In this transformational episode of The Abundant Coach, Mat Boggs shares his deeply personal story of failure, faith, and fulfillment—and how learning to harness visioning helped him go from broke and burned out to speaking on international stages and impacting millions of lives.

This episode breaks down how to create a crystal-clear, emotionally charged vision that becomes your blueprint for success—not just in your coaching business, but in every area of life. You’ll walk away with practical tools, renewed inspiration, and a new level of belief in what’s possible for you.

🎯 Key Takeaways

• The power of visioning is the foundational tool for building a life and coaching business you love.
• Your current results are not your destiny—they are a reflection of your past thoughts, feelings, and actions.
• Real change happens the moment you decide to live differently, not when your circumstances change.
• Visioning is more than a dream—it's a strategy, a mindset, and a spiritual calling.
• You don’t have to know how your vision will happen—you only need to know what you’d love.

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Whether you're just getting started or struggling to gain traction, you’ll discover:

• How to clarify your purpose and unique coaching niche
• The truth about what it really takes to attract clients consistently
• The most common mindset blocks and how to overcome them
• How to charge what you're worth and finally create a business that supports your full life
• The proven steps to grow a sustainable, purpose-driven coaching business

This is the roadmap every coach needs—and it’s 100% free.

👉 Join the Life Coach Accelerator now and take the first step toward your vision.

Mat Boggs

Well, I want to officially welcome all of you. Thank you for taking the time to invest in your life and creating results that you would absolutely love. I don't think there could be a better place for you to invest your time today than right here, because we have a phenomenal program in store for you to give you proven ideas, proven systems to help you unlock greater, more expansive results in your life.

Mat Boggs

My name if we haven't met yet. My name is Matt Boggs. I am the executive director of the Brave Thinking Institute. I'm also the co-founder of our Love and Relationships division, and I just happen to be Mary Morris's son. Many of you know Mary Morrissey. She is the founder of the Brave Thinking Institute, and for over 50 years, she has been the preeminent teacher in the world on dream building.

Mat Boggs

What does it mean to create a crystal clear vision for your life, and not just leave it in the realm of being a vision, something that's out there that you could never touch, never live? But how do you actually translate that vision into the real results of your life? And she's been teaching this system of dream building for over 50 years.

Mat Boggs

We've literally reached in just our Dream Builder Live events, which is a spectacular three day experience. 60,000 people have attended live in Our Dream Builder Live. She's impacted. We've impacted together literally millions of people over the last decades with this transformation. But our big dream is this our big dream is 1 billion dreams achieve. This is our mission, is to empower people to create and live a life they love.

Mat Boggs

Because as you're living a life you love, you've got dreams that you want to achieve. If you already know of a dream that you would love, whether it's finding the love of your life, whether it's hiking to the top of a particular mountain, finishing that marathon, writing that bestselling book, launching your business. So that's what we're here to do, as we're here to pour into you, to give you real, practical tools and ideas that can help you achieve that dream.

Mat Boggs

Mat Boggs

Like, we're trying as hard as we can, but we're spinning our wheels. Or you might be the person who you're at a transition point in your life. Maybe you've had success up until now and you might be shifting a career, or you might be at a point where you're no longer taking care of the kids, or you're no longer taking care of your elderly parents.

Mat Boggs

And this is the moment where you've got a fresh, clean slate and you really want to do something important with your life. You really want to make this next chapter matter for you. You might be the kind of person that you don't really know what your dream is. You're not really clear on it. It's fuzzy, but you just feel it.

Mat Boggs

You feel like deep down there's something more than what you're experiencing right now. Like life might have this numbness to it. Life kind of has this rut to it. And, you know, you see other people who are on fire. You see other people who are passionate. You see other people who are living dreams or creating results. And you long for that.

Mat Boggs

You want that, but you don't know how to create that. Or you might feel like what you're doing, many of you feel like this. What you're currently doing doesn't have the meaning that you want. Like it doesn't make your soul come alive. In fact, it might feel soul sucking. Other clients say it feels like they check their soul at the door when you go to work, like you're driving there and you just, you know, it has nothing to do with what you're put on this planet to do.

