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LIFE

COACH
How to do it

by master certified coach


brooke castillo
Also by Brooke Castillo
If I am So Smart, Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

If I am So Smart, Why Can’t I Lose Weight? Workbook

Self Coaching 101

The 42 Day Jumpstart

It Was Always Meant to Happen that Way

© 2012 by Brooke Castillo

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this


publication, reproduced, transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a
retrieval system, without the prior consent of the
publisher is an infringement of the copyright law.

ISBN: 978-1463563707

design by ashley inzer


Note from the Author
If you aren’t familiar with my work, I want to give you a heads up. I am not a perfectionist,
but there is a purpose to everything I do. I wrote this book in a way that would be easy
for you to read. I did my best to simplify my work and distill it in to the shortest book
possible - one that you don’t just consume, but savor.

But please, do not let its brevity or casual,


conversational style detract from the incredible
effectiveness of what is offered here. Very many
people, much smarter than I am, have used this work
to transform their experience in the world. There
is much more where this came from. I could have
easily written a five-hundred-page book, so please
come find me at The Life Coach School if you want
more. But for now, this is plenty. When I found this
work, I felt like I had found a miracle. I still do. I hope
you find it too. -Brooke Castillo
LIFE COACH: HOW TO DO IT • © Brooke Castillo | 2
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 5 PART 2 HOW TO COACH MAD SKILLS 75

THE INDUSTRY  8 1. Food and Body 77

SCHOOLS & FEDERATIONS 10 2. Unconditional Love 83

CERTIFICATION 16 3. The Manual 89

4. Boundaries 98
PART 1: HOW TO COACH THE BASICS 20
5. Emotional Childhood 105
1. The Anatomy of an Issue  22
6. Money 111
2. Cause vs. Symptom 29
7. Questions 116
3. Holding the Space 35
8. Outcomes 124
4. Clean Thinking 42
9. Story vs. Fact 130
5. Be Prepared 47

6. The Model 52

7. The Model in Action 66

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If you don’t love your
client, you have no
business coaching
them. And there’s no
way you can love your
client, if you don’t
first, love yourself.
- Brooke Castillo

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introduction
You bought a book titled Life Coach, so I am going to assume you have a general idea of
what a Life Coach is, and I won’t bore you with a detailed description.

Most simply, a Life Coach is someone


who can help you get perspective on
your life and your mind.
A Life Coach is not a friend who will commiserate with your self-induced suffering. A
Life Coach is not a substitute for a therapist who will treat acute mental disorders and
diseases. A Life Coach will not endlessly explore your past or allow you to retell your
painful life stories, as if they were still the cause of your discomfort. Life Coaching is not
cheesy. It’s not based on something shallow or unscientific. It is, more often than not, a
game changer for good.

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Vikki Brock, a coach whose doctoral dissertation was on the roots and influences of the
coaching profession, says the following:

Coaching came into existence to fill an unmet need, which


coincided with the shift away from a model of psychological
illness, and toward the humanistic ideal of wellness and growth.

I agree. Coaching is about taking healthy people and helping them make their good
lives awesome.

Coaching is “mind training.”

Much as a tennis coach works with a player to understand and analyze performance
both in practice and during a game, a Life Coach works with clients to understand and
analyze what they are doing in their cognitive, emotional, and behavioral life. The Coach
has an objective vantage point — a different perspective from where they can spot
what’s working as well as areas for change and improvement. This is as essential for a
well-lived life as it is for a well-played sport.
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If you want to become a Life Coach, it is
important you understand that there are
two major skills to be mastered.
1. First, you need to learn how to coach effectively by learning
the tools and practicing them in your own life as well as on
many willing clients.

2. Second, you need to learn how to run and market your small
business. It doesn’t matter how great a coach you are if you
don’t know how to attract clients.

This book introduces and discusses the first of these skills. The second is covered in its
sequel Life Coach, How to Sell it.

I want to be very clear that reading these books is not enough; mastery can only come
from consistent application and practice. This applies to all my books. Don’t just read
this book. Do this book!

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the industry
Life Coaching is an unregulated industry. This means that you don’t have a governing
body telling you what you can and can’t do.

This means you don’t have to have


any education to be a Life Coach.
This does not mean you won’t want
to get educated.
This means you will have to regulate yourself and won’t be able to rely on your credentials.
You will have to be responsible for what you do in your business without anyone forcing
you to do it. What a concept.

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it’s not where you
go to school, but
what you learn that
ultimately matters.
- Brooke Castillo

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schools & federations
Life Coaching has no mama and no papa.

There are many schools, and there are federations that claim to accredit them, but if
you look closely, as I did, you will see how important it is to question everything. The
International Coaching Federation (ICF), the organization you will most often hear about,
appointed itself as the governing/regulating body of the entire coaching community.
And as nice as that might sound, it doesn’t make it so.

There is no federation with authority


to regulate the coaching profession.
Period.

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The ICF is a nonprofit organization created by for-profit business owners to establish
credibility for an emerging industry. In exchange for paying them money, you get to
be a member of their organization and build their credibility, but it does nothing to
regulate or manage who can or can’t become a Life Coach. Remember that if you decide
to give them money and become a member, it is not because you need the credibility —
they give you none. You can follow their rules and ethics if you want to, without giving
them money.

ICF representatives claim that they are the “voice of the coaching profession.” I think they
are the voice of the people who take their training courses and become their members.

That’s a percentage of practicing


coaches and certainly not “the” voice
of the profession.
The ICF was founded by the late Thomas Leonard, who is also the founder of Coachu and
Coachville (competing schools). He started both schools, and he created the credentialing
federation to credential his schools. Thomas Leonard also created the International
Association of Coaches, another coaching association in the U.S
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This is an obvious conflict of interest. According to Rey A. Carr, who researched and
wrote an article on the Life Coaching Industry and Credentialing, this is also a violation
of the accepted professional standards. So ironically, the federation that attempts to
regulate the Coaching Industry could use some regulation:

While the ICF accredits coaching schools, the ICF is itself not “accredited” to do so.
The ICF is violating an accepted professional standard with regards to the same
organization both certifying individuals and accrediting the schools from which
those individuals have gained their training.

The 2003 report, Standards for the Accreditation of Certification Programs, prepared by
the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (www.noca.org), states the following:

The certification agency must not also be responsible for accreditation of educational
or training programs or courses of study leading to the certification.

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In what is considered the most authoritative reference work on the subject of certification,
The Business of Certification: A Comprehensive Guide to Developing a Successful Program
(Knapp & Knapp, 2002), the authors are adamant that:

Functions of accreditation and certification are distinct processes that should be


carried out by agencies independent of one another. This independence is designed
to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.

In other words, the ICF has no authority to accredit schools, and yet it claims to accredit
the schools and then certify the individuals graduating from those schools.

That being said, Thomas Leonard, who is responsible for creating this federation to give
his schools some legitimacy, was quite clever in attempting to bring some credibility
to our profession. I admire him and his accomplishments. I listened to his tapes and
enjoyed some of his ideas and his enthusiasm for coaching. I do agree that he is one of
the “fathers” of the coaching industry, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for
what he was able to accomplish in such a short time.

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More recently, Brendan Bouchard has established the Experts Industry Association
as an additional option for coaches who want to be part of an external association of
regulation and ethics. This association is not associated directly with any educational
body; it’s a separate entity that stands alone as an independent community. I say this
with full knowledge that Brendan, one of the founders and creators, does offer an
Expert Academy, but in no way does the association claim to accredit this academy to
the exclusion of others.

These are only two of the associations attempting to regulate and provide standardization
to the coaching industry. I have been a member of both but feel no loyalty to either.
Do your own research. Find out what works for YOU. Don’t look to some industry
standard because there isn’t one. Pick your school, academy, and association based
on what you want to learn and the quality of the teachers. The larger schools might be
a perfect fit for you, or you might prefer the smaller school’s approach. I don’t think one
is necessarily better than the other.

What matters is what works for you.


You decide.
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I ultimately ended up going through Martha Beck’s Coach Training and Master Life Coach
Training program (www. marthabeck.com), both as a student and as a teacher. The class
size was small, and the tools were cutting edge and very effective. Martha has taught
many of the best coaches in this industry, and I believe her training is superior because
it is not regulated by any organization. Nothing is off limits in her classes — just like
nothing is off limits in life.

Since then, I have taken dozens of training programs and classes. Some of them were
interesting, but most left me bored and uninspired. In the end, I decided to open my own
small, private school that focuses on treating the unwanted cause of results and behaviors.
Since then, we have trained hundreds of coaches in the art of mind management, life
coaching, practice building, and self-coaching.

Find out more at www.thelifecoachschool.com.

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certification
Even as a teacher who certifies coaches, I find it amusing the emphasis that coaches put
on certification. I have coached hundreds and hundreds of clients, and not one of them
checked my certification or was the least bit interested in it.

They wanted to know if I could help them.


They didn’t want to know how I did in school; they wanted to know how well I did
in coaching.

Certification is a completion symbol.


You can use it as a marketing tool or as a mark of distinction, but it does not replace
your own integrity. You and you alone need to manage your company, your ethics, and
your coaching with the highest level of excellence. Don’t rely on a piece of paper as a
substitute for that.

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Your clients will most likely not hire you because of what school you went to. Even the
coaches who are certified by different schools hire me to coach them, and it’s not because
of my education. It’s because they believe I will be effective, and they like what I have
created.

