The Hidden Habits That Quietly Kill Momentum

Momentum is the most important asset in your business, and most high performers do not protect it nearly enough.

By the time many people start working with me, they have the big stuff figured out. They know they want to coach, build a business, serve people, and create impact. They are not starting from zero. They are already showing up every week.

And still, they feel stuck.

They have a mountain of to-dos. They are working 20 hours a week in their business, sometimes for a year, sometimes for two or three. They are doing the work, and they are frustrated because the results are not matching the effort.

If that’s you, I want you to hear this clearly: it’s not usually the big stuff that stops your business from succeeding. It’s the little stuff. The quiet little habits you’ve picked up that run in the background like an operating system.

Those habits either compound momentum or quietly chip away at it until you feel like you are restarting every week.

Momentum Dies in the Restart Habit

The coach with inconsistent client flow is often not failing because they are lazy or unmotivated. They are failing because they keep restarting.

Restarting the plan. Restarting content. Restarting commitment. Restarting visibility. Restarting conversations.

When you pause and restart over and over again, it kills the number one asset in your business, which is momentum.

The coach who has abundance is not necessarily smarter or more talented. The difference is consistency. They show up with a level of consistency most people don’t. That’s true for coaches, and it’s true for business owners in general.

Consistency is not built on big goals. It’s built on small habits.

The Gap Is the Trigger Most People Avoid

When I first learned about compounding momentum, I did an audit. I looked at my life, my health, my relationships, my bank account, and I saw a gap between where I was and where I wanted to be.

That recognition freaked me out.

The hardest thing for most people to face is reality. Not because reality is bad, but because it triggers feelings. And when you don’t have emotional regulation tools, you cope.

Coping behaviors can be minor avoidances all the way up to addiction. They exist on a spectrum. For me, one coping behavior is scrolling. If I’m feeling low, screen time goes up. If I’m feeling great, it can go up too. That’s why awareness matters. You cannot change a habit you refuse to see.

If you want to take your life or business to the next level, it will be uncomfortable. Your brain is programmed to return to baseline. So when you start moving toward a bigger future, your operating system tries to pull you back to what’s familiar.

That’s why momentum matters. It carries you through discomfort.

The Three Invisible Patterns That Kill Momentum

There are three invisible patterns I want you to identify, recognize, and remedy.

1. Overthinking

Overthinking turns a simple demand into a maze of questions.

A goal makes a demand. A business makes demands. When a demand lands, what is your first response?

For many people, it’s resistance. And that resistance often shows up as overthinking.

“Where do I post?”
“What do I say?”
“Do I need a business page?”
“What if I waste my time?”

Those questions feel responsible, but they often function as obstacles. Overthinking is a huge time waste because it delays action. It’s better to post the thing and be imperfect than to disappear while you think about showing up.

Most people struggling for attention, connection, and opportunities are not even in the conversation. They do not go to the networking event. They do not follow up. They do not reach out. Overthinking keeps them out of motion.

2. Overworking

Overworking is not only about working too many hours, although I have done that too. Overworking can also look like overdoing a simple task because you never defined what “enough” is.

When you don’t define enough, you get caught in a loop of not enoughness.

Overworking is often an over allocation of effort and attention toward non needle-moving tasks. You over-index on what feels comfortable, what gives you dopamine, or what protects your status.

A big version of this is over-delivering for clients in a way that makes you hyper-available at wild hours. Over-delivery can be a strength, but habitualized over-functioning will pull your time and energy away from the needle mover.

You have to do the work, but are you doing what matters?

3. Overcommitting

Overcommitting is a brutal momentum killer because it puts you into constant promise-breaking with yourself.

A commitment is a promise you make to yourself. A promise is a commitment you make to someone else. Many people are great at keeping promises to others and terrible at keeping commitments to themselves.

Overcommitting often shows up as time optimism. “I can get this done in five minutes.” Then you stack 10 things into one morning and wonder why you feel behind by lunch.

Overcommitment creates guilt. Guilt creates avoidance. Avoidance creates restart. Restart kills momentum.

Your Calendar Tells the Truth

If you want to know what you’re committed to, look at your calendar.

Not your intentions. Not your to-do list. Your calendar.

A to-do list item that never rises to the level of a scheduled commitment is not a commitment yet. It’s an option. And if you keep telling yourself you “promised” you’d do it, but you never trade time, money, or energy to make it happen, you are engaging in lip service.

That habit makes you feel terrible. It also makes you envy people who are building what you want, because they are making commitments while you are carrying ideas.

The bridge habit is simple: prioritize and calendarize.

Clean Up Your Environment to Protect Your Focus

Your environment reinforces your operating system.

Curate your social feeds. Unfollow. Unfriend. Stop mindless scrolling. Consciously follow. Consciously open. Do not let your digital environment dominate your thinking.

And close the tabs.

