CCP_Life_Coach_How_To_Cover-wCover

LIFE COACH

HOW TO DO IT

FromtheFounderofeLifeCoachSchol

BROOKE CASTILLO

LIFE COACH

How to Do It

BROOKE CASTILLO

Master Coach Instructor

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

LIFE COACH: HOW TO DO IT

If you aren’t familiar with my work, I want to

give you a heads-up. I’m not a perfectionist,

but there’s 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

into the shortest book possible—one that you don’t just

consume, but savor.

But please don’t let its brevity or casual, conversational

style detract from the incredible effectiveness of what’s

offered here. Many people who are much smarter than

I am have used this work to transform their experience in

the world, and there is much more where this came from.

I could have easily written a 500-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.

CEO, THE LIFE COACH SCHOOL

LIFE COACH: HOW TO DO IT 3

CONTENTS

PART ONE

HOW TO COACH:

THE BASICS

7 Introduction

19 The Anatomy of an Issue

9 The Industry

25 Cause vs. Symptom

10 Schools & Federations

28 Holding the Space

15 Certification

32 Clean Thinking

34 Be Prepared

36 The Model

43 The Model in Action

4 LIFE COACH: HOW TO DO IT

PART TWO

HOW TO COACH:

MAD SKILLS

52 Unconditional Love

55 The Manual

60 Boundaries

64 Emotional Childhood

67 Money

69 Questions

72 Outcome

75 Story vs. Fact


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

LIFE COACH: HOW TO DO IT by Master Certified Coach Brooke Castillo

© 2012 by Brooke Castillo

Updated in 2020.

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

6


INTRODUCTION

What is a life coach?

Simply put, 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’re 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.

Vikki Brock, a coach whose doctoral dissertation had a major influence on 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

in both practice and a game, a life coach works with clients to understand and analyze

what they are doing in their cognitive, emotional, and behavioral lives. The coach has

an objective vantage point—a different perspective from which they can spot what’s

working as well as areas for change and improvement. This is as essential for a welllived

life as it is for a well-played sport.

If you want to become a life coach, it’s important that you master

two major skills.

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.

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. I want to be very clear that

reading this book is not enough—mastery comes only from consistent application and

practice. This applies to all my books.

Don’t just read this book. Do this book!


THE INDUSTRY

Life coaching is an unregulated industry. This means

there is no governing body telling you what you can

and can’t do.

This means you don’t need to have any

formal 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.

It’s not where

you go to school,

but what you

learn that

ultimately

matters.

BROOKE CASTILLO


SCHOOLS & FEDERATIONS

Life coaching has no mama and no papa.

There are many schools and federations that claim to offer accreditation, 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 hear

about most often, 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.

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 the ICF does nothing

to regulate or manage who can or can’t become a life coach. Remember that if you

decide to give the ICF money and become a member, it’s 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 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 just a percentage of practicing coaches and certainly not “the”

voice of the profession.


The ICF was founded by the late Thomas Leonard,

who was also the founder of Coach U and CoachVille

(competing schools). He created the ICF to credential

his schools. Leonard also created the International

Association of Coaches, another coaching association

in the United States.

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 accepted professional standards. So, ironically, the

federation that attempts to regulate the coaching industry

could use some regulation itself.

Do your own

research. Find

out what works

for you. Pick

your school,

academy, and

association

based on what

you want to

learn and the

quality of the

teachers.

BROOKE CASTILLO


Carr says,

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 (http://www.credentialingexcellence.

org/ncca), 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.

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, yet it claims to accredit

the schools and then certify the individuals graduating from those schools.

That being said, Leonard 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.

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 directly associated with any educational

body—it’s a separate entity that stands alone as an independent community. I say this


with full knowledge that Brendan 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 a smaller school’s approach.

I don’t think one is necessarily better than the other.

What matters is what works for you. You decide.

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.

It was a three-day training where she mainly taught me the work of Byron Katie.

Martha was one of the original coaches in our industry, and I have a tremendous

amount of respect for her and her work. She inspired me to go big and to create my

own curriculum and tools, which are now The Life Coach School.

Throughout my coaching journey, 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.