And let me also add that the number of hours someone has coached does not mean
they are an effective coach. It’s not the hours of coaching that make coaches effective;
it’s their natural talent, empathy, wisdom, and ability to hone in on what the client is
creating with their mind. Some students are able to do this after ten hours of coaching,
while others require much more practice. This point is made quite well by Rey A. Carr:

Certification based on hours of experience may be a way to underscore the


importance of experience, but hour-based approaches are at best arbitrary
and at worst misleading the public. Is a coach with 250 hours of experience
really less able than a coach with 500 hours of experience? It might be logical
to say, “yes,” but there is too little evidence that such hour designations are
equivalent to capability. In reality the use of hours to determine certification
is probably based on the outdated university system of awarding a degree
after completion of a certain number of units or courses.
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The way I see it, good coaches have three
things in common:
1. They do their own self-coaching work, so they can coach from
a clean place.

2. They have mastered high quality tools and skills.

3. They genuinely love their clients from a place of integrity.

This is not measured in the quantity of coaching they have done, but rather in the
quality. The bottom line is that Life Coaching, our profession, comes with a tremendous
amount of freedom. But that freedom comes with the tremendous responsibility to be
accountable for the work you do with your clients. You will not be able to lean on any
association for your credibility, but then again, you shouldn’t need too.

Let your work, your reputation, and who


you are be your credibility.

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certification is to
a coach, what a
marriage certificate
is to a marriage. it’s
a piece of paper that
means a lot if you
live by it.
- Brooke Castillo

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Part 1: How To Coach
THE BASICS
Life Coaching isn’t about treating the symptoms of our pain or shortcomings. Life
Coaching is about finding the root cause of each symptom, understanding it, and
then helping our clients change it to make room for new seeds of success and
fulfillment. This section includes basic tools all Life Coaches should understand
and master in order to be effective Coaches.

They include
1. The Anatomy of an Issue
2. Cause vs. Symptom
3. Holding the Space
4. Clean Thinking
5. Be Prepared
6. The Model
7. The Model in Action

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none of our pain comes
from what happens to
us. it comes from what
happens in our mind.
- Brooke Castillo

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1 THE ANATOMY OF AN ISSUE
Every issue that we encounter in our lives can be categorized and broken out into
five interrelated components, with changes in one component affecting the others.
Understanding how this works gives you, as the coach, great insight into where your
client is and how to proceed with coaching. No matter what issue your client brings to
you, you can find the troubling cause and begin coaching there.

The five 1) Circumstances 4) Actions

components are 2) Thoughts 5) Results


3) Feelings

When you understand each of these components, you can clearly identify the problem
your client is experiencing and decide which category it fits into. Then you can use your
coaching inquiry skills to uncover the root cause of the problem and build a picture of
what’s going on in each of the other components. This is because our thoughts about our
circumstances cause our feelings, which cause our actions, which ultimately create
results in our lives. Let’s illustrate with a few examples.

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Say your client is concerned about overspending. This fits into the action component of
the model. Then you know that you need to uncover the thought and feeling causing the
action. The thought leads to a feeling that leads to an action (overspending) that
leads to a result.

Say the client is depressed (feeling). You know this is the result of something he or she is
thinking (thought) and that the depression (feeling) leads to certain behavior patterns
(action). Your clients will most likely not be aware of this correlation between their
thoughts, emotions, and behavior.

Helping your clients unravel these patterns


and choose thoughts that ultimately result
in different actions will change their lives.

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It is useful to define each of the components of all the presented issues. Remember, no
matter what your client presents with, it can always be categorized.

1 Circumstances are the things that happen in the world


around us — things that we do not control. Examples include the
weather, our past, and other people’s behavior. These are things
that we cannot directly change.

2 Thoughts are the sentences that constantly run through our


minds. Sometimes we’re aware of our thoughts, but often we aren’t.
We choose thoughts about the circumstances in our lives. Examples
include “I’m not good enough” or “My boss doesn’t appreciate my
work.” We can’t change our circumstances, but we can change what
we think (our thoughts) about those circumstances.

3 Feelings are the emotions or vibrations that we experience


in our bodies, and they’re directly related to the thoughts we’re
thinking. Examples include anger, sadness, excitement, etc. Don’t
confuse feelings with physical, involuntary sensations such as
hunger, cold, reflex, physical pain, etc. Emotions are voluntary
because we can change what we feel by changing our thoughts.
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4 Actions refer to behavior, reaction, or inaction, and they’re
directly related to our feelings. Examples include eating when
we’re not hungry because we’re feeling lonely, avoiding interaction
with the boss because we’re feeling anger, and withdrawing from
relationships because we’re feeling sad. If we want different
actions, we can choose different feelings.

5 Results are the effects of our actions. Examples include being


overweight because we’ve been eating when we’re not hungry
and having dysfunctional working relationships because we’re
avoiding interactions with the boss. Choosing different actions will
lead us to different results.

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Think of your most pressing problem right now. Can you
Let’s practice this. categorize it into one of the five components?

Is it a circumstance? - This would be something factual — without judgment —


that you could prove in a courtroom. For example, if you just got fired, that would be a
circumstance if it’s factual and can be proved.

Is your most pressing problem a thought? - For example, “My boss didn’t
appreciate me; I can’t believe he fired me.” This is a thought because you can’t know for
a fact whether your boss felt appreciation for you.

Is your issue more of a feeling? - For example, anger may be what you are
experiencing when you think about your boss.

Is your issue an action or behavior? - Have you been lying on the couch drinking
beer since you found out that you lost your job? That would be the action you’re taking
because you’re feeling angry.

Or is your issue a result? - Having no income could be the result of lying on the
couch drinking beer and not working.

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It is absolutely imperative for coaches to know that circumstances or facts are not the
cause of pain — thoughts are. Your clients will often come to you believing they’re the
victim of their circumstances. It is your job to teach them they are only a victim of their
own minds. Whatever has happened to them or is happening to them doesn’t cause them
emotional pain. It’s their thinking that causes them the emotional pain. This is not the
same as condoning someone else’s behavior; it is simply taking complete responsibility
for our own mind.

Knowing this basic structure of human behavior, emotion, and


cognition is the ultimate basic knowledge for all good coaching. No
matter what your client presents with, you will know its cause by
understanding that circumstances trigger thoughts, which cause
feelings, which drive actions, which create results.

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treating the cause
of the pain will
eventually eliminate
the need to treat
the symptom.
- Brooke Castillo

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2 CAUSE VS. SYMPTOM
Most people who were trained by large traditional coaching schools are trained to treat
the symptom of a problem rather than the cause of the problem. It’s the equivalent of
taking aspirin for a broken arm versus casting it and healing it permanently. It’s easier
for the coach to give the aspirin and easier for the client to swallow it, but the result of
this treatment is temporary and ultimately ineffective in the long term.

Good coaching always seeks


to find the cause.
This applies to all areas of coaching from overeating, to overspending, to relationship
and career issues. You can treat the problem by trying to change the client’s actions
(symptoms), but unless you treat the cause of those actions, you will not be offering
your client a permanent solution. To treat the cause, it is essential to understand that
thoughts cause feelings that drive actions.

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Before actions can change, we must
change the thoughts and feelings (cause)
that lead to those actions.

For example, my main focus as a coach is on Weight Loss Coaching. The symptom
my clients bring to me is obesity. This is a result that is caused by overeating
and underexercising.

I can treat this symptom by helping my clients find a way to stop overeating and start
exercising, but this will not be a sustainable solution. Instead I focus on what is causing
the client to overeat and underexercise. If you have been paying close attention, you will
know that the cause of these actions is always the client’s thoughts and feelings. We
must work from the cognitive and emotional level in order to permanently change the
behavioral level. This ends the struggle against the symptom exactly in the same way
that casting and healing a bone prevents the need for continued aspirin to alleviate pain.

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circumstances
can trigger

thoughts
cause
EVIDENCE
feelings
cause

actions
cause

results

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Another example relates to clients who may come to you with money issues. Good
coaches understand that debt is the result of a thought like: I’ll never have enough. This
thought brings up feelings of scarcity for clients, which often causes them to overspend
on credit cards. A thought of not enough will ultimately create a not enough result. Positive
thoughts create positive results, and negative thoughts create negative results.

The cause of problems can always be


traced back to our thinking and how
we choose to interpret circumstances
or events.
The root cause of every problem is never the circumstance, but rather our thoughts about
the event or circumstance. It’s not our feelings, but rather the thought that created the
feeling. It is not our behavior, but our thoughts and feelings that resulted in the action
or behavior. Because the results we experience in our lives are directly created by our
thoughts, the cause of our problem is not the unwanted results, but rather the thoughts
that lead to those unwanted results.

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Great coaches are willing to bypass the “quick fix” of symptom treating in order to provide
causal coaching. This coaching understands the cause is never found in the past or in the
client’s childhood. It’s found in this moment and in the mind. It’s their current thought
about their past that is causing pain now.

The client’s current thinking is what creates


his or her current life.

So we begin there.

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we all need a safe
place where we can
clean out our ugly.
- Brooke Castillo

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3 HOLDING THE SPACE
In my opinion, coaching should never be about you as the coach and your agenda or
needs. It’s always about the client and what they need. The most important thing you
can do for your client is to “hold the space” for whatever it is they need to work out.
What this means is that you create a virtual, spiritual place where they can unload their
mind and get an honest perspective.

