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Welcome to the Anything But Average podcast where I will teach you how to create a coaching business one step at a time. I’m Lindsey Mango, a life coach passionate about helping you create the life of your wildest dreams by creating a coaching business. Let’s get started.
Hello, and welcome back to another week and another episode of Anything But Average. Over the next six podcast episodes you are going to be hearing from six different mastermind students who are going to teach you their favorite concept that they have learned in our work together. These mastermind students have created $40,000 businesses, $100,000 businesses doing work that they love while creating the life that they really want.
I specifically chose these six mastermind students because they started in Anything But Average or my old variation of the program, which was called Mango Magic, where they got started in their coaching business, signed their first few clients, and have risen up from that level to the mastermind level where they are really creating the full-time coaching business, 100K business that they set out to create from the beginning.
I wanted their unique perspective because they started at the ground up in our work together and I wanted them to teach you a concept that helped them at that point in their business. So without further ado I’d like to introduce my mastermind students to you, and their individual podcast episode on one of their favorite concepts that we’ve worked on together.
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Hello, wonderful coaches. I hope that you are having an amazing day whenever you are listening to this. I’m just sitting here kind of laughing to myself because I host my own podcast, The Abundant Artist Podcast, and I’m on a hiatus from it right now so I’m really grateful to be back in the podcasting chair. But that is how I always start out every episode, so it feels like a little inside joke with myself.
But my name is Whitney Uland, I am an actor, writer, and a certified life coach for artists. I help artists get unstuck and start creating the lives and careers that they freaking love. And I found Lindsay at the beginning of the pandemic in like March or April 2020. I have been a student of, first I joined ABA, I then worked with her privately before joining her mastermind. And now I am in my fourth round of it.
I think I might hold like the reigning crown for who has been in it the longest, I’m not positive, I might be tied with someone. But all of this to say I am such a huge fan of Lindsey’s. It has been such a delight to be able to be coached by her. And if you are not in any of her programs yet, she did not ask me to endorse them but like get the fuck in. What are you doing? Don’t waste any more time, become a life coach, join ABA, like all the things. I cannot recommend her enough.
Okay, so today I am going to be talking about inevitable success and kind of what it means to me, the way that I learned it from Lindsey, all of that. And so my definition, I guess, of her definition of inevitable success is believing that your success is inevitable no matter what. So believing that your success is done no matter what.
I actually had this really interesting moment the other day, I was listening to someone’s podcast that they had recorded in, I want to say April or May of 2020, and so that was like very early stages of the pandemic. And it was was a coach and she was talking to someone, I don’t even remember who this was.
But she was saying we don’t really know how this pandemic is going to affect our lives for the better. Like this could be, even though it seems like terrible, she was coaching someone I think who had gotten furloughed or laid off. And she’s like, but this could turn into something where your success in becoming your own coach, like running your own coaching business pivots because of this moment of this pandemic, this extra time that you have now.
And it was super interesting for me to listen to that now, two years later, because that was not my experience at all. And the reason for this is because I worked on this idea that my success is inevitable so much so that when she said that I was like, that doesn’t sit with me because my success is not because I had the extra time during the pandemic, or because I joined ABA, or because Lindsey coached me.
My success was inevitable. I would have built the coaching business to this six-figure business, to this group program no matter what. I didn’t need something terrible or tragic to happen, that was what was going to happen for me. And I think that’s the level of certainty that we always want to strive towards, is believing that our success in whatever our next goal is, is so inevitable that kind of come hell or high water, pandemic, no pandemic, global crisis, no global crisis, that our results are still guaranteed.
Now of course that doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be obstacles, there aren’t going to be different circumstances that we have to work through, but when you believe that your success is inevitable, you look at those obstacles completely differently.
And one of the things I have noticed is that when I am coaching my clients is that we stop believing our success is inevitable kind of for two reasons. So one is we start to look at circumstances around us to determine our success. Which if you are a proponent of thought work, which I’m guessing you are, you know that your results are created by your thoughts, by your mindset, not by your circumstances, right?
