The Social Selling Leadership Podcast

Income-Producing Thoughts: How Top Leaders Break the Self-Sabotage Cycle

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Episode Summary

Here’s the truth: if you keep avoiding the very actions that grow your business, nothing has gone wrong. This is a normal part of growth—especially for high-achieving leaders in network marketing navigating pressure, plateaus, or a rebuild season.

In this episode, Rachael Bodie breaks down why self-sabotage isn’t about discipline—it’s about self-protection. She walks you through how to identify the thoughts that are keeping you stuck and introduces income-producing thoughts so you can shift your mindset, take aligned action, and create real momentum in your business.

Why You Should Listen: What You’ll Learn

  • Stop Avoiding Income-Producing Activities and Start Executing
    When this skill is missing, it looks like scrolling, planning, or managing instead of actually recruiting, selling, and sponsoring. You’ll learn how to recognize self-sabotage in real time and shift into action that drives results in your network marketing business.
  • Replace Income-Blocking Thoughts With Income-Producing Thoughts
    If you haven’t developed this skill, your business is being run by thoughts like “I should be further along” or “no one wants this.” You’ll learn how to intentionally choose thoughts that create confidence, consistency, and stronger results in your recruiting system and sales.
  • Use the Think–Feel–Act Cycle to Create Consistency
    When you don’t understand this, it looks like knowing what to do but not following through. Once you apply it, everything changes because your thoughts start driving the emotions and actions required for sustainable growth and scaling your team.
  • Lead Yourself Through Resistance Instead of Waiting for Motivation
    Without this skill, it looks like starting and stopping based on how you feel. You’ll learn how to feel resistance and do it anyway—building the kind of leadership skills required for duplication, depth, and long-term success.
  • Shift From Autopilot to Intentional Leadership
    When you’re operating from your lower brain, it looks like habits, avoidance, and staying in your comfort zone. You’ll learn how to activate your higher brain so you can make decisions that align with your long-term vision and business growth.
  • Strengthen Your Identity as a Leader Who Follows Through
    When this is missing, it looks like inconsistency and self-doubt. Once you start practicing identity-based thinking, everything changes because you begin showing up as the version of you who builds a 7-figure downline with systems, structure, and consistency.