Your clients will have tried to do this many times with the people in their lives. But
because those people are involved and not objective, they will react to what your client
says, rather than being able to hold the space for the client to experience and explore
what’s going on. As the coach, it’s your privilege to hold that space and not react.
You are the one person who can hear anything your client has to say without reference
to your own opinion. Your client can “act out” their negative emotions with you and
tell you their negative thoughts and secrets; and you can hold the unconditional space
where thoughts and emotions can be looked at, unraveled, and understood.

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Do not underestimate the power of doing
this. This alone can change your client’s life.
This is the most important and often the most difficult part of your job. It requires that
you to do your own work. It requires you to be able to listen to your clients and hear
what their minds are thinking. You can know that whatever they’re saying is not who
they are — it is simply what they’re thinking. Even how they view you and your sessions
is not about you; it is about their minds.

To demonstrate this, let me tell you about my client Sarah. She came to me in a seminar
and later became one of my clients. She was angry with me from the beginning. She had
a very painful story about how her sister had victimized her. She would sob through
every session. She would rage against her sister. She was miserable “because of”
her sister.

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I never believed this story. I knew that this was just a painful group of thoughts that she
was creating and recreating in her mind. No matter what her sister had done forty years
ago (Yes! forty years ago), it was not harming her now. The only thing that was harming
her now was her thinking about it. I never once consoled her for her painful story or
empathized with her self-created pain.

I love my clients. I empathize with them.


But when they are punching themselves in
the face, I do not rub their leg and cry with
them. I grab their hand and tell them to
stop punching themselves.
In this case, I told my client that her sister was in no way responsible for how she was
choosing to feel. This pissed her off. Everyone had always agreed with her. Everyone
had always identified with her victim story and consoled her when she cried. She was
furious that I did not “have any compassion” for her as a victim.

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I was not negatively affected when she was mad at me. I knew that the people in her life
who had compassion for this terrible story had not helped her. That’s why she was here
with me. I gave her the truth she needed. I told her that her current pain had nothing to
do with her sister.

She told me that I was uncompassionate. She told me that


I was mean. She told me that I was cold. And then she
cried and cried and cried.

She was in a pool of despair — a mire of her own creation. I would not jump in with
her. I stayed out because I knew that from the ground, I could help her out of that pool.

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I asked her how she wanted to feel about her sister.

“What? What do you mean how do I want to feel about her?”

“How you feel is a choice,” I told her. I explained that she could choose to feel any
way she wanted to feel.

“I have always just wanted to be able to love her,” she said.

“Then love her,” I replied. “That’s your choice. You can love her no matter what
she has done. No matter how long you have hated her. No matter whether or not
she deserves it. It’s your choice and you can do it for your sake.”

She was furious. I let her hate me. I let her play this relationship with her sister out
with me, and I loved her anyway. No matter what she said to me, I stayed. I didn’t take it
personally; I showed her that the whole story was just in her mind.

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She didn’t e-mail or talk to me for two weeks. Then she e-mailed me. She wrote:

I do love my sister. I am very pissed at you for pointing that out. But, I
want to tell you that when I was crying and you weren’t consoling me,
it gave me a tremendous amount of freedom to let go of the hate and
cry. I knew you weren’t going to leave, you weren’t going to fall apart.
You were going to stay strong. And for some reason, even though it
made me mad, it was stabilizing enough for me to really go into this
issue. I’m still mad, but thank you.

I held the space.

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minds need cleaning
at least as often as
houses.
- Brooke Castillo

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4 CLEAN THINKING
Even though you’re a coach with the best of intentions, you are going to judge your
clients. Good and bad. You’re a human being. That’s what humans do. We are socialized
to believe certain things, and we have a history that creates our knee-jerk thinking. You
MUST be aware of this thinking and you must clean it up before coaching your client.

You clean it up by first becoming aware of your thoughts and judgments and writing
them down. Notice what your judgments are, and then put them aside as you coach.

Your opinion of how your client should behave


is not your client’s business. You can’t possibly
know what is best for your client. Ever. Only they
can know that. You can give them perspective, but
you can’t know what is right for them.

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So if you have a judgment that they shouldn’t be cheating on their husband or quitting
their job because of your own thoughts and beliefs, you need to know that your judgment
will interfere with your coaching. Do your own work in order to “clean up” your thoughts
and beliefs so that you can be present for your client-without judgment.

Being “clean” means you’ve acknowledged


your opinion and then let it go. You have an
open mind for all possibilities; you know that
only your client can find his or her answers.
Understanding why your client is doing what they are doing, how they are feeling, and
what they genuinely want is what matters. I find that an attitude of fascination is the best
way to observe clients. That word, fascination, gives me so much freedom to understand
rather than trying to fix or change them.

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For example, if your client comes to the session complaining about her unemployed
husband who doesn’t help around the house, you might be tempted to agree with her
complaints. But if you have cleaned up your own mind, you will not be judging your
client or her husband. Instead you will be ready to help your client find the thought
causing her pain. Talking about the husband’s behavior (something she can’t control)
will get you nowhere; talking about your client’s mind will help your client change how
she feels in the moment, without having to change the husband.

By having a “clean” mind as a coach, you can help your clients clean up their thinking,
which ultimately is...

where all their


power is.
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show up with
intention and let
the magic happen
- Brooke Castillo

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I decided to stop sabotaging
myself and to start
operating from the principle,
“awesome coaches come
prepared, that’s what makes
them awesome.”
- An Bourmanne
5 BE PREPARED
I believe there are three things a coach must do to prepare for a session:

1) Know the tools.


2) Self coach.
3) Practice.

1 Know the Tools. It’s important to master the tools you’ll be


using in your coaching practice. Study the teachers and coaches
you admire, and try their tools out on yourself. The only way you
can know if a tool works is if you have used it and felt it work on
yourself. This will help you put together your own personal toolkit
that incorporates tools created by your mentors, mixed in with
your own personal wisdom and knowledge.

A thorough knowledge of your tools will allow you to focus on


your client, evaluate their needs, discover what they already know,
LIFE COACH: HOW TO DO IT • © Brooke Castillo | 47
and then select tools you can use with them to help create the life
they want. If nothing else, teach your client how to be more aware
of what they think, feel, do, and create. Do they know how much
money they spend? How much food they eat? Why they eat it? What
do they really want now in their life, and what do they want in their
future? Consciousness is an underrated skill. Teach them how to
become conscious and aware of the control they have over their
own lives.

2 Self Coach. Preparing for sessions isn’t just about getting your
papers in place and reviewing your notes from the last session. It’s
about being in place to hold the space for your client without being
distracted by what is going on in your own life. As coaches, this is
our responsibility. We must do the preparatory work to be available,
to be present, and to hear what the client is saying and what they
aren’t saying. It’s very difficult to do this if you haven’t cleaned out
the closet of your own mind first. Remove what’s “on your mind,” so
you can be there for your client.

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3 Practice... On yourself and on clients.
So many of my new coach students complain that they don’t have
enough clients. They want to practice. Seriously? Your best client
is you. If you want to practice, sit down with yourself, and find out
where you need help. What isn’t working in your life? How would
you coach that?

The more you practice on yourself, the more you will be able to
relate to your clients. There aren’t really any new problems. We all
struggle with the same stuff. We don’t feel good enough. We want
more money. We want to lose weight. We want better relationships.
We want our life to be a contribution.

So work on yourself. And then learn how to coach what you’ve


learned about yourself with a client. That way, when your client
comes to you with the exact same issue, you will be the expert.

Then coach your clients until your brain hurts. Don’t be afraid
to practice. Don’t be afraid to over-deliver. Give them more than
they’ve paid for. Especially when you are first learning — coach
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anyone and everyone who will let you. Be willing to make mistakes
— they are valuable teachers. Own up to your mistakes. And then
make more mistakes. Keep your energy positive, helpful, hopeful,
and future focused.

Use the tools


you know.
Prepare.

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the model is always
working. it doesn’t
care if we notice.
- Brooke Castillo

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6 THE MODEL
In the years I’ve been coaching, what my clients want most is to
learn new ways to eradicate those 60,000 negative thoughts each
day. Though we can’t get rid of all 60,000 negative thoughts, there
are strategies that help to manage that uninvited mind crap, so it’s
not acting as general managers of our brains.
- Jackie Gartman

Here is the secret sauce to all great Life Coaching: “thought inquiry.” It means exactly
what it sounds like. Inquire into your thoughts. Pay attention to your mind.

There are many forms of thought inquiry and cognitive awareness techniques, and I
have studied most of them. Based on what I learned, I created a model that has changed
my life and the lives of thousands of my clients and readers. I introduced it to you earlier,
and now it’s time to get into some serious detail.

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Here is what it looks like:
circumstances
can trigger

thoughts
cause

EVIDENCE
feelings
cause

actions
cause

results

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Understanding our lives in this context simplifies what’s going on so that we can
understand the cause of the results that are showing up in our lives. This is the ultimate
tool that clarifies how cause and effect create our experience.

Circumstances are the things in the world that are factual and beyond our control.
They include things like other people’s behavior, our past, and the economy. Most clients
believe that their feelings, actions, and results are caused by circumstances. They are
wrong, and this is one of the most common forms of self-induced suffering. Believing
that things we cannot control cause our emotions leaves us powerless to change.

Circumstances don’t affect us in any way until


they reach our minds.
For example, even when someone dies, we don’t feel grief until we find out that they
died. Their death (the circumstance) did not immediately cause pain. It was when we
got the phone call or heard the news that we felt the pain because we had a thought
about it.

