Ep #162: The Unconscious Habit Derailing Your Success

You are listening to The Life Coach Business Podcast with Amanda Karlstad episode number 162.

Welcome to The Life Coach Business Podcast, a show for coaches who are ready to up-level their business and take their impact, leadership, and results to a whole new level. If you’re ready to start taking powerful action and become the leader your business needs in order to grow and thrive, this show is for you. I’m your host, Amanda Karlstad, certified life and business coach, and entrepreneurial leadership expert. Now, let’s get down to business.

Hello, and welcome, everyone, so glad to have you with me today. I have a really important episode for you all today. In fact, this is an episode that my intention is that it’s one of those episodes that you listen to, that you take in, and that truly creates a breakthrough for you. That unlocks something for you, that serves as a catalyst for you in your journey.

Wherever you are right now in your journey of building your business, my intention is that this episode is one that not only helps you unlock that next level for you right now, but it’s one that you also come back to and listen to again and again. It’s an episode that helps you to deepen your awareness, that helps you to see things in a new way.

So I’m really excited to be bringing you this show today. But before we dive in, I want to invite you if you are looking to grow to six, multiple six, or seven figures in revenue in the next six to 12 months, then I want to invite you to apply to the mastermind. This is my signature business accelerator program that’s designed to help coaches grow to six figures and beyond in the most accelerated way.

If you’re already at the six figure mark in your business, then I want to invite you to apply to the High Level Mastermind This is my 12 month high level business mastermind that will help you scale to multiple six and seven figures and create your million dollar business. We have clients doing so many amazing things and creating so much success in these programs.

So if you’re serious about growing your business to that six figure mark, or if you’ve already reached that six figure mark and you want to move into that multiple six figure level and you’re ready to go to that seven figure level then I want to invite you to apply. There’s an application process where you’ll fill out the application and book in a call time with me. We’ll talk about your goals. We’ll talk about where you are, and where it is that you want to be. If I think we can help you get there, we’ll talk about the next steps and what that would look like.

So I want to encourage you if you are ready to move into 2023 with a real business strategy on how to grow to six, multiple six, or even seven figures next year then I want to invite you to apply because right now is the time that you will create your success in 2023. Right now is the time that if you want to end 2023 in a different place, right now is the time to be laying your foundation, to be building the foundation for the results that you want in the next six to 12 months.

So now is the time my friends. You can go to the show notes in this episode or go to my website. We’ll link up the application there, and you can set up your call. I will tell you. We’ll have an honest conversation about where you’re at and what I think is possible for you. So with that, let’s dive into today’s show.

So today I want to talk to you all about something that I believe has the potential to change everything for you. It’s something that I’ve been thinking a lot about recently as I’ve been really observing my own growth and where I’m at right now in my own business. As I look forward to where I’m taking my business, it’s something that I even experienced recently as I’ve been deep in the process of working on some things that are going to take my business to the next level.

So it’s something that I see happen with my clients. It’s also something that I’ve experienced even very recently. It’s something that I observe with every one of my clients as they go through the process of creating different levels of success in their businesses.

So whether that’s launching a new program, or whether that’s launching their first program for the first time, or maybe that’s creating a whole new offer, or it could even be pivoting their business. It could be taking their business from six to multiple six figures, starting to grow their team, building more infrastructure, or it might even be taking their business from that high multiple, six figures, and scaling it to that seven figure mark and beyond.

It doesn’t matter what it is. I want you to know that what we’re about to talk about here today is going to be relevant to you, no matter if you are early on in your journey, or if you’re further down the line. So if you’ve created already some great success in your business, what I’m about to share with you is something that we must all be aware of, and we must all understand how to navigate as you’re on this journey of entrepreneurship.

So what happens is this. Whenever you set a goal, whether that’s to start a business, or whether that’s to make a million, or maybe $10 million in your business, what happens is that your subconscious pattern will inevitably kick in, in that process.

So when you make that decision, and when you start to take action towards that new goal, what will happen is that your subconscious mind and the patterns that it holds will immediately activate. Those patterns will be activated as soon as you start going after this new level of success. So as soon as you start to move towards, and once you start to take action towards this new goal, these subconscious patterns will be activated.

So the reason why this is so important to understand, and to understand why this happens, is that when these patterns become activated, what’s really happening is that the core of those patterns is that your subconscious mind is making an attempt to keep you safe. It’s attempting to keep you within your comfort zone.