Resources Mentioned

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the Social Selling Leadership Podcast, the show for six-figure network marketers ready to scale with alignment and simple systems. I'm your host, Rachel Bodie, network marketing expert and industry veteran. Each week you'll learn the strategies and systems top leaders use to enroll high-quality recruits, create duplication in their downline, and lead with confidence. Let's dive in. Welcome back to the show. So as I'm recording this, I have my sweet little Dotson sitting on the chair. For those that don't know, I'm a dog mom. I've got, well, I'm a girl mom of two, but I've got two boy dogs and two cats, all boys. My husband's like nowhere uh estrogen in this household. So Samson, my little Dotson, is just a little over one and he's sitting on the chair sweetly. I'm gonna try and record this and hopefully he will he'll be silent. Um, but we we'll see how it goes. Well, listen, as we kick off today, I wanted to tell you guys a story because uh I was thinking about this morning as I was getting ready. I think this is um so relevant to our episode today. So yesterday, uh it was a long day. Um, it was a Monday and it's spring in Atlanta. And I don't know if you guys have experienced this, but as I've gotten older, all of a sudden I've gotten allergies out of nowhere. So I started feeling like, oh, I'm starting to feel the allergies kicking in. I had uh three one-on-one coaching calls. I just had a full day. I had some content creation and I had something on my calendar to uh go through a module in a mastermind that I'm in. I'm in an email copywriting mastermind and to write an email. And I didn't feel like it. And in that moment, I was like, I almost didn't do the thing. But then I had a moment where I'm like, you know what? Forget about your mood. You're gonna follow the plan. You are a woman, you are a leader who does what she says she's gonna do. So I allowed that resistance to it anyway. And I think that was such a hallwork of successful people is they show up and they do the thing. They have the urge to hit snooze or not get up or not follow through, but they do the thing anyway. Now, obviously, if you are someone who is on the verge of burnout and your nervous system is fried, or you got four hours of sleep last night, I'm not talking to you, right? You have to ask yourself, what is my growth? And for most people, the growth is following through when you don't feel like it. But sometimes your growth is giving yourself a nap. And this is the perfect segue into today's podcast because we're gonna talk about self-sabotage. We need to think about, you know, the last time you sat down to work your business, you're thinking about, you know, the things that you have to do. And then somehow you do everything except that thing, right? So if you if you've ever thought about why does this happen, especially as a veteran network marketer, this is exactly what we're gonna talk about. So, this idea of self-sabotage, this has been coming up a lot recently on my coaching calls. And that's what led to me wanting to record this episode on it. So I'm gonna start by defining what it is, what is self-sabotage? This this happens when you either consciously or many times unconsciously have thoughts or behaviors or habits that interfere with achieving your goal. And I actually see this a lot with top earners and veterans in network marketing. In fact, I think the more success that you've had in this industry, the more likely you are to experience this at some point. Because when you've already built something once, the pressure to do it again can create even more mind drama, even more mental friction because you're putting that pressure on yourself. And I want to give you an example of what this could look like. So maybe you are in a rebuild season in your business. You've had success in the industry, but maybe you know, recruiting has slowed down, you've hit a plateau, whether that's on your income or you're stuck at a rank. And you know the actions that would move your biz forward, right? You know things like sharing more about the business opportunity on social media and your stories, or, you know, prospecting for the business, or actually reaching out and doing one-to-one offers, presenting the business opportunity, inviting people in to experience it. But when you sit down to work, one or more of these thoughts appear. You think, I should be further along by now. What's the point? You know, no one's ever gonna work as hard as me, or, you know, uh, I'm so over dragging people along. So because you start thinking these self-sabotaging thoughts, you start to feel anxious, defeated, maybe disappointed. And those emotions typically lead to avoidance behaviors, aka self-sabotage, scrolling social media, or maybe planning instead of actually taking action, or focusing on your team and managing your team instead of you getting into phase one, which is focused on your personal business, both sales and recruiting. Or for some, sometimes you still do the activities, but it's just like showing up and going through the motions. Like you're just checking the box. Like you're posting, you're reaching out, but the energy isn't there because you're also, as you're showing up to do these things, you're comparing or you're overthinking or you're beating yourself up. So the thing I want you to hear here, this is so important, because a lot of times people think self-sabotage is about self-discipline, but it's not. It's not that you're lazy, it's not that there's something wrong with you. It's actually about self-protection. And this has to do with how our brains are wired. And today I'm going to give you a tool that I use with top burners to help break this cycle, something I call income-producing thoughts. And this is why this is so important. There's something called the motivational triad. So, this is actually how our brains work. Our brains are wired to do three things to move towards what feels good. Our brain is skate is looking for pleasure, to avoid pain, and to conserve energy by doing things as efficiently as possible. So essentially repeating patterns. And that actually serves us, it served us really well, and it's very important for survival. But it's not very helpful when you're trying to grow a business and step outside your comfort zone, right? Our brains are wired for survival, not success. And when it comes to avoiding pain, your brain is going to try and protect you. It wants to protect you from rejection, from failure, from criticism. But those are the exact things that success requires. These are the very things you need to move towards to be able to scale your network marketing business. So your brain creates this friction between