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Thoughts are the cause of all emotions in our lives. One sentence we have in our mind
that applies meaning to any circumstance creates our emotion. Whatever we decide to
believe and think will determine how we feel. If my husband divorces me (circumstance),
that is a neutral event, a fact, until I apply meaning to it.

I might think: This is horrible.


Or I might think: This is awesome.

Depending on what I decide to think and believe,


I will either feel positive or negative emotions.

Most of our clients don’t realize this. They think that the circumstance is causing the
pain, so they try to manipulate and change the circumstance. Our job as coaches is to
teach them that they can change how they feel by changing their thoughts. This does
not mean that they won’t talk to their husband about not leaving; it just means they will
do it from a place of empowerment and peace rather than from a place of manipulation
and desperation.

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Just by becoming aware of their thinking, most of my clients are overwhelmed with the
negativity going on in their minds. They start noticing how much of their own suffering
they are causing. They discover how their mind is responsible for their emotions
and actions: from procrastination to giving up on goals, raging at other people, and
uncontrollable anxiety.

It can all be managed by managing the mind.


Feelings or emotions are the effect of thought. It is important to distinguish here between
physical sensations and emotions. Physical sensations — such as hunger, cold, illness,
and fight or flight — are caused in the body and travel to the mind. Emotions are caused
by the mind and travel as a vibration through the body. Emotions include frustration,
anxiety, anger, stress, love, and happiness.

Notice that you can make yourself feel happiness right now by thinking about something.
Alternatively, you could make yourself feel sad right now by thinking about something.
One sentence thought in the mind creates that emotion.

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So anytime you are feeling anything,
you can ask yourself: What is the
thought that is causing this emotion?
With your clients, you can simply ask why they feel a certain way. They will often give
you the thought they’re thinking, without even realizing it. If they attribute a feeling to
a circumstance, you can simply ask them what they are making it mean, and they will
likely answer with the painful thought.

For example, my client tells me in a session that she feels “desperate.” I ask her why.
She says it’s because her son is failing math (circumstance). Note that the reason she
is feeling desperate is not because her son is failing math. If this was the cause of the
emotion, it would make everyone feel desperate, and it doesn’t. So I ask her, “What are
you making it mean that your son is failing math?” She will give me her thought: “It
means he will never be successful.” That thought is the source of the pain, not the
grade in math. And the reason this is such good news is that she can change that thought
in that moment without having to change his grade. And from a better emotional state,
she will be able to communicate to her son without desperation.
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Actions are caused by our feelings or emotions. We act, based on how we feel. If we
feel motivated, we might do more. If we feel sad, we might isolate ourselves or look
for something to distract us from the sadness. If we feel anger, we might yell. Not all
emotions cause the same actions in everyone, but they do cause our actions. For example,
someone who feels anxiety might drink vodka, while someone else might eat too many
donuts, while still someone else might talk very quickly.

A person who feels genuine confidence will act in a way that is in tune with that positive
emotion. Someone who’s pretending to be confident is really acting from fear and will
ultimately get a fear-based result.

Many of your clients will not understand what drives their actions or
lack of actions. They will label it “lack of willpower” or “procrastination,”
but what is really going on is a repeated pattern of thought–
feeling–action. It is nothing short of life changing to help your client
understand that what they do is ultimately driven by what they think.

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By understanding this model, we can see how our clients create results in their lives by
their actions that give them evidence for their thoughts. They think negative thoughts that
ultimately lead to negative results. They use these negative results as further evidence
that their initial negative thoughts were true. It is a spiral that becomes much easier to
understand and change by using the model.

When we do our thought work, we simplify the process by using only letters to create a
working model. For example, if your client is feeling stressed (feeling), and you want to
help them figure out why, write out the model like this:

C:
T:
F: Stressed.
A:
R:

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Then ask them why they are feeling stressed. They will either answer with a C
(circumstance) or a T (thought). They won’t realize this is what they are doing, but you
will be able to use the model to understand your client very quickly.

So, for example, let’s say the reason they give you for feeling stressed is that their son got
an F on a test. This is a fact. It is provable. So this would be put in the C line.

C: Son got F.
T:
F: Stressed.
A:
R:
Your client will believe that they are upset because of the C. But remember, C’s don’t
hurt. Facts don’t cause pain. There’s always a thought between the fact (circumstance)
and the feeling.

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In order to find out what the thought is, you can ask: “So what?” or “What are you
making that mean?”

Your client will then give you the T (thought) that is causing them to feel stressed. A
typical response in a situation like this might be: He got an F because I am a terrible
mother and I don’t help him study enough because I am so busy.

C: Son got F.
T: I am a terrible mother.
F: Stressed.
A:
R:

Notice how the thought causing the client pain isn’t even about the son. It is about the
client. To help the client see this, you can then ask how she acts towards their son
when she feels stressed about not being a good mother.

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A typical response might be: “I yell at him and take away his video games.”

C: Son got F.
T: I am a terrible mother.
F: Stressed.
A: Yell at him.
R:

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By yelling at her son (something she doesn’t think a good mother would do), she gives
herself more self-created evidence that she is a terrible mother, perpetuating the
negativity and “terrible mother” behavior.

C: Son got F.
T: I am a terrible mother.
F: Stressed.
A: Yell at him.
R: Spend no time helping him with homework —
just being“terrible” to him.

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At this point, you have created a
model that helps you understand your
clients and how they are making their
situation more painful than necessary.
This is a visual of both the cause (thought) and effect (result) of the current problem. By
just showing clients this — and giving them awareness — you have opened them up to
the power of their mind and to the...

opportunity to
manage it.
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when we understand
how our minds work -
we can actively create
our experience.
- Brooke Castillo

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7 THE MODEL IN ACTION
This model isn’t just something that we play around with in coaching sessions; we use it
to change our own lives as well. Here are a few examples that my clients and colleagues
offered to share. They include some before and after models and illustrate how they
were able to change their lives by deciding what to think on purpose.

client 1
In my marriage I used to make almost everything C: Married to a man.
mean that I was unlovable. If he came home late, it
T: I’m unlovable.
was because I wasn’t lovable. If he didn’t earn money,
it was because I wasn’t lovable. If he didn’t help me, F: Unworthy.
it was because I was unlovable, etc. To deal with the A: Lie, drink, and pretend.
intense unworthiness that permeated my life, I overate R: I’m unlovable because I
and overdrank. I lied. I pretended. I tried to cover up never showed up.
all of my unlovableness.
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When I found the thought: “I love me.” And really meant C: Married to a man.
it. And believed it. Something inside of me just clicked.
T: I love me.
His actions no longer meant something about me. They
no longer meant anything about my lovability. They F: Empowered.
meant only something about him. And I could love me A: Sober, tell the truth, and
show up fully.
no matter what. I started to tell the truth to myself.
And to him. I stopped overeating. I stopped blaming. I R: I love myself.
stopped overdrinking. I met myself. And fell in love.

client 2 C: Man coaches high school girls’


varsity basketball.
When I first started T: He’s abusive and mean and horrible to these
getting coaching I girls; he shouldn’t be allowed to coach.
was very angry at my F: Angry and agitated.
daughter’s basketball A: Say bad things about him to anyone who
coach. I thought he was will listen.
the cause of my anger. R: I am being mean and horrible when I talk
about him.
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After some coaching, I C: Man coaches high school girls’
changed my thinking varsity basketball.
slightly to release T: It must be horrible being him; I bet he’s a very
some of my anger. unhappy man.
F: Acceptance with a hint of compassion.
A: Speak to school principal; express my concerns
without emotion or attachment to the outcome.
R: He gets to be who he is, and I stay in my own
business (which isn’t horrible) without trying to
change him.

This was very powerful for me because it helped me see what my business was and
what it wasn’t. Who he is, how he behaves, is his business. Thank goodness I don’t have
to be responsible for how he chooses to “be” in this world. My new thought allowed me
to detach. It helped me to stick to the facts and let the school decide whether he should
be coaching or not. And my daughter got to decide for herself whether she wanted to
keep playing on the team. That was just fr’awesome.

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client 3
I was always a fixer. A mediator. A C: I have people in my life.
peacekeeper. I cut the fuse on explosive
T: People in my life aren’t always
personalities. I brought the sunshine happy, and it’s my job to fix that.
on a cloudy day and I almost always
F: Anxiety.
found a way to turn that frown... upside
A: Buy something, change something,
down. I told myself it was my job, my
reschedule something, cook
responsibility. I managed people. I something, or do something to make
hustled to put out fires. I was a hustler. the person feel better; eat to numb
And me? For the most part I was knee- myself to my own pain.
jerk “fine.” I didn’t look too close. I ate R: I’m overweight and living in
a fantasy world, where I am
and boozed over my feelings until I was
responsible for everyone’s happiness
numb and I spent a lot of time worried but my own.
about how everyone else was doing.

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Coaching, and the outside perspective C: I have people in my life.
that it offers, helped me to see that not
T: I can’t make someone else happy;
only is it “not my job” to make someone the only person I have control over
feel better — it’s impossible for me is me.
to make someone feel better. I was F: Relief.
living a very painful, quietly arrogant
A: Start taking responsibility for my
lie that said I could somehow control own mind set, my own thoughts, and
what other people think. I imagined my feelings. Allow the people in my
that if I just worked hard enough at life to be who they are, unbroken,
without trying to fix them.
it, I could crawl inside their brain and
R: I am responsible for me, and only
make them think happier thoughts
me, which sounds a lot like
and be happier people. emotional adulthood and feels a
lot like freedom.

