Why High Achievers Still Feel Stuck (And How to Break Free) | Christine Knapp Episode

Welcome to the Legacy All-Stars Podcast. We feature inspirational stories from people who dedicate themselves to helping others. Here is your host, Alan Pavlosky.

Welcome back, everyone. This is the Legacy All-Stars Podcast, where we celebrate inspirational people making a difference in the lives of others. I'm your host, Alan Pavlosky, and today I am joined by a woman who has quietly built something remarkable, a coaching practice and movement that is helping high-achieving women step off the treadmill of perfection and people-pleasing and into a life of real clarity, purpose, and peace. Christine Knapp is the founder of Mindwire Coaching, a certified neuro coach whose work is rooted in the neuroscience of lasting behavioral change. With an ICF coaching certification, advanced training in clinical mental health counseling, and a CINC certified neuro coaching credential, Christine brings both science and heart to everything she does. Through her proprietary Aligned Achievers Path framework built around 3 transformative steps— explore, expose, and exchange— Christine has helped clients break free from anxiety, self-doubt, imposter syndrome, the patterns that keep capable women stuck. And I'm guilty of some of those as well. Her mission is beautifully simple: to help women rewire their minds so that their outer success finally matches how they feel on the inside. Christine, welcome to the show. Great to see you.

Hi, Alan. Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, let's jump right in. You describe yourself as a recovering perfectionist and people pleaser. I love that.

Yes.

What was the moment you realized you were living someone else's version of success instead of your own?

You know, it's funny, I think sometimes the awarenesses that we have happen gradually over time, and then sometimes We are blessed. I mean, it sometimes it doesn't feel like a blessing, it feels like a curse, but sometimes we are given this an opportunity to have an awareness just in one, one transformative moment. And for me, that moment occurred in 2012 when I was on a cruise with some girlfriends. And, um, you know, my children were young and it was the first time that I had really gotten away and stepped outside of my role and my identity as mom. I was a stay-at-home mom at the time. I stayed at home with my children until they were— until my oldest was about 9 years old. And I was, you know, I was on the beach and I was surrounded by my friends, and all of a sudden it sort of just hit me like a ton of bricks that I had been numb for quite a while. And when I looked back, I realized I had been just going through the motions of success and what I should do and what was expected of me, which is not uncommon for someone who's my age. I'm 51 years old, I'm a Generation X. And so, you know, we, we were told these are the steps to success, this is what you need to do in order to become an adult and make something of yourself in the world. And for some reason, all of a sudden, on a beach— I think we were in the Bahamas— it hit me like a ton of bricks that I had been numb. And I think a lot of it was that I was finally feeling for the first time and having a good time, and I was outside of my identity as a wife and a mom. That helped me really connect with, with Christine and who I was, and that it was— there was a big difference between me and how I was feeling in those roles. Not that I didn't love the role of mom, and it wasn't that I, I always knew that I wanted to be a mother, but that was the first moment where I realized something was very off and it was feeling very unaligned. It wasn't aligned for me and it didn't feel good the way it had transpired.

Got it. You made a bold leap in 2023, leaving a corporate coaching role to launch Mindwire. What gave you the courage to bet on yourself? And that's a big question I've asked many people on the show.

