The 4 Things Quietly Killing My 10K Months

I haven't had a consistent 10K month in a while. I've had them before, 10K months, 20K months, a single 5K hour, but for the last several months, that consistency has been missing. And here's the thing about being a coach who teaches people how to build consistent 5K, 7K, 10K months: you don't get to hide from your own advice. So I'm not going to.

Here's what I know now that I didn't fully let myself see a few weeks ago. There are four things that have been quietly working against me. Not big, dramatic failures. Small, sneaky misalignments between what I say I want and what I'm actually doing.

1. My calendar stopped being mine.

I tell my clients all the time that a mismanaged calendar is the same thing as a mismanaged mind. It's easier to say than to live. One of my favorite questions to ask a client is: what were you thinking about yourself when you said yes to this? Your calendar isn't a productivity tool. It's an identity mirror.

I wanted three new coaching clients. That's what I said out loud. But my energy was somewhere else entirely, panicking about where I'd even fit them. My words and my nervous system were telling two different stories, and the universe listens to energy louder than it listens to words. So I did the unglamorous thing. I actually opened my calendar. I looked at school pickups, my husband's baseball games, every commitment, business and personal. And I found out I didn't have room for three new clients. I had room for five. That one piece of information changed my energy completely, and within days, two new clients appeared.

2. I kept offering things I've already outgrown.

There are pieces of how I work with people right now that I don't actually want to keep offering. And I've kept them on the table anyway, because some part of me is more afraid of a "no" than I am committed to what I actually want to build. That's not abundance. That's scarcity wearing a nice outfit.

If you don't like the way you're making money, you're not going to want to make more of it. I've said this line for years. I forgot to apply it to myself.

3. I've been outsourcing my own authority.

I've hired mentors because they see things I can't see. That's the point of coaching. But somewhere along the way, I started treating their advice as prescription instead of information, trying to be the perfect student instead of the person who already knows her own business. You can't fully absorb two different experts' frameworks at once if you're trying to follow both of them to the letter. There isn't room. You end up with three people in the room and none of them is fully you.

4. I've been minimizing every win I have.

This one hit the hardest. I journaled this morning about what it would feel like to bring 20 women into the Reinvention Room, my goal right now. And in the fantasy, it felt incredible... for about four seconds. Then came the "but." But it took longer than I wanted. But someone else did more. But, but, but. That word is a buzzkill to every win I've ever had, and I noticed that even in the version where I get everything I want, I'd still find a way to shrink it.

Here's what I told my husband once, after his baseball team lost another season without making it to the World Series. I asked him what actually changes once they win it. He said, honestly, not much. He'd still have to recruit next season's team either way. That's the thing about chasing a goal as the fix. The goal was never going to be the remedy. The remedy is learning to feel successful with what's already true, right now, before the goal arrives.

So that's the real work I'm doing. Not waiting for some declaration moment where I'm finally allowed to feel like I made it. Practicing the feeling now. Auditing my calendar now. Saying no to the offers I've outgrown now. Trusting my own authority now.

If any of this is landing for you, if you've got wins you're not letting yourself feel, or a calendar that doesn't reflect what you actually want, that's exactly the work we do inside The Shift, a 5-day experience running July 27th through the 31st.

You don't need a perfect plan to leave the job you've outgrown. You need the identity shift that makes staying start to feel more uncomfortable than leaving.

Comment or DM the word SHIFT and I'll send you the details.