going to commit to it, and you're going to develop the mental strength that you're going to need to overcome those challenges.
And so the question becomes, how do you get stronger at anything? What makes something stronger? What makes you stronger? And it is the development of the muscle. It's the development through repetition, by building the capacity through exposure. And so, the work is going to have to be intense for short periods of time, and it's going to have to produce results, which will most likely include a lot of stumbling, a lot of failure. And when those failures happen, when the stumbling happens, that's your opportunity to kick into overdrive on building up your mental strength.
Nothing is too difficult for you. You can do hard things. You can move through this. Maybe you need support of a coach. Maybe you need to include a lot of positivity in your mind and your mind management, but you can do this.
So, I talked about this a little bit in the last session, but one of the secrets that I have to opening up the gym of working hard and getting stronger is setting impossible goals that you commit to.
And there's three reasons why that really works. One reason is, is it reidentifies you as someone who is going to achieve an extraordinary goal. I have been defined by my future for so many years that it's just basically taken my life time to catch up with it. I identified as a multi-million-dollar business owner way before I was, right? And then the life caught up to that vibration, to that identity.
And so that's the first reason. You have to set an impossible goal and start identifying with that impossible goal. The second thing you have to do is you have to commit to the work that it requires to achieve it. You can't just believe it. You can't just have, "Oh, I think this is great. I believe in the goal." No, you got to believe in the work to create the goal. You can't just want the goal; you have to want the work. And the harder the work, the more intense the work, the stronger you're going to get.
So I pray for jobs. I pray for goals that increase my strength, mentally and physically and capacity-wise. I want to become someone that is so badass that I'm not afraid to take on anything, any challenge that I think will be something that will evolve me, okay? So that's why we create impossible goals: to reidentify ourselves, to invite the hard work in, and to build the mental strength.
Now, one of the things that I teach that is a really important tool is to anticipate the obstacles, plan for them, and use the anticipation of the obstacle as an opportunity to strengthen yourself before the obstacle even comes.
Now, the way that I like to do this is to anticipate the worst-case scenario. And have a little caveat to this, and it's an important one. But when you think about what's the worst that can happen if I go after this impossible goal, and what is my plan for when and if that does happen, is such a wonderful way to prepare your mind, your body, your time in order to get stronger, anticipate, create for. And maybe that thing never happens, but you will be stronger for having prepared for it.
But my caveat here is, remember that the worst thing in my opinion that can happen is not that you try and fail. But the worst-case scenario is that you don't even try and you miss out on what could have been. The worst-case scenario is you never get to know who you could have been. You're just sitting on the sidelines watching everyone else live their lives.
So, once you've decided you're not going to do that, you've decided, "I'm going to go to that next level of my life," then what's the worst that can happen? Plan for it. Create a strategic plan for overcoming it ahead of time. And don't avoid anything terrible that can happen. Think it up. Think of the worst things that can happen ahead of time. And if you prepare for those, they most likely won't happen, but you'll be ready.
The third thing that you really need to do and the tool that you really need to develop is emotional resilience. And by setting really big goals and identifying as a badass, you are standing upright and strong, chest out, ready for whatever emotion comes. Now listen, the worst thing that can happen to us is terrible emotions, right? Trauma, horror, humiliation, right? These are all things that our brain and body react to as the worst things that can happen. A lot of people will say to me, "No, the worst thing that can happen is murder, death, tragedy." No, because think about it, if you don't even know those things are happening, if you haven't had a thought about them or a feeling about them, those things don't affect you at all.
Your thoughts and feelings about tragedy, your thoughts and feelings about horrible horror things, that's the worst-case scenario. So if you know how to manage your emotions. And when I talk about manage emotions, you have to be really clear in your mind that I am not meaning avoid them. I'm not meaning fight through them. I'm not meaning pretend they're not there. I'm talking about, "Let them in. Bring it on." Just a vibration. The worst emotion in the world is still just a vibration caused by a thought.
And the more you manage your mind and your emotions, knowing this and knowing that you are the cause and you are responsible for what you think and feel, and many times you're going to want to think and feel negative things because that's appropriate for the situation, if you do it on purpose and you don't escape it through buffering, and you allow the urge to escape to be there without reacting to it, you will get stronger and stronger and stronger.
Now, this doesn't mean you have to expose yourself to danger on purpose in a way that isn't productive. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying expose yourself to danger in a way that is productive. And by danger, I mean anything your brain is afraid of because it's in survival mode. Expose it to that.
And you have to be able to love yourself through that process enough to feel the emotion through to get to the other side of it, to recognize there is no feeling you can't feel. You have to embrace fear. You have to embrace doubt. You have to embrace insecurity.
So, once you build this emotional strength by embracing and paying attention and being aware and feeling your feelings, what you are going to notice is that as your emotional strength increases because you're managing your mind, your behavioral strength will increase as well. And you will be strong in the actions that you take. And what that means is you will start to obey yourself.
