https://www.motivaction.academy/

Academy of MotivAction, Austin, TX (2026)

09/09/2026

Have you ever been quietly furious at someone who has no idea they did anything wrong?

You walk in after a brutal day. Someone asks how it went. You say “fine”, and then resent them for believing you. You wanted them to see through it. To get up. To know what you meant without you having to say it.

I’ve run that move more times than I’d like to admit.

Here’s the part most of us won’t say out loud: it’s not just that we don’t tell people what we need. Half the time, we don’t actually know. We’ve never slowed down long enough to figure out what being supported or respected actually looks like to us — specifically. So we can’t hand anyone the handbook. Because we never wrote it. Not even for ourselves.

And this doesn’t stay at home. It’s the manager frustrated her team won’t “take initiative”, who never defined what initiative looks like here. It’s the leader who feels unappreciated for late nights nobody knew he was working.
That’s not a people problem. That’s an unspoken expectation. And they are not the same thing.

There’s a line I keep coming back to: 𝘂𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗸𝗲𝗻 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁.

So before you decide someone doesn’t care: who in your life has been failing a test they never saw?

https://motivaction.academy/post/unspoken-expectations

09/02/2026

I was raised to lead. Dancing taught me to follow. And that taught me more about leadership than any title ever did.

I always loved dancing. My uncle is a professional dancer, and as a girl I admired him endlessly. But I never got to take classes. My mother believed it was more important to be smart than to know how to move your body.

So I became smart.

I led people. I ran businesses. I became the one with the answers, who held the frame and kept everyone moving forward.

And then I burned out. The quiet kind, where you're still functioning and delivering, but somewhere underneath you've gone numb.

When I finally asked myself what made me happy, the answer was simple. Dancing.

So I went back. Country, ballroom, a bit of everything. Not professionally. For joy. For me.

Because dancing is the one place I let go of control. And that's where this stops being about dance and becomes about leadership.

On the dance floor, the woman who spent her life leading has to learn to follow. Following isn't weakness. It requires you to stop anticipating, let go of the outcome, and trust someone else to hold the frame.

There's a dancer I follow, .em.portugal, who named something I'd felt for years. What we call a "difficult follower," she said, is sometimes just someone whose body has learned not to trust easily. They're not resisting. They're protecting.

I immediately thought about every "difficult" person I've ever led.

The team member who over-controls, won't delegate, or braces against feedback. We call them resistant. But sometimes they're protecting themselves for reasons that have nothing to do with us.

I know, because I've been the difficult follower. Gripping too hard and afraid to get it wrong because my whole life trained me to control.

So maybe the question isn't "why is she difficult?"

Maybe it's: what does she need to feel safe enough to follow and flow?

That's not a dance question. It's a leadership question.

My mother was half right. Being smart built my career. But learning to follow taught me to lead.

Full post: https://academyofmotivaction.com/post/raised-to-lead-learning-to-follow

With gratitude to .em.portugal for the language. Her original reel: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZZ2fYmsq8b/

08/26/2026

My daughter made me scrambled eggs. They were too salty. I told her the truth and didn't eat them.
What happened next taught me something about all of us.
She'd been practicing for days. She even remembered I don't like my eggs milky, and got that part perfect. But this time she went heavy on the salt. She knew it, too.
I like my food plain. So when she handed me the plate, I had a choice.
I think ten steps ahead; it's just how I'm wired, so in the space of one forkful I ran every scenario. Tell the truth? Soften it? Eat it and say nothing? Say it's too salty but eat it anyway to protect her feelings?
I decided to be honest.
"Thank you for making this for me. It's too salty. I'm not going to eat it."
Am I a bad mom for that? That was the fear.
She just said, "Okay." Finished the plate herself. I made myself something else.
Later, I asked her: did I hurt your feelings? "No. Absolutely not."
Here's what she didn't do. She didn't decide she was bad at cooking. She didn't decide her mom doesn't like her food. She didn't turn it into a story about her worth.
She heard it as exactly what it was. Too much salt. Mom doesn't like salt. That's why she didn't eat it. A simple fact, received cleanly and set down without weight.
Then I started thinking about how rare that is.
Someone gives you food, you say it's good, whether you mean it or not. Someone asks "is it good?" while quietly praying you won't actually answer. And we feel we can't be honest, because we're afraid the other person can't handle it.
So we lie. And we give the lie a flattering name. We call it politeness. Kindness. Being nice.
But when we soften the truth to protect someone's feelings, we're usually protecting ourselves. From their reaction. From the discomfort. And underneath it is a quiet insult we'd never say out loud: we've decided they're too fragile to hear the truth.
My twelve-year-oldjust proved that assumption wrong.
I've also sat at the table where someone said "I don't like this," and the cook came apart. "Fine. Cook for yourself, then." As if my not liking the food were a verdict on their worth.
It isn't. Me not liking your food doesn't mean you can't cook. It means I didn't like it today. I'm not asking you to change. I'm just telling you how I feel, without any wish to hurt you.
The problem is never the honesty. It's that we've been trained to hear an opinion as a verdict.
I hope my daughter keeps her honesty. And I know I owe her one more lesson: that not everyone out there is ready to receive it as cleanly as she gave it to me.
Full post: https://motivaction.academy/post/too-salty