So even though you are excited about your new goal, even though you have energy around going after this new goal, or perhaps it’s launching this new thing, or maybe it’s becoming more visible in your business. Whatever that goal is, whatever it is that you’re pursuing, it’s important to understand that your subconscious is going to immediately recognize this as something that is not known. When something is unknown, the subconscious, more often than not, will process that as being unsafe.

When this happens, what will then proceed to happen is that your subconscious will offer to you evidence. Or to put more simply, it will find reasons or show you certain things. It will bring your focus and your awareness to certain things that cause you to question what it is that you’re doing. That causes you to question what it is that you’re going after, or causes you to second guess your abilities and whether or not you can actually make happen what it is that you originally decided that you are going to make happen. So it will be an attempt to stop you.

What I find so fascinating about this, and what’s also very difficult and can be very challenging with this. When this is happening, it’s not like your subconscious is telling you what’s happening. In fact, it’s very insidious. Meaning it does this in very gradual and subtle ways. That in reality for most people and for most coaches is something that is very difficult to recognize on your own. It’s something that is very difficult to see beyond what is going on. This is why this conversation is so important.

So at the very core of this, it’s really important to understand the paradigm and the belief system, the lens by which your subconscious mind is conditioned to look at things and to understand and to recognize the ways in which your subconscious creates stopping mechanisms in your life. These stopping mechanisms are based on patterns. They’re based on certain belief systems and paradigms that you currently hold.

That when you’re in a situation, when you start to move beyond what is perceived as being safe. So, for example, starting the business, or launching the new program or shifting your focus or your work to something that is more aligned to you, or going after your million dollar goal, becoming more visible in your business, whatever it is. Your subconscious, as soon as you start taking action towards that new goal, will immediately recognize it as unknown, as unsafe, and will immediately start to attempt to stop you.

It does this by creating different stopping mechanisms. These mechanisms stop you from taking action. They create confusion. They have you start to doubt your decision. So no matter what your circumstances are, it will find a way to stop you from stepping more fully into or to do what needs to be done in order to create the next level for yourself. The next level of what needs to be done in the achievement of your goal.

So this is a very, very important concept to understand. Because the ultimate goal of your subconscious is to get you to stop moving forward, to stop taking action, to get you to quit altogether on what you’re doing. So when you start to move yourself closer to your goal, when you start to make the vision that you have an actual reality in your life and in your business.

I want you all to consider if you look back over the course of your life, and you think about how this might have shown up for you in your life, whether you’ve gone after something big in your life, or whether you’ve set some type of goal in your life or in your business. In the circumstance where perhaps you didn’t finish what it was that you wanted to finish, or maybe where you didn’t take a particular opportunity for whatever reason, or maybe you decided to put something on the backburner, or you decided to change your mind and to not go after what it was that you said you were going to whatever that is.

I want you to consider what has been your stopping strategy in your life up until this point? What has been the pattern, the stopping strategy in your business? What are the reasons that you didn’t or maybe aren’t currently going after what it is that you truly want in your business? This is a really important question that I want you to consider because here is what happens.

When you’re going after something big in your life, for all of you listening, building, growing, scaling a business to a high level is a big thing, leaving the comfort of your corporate career or profession, or putting yourself out into the world in a different way, deciding to go all in on your business, to bet on yourself. These, my friends, are big things. When we go after big things, we also must have to be aware that we will be met with big resistance. We have to understand that we will be met with the most powerful resistance that we will ever be up against. That is ourselves.

So our so subconscious is one of the most powerful elements at play. Even when you desperately want the success, even when you are fully committed to success, even when you truly want the million dollar business. You must also understand that in that process, you will be up against something extremely powerful. Something that is motivated purely to get you to stop.

Something that is purely motivated to stop you from moving towards this new reality. Something that will trigger your mind. Something that will begin to rationalize different outcomes instead of what it is that you do want. Something that will show you evidence and bring into your awareness things that seem counterintuitive or counterproductive to what it is that you do want.

So what I want you to understand is that when you are in this process, you have to understand that the ultimate goal of your subconscious is to get you to quit. But here’s the thing, this is the good news. The only way that you end up quitting is if you agree to it. I want to say that again. The only way that you end up quitting is if you agree to it. If you choose to buy into the story, if you agree to quit on your goals, on your business, on that new program, on that impossible goal, on doing what it takes to grow your business to that high level.

The truth is that every single one of us at some time in our lives has quit on something. It might have been something big. It might have been something small. No matter what it was, at some point in all of our lives, we have all quit on something.