Tabs are a metaphor for your brain. When you keep everything open, you are holding ideas open without making decisions. Closing tabs is practice for choosing priority.

Same goes for physical clutter. It’s not just mess. It’s mental friction. If everything feels heavy, start cleaning something. Not everything. Something.

Small habits create traction. Traction creates momentum.

The Rule That Changes Everything: Move the Gap

If you have felt like the gap is eternal, awful, heavy, and never changing, I want to offer you a different target.

The goal is not to close the gap. The goal is to move the gap.

Make basic progress on basic things. Stop attacking yourself for not being perfect. When negative self-talk shows up, battle back. Build support. Get the environment you need to succeed long term.

Momentum is not magic. It’s earned, protected, and compounded through small habits, clear boundaries, and real commitments.

And if this episode helped you, share it with a friend. Send them to next5clients.com so they can access the library and stay on track as they build their expert business.

If you want to join the First Five Club, send me a DM that says First Five.

And if you want in on the AI Expert Intensive Weekend, it’s January 17th and 18th from 12 noon to 4 p.m. Send me a DM with the word weekend.

Chapter List:

00:00 Introduction to Hidden Habits of High Performers

02:38 Understanding Momentum in Business

05:42 The Importance of Consistency and Small Habits

08:16 Identifying and Addressing Coping Behaviors

11:31 The Gap: Recognizing and Bridging It

14:16 Building Momentum Through Small Actions

16:44 Overcoming Overthinking and Overworking

19:29 The Dangers of Overcommitting

22:42 Prioritizing What Matters in Your Work

25:17 The Role of Environment in Success

28:16 Creating Clarity and Boundaries in Commitments

30:48 Final Thoughts on Progress and Momentum

Full Transcript:

Amanda Kaufman (00:00)

I really wanna talk to you specifically about some of the everyday behaviors that are chipping away at the most important asset that you have in your business. And that is momentum,

Well hey hey and welcome back to the Coach's Plaza Weekly Training. I If you can see me and hear me let me know in the chat. Today we are covering the hidden habits that keep high performers the most stuck and

I couldn't be more excited to talk to you about this. I was reviewing my notes for this yesterday, because as you know, I do batch create my content. And I'm really, really excited about this one, because we're going to talk specifically about this idea of momentum. Good morning. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you can see and hear me okay. We're going to be talking about momentum. And this is one of the most important things that

a high-performable habit. Okay, so let's start to unpack this because a lot of the people, by the time they start to work with me, they have figured a lot of things out. They've figured out that they wanna be a coach, that they wanna have a business, that they wanna serve people, that they are impact-driven. If that's true for you, shadow Y in the chat. And so they've got a lot of the big stuff figured.

you know, before we ever start talking. And as we begin to talk, this number one thing is what stands in the way between somebody who has plenty of opportunity, plenty of conversations going, plenty of clients, and therefore plenty of cash flow, that person versus the person when they usually meet me, right? And the person when they usually meet me,

they have a mountain of to-dos. Like so many things. And they are generally really frustrated that they don't have the results yet. Because here's the real truth. These people usually are working in their business every single week. And when I ask the question, how many hours are you working in your business? Typically they're telling me that they're working like 20 hours a week. And when I ask them like how long,

have you been working for 20 hours a week? They tell me, well, for the last year, the last two years, the last three years. And I'm like, wait, hold up. So you don't have the client flow and opportunity you wanna have, and you are working at least half as much as a full-time job, and it's been a year? It's been three years? Like,

I know what that's like because I had that similar season, right? And today we're going to talk about that other coach, the one that has a lot of opportunities, the one that has a lot of things that are just kind of showing up randomly on a Tuesday that are positive, right? So here's the real truth. It's not really the big stuff that is really going to stop your business from succeeding. Okay. The reality is it's all the little stuff.

It's all the little stuff, all the little things. It's the quiet little habits that you've picked up that you're operating from. So I kind of think of it like every human being, it's almost like we've got the supercomputer of a brain, okay? And your operating system, right, meaning like the way you look at the world, the habits that you have, the way that you treat other people, all of those things are encoded in your operating system.

And it's those quiet little programs, those little habit loops that go unaddressed for a long time that you barely notice. They're usually the biggest obstacle. You know, I remember when I was very first starting this business, I was thinking like, I've got to have a big move. I got to get my big break, you know? And Hollywood talks about this, you know, the big break, the discovery of the actor, the things like that.

