Coach Yourself Through Anything: 3 Powerful Tools for Life’s Unexpected Challenges

Is life throwing you curveballs? Learn to be your own coach. This episode of The Art of Badassery equips you with powerful self-coaching tools to navigate life’s unexpected challenges. Join host Jen Cassetta as she shares a vulnerable story of overcoming a personal hurdle.

In this episode, you’ll discover practical strategies for processing difficult emotions like sadness, anger, and frustration. You’ll also learn how to identify and challenge limiting beliefs that hold you back, the power of reframing challenges as opportunities for growth and positive change, and techniques to cultivate an optimistic mindset that sees infinite possibilities, even in tough situations.

Stop feeling like a victim and start creating the life of your dreams! Tune in to this episode and learn how to coach yourself through anything.

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Coach Yourself Through Anything: 3 Powerful Tools for Life’s Unexpected Challenges

In this episode, I want to share a little snippet of how I coach myself and how you can coach yourself too, especially when life goes sideways. Let’s face it. Not everybody has the budget, time, and resources to have a coach on call all the time for you to coach you through those rough times. I strive to live my life with as much positivity as possible. It’s easy to do when life is smooth and things are going your way. It is not so easy to do when life goes sideways, life throws you curve balls, and you get knocked down. Maybe it’s a piece of news that you weren’t expecting or a huge life transition but either way, having a little bit of these tools in your toolbelt is going to come in handy for many reasons to keep yourself positive.

This show, if I think about it, is about living powerfully, being badass and powerful in the world so that you can live your best life and lead the life of your dreams. To me, that’s what being a badass is. It’s not just about being tough and strong and the inner strength. Yes, it’s all those things but it’s to live the life of your dreams, whatever that looks like. When things come into our lives that take us off that path for whatever reason, we need tools in our toolbelt to help us get back on track and keep us moving forward and not get stuck.

When life throws you curveballs and knocks you off track, you need tools in your tool belt to get back on course, keep your sights set forward, and avoid getting stuck.

I’m going to share a little bit about what I’m going through and how I’ve been coaching myself. Specifically, I’ll point out a few of those tools that I use. I don’t want to be stuck in a rut. I don’t want my friends, family, and clients to be stuck in ruts. I don’t want you to be stuck in a rut. I want you to move forward. On my episode with Judi Holler, if you read it, you know what’s happening a little bit. Essentially twenty minutes before I started recording that episode, I got a call from my landlord at the time who told me he was ending our lease.

A little bit of background, my husband and I have been living in a sweet pad, an amazing, spacious, and awesome home in Santa Monica. We didn’t own it. Therefore, I knew this day was coming. I don’t live in La La Land. I live in LA but you get what I mean. I live in reality. I just wasn’t prepared for it. I expected to get a little more notice than the 60 days he wanted to give us, especially after several years. He was well within his rights. Yes, I got upset. That’s why I’m able to share about it because I’m on the other side, still going through the transition but able to talk about it in a way where I feel more powerful.

On that day, I was handed this piece of news and then I had to deal with it. Time went on. We had to find a new place to live. In the last few years, rents have gone crazy in Santa Monica. What we are able to afford that’s on the market is very different than what we were used to. Let’s put it that way. There are a lot of emotions. Here’s where I had to dig into my framework, The Art of Badassery. I feel sometimes I write that book for myself first and foremost and then to share all the tools that I’ve used and learned with the wisdom of the Dojo to help me get back up when life knocks me down.

The first step is the White Belt. You’re getting onto the mat and faced with opponents. Life is going to take you out. That happens. What is the White Belt lesson? Embrace the suck. How do you do that? How do you embrace the suck when you are in the thick of it? First and foremost, you have to feel those feelings. Many of us try to bypass the feelings of disappointment, sadness, anxiety, fear, and all of these negative feelings because they don’t feel good so we try to bypass them, move on, and power through.

That can work for some of us some of the time but eventually, I do feel like if you suppress those feelings enough, they’re going to come up in unexpected times and ways and probably not in healthy ways. I talk about this in the book and we all know this. We try to bury those feelings with things like wine or shopping or burying ourselves at work, scrolling on social media, doomscrolling, Netflix binging, and all these different things to not feel the feelings.

I do feel like to process them and move through them, we do have to feel them. That’s step one. Feel them. Allow yourself that space. I started to ask myself, “What are the feelings that I’m feeling?” I started to cry. I was mad and sad. Those feelings hit me, especially during the week of the move. It took seven full days, truth be told, to get out of that house and empty the house.

I started purging early on. I got rid of tons of clothing, belongings, and furniture but it started to hit me when that space that I called home for nine years started to empty. As we got closer and closer, I started to feel lots of loss. I started to feel grief. I allowed myself to start feeling that grief because I was losing something. Even though there was a part of me that said, “You don’t deserve to grieve this. It’s just a home. It’s no big deal. Nothing is permanent in life anyway. It’s not like when you lost your dad or something important.” At the end of the day, loss is loss and grief is grief so I allowed myself to mourn and feel those feelings.

Nothing is permanent in life.

I cried and let it go. I cried in front of my friends. I had a friend hold me on her chest as I cried and wept. I allowed people to step in and fill those spaces and support me. I didn’t even ask. Friends showed up in my life to pack boxes, unpack, clean, and be there the day of the move, days after the move, and days before the move. It was amazing what I believe I allowed to happen because I allowed myself to feel those feelings and share them with folks.