Has coaching changed my life? In a lot of real, concrete ways I imagine it’s changed my life
the way a felon’s life is changed when their sentence is unexpectedly overturned. Released.
Set free. I was a prisoner in my own mind, locked up in a story that never allowed me a
moment of peace. Now I create my own peace — because I can, because coaching gave me
the tools to do so.
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client 4
Here are some before and after models. Notice how this client changes her thoughts and
ends up with different results.

BEFORE AFTER
C: My life. C: My life.
T: I don’t know what to do T: I’m interested in learning
with myself. new things.
F: Depressed. F: Interested.
A: Sit on the couch, watch TV, A: Research classes and sign up for
and eat. classes. Take classes.
R: Not doing anything with my life. R: Learning new things and excited
about life

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This is more recent:

BEFORE AFTER
C: Class I’m creating. C: My life.
T: I’m afraid to do this. T: I know exactly what to do.
F: Scared. F: Confident.
A: Stuck. Not working on the class. A: Organize my notes and work on
the class.
R: Class is not completed; I’m
confused and scared. R: Class is completed and launched.
Excited about teaching this class.

Before I learned self coaching, lots of things in my life were hit and miss. I’d get excited about
something and go gangbusters to make it happen. But if I wasn’t inspired by something, I
was lost. I’d end up on my coach bored and feeling depressed. I didn’t realize that the reason
some things inspired me was because of my thoughts about it and other times I was feeling
bored because of my thoughts. I started taking classes to lose weight and that’s where I
learned about self coaching. Learning how to coach myself has changed my life. I know now
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that if I’m feeling bored or lonely or depressed or uninspired, it’s only because of what I’m
thinking. I can investigate my thoughts with the self coaching model and choose to change
them. I can feel better about anything whenever I want. Self coaching has empowered me
to get off the couch and start my own business. I’m more inspired and productive than I
have ever been in my life.

client 5
I got a new boss. I hated her. I believed C: New boss.
that she was doing everything that
T: She is trying to take everything
she could to destroy everything I had away from me.
worked so hard to create. Every time I
F: Helpless.
spoke with her I cried, shut down or got
A: Cry, defensive.
defensive. I’m sure she thought I was
not effective. I’m sure she wondered R: I was giving her everything and
blaming her.
how I had achieved what I had achieved
based on how ridiculously she saw me
behave. I was unhappy every day.

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After lots of reflection and coaching from Brooke C: New boss.
and others, I decided I was being ridiculous. I
T: I create my future.
remembered that I always create my future. Good
or bad, it’s mine to own. That thought sets me free F: Strong.
and brings me back in touch with who I am. I create A: Focus daily on what I want.
my future. R: Creating my own future.

That thought changed everything about how I interacted with her from that moment on. I
was strong, confident, focused. From those feelings I created amazing things. I
created the future (that I’m now living) that I want. The future I chose.

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Part 2: How To Coach
MAD SKILLS
I know, more than I know anything, that a basic understanding of how the mind
affects everything is the most important foundation for good coaching. Once that
understanding is mastered, there are some additional “mad skills” to use that
take coaching to the next level. This is certainly not an exhaustive list, but in
addition to the basics of using the model; these are my mad skills.

They 1. Food and Body


2. Unconditional Love
6. Money
7. Questions

include
3. The Manual 8. Outcomes
4. Boundaries 9. Story vs. Fact
5. Emotional Childhood

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if food can’t fix it -
don’t eat.
- Brooke Castillo

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1 FOOD AND BODY
Most of my thousands of coaching hours have been spent coaching clients who want to
lose weight. Hundreds of women have come to me because they hated their bodies and
their relationship with food. They left loving their newfound freedom.

I certainly can’t cover all the tools I have for weight loss in this short section, so if you
want more tools on helping your clients lose weight, make sure to pick up a copy of my
first book, If I am So Smart, Why Can’t I Lose Weight? For now, I will give you the broad
strokes of coaching around food and the body.

When, as adults, we don’t know how to


manage our minds and control/create our
emotions, we find ways to disconnect from
our bodies. We do this to avoid feeling.

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Emotions or feelings are no
more than vibrations flowing
through our bodies.
Sadness, anger, happiness, and delight are all different frequency vibrations originating
in our limbic system and moving through our physical being. Positive emotion vibrates
on a positive frequency, and we feel good. Negative emotion vibrates on a negative
frequency, and we find that uncomfortable. In fact, we find it so uncomfortable that we
do whatever we can to avoid experiencing it.

For many clients, this means disassociating or disconnecting from their body as often
and as completely as they can, so they do not to have to feel uncomfortable emotions.
And when they disconnect from their bodies in order to avoid their emotions, they no
longer have access to wisdom: that body wisdom that can keep them healthy and at
their natural weight.

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Our body knows when it’s hungry, and it knows when it has had enough. It communicates
this through sensations. A sensation is similar to an emotion except that it’s involuntary
and travels from the body to the mind. Emotions, on the other hand, travel from the mind
to the body. When a client is avoiding the signals from the body to the mind because
they have disconnected, they tend to eat foods that may feel terrible to the body and not
serve it. They tend to eat when they’re not hungry, and they don’t stop when they have
reached satiety.

The results are not desirable. Weight gain, health issues,


body image problems, and increased evidence for negative
thinking perpetuate the problem until it can appear to be
completely out of control.

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The first step with any client who presents with a food or body “problem” is to reconnect
them to their body through awareness. Helping them reconnect to their body’s signals
for hunger and fullness is the first step. Having clients keep a food journal will help them
see how much they’re eating and why they’re eating — whether it is because of hunger
or a way to avoid experiencing emotion.

By separating out emotional eating


from physical fuel requirements, we
can begin understanding patterns of
overeating and weight gain.
I also insist that my clients keep track of their thinking around food and their bodies. So
many of them will be beating themselves up for overeating and then punishing themselves
with painful judgments about how they look. This only leads to more overeating and
a perpetuation of the problem. One by one these thoughts need to be acknowledged,
evaluated, let go of, and replaced with supportive, peace-creating thoughts. Awareness
and new thought creation will ultimately serve the client in weight loss as well as in
other areas of their lives.
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As their coach, you have the perspective to help your client increase their awareness
of thoughts during unwanted eating and weight gain. This is much more effective than
simply treating the symptom by controlling the eating.

We don’t try and


control the desire
to overeat; we help
clients eliminate it.
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to love someone, no
matter what, is the
best gift we have to
give ourselves.
- Brooke Castillo

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2 UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
No matter what your client hires you to do, they will all have painful relationships
that need healing. Relationships are playgrounds for thoughts and belief systems and
incredibly revealing for coaching. We always only coach “the person in the room” and
never the person with whom our client is in a relationship. What matters is not the
other person’s behavior, but rather our client’s reaction to their behavior.

Most relationship issues your client will


bring to you can be traced back to the
following areas:
• Having a Manual for How Others Should Behave

• Boundaries

• Emotional Childhood

• Relationship with Money


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If you understand and use these tools, you will be able to help your clients with 99%
of their issues. One of the most important things you can teach and show your client is
the concept of unconditional love: for themselves as well as for all the relationships in
their life. Most people think that unconditional love requires sacrifice and should only
be expected of saints, but I teach my clients that unconditional love is a gift they give
themselves. It’s for them, and it makes their life easier, not harder.

The way that I explain this is that love feels


good. If given a choice, most of us would
choose to feel love toward someone over
any other emotion. But most of us don’t
consciously choose to feel love.
Instead we choose to feel disappointment, anger, or frustration. We have expectations
of people, and when they don’t meet those expectations, we use that as an excuse to
feel bad. This makes no sense! We create rules and ideas that set us up to feel negative
emotion instead of something wonderful.

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Every time we choose to dislike someone, we are choosing to feel dislike. Dislike does
not feel good. It is not a wise choice. It is a painful choice. But we pretend it isn’t a choice.
We pretend we don’t have any control over how we feel toward someone else, and instead
we act as if their actions control how we feel. But, this is not how life works. Ever.

Our thoughts about their actions determine


how we feel, and when we choose negative
thoughts, we feel negative emotions.

For example, if a client says she is frustrated because her husband won’t take out the
garbage, I show her that the reason she is frustrated is because of what she is making it
mean. Her thought about her husband not taking the garbage out is what frustrates her,
and she can change what she is thinking in order to feel better. This way, her husband
doesn’t have to take out the garbage for her to feel good. She has taken responsibility for
how she feels.

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When you are coaching clients, it’s imperative that you remind them of this truth. It is an
incredible gift to teach your clients that they can feel good whenever they want to feel
good. They can feel love whenever they want to feel love. Unconditional love is not for
saints or sacrificers; it’s for anyone who wants to feel amazing.

Some very good questions to ask a


client who is suffering because of a
relationship are:
• How do you want to feel about this person?

• How do you want to feel right now?

• Would it feel better to like this person or dislike this person?

• Do you know that you have the option to unconditionally love this
person regardless of what they do or don’t do?

• What is stopping you from unconditionally loving for your own sake?

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As a final note on relationships, I always remind my clients that loving unconditionally
does not mean unconditionally approving of behavior. And it does not mean that you
have to see someone all the time. It just means that when you think of that particular
person, you get to feel love.