Big breaks do happen. I mean, I've had some really incredible big breaks on the journey but what people don't really talk about as much is the little stuff that is in between the big breaks and I'm still here, you know, we're we're working on our ninth year in business and I was catching up with an entrepreneurial friend of mine over the weekend and she asked me how I was I was like still here man, you know, so even so if you're if you're still here

It's not because there's a big move that rescued you. If you're still here, it's because you have a lot of little things that you're doing with a lot of consistency that compound over time. And I know I've talked about this before in our prior trainings, but I really wanna talk to you specifically about some of the everyday behaviors that are chipping away at the most important asset that you have in your business. And that is momentum,

okay?

the most important asset in your business is momentum. So I was talking earlier about like the coach who has this mountain of to-dos, they've been working 20 hours a week, they're showing up every week to their business, they care, but they're not getting client flow. Why? Well, because that coach is restarting every week or every month. They're constantly in this state or habit of restart. And what happens is when we,

Restart or when we pause and we restart over and over and over again, it kills the number one asset in your business, which is momentum. Okay, so How do we build positive? Momentum and what are those habits that kill it? Right, so I kind of hinted at one just now but

A coach who has a lot of opportunity on their plate, arguably too much opportunity on their plate, right? Like we start having to get picky about the opportunity that we put on our plate because there's just so much. Like that coach that has really tapped into abundance. The big difference is that they show up with a level of consistency that most people just don't. Right. And that's not just coaches. That's like business owners in general. Business owners in general really struggle with this. So

Let's talk about why consistency is built on small habits, not on those big goals. We're gonna talk about the invisible patterns. There's three invisible patterns that I want you to identify, I want you to recognize, and most importantly, remedy, right? So identify, recognize, and remedy, IRR. And then we're gonna talk about

how we can reinforce the positive momentum building habits that are really gonna move you forward, okay? my gosh, I'm so glad that Annie's here. Good, good, this is a good one for ya. We're gonna use a special rule that I have followed for years whenever I feel like my momentum is starting to fade, to die, like what do I do to like turn it around, okay? And then we're gonna talk about how to approach all of this because here's the raw naked truth.

When I first heard about this idea of compounding my momentum, the compound effect, I did take an audit. I looked at my life. I looked at my bank account. I looked at my friend count. I looked at my health counts. I looked at like everything. I just basically took a snapshot measure of where I was in life. And I was like, crap, right? Because so many of the things that I

measured were so far away from what I felt was my ideal, like what I wanted to create in my life. And that realization of something that I lovingly call the gap, the recognition of the gap freaked me out. Okay, it freaked me out because I was just like, my God, how did we end up here?

How am I possibly gonna migrate myself, my being, my outcomes from here to there? How am gonna do that? Now, just to paint a little bit of a picture for you, when I actually did this in my life, I did have a good job. That one I was like, yep, good job making good money. But I didn't have any really close friends really. I didn't have a great relationship with my stepkids that I get to enjoy now. I was...

lost in how to build like a really good marriage. So our marriage wasn't bad, but it also was like we got married and then I was like, you know, kind of a stutter step. I was sort of in a stall sort of a place. I'm like, okay, where to from here, right? What else is going on? Health was a joke, right? Like I was really not taking care of my energy, my body. I was sleeping maybe six hours a night on average.

And I was eating just garbage. It was terrible. And I was drinking too much, right? So I had like all... That was my reality. That's when I like calibrated. And when I'm working with people as a coach, the number one thing that is the hardest for people to face is reality. For real, right? Because what happens is we engage in this fantastical thinking about what we're gonna do or how we're gonna be or what's gonna be different in the future that's different than now. We...

we see where we are and we get emotionally triggered by that, right? And then we start having lots of feelings about it, right? And when you have a lot of feelings about it and you don't have emotional regulation tools and you don't have good coping, guess what happens? We engage in what I call coping behaviors. So coping behaviors are anywhere from kind of like minor

minor things we do to avoid the situation, minor avoidances, all the way up to addiction, right? And it's kind of a spectral thing. so, like, just take a beat here and just identify. You for sure have coping behaviors. Like, one of my coping behaviors is scrolling. Like, if I'm blue, my screen time goes, whistling, right? It just goes up. If I'm happy, my screen time kind of,

can go up too. Why is that? Well, I want to share with you a book that really changed my life and my perspective around this gap, and it's called The Big Leap. Has anybody ever read The Big Leap? This one is by Gay Hendrix. It's a crazy, crazy good read to read. It's a New York Times bestselling book, or at least it's by a New York Times bestselling author. I'm just reading that, trying to be very, very specific. But the idea is that if you want to take your life to the next level,

it will be uncomfortable, okay? So we all have kind of this barometer or thermostat of our expectation about how our operating system is gonna play out. What's gonna happen today? What are the routines? How am I gonna react to that? All of that is kind of precoded into our habits and our expectations. And if you're wanting to, for example, shift into a happier,

and more self-actualized, fulfilled kind of a place, and you've been indoctrinated or trained into a very depressive, anxious kind of a place, that shift is gonna actually be really uncomfortable. Why? It's not because it's actually hurting you, it's just because our brain, our operating system, is programmed to return to baseline. So if you've really worked out a baseline of like, is the amount of happy that I get to be, or this is the amount of wealth that I get to have.

or these are the number of friends that I get to have, or this is the amount of reach that I get to have. If you have been programmed that, like I am, goodness, here's how I hear this all the time with entrepreneurs. I'm an introvert, I don't know how to meet people, I'm so uncomfortable when I meet people. And I'm like, okay, that's been your operating system, that's how you've developed that social habit. The thing I want you to know is that you can make a leap. You can decide today.

that you are a friendly person. You know, one of the things that really changed me from being somebody who had very, very few close interactions, very, very few close social connections to somebody who like, I actually have to kind of manage it now, you know? Like I'm getting texts all the time and stuff, which is great, I love it. But that transition didn't happen because just one day friends got better. I mean, my friends are better.

