Beyond Limiting Beliefs: Unlock Your Focus in 2026

If you want a different level of focus in 2026, we need to talk about belief.

Not affirmations. Not surface-level mindset work. Not pretending you are confident when you are not.

I am talking about the thought patterns quietly driving your decisions every single day.

Because whether you realize it or not, what you think right now is keeping you exactly where you are.

I work with ambitious, intelligent, highly trained coaches and experts. They have certifications. They have frameworks. They know the scripts. They understand the strategy. And yet many of them struggle with consistency.

It is rarely a strategy problem.

It is almost always a belief problem.

What a Belief Actually Is

A belief is simply a thought you keep thinking.

That means your beliefs are not fixed traits. They are repeated mental patterns that have been reinforced long enough to feel like facts.

The problem is not that you have limiting beliefs. Everyone does.

The problem is that most of them go unquestioned and untested.

When you build your business on unexamined assumptions, you are building on weak scaffolding. The first time you hit rejection, a slow month, criticism, or a shift in the market, the structure shakes.

Roadblocks are not optional. They are part of the journey.

Your life is not defined by roadblocks. It is defined by what you choose to do next.

Why Action and Tracking Are Not Enough

Over the past few weeks, I have been teaching what I call the Launch Formula. It has three components: action, tracking, and belief.

Action is the prerequisite. Nothing moves without execution. You cannot improve what you refuse to implement. Ideas are cheap. Execution carries risk.

Tracking creates traction. If you are not measuring what you are doing, when you are doing it, and how much you are doing, you are operating blind. High performers do not avoid data. They use it.

But here is what most people miss.

You can take action.
You can track your numbers.
You can follow the scripts perfectly.

And you will still stall if your belief system does not support your behavior.

Belief fuels consistency. It determines whether you interpret rejection as feedback or as proof that you are not cut out for this. It determines whether you optimize for your goal or for your comfort.

And if we are honest, most people are optimizing for comfort.

How Identity Quietly Sabotages Progress

I see this constantly.

Someone identifies as an introvert and uses that identity to justify avoiding outreach.

Someone believes they are bad with numbers and avoids tracking metrics.

Someone says they are not “salesy” and avoids making offers.

The belief becomes an identity. The identity becomes a justification. The justification protects them from discomfort. And the goal remains unmet.

Awareness alone does not create change.

There is a massive difference between information and integration.

The Trap of Personal Development Guilt

We live in an era of constant input. Podcasts, courses, reels, books, AI tools. There is no shortage of information.

But information does not equal transformation.

Many people fall into what I call personal development awareness guilt. You see what is possible. You understand what you could be doing. And instead of using that awareness to move forward, you turn it into shame.

You tell yourself you should be further along.
You judge yourself for not executing perfectly.

That shame does not create progress. It reinforces avoidance.

There is also personal development awareness judgment, where you direct that frustration outward and criticize others for not operating at their potential.

Neither guilt nor judgment builds momentum.

Awareness, Acceptance, and Action

If you want an anti-fragile belief system, you need three things: awareness, acceptance, and action.

First, awareness. Observe the thought instead of automatically believing it. When you observe a thought, you create distance. You can ask, is this true? Is this complete? Is this helpful?

Second, acceptance. Acceptance is not resignation. It is not approval. It is simply acknowledging reality without attaching shame. This is where I am. This is what happened. This was my capacity in that moment.

Now what?

Third, action. You test your beliefs. You gather evidence. You expose yourself to new ideas. You gain experience.

Most beliefs are incomplete.

For example, someone might say, “I am an introvert.” That may be accurate. But a more complete thought might be, “I am an introvert and I avoid initiating conversations because I fear rejection.”

Now you have something you can examine.

What evidence do you have?
How true is it really?
What happens if you test the opposite?

Fragile belief avoids testing. Anti-fragile belief grows stronger because it is tested.

Unlocking Your Focus in 2026

If you want sharper focus in 2026, you cannot rely on motivation. Motivation fluctuates.

You need belief that supports disciplined action. You need belief that sustains you when results are slow. You need belief that allows you to take steps before you have proof.

Personality does not dictate your success. Gender does not eliminate possibility. Background does not determine your ceiling.

These factors may shape your obstacles. They may influence your path. But they do not remove the option of success.

What activates progress is belief in possibility.

And belief is not magic. It is built. It is reinforced. It is tested.

So here is the question.

What belief are you reinforcing daily that is quietly keeping you small?

And what belief, if strengthened, would unlock your next level of focus?

You always have a choice in path.

If you are ready to build belief that supports your ambition instead of sabotaging it, stop waiting for certainty.

Start testing possibility.