But yes, yes, what gave you the courage to bet on yourself? So for this, you know, this was— my decision occurred after a series of transformational experiences that I had. You know, sometimes maybe some of the listeners will identify with this, having a recurring thought in your mind over and over again. And sometimes the recurring thoughts are negative. I like to say we have an angel on our shoulder and a devil on the other shoulder. One, the angels saying, hey, you can do this. The devil's, you know, a result of a lot of automatic negative thoughts and past programming. But for some reason, when I was in my corporate job, one of my recurring thoughts over and over was, Christine, what if you spent even half the amount of time building your own dream as you did building the dream of this organization? What could you create if you spent even half this amount of time building what you want to do? And so that, that recurring thought inspired me to get coaching certifications and pursue the Neuro-Coaching certification that I got after the ICF training. And through that training that transpired out of a desire to help business owners get out of their own way, I started that training to help others. But ultimately I benefited immensely because when I was receiving the Neuro-Coaching, That's when I realized that I had some major limiting beliefs that were rolling around in my subconscious that were preventing me from taking the step that the recurring thought was showing up every day saying, what could you do if you spent just half the amount of time? But underneath that was a lot of fear and self-doubt. And then when I went through the NeuroCoaching, I recognized what the fear and self-doubt was, and I was able to rewire my brain to, to take that leap, uh, July 29th. It's actually quite funny, this podcast is going to come out right around the exact 3-year anniversary of my last day in corporate, corporate America.

That's great, that's great. Yeah, you have also had a background as a magazine publisher. How did that background where you helped others with their mindsets first open your eyes to the power of belief in shaping results?

So the corporate job that I walked away from was within a franchise, and it was a franchise that I started in 2014. I started my own local magazine and I followed the path and the prescription and the processes that the franchise gave to us and trained us on. And I succeeded quickly. And I was very early on, within just a few months of joining that franchise, was asked to coach other franchise owners. And, you know, that was a very transformative process for me because when I started the publication, I knew that I needed to create an income for myself because I was moving from being a stay-at-home mom to, you know, to ultimately supporting myself. And so for me at that time, failure was not an option. And that belief, that belief, that identity that failure is not an option— I have to succeed at this because this publishing my own magazine for this particular organization was also going to give me the freedom and the flexibility that I needed with my time in order to raise my young children, because I didn't want to miss out on important occasions. And the company, the N2 company, the N2 Corporation is what they're, they're called now. But, you know, they very much encourage people to have your magazine business and, and make sure that you maintain a work-life balance and spend time with your family. And so that gave me the confidence to say, okay, this is, this is it, and failure is not an option, so I have to succeed. So what happened though was when I did that, I started coaching other franchise owners, and I realized that everybody had the same information that I did, but I was one of small percentage of people that succeeded quickly and as well. And that process of coaching, through coaching them and understanding what their thoughts were and their fears were, is what really got me obsessed with mindset work. Because knowing what you need to do and actually doing it are two different things. So, you know, for me, accomplishing that, creating a magazine out of nothing, that was a level that my identity could support. But then for me, the next level of quitting the corporate job, walking away from the magazine business and starting my own coaching business was an identity that was very scary for me. And that was, that was an identity that, that was not aligned with, you know, with what my subconscious was allowing me to believe was possible. So the corporate job that I walked away from, I was in charge. I was one of two performance coach managers and we were coaching 40 coaches. Within that franchise, the magazine franchises, who when they were coaching, you know, 500 and some franchise owners around the United States. So that— I was so grateful for that opportunity because it did give me all the skill sets and the experiences and the awareness and the mindset that I needed to get here today.

Absolutely. Walk us through what neurocoaching is and why the brain plays such a central role in whether high achievers actually reach their potential.