Mat Boggs

You might not even know what would feel more fulfilling. You just know this, isn't it, right? Or you might feel like you are on the right path, but you just don't have the time or the money. Like you feel overwhelmed. You feel constricted. You feel stressed the majority of the time. Or maybe this is your experience. You ever have that moment where you look at yourself in the mirror like you're brushing your teeth, you're just got out of the shower, and you're thinking to yourself as you stare at your face in the mirror and you think, there.

Mat Boggs

I thought I would be way further ahead in life than this. Like I thought things would have worked out differently. So if you have ever felt any of these things, I want you to know that you are not alone. And no matter what's occurred up until now, your history does not determine your destiny. That there is an opportunity right here.

Mat Boggs

This day to create change. No matter how many personal development books you've read, no matter how many other seminars that you felt like may have worked or didn't work, no matter what your history has been, what you learn today has the power to completely put your life on a new trajectory. How do I know? I know for a few reasons.

Mat Boggs

Mat Boggs

I put it in ten, 12 hour days, working as hard as I could, trying to create results, trying to grow this business. And the first year I generated $22,000 in my coaching business, which would have been okay, except for the fact that I spent $24,000 to generate the 22. And I'll never forget, I put on this event hoping that people would sign up for coaching with me.

Mat Boggs

There was this free event and people got inspired. They seemed to like the content, but nobody signed up for coaching that night and everybody was like, thanks for the event and this was great. And by and as the room emptied, my heart just sank because I was 100% out of money. I didn't even know where I was going to pay rent.

Mat Boggs

Like, I didn't know where the money was going to come from to pay rent the next month. And that night, as I'm driving home and it's wet, dark Oregon night where it's raining and my stomach is just in knots because I feel like my dream of speaking and coaching is on life support and for some reason, other people seem to have success doing this.

Mat Boggs

Like I can see other people winning, other people succeeding. Maybe you've felt like that. You look around, you see other people having the results that you want, and you start to wonder, what's wrong with me. Maybe I don't have what it takes. Maybe I'm not meant to do this. Maybe this just isn't in the cards for me. And the problem was, I felt like speaking and coaching was my purpose.

Mat Boggs

And so if I'm not able to do this, then what am I going to do? Like nothing else felt appealing to me. I felt like I would be resigning my life to living a life of mediocre mediocrity if I didn't go for this. As I pull into my little apartment and I go up to my this little makeshift desk that I have, I remember just putting my face in my hands and tears are streaming down my face, and I remember calling out to God and saying, God, what can I do that I haven't been doing up until now?

Mat Boggs

And this little voice spoke me this still small voice, and it said, let go of the Lone Ranger syndrome. Now, as I say that some of you already know what that means. For me, the Lone Ranger syndrome was I had a I had a mother, as you know, Mary Morrissey, I grew up in personal development. I grew up with a mother who was already a speaker, teacher, coach.

Mat Boggs

She was super successful, and so I didn't want to get any help from her because my ego at that time, in my 20s, I wanted to prove to her that I was good enough. I wanted to prove to her that I could do it on my own. So as I'm sitting there at this desk, the book Thinking Grow Rich was on my desk.

Mat Boggs

I was studying that book. I've read that book multiple times. And in that book, what Napoleon Hill writes about, because he had researched the 500 most successful people in the world at the time. Every single one of them had mentorship. Every single one of them got help, got support, put themselves in environments of learning where they didn't have to be the expert they could receive.

Mat Boggs

They could actually be supported. And I completely missed it in studying that book. It just went right over my head. Except in that moment, it landed on me like a ton of bricks. And so I thought to myself, okay, who do I know who's really good in this industry? And of course, it was my mom. Last person I wanted to call.

Mat Boggs

But my dream mattered more than my ego. And so I put my ego aside. I called up my mom and I said, mom, you don't really know what's been going on for me the last year. I haven't really told you, but I am struggling and I'm completely out of money. You're having success doing this. Would you mentor me?

Mat Boggs

Would you help me? Would you show me what you're doing? Can we go to lunch and you unpack what you're doing? Well, caveat can you take me to lunch because I don't have any money. And so she was like, yes, honey, I will take you to lunch. And so we went to lunch and she showed me a system of transformation.

Mat Boggs

And here's what's great. Way more than the tactics because there's always strategy involved, right? There's always strategy involved in what we want to accomplish. Way more than that, when it comes to changing our results, it's 5% tactics, 5% strategy and 95% psychology, 5% strategy, 95% psychology. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. So it doesn't matter whether your dream is health or whether your dream is to launch a book or grow a coaching business, or launch a dog walking business, or attract the love of your life or deepen the love you currently have, it doesn't matter.

