Ep #161: Disciplined Thinking

You are listening to The Life Coach Business Podcast with Amanda Karlstad episode number 161.

Welcome to The Life Coach Business Podcast, a show for coaches who are ready to up-level their business and take their impact, leadership, and results to a whole new level. If you’re ready to start taking powerful action and become the leader your business needs in order to grow and thrive, this show is for you. I’m your host, Amanda Karlstad, certified life and business coach, and entrepreneurial leadership expert. Now, let’s get down to business.

Hello and welcome everyone. Welcome to today’s show. I hope you’re doing well. I am doing fantastic. I got off of a call earlier today with an amazing group of clients. We have an amazing group coaching call. I’ve been thinking about that call. I am so proud of them and the work that they’re doing in their businesses, in the world, and the differences that they are all making in their client’s lives.

Quite frankly, the difference that they’re all making in their own lives for showing up and for going after their dreams and for betting on themselves, and putting themselves in an environment that is challenging them to grow and expand in so many ways. So many of them, they’re making so much money doing it. It is really so much fun, and really, really amazing.

So today’s call really reinforced for me today’s topic, which I had been planning on recording and bringing to all of you today. It’s something that I think is really important. I want to share with you that in my call today with a group of these clients, I did some really deep work in relation to today’s topic. For me, it really reinforced the importance of what it is that we’re going to talk about.

So what I want to talk to you all about today is what I’m calling disciplined thinking, one of the things that you hear me talk a lot about on this podcast and in all of my shows is the importance of the inner work. It’s the inner work in addition to the strategy, in addition to the tactical work that we also have to do inside of the business. That’s why I teach inside of all of my programs both the outer strategies, but also a lot of our focus is on this inner work. I really believe that is one of the reasons that my clients are really able to take everything to the next level.

I think especially when you’re a coach, when you take your profession of coaching seriously, which I know all of you listening, do what I see happen, especially if you’ve been a coach, and if you’ve been running your business for any length of time. I think at times it can be very easy for your thinking and the way that you’re perceiving certain things, whether that’s in your business, or maybe it’s with certain clients, or maybe it’s even personally.

What I find is that it doesn’t matter if you’re someone who has been coaching for a year, or someone who’s been coaching for 10 plus years. It doesn’t matter if you’re starting out, it doesn’t matter if you’re an established coach who’s making millions of dollars. What I have found is that in taking this journey myself and also having coached so many coaches at this point all on this spectrum, I have found that there’s a real, real importance of practicing what I’m calling disciplined thinking.

What I mean by discipline thinking is a level of thinking that is congruent with who you want to be. It’s a level of thinking that challenges you, that moves you out of a pattern. It’s thinking that’s intentional. It’s thinking that is precise. It’s a level of thinking that is self-aware. It’s a level of thinking that demonstrates self-responsibility. It’s about being the highest version of yourself and becoming acutely aware of where your attention, of where your energy, of where your focus and your narratives are.

After taking my clients through an exercise today, it really hit me the importance of doing this work and the importance of doing this work consistently. Because no matter what stage of business you’re in, and for example, for these clients in particular, these are not new coaches. These are coaches who are six figure coaches, multiple six figure coaches. These are master coaches. These are coach trainers. So coaches who have trained other coaches.

After leading them through today’s exercise, their minds were blown. For all of them, they were able to experience a new level of awareness in relation to the stories that they were believing about themselves or about their business, or about who they believe themselves to be. So for all of them, it really opened up a whole new level of awareness, which opened up a whole new level of themselves, and ultimately, a whole new level for their businesses.

So I was thinking about this, and just what a beautiful thing this is and was to witness. So if you’ve been coaching for years, and you think you’ve got it, you think you have the importance of mindset, that you’ve done the work, and you’ve “made it.” The truth is that I have found this as an ongoing journey. It is ongoing work to become more and more self-actualized, to become more and more acutely aware of your patterns, and of your thinking and of your identity and your self-concept.

When you can do this work consistently, I personally believe that if you’re serious about growing and scaling your business, that having a coach and being in a container where you are being coached at a high level is a nonnegotiable. It’s been a nonnegotiable for me and will continue to be because even as I coach master coaches, even as I coach coaches who have been in the field for years, some even decades, coaches that have trained other coaches, what I find is that we all have blind spots.

