Do you feel like you’re always running out of time? We all have the same twenty-four hours in a day. You just have to make sure you’re spending it on the things that matter. Join your host Penny Zenker as she sits down for a conversation with today’s guest Dr. Amanda Barrientez on how you should shift your mindset into creating more time and money for personal and professional growth. Dr. Amanda is an NFA business consultant who helps coaches and online entrepreneurs align their energy, mindset, and habits to attract easier money using her proprietary NFA Money Maker Methods. In this episode, she discusses strategic actions, habits, mindset alignment, and heading into a new direction. Learn how to be a powerful NFA-style person who makes time!

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Strategic Actions To Create More Time And Money In Your Life With Dr. Amanda Barrientez

I am always looking for people, as I talk about every time I start my show, who are going to challenge us and give us some new perspectives and give us a prod and poke where we need it so that we can work smarter. I’m excited about this episode. This woman says she is not effing around. Dr. Amanda Barrientez. She is a business consultant who helps coaches and online entrepreneurs. They align their energy, which I talk a lot about, too, mindset and habits to attract money using her proprietary NFA Money Maker Method. She’s got special methods that can help us to attract more money and that would be working smarter. I’m excited to hear what you have to say. Welcome.

Penny, thanks for having me here.

People are always curious when you say, “I’ve got this method to help you make more money,” so everybody’s perked up and their ears are out and they’re on the edge of their seat. How did you come upon this method and why was it important to you to create and get out there?

It’s moneymaker methods so it’s many methods. Not only one. The first method is to become a master of yourself. Strategies to understand that you have to recreate yourself if you want different results. The thing that I learned in my journey was that I didn’t like the results I was getting. I had a moment where I was crying on the floor and I was like, “I got to change myself.”

Why do we always have to be crying on the floor when we make that decision to change ourselves?

Do you know why? It’s because we are too comfortable until we get so uncomfortable then we go like, “I have to change.” Change is hard. I call it the curse of the comfort zone because if you’re too comfortable, you’re not going to do that much to change. Some people can live their whole entire lives in that zone where they go like, “I’m pretty comfortable. I don’t need to change.” Those individuals have the hardest time shifting because there’s nothing that has knocked them down too far to go like, “I got to do something here.” Now, I don’t have to be on the floor crying to make changes because I see the power of how easy it could be to get the outcome you want when you decide to change yourself, instead of having something knock you down to do it.

No one can make you ready in shifting your mindset but yourself. Click To Tweet

You get into the routine of challenging yourself. If you can break through that then you can put that as a regular practice.

I always like to say you choose your challenges. As you learn these tools, you choose challenges instead of having things knock you on your butt to help it to change.

We would like that. Many people are probably taking their heads on it. You found it by necessity. COVID was one of those necessities. That change and radical change often can be a catalyst but people see it as a stressor. How could you help to reframe people’s mindset to see any circumstance that’s outside of their control or even within their control that this constraint or circumstance could be a catalyst?

That’s exactly how I look at change and knowing that the only thing you have the power to change is yourself, your thoughts, your decisions, your actions. That’s the only thing you’re getting control of. You can’t control other people, COVID, anything else. When you do that, people get scared. You could face the change and could have the mindset of like, “This sucks. Growth is hard. I don’t want to do it. It’s everyone else’s fault,” or you can go, “I have a magic wand to create whatever I want when I decide that I’m the one who’s creating my reality.” Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world. If you don’t like what you’re getting on the outside, you’ve got to change what’s within. You’ve got to decide, “I’m the center of my universe. Something in me needs to change in order to get a different result.”

This could be time, productivity, money, love, anything. If you don’t like what you’re getting on the outside, you’ve got to start looking at yourself, which most people that can be a very empowering thing. They can go like, “It’s in my control,” or they can go, “What? Is it not my parents’ fault? It’s not my partner’s fault? It’s not COVID’s fault?”

3/4 of the people reading this are like, “This is BS. I don’t have the time. You should see what I have to do. I’ve got three kids. I’ve got a business running. I’ve got ten people reporting to me.” We could go on and on about their list. People are in resistance. I agree with that and I see that a lot. We resist and there’s that expression, what we resist persists. I talk a lot about, too, getting in a relationship with your results because disconnect often as to how we show up and what we do and the results that we get and we don’t connect that we’re the common denominator.

