The Real Reason Things Stall Right Before the Next Level - ep. 221

You’re clear on what you want. You’re capable, experienced, and "not waiting for permission".

So why does momentum slow down right when it’s time to make a move that actually matters?

In this episode of the Limitless Life Podcast, we’re unpacking the real reason things stall right before the next level, and why labeling it as “fear of success” misses what’s actually happening underneath.

If you’ve ever felt excited, aligned, and ready… but you noticed hesitation or delay when things became real, this episode will help you understand why, without pathologizing it or turning it into another thing to fix.

Inside this episode, we explore:

• Why unrecognized fear often increases as success, visibility, and responsibility grow

• The difference between conceptual fear, emotional fear, and survival-level fear

• Why survival fear doesn’t stop action — it quietly downshifts momentum

• How your system evaluates whether the next level is safe to hold, not just reach

• Why intentions and clarity don’t stick when sustainability hasn’t recalibrated

• How to observe where things slow down without judgment or self-sabotage

This episode also sets the foundation for a new live workshop I’m hosting called The 20 Fears on Feb 12, 2026

It's a FREE 2-hour diagnostic experience designed to help you identify the subconscious and energetic patterns that shape your decisions, timing, and follow-through long before you’re aware of them....registration opens soon.

If you’re recognizing yourself in this conversation and want support seeing what’s really shaping your timing and follow-through, you can book a free Subconscious Strategy Session wth me

And if you want to stay connected between episodes, connect with me over on Instagram: @_brendajohnston