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

14


CERTIFICATION

Even as a teacher who certifies coaches, I find the emphasis coaches put on

certification amusing. 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. Your clients will most likely not hire you because of what school you

went to. Even 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.


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 10 hours of coaching,

whereas 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.

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 in the quality.

The bottom line is that 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 to.

Let your work, your reputation, and who you are be your credibility.

16


PART ONE

HOW TO COACH:

THE BASICS


THE BASICS

None of our

pain comes

from what

happens to us.

It comes from

what happens

in our mind.

BROOKE CASTILLO

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:

• The Anatomy of an Issue

• Cause vs. Symptom

• Holding the Space

• Clean Thinking

• Be Prepared

• The Model

• The Model in Action


ANATOMY OF AN ISSUE

Every issue we encounter in our lives can be categorized and broken down 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

you, you can find the cause and begin coaching there.

The five components are:

• Circumstances

• Thoughts

• Feelings

• Actions

• Results

When you understand each of these components, you can clearly identify the problem

your client is experiencing and decide which category it fits into. You can then 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.

Say your client is concerned about overspending. This fits into the “action” component

of the Model. You now 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 the 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.

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.

Circumstances are the things that happen in the world around us—things we

don’t control. Examples include the weather, our pasts, and other people’s behavior.

These are things we cannot directly change.

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.

Feelings are the emotions or vibrations 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, reflexes, and physical pain. Emotions are voluntary because we can

change what we feel by changing our thoughts.

20


Actions refer to behaviors, reactions, 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 angry, and withdrawing from relationships

because we’re feeling sad. If we want different actions,

we can choose different feelings.

Results are the effects of our actions. Examples

include being overweight because we’ve been eating

when we’re not hungry and having dysfunctional work

relationships because we’re avoiding interactions with

the boss. Choosing different actions will lead us to

different results.

Treating the

cause of the

pain will

eventually

eliminate the

need to treat

the symptom.

BROOKE CASTILLO


LET’S PRACTICE THIS

Think of your most pressing problem right now. Can you 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 because

it’s factual and can be proven.

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 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.

It’s 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’s your job to teach them that 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 emotional pain. This

isn’t the same as condoning someone else’s behavior—it’s simply taking complete

responsibility for our own minds.

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.


We all need a safe place where

we can clean out our ugly.

BROOKE CASTILLO

24


CAUSE VS. SYMPTOM

Most people who were trained at 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 for the client to swallow it,

but the result of this treatment is temporary, and it’s

ultimately ineffective.

Minds need

cleaning at

least as often

as houses.

BROOKE CASTILLO

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’s essential to understand that thoughts

cause the feelings that drive their actions.


Before actions can change, we must change the thoughts and

feelings that lead to those actions.

For example, my main focus as a coach is weight loss. The symptom my client brings to

me is obesity. This is a result that is caused by overeating.

I can treat this symptom by helping my clients find a way to stop overeating, but this

will not be a sustainable solution. Instead, I focus on what is causing the client to

overeat. If you have been paying close attention, you will know that the cause of those

actions is always the client’s thoughts and feelings. We must work at the cognitive

and emotional level to permanently change the behavioral level. This ends the struggle

against the symptom exactly in the same way casting and healing a bone prevents the

need for continued aspirin to alleviate pain.

Another example relates to clients 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, 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 our thoughts about the event or circumstance. It’s not

our feelings, but the thought that created the feeling.

It’s 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

the thoughts that lead to those unwanted results.

Show up with

intention and

let the magic

happen.

BROOKE CASTILLO

Great coaches are willing to bypass the “quick fix” of

symptom treating to provide causal coaching. This coaching

understands that 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 the client’s current thought about their

past that is causing pain now.

The client’s current thinking is what creates

their current life.

So, we begin there.


HOLDING THE SPACE

In my opinion, coaching should never be about you 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. This means

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 were involved and not objective, they likely reacted to what your

client said rather than holding 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.

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 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’s simply

what they’re thinking. Even how they view you and your

sessions is not about you—it’s about their minds.

To demonstrate this, let me tell you about my client

Sarah. She attended one of my seminars 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. I never believed this

story. I knew this was just a painful group of thoughts she

was creating and recreating in her mind. No matter what

her sister had done 40 years ago (yes, 40 years ago), it

was not harming her now.