08/19/2026

A while back, I took my daughter to an ophthalmologist.

One of her eyes has perfect vision. The other is quite the opposite. Naturally, I wanted to know what was wrong.

They ran every test. And the conclusion surprised me. Nothing was wrong. No illness, no condition, no disease. One eye simply sees one way, and the other sees another.

That's her normal.

Four words stuck with me long after we left: This is just her. Not a problem to fix. Not a deviation to correct. Just the way she's built.

It sent me down a longer road of thinking, because "normal" turns out to be a slippery thing.

As human beings, we are remarkably similar. And at the same time, every one of us is profoundly unique, right down to our physiology. I spent most of my life being told I have low blood pressure, until one day it clicked: what everyone else calls low is simply my normal. Nothing is wrong with it. It just isn't the average.

That's the trap hiding inside the word. We use "normal" as if it describes a standard everyone should meet. But most of the time it only describes an average. And an average is not a target.

Those definitions aren't even fixed. Cholesterol ranges have been revised over the years. Blood pressure thresholds have shifted. What counted as healthy in one decade sat outside the line in the next.

Sometimes it's better science. Sometimes experts disagree about where to draw a threshold on a spectrum with no natural edges. But it's worth asking: when the definition of normal shifts, who benefits from where the new line lands? I don't have the answer. I just think the question deserves to be asked.

Now take that same instinct, measuring a body against an average and calling the difference a problem, and notice how constantly we apply it to people.

We decide there's a normal amount of ambition, a normal way to grieve, a normal pace, a normal way to show emotion. And when someone falls outside our range, we quietly conclude something is wrong with them.

But what if nothing is? What if, like my daughter's eyes, that's just how they're built?

Even if someone's normal is different from yours, how is that a problem? We collapse "different" into "wrong" so fast we never notice we did it. Different is not a problem. It's just different.

If you lead people, this isn't abstract. The team member you've labeled "difficult" or "too much" is often just someone whose normal doesn't match the average you've quietly set as the standard.

The best leaders I know don't have the strictest definition of normal. They're curious enough to ask what someone's normal actually is, and secure enough not to need everyone to match.

Because people are not deviations from an average. They're individuals.

Full post: https://motivaction.academy/post/what-is-normal

08/12/2026

Have you ever built the perfect morning routine — and then quietly started to dread it?
I did. Journal, meditate, gratitude, workout, read, visualize. Every single morning, for years. I loved it.
Then I fell off. A day. A week. Months of sporadic. And the inner critic showed up right on schedule — that itty-bitty-sh*tty committee, certain that falling off meant something was wrong with me.
I was on a call with a coach I trust, spiraling about exactly this. She asked me to walk her through the whole routine, start to finish. When I finished, she paused — and said one sentence that loosened something in my chest before my brain caught up.
Here’s what I finally understood: those routines weren’t wrong. They worked. Eight, ten years ago, they pulled me out of some real storms. But I’m not that person anymore.
What if you no longer have the same capacity for the things that once saved you? Not because you’re broken. Because you’ve changed — and the structure that held you then was never meant to be a life sentence.
Recovery is personal. Capacity is personal. We hand people the playbook that worked for us and call it help. And when it doesn’t fit, we let them believe the problem is them.
It isn’t.
Read the full post:
https://motivaction.academy/post/the-dread-of-my-morning-routine

07/29/2026

The badge-of-honor version of exhaustion is one of the hardest patterns to interrupt in law enforcement, mostly because it looks identical to dedication from the outside.

