Ep #320: Ambition and Pain

 Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach® podcast where sales expert and master coach Stacey Boehman teaches you how to make your first 2K, 20K, and 200K using her proven formula.

Hey, coaches, welcome to episode 2. I almost said 220. It’s 320. What? That’s so crazy. I have a really fun podcast today, a topic that I’m very engaged with right now. So it is the beginning of February as I’m recording this in 2025. And I have had a very accomplished and busy January. But I also know that some of you feel like I’ve seen this online a lot that you’re feeling maybe a little bit like January shouldn’t count and the new year should start now. And that’s fine.

I just made a post on social media and I said, listen, it’s never too late to start your year and there’s plenty of time and there’s so much growth available over the next 11 months. And so I know that many of you, whether you have had an amazing January and it’s gone exactly the way you thought, or you’re feeling like January was a throwaway and now we’re really going to get started in February. And whether you’re feeling positive about the year or you’re feeling really down about the year, regardless of where you’re at now, you’re probably to some degree thinking about your goals and thinking about how to execute them and who you want to become this year and how you want to use this year and the things that you want to accomplish. And this is a great time for that.

But while you’re planning, instead of what I see us do a lot as coaches spending so much time, especially entrepreneurs, spending so much time answering the amount of launches you’re going to do and how much you’re going to sell each launch or the amount of people that you’re going to add to your list or spending time working to believe the math. And these are all valid things. These are things that I do in my business, but instead of only doing those things, I also want to encourage you to spend time with the emotions you will need to cultivate regulation around.

Do you know what I mean? Like the emotions that are very activating for you in a negative way, the hard emotions that you typically avoid and don’t want to feel, you want to think about what are the top three or five emotions that I really want to allow myself to confront this year and to build safety around and feel regulated when I experience them.

So this is not choosing a word for the year or even an emotion for the year and trying to do your best to live in it. So it’s not like the top three feelings you want to embody every day. All of those things are lovely and great. This is not a like, don’t do those things. Those things are great. But it is typical. It’s where we like to normally spend our focus.

But if you talk to the most successful people in the world, they won’t tell you, like, oh yes, I really embodied excitement and playfulness and joy. What they will tell you is that they found their grit, their courage, and their resilience. And I’ve been thinking about like, why is that? And my shortest answer is that I believe with all ambition comes pain. They go hand in hand.

The most ambitious people, and we are all ambitious people, if you’re listening to this episode, if you listen to podcasts for personal development, you are ambitious. If you are an entrepreneur, you are ambitious. If you want to make more money in your life, you are ambitious. If you want to help more people, you are ambitious.

So the most ambitious people, those people will experience the most friction, the most obstacles, the most challenges, the most failures, the most setbacks, the most disappointments, the most missed expectations. Those people will experience the most pain. Yet we don’t necessarily think of that when we think of big goals. We think of having them and how great and amazing the having will be and how much better the having will be. And then we tend to focus there on the excitement, on the joy, on the playfulness of the goal, right? Of the amazingness and the betterness.

Yet because we are ambitious people, this is the other thing to think about, the ambition never actually arrives. Like our ambition is never fulfilled truly. We’re always moving towards the next ambitious thing.

Now, some people have ambition and then they reach that mark and they can’t find their ambition to the next thing and or they don’t want to. Like they feel fulfilled, they’ve arrived, this is the level. But even for the people that I speak to who feel very content in their business, if they were very honest, they also still have ambitions. And then it’s just whether or not they’re allowing themselves to pursue it or not.

Because of, and typically when I’m coaching people, the non-pursuit of the ambition comes from the fear of the pain that will also be required. And so if you are, let’s just say, an ambitious person who is actively in, living out, working towards your ambition, and let’s say you’re typically someone that once you achieve a goal you have another one. This is just the majority of the people that I typically coach. So I assume also the majority of the people who listen to me here on this podcast.

So if we are all ambitious and then we’re also, as soon as we hit a goal, we have our next ambitious thing that we’re working on, then we’re never actually quite in the having of the ambition. And we don’t spend as much of our time in the contentment. And I actually don’t think that’s a problem. I think it’s totally fine to never be content. And not in the way where you’re never happy. You can experience content and ambition at the same time, but in the sense of I’ve never arrived. Like I just never feel like I’ve arrived.

I feel like there’s so much growth. There’s so much evolution. There’s so much joy. There’s so much deepening into life experiences and relationships. There’s just so much more possibility and potential that I always see that I can’t imagine ever just feeling fully content, like I’m full and I’ll never be hungry again.