 

One of the benefits of me being on the floor crying and when I share my story, people are like, “If you could do it, I could.” I was on food stamps, three kids, a single mom, grad school and I built my business to six figures in the first year. That’s because I decided to take responsibility for my outcomes. When people say, “I didn’t have the time ago.” I go, “Good one.” I was reading three books a week, writing papers, teaching classes, driving kids around and building a business at the same time. You’re a victim of time is an excuse that you used to blame other people, blame the outer world for your results instead of going, “How am I going to be a powerful NFA style person who makes time?”

How did you do that?

I started by listening to podcasts. We talked at the beginning about energy and mindset alignment. Everything comes from the way that you think and believe and how you feel. Whatever you get in your results is based on your paradigm of believing and thinking. That comes from your mindset. I tell people, “You have to do daily mindset training.” It’s fascinating to me that we go like, “I want to live a great life. I want to feel confident and sexy and powerful and have money and have a great relationship,” but then when you ask people and they say like, “I’m stuck. I’m struggling. I’m miserable. I’m on the treadmill of the rat race. I’m not happy.”

You go, “How many personal growth and development books did you read last year?” “Zero. Maybe one.” “When do you ever take time to work on yourself?” “Never. I don’t have time.” That’s usually the number one excuse. You go, “You’re going to keep getting the same results you’ve always gotten because you’re not willing to work on yourself.” You are the key common denominator of your entire reality. If you don’t like those parts of your life, you’ve got to make changes. No one’s going to come and rescue you and pick you up off the ground and say, “Here’s $1 million, a great relationship, a healthy body and an awesome life.” You’ve got to do the work to have those things. You’ve got to become a different person that creates those things.

There’s still a lot of people thinking, “I don’t understand. I care about personal growth but I still don’t have the time. I don’t know how you make time or money out of that.” That’s what they’re saying. How do you help them understand it?

I don’t. I say to people, “You got to be hungry. You got to be ready. You got to make a decision. You got to commit and recommit every day.” I don’t talk people into making time and using it. If someone comes to me and they’re using that excuse, I say, “Awesome. Go on your merry way and keep creating the life you’ve got.” If you’re going to hang out with me and you’re going to work with me and you’re going to learn from me, you’re going to decide, “Teach me how to create the time and optimize my time, be more productive, enjoy my life, do what I love and get paid to do what I love.” You got to be ready. I’m not one of those people that rescues people from their victim mindset. I’m one of those people that goes, “Come see me when you go like, ‘I’ve been stuck in a victim mindset. I’m ready to change.’” You’ve got to be ready. No one can make you ready but yourself.

That’s good for people to hear. If they’re caught up in excuse that what I’m hearing you say is they’re not ready.

Make time for what's valuable to you. Click To Tweet

They’re not in pain yet.

There’s not a pain or not a connection or not enough desire. Sometimes its pain or desire.

Too comfortable, too scared. They could be scared. Fear plays a huge part but these are all excuses we use. We go like, “I’m scared.” Usually, that’s not the conscious thing. The most common one and I love that we’re talking about productivity in time is because that is the most common excuse. “I don’t have time.” I go, “Everyone has the exact same amount of time in a day. How is it that some people are incredibly productive and have a lot of free time and some people feel like they’re overwhelmed and overburdened all the time?” It’s a mindset shift.

Once you have the mindset shift, your habits follow and it goes together. It’s a self-perpetuating feedback cycle. Once you decide, “I’m going to do something different. I’m going to start becoming a master of my time. I’m going to do things a little bit differently.” You take small strategic actions that over time lead to autopilot habits that get you in a new direction. It gives a feedback loop because you start to feel better and then you go like, “I do have some power here.” You’ve got to start somewhere.

When people are stuck, I like to think of them as micro shifts. Your micro shifting your mindset, energy and habits. You’re not going like, “I’m on the couch, stuck. I’m 50 pounds overweight. I have no money. I don’t feel good about my relationships.” You don’t go from that place to like, “I’m going to go run a marathon and make $1 million this year and find the love of my life.” You got to take small steps. You got to start somewhere. The easiest place to start is to do one thing every day that brings you joy. One small thing.

That’s one of the strategies that you help people is making that micro shift around bringing more joy into their lives.