But what actually happened is I decided I don't give a toot whether I'm an introvert, an extrovert, an ambivert, or an alien. Like I really don't care what my personality profile says or what my zodiac says or what my friend or family member says about what they actually see of me because here's the truth. I am not fixed. Okay, I am not this unchanging.

rock careening through the universe. No, I am a growing, evolving, conscious being that can update my operating system anytime I like. Now, does that mean that it's always easy to code the new habits? No, hell no, heck no, absolutely no. It's not always easy to do that, but that's actually the design because guess what?

When you do successfully recode or encode a new set of behaviors, a new way of being, it is hard to deprogram. So like, now that I've encoded that when I go into an environment and I interact with people, I am friendly and I smile, it's hard not to. It's actually hard not to smile, not to introduce myself, not to ask the question, but it's because I took the time to actually adjust the programming.

Does that make sense? So The Big Leap is a really good book to kind of give you a good metaphorical perspective on how your discomfort with that next level is part of what keeps you same same, right? Your discomfort with even the joys of it, even the happiness, because then it's like, well, am I allowed to enjoy this? I like, is it, am I a bad person because I'm enjoying this thing?

Like these kinds of questions are normal that come up during these kinds of changes. So, okay, let's take it back. I wasn't really gonna go talk so much about the gap, but don't be afraid of the gap, okay? The gap is the gift because when we have a gap and we can actually identify, this is my gap. Another word for gap is ambition. It's your ambition, it's my ambition.

to grow my bank account, it's my ambition to grow my social support system, it's my ambition to be more creative, it's my ambition, right? Your ambition is absolutely required to cultivate a momentum habit around your motivation. You know, one of the things that I hear from coaches that struggle to get clients versus the ones that don't struggle to get clients is the ones that struggle to get clients, they are waiting for motivation.

They're just waiting for it and it doesn't come because they're waiting for this like magical fairy of inspiration to come and just like bless them with a thought and idea and a spurt. And sometimes that fairy, magical fairy will show up I suppose, but truly the thing that will really motivate you is when you can cultivate a sense of momentum. It's almost automatic once you actually do it.

The fairy godmother of clients, exactly. I love it when the fairy godmother visits with new clients, but I gotta tell you, she doesn't visit too often. You really gotta roll up your sleeves and do the damn work. So the momentum is gonna be built on small habits, little things. So I'm gonna give you an example of a really, really tiny habit, a small thing. When you're asked to do something,

What is your emotional response? What's your first response? Right? So trigger, you're asked to do something. So one of my mentors always says, goals make demands. So let's just say you set a goal. I want to have five clients by the end of March. I don't know what your goal is. You decide. That's for you. That's your homework. But that's going to make a demand of you. So tiny micro habit.

When a demand is made of you, whether it comes from yourself or somebody else, what's your first response? Right. And for most people, it's, ugh, ugh, or, no, or, right. And all of those, you know, glottal sounds to say it's resistance. It's resistance to the demand. Right. And one of the tiny little habits that makes a huge, huge difference.

is to actually accept and consider the demand and to evaluate the demand so that you can then decide the trade-off. And this is something that is a really, really, really powerful thing to do. There's three patterns that somebody who is really struggling to attract that next person into their life versus somebody who has too many people to manage is...

Overthinking. This is the first one. Overthinking. So coming back to the example of a demand is placed upon you. Are you overthinking the demand? I guarantee for the coach that's really struggling, the answer is hell yeah. They're overthinking. So for example, if I say like, hey, let's do a daily social post. Boop, overthinking. What do I post Amanda? Where do I post it?

Do I do a business page? Can I just stay on LinkedIn? And it's all these extra questions that come into the play. The singular statement was post something, right? The overthinking habit is this proliferation of unhelpful questions, right? Why are they unhelpful questions? Because every single one of those questions creates an obstacle to the demand. Every single one of those questions, right? But Amanda, I don't wanna waste my time.

Well, what do you think you're doing with overthinking? Right? It's a huge time waste. It's better to just post the thing, be wrong about it, in whatever manner, but you know what you're not wrong about? Showing up. You know, the vast majority of people that are like struggling for attention and connection and feeling value and worthiness from other people, why? They're not even in the conversation. They're not even showing up.

