Ep185: Feeling Behind? Stop Leaking Power and Regain Momentum
Episode Summary
What if feeling behind isn’t a sign you’re failing—but a signal that some structural pieces need to shift?
If you’re capable, moving forward, but still find yourself quietly questioning your pace, this episode speaks to that experience. You’ll hear what’s actually unfolding — and why the obvious moves won't resolve it.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
Why feeling behind isn’t a competence issue—it’s a power dispersion issue
The subtle signs you’re reacting to discomfort instead of consolidating authority
Four shifts that bring power back in-house—without dramatic pivots or reinvention
Press play to close the gap you're feeling and restore your momentum.
Who This Episode Is For
This episode is especially helpful for high-achieving women entrepreneurs who:
Feel behind in their business growth — even though they have results, clients, and proof of concept
Experience subtle self-doubt in entrepreneurship during periods of expansion
Notice their leadership confidence dipping as they scale to a new level
Feel stuck between where they are and where they thought they’d be by now
Want to regain momentum in their business without overhauling strategy or adding more work
Core Concepts in This Episode
Power Dispersion (Why You Feel Behind in Business)
A structural leadership issue — not a competence problem. Power dispersion happens when your authority, decision-making clarity, and focus get scattered across too many options, comparisons, or reopened decisions. It slows entrepreneur momentum and creates the illusion of falling behind.
Power Consolidation (How Momentum Returns)
The process of reclaiming leadership confidence by narrowing your focus, raising standards, and making clean decisions. Consolidation restores business momentum without adding more tactics or complexity.
Decision Field (Hidden Cause of Overthinking in Business)
The range of strategies, ideas, and alternatives you allow yourself to entertain. When you feel behind, your decision field expands — leading to overthinking, second-guessing, and diluted execution. Narrowing it increases clarity and speed.
Old Vantage Point Measurement (The Business Growth Illusion)
Judging your current performance using outdated timelines or expectations from a previous version of you. This creates unnecessary pressure and makes natural expansion feel like a business growth plateau.
Authority Recalibration (Restoring Leadership Confidence)
The shift that occurs when your internal leadership stabilizes. Messaging sharpens. Decisions become obvious. Standards rise naturally. This is how you regain momentum without reinvention.
Key Takeaways
Why feeling behind isn’t a competence issue—it’s a power dispersion issue
The subtle signs you’re reacting to discomfort instead of consolidating authority
Four shifts that bring power back in-house—without dramatic pivots or reinvention
Full Episode Transcript:
In this episode, you'll discover how to stop leaking power and regain momentum when you're feeling behind. Welcome to The Uncommon Way, where high achieving women entrepreneurs and leaders pitch the rule book and design success on their own terms. I'm your host, Jenna Harrison, a top ranked business coach sharing business growth strategies, mindset mastery, and power boost to help you attract ideal clients, leverage your unique genius, and scale with freedom. Let's dive in. Welcome. Welcome back to The Uncommon Way. I've got a question for you. What if feeling behind is not a sign that you're failing, but a sign that you are in an expansion phase? And what if the real risk isn't feeling behind, it's staying there? Because feeling behind is normal, but staying there disperses power. And that matters, because the higher your capacity, the more expensive that state becomes. Today, I'm going to show you how to address the situation when you find yourself feeling behind so you can operate at your highest capacity, create maximum leverage, and regain momentum. And don't worry, I won't tell you to remind yourself that you're actually doing great. In this episode, you'll learn why feeling behind isn't a competence issue, it's a power dispersion issue, and the subtle signs you're reacting to discomfort instead of consolidating authority. And you'll get four shifts that bring power back in-house without dramatic pivots or reinvention. So let's call a spade a spade. Of course, you feel behind sometimes. You're wired with a negativity bias. And when we don't know much about something, we tend to overestimate what's possible. But once we understand the depth required, we often underestimate ourselves. And you're surrounded by stories of businesses with explosive growth. So yes, you will feel behind at times, that's human. But here's where it becomes expensive. When the emotional state of behind starts shaping your actions and perceptions. That's when your mood drops, and that affects everything. Your standards weaken, so you begin considering options or tolerating behavior you wouldn't have before. Your decision field expands, meaning that you start entertaining more options and second guessing what was already working. You begin scanning for what you're missing. And your brain happily supplies answers, whether they're priorities or not. You reopen decisions that were already clean. You hesitate on moves you're actually ready for. That is how power disperses. And the reason this becomes more expensive at higher levels isn't emotional, it's