If you think about it, if you’re familiar with the model, which is there are circumstances that happen in the world and then we all have the choice to choose what thought we want to think about those circumstances to determine what we’re going to make the circumstance mean about us, about our future, about our success, all of those things. And those thoughts are what create our feelings, what create our emotions. It’s not the circumstance itself, right? It’s always the thought about the circumstance that creates the feeling.
And going back to me listening to that other coach’s podcast, she was trying to help this new coach realize that she could have certain thoughts about the pandemic and about the circumstance of being furloughed so that she could have different feelings.
And the reason this is so important, of course, is that our feelings all drive our actions. And so the actions that we do or not take, how committed we are to our results, whether or not we keep showing up, whether or not we problem solve, whether or not we quit in a micro or macro way.
I call micro quitting the days that you’re like, “Well, I’m going to start on Monday.” Or quitting on the short-term goal or whatever. And then the macro quits are the days we’re like, “Screw this, this is not meant for me. There’s no way that I’m ever going to achieve this goal, I should just give up now.” But all of that, those actions are all coming from the way that we’re feeling, which is coming from our thoughts, never our circumstances, right? And those actions cumulatively create our results.
So the two reasons we stop believing in our success, one is, again, we assign circumstances, outside evidence, things that other people can see, the past, whatever we’ve seen before us to determine whether or not we can create our results. And that’s just like error thinking, right? Because no results come from our circumstances. Our results always come from the way that we view the circumstances, how we show up, how we problem solve in relation to those circumstances.
And then the second reason is that we start to make the results mean something personal about us or our ability. Or our innate talent, how special we are, how worthy we are. I see this a lot with my clients because everyone who is my client is an artist, right? And we hear all of these stories about celebrities or like literally we call them stars, right? And so we get this idea that they created these results because there’s something inherently special about them.
So something to check in with yourself is like do you believe Lindsey has created her success because she is special, or gifted, or talented? Or because it’s just a result that can be created by a person, right? And we’re going to get into this a little bit more.
So actually the next question that I wanted to lead straight into, this is a perfect segue, is okay, think about the job that your parents have or have had and whatever their career has turned into. And I want you to think about if you had to, I’m not saying that you would want to. But if you had to, if there was some rule that you had to go after that exact line of work and create the same results that your parents have, do you believe that you could create that?
Now, most people when we ask that, they say yes. Why is that? Because of your thoughts. You see whatever result they have created as a result that can be created, right? You just kind of see it as a neutral thing that could happen and that is possible in the world. Some of your thoughts about it might be, “Yeah, I could do that. It might be hard, but I could. I might not like it every day, but I could do it. There might be obstacles that I would face, but I would figure them out.”
My dad was an entrepreneur and so for me, being an entrepreneur didn’t really seem like a big leap and I’m sure a lot of that and my thoughts about that have been why I’ve been able to have such a successful business on my own. Now, if they told me you have to be an entrepreneur, I don’t know who they is, by the way. If some authority figure told me that I had to be a computer programmer, which is what he did, entrepreneur, do I believe I could do that?
I’m like, I could. I would hate that, looking at computers all day sounds like the bad place to me, but I could. I could figure it out. There would be obstacles, I would have to get over my attention span, it might take me more time to get through some training programs than it took for him because that really was just his zone of genius. But I could. I could do it, there would be obstacles but I would figure them out. Another thought is like yeah, that’s just a job that people have, right?
Now, I want you to think about what about your next goal, like think about whatever it is. Whether it’s 100K, whether it’s your next client, whether it’s to become a 100K coach in your lifetime, to become a millionaire coach in your lifetime. Do you believe that you can create that result with as much certainty as you believe that you could create your parent’s job?
