Ep. 27: How to Believe That Thing You Want WILL Work Out for You

No matter who you are you probably have one (or many) things that you want in life that seems just out of reach. It can be hard to believe that that thing you want so badly (the relationship, the career, the money, the family, the body, the friendships, the business….) will actually work out of you. And there’s a reason it’s hard to believe - it’s not because it’s not possible for you, but it’s because that’s how your brain is wired. In this episode Coach Stephanie talks about the things that she wants that can be hard to believe will actually happen for her - and gives you 4 tools you can use to improve your own belief and increase the odds that what you want really WILL be yours. 

On today's episode, we're gonna be talking about something that I myself have spent a lot of time working on with my own coach, which is how to believe that that thing that you really want actually will work out for you. So most of us have something that we want that we don't have, if not a lot of things that we want that we don't have, right? That might be you're looking for a partner or you're wanting to improve your marriage, you want a different job, you want a kid, you want to lose weight, you want to run a marathon in a certain time, you want to write a novel, like the list goes on.

If you're like most people, and certainly most clients that I coach, and myself, you have something in your mind that you'd like to accomplish or achieve or get, and maybe you're actively working towards it right now, or maybe it's something that is, just feels like a pipe dream for you. But no matter what it is, in order to actually get it, you have to believe that it's going to work out. You have to believe that it's attainable for you.

For myself, we're in the process right now of going through an adoption. As I've spoken about on other episodes, we don't know if it's going to work out for us. We don't know if it's going to be finalized. We hope so. We think so. But we don't know. That's one thing that I think about a lot that I'm not sure if it's going to work out for us. In order for me to even have a shot at that working out the way I want it to work out, I have to start by believing it will. I have to start by getting it in my mind that it is possible for good things and this particular good thing to work out in my favor.

It's so easy for us to default to the thinking of it's not going to work out for me, the odds aren't in my favor, I'm just not somebody who's lucky, this has never worked out in the past. Any of those thoughts that are very common but also really unhelpful can actually really block you from getting what it is that you want. And so we're going to talk about that today. We're going to talk about how do you go about believing that the thing that you want really will work out, the thing that you want really will be yours, even if that's not what you're thinking right now.

OK, so first we're going to do a quick review of why this matters. So you might be thinking something like, right, but the thing that I want is largely out of my control. I think about that all the time with this adoption. The adoption is largely out of my control. Or maybe you have a fitness goal, but you have something going on physically or a diagnosis or something that makes it hard for you to meet that goal. Or maybe you really want to make this massive career change or get this big promotion at work or level up in some way professionally, but you have what feels like a million obstacles in front of you and it just doesn't seem possible that you'll be able to make that big pivot or make that transition or get that thing that you want. Or maybe you are in your 40s and you're divorced and you would like to get married again and you're thinking is like I just don't believe that there's a partner out there that's going to be a right fit for me. I don't believe that there's somebody out there that's gonna be my match. I don't believe that I'm good at relationships. There's a lot of ways that this can pop up for us as we go through life, is thinking that this isn't gonna work out.

The reason it's really important that you believe that things will work out for you, the thing you want will happen, it's really important for you to believe that that's true because that will affect how you act and the results that you get. Now, if you're in a situation, like I've mentioned, the adoption, where a large portion is out of my control, it might be like, well, what does it matter if you believe it or not? It's in somebody else's hands. It's a judge's decision. And you can put your own circumstance in there where you're thinking like, yeah, it doesn't really matter. No matter what I do, it's not within my control. It's out of my control. The decision is somebody else's to get the thing that I want. I can think all I want that I want to meet a great partner, but I can't control if somebody else falls in love with me or not. I can think all I want that that dream house that I've been eyeing, it's finally for sale and I'm gonna get it. But at the end of the day, I can't control whether or not the owners accept my offer.

So there's like a lot of ways that we do this where we sort of disempower ourselves by saying like it doesn't matter it's out of my control and therefore whether I believe it or not who cares I can just take the actions and then I need to just kind of let it up to fate or the universe or God or the other people but even if you have a 1% influence in the result of something that you want and for the record very few situations are such that you're gonna have a 1% chance of getting what you want, right? Everything 99% is out of your hands, 1% is in your hands.

But even if that's the case, it's still really important that you actually do have the belief that it's gonna work out for you, that you're gonna get the thing you want or the thing's gonna go your way. And the reason is because, remember, what are beliefs? If you've listened to this podcast or worked with me at all before, you've probably heard me talk about this. A belief is just a thought that you have that you've thought a lot. That's all it is. A belief is just a thought that you've thought over and over and over. That's all a belief is. We tend to separate this and we think like, well, my thoughts are on, you know, like a level two, but a belief is on a level 10. Like we put beliefs above thoughts. They're actually the exact same thing. A belief is just a thought that you've thought over and over and over.

