CONSISTENT by Primal Potential

There's a trap keeping a lot of us from what we want, and most of us walked into it again this week.

It goes like this. We're not where we want to be. With our health, our money, our marriage, our kids. And we think, "I just need someone to tell me the thing. This book is going to be the one. This is what's going to make it click."

So we read the book. We get the freebie. We take the course. We sign up for the webinar. We follow one more person who seems to have it figured out.

And we're constantly in this learning loop, because we believe we just haven't gotten the piece of information that makes it click yet.

We don't have an information problem. We have a retention and access problem.

Insight Library solves it. Save 50% off your first year with code LAUNCH through Oct 31.

The most helpful thing I ever told a client was to eat nine pieces of Halloween candy.

For weeks she’d promised herself “none,” and for weeks it hadn’t worked once. Nine worked right away. Less than 10 days later, she wasn’t eating the candy at all. In this episode, I break down why, and what makes the next plan different from the last hundred.

In this episode:

• Why the plan you know you should follow and the plan you’re willing to follow can be miles apart
• The question I use to find the version I’ll actually do, and the day I used it after butchering chickens, a sick babysitter and no food until 3 p.m.
• Why “I must not want it enough” is the wrong explanation
• How to tell whether an excuse is about this moment or part of a pattern
• The three checks to run before you start over again

Read the free written version on Substack: https://elizabethbentonthompson.substack.com/p/started-over-a-hundred-times-heres

If you want to go deeper:

• 3 Strategies for When You Know What to Do but Still Aren’t Doing It: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1340-3-strategies-for-when-you-know-what-to-do-but/id954984769?i=1000724349837
• How to Shut Down Excuses in the Moment, Even When They Feel True: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1337-how-to-shut-down-excuses-in-the-moment-even-when/id954984769?i=1000723192258
• Consistency Vault Part 2: Dial Down: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1378-consistency-vault-part-2-dial-down/id954984769?i=1000744777319

Follow me on Substack: https://substack.com/@elizabethbentonthompson

How I Get Out of Overwhelm in Under a Minute: The Fix No One Taught You

Most of the overwhelm you’ll feel this week will come from trying to solve things it isn’t time to solve yet.

After I wrote about this on Substack, a lot of you asked me to go deeper, so in this episode I do. You’ll hear:

• Why the amount on your plate matters a lot less than you think
• What a text about our empty egg box taught me about mental management
• The simple decision tree I use to get out of overwhelm in under a minute
• Why overwhelm shows up at night, and after a great course or conference
• What to do when it really is the right time and it still feels like too much
• One thing to try in the next 24 hours

Read the free article this episode came from: elizabethbentonthompson.substack.com

Build My Coach: For less than the cost of a single coaching session, get three personal coaches in your pocket, built by me and personalized to you, ready to coach you through the decisions that are actually shaping your life, 24/7. $97 until November 1. elizabethbenton.com/buildmycoach

If you can tell me what time tomorrow you're most likely to struggle, you already have what you need to stop it.

Most of us know exactly when we fall off. The dinner we didn't plan. The workout that gets pushed until the day is gone. The afternoon that starts overwhelmed and scattered. We know what to do, we know we're not doing it, and we even know why. And still, we keep getting caught off guard, the same way so many of us get caught off guard by Christmas every December.

Elizabeth walks through the four traps that keep us repeating the same struggles:

• Believing that wanting to do better is enough. Wanting to do better has never once changed a behavior.
• Planning the home run. The plan you're proudest of is often the one you're least likely to follow, and the one question to ask about every plan you make.
• Waiting for certainty. Certainty is something you earn by deciding. Waiting won't give you any.
• "I don't have time." Most of us have never actually done the math.

Then she shows you how to look at your next 48 hours, find the struggle that's already waiting for you, and decide what you'll do before you get there.