Most people probably not, right? Why not? Because you have completely different thoughts around them and, again, they probably tie into something that I’ll break down in a second, one being that the circumstances have proved something different for you or are continuing to prove something different for you. Or two, because there’s something that you believe is special or different, or inherently unworthy about you that someone else who has created the result has.
When in reality, when we think about the kind of job that your parents had, that job and you creating that result, you would just be able to do it because you have clean thoughts about it because you believe that success in that way is inevitable. And this can be something like a really fun exercise for you if you want to list out what are my thoughts about having the same job my parents have versus what the thoughts that I have about becoming the next goal of mine. And where is the gap and where am I not believing that my success there is inevitable?
And something to remember is that any job is just a circumstance, just a neutral circumstance, right? When I did this exercise with my clients, instead of asking what their parents job was I asked them, I was like, okay, how many of you on a scale of 1 to 10, if you had to in your lifetime, believe that you could make $100,000 as a life coach in one year?
And every single one of them said yes because they’re not attached to it and they don’t think that you have to be special to do it. It’s just a result they’ve seen me do and they’re like, yeah, there probably are obstacles, you probably have to learn some things, whatever. But it’s something I can do.
But yet for them, when we changed the circumstance and for them it’s like, okay, but can you get on television? Then their brains are like no, only special actors can do that, or whatever, right? So our brains will just do the same thing. But having those two lists of what are your thoughts about your parents job versus what are my thoughts about my next goal as a coach can be really revealing to just show you exactly what you need to get coaching on.
And I want you to imagine how different you would show up to your coaching business, if you just believed that anything that you wanted to create in your business, in your life was just a result that was creatable by anyone, including you.
That there is no result in the world that is reserved for only special people, for people only with certain backgrounds, for people only with certain circumstances. There’s literally no upside to believing that, especially if you’re going to believe it about yourself and use that against yourself I mean. But if you just believe that anything that you want to do is just a result that is creatable, then how different would your life look?
I posted about this for my audience at one point because in this last year I feel like that was such a huge breakthrough that I have, of just like my success is inevitable in any area of my life. And any result that I want is just a result that is creatable by a person and I’m a person, right?
And so from that place, and I love coaching, obviously I know y’all do too, but from that place I was like oh, what if my sleep routine could be better? What if my sex life could be better? What if my marriage could be better? What if like my weight and my body relationship could be better? What if my style could be better?
My brain just opened up to all of these possibilities and that’s when I feel like I really started to create, not only success in my business, but like create the dream life that I wanted. Because I stopped believing that there was something different about me or different about my circumstances that held me back from having the things that I actually wanted in my life.
So I’m going to break down, in just a minute, the thoughts that I have come up with. I’m sure this is not an extensive list. I mean it’s not, there’s only like four things on this. But the four like most common thoughts that I see with clients that keep them from believing that their success is inevitable, and then thoughts that you can work on shifting to instead. But first off, I just wanted to share a little bit about how this concept, like the first time I learned this from Lindsey, how it really made a huge impact for me.
So when I first joined Anything But Average in March or April 2020, I was in the middle of fundraising for a movie. And this was a movie that was going to be my directorial debut, I was going to star in it, all these things. And we, as part of our fundraising, so we had private investors but then there was also this pot of money that we needed to raise from like crowdfunding, so from small contributions. This is something you do as a filmmaker, so that you can build an audience.
So basically, on March 3, 2020, we launched this big crowdfunding campaign and we decided that we were going to shoot for $30,000. They give you 30 days and if you don’t hit at least 80% of this goal, then you do not get to keep any of the money. Okay?
So we had this very short timeline and a very ambitious goal, right in March in 2020. And if you somehow have been asleep for last few years, that was not a great time for people financially and feeling like they had a lot of certainty to give money to artists. Some of those are thoughts, which I will get to in a second.