They don't even go to the networking event. They don't even follow up with the friends that they do have. So because of that, well, why? Because they're overthinking. If I say, reach out to your friends and wish them happy holidays, you know what the next thing is? I've got to overthink. Reaching out to people and saying, hello. what are they going to think of me? They're going to think I'm weird if I'm reaching out now. Right. And it's that habit that sabotages people the absolute most. Second big habit.

that sucks and this is one that I really have to work hard on myself is overworking. Now, this has been a really interesting one because I've really explored, especially since Alex Hormozi came onto the scene, this guy, he's like pro work. He loves work, he's working all the time, he's obsessed. But it's really raised kind of like this question in my mind of like about work because when I started my career, I did it, embarrassingly raised his hand to self identify.

Well, you know, me too. Yeah, I get it. I get overthinking. I understand that. On the overworking thing, I got a really far way as a young consultant by simply working earlier and later than everybody else. There were seasons in my earlier part of my career where I was working 120 hours a week. And I would hear back from the project management office for the project that I was working on. It's like, did you, is this a typo? And I was like, sadly.

No, I was here, you know, and I was doing the overnight thing. That's like obvious overworking, okay? That's obviously a management problem in the project. Like there is no earthly way that that should have ever been allowed to happen, but it did and I was young and you know, stupid, whatever. And when people think about overworking, they tend to think of it like that. But I wanna offer you another way of thinking about overworking that has really come up for me in the last couple years.

Another way you can overwork is you can overdo a simple fricking task. Okay. So let's just say, yes, young and dumb, older and wiser. I actually really like getting older and building wisdom personally. I think it's pretty great. But, you know, we'll talk about what society thinks about that another day. Overworking can sometimes be like over-functioning on a task.

And what do I mean by that? It's not defining enough. You haven't defined what is enough. So when you don't define enough, you can overwork it and get caught in a loop of not enoughness. Right? Now, that's not to say that you should just do shoddy work that sucks and be bad at stuff. Like, that's not what I'm saying.

Overworking is often an over allocation of effort and attention towards non-needle moving tasks. Okay, I'm gonna say that again. Your overwork pattern is very often an over allocation of, or an improper or imbalanced allocation of work effort towards non-needle moving tasks. So they're gonna be towards the things that

are very maybe easy for you. So you're getting a little dopamine hit of like, yay, I did it, check, right? Or maybe it's stuff that is really, I've noticed it's like typically very highly correlated to your status. So like how you think your peers are gonna look at you, you spend a lot of time on that. And I see this with so many entrepreneurs, so many entrepreneurs, love them to death.

And when their reputation is possibly at risk, they will overwork something to preserve that sense of reputation with, by the way, people that are never gonna buy from them, right? People that are never gonna connect with them, people that are never gonna give them opportunities, they just like overindex and overfunction. So overworking is really, another, gosh, coaches. I see this one all the time too. For overworking.

is when you've promised and committed to do something for a client, right? So you sold a package, right? And then you are hyper available at wild and crazy hours responding to over-deliver on what you do. I actually really do like over-delivering. I think it's a good idea, but you gotta be really careful that it doesn't turn into hours and hours of work on your weekends or bleed into...

you not being able to have high functioning relationships outside of your client relationships. So overworking, that's a really, really big pattern. And again, it comes from a lack of definition and specificity about enough. What is enough, right? And ideally, and when I'm working with my clients and my program, the Experts Network, I'm helping them to actually architect a program with.

real definitions so that they're very clear about what it is that they are offering. And it's not less than that and it's not more than that. It's like, that's what it is. And then if you want to bring in additional moments of surprise because you have excess energy, fine, but be really careful about habitualizing that, right? Because if you make that a really big habit, what it does is it takes your time, energy and focus away from the needle mover.

You've got to do the work. The work is super important, but are you working on the thing that matters? Shout out DWM for do what matters. Are you doing what matters or are you doing what's comfortable? Are you doing what matters or are you doing what other people are going to judge you for? Are you doing what matters or are you just doing what the old operating system has been telling you to do over and over again? Do what matters. Dang. So good. Love that one. Third one.

The third really big habit that especially coaches and experts have to be so freaking mindful of because you're people people, you know, like I know a lot of coaches are kind of moving out of this people pleaser season. They always tell me like, I'm a recovering people pleaser or I'm working on my people pleasing. And I get it. So this, this particular third habit is like such a sabotage. And that is over committing, over committing.

So over committing is, I would say a little different than over promising, but it kind of lands in the same sort of place. a promise is a verbalization to somebody else that you're gonna do a thing, right? And it is also a commitment, right? So when you make the promise, it's a commitment. But sometimes you're making commitments even without having had a conversation with other people.