knowing and doing. And I love this. I was thinking back to something my coach told me once. She said, to know and not do is to not know. I just thought that was so powerful because so many of us, we know the thing intellectually. We're like, yeah, I know the thing, but you don't believe it deeply enough to act on it. You don't embody it. So when this happens, the question that a lot of us ask is, why am I doing this? Why am I sabotaging? What is wrong with me? But a better question to ask is, what story am I telling myself that's leading to me showing up this way? What am I believing? Because high-quality questions lead to high-quality answers. Actually, uh, my former boss, John Maxwell, wrote a book, Good leaders ask great questions. So the quality of your life can be determined by the questions you ask. And curiosity is the starting point here. So instead of judging yourself, you want to get curious because getting curious means really looking at and figuring out what's going on here. Right? What uh and at the most basic level, let me even back up, your brain can be divided into two parts, your lower brain and your higher brain. And your lower brain, sometimes called your lizard brain, your animal brain, that's where habits live. And that part of your brain is wired for instant gratification, comfort, keeping you safe, the motivational triad, right? But the part that makes us human is our higher brain, the prefrontal cortex. And the higher brain is where change happens. This is where there's logic and long-term thinking and leadership and intentional decisions live. But here's the key: when self-sabotage is happening, it's it's typically because you're operating on autopilot. That's the lower brain taking over. But when you create curiosity, you create awareness, you can interrupt the pattern and activate your higher brain to choose a different path forward. So this is really the starting point for shifting out of self-sabotage and overcoming it is taking radical responsibility for your mindset, for what you're believing, your um, your inner self-talk or your inner narrative. So I want to give you a real life example. So I was in a rebuild season. Um, I had a lot of success in my business, and I took my foot off the gas in terms of focusing on my personal business. And I went into management mode. And I remember sitting down one day in the morning, knowing exactly what I needed to do. I had to get back into momentum. I had to do business reach outs, nothing complicated, right? Just invites. And I already had a list of people to reach out to. My brain started going haywire, telling me, maybe you should check the team chat. You should probably get ideas for content. Or I can't believe I'm back here again. I'm judging myself. And all of a sudden, I found myself doing everything except the actual thing that would move my business forward. And I remember catching myself in that moment and thinking, you know what? I know exactly what to do. My brain is just trying to protect me, of course. It's trying to protect me from discomfort, from someone saying no, from judgment, from rejection. And in that moment, I had a shift because it wasn't like, it wasn't about, you know, something's wrong with me. It was just, hey, okay, I'm having resistance. I can feel this resistance and do it anyway. Which, by the way, this is the very first example of an income-producing thought. It's a new story that's going to allow you to show up in a way where you can move forward and do the thing you know you need to do and you want to do. And so what I want to offer to you is the next time you notice a moment where you know the thing to do, you're sitting down to do it, but you you don't do it, pause and notice. Create awareness. This is uh an opportunity to show yourself something really important, to tune in to what you're believing and notice how you're feeling. You know, I love to think about strong uh negative emotions as almost like a check engine light on a car. It's an indication that you're believing something that isn't serving you. Right. So in that moment, you feel that emotion and you ask, okay, what am I believing? And this is important because what you believe about yourself and your business is what you will make true about your business. That's the way confirmation bias works, right? You're whatever you're believing, your brain starts scanning the environment looking for evidence to prove those thoughts true. Which this is why it's so important to become aware of the self-sabotaging self-talk and start to intentionally shift it. So the self-sabotage, those thoughts, I call those income blocking thoughts. It could be I don't have enough time, nobody wants to join me, I'm not a good leader. You know, income blocking thoughts are the stories that are running our business when we're not getting the result that we want to get. They're the stories that we tell ourselves that lead to self-sabotage. So if you want to change the results in your business, you've got to start with changing the way you think. Because the difference between leaders who plateau at 10K months and the leaders who build to 30, 40, 50 K plus months, it's not always just about different strategies. It's that those top leaders think differently when it's time to work. And that's because your thoughts, your beliefs create how you feel, and those feelings drive your actions. And some, and those actions, how you show up, that's ultimately what creates your results. This is the think, feel, act cycle. And I didn't create this. This has been around for a very long time. It's the foundation of high-performance psychology, of cognitive, behavioral psychology. You know, cognitive is what you think, behavioral is what you do. It's also biblical. So for my Jesus girls out there, when you think about Romans 12, 2, it talks about not conforming to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And you do that by creating awareness, taking those thoughts captive, and renewing your mind with something that is true. So the crux of all this is if you want to permanently shift your results, you can't just shift your actions. You have to shift the root cause of your actions, your beliefs, because your beliefs drive behaviors. So you've heard of income-producing activities, right? IPAs. Everyone, everyone in the industry talks about IPAs. But today I want to talk about IPTs, income-producing thoughts, right? This is something that no one's talking about. And these are the thoughts that you intentionally practice believing when you sit down to work your business so you can show up feeling more confident, more purposeful, more empowered, more in control. Because it's not just what you do in your business, it's the energy behind your actions.