Chapter List:

00:00 Activating Your Coaching Business

02:41 Building an Anti-Fragile Belief System

05:48 The Importance of Action and Tracking

08:28 Understanding and Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

11:12 Personal Development Awareness Guilt and Judgment

14:16 The Role of Beliefs in Coaching Success

16:50 Challenging Your Beliefs for Growth

19:43 The Power of Exposure and Experience

22:37 Integrating New Beliefs into Your Practice

25:21 Creating a Mindset of Acceptance and Action

28:20 The Impact of Beliefs on Business Performance

30:53 Conclusion and Next Steps

Full Transcript:

Amanda Kaufman (00:00)

Most coaches get so self-obsessed about what thoughts they are thinking. They stop there and that is what stops their progress.

Good morning and welcome to a strong start. My name is Amanda Kaufman and you're here to talk about activating your focus. So for the past few weeks, we've been talking a lot about how to build a coaching business from the ground up, how to launch something new, how to close the gap. If you already have a few clients, but you have capacity for more. So if you have capacity,

then it's time to activate the launch formula, the let's launch formula. So we've been talking about this for the past few weeks. And if you can see me and hear me okay, let me know in the chat, just say hello. And if you're an old friend, say hello. If you're brand new, say I'm new. And I'd love to welcome you to our community. This entire training is available in our Clients Over Chaos community, which you can access for free.

at next number five clients.com. So if you go to next number five clients.com, you will have access to our training library for all of the strong start trainings that I do every single week. All right, belief, belief. We're gonna activate today. We're gonna talk about this core idea around belief. And as we get into this, I just wanna know, I want you to know something.

Before you do anything, it's not going to feel real. It's not going to feel like it's possible. You are very likely to walk into that next chapter, that next thing that you're going to activate, that next thing that you're going to do with this idea that maybe you can't. Right. And that's normal. That's called doubts. Right. We all experience doubts and

The whole thing that we're going to talk about today is how do you do it anyway? How do you do it anyway? Good morning. Good morning. Hello. I've seen people popping in and saying hello. Good morning. I love it. So here's the thing. No one can create something that they haven't visioned their capacity to create. So I'm going to say that again. If you have a belief system that is very fragile, you will

bow down to your doubts. You're gonna let the fear take the wheel. You're gonna let the opinions of other people take you off course. And what we're gonna talk about today is how do you develop something that I call the anti-fragile belief system? Now, I'm not the first person to talk about anti-fragility by far. And as a high-performance coach, I've really needed to do a lot of exploration on this topic. For me personally,

but also to just be in a better position to help my clients because it's not really a big secret that people who are more successful in the long term have something called grit, right? Have we talked about grit? Good morning, Tanya. Good morning, Kathy. Thank you so much. Yes, it's holiday. Happy, happy president's day if you're in the United States, but I'm here and I'm doing the dang thing. So here we go. Today we're going to talk about this anti-fragile belief system. Okay. So shout out AF in the chat.

If you're here for it, I'm super excited to walk through this with you because it's going to come down to basically three key elements. All right. Three key elements to have a belief system AF, anti-fragile, right? And I'm aware AF could be for something else that is on purpose. But I love this. So the first thing is going to be awareness of what it is that you freaking believe in the first place.

You know, when I very first started my coaching journey, it was just like popcorn of like pop, there's a new idea, pop, there's a new idea, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. And I started getting like this new level of consciousness and awareness of what was actually happening in my own mind, right? My own perceptions, my own psychology, starting to really see some of these things, the connections between things that had happened when I was very young and the, and the habits that I had built.

in my mind, in my mindset, pop, pop, pop, you know, just getting all these, these new beliefs. And I hear it all the time in, you know, in coaches that are like starting out or average kind of coaches, they're like, I have this belief, right? So there's this awareness that they have the thought, but we're going to talk about how do you move from like the awareness that you had a thought, had past tense, had a thought.

And how do you actually reinforce something that's more supportive of your goals? All right. It's not enough to simply identify limiting beliefs, right? Obviously we will continue the way that we've been going with our current operating system until a belief gets challenged, right? But what a lot of people do is they go, well, I got that challenge. I identified that challenging limiting belief.

Now I just have it and they treat it like it's some sort of a disease or some sort of a ailment or an affliction. And I want to really help you move past that thinking today. That's one of my big goals. The third big piece is actually around testing what you believe, right? Testing what you believe, because what you think right now is keeping you where you are. Have you ever really thought about that? Right?

The conditioning that you have in your mind is what's keeping you where you are. So I want you to just like write this down in your notes. I know you're all big note takers. The first thing is I want you to understand what a belief is. And I think Wayne Dyer really nailed this one. He said, a belief is a thought we keep thinking. Not bad, huh? A belief is a thought we keep thinking.