Mat Boggs

The strategy of what you want, you can fit. We can figure that out. But the psychology, what's going on underneath that's keeping our results at bay, or that could allow us and accelerate our results. That's what we're going to unpack today. And that's super exciting because that is where it'll take you, where you want to go. And so if you would have told me when I was that kid with my stomach in knots, tears down my face that I would be on the Today show multiple times, if you had told me that I got to travel the world, that I would have social media followings with 1.25 million followers just on YouTube alone, let alone

Mat Boggs

another almost million followers across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. If you would have told me back then that I would be that I would travel the world and get to speak to literally thousands of people around the world, I would have told you you're crazy, because where I was back at that desk, like I couldn't see that possibility. And yet that's exactly what's been able to happen because of the principles that we're going to unpack here today.

Mat Boggs

Right now, think about the area of the life that you would love to improve. What area would you love to improve and know this? Often these goals, these dreams are born out of the struggles that we face, are born out of challenges like we're experiencing a challenge in a particular area, and we would love to shift it. We would love to change it.

Mat Boggs

You and I are spiritual beings having this human experience. If you think about this, the chair that you're sitting on right now, the desk that you're at, what is the device that you're watching this on your own body is 90% space. If you actually use an electron microscope and zoom in and zoom in and zoom in, what you will find is swirling clouds of energy, dancing filaments of light that you and I are pure energy.

Mat Boggs

We're spiritual beings in this spiritual experience. Excuse me? In this human experience. And because we're connected to spirit, spirit is seeking ever fuller expression of itself by means of itself, which means that as long as you and I are breathing, we feel this pull of becoming. We feel this pull to expand, pull to grow. And there are two signals that the infinite will send you.

Mat Boggs

And I to signal that it's time to grow. And those signals are your longing and your discontent, your longing and your discontent. One of the stories I love the most is how lobsters actually grow. Lobsters are these animals that live in the ocean. I'm sure you know what a lobster is, but they have this squishy body, and instead of having a skeleton inside like you and I have, they have a hard exoskeleton on the outside and how a lobster know that.

Mat Boggs

It knows that as times to grow, as they grow and get larger, what happens is their little soft body on the inside begins to swell up and press against the hard exoskeleton on the outside. And once it gets too uncomfortable, they will swim behind a rock shed the exoskeleton, grow a new exoskeleton this larger and then, for the next period of time, be able to have their life until their little body inside grows larger, larger, or larger.

Mat Boggs

And then they feel this squeeze, they feel this constriction, and it's very, very uncomfortable. They swim behind a rock again, shed the exoskeleton, and then grow a new one, and then they continue to have their life. So isn't that interesting? The signal for the lobster that it's time to grow is that they're uncomfortable. Consider the possibility that you and I are the same way.

Mat Boggs

The signal that it's time to grow, not the signal that your life is getting smaller or that your life is constricted. No, the signal that there's a new possibility for you and me is being uncomfortable. Is this longing and this discontent. And so as we tune in to that, we can use that signal to actually amplify the energy that we have to create change.

Mat Boggs

So the majority of the world numbs out their pain. They numbing out with drugs, they numb it out with Netflix, they'll number that with sex or porn. They'll numb it out with distraction or numb it out with work and become a workaholic. The majority of people will numb out the pain that they're in because they don't know how to grow.

Mat Boggs

They don't know how to change. They've lost hope. They're discouraged. They don't. They don't have a proven system. Instead of numbing it out, the first step in creating changes to actually get in touch with it, as Doctor Reverend Michael Beckwith said, often we're pushed by pain and tell. We're pulled by a vision. The first step is let us get in touch with the pain.

Mat Boggs

And so my question for you is when you think about the discontent that you've had in your life, maybe it's a relationship discontent, maybe it's health, maybe it's financial discontent, maybe it's creative expression. Your vacation discontent. How long has it been this way? How many months, how many years? How many decades? No, this. If we don't do something different.

Mat Boggs

The likelihood of change is zero. In other words, if you keep doing what you've been doing, you're going to keep getting the same results. We've got to be willing to do something different, take a new approach, take a change. A lot of people say, like to believe that change takes a long time. It doesn't. Change happens in an instant.