So when you make that over commitment of how you're going to show up in a given thing, that can really, really hurt you. And especially if it's habitualized. there's this thing that they've discovered with ADHD that a lot of people with ADHD tend to engage in something called time optimism. So it's this optimism that, yeah, I can get this done in like five minutes, right?

And it's this lack of recognition, because the thing about ADHD is it affects your executive function. It affects your executive function, and it also affects your regulation when it comes to motivation. So this time optimism thing is when you look at a Saturday morning and you're like, I'm going to get 10 things done, or 19 things done. And that overcommitment.

can be a real challenge. Now, speaking of somebody who has ADHD and needs to really like think about how I approach my work, this one is a real friggin' doozy, because I always wanna take things to that next level, and I always wanna do a good job, I wanna friggin' show up, I get it, right? However, if you're in this overcommitment loop, you find yourself in this place where you're consistently and constantly breaking promises to yourself, right?

So I look at a commitment a little different than a promise because a commitment is more of a promise that I make to myself and a promise is a commitment that I'll make to you. Right. And I keep my promises. I'm very, very good at keeping my promises. I'm less good about keeping commitments. And in particular, what I've noticed to solve that one is that my appetite for what I want to do is always really high.

I always have this ambition, that gap we talked about earlier. My ambition is large. And you know what's crazy? There's this tendency that once we achieve and become and create and do the things that we set out to do and that gap starts to close, you know what happens? You look over the horizon and you widen the gap because you realize what is actually possible for you. So for a given person, the actual gap is never going to actually be closed. The question is, is the gap moving?

Is there progress? Are you moving things through and setting a new horizon? That's the question, right? Because when you get that progress going, that's where you feel the greatest sense of fulfillment and activation. And that's why I'm always telling my clients, I'm always telling people, I'm like, look, I know it seems like your bank account is what's making you miserable, but you're miserable. And then you look at your bank account and it's making you sad, right?

Like we can activate how we want to approach and how we want to actually feel something. And look, I've had times where my bank account was super full and I was crazy happy. I've had times where my bank account was like super empty. I was crazy happy. I've had times where my bank account was super empty and I was crazy happy and, or crazy, crazy bummed, right? And I've had times where my bank account was really frigging full and I was still frigging bummed. And I was like, whoa.

Money isn't actually the thing that makes you happy or sad. It is the story, the narrative that you're telling yourself. And I am telling you that as you make progress in your life, you accomplish things, you achieve things, you really integrate your growth, your learning, all of those kinds of things. That is what activates a greater sense of fulfillment and satisfaction. One of my mentors, Brendan Burchard, likes to say, strive satisfied. And I love that idea. Like, strive satisfied. Be grateful for what you have.

Be grateful for where you are. Be grateful for the ambition that's been placed upon your heart and strive. Like show up, do the damn thing. And if you're committing to garbage, if you're committing to things out of a sense of previous obligation or a sense of like shoulds or even just like committing to things just, just, you know, out of kind of a ritualistic kind of a place, stop it. Really examine. And there's two places that you can actually really look.

to see where are you committing. Number one, your calendar. And whether you write things down on your calendar or not, that's another micro habit, but let's just say you wrote down literally how you spent every 15 minute increment for let's say a full week. And I've done this down to five minute increments for a full week for like three weeks. So I've got quite a bit of data that I've done with my time studies and I've done several time studies. This is what's called a time study when you study how you use your time.

But when you actually document the specific time and date and the specific thing that you were doing, that is where you are committed. And if you're like, my God, I'm really committed to this, my favorite show on HBO. Or I'm, my gosh, I seem to be so committed to having these super drama conversations in my family. Or, wow, I seem to be really committed to spending a bunch of time in the toilet.

I don't know your thing, right? I don't know what it is for you. But I guarantee you've committed things and they're on your calendar. The stuff that's on the to-do list, you know, the promises that you're making to yourself that you keep fricking breaking, those are not your authentic commitments.

She said it on a Monday. it rises to the level of to-do list but does not rise to the level of commitment on a calendar, it's not really a commitment yet. It's just an idea. It's a thing you could do. It's an option, right? So you've got this to-do list that's weighing you down and you're like, I promised I was gonna get all this stuff done. I'm like.

Yeah, well, you know, we can talk about making the promise, but the truth is, is that you really didn't actually commit to it because you're not trading time, money or energy to make it happen. And because you're not trading time, money or energy to make it happen, you're you're you're engaging in lip service. You're just talking. You're just making noise. You're not actually really doing anything. And I hope that that is not coming across as hard as it sounds to me.

but truly like like that habit of putting so much on your plate and then Continuing to engage in this story about how you can never actually move things forward. That's just making you feel like crap boo It's making you feel terrible. It's making you look at other people who are making the commitment with envy because they're they're building things and getting things you wish you had and the truth is is that the habit

change there is to prioritize and calendarize. Right? So it's fine that it starts with a brain dump or a to-do list or even a project plan. That's okay that it starts there. But until it rises in priority to appear on your calendar, that's the habit, that's the bridge habit that's absolutely missing for most people.