structural. When your capacity increases, the felt effects carry more weight. The opportunity cost of missed revenue is larger, and very immediate. Your business has the capacity to impact many more people than it did at earlier levels. And your possibilities for visibility are much higher than they used to be. But all of that is stunted now. And at higher levels, more people are affected by your clarity or your hesitation. So at earlier stages, this kind of power dispersion slows you down. But at higher levels, it multiplies. That's the real difference. This is not theoretical. I watched this happen with a client, Lisa. Lisa had an established business and so much expertise in her field. She had clients, she had proof of concept, a large following, and people steadily booking discovery calls. But she kept saying something that caught my attention. She'd say, I don't know, maybe I should just go back to corporate. Not like having a meltdown. It was almost casual, as if she were just rationally reviewing options, which is what made it more important. Nothing had collapsed, but she felt behind. Behind where she thought she should be by now. Behind peers. Behind her own earlier expectations. And that didn't just stay up in her head. She was playing it safe with messaging because she couldn't afford to alienate prospective clients. She wasn't considering offers that her people wanted because she probably wasn't ready, and because she couldn't afford to take her eyes off the ball. She even felt guilty for taking any time away from her business because she should be figuring out a solution. I have an episode I'll link to, 135, where she talks about this more. But here is one line from that episode that's really telling. She said, what I realized looking back is it was more challenging than I expected. And I made that mean I wasn't up to the challenge. So there was no evidence that the business was failing. But the state of behind was influencing her perception. Her authority wasn't gone. It was dispersed. I know because she was able to access it so quickly once we started doing this work. We didn't pivot the business. We didn't switch social media platforms or hashtag strategies.
We didn't teach her a new tactic for handling objections or writing copy. We just reoriented her to what calls power back in rather than what leaks it out. And that's how her inner authority recalibrated. It's how her messaging authority recalibrated. It became captivating and slightly polarizing, and she delivered it authoritatively without apology. It's how external recognition expanded, with top organizations asking her to present and teach workshops and clients popping into her DMs, repeating her language back to her and saying that's exactly what I need. It's how personal spaciousness expanded, how she was able to truly disconnect from work and to work fewer hours, even as her revenue and business complexity increased. She reconnected with her husband and family and started a bunch of new hobbies just because it was fun. A friend of hers asked, Lisa, what's going on with you? You're glowing. And it's also how her business model expanded because she was, in fact, ready. She launched two new offer tiers, creating a business ecosystem that brought in more people than she previously had been able to help.
And this was not because she figured out some missing piece that everyone else knew, but she didn't. But it was because she could channel power that was fully hers, but previously had been dispersed and unusable. That is the shift. So when you notice yourself feeling behind, the work isn't to react to the discomfort and change everything. It's not about big changes to try and catch up quickly. It's about adjusting the underlying mechanics that are dispersing power. So here are a few examples of how to stop leaking power and regain momentum when you're feeling behind. Number one, you stop measuring from your old vantage point. You may have surpassed the version of you who set the original timeline, but you're still measuring from her expectations. Of course, it feels like you're behind. You are comparing your current knowledge and expansion to outdated projections. Instead, ask yourself, if I only measured from my current knowledge and capacity, not my original fantasy timeline, would I still call this behind or would I define it differently? Often you see that it's just your awareness about what's actually required that is finally caught up. And that is maturity, not failure. So always measure from here, not from there. Number two, narrow the decision field. So when you feel behind, your brain wants to add more options and explore new strategies. Compare yourself to more people. Reconsider everything. Do the opposite. Ask, what are the next three non-negotiable moves already on my path? Another way to phrase this is, what are the next three aligned actions already in motion? Write them down, execute them cleanly, and don't expand the field until you're in a different energy. Expansion under insecurity diffuses power. Narrowing your field and directing momentum there restores it. Number three, raise one of your standards. When you're feeling behind, it often subtly lowers your standards. You tolerate slower response times and messier boundaries and softer messaging and slightly underpriced work and half-clean decisions. So pick one standard and raise it without making it anything dramatic, without announcing it, but just knowing it and holding it. And you will feel your authority come back online.