So we're going to keep thinking that thought until we interrupt the thought until we really observe the thought. That's why I'm a big fan of like meditation and journaling and reflection. And of course coaching, like all of these things are super powerful for helping us to really identify not participate in the thought, but rather identify what the thought is. Okay. So what I'm talking about there,

the difference between participating in a thought participating in a thought is basically like you are experiencing the thought and you are acting accordingly. Okay. When you are observing a thought, it, you don't have to engage it. You can just notice it. Notice what that thought is. Right. Write it down. Right. Just because you notice a thought doesn't mean you have to act upon the thought. Right. But when we're participating in thoughts, what happens is

we activate our behavior according to that thought being factually true. Okay, so we're going to go deep today, but I want to give you a little bit of context as to why the hell we're talking about all of this on a Monday on a holiday day. It's family day in Canada. Hello Canadians. I'm so glad you're here too. It's president's day here in the United States. Why think about beliefs at all? Okay, now I'm just going to give you a big old warning sign.

Most coaches get so self-obsessed about what thoughts they are thinking. They stop there and that is what stops their progress.

So I'm going to rewind and I'm going to remind you from the past couple of sessions, we've been talking about the let's launch formula. So the let's launch formula.

is the way that I look at activating high performing experts. We talked about action in the first session. We were talking about how action is the prerequisite. I've been telling myself for years, I tell anybody who will listen, you've got to do what matters, not think about what matters, not protest about what matters, not be offended by what matters.

Do the thing, action, action, action, right? And if you're a very intellectual sort, if you're kind of a heady sort of a person, know, you will tend to want to retreat into the recesses of your mind. You're gonna contemplate, you're gonna endlessly plan. And until the plan hits the ground, my friend, it's just an idea and ideas are super cheap. It's the execution.

where the risk is there. It's the execution where the real expense is. It's the execution where the rejection lives. And until we actually execute, there's nothing to optimize. Okay. So action is the first leg of this formula. The second part of the formula that we talked about just last week, we did a deep dive on tracking your action, right? And we talked about how your real traction isn't coming from starting.

Sorry. Right. Everybody puts all this weight on story and and and tell and and the story around starting and they build this whole thing about the significance of starting. But boo, if you just started, that's that's just starting. OK, you know, you're not going to win a marathon the first time you put on your running shoes. Know what I'm saying?

Right? You're not going to achieve that goal that requires repetition and consistency and commitment, but by doing it one time. Right? The start is super important. You know, we call this zero to one in the business coaching world, going from zero to one sale, from zero to one dollar, from zero to one event. And that is probably the most intellectually intimidating. But we have to sustain.

And the difference between good coaches and great coaches is great coaches take their experience, both the positive and most especially the negative, and they take from. I'm just going to boot somebody that's really kind of. There we go. Bothering me on the the gram. OK, so hello and welcome back. So.

I was talking about action traction, right? But the thing is, is that most people are so afraid of failure that they don't track failure. They don't track any of it. They're just like taking action and they're blind as they're taking this action, right? So the action thing is super important. A lot of people, you know, they never take the action in the first damn place. But then once you start taking the action, how far are you going to get when you go blind? Right? Shout a zero in the chat, right? You're going to find yourself on this hamster wheel of doom.

because you're not going to find more efficient ways to do what you're doing. You're not going to find more effective ways to do what you're doing. You're not going to improve the quality of what you do, right? Because you're so scared of zero. Everybody's so scared of zero. And they're so scared of like low marks and all of this kind of thing. And it's understandable. I mean, I get it. I grew up in a school system too. I get it. I was in corporate America where we rack and stack people. We ladder them, right? So I understand the...

the impulse to want to be at the top. But the thing is, is the people that are at the top are there because they perfected their action. Okay. And the only way you can perfect is to observe and the, and that's where tracking comes in. Right. Can I get a big thumbs up or a Y in the chat of just like, yeah, okay, I'm getting it. I got to take action and I've got to be brave enough to track my action. But the thing is, is what do you do?

What do you do if you are frustrated by your zeros? Right? Authentic question. What do you do when things show up that you didn't plan for? You know, so like when I started my business eight years ago, I sure as heck did not anticipate publicly available artificial intelligence. Like that whole thing, that was like plot twist, right? Shout out plot twists in the chat.

So if you ever experienced a plot twist, right, where something shows up that you really didn't, you know, envision, you didn't think of it like crazy, right? Same with, you know, I've, I've been talking to a lot of coaches and you know, both sides of the aisle, so to speak, upset man, just generally offended, pissed off. And, and what I'm saying is, is like, yeah, these are the conditions. These are the conditions that we find ourselves in.

Right? Not a political statement, just an observation. Lots of people pissed off. Right? And the thing is, is that if you're pissed off all the time, how effective is your action going to be? Right? How focused are you going to be? Just being completely honest with you. And, and, and the thing is, is that if we don't have this third piece of the let's launch formula,

I could give you all the tracking sheets in the world. could tell you exactly what metrics to track. I could tell you exactly what actions to take. I could tell you exactly what scripts to follow and it won't matter. Why? Because the belief is not supporting the rest of the system. Okay. So what, what do we need? What do I mean by belief? I mean that you are able to see

a version and a vision of you in the future who's better off for having figured it out and that the journey is going to be worth it. Okay. You're better off and that the journey is going to be worth it. These single like, honestly, y'all, this took me a hot minute as a practitioner to, to really understand because I thought that people didn't know how to sell cause they didn't know what to say. Honest to God. That's what I thought.