And neurodivergent or not, prioritization is actually really hard because people don't want to admit that something is more important than other things. And why do we not want to admit it? Status. We're afraid of how that makes us look to other people. And we're like, well, if I prioritize this, then so-and-so is going to be upset. If I prioritize that, then so-and-so is going to be affected. And so it's actually social pressure.

that is one of the biggest culprits in not prioritizing. The other big culprit is not knowing that you need to. But now you don't get that anymore, because you've been on my live today, so you don't get that excuse anymore, right? So now it's like the next thing. Once a person knows that prioritization is the key to honoring commitments, then the next thing is like actually doing something about it.

Right? And it's that social pressure. And social pressure doesn't have to look like there's a lot of rhetoric about it's not rhetoric. It's like true. But there's a lot of conversation around bullying. Right. And so we kind of conceptualize like personal like social pressure is like bullying. But actually, no, social pressure is really unconscious for a lot of us. For most of us. It's this recognition that we need to fit in with the tribe.

And so when we're going to prioritize something, there's a very natural pairing thought that goes with it of like, what is so-and-so going to think about this? Right? Or how is this going to be received? Or how is this going to work out? Or what is so-and-so going to think? And the thing is, that you've got to really, first of all, cultivate those so-and-so's, right? Think about who are you impressing anyway? Who do you need to impress anyway? And, you know, I often tell the story about how like,

Small my social circle was when I started and I realized like that was actually kind of a crazy advantage because because being so socially Isolated in some ways allowed me to be far more intentional when I started to grow my social network that can be very different than somebody who already has a very you know large and High functioning social network

It can be really different like their their their experience change can be very very different. Everybody has their own challenges You know what I mean? So, okay The role of environment right so I started to talk about it. Yes social environment. So on your social feeds unfollow unfriend and Curate holy cow do not mindlessly scroll consciously scroll

Right? Consciously follow, consciously open up your content for updates. Do not just let it, let it dominate your thinking. So that's like your digital environment. Another thing about digital environment is the frigging clutter. So on planning extravaganza this year, we talked about tabs. How many of you changed how you relate to having tabs open? Right now I have one, two, three tabs open. Right?

I've got the Clients Over Chaos group open. I've got Riverside open. I've got my notes for the livestream open, and that's just because I printed it real quick before I went and I didn't quite close that one, right? So yeah. What I told you then, and what I'll remind you now, is that if it's that important, you can go back to the link. If it's that important, you can go back to the link.

Having all these tabs open is a metaphorical equivalent for what's happening in your brain. You're just flipping between all these things and hoping not to forget stuff, right? I love tabs. Like it's a manifestation of what's going on in your brain. You're holding all these ideas open and you're not closing them. You're not making decisions. You're not deciding to let it go.

You're not deciding that that's not important right now. You're not choosing your priority. And I can see it in the number of tabs that you have open, right? So I think it's a really powerful thing to like close the damn tabs. Same thing in your house. So if you've been in the habit of high loop opening, how many of you can recognize, holy cow, the clutter, right? I've got all of these, comp, I used to call it my complex filing system.

Because magically and miraculously I can't usually find what I want to find in the piles but like I was I've been like a clutterbug for most of my life and what I realized is I'm like, my god, that's actually what's happening in my life. I have these piles of concerns in my brain, right? Piles of concerns aka life arenas, but they're not organized, right?

And I was listening to a podcast by, where David Goggins was speaking. wasn't his podcast, but it doesn't really matter. But it was David Goggins that said this. He said that he spends time every day in meditation. And he talked about placing thoughts in his mind, like an organized garage. And he said, like most people, their thoughts are like that crazy garage, you know, the one where you can't even close the door because it's just full of stuff.

and you can't find anything, you don't even really know what's in there anymore because it's just cluttered. And I thought, wow, that's really kind of incredible to think. I could have my mind metaphorically organized to choose what thoughts I want to cultivate and develop, et cetera. Powerful idea. Okay, now when I first noticed the gap,

in my life. So we talked about environment, so clean it up. Clean it up or start cleaning something. But if you're like me and you like looked around, you're like, my God, 2020 happened. It's been a couple of years and it still looks like 2020 is still happening, right? That's actually what in real life happened for me is I was like, yeah, the clutter. was, it was, it was really intense. So.

One option is to just clear the decks and do everything all at once.

I tried that option many different times when it comes to the physical clutter, digital clutter, business clutter, health clutter, and I'm telling you that my favorite book on this very subject is actually Atomic Habits by James Clear. So Atomic Habits is about building good habits and breaking bad ones, and he teaches some ideas like anchoring. So for example, if you've been a clutter bug and we've got two floors in our

right? So I had a lot of things downstairs that belonged upstairs and I was like, this is this is really getting me down. I don't like it. So I built a little habit of every time I went upstairs, I would bring, you know, an arm of things. I would just bring an arm of things and I would do that every single time I went upstairs. It's like, Amanda, you were henceforth not allowed to go upstairs without putting a few things in your arm and walking up the stairs. Guess what?