You watch. When you raise a standard, not to prove anything, not because you're reacting, but because you can, your nervous system recalibrates to your actual level. Number four, make one clean decision. When you feel behind, your hesitation increases. So counter it directly. Make one clean, contained decision. You can do that right now. Again, I'm not talking about a huge reinvention or this dramatic pivot, just something that you've been circling.
Decisions bring your power back in-house. Hesitation disperses it. So again, feeling behind is normal. Staying there disperses power. You don't try to eliminate it from happening. You shorten the time you spend there by refocusing on activities and behaviors that reconsolidate your power. That is leadership. And this is actually the perfect moment to share something I haven't talked about here yet. I am opening a private community. It's a monthly membership focused on accessing power on demand. It's not for surface level networking or for consuming more information. No more information. It is for applying the tools we talk about on this podcast to your specific business and your circumstances. It's what I wish I'd had last year when I was in growth mode. Cause let's face it, it's challenging to see your own situation objectively when you're in the thick of it. I wasn't aware where I was leaking power versus where I was just responding to the situation at hand. But when authority consolidates, you feel the difference immediately. Decisions become obvious. You run the business instead of it running you. Time expands. Your best ideas turn into momentum rather than sitting on a shelf for later. Discipline becomes unnecessary. And we will be doing all of these things together with women who are serious about this level of leadership. It's rare to be in a room or you don't have to disguise your ambition. Where you aren't told to adopt different tactics when you've been in the game long enough to know it's really about who, not how. And where you're challenged to continuously think at a higher level by people who won't let you shrink or get buried in business or erode boundaries and standards. That's what this community is designed to be. And I'm confident of the environment and the results that we are going to create here. I'll share further details in coming episodes, including how to get an invite for this opportunity because there are going to be some entry qualifications. All right. If you enjoyed this episode, click share right now and send it to a friend who's maybe feeling a bit behind and could use some actionable steps so she can reorient quickly and stop leaking power. Until next time, remember the more power you can access, the less you react and the more momentum you create.
Episodes mentioned:
Ep 135: How Lisa Boosted Revenue & Work Life Balance Simultaneously, w/ Lisa Stryker
Work with Jenna
Decisions on Demand — A practical mini-course designed to help you make cleaner, higher-quality choices — the kind that unlock momentum, authority, and follow-through. The framework mirrors decision-making principles used in high-stakes environments, adapted for real life and business.
The Clarity Accelerator Mastermind — If you want to be surrounded by other visionary entrepreneurs while rapidly aligning your business to the conditions and strategies that let you thrive and excel naturally, this intimate mastermind will stretch you into your next level. Schedule your call today here or visit this page to find out more.
Private Coaching— If you’re craving the highest level of support, strategy, and partnership to create all the freedom, impact, and success you’re designed for, this is the space for it. Schedule your call today here.
Find Jenna on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theuncommonway/
The Uncommon Way is a leadership and business podcast for ambitious women leaders who want to operate with more power, authority, and clarity as they scale.
Hosted by business and leadership coach Jenna Harrison, this podcast focuses on high-level decision-making, clean authority, and structural leadership for women entrepreneurs and founders. Each episode explores how power stabilizes growth, how authority strengthens teams, and how scaling can become simpler — not more chaotic.
If you are a woman leader navigating growth, expansion, increased responsibility, or higher-stakes decisions, The Uncommon Way offers practical tools and grounded insight into executive-level decision-making, leadership standards, and scaling without distortion.
This is not a hustle culture podcast.
It is a power and authority podcast.
Topics include:
Decision-making for women leaders
Leadership development for founders
Authority and team stability
Scaling without overwhelm
Founder leadership psychology
Clean standards and structural growth
Whether you’re a woman entrepreneur, founder, CEO, or emerging leader, The Uncommon Way helps you operate at higher levels — without losing yourself in the process.