Because love just


feels better.

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isn’t it amazing how
we can’t figure out
our own lives, but we
know exactly what
they should be doing?
- Brooke Castillo

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3 THE MANUAL
Though they may initially approach you with a different issue, most of your clients
believe they could be happier if someone in their life would change. Most problems are
about wanting other people to behave differently. This is a huge cause of suffering because
our clients believe that other people have the power to determine how they feel.

One of the most powerful things you can


teach them is that this isn’t true.

Ever.
Other people’s behavior has no impact on us emotionally until we think about it, interpret
it, and choose to make it mean something. No matter what people do, how they act, or
what they say, we don’t have to give them the power to determine how we feel.

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This concept will be mind altering for your clients. It also might be jarring. If they have
lived their whole life handing their power away, it might be difficult for them to realize
that they have been doing that voluntarily and unnecessarily.

For example, I had a client who hated her ex-husband and blamed him for everything
she was currently struggling with in her life. She would often say, “If it hadn’t been
for him, I would be successful and wealthy,” or “He is the reason I have no money and
no happiness.”

They had been divorced for twenty years, and she was still giving this man power in her
emotional life. She was letting her story about him — who he was and who he should
have been — cause her to be miserable.

She was dedicated to hating him and


feeling that hate each and every day. For
more than twenty years!
Through our work together, I was able to hold the space for her to hash this out. She
would vent all this hate, and I would show her that he wasn’t feeling her hatred.
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I would show her that instead of punishing him
with her hate, she was punishing herself. She
was the one feeling it, experiencing it, and living
it. He was happily remarried and paying no
attention to her misery.

I would ask her how it felt to think about him in this way, and she would say, “Terrible!”
I would then ask her why she was consistently choosing to feel terrible. It took her a
while to truly understand that this was her choice. She started to realize that hating him
had no upside. She started to let the story go and eventually focused on the areas of her
life that truly needed her attention.

I talk to my clients a lot about the “manuals” most people carry around. These are the
instruction guides we have for other people that list how we would like them to behave
so that we can feel good and be happy. Most people aren’t aware that they’re carrying
around these manuals, and they don’t see the pain that these manuals are causing them.
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Here are some examples of instructions that come from the Behavior Manuals my clients
have been carting around.

Friendship Manual
She should call me back when I call her.
She should remember my birthday.
She should invite me when she has a party.
She should write me a thank you note.
She should be kind and understand when I am frustrated.
She should support me.
She should listen to me as long as I listened to her.
She should come to the hospital when my father is dying.
She should ask me to be a bridesmaid, godmother, etc.

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Spouse Manual
He should tell me he loves me.
He should buy me something special on my birthday.
He should know what I like.
He should be “emotionally available.”
He should want to go to the movies I like.
He should make more money.
He should spend less time at work.
He should spend more time with the kids.
He shouldn’t watch so much football.
He should take out the garbage without having to be asked.

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I promise you, this is a very short list. Most manuals are pages upon pages thick. They are
complicated and intricate and detailed. Many of my clients don’t even share the manual
with the person they expect to follow it. They think it is just something that the other
person should “know” if that person loves them.

The problem with this type of manual is


that it’s literally a guarantee of pain.
By subscribing to these manuals, my clients put their emotions in the hands of other
people. If the other people don’t follow the manual (they usually don’t), my clients are
then guaranteed to feel negative emotions. My clients then, unknowingly, blame the
other person for their feelings. The clients have given control of their emotional life to
someone else, cementing their own powerlessness.

I spend a lot of time with my clients helping them understand this. I have them write out
their manuals for other people. I show them that the only reason they want the person
to follow their manual is so that they can feel good. And then I show them that the
only way they can feel good is to take responsibility for themselves and to stop giving
responsibility away.
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In essence, I explain that it’s like buying a new TV, handing someone else the remote,
and then complaining that you don’t get to watch what you want.

When you take responsibility, you get to feel


and experience what you want on your own
terms, no matter what the other person
chooses to do.

Inevitably, someone will always ask me if this means it’s “bad” to have any expectations
of other people. My answer is no. It’s not bad to want others to do things, nor is it bad to
even ask for something we want. But it is painful when we expect other people to “meet
our needs” or to help us “feel good.” That is our job. So ask away — just don’t make your
happiness dependent on whether or not others comply.

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When it comes to manuals,
here are some great questions
to ask your clients:
1. Is there anything the other person does that you believe causes you
negative emotion?

2. What do you believe the other person could do to make you happy?

3. Do you want the other person to do something he or she doesn’t want


to do? Why?

4. If other people do something they don’t want to do in order for you


to “be happy,” what happens when they don’t do it?

When you drop the manual for people you love, you “allow” them to be themselves. True
intimacy comes from being with someone who wants you to be yourself and who wants
you to do what you want to do.

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boundaries make
loving easier by
removing resentment
from the picture.
- Brooke Castillo

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4 BOUNDARIES
The word boundaries may sound like it is straight out of a therapy session, but this
concept is also commonly used in coaching to achieve life-changing results.

First, let’s start with what a boundary is. An emotional boundary is very much like a
property boundary; it delineates where I end and you start. It’s a way of “drawing a
circle” around ourselves and our behavior.

It may seem that boundaries would


separate us from others, but really they do
quite the opposite.
Because healthy boundaries promote self-responsibility and empowerment, they lead
to closer relationships with others. By contrast, weak boundaries promote enmeshment
and emotional childhood behavior, distancing us from others.

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There are two parts to setting a boundary
with someone else:
1 The request ask for someone to stop doing something
that infringes on your property (literally or emotionally).

2 The consequence tell the person what you will do


if he or she does not comply with your request.

Here’s an example
The request Please stop yelling at me.

The consequence If you don’t stop yelling, I am going to leave.

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Notice that the request is not an order, but rather it states or asks for what you want.
The other person can behave however he or she would like to behave. You really do
not have any way to control someone else’s behavior, and you don’t need to. The other
person can continue to yell. What the boundary does is state what you will do if the
behavior continues.

It is very important to understand that


boundaries are not a way to manipulate or
threaten others. They always come from a
place of love, to promote self-kindness.
So if a client said to her husband: “You need to take the garbage out, or I won’t have sex
with you,” I would let her know that the statement was pure manipulation. Not taking
out the garbage does not violate the client’s physical or emotional boundaries, and since
there has been no boundary violation, there is no need to set a request/consequence
boundary. Boundaries are needed for physical and emotional self-care, not for getting
others to behave in a certain way.

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Many of my clients get into their significant others’ business instead of managing
themselves and their own business. Often, this results in them wanting to give other
people ultimatums.

A boundary is not an ultimatum.

It’s not a way of controlling another person, so we can feel better. This never works, and
it is completely disempowering and separating. People do not like being controlled or
forced, and the truth is that an ultimatum is actually a boundary violation against the
other person.

On the other side of the spectrum, some clients do not want to set proper boundaries in
their lives because they don’t want to risk losing relationships. They’re afraid that if they
take care of themselves and tell the truth, they might make the other person angry.
So in order not to risk the other person “losing control,” they stay in relationships
that are based on lies, pretense, and resentment. This prevents any true intimacy in
the relationship.

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When we set boundaries, we must be
willing to follow through on them.
Sometimes the boundary may not even be spoken to the other person. For example, if
someone were to hit me, I would leave. That is a personal boundary I have for myself.
But I don’t go around telling everyone I meet that I will leave if they hit me. Other times,
I do let people know what my boundaries are. For example, if someone were to start
smoking in a car I was driving in, I would ask that person to please stop or let me out of
the car. Notice how the language permits the individual to continue to smoke, and I don’t
have to get angry or upset or make it mean anything. I don’t have to control the smoker’s
behavior. I just need to control mine and get out of the car. This prevents me from having
to accept the consequences of someone else’s behavior by managing my own.

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As I have watched myself and my clients learn how to set boundaries with kindness,
love, and self-care, I have seen our lives change. I believe it’s one of the biggest parts of
growing into who we are and finding our “place” in the world. It’s about realizing that we
can love and accept other people for who they are, allowing adults to behave exactly
the way they want to behave while taking care of ourselves by honoring what we need.
When we do this,

we create an
environment where
relationships can
flourish.
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at the end of the
day, we are all like
children wanting
attention.
- Brooke Castillo

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5 EMOTIONAL CHILDHOOD
We call ourselves adults, but most of us are still functioning as emotional children. There
is no college we all attend to learn how to be mature adults. It’s not something we do on
purpose; most of our parents still function as emotional children, perpetuating the
cycle. One of the most rewarding things for me is watching a client grow and become an
emotional adult, fully empowered and responsible for his or her own life.

Emotional childhood is when grown adults have not matured past childhood in terms of
managing their emotions.

This means they react to their


emotions, act out, or avoid emotions
rather than taking full responsibility and
choosing thoughts that will create the
emotions they want to experience.
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So much of our programming is about avoiding feeling any pain. As children, we don’t
understand emotions, and most of us aren’t taught what to do with them. We are at the
mercy of believing that whatever is happening in our lives is the cause of our pain —
rather than being aware of the thinking that accompanies it. We are not taught to see that
we have a thought every time something happens and that it’s that thought that brings
up our emotional response. We have no idea that we have control over our feelings.