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


The Model is

always working.

It doesn’t care

if we notice.

BROOKE CASTILLO

The only thing 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’re punching themselves in

the face, I don’t rub their leg and cry with

them. I grab their hand and tell them to

stop punching themselves.

In this case, I told Sarah 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

identified with her victim story and consoled her when

she cried. She was furious that I did not “have any

compassion” for her.

I was not negatively affected when she was mad at me.

I knew that the people who had compassion for this

terrible story had not helped her. That was why she was

here with me. I gave her the truth she needed. I told Sarah

that her current pain had nothing to do with her sister.

She told me I was mean. She told me 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.


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.

She didn’t email or talk to me for two weeks. Then she emailed 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.


CLEAN THINKING

Even though you’re a coach with the best of intentions, you’re going to judge your clients,

good and bad. You’re a human being. That’s what humans do. We’re 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 clients.

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’s best for your client. Ever.

Only they can know that. You can give them perspective, but you

can’t know what’s right for them.

If you have a judgment that your client shouldn’t be cheating on their husband or

quitting their job, you need to know that your judgment will interfere with your

coaching. Do your own work to “clean up” your thoughts and beliefs so 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, and you know

that only your client can find their 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.


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 judge your client or her husband.

Instead, you’ll 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, but 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 is ultimately

where all their power is.

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


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

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 out their tools on yourself.

The only way you can know whether a tool works is if you have used it and felt it work.

This will help you put together your own personal toolkit that incorporates tools created

by your mentors combined 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, and then select the 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 and 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.


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 a place to hold the space

for your client without being distracted by what’s 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 and isn’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.

Practice. On yourself and on clients.

So many of my new coaching 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.

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. When you are first

learning, coach 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 have. Prepare.


THE MODEL

Here is the secret sauce to all great life coaching: “thought inquiry.” It’s 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 have 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.

Here’s what it looks like:

C IRCUMSTANCES

can trigger

T HOUGHTS

cause

EVIDENCE

F EELINGS

drive

A CTIONS

create

R ESULTS


Seeing our lives in this context simplifies what’s going on so we can understand the

cause of the results 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 other people’s behavior, our pasts, and the economy. Most clients believe

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 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.

Thoughts are the cause of all emotions in our lives. 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 doesn’t mean

they won’t talk to their husband about not leaving—it means they will do it from a place of

empowerment and peace rather than from a place of manipulation and desperation.


Most of my clients are overwhelmed by the negativity going on in their minds when

they become aware of their thinking. 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 to raging at other

people to feeling uncontrollable anxiety.

It can all be managed by managing the mind.

Feelings, or emotions, are the effect of thoughts. 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 vibrations 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 can make yourself feel sad right now by thinking about something

else. A single sentence thought in the mind creates that emotion.

Any time you are feeling anything, you can ask yourself,

“What is the thought that’s 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’re 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’s feeling desperate is not because her son is failing math.

If this were the cause of the emotion, it would make everyone feel desperate, but it doesn’t.


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’s really

going on is a repeated pattern of

THOUGHT—FEELING—ACTION.

It’s nothing short of life-changing

to help your client understand that

what they do is ultimately driven

by what they think.


39

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. This is good news because 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 with her son without desperation.

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 angry, 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, whereas someone else might eat too

many donuts, and 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.

Results are created by the actions we take. By understanding this model, we can see

how our clients create results in their lives by their actions, which 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 our

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:


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.

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’s 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, Cs don’t

hurt. Facts don’t cause pain. There’s always a thought between the fact (circumstance)

and the feeling. 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’m a terrible

mother and I don’t help him study enough because I’m 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’s about the

client. To help the client see this, you can then ask how she acts toward her son when

she feels stressed about not being a good mother.


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

C: Son got F


F: Stressed

A: Yell at him

R:

By yelling at her son (something she doesn’t think a good mother would do), she gives

herself more self created evidence that she’s a terrible mother, in turn perpetuating

the negativity and “terrible mother” behavior.