I thought people didn't know how to sell because they didn't know what to say. Because I know when I went to go and sell, I didn't know what to say. And so like I needed to learn what to say. And then when I started teaching people what to say, they still weren't really doing the thing. And I was like, well, maybe I need to teach them what to do. Right. Like maybe I need to show them the exact systems, the step by step, the screen by screen, the blow by blow. And guess what? When I do that, we get a little bit of progress.

We get a little bit of traction because I've basically walked with you through the action one time. But I want to tell you the difference between the people who make twenty thousand dollars a month, you know, within a couple of months of working together, those that go into six figures per month and beyond, like they do something different and the difference is belief. OK, so I'm going to I'm going to break down like where.

Where do the beliefs kind of sabotage an average coach? Okay. And I have to tell you, like working with coaches, was like, coaches should have the best belief system in the world. Like coaches should have like all this positivity, right? We should have all this optimism. We should have all of this belief in like ourselves because we're so ready to believe in other people. And that has not been my lived experience.

I'm just, I'm just being totally real with you on a Monday. You know, it's a strong start. So, you know, I named it that so that I could give myself permission to just tell you the dang truth. Like for real coaches at times have the worst self concept that I've encountered. And I'm like, what is happening? You're so educated. You, have so much going for you. Like why, why are doubts so much stronger?

with somebody who's really educated in personal growth and development. This was a real doozy, all right? And you maybe don't even believe me when I say this, but I'm just telling you after working with hundreds of coaches and just seeing like the stats and seeing how many people kind of fall off the wagon of traction and action, I got to tell you, there's this thing called personal development awareness guilt, okay? And actually,

There's personal development awareness guilt and then there's personal development awareness judgment. PDAG and PDAG. Okay. Personal development awareness guilt and personal development awareness judgment. So let me break this down for you. Just because you have information does not mean it has shifted your belief system.

I'm going to say that again real slow. Just because you have information does not necessarily mean that you've integrated that information into your thoughts and your beliefs and your practices. All right. The truth is, is like a lot of coaching certifications you can go through in a few days, right? And you learn all these amazing things and you get all these pop, pop, pop, pop, pops of ideas. However,

there is a big difference between information and integration. Okay. Shout a Y if you agree, shout an N if you're like, nope, information's always been enough. This is why AI can go onto the scene, literally make everybody's jobs so much easier. And yet we still struggle to get the doing done. Because information is not transformation. Information does not mean integration.

And just to prove this to you, how much information do you get on a daily basis that you straight up ignore? Right? This is not guilt. I'm just telling you, like there's so many things that are coming in and you're just like, I can't. You shouldn't. All right. Your brain's not built to properly synthesize all of the information that's coming your way. And there's a lot of information that's kind of

Garbage right like it's not high quality information that you can really do anything with and in an age in a day when people are spending so much time on social media and consuming content is it any wonder that we're biasing towards Defensiveness right we're biasing towards like I don't want to see another idea. I don't want to have to make another judgment We're exhausted by it right so here's the thing

If information does not lead to integration, then what the hell does? Right? What the hell does? What actually allows us to integrate ideas? Well, I really believe we have to kind of break all of this down and then build it all back up. Right? Break it down and build it back up. So most of us are only actually partially aware of what we believe. It's kind of like we're a fish in water.

You know, it's really hard to observe how we are thinking without applying a ton of bias on top of it. And that's again why I'm such a fan of journaling, such a fan of mentorship and coaching, such a fan of an intentional progressive learning journey. Intentional. There is no arrival. All right. And the thing is, that beliefs are simply thoughts that we keep thinking.

over and over and over again. And they're informed by our experiences. They're reinforced by our observations. But remember, when we're making observations, we're filtering the holding time. Right? So the thing that is really useful and helpful about belief is it is actually changeable. You're not stuck. And I think where people get stuck with it is they get to the place of identifying. It's like, I know I'm nervous.

Right? I know I'm nervous about or, I know that I've had this tendency. I observed that I've had this tendency. And then people treat like the observation as the whole job.