For example, if you have a client


who was beaten by her father when
she was a child, every time she was
hit, she may have believed that she
was an unworthy daughter.
This takes the physical pain of being hit and adds a torturous pain of feeling unworthy
and inadequate. As a small child, she has no idea she is doing this to herself and therefore
can’t stop it. Many times this pattern has followed our client into adulthood and shows
up in adult relationships with friends and spouses.

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This same client may marry someone who physically abuses her. She may not understand
that she’s making the choice to repeat the relationship because she is choosing to believe
that she is unworthy of something better. She may use the relationship to further prove
her belief system of unworthiness.

As a coach, it’s your job to teach this client


that she is responsible for herself. She’s not
responsible for her father’s or husband’s
actions or abuse, but she is responsible for
staying in the relationship, believing she is
unworthy, and having thoughts that cause
her additional pain and misery.

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The only way to achieve emotional
maturity is through self-responsibility.
Emotional adulthood means:
• Taking responsibility for our pain and also for our joy.

• Not expecting other people to “make” us happy.

• Not expecting others to “make” us feel secure.

• Appreciating that we are the only ones who can hurt our feelings
and that we do that with our own thoughts.

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When your clients understand and apply this, it will dramatically change their lives.
They will begin to think in different ways about what it means to be a victim and what it
means to be empowered.

They will begin to understand that


blaming someone else for how we feel
is a sure way to hand our emotional
power over to another person.
Handing over that power to someone else makes us dependent on that person for how
we get to feel. A dependent is otherwise known as a child.

An emotional child.
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money takes who you
are and what you
believe and amplifies it.
- Brooke Castillo

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6 MONEY
How we handle money is a great indicator of what is going on in our minds. It is a wonderful
topic to coach clients on because the beliefs are usually ingrained and unconscious.

Simple questions can open up a collection


of thoughts:
1. Do you have enough money? Why or why not?

2. How do you feel about money?

3. How would your life be different if you were given $10 million?
How would it be the same?

4. What do you believe you can do to get more money? Do you


want to do it?

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Most clients who want and need money coaching have a mindset of scarcity. They believe
money is hard to get and even harder to keep. They are worried about having too much
because it will change how people feel about them, and they are worried about not
having enough to do the things they want to do.

Once we uncover their current mind blueprint on money, I teach my clients


three concepts.

First, I teach them that money is abundant,


and there is plenty to go around.
I help them understand that them having money does not mean others will have less.
This is very difficult for some clients because they have deep beliefs like: If you’re rich,
you hurt someone to get there. It’s not fair for me to have more than someone else. If I have
lots of money, then I don’t care about people who have nothing.

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Second, I teach my clients that money is
easy and good.
This is usually the opposite of what they have been thinking. Money clients have beliefs
like: You have to work hard for every penny. Money is complicated and difficult to come by.
Making a lot of money requires too much work and sacrifice. By thinking and talking about
money being easy and good, they open up possibilities that they have been blocking.

Often, I will tell my clients that I love money. I love it for me, and I love it for them.
This will take them off guard. It brings up resistance and a wonderful opportunity for
coaching deep-seated beliefs.

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And finally, I teach them
acceptance, which means that
there is nothing money is holding
us back from doing.
We have the exact amount we need in this moment to fulfill our destinies. How much
money we have is a reflection of what is in our minds, so we can use it to evaluate and
explore our interior life. We can use it to also demonstrate the power of our thinking by
using our mind to create it.

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wanting something can
be almost as good as
having it.
- Brooke Castillo

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7 QUESTIONS
The best type of Life Coaching helps the client change whatever it is that they want to
change, permanently.

Instead of treating the symptom, great coaching


tracks down the cause of the symptom and finds
ways to cure the source.

It’s one thing to have a client who isn’t making a lot of money and to help them find ways
to make more; but it’s a whole different life-changing experience when you can help
them understand WHY they aren’t making the money they want to be making in the
first place.

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This is true for a body that isn’t healthy, a job they hate, a marriage that isn’t working, or
even an addiction your client wants to let go of. Before we fix it and before we help them
try and change their behavior, we must understand the WHY.

Why? It is the most powerful question


in a Life Coach’s toolbox. It seems to be
such an innocent little word, but it really
can increase the consciousness of the
planet one client at a time.

When we ask why, our clients have to go into their minds and find the meaning and the
intention that drives them. Many of your clients may have never done this before. It’s
one more step on their journey to consciousness and emotional adulthood.

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Don’t ever underestimate how many of us are on automatic pilot, playing out the
programming of our childhood without question. We do what we think we should do,
based on what we were told as children, and we have never evaluated whether it still
applies or makes sense. Your clients will come to you miserable and have no idea why
they are miserable. If they don’t know the why, it’s time to ask and find out.

By asking them why, you can show


them how they have created their
current circumstances.

Your clients will come to you and give you external reasons why they don’t have what
they want in their lives. They will blame their environment, the culture, their family,
and/or their boss. Coaching shows your clients that they alone have created what they
do — and do not — have in their lives.

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This may not be something they want to hear at first, because it feels like they are blaming
themselves for what they have created, but when they begin to see that it’s not about
blame, but about responsibility, it can be very empowering.

You created this. You wanted this.


Which means: You can create something different.

Step one is always helping your client to become aware of their real thoughts
and feelings.

Clients will tell you the things they want to do, results they want to achieve, and things
they want to stop doing. As a coach, it’s essential for you to show your client the thoughts
and feelings behind their current actions and results. They need to see how they are
creating their current results with their mind.

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For example, if your client is currently making 50k a year and they want to be making
100k per year, you could inquire as to the cause. You ask: “What is the belief you have
about money that gives you the result of 50K? What would you need to believe to
make 100K?”

By changing the thought that


created the feelings and behaviors
related to producing 50k, you can
literally create new feelings and
actions with the new thinking.
Understand that changing behavior and producing different results must be driven by
current thoughts and feelings. What we think determines how we feel, and how we
feel determines how we act. If we try and change how we act without changing the
thoughts/feelings driving that action, it will be a struggle of willpower, and the results
will be temporary.

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When working on any issue,
you can ask the client:

What is your thought driving that action?

How does that thought feel?

then:
What is the action you want to be taking?

What is the result you want to be creating?

What is the mindset (the collective thinking) that will create


what you want?

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When I teach questions to students, I remind them that when they ask a negative question,
they will get negative thoughts as answers. For example, I ask a client, “Why can’t you
lose weight?” The client will give me all the reasons he or she can’t lose weight.

Alternatively, when I ask clients a positive question, they will answer with positive
thoughts. For example: “How have you been successful at this?” or “How can you enjoy
this process?”

The answers to these questions will be thoughts, so when we are looking to create new,
positive mindsets,

asking questions
is an awesome
tool.
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you are the story you
tell yourself about
yourself.
- Brooke Castillo

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8 OUTCOMES
Once you teach your clients the power of their minds, they will be excited and terrified.
They will realize that they can create the emotional life they want without anything
changing. And they will also realize that they have to take full responsibility for their
lives. They will need to move into emotional adulthood.

The first thing they are going to ask you is, “How?”

“How do I do it?”

The simple answer is by managing your mind. Everything starts with the brain and
the thoughts it thinks. The brain is going to keep thinking whether you manage it or
not. Those thoughts are going to create emotional states that will drive action at work,
at home, and at play.

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It’s pretty hard to argue against this theory because there’s so much evidence to support
it. If you are depressed at work, you will create different work and results than if you are
excited. And there are infinite subtleties to that. For example, if you are curious at work,
you will create different results than if you are just diligent. Every manager at every
corporation would be wise to understand the feelings driving their employee’s actions.
This will determine the results for each individual, and collectively, the results for the
entire corporation.

Whether you want to talk about touchy


feely or not doesn’t matter — it will
determine the bottom line success of the
corporation it will determine the bottom
line success of the corporation either way.
What is your thinking foundation? What are your most common thoughts about your
job? What three feelings do those thoughts create, and do they fuel you to do the work
you want to do? If not, you must change your thinking.

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You must change your beliefs: how
you are programmed and what your
mind is seeking evidence for on a
daily basis. Your mind will find ways
to prove your thoughts true
If your thought is: This project is going to fail, you will find the ways it will fail, and more
importantly, you will create evidence through your own actions.

Test it.

Think about your last project at work. Think about your thought about that project.
Now evaluate your results. 100% match? I thought so.

If you disagree, you haven’t found the real thought you were thinking. I don’t mean the
thought you wanted to be thinking, but rather the thought you were really thinking
about — what was happening and would happen.

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When we can help our clients see how they have created
evidence in their past to prove their beliefs, they will
stop using that self-created evidence to prove they can’t
achieve an outcome in their future.

This is what we, as life coaches, mean when we say you can achieve anything you “put
your mind to.”

First, you create a goal, then you align your thinking, and
then you take massive action to create evidence to prove it.

The work of aligning the thought with the endgame is essential. This is not an “affirmation-
think pretty thoughts” kind of philosophy. Instead it’s about being real and down to
earth. It’s about asking: “What do you think?” and “Is that working?” Or we can ask: “Can
we find a way for you to think about this that you really believe (no bull) and that fuels
your work?”

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Take a look at these two thoughts:
• My boss is an idiot.

• I am capable.

Focusing on either of these thoughts over an extended period of time in the exact same
work environment will create completely different outcomes.

Both may be thoughts you believe. But one will bring anger — the other will bring
motivation.