So if we are always in the pursuit and the ambition, then we’re never quite in the having. And again, also at the same time, we always are having, right? So this isn’t an anti-gratitude episode, but, and really it’s like we’re in one having and then we’re always just moving towards another. That maybe is the best way to explain it. We’re in one having and we’re moving towards another.

But the moving towards the other, that always creates friction, obstacles, challenges, failures, missed expectations, disappointments for the things that you’re moving towards that you haven’t achieved yet and the amount of times that you thought you were gonna get it and you didn’t.

And so if that’s true, then the only way to achieve your ambitions, to stay in the ambition and in the process of creating the ambition long enough to create it, to fulfill it, you have to get good at the thing in between you and the having, which is the hard stuff. It’s the middle part. It’s the in-between. It’s in the not having.

So it feels good to think of doing something and to think of having something, but it feels terrible most of the time to actually do it. The things that you have to do to actually get to your next level and reach a bigger potential and double your revenue, triple your revenue.

I’m in the middle of 2 Million Dollar Group mastermind week right now, so a lot of us are talking about doubling and tripling revenue this year, and scaling and doing things at a really high level. And there are things that you know you have to do to create that, and your brain is like, oh my God, this is gonna feel terrible. I’m not looking forward to this. This is going to be very hard.

The reason it feels terrible is there is risk when you are doing it. This is the reason so many people procrastinate. They don’t wanna feel the risk. They don’t wanna feel that potential that I could put energy and effort into something and then risk not getting what I want, risk rejection, risk failure, risk that feeling that emotion that is hard and that your body perceives as a threat.

So not only do we feel pain going for the thing but then our brain also tells us that the pain is bad, that we can’t handle it, that it’s harming us, costing us, taking from us, inhibiting us, and making us in general unsafe and unwell. Right, like that’s the whole fear around burnout is I will be unwell or I am unsafe.

But really most of this is just our body perceiving the emotion we are experiencing as a threat and then having us expend energy to get rid of that emotion versus seeing that emotion, seeing that hardness, seeing that disappointment, that frustration, that failure, that challenge, that missed expectation, that friction, that obstacle as growing us, as curating a path for us, as teaching us what we need to know, showing us where we need to go, revealing our own personal roadmap to becoming the person who creates the thing.

Because if you knew easily how to create and have the thing you want, you would just create it and have it. I say this all the time, it feels like the most basic self or personal development concept ever is if you knew how to create the thing you wanted, you would have already created it. No one’s sitting around saying, I know how to do it, I just don’t want the thing that I want or I’m not gonna do the thing that I want. No, it’s that we don’t know how to do it yet.

So if you don’t have the thing that you want, if you don’t have the thing that you feel ambition towards, yet there is an emotion in the way, an emotion your body doesn’t want to feel and that your brain thinks is dangerous to feel, if you even have awareness around it, because some of this happens at a very deep level of subconsciousness.

So instead of moving toward the thing that would fulfill your ambition, we move away from the thing consciously or unconsciously. The very thing that would grow you and curate a path for you and teach you what you need to know and show you where to go step by step.

So again, if you are an entrepreneur, you are ambitious. Again, whether you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing, whether you think of yourself that way or not, I looked up the definition of ambition and it’s having a strong desire to succeed. What I believe allows us to succeed or keeps us from it is part determination, which is a firmness of purpose, but also part willingness to feel the pain that comes along with it. That is a part of the entire journey.

Especially as an entrepreneur, you will put yourself through more pain than any other human around you that you know, potentially. Emotional pain, of course. That’s what I’m talking about. And your brain might tell you it’s not fair. Like sometimes in my deepest hardships or obstacles or frustrations in my business, my brain will be like, oh my God, the people who just like work a 9 to 5 and then just get to come home at the end of the night and over the weekend, and they don’t ever think about their business, and they don’t have to work this hard, and they don’t have to care this much. It would just be so much easier to just clock in and clock out.

It would be to some degree. I just wouldn’t be able to fulfill any of my ambitions. There’s a different pain that comes with that. There’s a more chronic and I think like dull but consistent pain that comes from ignoring an ambition. There’s a lack and loss of confidence that comes with ignoring an ambition. There’s a checking out, there’s a going to sleep, a sense of not good resolvedness, if that’s even a word, to not go after your ambition.

Like really think about it. It takes, I think, more effort and more pain to not go after it. I think you feel less of yourself not going after it. So ambition creates emotional pain, but it’s worthy, useful, growing, evolving pain. And it’s emotional pain. It’s just emotional.

When do we become… Like we just haven’t been taught how to deal with our emotions, but we have really become very, as a society, afraid of experiencing emotional pain. And the way that I think of emotional pain is it’s created from feeling unwanted emotions and experiencing unwanted circumstances, obstacles, or outcomes that create those emotions, right?