But what happened was immediately most of our investors backed out as soon as stocks started kind of going up and down, or mostly down, right? And what happened was the crowdfunding campaign was like, yeah, sorry, we don’t really know, but you still have to raise the money and if you don’t, then you’re just going to lose it. And I think they did give us an extension, they gave us like two extra weeks, which is still kind of cuckoo to me that they didn’t just let us pause it and like reset in like July or whatever.
But we had raised, I want to say like $10,000 already. And so it was like, well, if we don’t finish then we lose this and we’ll have to completely start over. And we have to get to at least 80% of our goal in this now, I think six week window, otherwise we’re not going to get any of the money.
And so what happened was my brain went into like this is impossible, for sure no one can do this unless they’re like Meryl Streep. You have to be special to be able to do this, this is my first time, I’ve never done this before. I’m looking at the fact that we’re less than a third of the way to our complete goal, all of these things.
There’s so much evidence around me and uncertainty about whether or not I was going to be able to hit this goal. And this was, luckily, right when I found ABA and was able to get coaching on this. So from this place, though, because I worked on believing that my success was inevitable, that this crowdfunding campaign was going to be inevitable, this is how it led me to show up.
So first off, I stopped stopping. I stopped these little micro quits of like, well, maybe we can just try again next year, right? Maybe we can, I don’t know. I stopped stopping on a micro scale and on that macro scale, because there were days that I was like maybe I’m just not cut out have to be a filmmaker, I don’t know. Right? So I stopped stopping.
I also was able to let go of evidence and timelines of whether or not I was on the right path. The way that I like to think about coaching sometimes, and coaching is an art, not a science. And there are times that we need to sit with our emotions and process them and sit with what comes up. But I also think of coaching, sometimes when you get really onto yourself and there are just thoughts that keep coming up over and over and over again, I like to think of this like mental whack-a-mole.
So whack a mole is the game where those little like, I don’t know if they’re like beavers or like prairie dogs. I don’t even know, it’s not very nice to animals. But these animals just pop out of the ground and you, oh moles. Is that what it is? I sound like such an idiot, whatever.
And then you just like whack them and you’re trying to hit them. Every time they pop up, you just like whack them down, right? And that’s kind of what we have to do sometimes with our thoughts, especially these thoughts that keep coming up that are in the way of our goals.
So what happened was, every time my brain wanted to look at the timeline, and just so you know, with a crowdfunding campaign they like make this virtual little thermometer that’s a very visual representation of like how far you are from your goal, and also how much time you have left.
But because I believed my success is inevitable, every time I saw how far we were on that little thermometer I just was able to play mental whack-a-mole and be like, you know what, that evidence right now is actually irrelevant. I was able to discard the timeline, I was able to just let it go.
Instead, I was able to stay creative, stay focused. I was able to maintain my belief, which we all know that thoughts are the only things that create our results anyway. I was able to evaluate what things were working and what things weren’t working because I knew that this didn’t have anything to do with me. So I wasn’t just like shutting down and being like, I’m not cut out for this, you know, whatever.
And, at some point we did lower the goal, we’re like, let’s just get to that 24K mark, which is the 80% so that we can get our money and just go from there. And we did, we crossed that 24K. I think we made $24,200. We made those last few hundred dollars in the last hours and it was crazy. But from the entire time, that just looked completely impossible because of these two things, which I’m going to get into.
Again, one is the circumstances, the past evidence, the evidence around me, was telling me that this goal was impossible. And then the second reason being thoughts about myself being able to get in the way and not believing that this was just another result that could just be created.
So again, I’ve narrowed down these are the four thoughts that I see come up the most that get in the way for people of believing that their success is inevitable. So the first one is this hasn’t worked before, right? And like I should just stop, when you’re looking at outside evidence. And this could also look like, you know, this hasn’t worked before for me, or this doesn’t work for people, or for like the people around me, or whatever.
And the thought that I want to offer to you that you can, so whenever you notice this, you can play mental whack-a-mole. So whack this one down and then, instead, remind yourself, okay, well, if I keep looking at circumstances, then I’m never going to create anything new. Right?