Sorry, right? We've got to take it the long distance, the whole way. Now, this is where I think a lot of belief gets very stuck because the thing about smart people and most people that I experienced in entrepreneurship and in coaching, like y'all are pretty nerdy. Okay. With love, with love, you're pretty nerdy. You like the details. You like, you like reading about things and listening to the podcasts and all that. Like,

Is that a fair assessment? Shout out why in the chat if you can receive that. If you prefer, I don't call you a nerd. Tell me that too. But but seriously, the thing about an intelligent person is they tend to be very good at rationalizing their position.

like absolute genius at justification and rationalization. So it's a good thing to be aware of is that perhaps the thought comes up, you get the metacognition, the ability to see what the thought is and then to rationalize why you're stuck with it and to reinforce why that thought needs to continue.

and to justify why you need to deviate from reasonable action to accommodate the belief system. I'll give you a perfect example. How many introverts are there? How many people go to a networking event or they meet somebody cool and the person then apologizes for their business not being bigger and they claim they're an introvert and that's why it's hard. That's a perfect example.

The fact you are an introvert is something that you believe is causing a problem with you meeting people. And so then we rationalize that this is my identity, right? If my identity is I'm really shy or my identity is that I'm an introvert or my identity is I'm a quiet person, then we can rationalize.

What makes it okay to not reach out to so many people? We can rationalize why we're not going to do as much on visibility because after all, this is who I am. And just a question, how helpful is that belief? If your goal is to truly serve other people and the only way that you can serve other people is to gain visibility.

then then then how helpful is it to identify as introvert? So I know this is controversial, but I am so committed as a mentor and a practitioner to telling you the damn truth and like what I find helps. And by the way, the truth changes for me because I do test a lot of things. And we're to talk about that in a little bit. But a few years ago, I said no to personality tests. I do not care whether I rate high as an introvert on Myers-Briggs.

or if I'm a high C or if I'm an Aries, I don't care what my birth chart says. And, you know, some would argue it's like, well, that's classic Aries right there. Which may be true. The thing is, is that I've just found that it doesn't necessarily help me do the things that I need to do. Right. The reality is that for me to be very successful with this business, I have to. I have to.

I hate the words have to I do, but it's just true that I need to have conversations with people I can help proactively. I'm in a super saturated market. There's like so many people that are begging for and clamoring for your attention and they're like, here's this shiny object over here and here's that shiny object over there. And if for my own personal comfort, I just sit back from that and I say, you know, recurring thought in my mind, it doesn't matter.

That's another big one that I hear a lot of people say. They're like, later is fine. And I'm like, but why is later fine? Well, the thought, the thought they keep thinking is because, I haven't done it up to now, so it doesn't really matter if I do it today.

Again, how helpful is that? So this is why beliefs are such an important thing to continue to work on, but it's not enough to simply identify that I identify as an introvert or identify that I'm uncomfortable reaching out to people or identify that I have a hard time with rejection or identify that like I'm a people pleaser. Most people just stop there because the fascination, I call it navel gazing.

The fascination is with ourselves. And I ask you why build a business in service of other people if at the end of the day, the only person you care about is yourself.

I don't actually believe that about you. But our behavior, you know, collectively as a society, not even limiting to coaches, is very self-concerned. Do I have the right opinion? Am I in the right place? Am I doing the right thing? Am I cool enough, rich enough, pretty enough, healthy enough? Personal development awareness guilt. Just because you have the information doesn't mean you've integrated. You're guilty because you see how good things could be.

And then when you don't show up to that at that level, instead of solving the problem through action and tracking, we tend to rationalize with a belief system. Y'all tracking this? Shout out to Y in the chat if this is, if you have questions, do ask, okay? Cause I'm here, we're live, we're doing this thing. Okay, let's talk about P-DAG for a second. Personal development awareness judgment. Okay.

So guilt is when you have the shame turned inward. Guilt is when you see how good things could be or how high you could be operating your own potential activation and you're not there so you feel guilty about it. Right? Shadow Y if you're tracking on that. Right? And it's easy to do that. It's very easy to do that. And generally unhelpful. Right? Generally, the best thing to do is to get curious.

Right? that's so interesting. I promised that I was going to go to the gym and I didn't go to the gym. Okay. Let's get curious. What got in the way of going to the gym? Well, I was freaking exhausted. Okay. Let's look at that. I wonder why I was so exhausted. Like what was going on there? Well, I went to bed at 1130 PM. okay. So you, you have an opportunity then to set an earlier bedtime. Why? Yes, I do. Do you see how the charge in that is like not crazy?

Right. But when we start going into PDAG, Personal Development Awareness Guild, only good coaches are the 5 a.m. club type. And I don't do mornings and I'm an introvert and I'm this and I'm that. Do you hear all the identity statements in that? Wild. And the actual answer is go to bed. Right. You can handle it when you're 10 years old. I'm pretty sure you can handle it now. But the thing is, is that

That that identity conversation can really sabotage because it's gonna give us that Rationalization for why I yet again need to stay up and watch another season of scrubs or whatever it is. That's keeping you up at night, right? so P- personal development awareness judgment Same basic idea you have an awareness of the potential of others and you judge them for not exercising against their potential

Okay. So instead of shame inward, shame outward. Right. So I know I was really guilty of this when I was coming up in my business, because I saw like the super bro behavior. and I was just like, that's not demonstrating compassion. That's not considerate. That's not high empathy. And I all this judgment for their behavior, posing in front of cars, wearing like the running shoes I didn't care about and things like that. And I would spend so much mental energy.

on creating separation from that culture because I had judgment for it. I didn't think it was enlightened. I didn't think it was that next level of human beingness. And so my basic knee-jerk response to that was, am separate from you.