Yes, so neurocoaching is essentially coaching that's grounded in neuroscience. There are a of coaches out there and coaching on a lot of different things. The coaching industry is not regulated, so anyone can give themselves a label of coach. And so I do like to definitely differentiate my work by focusing on the neuroscience part of it, because I trained— I went through a lot of training in order to understand how the brain works and to help my clients understand how their brain works. Because, you know, there's a lot of little hacks and tools and techniques that we can implement to achieve goals. You know, you've heard of SMART— set your goals, make them SMART, but I can't tell you how many people I worked on SMART goals with that didn't achieve those goals, right? And it wasn't, it wasn't anything that was wrong with them personally. It was that their brain was wired to keep them back in an old identity. And so NeuroCoaching is grounded in neuroscience. The foundation of everything I do is that 95% of our decisions, actions, and behaviors originate from our subconscious programming. So that programming was also largely put in place before the age of 7. And, you know, by the age of 12, your subconscious is— and your brain is substantially wired by that time. So by the time you're a high-achieving adult with a title and a career and everything that looks great from the outside, you're still largely running on a code that was written when you were very young. So this is why, you know, high achievers specifically, because of that word achievement, that word achievement and wanting to go for the next thing, is where your bad patterns, your limiting beliefs show up because you're striving. There's, you know, half the world I would say is high achievers and the other half are very content, and there's nothing wrong with being content, but you're not really striving to hit the next goal and wondering, "Why can't I do this? What is wrong with me? Why can't I stick to this, this this schedule that I've set for myself? Why can't I stick to this morning routine? I know the morning routine is gonna help me succeed. It's gonna help me meet these goals that I want to achieve. So when you're trying to achieve the next level, you're operating on the same subconscious that you were raised with, and there's identities there that are keeping you stuck. But again, you don't know it until you're actually trying to achieve the next level. So neurocoaching is all about helping high achievers recognize what the patterns are, and then more specifically what the thoughts are that are causing the patterns that are keeping them from achieving what they want to achieve next.

Got it. What is the difference between someone who has read every self-help book and still feels stuck versus who has done the deeper rewiring work?

Yeah, so the person who's read every book has been working on that, the 5% of their consciousness, right? They know the concepts and they may even be able to teach them but knowing and then being wired are two entirely different things. So there's an analogy that I use all the time, which is, you know, if somebody's moved and they have to drive a new route to a grocery store or to work, when you first get in the car to make that drive, you have to think about where you're going and you have to think about the turns. And maybe if you've left the house and now you're driving and it's during rush hour, you have to think, well, what's going to be the, the quickest way to get there? But eventually in time, You drive the route enough times that you get in your car, you can be talking on the phone on Bluetooth the entire time, and you never give one conscious thought to where you're going because your brain wired those directions into your subconscious. So it's that easy for something like that, right? But I like to use that example so that people can understand how your brain is constantly, every day, it's rewiring. It's wiring in new thoughts, it's wiring in new directions, you know, to the grocery store. And the scary thing is that your brain doesn't know if what you're wiring is good for you or bad for you. It doesn't know if the thought that you're having over and over again that's maybe a negative thought is actually going to harm you in the long run. So somebody who's read all the books, again, they're working with that 5%, that consciousness, but you have to consciously remember to think positive thoughts or to think the thought that's that's going to help you make the decisions that will help you succeed. Whereas when you've done the work and you've rewired, it just becomes your natural state of being. You are just operating from a different, a different subconscious that you've created.

Got it. You've chosen to work specifically with high achieving women. What patterns do you see showing up most consistently that are quietly draining them?

So it's interesting. I do work with a lot of high achieving women, but I have to say that men reach out to me as well. And I speak to high-achieving women because I am a woman, and so I really understand how their behaviors and their patterns show up on a day-to-day. But men also struggle with the exact same things that I'm going to talk about here, which is I've identified what I call cognitive clogs. You know, in my work when I was coaching franchise owners, I realized there were 4 thought patterns that keep showing up over and over again. And I remember I got out like a poster board and I was just writing sticky notes, and I felt like a mad scientist. And I was like, what are all these symptoms? And What is this all drain? What is this all from? What is going on? What are these symptoms that are showing up? What is, what's happening? And so the cognitive clogs are, you know, are people pleasing. And it's very interesting because many people have people pleasing behaviors and there are a lot of people who've achieved a lot of success but still have a hard time saying no when they need to say no. It's almost difficult for someone who's achieved a high level of success to recognize that one of the reasons they may have gotten there, especially in corporate America, is because they operate within a hustle culture and they operate where it's almost— it's expected that they work 80 hours a week instead of 40. And so they said yes and yes and yes to their bosses to climb up that ladder. But those are people pleasing. That's a people pleasing behavior, right? That is a behavior that's saying, oh, I need to make sure that my boss doesn't get upset with me. I want to get to the next level, so I'm going to I'm going to sacrifice my peace, my health, my well-being, my relationships in order to do this for XYZ outcome, right? So the 4 cognitive clogs: people pleasing, perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and self-sabotage.