Sometimes those blind spots can be much more difficult and much more difficult to see, especially if you’ve done a lot of the mindset work already. Especially if you’ve experienced success in your business. Because what happens is, is we tend to think we’ve overcome certain things. We tend to think that because we’ve done work in certain areas that we’re beyond it, that we don’t need to look at it anymore.

What I have found over and over again, is that it isn’t until you truly make a decision. It isn’t until you make a true decision to be done with that narrative in your life or in your business. You decide to no longer accept certain truths that you’re accepting. It isn’t until you practice this and live from this new lens and live from this new, disciplined thinking place and continue to choose it daily is when you truly experience those massive shifts personally, which then translates into business success.

So I want to give you an example of this. One of the clients that I coached earlier today on this, what was coming up for her was that she was looking at her upcoming launch that she has planned for her business. She was looking at what needed to be done for this launch, and her plan for getting done all of the things that she was needing to get done for the launch.

So for her she’s launching another cohort of her group program, and this is a program that she has actually run for the last couple of years. But she decided to try a few new things for this launch. She is doing a couple of different things with her marketing. She’s incorporating a new webinar. We are going to be turning on ads for this launch very soon. So there’s just a few more moving pieces than she has had in play over the last year, to be honest, and really since the last time that she launched this program.

So because of that even though she has a really great runway. She has two months of what I call runway before her launch, which is essentially the timeframe leading up to the actual launch, which is very, very important. Something that I teach inside of my programs is how to create million dollar launches. She’s in a place where she recognizes that she is falling into all or nothing thinking.

So what she shared was that for her right now, she’s feeling that she has to either sacrifice some of the things personally that she doesn’t want to sacrifice, certain self-care things. Or the other option is that, essentially, she just curls up in a corner, to use her words. So what I offered to her was that what if this was an invitation for her? What if this was an invitation for her to now step into the $5 million version of herself? The version of herself that creates a million dollar launch, the version of her that creates $5 million per year in our business?

What if it didn’t have to be either or? What if it was an opportunity for her to step into this version of herself and to stop entertaining the story that either she has to hustle and sacrifice things like sleep and exercise? Or that she does the opposite and completely falls apart and instead chooses to not fully show up in the launch and does curl up in that corner? Or what if she decides in this moment that she now no longer accepts that version of her that story, that self-concept.

Now she’s able to approach this launch from a feeling of sufficiency, from a place of confidence, from a place of commitment of certainty. Knowing that she knows what to do, knowing that she has launched this program before knowing that she has helped literally hundreds of clients already in this program. She’s made multiple six figures in her business from just this one program alone. How would that impact this launch? How would that impact her feeling right now and during the launch? How would she be able to show up differently in her business?

So for her, for this client, this was something that even in her 50s is something that she has always thought about herself. It’s a story that she’s been carrying her whole life. That either she does everything, she has to hustle, she has to sacrifice, and through that process doesn’t take care of herself. Or, in her words, she goes into a corner and melts.

So when I was coaching this client, what I offered to her that perhaps this was meant to show her and invite her and serve as a powerful opportunity for her to change that narrative, to change that story about herself, to change herself concept, her identity. So it was so clear that she had been creating this reality for herself in so many ways in her life. As we started unpacking it to look at how she had been perpetuating the story and believing the story and accepting it as truth.

I’m sharing this with all of you today because this is the power of disciplined thinking. This is the power when you develop a level of self-awareness to your thoughts, to the stories that are circling in your mind, to the stories you have about yourself. When you can get to a place where you can start to question them and challenge them and see how they’re playing out in your lives and in your businesses. It’s only then that you have the power to change them. It’s only then that you have the power to choose differently, to choose a new and more disciplined narrative. A narrative that serves you and that serves your business.

So I want to encourage all of you to practice discipline to thinking, to make it a habit, to decide that it’s important. I also want to encourage you that if you know you need support in doing this, I also want to encourage you to take the next step and to apply to work with me and my team.

If you’re currently working towards six, multiple six, even seven figures in your business, I want to encourage you to get in the room with us. Let’s look at what’s getting in your way of success. Let’s look at and choose differently so that you can get on with it that you can go out and do the work that you’re here and meant to do. So that you can create the life and the business and the financial freedom you know that you’re capable of. All right, my friends have a beautiful week. I’ll talk to you all again soon. Take care. Bye-bye.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Life Coach Business Podcast. If you want to learn more about how to build, grow, and scale your business and accelerate your results visit amandakarlstadcoaching.com.