 

Joy is such a high frequency. I always have a drop/add list. If people go, “What do you hate doing? What’s misaligned? What sucks your energy? What do you love to do? What gives you energy? What inspires you?” The things on your drop list, start dropping, automating or delegating. On your add list, do more of that every day. That’s the simplest habit shift.

I have a sticky note somewhere here because I have a lot of sticky notes around me at the moment. One of them says, “Joy vacation.” A joy vacation process is that you’re busy and all these things that we’ve got going on. Sometimes they can suck the joy right out of our life. Busy sucks the joy out of our life. We have to take it back. You have to take it back. I love that that’s the number one thing, to find those pockets of joy.

It’s funny. I was writing down notes exactly what you’re talking about, which was that busy piece. It’s a busy piece because when you’re in a state of business, you can’t even slow down enough to go what’s working, what’s not? Which is the drop/add list. When you make the time to do those things and I’ll have everyone to know this, you make time for what’s valuable to you.

I always use the analogy like, “If I gave you two tickets to your favorite concert but you’ve got other stuff to do.” Backseat tickets, backstage with your favorite performer. You get to meet and greet them. You’re going to find a way to cancel, change, whatever you need to do to be at that concert. We do. We know how to do it. We don’t use those skills the way that we sometimes do.

It’s an incredible example because we will. For whatever we highly value, we will make time for it. Let’s say you’re a parent and you have kids and they’re in need, you’re going to make time in your schedule to go help them. You’ll drop everything for it because you highly value your kids. Why don’t we highly value ourselves enough to make time to nurture ourselves, take care of our bodies, learn how to become masters of ourselves because you’re the one central part of everything you get in your life?

That’s the number one thing that I do. I decommit. I drop things. As soon as I start feeling I’m overwhelmed like there’s too much going on. I’m in the practice of noticing. As soon as I notice that, I start to drop things. I start to go, “That’s not necessary for me to do today or tomorrow or this week. Let’s move it.” That’s one of my favorite things to do, is to reorganize because the act of doing it and taking it off my schedule allows you to breathe.

You said decommit. It’s the recommitment every day. You’ve got to commit to something and recommit then the drop is the decommit. It’s like decommit to things that are not bringing you joy, things that are sucking your energy, things that are should. That’s how you make time. Time is powerful because time is money. The reason we want money is that we want time freedom. We always think, “Once I have the money, I’ll create time freedom.” It’s the opposite. You create the time freedom and the money comes because you’re doing what you enjoy. That’s a magnetic frequency.

You have to work on yourself or else you’re going to keep getting the same results. Click To Tweet

It makes sense. Are you guys getting this? The name of the show is Take Back Time. That’s the beautiful paradox that you said, that we go from a perspective of when I have more money, I’ll have more time. It doesn’t work that way. Do yourself a favor and make time now. I’m curious, what’s your definition of productivity and why?

It’s actions that bring you closer to fulfilling your vision in life and business. True productivity is not busy work. It’s strategic decisions, commitment and actions that every day get you closer to fulfilling your vision. In that vision that’s always expanding, it’s you going, “I learned more about myself and I love what I’m doing. I get to be in my zone of genius and I get to play.” It sits like productive actions that lead to fun and joy. To me, that’s the power of productivity. It’s not just for the sake of going, “I checked a whole bunch of boxes because I feel bad if I’m not busy because I have a guilt complex and money blocks around thinking I have to work hard to make money.”

I want to sit back because a lot of what we’re talking about, a lot of entrepreneurs can appreciate but there are people also who are reading who are in the corporate world. They’re not their own boss. They don’t have as easy chance to decommit on things as I might or you might. Everybody can find joy so that’s for everybody. Is there something specifically that you would recommend for people who have bosses and have less flexibility of some of the things on their schedule?

Boundaries and learning to say no, huge in everybody’s life. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a CEO or anyone in any career, in any situation where you’re working with people, you got to learn boundaries and you’ve got to learn to say no to things. This is again like a drop list. Saying no is one of the most powerful ways to be productive in your highest inspirations. If you’re at work you can’t say no to your boss about everything and yet, people don’t think they can say no as much as they can. In my one-on-one coaching, I work with some CEOs and teach them how to say, “Is this in my highest ROI action for what you’ve hired me for or are you just only filling my plate with busy work that could be given to an assistant or somebody else?”