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Welcome back to the Limitless Life Podcast, or welcome if you are new here. I'm your host, Brenda Johnston, and I hope that if you live in a place where it's cold and wintery, you are staying warm. Because let me tell you, we are currently having the worst winter symptoms that I have experienced in at least I would say, I don't know, 14 years or so. It's crazy. I'm bundled up in a nice cozy turtleneck as I record this, and there's something about that that always makes me feel a little sassy. So buckle up because today I want to talk about something I see showing up again and again and again for powerful, capable people. Yes, you. I'm talking to you. You know what you want to do. You're not an experienced, and you're not sitting around waiting for permission, like everybody likes to say, oh, you're waiting for permission. No. You probably do feel a little overwhelmed right now. You might be having a harder time making decisions because things are crazy. We do have a lot of people and programs out there selling things that don't necessarily deliver on the claims that they're making. So there's there's a trust recession. I've talked about it before. And I know that you're having these moments of, hmm, I know what I want to do. So why does this keep slowing down right when I get to this point? I know this because I've had those moments too. And there's a reason that things tend to slow down right when it's time to make a move. I'm not talking about any move. I'm talking about making those moves that actually matter. And it's absolutely not because you're afraid of success. That has become such a convenient explanation for things because, you know, it sounds really insightful without requiring much understanding of what's actually going on. What's happening is a lot more subtle than just being afraid of success, okay? Something underneath, something running in your unconscious and your energetics, is checking whether what you are about to do is actually safe for you to hold. And that's why when people talk about fear, in my opinion, it's usually wrong. We tend to treat fear as something only emotional or only psychological or something that you know you overcome. What's that old saying? Fear, face everything and rise. I think that's what it is. But the way I see it, fear is more like a regulator. It's a signal about capacity, or it can be a signal to say, ooh, we need to address something here. It's like the check engine light in your car comes on. And it's why you can feel very clear and very inspired and even excited, and still notice you have this hesitation or delay right when things start to become very real. And it's not that you don't want the thing, it's that some part of your system is literally checking to make sure it's all good to move forward, and that you have the energetic capacity to move forward. And to add to all of this, part of the confusion when it comes to fear comes from the fact that most people talk about fear as though it's um like one thing. It's not. Fear actually operates at different levels, and each level behaves totally differently. One level is conceptual fear, that's the fear in the mind, the stories, the projections, the what-ifs. It's the kind of fear that you can usually reason with it. You can think your way through it or journal about it, coach it, self-coach it, reframe it. And for a lot of you listening, you've already done a lot of that work, which is why conceptual fear usually isn't the thing actually stopping you anymore. And then you have the emotional fear level, and this is the fear that you feel. It can show up as anxiousness or anticipation, like you feel you literally feel yourself contracting. An emotional fear is going to respond to reassurance, feeling safe, feeling regulated, and it usually moves, moves along when you feel supported. And again, many of you have learned how to work with that layer of fear. You can soothe it, you can stay present with it, you can do the things, which is why it's frustrating when the pattern that you're working with or dealing with still shows up, anyways. And then there's survival fear, and this one's different because survival fear it isn't interested in logic or reassurance, it doesn't respond to mindset shifts or emotional processing. The only question that survival fear has is this safe enough to sustain? Like, can we can we keep going like this? Are we safe? And back in the olden days when we used to be chased by dinosaurs or cybertooth tigers, survival fear came in pretty handy. This is the layer that regulates energy and capacity and timing, and it decides how much you do, how fast you move, how consistently you can stay in motion once you start. And this is the fear that usually gets missed because survival fear doesn't usually stop your actions completely. You're still doing the things, and you can be highly capable, very accomplished, pretty successful. You can build a life, a business, a reputation, a body of work that really does work, and survival fear can still be very present. And that's because survival fear isn't responding to your past success, okay? It's responding to future exposure. It's not asking, have you been able to handle this before? It's asking, can this level be held consistently without costing something? Survival fear usually becomes much more active as your success increases. It doesn't become less active. And because with success comes more responsibility, visibility, expectations, more demand on your time, your energy, your nervous system. Your system will think, oh MG, are we gonna burn out again? It's it's calculating everything, it's asking and scanning and checking. Okay, if I keep going at this level, if I say yes to this next step, if this becomes normal instead of the exception, what is this going to cost me? And when survival fear is active, it does not usually slam the brakes. It'll downshift you, it'll slow you down, it'll pull back from what feels like maybe it's too big of an ask, even if your desire is strong to do the thing. That's why so many people have issues with the whole new level, new devil thing, or making substantially more money than they've ever made. And this is the point, and also it's why. Telling a successful woman that she's just afraid of success is not only just inaccurate, in my opinion, but it's fucking lazy. She's not afraid of succeeding, she's not assessing whether the next level is sustainable without self-sacrifice. Survival fear is very intelligent. The problem isn't that it's there, the problem is that when we try to override it with mindset or motivation or more identity work instead of actually understanding what it's responding to, that's where the problem is. And this is especially relevant right now. Because as we move into this new lunar new year, which I've talked about a little bit, particularly one that is marked by fire horse energy, which by the way hasn't occurred in over 60 years, so that's kind of cool. There's a very strong collective push towards movement and initiation and making bigger, badder, wilder decisions. And this is typically when you're gonna want to start setting intentions and making plans and committing to doing things differently and joining groups that say they're gonna activate you and do all these things. And what tends to happen during times like this isn't that the fears that are running inside of you disappear, it's that they become much, much more visible, especially in this energy. Because fire horse energy doesn't remove fear, but it will expose it, and not necessarily in a gentle way. It's gonna bring pressure to move because you know, fire horse energy, we're charging into the new year, and that's cool, but that pressure to move is what makes those underlying patterns so much easier to see, they're gonna