So your thoughts create your feelings. This is how this all works, unless, little asterisk here, you're talking about a trauma situation. But we're not talking about that right now. We're going to put that aside. Under a non-Big T trauma situation, your thoughts are going to create your feelings. So if I think there's no way I'm going to get that job and my feeling is defeated or disappointed, then those feelings create your actions, right? From a place of feeling defeated or feeling disappointed, I'm going to take certain actions. Like maybe I won't apply for the job because I think what's the point? There's no way I'm going to get it. Maybe if I did an interview, I don't send a follow-up email. I don't send a thank you. I don't send, you know, some additional bonus material on top that could actually put me over the edge. I don't do the things that I could do in order to better my chances of getting the job.

And then your actions create your results. And so if we're following this example, I have a thought, there's no way I'm going to get that job. I'm feeling defeated or disappointed. The actions I take from those feelings are not much that's productive, right? I don't do a lot of follow-up. I don't do anything that I could be doing to further my chances. And so from my actions come my results. My results are going to be probably not going to get the job. Maybe I will, but probably not. Whereas if my thought was something like, I am sure I'm getting that job. I can't wait to get that job. I'm so confident about that job. My feeling, the emotion that's created by any of those thoughts is going to be something like excited or motivated or energized or confident. And from a feeling like that, I'm going to take different actions, right? I'm going to take actions like maybe I do send the follow-up email right away. Maybe I do send over some additional material that I think could help put me over the edge. Maybe I do start applying to a handful of other jobs that are very similar because the interview process went so well for that first one. Well, I could do a series of things there, and the result is I definitely increased my chances of getting the job.

So you see how that works. That's why belief is so important because it really does impact your results. That's why it's so key to believe that the thing that you want will work out for you. That's how the chain works. So that being said, it's very natural and normal for us to want something and then immediately think it's not going to work out or have feelings of doubt that are created by thoughts like it's just probably not going to happen for me. The odds aren't in my favor. I'm just not a lucky person.

Most of us have that kind of thinking, at least initially, when we really want something that may seem out of reach, hard to get, really big or far away, or something that we just feel we want really badly. And the reason for that, again, if you've listened to any of my previous podcasts or if you've worked with me at all or done any sort of personal development work, you probably know a bit about this, but the reason for that is simply that that's your brain trying to protect you. That's your brain doing the safe thing. Thinking about getting something that's new or something that you haven't had before or achieving a big goal, getting something that is different than your day-to-day right now, anything like that, your brain is gonna freak out. Your brain doesn't like new, it doesn't like anything that's unknown.

So for me, if I'm thinking about this adoption, adopting this particular child is a new thing for my brain. It's also new for my entire life, right? So my brain is freaking the fuck out because my brain doesn't know what to do when I present it with something new. And so, so right away, my brain goes into defense mode and it's like, Nope, it's not going to work. It's not going to happen. It's not going to work out. No way. No, nope, not happening for you. Move on. And my thinking is something like this kind of stuff just doesn't work out for you. You know, adoptions fail all the time. This, you know, the odds aren't in your favor or whatever the thoughts are that come up. They're there, whether they're real or not, it doesn't matter. In the moment when my brain gives me those thoughts, they feel fucking real.

And if you've gone through anything like this before, not an adoption, but I mean, seeking something that you really want that you feel like isn't going to work out for you, then you can relate. You've been here before where your brain is serving up these unhelpful thoughts that feel really fucking real. So when your brain does that, it's really important to recognize, hey, my brain is doing this because it's trying to protect me, not necessarily because any of that is true or factual, not because my brain can predict the future. My brain lives from the past. My brain looks to the past and says, what has happened in the past? Oh, that happened in the past. Okay, then that's the thing I want to have happen again. And it will just start replaying the past.

So if you've had failure or disappointment or a goal you didn't achieve or something specific, you're trying to pursue an adoption and you have a failed adoption in your past. You're looking for a new job and you have had trouble finding a job in the past. You want to pay off your credit cards, but you've run up your credit cards in the past. Whatever it is, if you have a past that your brain can pull evidence from to prove that it won't work for you in the future, your brain's going to do that. You better believe it. So it's really important, as I often say, no matter what we're talking about here, one of the most important skills to start to develop is being onto your brain and recognizing is your brain serving you a fact or is it serving you a thought that is based on its goal to play safe, play defense, keep you safe and alive and doing that by repeating the past because no matter what happened in the past you're alive today listening to this podcast so your brain just wants to repeat that.