The interesting thing about people who are busy and productive, they’re the first ones that want to be asked to do more. They will always say yes and fit it in because they’re good at a lot of things because they’re good at getting things done. If you keep filling your plate with all the business and the list of nonsense then you’re going to always feel overwhelmed, overburdened and people are going to keep piling it on. You’ve got to learn, “No, this is what I do best. This is what you hired me for and here’s where we need to have somebody else to take over these roles so that I can be powerful in my zone of genius.”

Companies that do that are the most powerful, they know how to delegate well. They create leaders out of leaders and its people who can communicate that and know like, “Here’s my zone. Here’s what I’m amazing at and here’s what I need to drop, automate and delegate.” That creates time for people and it creates energy. It creates expansion for themselves and the whole company.

I don’t know that I’d made this connection before but what I’m hearing is that it’s a little bit of a self-worth question because when I’m in my self-worth, I don’t see it as saying no. Sometimes you don’t have to say no. You can ask for clarification, like, “What is it specifically?” Maybe, “Can this be broken down into different parts?” We don’t ask enough questions and get enough clarity around. “Is this the best thing for me? Would you rather that I do this over this?” Sometimes you don’t have to come with a definite no but you can say, “I can only do one of these. Which is more important to you?” You might say, “I’m better at this. Let’s have someone else do this and make a suggestion.” Not setting boundaries has something to do with our self-worth. Would you agree with that?

 

Yes. It links back to the time thing you were talking about where we say, we will make time for what we value. If we don’t value ourselves, we don’t make time for ourselves. If we don’t value ourselves, we say yes to everything. I love what you said. You could even rephrase it as, learn to say, no. You could rephrase that as, don’t always go to the automatic, yes. Negotiate, ask questions, go, “I’ve got this much time on my plate. Do you want me to do this or this? What do you prefer? You’re my boss. If that’s what you want me to do, then I got to offload some of these other tasks that you’ve created for me.”

That takes somebody who has self-worth and boundaries are 100% tied to self-worth. These people who don’t value themselves, they let other people’s emergency become their urgency. They feel inclined to say yes to everything. When you start to develop your self-worth, you charge what you’re worth. You’re able to set boundaries, ask questions, get clarification’s, instead of automatically going, “I got to say yes to be liked, to stay in this position, to prove myself.” It’s approving of self-type of thing.

I get it. I also see it as it comes from a place of wanting to please, wanting to be there for other people and so forth, but at what cost?

It’s self-worth though because then you’re pleasing other people at the expense of your own sanity. You don’t value yourself. This shows up big time in anyone who’s in a career and entrepreneurs all the time. It looks like imposter syndrome. In imposter syndrome, you don’t value yourself because you think you’ve got to prove yourself, which means you’ve got to say yes to things and do things you don’t want then undercharge, overdeliver and you’re always burnt out. Not having enough time.

Do you have any other shortcuts or tricks that you use that help you to shift in the moment or question that you asked yourself? There was a question that you have your CEOs ask, which you mentioned. Are there any other pivotal questions? I call myself a focusologists. It is a question of those simple shifts and a question can shift our focus entirely. It can change our come from and direct our focus in different directions. I’m a big fan of changing the questions that we have aren’t getting as the results that we want, back to your point about results. What questions do you ask yourself? Do you have your clients ask themselves what helps them to get better results?

I’ll give you the simplest one and it’s interesting. I’m thinking back to the very first YouTube video I ever did. I called it the ultimate mindset switch strategy and it’s three words, very simple. How can I? You could go, “How can I take back time? How can I create more time? How can I drop the things I don’t enjoy? How can I find more joy in my life? How can I make more money faster? How can I talk to my boss about this issue?” What happens is instead of going, “Can I or I don’t know what to do,” our brain gets into this mode of focusing on the problem.

You have to be ready and decide to optimize your time to be more productive and enjoy life. Click To Tweet

When we’re in problem mode, we attract more problems to us and we feel stuck. When we’re in solution orientation, our brain is a problem-solving operating system. When you plug in a how can I question, it starts to look for solutions. You get into that solution mode and your brain gets more expansive, creative and brainstorming, which a much more fun flowing energy. It’s the simplest start to end, “How can I?” I’ve been stuck in some serious places before. I would go on a run. I love to run and so I’d run and the whole run, my task to myself was to say, “How can I this? How can I that?” By the end of the run, all the problems were solved because I had solutions. My brain’s like, “There are 50 solutions to everything.”