C: Son got F


F: Stressed

A: Yell at him

R: Spend no time helping him with homework— just being “terrible” to him

At this point, you have created a model that helps you

understand your client and how she’s making her situation

more painful than necessary.

This is a visual of both the cause (thought) and effect (result) of the current problem.

By 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.


THE MODEL

IN ACTION

The 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 my clients and

colleagues let me share. They include some before-andafter

models and illustrate how they were able to change

their lives by deciding what to think on purpose.

When we

understand

how our minds

work, we can

actively create

our experience.

BROOKE CASTILLO


CLIENT 1

In my marriage, I used to make almost everything mean that I was unlovable. If he

came home late, it 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, it was because I was unlovable, etc. To deal with

the intense unworthiness that permeated my life, I overate and overdrank. I lied.

I pretended. I tried to cover up all of my unlovableness.

C: Married to a man

T: I’m unlovable

F: Unworthy

A: Lie, drink, and pretend

R: I’m unlovable because I never showed up

When I found the thought “I love me” and really believed it, something inside me just

clicked. His actions no longer meant something about me. They no longer meant

anything about my lovability. They meant only something about him, and I could love

me no matter what. I started to tell the truth to myself and to him. I stopped overeating.

I stopped blaming. I stopped overdrinking. I met myself and fell in love.

C: Married to a man

T: I love me

F: Empowered

A: Sober, tell the truth, and show up fully

R: I love myself


CLIENT 2

When I first started getting coaching, I was angry at my daughter’s basketball coach.

I thought he was the cause of my anger.

C: Man coaches high school girls’ varsity basketball

T: He’s abusive and mean and horrible to these girls and shouldn’t be allowed to coach

F: Angry and agitated

A: Say bad things about him to anyone who will listen

R: I am being mean and horrible when I talk about him

After some coaching, I changed my thinking slightly to release some of my anger.

C: Man coaches high school girls’ varsity basketball

T: It must be horrible being him—I bet he’s a very 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 and 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 stick to the facts and let the school decide whether

or not he should be coaching. And my daughter got to decide for herself whether she

wanted to keep playing on the team. That was just awesome.


CLIENT 3

I was always a fixer, a mediator, a peacekeeper. I cut the fuse on explosive personalities.

I brought the sunshine on a cloudy day, and I almost always found a way to turn that

frown upside down. I told myself it was my job, my responsibility. I managed people.

I rushed to put out fires. I was a hustler. And me? For the most part, I was knee-jerk “fine.”

I didn’t look too closely. I ate and boozed over my feelings until I was numb, and I spent

a lot of time worried about how everyone else was doing.

C: I have people in my life

T: People in my life aren’t always happy, and it’s my job to fix that

F: Anxiety

A: Buy something, change something, reschedule something, cook something, or do

something to make the person feel better; eat to numb myself to my own pain

R: I’m overweight and living in a fantasy world where I am responsible for everyone’s

happiness but my own

Coaching, and the outside perspective it offers, helped me see that it’s “not my job” to

make someone feel better, and it’s impossible for me to make someone feel better. I

was living a very painful, quietly arrogant lie that said I could somehow control what

other people think. I imagined that if I just worked hard enough at it, I could crawl

inside their brains and make them think happier thoughts and be happier people.

C: I have people in my life

T: I can’t make someone else happy. The only person I have control over is me

F: Relief

A: Start taking responsibility for my own mindset, my own thoughts, and my feelings,

allow the people in my life to be who they are, unbroken, without trying to fix them

R: I am responsible for me, and only me, which sounds a lot like emotional adulthood

and feels a lot like freedom


Has coaching changed my life? It has in a lot of real, concrete ways. I imagine it’s

changed my life the way a prisoner’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.

CLIENT 4

Here are some before-and-after models. Notice how this client changes her thoughts

and ends up with different results.