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Right?

SPEAKER_00

If you sit down to recruit and you're thinking nobody wants this, I'm not a good leader, I don't have an effective onboarding system, you are going to have very different energy than if you're thinking, I know how to create clients, someone's praying for this, someone's ready to make a decision to change her life today. So just like you would lay your workout clothes out the night before to prepare for the next day, I'd like to think about our thoughts the same way, income-producing thoughts. You lay out the thoughts that you want to think on purpose. You predecide what you want to think and who you want to be before you sit down to work your business. So I'm going to share six income-producing thoughts for you to try on and practice believing this is for my own work and building two businesses to seven figures, and then coaching over 85 six and seven figure earners in the space who are my clients. So the key though, here is to try on these thoughts and see how they feel. Thoughts are like close. You know, may look really good on the Hager, but you have to try it on, or vice versa. It may be like so-so mid, and then you you put it on, and it's amazing. I'll never forget. Um, a couple of years ago, I flew to Chicago to meet with a stylist because I was having a brand shoe. It was such an incredible experience. And she had all the clothes, you know, lined up on this rack. I mean, it was so fun. And there was a red blazer, and I thought, eh, it's mid. I put that blazer on and it was like something activated. It's one of my favorite blazers. It is that orangey red, my favorite color from Alice and Olivia. And the thoughts are the same way, right? It's not the thought that's magic, it's putting it on and then how you feel when you think it. It's that connection from thinking to embodying, feeling in your body. Okay, so let's start with the first one. I already shared it with you, but I'm gonna share it again. I can feel the resistance and do it anyway. You can even swap out, I can feel the fear and do it anyway. You're gonna have resistance. Okay, when you're when you want to scale your business, your brain is gonna offer you all kinds of reasons not to do the thing, to sleep in, to skip the power hour, to not reach out to that dream team member. That is so totally normal. And you're allowed to feel the resistance. But the key is allowing that urge, that resistance to be there and doing the thing anyway. Exactly the example I shared, you know, at the beginning of the podcast. Forget the mood, follow the plan. Because when you do this, you're letting your pre-fort frontal cortex lead. That part of your brain that knows what's best for your future. And every time you act in spite of your resistance, your identity expands. You are actually being that future version of you. And you start to become that next level version of yourself. And that is where confidence is built. Because honestly, the worst thing that can happen is a feeling. Okay, number two, the more me I am, the more I attract my people, my aka, my dream team. The thing is, your dream team isn't attracted to perfection, they're attracted to you. But in order for them to be magnetized to you, you have to show up and be visible, be seen. So that looks like face-to-camera on stories, going live, doing talking reels, right? The more you show yourself and your face, the better. But it's also about letting people see the real you, being vulnerable and sharing the quirky things that make you you. You know, years ago, uh, when I probably like a couple years into my business, I remember I would, I went on stories and I recorded a couple stories and there was rap music in the background. There was cursing. And I deleted the stories because I didn't want to be judged. I thought people are gonna think I'm not a good Christian because I'm listening to some baby with some F-bombs. But that wasn't even that wasn't who I was. I was deleting my authenticity. I listened to that kind of music, right? So we've got to show up and allow ourselves to be seen. Another example of that, uh, back in December of last year, I had plastic surgery. And I wasn't planning to share, and then I decided, you know what? I'm gonna share the whole journey. And you guys, I came on right after the surgery. I still had anesthesia in my system and I was talking to the camera and showing, and I had serious bruises, and it was wild and pretty hilarious too, because I was still you know heavily medicated. But over the course of the next, you know, two to three weeks, I shared the behind the scenes and it created so many conversation and so much connection because I was just showing up with a willingness to share what was true for me. Okay, number three. My five are in my network watching. And I'm you can put in whatever number you want here, but the whole premise is thinking about showing up as if your three or five or two dream team members were already watching. If you believed that they were watching you and they were in your network, how would you show up on stories? What stories would you share? What type of energy and purpose and excitement would you have? Versus a lot of times when, you know, I'm coaching people, it's like, oh, it's the same people watching my stories, same people that are showing up, instead of no, my dream team member is silently watching me. Because the truth is, most people watch before they interact. I mean, I was a lurker. I I've stopped my upline for two months before I ever liked or commented on anything. So it's really shifting into that energy and believing that they're in your network watching and someone is ready to say yes today. Because when you believe someone's watching and is ready to say yes, you show up differently. Your voice has certainty, your invitations have energy. And that energy is magnetic and sellless and recruits on your behalf. So for the next seven days, I want you to consider showing up like your dream team member is already watching you, because she likely is. Okay, number four, I am an example of what's possible. Because this is true. I don't even have to know you or your story. The fact you're listening to this podcast, you are someone who values growth. You are someone who has dreams, who wants to create something for your life. You are proof of what's possible. Your story, your lived experience. And because of that, people want to work with you. Not me, not your upline, not your sideline, right? They see something in you that they want for themselves. And the truth is, a lot of times we we worry about what if I don't know this or don't know that. Listen, even if you don't have the answer, you can figure it out. Right? You can be, you can be confident that you're someone who's willing to figure it out. So this is this wasn't one of the thoughts, but another side thought that I just had that I used to say to myself all the time, I trust my ability to figure it out. Because when you believe this, you start showing up with that dream mentor energy, and that energy doesn't just impact your business. That pours over into every area of your life, right? This idea of being an example of what's possible in your business, yes, but in your health, in your marriage as a parent, such a powerful thought. How would you show up if you believe that was true, that you are an example of what's possible? Number five, God is directing my steps. This is a powerful one because I don't know about you, but I'm a girl who likes the plan. And um I like to be in control of what's happening. And sometimes we want the entire plan for many of us. We want to see what's step 27, but we're only in step two. And the truth is, you don't need the whole path. You need just the very next step. There's been so many moments I've had to remind myself, okay, I have the Holy Spirit of the living God inside of me directing my steps. I don't have to have it all figured out. I just need to take the next right action. So, what is that next step? Trusting that God is directing your steps. And then number six, I am creating the team everyone wants to be a part of. When you have this belief, you are become someone who's not chasing. You are creating an environment that people want to join. You're casting vision, you're inviting boldly, you're overcoming objections because you believe in what's possible for the other person. And you're attracting people in who have a desire and willingness to work because you're believing that you have an environment, a team that everyone wants to be a part of. And it's so important. This concept of energy is so important because a lot of people are out there recruiting with low energy or almost apologetically, like I'm not trying to sell you or embarrassed. And if you're not excited, no one else will be either. I think I mentioned we're re-watching Breaking Bad. It's kind of like people feel like they're doing a drug deal. It's like, oh, do you want to think you may want to look at this business? Because that low energy kills belief transfer. And especially with recruiting, recruiting, you are selling an intangible, you're selling possibility. It's not something that someone can see. So it is majorly about the transfer of belief. So you have got to have that belief.