come to the surface a lot easier, which in one way is great, because you're like, oh, I can see these patterns a lot easier, but in another way, it's not so great because now you're like, darn it, why do these patterns keep coming back? So the patterns that are gonna start showing up, especially for a lot of people, are going to be about what feels safe to start and what feels safe to sustain once you've got that motion, once you're moving forward. So if you've ever set intentions, which I know we all have, because like who doesn't like to do that? But if you've set intentions with like that, and you're like truly sincere about it, and you genuinely believe, okay, this time is gonna be different, and then you start to watch and experience these familiar patterns reappearing, whether it's a few weeks later, a few months later, but it typically happens, and this is often why. It's not because you weren't serious about your intentions, or you weren't spiritual enough, or you weren't manifesting hard enough, it's not because you didn't want it badly enough, it's because the underlying calibration of what felt safe to sustain in your system hadn't actually changed, even though the desire had. And years ago, I used to teach that it was as simple as just stepping into your next level identity. And I've come to realize doing the work that I do that that is not the case. Yes, we do have to step into a next level identity, but we also have to deal with the things running the patterns under the surface. And if those things continue to go unrecognized, it's virtually impossible to just step into the next level identity. And like honestly, if we think about this, if it was that easy to step into those next level identities, don't you think we'd all be doing it all the time? Once you start looking at fear in this way, it's not a problem, okay? Like, don't look at it as a problem. Look at it as a regulator. When you start doing that, the patterns become very hard to ignore. And over time, I've noticed that what might look like dozens of different issues usually trace back to a much smaller set of recurring fears or patterns. Usually, when people are coming to me, and I've really been leaning into these fear layers in the energetic system, especially this past year, they're saying things that sound totally reasonable. So they're saying things like, I just need a bit more clarity, I'll start once things settle, I don't want to rush into this. And on the surface, those statements are accurate. Like that is actually how they feel. And to be honest, sometimes those statements are appropriate. But here's where it becomes important to pay attention. When the same moment keeps coming back, when you keep circling back, oh, I'm gonna get going, I just need a little more clarity, I don't want to rush this. When things keep repeating that slow your momentum down at the same point, that's when the question has to change. And the question isn't what's wrong with me? The question needs to become, what is my system trying to protect me from? And more importantly, what would change if I could see clearly instead of negotiating with it over and over again? Because once you can recognize these patterns, you understand that it's not a personality issue or an identity issue, and you can stop reacting to them blindly. You start to see which ones are operating, when they activate, what they're actually regulating, what are they protecting you from. So the challenge is most of you never realize you're even negotiating with the same patterns. You don't realize that they're fears that are activating these patterns again and again because you don't know how to recognize them when they show up. And that is perfectly okay because nobody has ever taught you that. And this is exactly why the other day, I decided I want to do a free workshop right now. Like I said, we're moving into a lunar new year, it's marked by firehorse energy, which is a cycle that naturally brings all the pressure and all the things forward. And so this is when you want to set intentions and name your goals. Me too. I totally get that. But if fear is still quietly regulating what feels safe under the surface, especially at that survival level, then your intentions aren't going to want to land the way you want them to. So, this year, instead of helping you set more intentions or giving you a new way to visualize differently, I want you to see what's been shaping those intentions in the first place. So I'm doing this workshop. I didn't know what to call it, so I'm literally calling it the 20 fears, because there are 20 fears that can be active in us. It's gonna be February the 12th at 12 o'clock Eastern. It's two hours, probably. You can join live, you can watch the replay. It's not a masterclass, it's a diagnostic workshop, is what I'm calling it. Because we're going to explore, and you're going to explore, how subconscious and energetic patterns shape your decisions. And you're going to start to understand which of these fears might be running some of the patterns that you have. Because these patterns often show up as things like discernment or caution or not yet. So you're going to learn how to recognize which ones are operating for you and at what level they're actually working on. So that you can stop trying to change the wrong thing and actually understand what's really shaping your decisions. I'm in the process right now of finalizing the signup page. By the time you're listening to this podcast, which will be today, will probably be Wednesday. If you're listening to it the day it comes out, the registration page for the workshop should be done before the end of the week. So if you're listening to this and you know that you want to get in on this because it's a free workshop, what I want you to do is send me a direct message on Instagram, and I will make sure that you're notified as soon as I have the sign-up page open. Um, and then I'll just send you the link and you can sign up because it's gonna be really, really cool. I mean, I do a lot of cool things, but honestly, I think this might be one of the coolest workshops that I've done in a while. Having said that, I want to wrap this episode up by inviting you also just to notice something over the next little while. Not to fix it, not to change it, just observe it, okay? Allow yourself just to be curious, because curiosity is one of the best things you can do. Especially if you want to come to this workshop, I want you to pay attention to where things tend to slow down for you. I'm not asking you to look at where do you feel confused. I'm not asking you to look at where do you feel like you're losing interest in things. I want you to pay attention to where things tend to slow down. Where is something you still really care about or you're excited about? But every time you start to move forward, when does that momentum slow down? Make a note of it. And also understand that when you learn how to look at the moment without judgment, it's going to also stop feeling like resistance and it's going to help you shift things. So I'll leave you with this. The place where things usually slow down is often the place that the most useful information lives if you know how to look for it. One last thing before you go. Again, just a reminder: if you're listening and you know you want to sign up for the free 20 fears workshop, send me a DM on Instagram. I'll make sure you're the first to know when the registration's live. And if this episode gave you clarity or you had a little aha moment, I would love and appreciate if you would take a couple of minutes to go leave a five-star rating and review wherever you listen to this podcast, because it is one of the easiest ways to support this podcast and help this work reach even more women. Until next time, here's to creating your limitless life.