So the unwanted circumstance, obstacle, outcome, that happens first, then we create an emotion or we imagine it’s going to happen. And we create emotional pain ahead of time, deciding our launch is gonna fail, deciding we won’t make the money that we wanna make, deciding we’re not capable of overcoming the hard thing, deciding life is too hard right now to be making money in our business, deciding we don’t have the capacity.

So sometimes we just decide ahead of time and we feel the emotional pain ahead of time. We decide the disappointment is coming, but that’s really all it is. An unwanted circumstance, an unwanted obstacle, an unwanted outcome, and the unwanted emotions associated with that.

And if that is true, then figuring out how to master having pain is the thing that really brings all of your ambitions to life. Let me say that again. If that is true, figuring out how to master having pain, feeling pain, experiencing pain is the thing that really will bring every one of your ambitions to life, to fruition.

And here’s what I think is mastering the pain. It’s learning how to be in the hard part. Because so much of your journey will be in the hard part. It’s becoming someone who manages, reacts to, and recovers well from the hard parts.

It’s learning how to extract the highest amount of value from the pain. It’s really learning to find allowance and even beyond that, loving feeling towards the grit, the challenge, the overcoming, like becoming activated, compelled, engaged, stimulated in the challenge. These are the traits the most successful people in the world have.

But I will tell you, the thing that has resonated the most with me over the last year as the solution to being in the hard part, feeling the pain, doing the hard work, the thing that your brain wants to avoid, the thing you think you shouldn’t have to do, the thing you don’t feel up for energetically, is that we all have to do this. We all have to learn how to feel alive in the pain. As alive as in the succeeding.

Think about this. We only ever attribute feeling alive to standing on the beach, seeing the beautiful thing, feeling the beautiful thing, the peace, joy, smiles, laughter, wind in our face, fresh air, sunshine. But people also feel alive in the fear. Like fear is often where we see how fragile our aliveness actually is. Trust me, I’ve jumped out of an airplane. I definitely felt how fragile my aliveness was.

But what if it was more than that experience? What if we recognized fear, pain as aliveness itself? Connecting with ourselves in our bodies in the most pain is deep aliveness. Crying our hardest tears is our deepest aliveness. And I was like, I wasn’t even sure if that was a word. So I looked it up, aliveness. And one of the answers online about what does it mean to feel aliveness? And here’s part their answer, part my answer.

Their answer was, it brings us energy. And I really think it’s that, but it’s also what we bring our energy to. That’s what we recognize as our aliveness, as anything we bring energy to. So if we bring our energy, if we bring our hope, if we bring our power, our capacity, our capability, our belief, if we bring ourselves, our action, our emotions to it, we feel alive. It also brings the feeling of groundedness and strength. And I loved what it said. It said it wakes us up to go for what we want. Pursuing our dreams, living with joy.

And I think to add to that, living with joy even in the deepest challenges and the hardest days, finding the joy in the hard thing. This is the difference between hard work and burnout. This is the difference between expanding your capacity and burning out, is if you found the joy in the hardest thing, in the hardest work, the ability to meet yourself and engage and activate with it versus resisting it.

It also said having a wonderful sense of excitement in our lives. That’s what aliveness is. And I think it’s also a sense of purpose, a sense of intention, a sense of growth, a sense of evolution, a knowing that we are more powerful than anything we have tapped into in the moment and anything that could come our way.

Like I am living right now, I’ve been talking about living in the current, I am living in a place where I have tapped in to something in my body that is just meeting every challenge that comes my way in a bigger way than I could have ever imagined in my whole life. Some of the hardest things, both physically and emotionally, anything that comes up, I’m just noticing in the past I might have fallen out of the current, gotten a low value cycle, been stuck, been frustrated, taken a long time to recover, and my brain is just like, bring it. I’m here for it. I’m going to rise above it. I’m a master at solving this. I am alive to this moment, to this sensation, to this experience. I am in it. I am engaged with it. I’m bringing my energy towards it.

It’s like, I just can’t be taken out. Let’s freaking go. That’s a wonderful sense of excitement in your life. And when we can do this in the hard, in the hardest times, I’m not talking about the easy times, I’m talking about the times where you don’t believe it’s possible, where if someone told you it was possible to overcome it, you would want to roll your eyes at them or fight with them a little bit. Smack them in the face.

I remember hearing the saying that for every single circumstance that you are going through right now, no matter how hard someone else has gone through it and overcome it. Jack Canfield said that. I remember exactly where I was when I heard that because I knew it was true.