Where have you experienced that in your own business building? Where you see somebody come into a networking group and they're completely obnoxious and they're just bouncing off the wall trying to get everybody to pay attention to them and you're like, they are not being cool. And so then you create this distance, it's like, God, I hope this person doesn't talk to me. And it's because you have this awareness of.

What is a good way to connect with people? What's a good way to activate your influence and to proceed with calm? So when somebody doesn't do it, you find it upsetting, offensive, irritating, annoying. And here is my question to you on a Monday. And how does that further anybody's goals?

I'm not saying you're obligated to work with annoying people, right? I just booted somebody on the gram that was like blowing up the comments with things that, you know, were not relevant or germane to the conversation. You have a right to steward your attention. You have a right to steward your focus. Like, I completely understand it. But if I take it to another level and I have judgment for this person not having marketing that I would like them to have or not approaching me in the way that I would like them to approach me, right?

that helpful? It's not, right? Answer not. So a thing to really just check in on is your awareness of human potential and where are you attaching shame or guilt to the conduct of yourself or others. And the reason this is so stinking powerful is because when you can just cut the ties of shame and cut the ties of guilt

and just allow what happened to have happened in the past. Allow your capacity to have been in your capacity to make the best decision for you in that moment. Just allow for that and allow for other people to do that. And not to have to go any further than just simply saying, I accept. I accept the reality of my capacity. I accept the reality of their capacity. I accept the reality of my desires. I accept the reality of their desires.

I accept the reality that communication can be challenging. I accept the reality that building a business is challenging. Not everybody does it. I accept all of these things. Let me ask you, if you build a mindset of an acceptance and activation of your ambition, how much further are you going to go? You don't have to pack your bags of shame and guilt projected inward or outward. You don't even need to pack them. Right?

Now the thing is, is that you're still going to have your moments, right? We all do. We all do. I remember I was hanging out with somebody recently and they were like, I don't like chocolate. And I was like, judge, you know, chocolate's the best. It's a, it's a natural impulse. But the question is, is like, how are you responding to the impulse after that? Right? What are you reinforcing? So we have a choice about what we keep thinking. And so there's a few things that really, really help you.

to make new choices around this. And before I go any further, y'all, has this been helpful? Show it to be in the chat if you're just like, yep, belief's important. I'm learning something that maybe I didn't already know. OK, cool. So yes, I love this. So in 12-step programs, they talk about awareness, acceptance, and action. Yep. So you don't have to be in one of those programs to really extract the value of that. And if you are in one of those programs, amazing. That is a really cool idea to carry forward.

So here's a few things that have helped me a ton, okay, when it comes to challenging my systems of belief. And I was shook, shocked, no longer as shocked, but I was shook and shocked when I realized just how many ideas I had that had no supporting data that were narratives, they were just stories that just were helping me to process painful experiences. And I was just like, damn, there's a lot, right? And then there's also gonna be the stories that your ego tells.

to protect you from ever, you know, feeling any kind of badness, right? And the thing is, is that the first thing is I would say research, research, right? So how true is it really that, right? That's kind of the core thesis, you know, idea for me when I'm looking at something new, I'm like, how true is this really? And when we talk about using AI as a thought partner, holy toly doh.

Okay, you can do research like that. You can do deep research. One thing to be aware of certain, not just certain AIs, AIs in general are geared around appeasement. Okay. And, and, and making sure that you feel really good about their answer because they want to prioritize your addiction to usage. Okay. So just be super, super aware of that. But even so, how are you processing like different ideas and how are you challenging what you already think?

Research the second piece that's super like important and very challenging in this life The society that we find ourselves in is space to contemplate Space to consider space to to to really just like let thoughts flow without attachment and that contemplation lets you

your understanding of the world, develop your own personal philosophies, right? And when I finally learned like, first of all, what philosophy is, and then secondly, started to actively cultivate and curate a philosophy for my life, it changed everything. And so think of philosophy as the lens through which you interpret the world.