So many times, we know what we need to do, we know what we want to do, we know what will create that result, but we don't do it because we're functioning from the opposite of being a badass. We're functioning from a very weak mind and a very weak set of emotional success because we have been avoiding those emotions and we don't know how to process them. You have an under-feeling problem. But as soon as we open ourselves up to those feelings and we're willing to feel them and we can anticipate them and know that we'll be okay on the other side of them, that's when we start utilizing our behavior of strength because emotions that are felt through can provide you with the energy that you need to create results, the energy that you need to keep going.
When you are constantly fighting against your own vibrational life, your own emotional life, you will be exhausted, and you will need an escape, and you will start buffering. But when you embrace those emotions and you embrace your full humanity, I'm talking about the positive and the negative, you will have so much more energy to keep going and to have behavioral strength.
So, an example of behavioral strength is when you mess up, when you make a mistake, when you do something wrong, instead of quitting, you double down. That's behavioral strength. Instead of quitting, you double down. Instead of complaining, all the stuff we talked about in the last episode, complaining, making excuses, blaming, whining, throwing your hands up in the air, giving up, being dramatic, instead of all of that, we double down on the work. We double down on the intensity. We double down on the mind management. We double down on the emotional processing so we can build up our emotional strength.
One of the most important things that you can do during this process of reidentifying yourself as a badass is to control the inputs that go into your brain. You want to make sure you're getting coached. You want to make sure you're reading really positive material. You want to make sure you're listening to coaching. You want to make sure you're coaching yourself. This is the immersive process of filling your brain with all of the positivity, all of the energizing information that you're going to need in order to get your work done, in order to take care of yourself.
One of the biggest problems that I see is this coddling of the self and the identifying as a victim and blaming other people for shortcomings. It is the opposite of badassery. You're never going to see a badass person sitting on their computer making negative comments towards other people. They just don't have time. They're not going to be gossiping and creating unnecessary drama. They're going to be working. They're going to be getting after it.
And so, I would say the difference between coddling is it's an attempt to create comfort in a way that weakens you versus loving yourself, which creates a level of comfort that strengthens you.
So self-love is eating really good food, taking care of your health, resting when you need to health, planning ahead, obeying yourself, creating the life that you want and that you deserve. That is self-love, and it's fierce. Coddling is all of this like, "Oh, this is too hard. I'm going to make an excuse. I'm going to blame. I'm going to look for all the reasons why I'm a victim and I can't do any of this," right? And listen, I spent a lot of time coddling myself. I'm not going to lie. I catch myself doing it to this day, right? I slip into that, "Oh, poor me. I'm so exhausted. I need a break." When I know that's not really it. The reason I feel tired is because I haven't been doing the work that energizes me and strengthens me. I've been doing things that weaken me.
And so, I'm, as your coach, willing to call you out on this, but you have to be willing to call yourself out on it too. You have to be willing to do it in a loving way where you're like, "Hey, look, I know we can do better. I know it's going to feel better. I want to take better care of myself. I want to show up for this life. I want to show up for my family. I want to set an example. I want to create amazing, awesome results in my life and see what I can do in this one precious life. See what I can create."
So you must identify as a badass by what you've overcome and also what you're willing to overcome in the future. You can't be a badass if your life is only easy.
So many of us, I feel like we've had so much trauma, so much challenge, so many things go wrong in our lives that we feel exhausted and we feel like, "Okay, now I just want to rest. I'm a badass for having overcome all of that, and now I just want to coddle myself and care for myself and heal myself and hide from the world."
And I think being a badass means, "No, I strengthened myself by the experiences that I've had in my life, and I will continue to strengthen myself by the experiences that I'm going to create for my future because I want there to be opportunities for me to get stronger."
And when the challenges come, when the storms come, when the pain comes, I will be ready for it.
So think about this for a minute. When you are experiencing pain, at the same time you're experiencing strength, you have a clear mind, you have honest emotions, and you have the ability to overcome. And when you are experiencing pain and a lot of mental negativity, you're either beating yourself up or you're whining and complaining or you're feeling sorry for yourself, that pain is so weakening, and it's the difference between those two.
I talk a lot about building work ethic is overcoming dread. I have a whole podcast on it. It's called Dread Sprints. And your ability to experience the emotion of dread on purpose in order to create what you want to create and embracing that emotion. It's like people say, "Well, I just want to feel happy all the time. I just want to feel peace all the time. I just want to feel satisfied all the time." And they find it very difficult to do that because life presents them so much negativity and so many reasons not to.
But if you're willing to embrace alternative emotions, if you're willing to embrace emotions that you know you need to go through because on the other side is the success, that is what will create badassery in your own life.
And if you want more of this, I mentioned this in the last one, but if you want more of this, you should listen to that podcast on Dread Sprints, and also post-traumatic growth and being antifragile. And you should listen to them over and over and over again. When I was first starting out and building my strength as a human, learning the tools of life coaching and really understanding that I had it within my power to create an identity that would produce a life that I really genuinely wanted, I spent pretty much 3 to 4 hours a day reading and listening to material that supported that claim.
And I'm so thankful that I wasn't on social media and I wasn't on. At the time when I was first starting, there wasn't a lot of it, but there was Facebook, and there was a lot of negative inputs, a lot of negative news, a lot of negative commentary, a lot of gossip, a lot of hate that was being spewed out into the world. And I spent my time focused on what I could do, what was in my control, what I could take responsibility for, how can I be part of the solution and not part of the problem?