Now, you're not a victim of your brain, you're not powerless over your brain but it's just good to know that that's how your brain is going to operate at first. I read something somewhere where it talked about this idea of you need four positive inputs for any one negative input that you see, right? So if you watch the news at all, nothing but election coverage right now on the news today in particular, as I'm recording this, we're about to have the final and only Trump-Harris debate. So the news is all about the debate and the election and the polls and the this and the that. So for every poll that I see that shows the election dangerously close, then my brain interprets that as negative. So in order for me to actually feel better, I need to go out and find four different inputs that show me something positive. So in my case, it would be four different inputs that show me Harris winning, right? That would be what my brain needs to see to just get back to neutral.

I say this because again, it's a good reminder, your brain is always gonna put an emphasis on the negative. It's gonna put an emphasis on the defense. It's gonna put an emphasis on staying where you are versus going somewhere new. And in order to overcome that, you do need to put in the effort to go out and find evidence that your brain is wrong. This brings us to the first of four different ways that you can start to build the belief that the thing you want will work out for you. How you can start to change that thinking and believe that things will work out the way you want them to, so that you can feel the way you want to feel, take the actions you want to take, and get the results you want to get. Okay?

So, the first thing, as I just was talking about, is you want to find evidence that the thing you want to have happen is possible for you. Going from here, so if we think about the one negative input to four positive inputs, just think about it. If your brain's serving up like, no, it's not possible for me, there's no way the adoption's going to work out. I'm not somebody who is going to have the family that I want. I'm not somebody that things work out for. Odds aren't in my favor. All of those thoughts. For any one of those thoughts, I want to come up with at least four pieces of evidence that will help my brain see that no, these things do work out for me. I am somebody who gets lucky. I am somebody that creates the life that I want to have. In order to do that, I really recommend sitting down pen and paper. Type it on your phone if you want, but I like pen and paper. So I really recommend sitting down and just writing down, like when you're thinking about that thing that you want, what's the thought that comes up for you first that's not helpful, right? It's just not meant to be for me. I'm just not somebody things work out for. Whatever the thoughts are, write that down and then write down four different examples of how that's not true from your past, from your real life. What are four pieces of evidence that you can look at and say, no, things do work out. So it could be anything. You could look at the life you have now, things that you've achieved in the past. What are examples so that when your brain starts to go to that negative thinking, you can combat that with the positive inputs that you have. And by the way, now you've got more positive inputs than you do negative. You're going to start to balance out your brain. It doesn't mean that you deny the fact that you can't predict the future. It doesn't mean, I talked about this in the last episode of Living With The Unknown. It doesn't mean that you're ignoring the facts of the world, right? I don't know for sure what's going to happen. I don't know for sure if the adoption that we want is going to actually work out. But what I know is there's a whole bunch of other stuff that I have now that at the time I didn't know if they were going to work out and they did. And I can list those things as examples as to how things do work out for me, as to how I do have the ability to create a life that I want and a family that I want. And so again, going through and just putting down for every one negative thought you have, come up with at least four examples of how that's not true. Four examples of evidence as to how that's not true. That's really going to help to at minimum balance your brain out so that you're not in that sort of panicky negative head space. Okay, so that's the first tool you can use.

The second is asking yourself the question, why am I the perfect person for this to work out for? Your brain will say no, like we just talked about. Your brain will say, no, you're not the perfect person. Here's all the reasons it won't work. I just wrote something on the blog about not swinging at the first pitch, not believing the first thought that your brain offers up. And this is another case of that. You ask, why am I the perfect person for this to work out for? And your brain's like, you're not. Here's all the reasons you're not. Then you can listen to your brain and you'd be like, okay, sure. But what if I was? Like let your brain throw out that first pitch like let your brain just sort of say the thing and then you say back all right sure but then but then what could happen if I was the perfect person what would be the reasons why if you let your brain sort of give you that first crappy thought or the first couple crappy thoughts and you keep going back and looking for more information you're going to get it your your brain is going to answer the questions that you ask it. So ask it good questions. Your brain will offer up solutions. You got to give it a chance to.