When you start working with your clients to create outcomes or goals, there are important
factors to consider. First, what do they want and why? The why is key. Second, how do
they feel when they imagine this goal or outcome? Remember the emotion that drives
actions will ultimately determine the results. And finally, do they truly believe they can
achieve the desired outcome?

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Here are some power questions
for outcomes:
1. What do you want?

2. Why do you want it?

3. How do you feel when you imagine achieving this goal?

4. Do you believe you will achieve this?

5. Why or why not?

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9 STORY VS. FACT
Separate out the facts from the thoughts.

One of the most important things you will ever teach your clients is that facts don’t hurt.
The circumstances of our lives have no effect on us until they encounter the mind and
we attach meaning to them. We aren’t sad about someone dying until our minds register
the fact. The person dying, which may have happened days ago, has no effect on us at all.
They can die, and we can be laughing in that same moment because our minds are not
aware of what just happened.

It’s inaccurate to say, “I was


devastated when they died.” It’s more
accurate to say, “I was devastated by
what I thought about their death.”

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Do these semantics matter?

YES.

When we realize that our minds cause our feelings, we can be much more in control of
our emotional lives. It doesn’t mean we won’t choose to be sad when someone dies; we
most likely will. But it does mean we can decide not to be mad when something much
less significant happens in our life.

We control our emotional life with our thinking.

Say your clients say, “Work stresses me out.” You can point out to them that it is their
thoughts about work that stress them out, and although they might not be able to change
their job in this very moment, they most certainly can change the way they think about
their job. And that will change everything.

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Identifying and understanding the patterns of one’s life is much easier from an outside
perspective. That’s why your clients will hire you — for outside perspective and your skill
in helping them find and understand the why behind those patterns. Whereas clients
believe that the why is a given — the truth — you as their coach can clearly see the
difference. You must train yourself to look for and understand the distinction between
what they are doing and why they are doing it. Your job is to see it and to explain it to
your client, clearly identifying cause and effect.

We create our lives mostly with our minds.

We often believe our stories so deeply that we think they are facts. They are not. This is
fine — as long as the story isn’t painful or causing problems in our lives.

But many of our stories are painful. Even debilitating.

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Let me share with you an example from one of my clients. She came to our call one day
and was furious with her mother- in-law. Her story went something like this:

My mother-in-law does not respect me. She doesn’t love me. She wants me to be
fat. She can’t support me in my desires or dreams. Even when she knows what
I want for myself, she is always trying to sabotage me. It’s like I don’t even want
to be around her because of the awful things she does. Just this last weekend, we
went to her home for a visit, and she was so backhanded. So conniving. I know
my husband doesn’t even care. He doesn’t back me up when I feel this way, and he
refuses when I suggest we should confront her and stop visiting her. I think I’m
going to have to give him an ultimatum. It’s either her or me. He is a grown man,
and he needs to make this decision.

This is when I interrupted her story and asked her to retell me this story stating only
the facts.

She hesitated and then started retelling the story in pretty much the exact same way.

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I reminded her that facts are provable. Every person would agree on a fact. It includes
no judgment and no opinion.

It took her a while, but she


finally came up with the facts:
1. I have a mother-in-law.

2. We went to her home last weekend.

3. She made me spaghetti.

4. Everything else was story. Painful story.

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My client’s mother-in-law had made
her spaghetti, and my client made
it mean that she was conniving
against her and trying to sabotage
her weight loss.
I asked her if maybe the spaghetti could have meant something else to her mother-in-
law. Were there any other ways to interpret the facts that might feel better?

She then acknowledged that maybe she made spaghetti because her son loves spaghetti,
she’s Italian, and it’s one of her specialties.

I told her that either her original story or the latter one might be true, but what mattered
is not what was “true,” but what was not painful. What served her better? What served
the relationship better?

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And further, I suggested that she consider how it felt to just leave the facts alone and not
offer a meaning or a story about those facts.

My mother-in-law made spaghetti.

Without a story, this fact doesn’t hurt.


Facts never do.

Whenever your clients bring you painful stories, separate out the facts. Show them how
they are creating their pain or their happiness by how they

choose to interpret
the facts.
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when i learned
about life coaching
i knew i had won
the career lottery.
- Brooke Castillo

LIFE COACH: HOW TO DO IT • © Brooke Castillo | 137


conclusion
Being a coach is the best profession in the world. I know, because I am living it. I work
from home in my pajamas and help people end their suffering and change their lives. I
am biased, but I am pretty sure it’s one of the highest callings.

The perfection in this profession is


that it requires you to be responsible
for your own life.
You cannot coach well unless you are coaching yourself well. Period. The hardest part of
this job is facing your own mind, your own limitations, and your own power.

I have journeyed into myself, as a coach and as a client, and that’s the only reason I am
able to help my clients journey into theirs. I have heard story after story from people
who don’t believe they are lovable, worthy, or important.

LIFE COACH: HOW TO DO IT • © Brooke Castillo | 138


They believe they have done unforgivable things — molestation, infidelity, prostitution,
drugs, theft, abuse, and lie after lie. When I tell them that there’s nothing they have done
that can prevent me from loving them or coaching them, they bawl. Literally. They soften.

They can’t seem to understand how I can see them as lovable. I know how they feel.
I used to hate myself, and now I love myself. When someone loved me while I hated
myself, I didn’t believe them either. But as their coach, I can show my clients the way.

I can help them see that they aren’t


what they have done, or how much they
weigh, or how much money they have.
I can help them see that when they
stop judging themselves, what’s left is
something pretty damn lovable.
And from there, they can lose the weight, earn the money, and stop defining themselves
by their past.

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I teach them that the future is theirs to own
and create — based on what they know
to be true deep inside — after the painful
clutter has been cleared away.

There is nothing more beautiful to witness.

It’s an honor and a privilege to be a Life Coach.

Join me.

As I finished this book, one of my students sent me an email detailing her experience
at one of our coach retreats in hopes that I would share it with anyone considering
becoming a coach. I thought it would be a beautiful way to end.

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Surrender to Your Full Potential
In an instant my body went from struggling to floating. I trusted the instinct to let go. To
surrender. Observers might simply have seen coaches strategizing, individuals working
together to achieve a task, or Brooke cheering us on so we could get each coach over this
wall taller than any one of us. Life coaching can do that. For you. For others. Amazing.

But I could not see or hear any of that. I was struggling. I found myself stacked on top of
two, maybe three coaches, my arms stretching to reach another coach leaning over the top
of the wall ready to pull me over. Suddenly I was thrust up toward the top of the wall. With
only the bottom of my feet in the hands of coaches, I had left the safety of the ground and
had not yet reached the safety of the top. I was in the unknown. It did not feel safe. I did not
trust it.

So many thoughts began swirling through my mind, stiffening my body. “You can’t do this,”
“Brooke will think you are stupid,” “You’ll be the only one who won’t get over the wall,”
“You are going to let everyone down,” and “See, you are not cut out to be a coach.” The last
thought stung. Later I would realize it was because at the time I believed it the most.

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The louder these thoughts became the more my body responded with tension. I began to
fall. The top of the wall was no longer a small reach away. In that moment, I surrendered.
I stopped struggling. I stopped believing the thoughts that were crippling my progress,
stealing my dreams, and preventing me from reaching my goals and enjoying the journey.

My body was not shorter or heavier than any of the other coaches. It was not too hard
of a task. I was not less intelligent or creative. I stopped realizing my potential because I
believed crappy thoughts that were all lies.

To stop believing the painful lies I had told myself for years is the biggest gift I learned in
coach training. It allowed me to begin living truthfully. To authentically coach my clients.
To trust myself. To be my best even when I was falling. To show up. Every time.

Oh and by the way — I didn’t hit the ground. When I surrendered, my body responded with
unbelievable lightness. My fellow coaches changed the direction of my body with such ease
that even today the memory gives me tingles. Before I knew it I was up and over that wall.
It felt like magic, but I now know it was the gift of realizing my truth.

Life coaching can do that. For you. For others. Amazing.


— Gaynor Levisky
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more information
If you would like more information on Life Coaching and how to become a Certified Life
Coach, please visit: www.thelifecoachschool.com

If you would like more information on Brooke Castillo and her other works, you will find
it at: www.brookecastillo.com

Please stay tuned for the sequel to Life Coach, How to Do it. Titled, Life Coach, How to Sell
It, it will cover the business side of running a coaching business.

LIFE COACH: HOW TO DO IT • © Brooke Castillo | 143


I want to offer a very special thank you to all my students and fellow coaches who have
joined me on this journey... And a special shout out to the following contributors to
this book:

Meadow Devor - For believing in me when I didn’t agree.

Lin Eleoff - For loving my sarcasm. And me.

Michelle Kittell - For working the model so hard it hurt. Such an awesome student.

Kira DeRito - For being so smart and so quick. And so full of love.

Kris Plachy - For sticking with me from the early days and being so dedicated to this work.

Gaynor Levinsky - For saying the right, funny thing just when I least expected it.

Katie McClain - For telling me the truth. And loving my work.

An Bourmanne - For being an example of goodness and excellence.

Jackie Gartman - For being so nice to me when I’m not around.


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there really are no
new ideas, there are
only new ways of
teaching them.
- Brooke Castillo

LIFE COACH: HOW TO DO IT • © Brooke Castillo | 145


COACH
LIFE HOW
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COACHTO DO IT
HOW TO DO IT
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www.thelifecoachschool.com
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WWW.THELIFECOACHSCHOOL.COM

BROOKE CASTILLO
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