Why this is relevant is that because of this we all have this pattern within us. We have all been in situations or have had circumstances in our lives where we decided that we weren’t going to finish that thing. Or we decided to walk away from that thing. Or we decided to rationalize only going perhaps halfway. Maybe settling on what it was that we wanted.

The truth is that our subconscious recognizes this. It recognizes this pattern. Because its number one job is to keep us safe, to keep us from harm, to keep us from becoming a different version of ourselves that isn’t currently known. It’s really important that as a coach who is growing a business, a personal brand, who is putting their work out into the world, who is evolving and doing big things in this world.

It’s so very important to understand that you will encounter this along the way. You will encounter this even when you’ve reached a high level of success in your business, even when you are working to take your business to the next level. It will show up in so many different ways.

I will tell you most often it’s going to show up as doubt. It’s going to show up as doubt that you have what it takes. It’s going to show up as doubt that what you’re working on will work for you, or doubt that something else will work for you. It’s doubt that it’s the right time. It’s doubt that what you want is possible for you.

What happens is when that doubt is present, when you open that door to doubt, and when you entertain that doubt to any degree, that doubt will also grow. It will become more and more present. You will start to find evidence of that doubt, and what that doubt is telling you.

The other common way that this works, and this is something that I recently experienced myself, is that certain things will start to show up in your life. Things that are not ordinary, things that could be considered crazy to a degree.

In my case, this was recently something that showed up with a family member. Something that was completely out of the blue. Something that required some of my time, that required that I put a fair amount of energy into. What was really interesting is this was something that came up just as I was about to make a big move on something in my business, just as I was heading into a season in my business that quite frankly required more of my energy, more of my time.

Because of that, I decided to push back a couple of things. I decided to put a few things that I had been working on for a few months and to just kind of put that off to the side. What that did is it created more space to support who I needed to support. Now that I’ve moved through that place, I can see how the timing, and I can see how it seemed that all at once things were happening.

When I look back on it now, I look at my reaction to what was happening at the time. I can see that instead of maintaining my focus on the plans that I had laid out in the business. I can see how instead, I chose to put my focus on the personal side of things for a few weeks. I could see how it ultimately stopped me to a degree from moving forward on the same timeframe for what I had planned.

This is very common. It’s very common once you start to take action. Once you start to do things that are going to move you closer to your goal when you are in the process of a major uplevel that events like this, that circumstances, things will start to show up that are random, that may even seem crazy. Where it might seem like everything is “falling apart” to a degree.

Ultimately, what’s really happening is that it’s a play of our subconscious to get us to change our focus, to start rationalizing why now might not be the best time to move forward in the business or to stop focusing or completing tasks that needs to be done in order to move things forward.

Here’s the thing. It also doesn’t just stop there. That is just the first step my friends. So it first creates alternate circumstances or gets our permission to start focusing on whatever that is and to take our focus off of achieving whatever it is that we want to achieve.

So the next thing is that the frequency of those things, the frequency of what it is that we are choosing to focus on, will start to increase. So for example, if you’re in a place in your business where you are thinking, it’s just not happening fast enough, or I’m not where I want to be yet or where I think I should be. The play here is that your subconscious is trying to get you to agree by reaching the point where you either explicitly or inexplicitly express this just isn’t worth it. Or I should just give up.

Whatever version of this is to you, what I want you to understand is that when this is happening, what literally is happening internally is that you start to align with the idea of quitting. You start to align with the idea that it will be less painful, or that you will feel better, or it will feel better if you just give up. That life will be better, that things will be better if you quit.

What happens is when you do that, your subconscious will continue to show you and give you even more evidence as to why it makes more sense to give up on your commitment, to give up on your goal. It will try and get you to rationalize just like it did in my situation why we might just need to lower the goal for now. when we’re in this place, we start to become psychologically, emotionally, and physically worn down. We start to feel exhausted. when we feel exhausted, we also lose our ability to focus to the level that’s required, to focus to the level that’s required to break through to that next level.

But here’s another complication. In the context of building and growing a business, which all of you are, what’s also at play here is the fact that for every one of you when you are in this process of growing and scaling your business, the fact is that unless you have grown and scaled the exact business that you’re growing and scaling right now with the exact conditions that you have right now before, you will be in a tremendous amount of learning. It will require a tremendous amount of learning of new skills.

this is something that I talk with my clients on a lot is about the level have skill that’s truly required to build a business to a seven figure level and beyond. Because the truth is that there is a huge learning curve when you are in this process that requires a lot of intentional focus. It requires a lot of mentally challenging things. It requires a lot of learning and developing new skills.