Before

C: My life

T: I don’t know what to do with myself

F: Depressed

A: Sit on the couch, watch TV, and eat

R: Not doing anything with my life

After

C: My life

T: I’m interested in learning new things

F: Interested

A: Research classes, sign up for classes, take classes

R: Learning new things and excited about life


This is more recent:

Before

C: Class I’m creating

T: I’m afraid to do this

F: Scared

A: Stuck. Not working on the class

R: Class is not completed and I’m confused and scared

After

C: Class I’m creating

T: I know exactly what to do

F: Confident

A: Organize my notes and work on the class

R: Class is completed and launched. Excited about teaching this class

Before I learned self coaching, lots of things in my life were hit or miss. I’d get excited

about something and go gangbusters to make it happen, but if I wasn’t inspired, I was

lost. I’d end up on my couch bored and feeling depressed. I didn’t realize that some

things inspired me because of my thoughts about them 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 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 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 she was doing everything she could to destroy

everything I had worked so hard to create. Every time I spoke with her, I cried, shut

down, or got defensive. I’m sure she thought I wasn’t effective. I’m sure she wondered

how I had achieved what I had achieved based on how ridiculously she saw me behave.

I was unhappy every day.

C: New boss

T: She’s trying to take everything away from me

F: Helpless

A: Cry, defensive

R: I was giving her everything and blaming her

After lots of reflection and coaching from Brooke and others, I decided I was being

ridiculous. I remembered that only I can create my future. Good or bad, it’s mine to own.

That thought sets me free and brings me back in touch with who I am. I create my future.

C: New boss

T: I create my future

F: Strong

A: Focus daily on what I want

R: Creating my own future

That thought changed everything about how I interacted with her from that moment on.

I was strong, confident, and focused. From those feelings, I created amazing things.

I created the future that I wanted. The future I chose.


PART TWO

HOW TO COACH:

MAD SKILLS

50


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 include:

• Unconditional Love

To love

someone no

matter what is

the best gift we

have to give

ourselves.

BROOKE CASTILLO

• The Manual

• Boundaries

• Emotional Childhood

• Money

• Questions

• Outcomes

• Story vs. Fact


UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

No matter what your clients hire you to do, they all have painful relationships that need

healing. Relationships are playgrounds for thoughts and belief systems, and they are

incredibly revealing for coaching. We 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 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

If you understand and use these tools, you’ll be able to help your clients with almost all

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 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 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

emotions instead of something wonderful.

Every time we choose to dislike someone, we are choosing to feel dislike. Dislike does

not feel good. It’s not a wise choice. It’s 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 isn’t how life works. Ever.

Our thoughts about someone’s actions determine how we feel,

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

For example, if a client says she’s frustrated because her husband won’t take out the

garbage, I show her that the reason she’s frustrated is because of what she’s making it

mean. She can change what she’s 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.

When you’re coaching clients, it’s imperative you remind them of this truth. It’s an

incredible gift to teach your clients that they can feel good whenever they want to.

They can feel love whenever they want to. Unconditional love is not for saints or

sacrificers—it’s for anyone who wants to feel amazing.


Isn’t it

amazing how

we can’t figure

out our own

lives but we

know exactly

what other

people should

be doing?

BROOKE CASTILLO

Some good questions to ask a client who

is suffering because of a relationship:

• 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 love this

person unconditionally, regardless of what they do

or don’t do?

• What is stopping you from unconditionally loving

for your own sake?

As a final note on relationships, I always remind my clients

that loving unconditionally doesn’t mean unconditionally

approving of another person’s behavior. And it doesn’t

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.


THE MANUAL

Though they may initially approach you with a different issue, most of your clients

believe they would 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.

This concept will be mind-altering for your clients. It might also be jarring. If they have

lived their whole lives handing their power away, it might be difficult for them to realize

they’ve 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’s the reason I have no money and no happiness.”

They had been divorced for 20 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 20 years!

Through our work together, I was able to hold the space for her to hash it out.

She would vent all this hate, and I would show her that he wasn’t feeling her hatred.


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 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 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 these manuals are causing them.

Here are some examples 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.


Most people aren’t aware

that they’re carrying around

manuals, and they don’t see

the pain these manuals are

causing them.

BROOKE CASTILLO


57

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.

I promise you, this is a very short list. Most manuals are pages upon pages thick.

They are complicated, intricate, and detailed. Many of my clients don’t even share the

manual with the person they expect to follow it. They think it’s something the other

person should “know” if that person loves them.