Mat Boggs

The moment you decide for a new way of being, the moment you decide I'm going to eat at a different level of health. The moment you decide for yourself, let's say you see the love of your life, then you don't know them yet and you decide to go and approach them. Or you decide to get online for the first time, changes your life because you meet the love of your life.

Mat Boggs

The moment you decide to go to a transformational event and what you learn expands your mind and you can never unlearn that changes your life forever. These life changing moments happen in an instant. What takes people a long time is getting ready to change, right? Is they're not ready either because they're numbed out and they're ignoring it, or they're afraid.

Mat Boggs

They're afraid of putting their whole self in, only to be disappointed again. They're afraid it won't work out, they're afraid it will work out. And what will other people think? All kinds of fear gets in our way. But getting in touch with how long has it been this way? We've got to be willing to do something new. So what's some of the fuel to help us be willing to do something new?

Mat Boggs

Mat Boggs

My friends, I had a dream of launching a YouTube channel. I put it off for five years because I was afraid that I wasn't good enough. I was afraid my ideas weren't valuable enough. I afraid it wouldn't really make an impact in people's lives. What if I got criticized? I put it off for five years, and ultimately I came down to this question.

Mat Boggs

I said, if I go to my deathbed, not having at least gone for this dream, it doesn't matter to me if I get a million subscribers or all of that. I just want to impact people's lives. If I don't go for this, what is it going to cost me? And I imagined myself on my deathbed with a heart full of regret, because I was too scared to go for what I really wanted, and I felt the weight of that.

Mat Boggs

And what I realized in that moment is that regret weighs tons pain. The pain of failing, the pain of criticism, the pain of looking dumb. If you go for what you want that weighs ounces. Regret weighs tons. And I decided for myself I was not going to my deathbed. Not having gone for what I wanted and fill my heart with regret.

Mat Boggs

That's not going to be my life. And on that day, I recorded my very first YouTube video, and it was clunky and it was awkward and it was hard. But I got it done. And now the videos are easy and it's fun and I enjoy it and it's awesome. And I'm literally transforming people's lives all around the world as you go for what you would love health, relationship, whatever it is, you have no idea the ripple effect of good that it will create in people's lives.

Mat Boggs

My question is, what is it costing you not to? Because here's the cool part my friend. Our history does not determine our destiny. It doesn't matter if you've had this result for 40 years. It doesn't matter if every doctor tells you it'll never change. It doesn't matter if the experts in your field tell you it won't work out.

Mat Boggs

It doesn't matter how long it's been this way your history does not determine your destiny, and I'll prove it to you. So here's why. Your history does not determine your destiny. Here's the cause of our results. This right here has the power to change our lives if we take it to heart. Your thoughts. Everything first begins as a thought.

Mat Boggs

This is the universe's currency. Everything begins as a thought before it becomes a thing. The clothes on your back were first a thought before they were the thought in the mind of the fashion designer. Before they became the clothes on your back. The car that you drive first a thought, an idea in the mind of an engineer before it became your car.

Mat Boggs

Your thoughts influence your feelings. If you're thinking happy thoughts, thoughts of possibility, you feel happy. You think about all the blessings that you have. You feel grateful. If you think a guaranteed way to make yourself miserable is to focus on what's missing. Focus on all the people who hurt you. Focus on all the ways that it won't work out.

Mat Boggs

You want to generate confidence. Focus on your capabilities. You want to generate fear. Focus on all the possibilities that might go wrong. Well, notice this your feelings dictate your actions. Our actions create our results. This is the law of cause and effects. Thoughts, causes, feelings, feelings, cause, actions. Action, causes thoughts. This looks too simple because most people the first cause of all of the results are our thoughts.

Mat Boggs

They get expressed in the car. The generate a vibrational feeling tone that is also dictating what we attract in this world. And then it gets impressed into actions and creates these results. Most people miss this. Most people look at their results, they look at their bank account. They look at their love life. They look at their job. They look at their dream that they're working on.

Mat Boggs

They call it their B causes, right? They look at what they want. They say, I can't have the relationship. I want because they're all the good ones are taken. I live in the wrong town. I'm at an age where it's not going to work for me. Right? They look at their financial results and they say, well, this can't change because of my job, or I'm taking care of my parents or whatever the case may be, right?