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So

SPEAKER_00

So I am creating the team that everyone wants to be a part of. Start looking for the ways this is true and show up and share this in your marketing. By sharing in your marketing, these are the type of dream mentor signals that are going to put out content to attract in the people who you want to work with. So, how do we leverage this concept of income-producing thoughts to create a breakthrough in your business? It starts with uh practicing these intentionally. Write them down, say them out loud that activates a different part of your brain. Put them on a phone screensaver, write them on a sticky note. I have sticky notes all over the place. Because the goal isn't just about thinking these thoughts, it's about tuning in to be uh to believing them and being that version of you. It's connecting to the feeling and the emotion associated with the belief. And then this part's important. It's not just about changing your mindset, it's about taking inspired action. Those two pieces together, shifting your identity, what you're believing, and taking inspired action. This is the recipe to create momentum. Because it's strategy alone doesn't create momentum. Otherwise, we'd all be seven bigger earners, right? It's the thoughts running your business that always create the results in your business. And this is why income-producing thoughts matter. Because when you change the thought, you change the feeling. When you shift how you feel, you shift how you're showing up. And those actions change the result. Here's the thing that's important to name two. This isn't a one-time thing. It's not a one and done. You will have to redirect your thoughts again and again. It took a long time to create these income blocking thoughts. So we're gonna have to take time to rewire these new neural pathways. Uh, one of the books that John, uh, my former boss wrote, uh, The Laws of Leadership, one of the laws is called the law of process. And it says leaders develop daily, not in a day. The same thing is true with renewing your mind or managing your mindset, shifting your mindset. This no sink, no one single activity is gonna change your life. This shift, the growth is gonna happen through repeated practice, then taking that action and rinsing and repeating. So here's what I want you to do during your next work block. So before your next work block, number one, ask yourself, what's the number one income blocking thought that has been running your business lately? And this is a thought that is creating a result that you don't want. And then number two, choose one of the income-producing thoughts from this episode. Put it on a sticky, put it on a screensaver, and I want you to practice believing it again and again. Tune in, say it out loud, tune into how you feel, and from there sit down and work your business. And I'm telling you, this will be transformational because the leaders who scale their businesses aren't the ones who never feel resistance. They're the ones who choose to think differently to have enough courage to show up and do the work anyway. Okay, guys, I'll see you in the next episode. If you're a six-leader network marketing leader and you know your recruiting and duplication systems need a revamp, this is exactly the work I do in my private one-on-one recruiting. I help established leaders become the mentor their dream team is looking for so that growth becomes duplicatable, scalable, and sustainable without the burnout. If this episode resonated, you can apply for a free mini session using the link in the show notes. We'll look at your current systems and goals, identify what's actually creating the ceiling in your business, and map out the top three shifts that will position you to double your monthly income.