The third tool I like to use is just indulging in the maybe this won't work out for me thoughts for a limited amount of time. So this one, I remember I was going through like a brutal breakup a while back and I was sad all the time and I got to the point where I was so sick of being sad and sick of crying and sick of thinking about it, but it felt like I couldn't escape those thoughts. And so what I told myself, I was like, okay, I get to be sad about this from three until 3:15 today. And after that, I'm not, I'm going to wait until tomorrow. And then tomorrow at three o'clock I can be sad again and I can indulge in those negative thoughts. I didn't quite use that language because I wasn't doing coaching yet when I did this. So what I did was like, any time I would go through the day and I'd be like, I'm never gonna get over this breakup. This is horrible. I regret this. I'm so sad. I'm gonna die alone. Like whatever the thoughts were that were coming in that were making me say, I miss him. Like whatever the thoughts were that were coming in that were so upsetting to me, the thoughts would come up and I'd be like, nope, not right now, three o'clock. I get to do that at three o'clock. And then at three o'clock, I would go in my room and genuinely like be sad and cry and sit and like, I don't know what I did. I looked at photos or whatever I was doing, scrolled my phone and like indulged in the sadness until like 3:15. And then I was like, okay, time's up. And if I want to be sad about it, I get to be sad about it again tomorrow. And I do the same thing now with worry. When there's something specific I'm worrying about, I like to box it and say, I get to worry about this from 2 o'clock until 2:20 today and then tomorrow I'll worry about it again at 2 o'clock so whatever it is for you However much time you might need when during the day is ideal obviously that's all customized But the idea is this it's not about denying that maybe things won't work out. Maybe you won't hit the goal Maybe you won't get the achievement. Maybe you won't get the thing that you really want. Even if that's the case, you don't have to spend 24-7 with that lingering white noise in your head all the time about it. You can decide, hey, I know that that's a possibility. I don't want to spend a lot of time focused on the possibility, but I also want to acknowledge it is possible because I'm a realist and I live in the real world where not everything works out the way I want. So let me just take control of my brain and say, okay, I get to be sad about this for a half an hour every day from 12 to 12:30. And when the thoughts start to come up again, you just remind your brain, nope, not right now. We're not thinking about that now. But tomorrow at noon, we can think about that as much as we want for 30 minutes. It can be a really, really helpful tool. And I found that to be very useful when I was going through that awful breakup as well as other times in my life since then. It's been a very helpful tool for me to keep myself moving forward when there were times where I really just wanted to indulge in bummer thoughts that were really weighing me down.

And then the fourth tool is just asking yourself, what actions can I take to help me get the thing I want now? Yes, there is so much I can't control, but what can I? And I touched on this a little bit at the top of the episode, but just thinking like, okay, I can't control the outcome of this adoption. I can't control what the judge says, but what can I control? And there are actually a list of things that I can do, actions I can take, that may influence the outcome. They might not, but they might, and it feels a hell of a lot better to take those actions and be doing something that might help than it does sitting around and doing nothing because I don't think it's possible for me to influence this at all. So, I can't talk about specifics of all of that because there's confidentiality around the case, but just knowing that, look, if there's actions that you can take, even if they don't guarantee the outcome, is there a chance that they could improve your outcome by 1%? Could you get 1% closer to your results? You can take those actions rather than wallow in the actions you can't take. So just ask yourself, what actions can I take? What will help me get there? And then what you do, again, your brain is probably going to offer up like, no, I can't do anything. So that's what your brain does. You can be like, okay, brain, right. But I know I can't do anything. I know, I hear you. But what if I could? Like, let's just pretend for a second, brain, that I could, what would I do?

Or the other question you can ask is, if I knew that taking action would for sure get me the result I want, what action would I take? And I love that thought because you can acknowledge like, yeah, I don't know for sure, but if I did know for sure that I actually have more control over this than I thought. If I did know for sure that if I took some actions, things would go my way, what actions would I take? And then from there, start taking the actions. Because remember, at the end of the day, your thoughts create your feelings, feelings create your actions, and actions create your results. So taking action is always going to lead to something. It may not lead to the result that you want, but it's going to lead to some result. And for all you know, it'll lead exactly to the result you want. So why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you get up and say, okay, I know I can't control this all, but for the part that I can, what can I be doing right now? It feels so much better to do that rather than sitting around and just waiting for forces outside of you to make decisions for your life.

Okay, so that's it. That's what I have for you today. Those are four different ways that you can work on believing that the thing that you want will actually work out for you. Whatever it is, there is no reason to spend a significant amount of time assuming it won't work. There is every reason to spend most of your time believing it will!

I would love to coach you guys on this if this is something that you want help with, are stuck on, if you feel like, yeah, but my specific circumstance is the one where no matter what I think, I can't influence it. Whatever it is, I would love to chat with you about it. So, lots of ways to work together. I do 60-minute free consults. I would love to chat with you there, or I also offer free email coaching. All of that information is over on MakeYourPivot.co. Head over there and you can learn about all the various ways that we can work together. I hope that you are taking action towards whatever it is that you really want, and I will talk to you guys next week. will talk to you guys next week.