Like if you think about any circumstance or any evidence that you’re looking at, that your brain wants to look at, it’s just something that’s just a circumstance and it’s just in the past. And if we want to create new results, results come from our thoughts. Sometimes I feel like we kind of have to give our brain a little bit of a reminder that the circumstance is actually kind of irrelevant because what we actually need to do to create results is focus on the thoughts.
And with this also, like another thought, so this would be the second one, is my circumstances are just too far off. Right? And this is a little bit, it’s like circumstantial but it’s also kind of tied up into us and like something lacking in us. So this could be like, I’m too busy, I’m too emotional, I don’t have enough time. For me, it’s like I’m too pregnant to be able to do this. I’m eight and a half months pregnant and sometimes I’m just like, see, I can’t do that because the circumstances are just working against me.
And the thought that I’m want to offer after you whack that one away is that all results come from our thoughts. And even though I don’t get to choose my circumstances, I do get to choose my thoughts. And that’s the only thing that matters to create results anyway, right? So those two, I think, can be really helpful when we want to look at whether it’s evidence, whether it’s circumstances, whatever it is, to determine whether or not our success is inevitable.
Okay, the third one that I have written down is that this result is only for certain kinds of people. So that could be special, wealthy, smarter, more successful, older, younger, hotter, thinner, whatever it is. Whenever you have a thought of like this result is only for that kind of person and I’m not that kind of person, that’s just you not believing that your success is inevitable. And it’s you not believing that this is just another result.
So again, my antidote thought for this is, this is actually just another result and all results are creatable by all people, okay? That’s the one that just like really neutralizes it for me, is just like this is just a result, the results are all creatable. And the circumstances to that and who I am, isn’t really relevant.
And then the last one I have is, and these are kind of all like just different iterations of the same thought, to be honest. It’s like statistically speaking, I won’t succeed. My artists love to use this and to look at all the numbers of the actors in the Actors Guild who were unemployed last year and be like, “See, clearly that would be, statistically it’s an anomaly,” right? And again, that’s really just us looking for something, looking for a circumstance to determine our results instead of looking at our thoughts to create our results, and looking at our mindset to create our results.
But the thought that I like to go to for this is that there are always exceptions, I could be one of them. And me being one of those exceptions, opens the door for more people like me. So whether it’s like I have too many kids, I have the wrong color skin, I have the wrong color hair. For me, I’m bisexual, right, like I’m a queer person. Statistically speaking these marginalized groups don’t have as much success. Or even just like in business, women don’t have as much success.
Whatever it is, our brains want to use that against us to get in the way of believing that our success is inevitable. And by flipping that and instead focusing on like, okay, but there are exceptions and the people who are the exception are the people who choose to define themselves by their thoughts, not by their circumstances.
So, anyway, all of this to say I think there is an element of, well, this would be a whole other episode, I guess. There is sometimes an element of being willing to bet on delusional, on being delusional, right? To bet on like my success is inevitable because none of the evidence that I’m seeing, none of the results I’ve created actually matter, right?
Like for me when I was doing the crowdfunding, that thermometer and the timeline, it doesn’t matter. It’s totally irrelevant to whether or not I can create results because that’s just a circumstance now. Anything that I can see in my present view, right, or in my rear view mirror is just a circumstance. And results come from our thoughts and our thoughts are always in our control.
So that is what I had to share with you. Thank you for your time, it has been such a treat to be on here. I wish you all the best and I hope to see you all in ABA soon and or in the mastermind or whatever. And thanks again for having me, I’ve had a wonderful time. Talk to you later, bye.
If you’re ready to take this work deeper and create your own coaching business, join us in Anything But Average where I will walk you through the step by step process to become a coach, start your coaching business, and start signing clients. Go to lindseymangocoaching.com/anythingbutaverage and I will see you on the inside.