After the White Belt level is the Yellow Belt, which is about bouncing back. Part of the things that I write about in the Yellow Belt chapter is leaning on your community for support. I’m so blessed and lucky that I didn’t even have to ask them. They just showed up. That was amazing. Getting back to those feelings and allowing, I also start to ask what the feelings are. I got the loss and grieve but there was something else that I knew was there. if I dug a little deeper, I would find more answers.

Sure enough, there it was, shame. I started to feel shame about losing my home. I dug deeper and I was embarrassed. I’m ashamed that I don’t own my home at this age and stage in my career. Starting to unpack that a bit was helpful as well. The next thing I start to ask myself or even when I’m coaching my clients is, “Is it true?” Take that sentence.

When I start to be shameful, I’m like, “What am I shameful about?” That’s where all those lies start to surface. I’m a failure. I’m not as successful as I should be. I don’t own a home and I should. I start shoulding all over myself. “Are these things true?” I start to separate them one by one and allow them to surface. “Am I a failure? Is that true? No, that’s not true.” I started to talk to myself and say, “These are all the reasons why that’s not true.”

I start to point to my successes and the epic things that I’ve achieved. I also start to look at what I’ve prioritized over the last decades. I’ve prioritized growing my career and investing in my self-development and my business. That’s what I was focused on. Part of that is debunking the failure part but it’s also one other step that I like to coach myself and other people through, which is, “Is there anything that I can take responsibility for?” That’s very different than blame.

I can blame myself but that only leads to more shame. Instead, what can I take responsibility for? That’s what I said. I can take responsibility for what I’ve prioritized in my life, which are other things than buying a home. Got it. When life knocks you down, sometimes there’s a lesson there or an opportunity to reprioritize, make new goals for yourself, and set new expectations. Maybe this next decade, hopefully, I will prioritize getting my home. This can happen again. It’s another thing.

Is it true? If they’re not true, make sure that you have enough reasons and backup to debunk those myths and lies that you’re telling yourself because usually, shame and blame come from these lies and negative things that we’re telling ourselves over and over again. Another thing about feeling the feelings, as one more sidebar on that, is in Chapter 1, Embrace the Suck. It’s important to feel the feelings and have a timeline for them.

What I don’t want for anyone that I care about, including you, is to get stuck. When we stay in these modes of sadness, depression, anxiety, worry, and fear, and we don’t process them and move through them, then we’re getting stuck in them. That’s when I talk about getting stuck in that victim mentality. “Life is happening to me. This isn’t fair.” We’ve all been there and we can say those things but then we can move through them. What I’m trying to do is give you a deadline.

Everyone’s deadline, depending on the circumstance, can be very different. The power in it is choosing what’s going to beat for you. I know that I let myself feel those feelings for seven days. Did I know on day 1 that I was giving myself 7 days? No, but I got to a point where I said, “Enough already,” because by day seven, I was in the new place. I decided that I did not want to bring those feelings into my new space.

I didn’t want to give them more life or fill up my new space with those negative feelings. For me, that was the turning point. I said, “No more. From now on, I’m going to focus on generating positive feelings like feelings of hope and what can be in the future.” That’s where this third tool that I love to play with comes in handy, which is trying to imagine that there are infinite possibilities in the universe and every different scenario that’s playing out.

For me, this scenario of moving to a place that was different than I was used to, on paper is not as great, to be honest. It’s not better than what I had. I had to realize that there’s got to be a reason for it. The reason can be better than I could have ever imagined. Instead of staying stuck and focused on the fact that this is a bummer and downgrade, I’m going to focus on infinite possibilities.

Instead of dwelling on the negatives and seeing this as a setback, focus on the endless possibilities and approach each challenge with a curious mind.

“What if this works out in my favor?” That is one of my favorite mantras and questions to ask myself. Approaching each challenge that you’re going through with curiosity and questioning like that brings a whole new vibration. At the end of the day, what I’m trying to do is keep my vibration as high as possible so I can create the life of my dreams.

Pretty much what I’m going to leave you with is the question, “What if this all works out in your favor? What could be possible?” There are infinite possibilities for how it could play out for you. Some quick examples of what I’ve been thinking about are being in a new space at a new address in the same neighborhood. I was able to stay in the same neighborhood. Maybe I’ll meet new neighbors that will change my life and it’ll get me out into the coffee shops more. I’ll run into someone or create some amazing opportunity for my business, life, family, and relationships. Who knows? What if this works out in my favor?

That’s all for this episode. I hope whatever it is that you’re going through, you find the inner strength to stay open and curious, and at the end of the day, stay as positive as possible but first, feel those feelings and identify what they are. If you find yourself blaming or shaming, ask yourself, “Is it true?” If it’s not, what is true? Last but not least, think about the infinite possibilities that are out there in the universe. What if this works out in your favor?

I hope you enjoyed that quick tidbit. I will keep you posted on how this all unfolds. It’s important to share not just the highs of my life but also some of the lows and challenges. If we are to look just at Instagram and social media and compare ourselves to everybody’s highlight reels, it could be a downer. I know that is happening, especially with young women and teenagers around the world as they compare their lives to everybody’s highlight reels.

That is why I share. That is why I am vulnerable. I will continue to do so if it serves a greater purpose. With that said, I’d love to know if it does help. Let me know. Jump on social media. If you see these reels on my Instagram or LinkedIn, comment. Let me know how you apply this advice to your life and how it’s working out for you. I want to know. Everyone, have an awesome day. I’ll see you in the next episode. Thanks.