If you'd like help seeing the patterns you can't see on your own, Build My Coach gives you three personal coaches in your pocket, built by Elizabeth and personalized to you, for less than the cost of a single coaching session. Today is the last day to get the Personal Insight Library bonus when you join:

Join Build My Coach. 10/12 is the last day to get the Personal Insight Library Training for free with your purchase!

Think about the best personal development book you’ve ever read. Now name the five most valuable things you learned from it.

I can’t do it either.

And that got me thinking about how much we’ve expected information to do for us. It’s not enough to learn something valuable. You have to remember it, access the right piece at the exact moment you need it, and know how to apply it to the situation you’re actually in.

No wonder knowing what to do hasn’t been enough.

In this episode, I’m sharing what I realized about the massive gap between learning something and actually being able to use it. I’ll show you how I’m using AI to close that gap, including the Personal Insight Library I built for myself, why EBGPT can sometimes answer a question better than I can, and a real example of how I used my Defense Coach to prepare for a week I knew would be hard.

This is one of those ideas that changed the way I think about every book, course, podcast, coaching program, sermon, and insight I consume.

Build My Coach gives you three highly personalized AI coaches for one payment of $97, with no subscription.

And through October 12, you’ll also get my complete step-by-step tutorial for building your own Personal Insight Library free with your purchase.

Access Build My Coach and secure your free Insight Library tutorial!

What if the most useful thing you’ve ever learned could actually find you when you needed it?

Think about how many times you’ve read a book, listened to a podcast, sat through a sermon or heard something in a coaching conversation and thought:

Oh my gosh. I need to remember that.

Then real life happens.

Six weeks later, you’re in the argument. Standing in the kitchen. Making the decision. Talking yourself out of the thing you said you wanted.

And that incredible insight?

Nowhere to be found.

The insight existed. Access to the insight didn’t.

That is the problem I’ve become obsessed with solving.

For the last year and a half, I’ve been exploring what becomes possible when we stop using AI like a blank box that knows a lot of stuff and start deliberately training it on the information, frameworks, perspectives and context we actually want it to know.

The result is something I genuinely believe can change the way we access coaching, perspective and even our own accumulated wisdom.

It’s called Build My Coach, and today I’m finally showing you what I built.

In this episode, we’re talking about why having great information is not the same as being able to use it, why we can spend years working hard on the wrong problem, what happens when you reach the edge of your own perspective, and why the moment you need coaching almost never happens to be the moment your coach is available.

I’ll also show you what changed when I realized AI could do more than retrieve information. It could be trained to coach, and it could learn the person being coached.

That led me to build three highly personalized AI coaches:

Your Defense Coach, built to help in the moments when you’re talking yourself into the exception, excuse or choice that threatens to take you off course.

Your Personalized Coach, built around your goals, patterns, history, circumstances and the way you need to be coached, with the ability to know you better the more you use it.

EBGPT, giving you access to more than 13 years of my coaching, 2,000+ podcast episodes, programs, frameworks and body of work without requiring you to remember where I taught the thing you need.

But while I was building all of this, I realized something:

I wanted this for everything else I learn, too.

I recently finished a marriage book filled with insights I desperately wanted to remember.

Ask me right now for the most important ones.

I can’t remember them.

And I JUST read the book.

So I started building something for myself that I’m now giving you as a launch bonus:

I’m going to show you how to create your own AI-powered library of the things you want available at your fingertips.

The book that changed how you think about your marriage.

The podcast that taught you something important about your career.

The sermon you never wanted to forget.

The course you paid for three years ago.

Your own notes, realizations and insights.

Not just stored somewhere. Accessible when you actually need them.

The full step-by-step bonus training will be delivered October 12 and is included when you purchase Build My Coach during this launch.

Three highly personalized AI coaches.

One payment of $97.

No subscription.

Plus Build Your Personal Insight Library during this launch.

Get Build My Coach here

Build My Coach for $97

I usually try to say hard things gently. This episode is what happens when I stop softening them.