Yeah. All right. This is a question I've been dying to ask you.

Yes.

Again, and bear with me. How does high-functioning anxiety disguise itself as productivity? And how do you help your clients see the difference? Hmm.

Okay. That's a very good question. So high-functioning anxiety, it— someone is— can be a very high performer, right? So it's, it shows up as somebody who's always busy, always has a full calendar, somebody who over-delivers, never misses a detail, says yes to everything because no feels almost dangerous. Like if they say no, something could fall apart. And the high-functioning anxiety, where it causes problems is that your body, your cortisol starts to spike. And cortisol in itself is not a bad thing. But when you're functioning so much at such a high level where you're constantly going and not giving yourself time to truly relax, not having enough balance, you start to see it in your health. So if somebody is listening to this and they are starting to develop health problems, the chances are they've been operating at a level where their nervous system is on high alert and they're going and they're going and they keep reinforcing an identity that is no longer serving them. And so one of the ways that I help my clients see this is when they recognize that they're being reactive. So it starts by they desire a behavior change, and before they know it, they've stepped into automatic mode. They've stepped into the mode where their subconscious is driving them, and they say, you know, I don't, I don't even know why I did that. I don't know why I said yes. I don't know why I agreed to that. That, that right there, that's it. You don't know why you did. Well, that's wired into your subconscious.

Right.

And so then we get to dig down deep and say, for every person it's different. Why? What does that mean about you if you didn't say yes? Again, for every person it's different.

Yeah. Tell us about the Explore, Expose, Exchange framework. Walk us through what each step actually looks like and feels like for a client.

Yeah. So Explore is where we begin. So that's what I just touched on. So we just get curious about the individual's behaviors. And so, you know, in my coaching, real— somebody who's trained as a coach in an ICF style, real coaching is not about giving advice. No one— I mean, not when it comes to your behavior change in your life. Like, giving advice is just— it really almost never works, especially if it's unsolicited. So I like to say I take my clients on an inner journey, and we never know what we're going to find. And it's true. A lot of ways we don't, we don't know what we're going to find when we start to uncover why, what the thoughts are and where those thoughts came from that are causing their behaviors. So the Explore is just, you know, the high-level overview, developing the third-party self-awareness and getting curious about themselves to start to recognize the patterns and their reactions. And then Expose is where we get to dig deep and identify What are the thoughts that cause you to behave that way? And that's the neuroscience, that's the neurocoaching part of it. What are the thoughts? Sometimes, um, people know exactly where— oh, I know where I have that thought from, it came from the past. Sometimes they don't ever find out and know where the thought comes from, and that's okay too, because this is coaching, it's not therapy. So we use the past to inform the present, but we don't need to go and unpack the past and analyze the past, right? We just use the past to inform present. How is that past belief impacting you today? And then exchange is where we start to practice wiring in a new mindset, new thoughts, new beliefs that create a new subconscious from which they can operate.

Got it. All right, this is an alignment question. I love this. What does alignment look like and feel like in real life, especially for someone who has spent years succeeding on the outside while feeling empty or anxious on the inside?