Mat Boggs

They look at their health results and they say, this can't change because of my genetics, whatever it is, not realizing that what they're looking at, your current results is simply a historical summation of everything you've thought, felt, and done up until now. And the moment you begin to think new thoughts that are connected to a different possibility and you feel a different sort of way about that possibility, you connect to the result that you want, and you take action in alignment with the version of you living that dream.

Mat Boggs

Everything begins to change. The problem is, there's a lag period. It doesn't just drop into manifestation right away and there's a feedback loop. We start thinking different thoughts. We don't see the results right away, and we think this isn't going to work. And so because we think this isn't going to work, we feel discouraged, we act discouraged, and we replicate the old results.

Mat Boggs

This is the cycle of circumstances. This is why most people we know, most people don't live 80 years. They live one year, 80 times. Why? Because the thoughts recycle over and over and over again. And this is the formula that allowed me to change my life. Because as I was trying to grow my coaching business, I was doing it through push energy.

Mat Boggs

I was doing it through fear, I was doing it through constriction, and I was literally choking off the results that were trying to come into my life. Because you and I have a choice with every thought that we think we're either going to think default thoughts and live our life by default, just the same old thing every day.

Mat Boggs

Or we're going to live a life by design, by consciously choosing what it is that you would love. Every thought that you think is either going to be one of two categories a common. Our thought, or what we call a brave thinking thought. The reason we call it brave thinking is because some of the hardest things to do are to think thoughts of possibility when faced with an opposing reality.

Mat Boggs

In other words, thoughts of truth and the presence of facts that say it's not possible. You want to say, I can live an abundant life and you're looking at a mountain of debt, or I can have an abundant career and I don't know how I'm going to pay rent. It's it takes courage to think thoughts. They're connected to what you love when your life reflects nothing like that.

Mat Boggs

Here's the definition. Most people think common our thoughts, which is they look to their circumstances and conditions for permission as to what they can be, do or have. Brave thinking is the courage to think and live from a vision, regardless of your circumstances. You want to create a rapid transformation in your life is to master brave thinking, because your thoughts are going to be one of two categories.

Mat Boggs

They're either going to be constrictive or they're going to be expansive. Your results are either going to be driven by conditions, or they're going to be driven by a vision. But right now, the first step is getting a crystal clear vision. And this is imagine it's three years from now and it all worked out three years from now and you're waving a magic wand.

Mat Boggs

It all worked out and you're experiencing exactly what you would love. You don't have to know the how. And here's the key get in love with this. You do not have to know the how. Put the how on hold. Grab a piece of paper and a pen and just journal everything that you would love in this area of your life.

Mat Boggs

What are you doing? Put images to it and specificity to it. What would you love? We're not asking what do I think I can accomplish? What's reasonable here? What do other people expect of me? What are my responsibilities? No. Spirit speaks to us in a language of love. Really contemplating, gosh, in this area of my life, what I love but what I really love, what would feel expansive, what would ignite joy in my life?

Mat Boggs

What would I love, man, I'd love to travel and impact people, or I'd love to make this particular difference in the world. What would you love? And imagine that you're the person living this and what I invite you to pay attention to is, as you imagine yourself in the scene that you just created, tune in, move out of your head and into your heart and begin to familiarize yourself with what does it feel like to be living this vision and to begin to memorize that feeling?

Mat Boggs

So just imagine for a moment, what if we could sustain in the presence of circumstances, in the presence of the condition, what would happen if we were able to sustain these types of thoughts? This type of vibration, and then act from this way of being? You know, I don't want to sugarcoat this. This is not easy work to do because results are concretize.

Mat Boggs

They're staring us right in the face when we have a gap. We don't know where the money's going to come from, or we get rejected on our love life, or we have a diagnosis. And like my mom had, doctors are telling her, you're not going to make it. People who are experts telling you you don't have what it takes.

Mat Boggs

But that's what's required for us to bridge the gap and transform our dreams.

Mat Boggs

me this week on the Abundant Coach.

Mat Boggs

To dive even deeper. Visit our website at BTI dot com slash Coach Certification.

Mat Boggs

If you love today's episode, be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And while you're at it, please rate and review. I'll see you in the next episode.