Now, know, fast forward, and this occurred literally over months, right? This would be very agonizing for some people, but the little habit of doing it gave me the sense of progress. And then one day I had like a big motivation day and I was like, you know what, I'm going to clean the whole thing. Right. So I look at like the little habits and the little adjustments as the doorway of creating the higher likelihood of the potential of a big day of motivation.

And my rule around big days is like, don't take a big day where you've got like a lot of energy and a lot of enthusiasm and like everything's been really working for you. Don't take a big day and turn it into three subsequent bad days. Right? So what do I mean by that? Your current mood and energy is largely dictated by the actions that you've taken in the last 72 hours. So if you have a day where you completely over exert yourself, you are not

eating, you're not hydrating, you're not taking care of yourself, you're not building in the breaks, that can follow you for like three days. Right? So be super careful about those kind of like manic days where you're like, I'm going to change my whole life. Your whole life took years to get to where it is. Right? So it's reasonable to expect it's going to take a few weeks, a few months, and possibly a few years to reverse or to improve.

some areas of your life and that's just being really, really real with you. And if you can accept that it's worth the discomfort, it's worth the commitment, it's worth learning how to do new things and develop my capabilities to have that better, brighter future that's on the other side of the gap, then that means you're going to really start addressing your overthinking. You're gonna stop it. You're gonna stop it.

And one way you can stop it is ask yourself like what is the minimum I need to get this done? What is the minimum that I need to get this done? The pairing question would be what does great look like and get very specific? Because what I'm finding with people is the perfectionism tendency it just it overflows and that's what leads to your over commitment and that's what leads to the overworking is is that we're not

embodying the habit of clarity about what good enough actually looks like and what a bare ass minimum, a BAM, actually looks like. And when we get very clear on those things, what's the bare ass minimum? What's considered great? It gives us the boundaries that we need to create, right? We have to, create within boundaries. We create within constraints. So it's really, really, really empowering and helpful.

So last thing I want to leave you with is that if you have felt like this gap is eternal and never changing and awful and heavy, then I really want to encourage you that the goal is not actually to close the gap. The goal is to move the gap. Okay. It's to move the gap. So what does that mean? It means make

Basic progress on basic things and let yourself do that Don't engage in the negative self-talk, you know when you have negative self-talk positive self-talk back, right? I can't possibly do that. Of course I can possibly do that. It's possible I don't know if it's gonna be great as possible right you see when you have the negative self-talk Battle back build support system. So, you know have a coach enroll in a program

work with a mentor, work with somebody that can give you the social support system that you need, the environment that you need, so that you can be more successful in the long term. Last thing is just this week be more aware. Be more aware of where do you have habits that are draining your energy? Where do you need habits that are gonna boost your energy and boost your progress?

And just start with something really, really, really small and think of it as like a swap, right? So I'm going to swap and it could be something like taking a quick walk before you have your next call. It could be having like a five minute reset between tasks and just track how you feel by the end of the week and notice how small swaps add up so fast and you start to really see and observe that momentum. So if this episode has really helped you with building the

building better habits, make sure you share this with a friend. You can send them to nextnumberfiveclients.com. That's nextnumberfiveclients.com where you and your friend can get access to all of our library, including this recording, to just like stay on track as you build your expert business. This week, we are going to be meeting with the first five clubs. So we've got the first five club.

connecting this week for our, it looks like that'll be our second Tuesday of the month. So we've got two coaching calls for First Five Club coming up this month. So do make sure if you're not in the First Five Club, you send me a DM that says First Five so that can make sure that you get the invitation to come join us for that interactive coaching call. That's gonna be tomorrow. And we got another one coming up on the 27th.

The other thing that I want to make sure, make super sure everybody has on their calendar is the AI Expert Intensive Weekend. So that is coming up this weekend. It is going to be on the 17th and 18th from 12 noon to 4 p.m. It is a paid program, but I made sure that it is priced less than a nice dinner out with a friend. And so if you have not already registered for the AI Expert Intensive Weekend, do make sure that you do so.

If you are a client in the Experts Network or the First Five Club, you get $100 off of the regular price. If you're not, you can still join us. It's going to be $297 for anybody who is not already a client with the First Five Club or Experts Network. We do have a few seats left, so do make sure that you send me a DM with the word weekend if you would like to come and join us. And yeah, thank you so much for being here.

We'll see you very, very soon and have a great week. Next week we're gonna be back and I believe our topic is going to be, boo boo boo, how to scale without burning out the smart way to grow. I think that's what we're talking about and if I'm wrong we'll update it in the Clients Over Chaos community. All right my friends, take care.