The problem with this 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 (and 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 helping my clients 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 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.

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.

58


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 ask me if this means it’s bad

to have expectations of other people. My answer is no.

It’s not bad to want others to do things, nor is it bad to

ask for something we want. But it’s painful when we

expect other people to meet our needs or to help us feel

good. That’s our job. So ask away—just don’t make your

happiness dependent on whether others comply.

At the end

of the day,

we are all like

children wanting

attention.

BROOKE CASTILLO

When it comes to manuals, here are some

great questions to ask your clients:

• Is there anything the other person does that you

believe causes you negative emotion?

• What do you believe the other person could do to

make you happy?

• Do you want the other person to do something he or

she doesn’t want to do? Why?

• 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.


BOUNDARIES

Boundaries

make loving

easier by

removing

resentment

from the

picture.

BROOKE CASTILLO

The word boundaries may sound like it’s 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 where 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 in reality,

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.


There are two parts to setting a boundary with someone else:

The Request

Ask someone to stop doing something that infringes on your property

(literally or emotionally).

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’m going to leave.

Notice that the request is not an order, but rather, it states or asks for what you want.

The other person can behave however they would like to behave. You really don’t 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’s very important to understand that boundaries aren’t a way to

manipulate or threaten others. They always come from a place of

love to promote self kindness.


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 this statement is pure manipulation. Not taking out the

garbage does not violate the client’s physical or emotional boundaries, and because 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.

Many of my clients get into their significant other’s business instead of managing

themselves and their own business. This often 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’s disempowering and separating. People don’t like being controlled or forced, and

the truth is that an ultimatum is actually a boundary violation against the other person.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, some clients don’t want to set proper boundaries

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. 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.

When we set boundaries, we must be willing to follow through

on them.

Sometimes, the boundary may not even be spoken. For example, if someone were to

hit me, I would leave. That’s a personal boundary I have for myself, but I don’t go

around telling everyone I meet that I’ll 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 in, I would ask that

person to stop or to let me out of the car. Notice how

the language permits the individual to continue smoking,

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.

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.

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.

BROOKE CASTILLO


EMOTIONAL CHILDHOOD

We call ourselves adults, but most of us are still functioning as emotional children.

There’s 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 their 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.

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 believe that

whatever is happening in our lives is the cause of our pain rather than being aware

of the thinking that accompanies it. We’re not taught to see that we have a thought

every time something happens and that it’s this thought that brings up our emotional

response. We have no idea 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 the torturous pain of feeling

unworthy and inadequate. As a small child, she has no idea she’s doing this to herself

and therefore can’t stop it. This pattern has followed the client into adulthood and

shows up in her adult relationships.

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’s

choosing to believe she’s 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’s 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’s unworthy, and having thoughts that cause her

additional pain and misery.


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.

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 they feel is a sure way to hand their emotional power over

to another person.

Handing over that power to someone else makes us dependent on that person for

how we feel. A dependent is otherwise known as a child, an emotional child.


MONEY

How we handle money is a great indicator of what’s

going on in our minds. It’s a wonderful topic to coach

clients on because these beliefs are usually ingrained

and unconscious.

Simple questions can open up a collection

of thoughts:

• Do you have enough money? Why or why not?

• How do you feel about money?

• How would your life be different if you were given

$10 million? How would it be the same?

• What do you believe you can do to get more money?

Do you want to do it?

Money takes

who you are

and what you

believe and

amplifies it.

BROOKE CASTILLO

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’re worried about having

too much because it will change how people feel about

them, and they’re worried about not having enough to

do the things they want to do.

Once we uncover their current mindset 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 having money does not mean others will have less. This

is 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,” and “If I have lots

of money, then I don’t care about people who have nothing.”

Second, I teach my clients that money is easy and good.

This is usually the opposite of what they’ve been thinking. They have beliefs like,

“You have to work hard for every penny,” “Money is complicated and difficult to come by,”

and “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 they’ve been blocking.

I’ll often tell my clients that I love money. I love it for me, and I love it for them. This will

catch them off guard. It brings up resistance and a wonderful opportunity for coaching

deep-seated beliefs.