I’m sharing three opinions I feel strongly about, even though they may make some people uncomfortable. We’re talking about the attention we keep giving to fear, the resources we leave unused, and one choice many people will deeply regret continuing to postpone.

None of this is coming from a place of having it all figured out. I give myself these same lectures. But there comes a point when insight, frustration, and good intentions have to turn into action.

Also mentioned in this episode: I recently answered member questions about time management, prioritization, following through, and managing the very real load of life over on Substack.

Listen to the members-only Time Management Q&A here.

Join me on Substack:

https://substack.com/@elizabethbentonthompson

In 100 days, it will be 2027. And in case that sounds like plenty of time, 2016 was ten years ago.

In this episode, I’m sharing the commitment I’ve made for the final 100 days of the year: to stop casually participating in the erosion of my own potential.

This isn’t another rigid challenge. I’ve identified four parts of my life I’m no longer willing to leave exposed: my space, my money, my body, and my joy, and I’ll take one specific action to protect each of them every day.

Because the life you want is rarely lost in one dramatic decision. It is usually surrendered an inch at a time.

What part of your future are you leaving unprotected, and what could you do today to guard it?

For more of my writing and subscriber-only podcast episodes, join me on Substack.

What if every discretionary purchase became a choice between the thing and the money?

In this episode, I’m sharing a spending experiment I’ve started after realizing something simple and slightly painful:

Everything you see used to be money.

The clothes. The furniture. The random Amazon purchase. The thing you bought because it was on sale. The thing you barely use.

So now, before I buy something, I’m asking a different question:

Would I rather have the thing, or the money?

And when I choose the money, I’m moving part of it into savings so the decision actually becomes visible.

In this episode, I’m talking about:

• the $40 jacket that sparked the idea
• why “I can afford it” is often the wrong question
• the difference between not spending and actually redirecting the money
• why the tiny purchases may be the most interesting part
• how I’m tracking this experiment as it unfolds
• how you can do it with me

I’m sharing the full experiment, the running total, the individual decisions, and what I’m learning over on Substack.

Follow me there so you can see how this plays out in real time:

https://substack.com/@elizabethbentonthompson

Give me the ONE thing you’re sick of starting over with. Give me four weeks.

The Four-Week DEFENSE Build starts September 8, and I’m keeping this group intentionally small because this isn’t about spending four weeks learning DEFENSE.

It’s about implementing it around your specific problem, with my eyes on it with you.

Bring me the thing you know how to do, have probably done successfully many times, but somehow keep finding yourself starting over with.

Over four weeks, we’re going to get specific about what keeps happening around that problem, identify where you actually need DEFENSE, build something you can use, let your real life test it, and use what happens to make it stronger.

This is hands-on. This is personalized. And this is for the person who is tired of assuming the answer is another plan, another fresh start, or another promise to try harder.

We start September 8.

Your enrollment is also backed by my 100% money-back guarantee. Do the work and submit it as requested. If, at the end of our four weeks, you don’t feel you have a valuable, personalized DEFENSE for the specific problem you brought in, I’ll refund what you paid.

If you do the work and I don’t deliver, I don’t want you to pay for it.

elizabethbenton.com/defense-build

I spent all of my childhood, adolescence and young adult years severely obese. At just 5'5", I weighed over 350 pounds. I had a degree in nutrition and was still a chronic binge eater.

After decades of struggling, I stopped binge eating and went on to lose 130 pounds long before GLP-1s were a thing.

People often ask me what finally clicked.

There is one breakthrough I can trace so much of my personal transformation back to, and it started with a question I couldn’t answer:

How could I demonstrate so much discipline in other areas of my life and struggle so profoundly to do it with food?

The answer changed the problem I thought I needed to solve.

In this episode, I’m sharing that breakthrough, what it taught me about perspective and permission, and why I eventually realized:

I kept trying to solve the start when I needed to study the stop.

If you recognize your own stubborn problem somewhere in this conversation, don’t just listen to this one.

Bring it to me.

Join the Four-Week DEFENSE Build here