There are many ways to, I don’t know why that stupid expression comes up, to skin a cat. I don’t want that expression but many ways to do things.

I always say there are 1 million ways to make $1 million. My business is focused on helping people heal their relationship to money so that they can charge what they’re worth, feel good, make easier money, have time freedom, ultimately. You go like, “I want to get into solution orientation mode. I want to know that there are always solutions to everything.” It’s shifting your brain and training and the direction of being solution-oriented.

I’m a huge fan of that as well. We get stuck in the problem sometimes. We’re human. It’s okay. Recognize it. Be a noticer and recognize where you are. Notice what’s going on and what you’re focused on so that you can shift that focus. Sometimes I find if you add before the how can I, if you add, even though and you say what the problem is so we acknowledge it. The challenge you’re stuck in. Even though I don’t have any money, how can I still go to that? I find that also helps people to give it an acknowledgment but then also shift. It has both sides of the shift.

It’s similar. I say, “Until now, I’ve been feeling this. How can I shift in this way?” What we tell ourselves in our brain is incredibly powerful. Anything you say after the statement, “I am,” is going to program your subconscious mind with your belief system. Your reticular activating system, which is a part of your brain, tracks to prove to be true what you’re believing and thinking whether it’s subconscious or conscious. Here we’re talking about time. If you say, “I’m struggling. I don’t have enough time.”

You keep programming your brain with that, you are creating that in your reality because you’re looking for that to be true. You’ve got to reprogram your brain in a different direction. It’s a habit. At first, it’s hard because you’re so used to doing the negative and focusing on the problems. Once you start training in a direction, it gets easier to where that becomes your new autopilot habit. Like any habit, formation and change, you got to do it day by day, step by step and it gets easier. All of a sudden, you notice like, “I feel completely differently.”

When I was on food stamps and not making any money and freaked out, I had a lot of work to do because I had a lot of negative programming in my brain. I was in a super victim mindset mode. It took daily consistent reprogramming. Every time I caught myself, you’re talking about the power of noticing, I would notice and it’d be like, “Stop. Do something different. Think something different. Turn on a podcast.”

 

Make a pattern. It’s like a pattern in your thought like running a CD or a record, whatever. It’s only a pattern. The more you break the pattern, that’s why you said practice, the more you break it. Find something that helps you to break it. Every time you see it, do something that helps you to do that. It looks like our time comes to an end. First of all, we had great nuggets, great conversation and at the same time, people’s attention span gets a little low, more than this and they won’t put it into practice. Where can people reach you? Tell me where they can go and get more information about you and what you’re doing.

Everything is easy to find on NFAMoney.com. They’ll find all the free stuff. I have a Money Blocks Profile Quiz that they can take. I have access to my podcast and YouTube channel. If they would love podcasts, obviously, they’re here. It’s called Max Potential Money, is my podcast. I release an episode every week so there are lots of gold nuggets there.

Thank you so much. This was great. I love talking about this stuff. Hopefully, you all like reading it.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you so much, Amanda. Thank you all. Thank you for being here. Make sure that you subscribe. Leave us a review. Check out Amanda’s site and take that quiz and find out where you are now. That’s a way to notice, is to take a quiz to give you some heightened awareness. Some great tips on this episode, focusing on some better questions, getting in a relationship and understanding what’s working and what’s not working. Simple, practical tools. Add a little bit more joy to your life. Join me in the joy of vacation for the coming year. Thank you. We’ll see in the next episode.

Important Links:

• Dr. Amanda Barrientez
• YouTube Channel – NFA Money
• Max Potential Money – Podcast
• www.MoneyBlocksProfile.com
• www.NFAMoneyMakerLab.com

About Dr. Amanda Barrientez

Dr. Amanda Barrientez is an NFA – No Fucking Around – Business Consultant who helps coaches and online entrepreneurs align their energy, mindset and habits to attract easier money using her proprietary NFA Money Maker™ Methods. After going from food stamps to building a 6-figure business fast, she’s been on a quest to teach work-from-home business builders how to make more money doing exactly what they love to do.

 

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