So if you think about this like driving your car, driving your car to, for example, the grocery store. Because it’s so habitual for most of us, we don’t have to think about this. But in the beginning, if you think back to the beginning when you learned to drive, if you go to that place, there was actually a lot that you had to focus on. You were probably focusing on how the car even worked.

You were probably focusing on making sure that you didn’t hit anything as you were backing out of the driveway or driving down the road, making sure that you were aware of the speed limit, making sure that you were paying full attention to all of the different traffic signs. So thinking back, I want you to just go there for a second. When you go back to that time, it probably required a lot of your focus. It required a lot of skill.

But if you fast forward to today, where I’m sure many of you are, you can probably also drive to the store, or to whatever destination where you don’t have to apply as much effort, where you have a sense of familiarity with your vehicle, where you know how things work, where you probably know what the speed limit is, where you know there are certain things that you need to probably look out for on the way.

the fact is that you probably don’t feel exhausted once you get to the store or wherever it is that you’re driving. It probably doesn’t require a ton of mental energy from you to drive to where you’re going. But when you were first learning to drive, it did.

the same is true in your business. Because in the beginning, when you are taking things to a whole new level, there is going to be a massive learning curve. this learning curve is going to require a lot more effort. It’s going to require more mental energy, more physical energy so that you can learn and complete what it is that you need to learn and complete.

But the problem is that when we start to make all of this mean that it’s too hard, or that it’s not possible, or that we should just give up. Or maybe we need to lower our goal or adjust the plans.

What I want you to see here is that this is just another way that your subconscious is attempting its stopping strategy. It’s another mechanism that it uses to get your agreement. So to either stop going after what it is that you want or whether that’s stepping into your next level. So this is a very important aspect for all of you to be able to grow into the leader that your business needs, to be able to become aware of your own personal stopping strategy, for you to see how this might be playing out for you, for you to see what decisions you are then making in your business as a result.

lastly, one of the most powerful strategies of your subconscious is to get you to focus on a bad outcome. So if you don’t stop by some of the examples that I just explained, one of the last things that will typically happen is this. You will start to catastrophize. You will start to question and worry about what will happen if it doesn’t work out.

So instead of thinking about this isn’t worth it. Instead, the subconscious gets you to move to the worst case scenario of what if this doesn’t work out? What if everything goes wrong, and what those consequences are? So for example, you might be having thoughts about what that might do to you and your family financially if this doesn’t work out. You might be thinking about the time that you’ve wasted. You might be thinking about what people will think. Because of that, what will that mean about you?

So if you’re experiencing this, I want you to know that it’s very important for you to see this. Because if we don’t become aware of this, what will start to happen is you will start to become vulnerable to these thoughts. You will start to become vulnerable to the physical exhaustion, to the tiredness. To become vulnerable to the mental exhaustion, the emotional exhaustion.

So what we do have to do and what I want to offer to all of you today is the importance of staying conscious. The importance of staying committed to choosing to move forward with your goals, to stay conscious of staying committed to what you’re creating, to stay conscious of being committed to serving your clients, to stay committed to becoming that next version of yourself, no matter what.

You must also make an agreement. I’m telling you this agreement will feel uncomfortable, but an agreement to yourself that you will not quit. The agreement is that you will finish this race to become comfortable with feeling uncomfortable in this process, to stay committed to what it is that you’re creating that is even bigger than the emotions that you might be feeling, that is bigger than your physical, your emotional, or any mental exhaustion you might be experiencing.

I will share with all of you one of the ways that I hold myself to this is in the remembrance of what it is that I’m creating, in the remembrance of who I’m serving, the thousands of entrepreneurs and coaches that I’m impacting, the lives that I’m helping to transform, the businesses that are being transformed, the businesses that are adding so much positive value into this world, that are helping so many people. The wealth that is being created, the ripple effect of all of this.

 It’s about remembering who I’m becoming, who I’m committed to become, and being able to look back and know that I gave it my all. That I did go for it, and not have to question what if. What if I would have actually went for it? What if I would have actually stepped into who it was that I knew I was meant to be? But instead, I am choosing to stay committed, to choose not to quit, to choose to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

because of this, I know that I will make so much more of an impact. So much more of a positive impact on so many more lives. That I will be a role model for my children, for my loved ones. I will become an example of what was possible. All right, my friends. Have an amazing week. I’ll talk to you all again soon. Take care. Bye.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Life Coach Business Podcast. If you want to learn more about how to build, grow, and scale your business and accelerate your results visit amandakarlstadcoaching.com.