If you're in the driver's seat of the interpretation of the lens, then you're gonna have a huge advantage to those who feel like they are at the effect of the world completely, right? That their philosophy is life happens to me, not for me, right? Super, super important. Exposure is a huge teacher. So we talked in the Let's Launch formula about activating your action,

tracking what you're doing, positives and negatives, optimizing your action over and over and over again. Well, from a belief standpoint, just exposing yourself to different beliefs. So I spoke earlier about like the judgment that I had for bro culture. Well, then I want to join a bro mastermind and some of my favorite people in the whole land are bros now, right? Because I gave myself the opportunity for true and authentic exposure. So

You know, there's this feeling that I get sometimes that people are scared to see a new idea. And I, in my personal philosophy, that is a disastrous way to operate because how can you really believe what you believe if your beliefs are never challenged? If you're never given an opportunity to truly consider what it is that you do believe, right? And you may double down. You may decide that like, no, I'm right and you're wrong. And

That's cool, right? You're allowed. But I just think you end up with a higher quality thinking if you're allowed to question what you think. Right. Okay. So exposure. Last one, experience. Right. So, so putting yourself in the ring, doing the thing over and over again, getting that experience and evaluating your experience helps you to shift your ideas.

The thing is, is that a lot of your ideas are just incomplete, right? There's parts of it that are truth and they are truthful and they've got a lot of data. It's just that they're not complete. And if you just start to really examine where you have incomplete ideas. So for example, I'll go back to the introvert one. I'm an introvert. Okay, well that's part of an idea.

I'm an introvert, so I don't like to initiate conversations. That's a more complete idea. And you can actually examine that idea. You can go like, okay, what is it that I don't like about activating conversations? And you can dig a little deeper. I don't like activating converse. I'm an introvert and I don't like activating conversations because I always feel really awkward doing so.

or because I feel like I'm gonna pitch slap them because I'm so desperate to sell my coaching. Okay, that's actually a really complete thought that we can now start to look at it. It's like, well, what is it about your coaching you don't believe in?

What is it about your coaching that you think is too expensive? What is it about your coaching that you think is ineffective? What is it about your coaching that that you think maybe it's not going to be worth the time, money and energy for the other person to receive it? And again, there's like partial ideas that will come up here because people maybe have beliefs around money, right? Well, I know what it's like to be in debt. I never want to push somebody else into debt.

Okay, let's look at that again, right? So what is it about somebody else taking on a credit card that bothers you so much? Well, because I've taken on a credit card and I was not responsible with how I paid back my credit card and it hit my credit and I realized that it was compromising my future goals and it was like a whole damn mess. Okay, let's just check in. How true is that for this other person that you're talking to? Right?

And when you start to really examine a more full and complete thought that's leading to your action, you get a choice about whether you want to continue to reinforce that thought or whether you want to revise your thought with new information. Okay. So the thing is that if you have a lot of beliefs that are just unquestioned, untested, it's very weak scaffolding to build from.

Right? Because when you encounter triggers and challenges, which you absolutely most certainly will on your journey, then then it ends up becoming this roadblock that you get a choice about. Right? You can either sit there and go roadblock, roadblock, roadblock, roadblock, roadblock. I swear to God, my entire career has been built on helping people understand that their life is not defined by roadblocks.

that they have choice in path. I'm serious. Like I built a very good career simply helping people find paths of progress. That's it. That's what I've done. It's kind of crazy to think about, you know, and at the same time, you know, if you are a practitioner, if you want to replicate some of the things that I've done, one of the things I have to tell you is that there's beliefs that are preventing your action.

And there's beliefs that are preventing your tracking and there's beliefs that are preventing your progress and the, the, the unquestioning of them or to reroute to optimize for comfort instead of optimizing for goal. That's the number one thing that differentiates my clients that have gone way far and my clients that have continued to prepare to go. Right.

It's this optimizing for comfort, optimizing for safety, optimizing for emotional experience. So it's like, okay, well, I don't want to ever be scared. I don't want to ever be nervous. I don't want to ever be doubtful. I don't want to ever be any of these things. So can you give me an answer that prevents all of that? And the candid answer is no, you are the only one that can do that. You know, I can raise your awareness to the belief. I can raise your awareness to the thought.

but you're the one that gets to decide whether you wanna keep the thought or change it, right? Now, the game is to understand like, what is it that you believe? And how do you keep reinforcing that belief? And what belief would serve you? And how can you reinforce that? And my challenge to you today is how can you reinforce the positive belief with some spice on it, right?

How can you reinforce the positive belief? Because again, societally, I see this optimization towards comfort and familiarity. And this season that we're all in, I don't care how old you are, I don't care how young you are, I don't care your gender, I don't care, you know, stage of life or marital status, whatever. We are all in a state of flux right now because we're getting so much.

hitting all of us, no matter who you are. Y'all believe that? Shout out to the chat if you're like, yeah, we're all in a season. And the thing is, is if you're always looking left and right for the map, but you never take a step on the map, you're not gonna be any better off, right? So I do believe that mentorship speeds things up. I do believe that accountability really, really helps. I do believe that...