Talk to veterans across the profession and you hear a common realization. Most officers spend years believing that feeling constantly switched on, drained, and hypervigilant is just the price of admission. They drill tactics, physical response, and rapid decision-making to survive the 12-hour shift. But almost nobody gives them a practical framework for what happens when they drive home and try to turn work mode off.

When high-stress reactions become your default, what kept you safe on duty quietly starts eroding your home life, your health, and your longevity.

That is why we created “Beyond the Badge”. This is not a generic wellness lecture or a check-the-box class. It is a 2-day debrief on the actual neurobiology running your shift, giving officers concrete tools to protect their careers, safeguard their personal lives, and reach retirement whole.

We are bringing this 16-hour TCOLE credit training to Central Texas this September.

Course Details:
Date: Wed-Thurs, 9/23rd–24th, 2026
Time: 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Location: Round Rock Public Safety Training Center, Round Rock Texas
Credits: 16 Hours TCOLE Eligible

If you are a sworn officer in Central Texas who is ready to build sustainable career longevity, reserve your spot at MotivAction.Academy/beyond-the-badge

07/29/2026

We canceled my kids' martial arts membership. Not because of the price. Because of what the price started to feel like.
I love supporting local businesses. And as someone who works with business owners, I understand revenue better than most. If you're not making money, you can't serve anyone. So this isn't a story about a business charging too much.
It's a story about what happens when money quietly becomes the only thing that matters.
The tuition was fair. $300 for both kids, average for the industry. I was happy to pay it.
Then it started to shift.
The required equipment kept changing. Every six to eight weeks, sometimes more, fifty dollars at a time. Then ranking tests every eight weeks, each with a fee. And if you didn't pay for the test, your child didn't advance. Their belt stayed the same color while every other kid moved up.
Kids notice that. So you pay. Not because they earned it in any measurable way, but because they'll feel left behind if you don't.
And here's the part that told me everything. Everybody passed. Every time. The test was never really about technique. The belt was the receipt.
The staff were lovely. This isn't about bad people. But the longer we stayed, the clearer it became: the tuition wasn't the business. The add-ons were. We'd stopped being members and become a revenue stream.
Here's the lesson every business owner should sit with.
Nobody at that studio woke up and decided to build a money machine. It happened the way it always happens. Slowly. One reasonable-sounding revenue decision at a time. A new equipment requirement. A more frequent testing schedule. A cancellation process that protects the bottom line. Each defensible on its own. Together, they changed what the business felt like to be a customer of.
That's the trap. The shift from serving customers to extracting from them almost never announces itself. It creeps in through a hundred small choices that each make sense on a spreadsheet and quietly erode the one thing you can't get back: trust.
Customers rarely leave over price. They leave when the value stops matching it. They leave when a relationship starts to feel like a transaction. And by then, no discount brings them back.
Profit and care aren't opposites. The best businesses are profitable precisely because customers trust they're being looked after, not looked at as a line item.
So the question worth asking, over and over, isn't just "how do we grow revenue?" It's "what does this decision feel like on the other side of the counter?"
Your customers are keeping score on that. Whether you are or not.
Full post: https://motivaction.academy/post/when-money-comes-first