And it made me want to be bigger than everything I was going through in that moment. This was like 10 years ago. So when we can do this in the hard, the feeling, feel alive in the hard, we can achieve anything our ambition can dream up for us. So I really believe that the feeling of alive, being alive, stepping up to aliveness in everything that comes your way this year is the solution to achieving anything you want.

And because of this is the next natural step in the entrepreneur series. Alive, a course on mastering feeling and being in pain, in obstacles, in failure, in setbacks, in challenges. This is what a coach is after all, right? A master of challenges. And I am telling you, when you become a master of challenges, you become a master coach.

If there is nothing you can’t overcome that’s currently in your path or has happened in the past that still keeps you stuck now, if there is nothing that you cannot overcome and become alive to, there will be nothing that you can’t coach on, nothing you can’t pull your people out of. There will be nothing that stumps you or makes you feel disempowered or confused or overwhelmed as a coach.

And I am teaching you my process for overcoming anything. I really believe all disconnection that we experience in our business and in our purpose is rooted in unhealed pain. And this is the container to come, move through it all so that you can serve your people and the world and grow faster than you ever imagined.

If you were in my entrepreneur series course, Served, this is the greatest follow-up you can imagine. And if you missed Served, you do not want to miss this one. It’s going to end in the same place. The purpose, the point of it all, is for you to be so connected to your purpose, your mission, your people, your goals, your next version of yourself. It’s all on the other side of the allowance and the activation and the engagement with the pain, past or present or future, real or imagined.

This is a limited series course. It’s the only way I can offer them, how I’m able to offer them at the price I’m able to offer them. So access will end with no exceptions March 14th of 2025. And I will not be offering it again this year.

This will be a fully live course taught by me with six classes over a two week period. This is gonna be really freeing work, not heavy work, I promise you. This is not coming into a really heavy container. This is going to give you more energy than anything you have ever experienced. But because we’re going to be working on things that will dramatically set you free for this year, I wanted to do three classes in one week, have a break, and then three classes in the other for myself and you because I’m going to be holding a lot of space.

So you can sign up at staceyboehman.com/alive. We will link this up in the show notes. I will also have this posted on my social media, @staceyboehman on Instagram and on Facebook. And I recommend inviting every coach. Do this with all of your mastermind, your business besties, your coaching cohorts. This is going to move a lot of energy in this industry. We are going to create a lot of new energy for a lot of people. And the more people we create the energy for, the more you tap into that energy.

This is going to be a defining moment for everyone inside the course, everyone who participates, whether live or in replay. I know because this is the work I did. For those of you that have been asking and asking, like, Stacey, I’ve seen it. I’ve watched you go through hell and back. I have watched you reinvent yourself. I have watched you come back alive. I have watched you blow up again in a way that I didn’t even know was possible for you even. I’ve seen you step into the current like, what have you done?

This is it. This is the single most important work that I have done to create in myself a place where I do not experience fear and stalling in my business anymore. There’s nothing that I’m like, oh my God, I hope this doesn’t happen, or this would be the worst case scenario. Even the fear of losing it all, some people when they make a lot of money, if you’re making multiple six figures, seven figures, you might have that feeling of like, I’ve got to keep it going because I might lose it. I have none of that. I have no fear of being canceled. I have no fear of people saying mean things to me.

I have no fear of launches not going the way I want. No fear of not hitting my goals. Like it’s the place I’m in is the most solid place I’ve ever been in my life and these six classes are going to be how I got there. And I just wish for all of you, I’ve said this to probably no less than 30 students in the last few months, like when I do this course, you must be in it because it’s going to change everything for you.

I see all the coaching I’m doing individually in all of my classes. I’m like, oh my gosh, this master course, immersing in this topic is going to be the thing that breaks a lot of people free, that breaks a lot of people through. Whether it’s current disconnection, past disconnection, however you would describe it, past pain, future fear of pain, struggling with something now that feels too big for you that you just think you don’t have capacity or capability to overcome. Everything gets left here in this course. You walk away feeling more alive than ever before. That is what is on the table and bringing that aliveness to all of your people.

And I promise you, whether you are in a challenging time or the best time of your life, doesn’t matter. People buy from life coaches because of recognizing that feeling of aliveness and wanting that for themselves. So the more alive you feel, the more clients you will attract. I want you to feel that way even in the lowest value cycles, the hardest times, the biggest setbacks. I want you to meet yourself as the most powerful version of you so that you can overcome and move through and do well in anything that comes your way.

All right, I am so excited for this course. I have been dying to release it with excitement and purpose and activation. I cannot wait to see each and every single one of you. Have an amazing rest of your week and I will talk to you next week. Bye-bye.

Hey, if you’re ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2k for 2k program where you’re going to make your first $2,000, the hardest part, using my simple 5-step formula for getting consults and closing new clients. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.