And one of the tools that is very imperative, I think, for anyone who wants to be effective. And when you're a badass, you're going to be effective. You're going to take care of business in a way that other people don't. In order to be effective, you really have to be able to define the problem in a way that is productive. And this is a skill you can develop. And when you can define a problem in pure circumstance, when you can define the problem without any judgment, without any drama, without any added fear, doubt, insecurity, you will be able to solve your issues or the obstacles in front of you so much faster.
Anytime you drudge up within you the anti-badass persona, the anti-badass identity, you have to go to work on managing your mind. There is no room for the myriad of thoughts that are going to be presented to you in your brain that make you feel less than, that make you feel weak, that make you feel like you're not like other badass people. And you have to catch yourself doing it.
And just because you're keeping those thoughts and feelings to yourself doesn't mean they're not affecting your life. So if you have thoughts of, "Well, I'm just not good enough," or, "I'm a bad person," or, "I'm hateful," or, "I'm not smart enough," or, "I can't do this." It's the most important piece of work you can do that day to write all those thoughts down and negate them, to challenge them, to work through them, to process the feelings that they're causing.
And go back to that original decision, which is, "I'm a badass." So, what does that mean that I've made that decision? It means I'm committed to working hard, harder than I ever have. I'm committed to being emotionally strong. I'm committed to thinking thoughts that support my identity as someone who can do this, who can be a badass at this.
And it takes a lot of courage to put yourself out there like that. Takes a lot of courage to be willing to do that and to claim it and to say that about yourself and to let people put you down for it. It's okay. But you're going to have to be ready because if you are willing to go out there into the world and play this big game, they're going to come at you, the challenges, right? The challenges are going to come at you all day, every day. And you have to have a positive mental attitude about that. "I'm ready. This is what I live for. This is what I'm made for."
And the more you build yourself up, you will realize that you will be built on a pile of failures, on a pile of mistakes, on a pile of judgments. And there's going to be enough negativity coming at you, you cannot be one that's creating that negativity within you.
And so if you want to understand what is your full capacity, what could you really be capable of and you allow yourself to dwell in that space, dwell in that vision, dwell in that wonder and claim yourself as the badass that you are, you can blow your mind so open. You can literally trip yourself out by how amazing you can be. It's actually the most fun, amazing trip, journey ever. And it doesn't have to be something that everyone else notices. It's just you know what you've done. You know what you've overcome.
You know, I think one of my biggest accomplishments in my entire life is removing the compulsion to overeat from my brain. I literally just don't have it anymore. It's just not there. And that to me is the biggest miracle. I have blown my mind so many times thinking about, thinking how I used to be and how I am now, right? And the compulsion I used to have to drink that I don't have at all anymore. Just gone.
The desire that I had to create a family, create a business, create an amazing group of chosen family friends. Like all of it blows my mind every single day. And I want to keep growing and I want to keep challenging myself. I want to continue to be a badass in my own life. It makes me feel amazing to see myself that way.
And so, I want to end this series with just saying to every single one of you who have asked me, "What can I do to be more like this? What can I do to create these results? What can I do in my life? You inspire me. I want this for myself." Take what I have told you over these past three episodes very seriously. Every single thing I've said. Listen to it again if you have to. Take it on as your own responsibility. Do it religiously. Manage your mind. Continue to listen to other episodes of this podcast. Listen to Antifragile, Post-Traumatic Growth, Dread Sprints, anything that has to do with managing your mind, anything that has to do with processing your emotions, anything that has to do with working hard and creating really strong results in your life.
You don't want to ever use your desire to be a badass against yourself. You want to use it for yourself to strengthen you, to make your life exactly what you want it to be.
So I'm going to let you go with this series. It's been really fun doing it. I've been loved hearing all of your feedback. I've been loving hearing all of your excitement about stepping into new projects, new ideas, new goals, new things in the world. There's just so much opportunity. The world is moving so fast right now.
I was meeting with my brokers, my investment brokers who manage my investments. And we were talking about investing in these VC companies that are all doing AI work, artificial intelligence, right? And working with all of the new products that are being developed at 100 times the rate as normal because of this new technology.
And the world has sped up so much over the past 200 years, right? We just keep getting faster and faster and faster. It's nothing like about what we're heading into. We're heading into a light speed of exciting opportunities for what we can create with our lives. Desires. We have more support than we've ever had. We have more ideas than we've ever had. And we have more negativity than we've ever had, right? It's just the same balance, but it's all a lot faster. Utilizing these tools are going to make it so you don't get knocked around. You're not going to get left behind. You're going to be right there on the cutting edge of your own life, creating what you want with what's possible. And what's possible is so much bigger than we can even imagine yet. It's just going to keep getting better and better and better. So make sure that you're doing the internal work to be ready.
As Ina Garten says, "Be ready when the luck happens." Because there's so much coming our way.
All right, my beautiful friends. I'm going to sign off until my next level of inspiration, and I'll come out with another podcast. In the meantime, have a beautiful rest of your month.
Take care, everyone. Bye-bye.