You know, building systems and delegation is the lever forward for a lot of people. What I don't believe is, is that your personality or your personality score have to dictate whether you're successful or not. I've seen so many people who are successful who, know, honestly, the personality wise, I'm like, whoo, you know, not maybe somebody I want to hang out with and, and, know, have a barbecue with or something like that.

doesn't negate their success, right? I've also met people where I'm like, dang, I could spend all day, all night with you. You're just like my favorite flavor of a human being. Wow, you are just so awesome. And they're super successful. Personality does not dictate your results. You know, there's science on science on science that says that. Gender, same thing.

And you could say, well, Amanda, you're disregarding patriarchy and you're disregarding societal norms. I'm like, no, no, no. I'm saying you can still be successful. I'm not saying it won't be hard. And I'm not saying that you won't have obstacles that are different than your neighbors. I'm saying it's still possible. And it's that activation of the belief of the possibility that is going to allow you to take steps when you don't have the proof.

It'll also allow you to integrate the proof when the proof arrives. How many of you will accomplish something or you've accomplished something in your life and you say, it's no big deal. You got a degree, you got the job, you sold the contract, you landed the partner, you, you raised the kids, you kept the doggies alive. Like whatever you did, how often are you marginalizing that? Right?

The thing about coaching is that people are looking for validation. If you don't validate yourself.

then who are you expecting to give that to you?

Right. Who are you expecting to give that to you? Coaching is really about elevating thinking. It's about elevating philosophy. It's about elevating the quality of the decisions that we make so that we're making good long term decisions instead of living in a short term reactive and generally miserable existence. That's what it's really about at the end of the day. So in my own practice, I probably spend about

20 % of my time teaching you action, right? Here's how to do the thing. Shout out how in the chat if you understand that. The, probably 10 % of the time, we're talking about tracking. And I think we should probably talk about it more, but it's about 10 % of the time. And when you're tracking, that helps you focus on what and when and how much. What and when and how much, right?

So if you want to put that in the chat for reference for anybody taking notes, what, when and how much that's what tracking is going to give you.

The belief, the belief is going to be the thing that activates your consistency, that helps you with discipline, that allows you to make decisions, that allows you to take action despite the doubts and the possible negative consequences with conscious trade-offs, right? It's belief that is actually going to fuel the business growing to a greater capacity.

Without the belief, my friend, there cannot be any traction in your action because you're gonna doubt and you're gonna disintegrate. You're not gonna take the integration of like, wow, when I reach out to people, people tend to respond back. Scientific, I know. But if you aren't tracking the data and you don't believe that it actually matters, then you're gonna ignore that data.

And it was the very thing that was going to activate your impact. Right. Yeah. When what, when and how much is going to come from your tracking. Your motive is going to come from belief. Your motivation, your beliefs about your pains, your beliefs about your gains. This is like the fuel of your engine. You can have the most optimized engine.

You can have it tuned up. You can have it just like this gorgeous, sexy Ferrari of an engine. And if you have dirty fuel, you're thinking, then you're very unlikely to perform at your highest. You like that's that's that's a very weak way of saying it. It's your beliefs that are going to prevent your action. It's your beliefs that are going to cause you to turn away from the tracking and the math of your business.

And business at the end of the day is black and white. Did you do it? Did you not do it? Did the action create the outcome that you were looking for? If you cannot track that because you believe you're not good at math or you believe you're bad with Excel or you believe whatever it is that you believe, you believe you need all these crazy special accommodations in order to be successful.

I don't even know what. So next week, we're gonna keep going with Strong Start. We've been talking all about action, we've been talking about tracking, we've been talking about belief. We are going to be talking about the reinforcement loop. So this is going to be such a fire session. And if you've been loving this,

do make sure you invite your friends. It's next number five clients.com or if you're watching on Instagram, you can send them over to link and bio and watch, join the community clients over chaos there. And if you're really ready to activate, I am going to be starting a new cohort of the experts network. So the experts network is my group coaching program where we get to do this for a few hours a week, but we do it according to.

the system. So the system is going to help you with what exactly do you need to do? How exactly do you say it? Do you do it? How do you track it? And how do you sustain your performance over the long term? So if you're interested in an application or details around the Experts Network, all you got to do is say Experts in the chat now, or you can send me a DM at TheAmandaKaufman on Instagram and just say Experts and I will send you the details about the Experts Network.

We are starting enrollments today and I'm gonna be closing for this particular cohort for March 1st. So March 1st is the start date. Amazing Tanya. I will follow up with you and I wanna make sure I have your details so if you don't mind, I'm just gonna pop my Instagram if you can send me a little DM there. That way we'll have a point of connection after today's call.

Okay, y'all, thank you so much for being here. I'll be here next week. We're gonna talk about reinforcement of what we've talked about with the action, the tracking, and the belief. We're gonna talk about how do you build a reinforcing system that allows you to keep progressing upward, spiraling upward, and not feeling like you're losing your traction and spiraling downward. All right, my friends, thank you so much for being here, and we will see you next week.