07/22/2026

It's the middle of the year. Which makes this the most honest moment you'll get.
Not January, when everything felt possible. Not December, when you'll be too tired to think straight. Right now, the unglamorous middle, where the year has stopped being a plan and started being your actual life.
Whatever is draining you is draining you today. It's running right now, and you can still feel exactly where it lives in your body.
So while it's live, ask the question. What is actually draining you this year?
Not what's keeping you busy. What's draining you. There's an enormous difference, and almost nobody stops long enough to find it.
Here's what I've watched, over and over, in rooms full of accomplished women.
Sometimes it wasn't the workload. It was the expectations you kept trying to meet, most of which nobody ever actually asked of you.
Sometimes it wasn't the meetings. It was never once scheduling space for yourself.
Sometimes it wasn't the deadlines. It was saying yes out of fear of disappointing someone, then quietly resenting the yes you gave.
Sometimes it wasn't the stress. It was carrying emotional labor that no one ever acknowledged.
Sometimes it wasn't the team. It was taking responsibility for things that were never yours to carry, and calling it leadership.
Sometimes it wasn't the pace. It was living at a speed your nervous system never agreed to.
And sometimes it wasn't burnout at all. It was the belief that rest had to be earned.
Read that last one again. Because if rest is something you earn, you will never have enough of it. There is always more to produce first. That belief outruns every boundary you set and follows you onto a beach.
Now here's why I'm writing this in July and not December.
Most women wait. They push through, promise to sort it out over the holidays, then sit down in the last week of the year to figure out what went wrong.
By then it's too late to see clearly. A depleted mind doesn't investigate. It protects. It smooths the year into something manageable and hands you fresh goals built on a story that isn't quite true.
You cannot perform an honest autopsy on a year while you're still bleeding from it.
Planning without reflecting doesn't produce a new year. It produces the same year with new goals attached. The pattern doesn't care what your goals are. It takes whatever you give it and converts it into another year of proving.
There's a particular woman I keep meeting. By every visible measure she is winning. And she is surviving her own success. Ending each year more hollowed out than the last, then starting the next one by asking how to achieve more.
What would shift if you began a year with clarity instead of exhaustion?
It's July. The pattern is running right now. You can still feel it.
Full post: https://motivaction.academy/post/it-wasnt-the-workload

07/15/2026

I teach this. And then someone asked me the question. And I wasn't ready.
This week some interesting opportunities came to our attention. The kind that come with questions I personally coach my business clients on:
What do you truly want? What does the business look like at the end? Do you want to sell? What does an exit look like for you?
I was not quite ready to answer them for myself.
We're still a young business. I'd told myself those questions would come later. I didn't expect to need that clarity this soon.
But what came up in the process of trying to answer them was more interesting than the questions themselves.

Jen, my business partner, coded her core value as autonomy. I coded lifestyle.
Those two words said everything.
I know what it's like to work 40 to 80 hours a week with no days off. Always on. For family, for business, usually both at the same time. I've lived there.
And I have no desire to go back.
The hustle culture that gets promoted everywhere, the work more, grind more narrative, that's not what I built MotivAction around. I built it around energy. Around lifestyle. Around the way I actually want to live.
I built a schedule where I don't have to rush in the morning. I send my kids to school. I go to the gym. I have a slow breakfast. Then I do the work. I can work from anywhere, and I have. The business was designed to support that life, not the other way around.
And then someone asked me: How much money would it take for you to change how you work right now?
I couldn't answer it. I sat with it. I turned it over. I tried to find a number.
I couldn't put a dollar sign on the freedom of the lifestyle I've built.
That surprised me. And it told me something about what I've built and what it means to me.
If you're a business owner, there are probably questions you're deferring too. Exit strategy. Long-term vision. What you actually want the business to give you, not just financially but in how you live.
We defer them because we're busy. Because it feels premature. Because the moment doesn't feel right.
But those questions don't wait for a convenient time. They show up when an opportunity knocks and you suddenly realize you don't know how to answer the most basic question: Is this what I want?
Know your values before someone else forces the question.
I teach this. And this week I had to learn it again for myself.
Full post: https://motivaction.academy/post/i-teach-this

07/08/2026

I spent two weeks on the elemental diet learning one thing above everything else.

Listen to your body over the prescription.

I kept that agreement every single day. Three shakes some days, five on others. Never six. Every time — the right call.

Then reintroduction started.

And within seven days I had broken the agreement completely. Not dramatically. In the quiet, familiar way patterns reassert themselves when you think you've outgrown them.

I had sensed all along that two weeks might not be enough for me. I felt it. And I overrode it anyway — defaulted to the protocol, filed my own knowing under probably just fear talking, and moved forward on schedule.

Day seven, everything came crashing down quietly. The hyper-vigilance of monitoring every bite. The visual struggle as food came back into my body. The shame spiral. And underneath all of it — the recognition of a pattern I know well.

Trusting the expert over myself. Again.

On the blog this week I share what reintroduction actually cost me, what I did on day seven, and what this whole journey has been trying to show me underneath the gut health story.

Read it here: https://motivaction.academy/post/sibo-journey-part-4-reintroduction

Academy of MotivAction

09/09/2026

09/02/2026

08/26/2026

08/19/2026

08/12/2026

07/29/2026

07/29/2026

07/22/2026

07/15/2026

07/08/2026

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Featured

Share

Category

Listing takedown request