And finally, I teach them acceptance, which means that there’s

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’s in our minds, so we can use it to evaluate and

explore our interior life. We can also use it to demonstrate the power of our thinking

by using our mind to create it.


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 help them find

ways to make more, but it’s a wholly 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.

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 conquer. Before we fix it and before we help

them try to change their behavior, we must understand the WHY.

Why? It’s 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 our clients have never done this before. It’s one

more step on their journey to consciousness and emotional adulthood.

Don’t ever underestimate how many of us are on autopilot, playing out the

programming of our childhood without questioning it. We do what we think we

should do based on what we were told as children, and we don’t evaluate whether it

still applies or makes sense. Your clients will come to you miserable and have no idea

why they’re miserable. If they don’t know 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 give you external reasons for 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.

This may be something they don’t want to hear at first because it feels like they’re

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.

This 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 minds.

For example, if your client is currently making $50k a year and they want to be making

$100k, 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 to change how we act

without changing the thoughts or feelings driving that

action, it will be a struggle of willpower, and the results

will be temporary.

When working on any issue, you can

ask the client:

• What is your thought driving that action?

How does that thought feel?

There really are

no new ideas.

There are only

new ways of

teaching them.

BROOKE CASTILLO

Then:

• What is the action you want to take?

• What is the result you want to create?

• What is the mindset (the collective thinking) that

will create what you want?

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, when I ask a client,

“Why can’t you lose weight?” the client will give me all the

reasons why they can’t lose weight.

Alternatively, when I ask a client a positive question,

for example, “How have you been successful at this?” or

“How can you enjoy this process?” they will answer with

positive thoughts.

The answers to these questions will be thoughts, so

when we’re looking to create new, positive mindsets,

asking questions is an awesome tool.


OUTCOMES

Once you teach your clients the power of their minds, they will be excited and terrified.

They’ll realize that they can create the emotional life they want without anything

changing. 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’re 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.

It’s pretty hard to argue against this theory because there’s so much evidence to

support it. If you’re depressed at work, you’ll create different work and results than if

you’re 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 employees’

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 stuff or not doesn’t

matter—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.


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 are 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. A perfect 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 really were thinking—

what was happening and would happen.

When we 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 it.”

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

affirmative, “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

and that fuels your work?”


You are the

story you tell

yourself about

yourself.

BROOKE CASTILLO

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, and 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.

Third, do they truly believe they can achieve the

desired outcome?

Here are some power questions

for outcomes:

• What do you want?

• Why do you want it?

• How do you feel when you imagine

achieving this goal?

• Do you believe you will achieve it?

• Why or why not?


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’s death, 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.”

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 lives.

We control our emotional life with our thinking.

If your clients say, “Work stresses me out,” you can point out to them that it’s their

thoughts about work that stress them out. Although they might not be able to change

their job at that very moment, they most certainly can change the way they think about it.

And that will change everything.

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. When 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 them, clearly

identifying cause and effect.

We create our lives with our minds.

We often believe our stories so deeply that we think they are facts. They’re 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.

Let me share 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 was when I interrupted and asked her to retell this story stating only the facts.

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

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:

• I have a mother-in-law.

• We went to her home last weekend.

• She made me spaghetti.

Everything else was story. Painful story.

My client’s mother-in-law had made her spaghetti, and my client

made it mean that her mother-in-law was conspiring against her

and trying to sabotage her weight loss.

I asked her if maybe the spaghetti could have meant something else to her mother-inlaw.

Were there any other ways to interpret the facts that might feel better?

She then acknowledged that maybe her mother-in-law 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 could be true. What served her

better? What served the relationship better?

I suggested that she consider how it felt to 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.


CONCLUSION

Being a coach is the best profession in the world. I know, because I’m living it. I work

from home in my pajamas and help people end their suffering and change their lives. I’m

biased, but I’m 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’m

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.

They believe they have done unforgivable things—molestation, infidelity, prostitution,

drugs, theft, abuse, and lie after lie. When I tell them 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, 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.

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.


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 bottoms 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.” “See, you’re 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.

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’d 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 coach my clients authentically.

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.

GAYLOR LEVINSKY


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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.

WWW.THELIFECOACHSCHOOL.COM


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