Mm, that's a great question. So alignment, alignment to me is when you can go through your everyday life with a certain sense of calm and peace where you're outside and what you're doing on a day-to-day basis matches who you see yourself as inside. And when you've created a life that is aligned, meaning like, you know, your head, your heart, and your soul are all operating on the same level, at the same frequency, it feels true, right? There's no static, I should say, in how you're showing up and in who you're associating with and how you're reacting and how you're responding, what you're saying yes to and what you're saying no to. You don't second-guess yourself. I'm not saying that all of that completely goes away, right? I'm not saying— I'm not sitting here describing alignment saying like, I've achieved it, I'm perfect. But I've definitely achieved a lot more alignment in my life since that day in 2012. And now, you know, we're doing this interview 14 years later. And so, you know, one of my goals with coaching is to help women and men get to a place of alignment where they can sleep peacefully at night and they go through life feeling calm and peaceful a lot quicker than it took me. It took me, you know, 12 years, let's say, to get here, and a lot of work and a lot of, a lot of books and podcasts and, uh, so much, so much. I think I have over 200 books in my Audible library, and, uh, and it wasn't until I did the NeuroCoaching certification that I actually made change.

Right. What gives you the most energy in this work? Is there a client story or a breakthrough moment that still stays with you?

So what gives me the most energy in my work is 100% my clients. I love my clients. I really do. I know it seems like a strong word, but I love rooting for them. I love helping them see how amazing they are. Because those limiting beliefs that we have, they have no business taking up space in our minds. And a lot of times the limiting beliefs, well, not only do they have no business, but they're completely untrue and unfounded. And so I love when my clients are able to start to see their brilliance and see how amazing they are when they start to own that. Confidently, like with a true inner confidence. And I love cheering them on. I mean, I check in with clients after a year to see how they're doing. 50% of my clients either renew with me or come back after a couple of years because they're ready for their next level. And so I'm honored to coach for everyone that I coach, and I'm honored when they come back for more.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, this wouldn't be Legacy All-Stars if I didn't ask you a legacy question. So when you think about legacy and what you're building through Mindwire, what do you hope it ultimately stands for?

I hope that Mindwire ultimately stands for possibility and awareness and realizing that you have the ability to achieve anything you want. And it all starts with the thoughts you're thinking. It's a simple, simple concept, and I don't mean to make it sound simplistic because it's anything but simplistic, but it is simple. The process of getting there, because we're dealing with humans and human emotions, the process of recognizing what the limiting beliefs are and rewiring them, that can be challenging. It's interesting, I was coaching a woman yesterday and she In the first 3 sessions, we really narrowed in on how her fixer identity got her to where she is. But that fixer identity as a leader, as an SVP in an organization, is not going to get her where she wants to go. And now the fixer identity is holding her back. And in particular, she recognized that how much of her to-do list was revolved around her need to fix things. And her identity to fix everything and the way that that shows up in the people around her, the way they ask her and come to her for things. But recognizing that if she wants to develop a team to take the company truly to the next level, she has to let go of that and encourage and coach her staff and her team to learn how to fix the problems themselves. So that like simple tweak of recognizing, hey, look, this served me to a point, And that's usually when people find me, is when they realize that their strength served them to a point and now it's holding them back.

Right. Makes total sense.

Yeah.

All right. For a woman, or a man for that matter, listening right now who recognizes himself or herself in this conversation but does not know where to start, what's the one thing you would say?

The one thing I would say is, you already know. You know that something needs to change, and you've been feeling it for a while, maybe years. You've tried things— books, podcasts, journaling, planners— and you're still here recognizing yourself in someone else's story. So that recognition, that little flutter of, "Yes, that's me," that's not an accident. That's your future self letting you know that you're ready. You don't have to have it all figured out. You don't have to know every step. You just have to make one decision, and everything is Everything is one decision away. We are one decision away from success, one decision away from change, one decision away from rewiring subconscious patterns that, you know, have been holding you back from your next level of greatness.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, right?

That's right.

Yeah, absolutely. Christine, this has been a really great conversation. Thank you. Thank you for what you're doing at Mindwire. It's more than coaching. It's liberation work. I love that. The ripple effect of one woman or man stepping into clarity, confidence, and alignment is really immeasurable. For our listeners, Christine's work is available at mindwirecoaching.com. Go explore how to begin the journey. This is Alan Pavlosky signing off for Legacy All-Stars, where people and legacies are built from the inside out. See you next week.