The Emotional Patterns Keeping High-Achieving Women Stuck

We just had a spicy conversation with a dear friend of mine, Annie Yatch, who is a relationship and leadership catalyst who empowers visionary women and the partners who rise beside them to build lives and businesses grounded in purpose, partnership, and power. Before becoming a leading voice in leadership and conscious communication, she served as a consultant for the Defense Intelligence Agency. What a big switch. She now helps Up women Power couples turn their relationships into their greatest multiplier for impact and success. Her methodology blends neuroscience, emotional intelligence, and authentic leadership to dissolve control, competition, and disconnection, replacing them with trust, alignment, magnetic communication so both love and business can thrive. Welcome to the Power Up Your Life podcast brought to you by GoBundance Women. I'm Kelly Resendez. And I'm Mandy McAllister. And we have a dear friend of mine with us today who just actually joined us at our Cabo retreat. So I got to see her in person again, which was just absolutely incredible. And she shared so many gifts with the GoBundance Women tribe that we just had to bring her here to a wider audience. So welcome, Annie. How are you?

God. I'm so excited to be here. I just love you both so much. This is, like, the perfect way to celebrate a Friday.

It is. Absolutely. Well, share a little bit about your backstory and how you got to be doing what you're doing today.

Well, ironically, the backstory was, short version, I was working and hoping to go into counterterrorism and being recruited by the CIA, and I was told basically that your heart is really beautiful, but this work will crush you. You should probably think about doing something a little bit different. And that's Women I was like, you know, I'm not good at lying. All I wanna do is make people's lives better. Not sure counterterrorism is the right fit for that. So that is how sort of this new career move started back fifteen years ago where I just decided, I'm like, how can I do something great in the world? Mandy, it originated with the Navy SEALs because I learned a lot about the Navy SEALs. I worked with a ton of SEALs with the project with Jerry Bruckheimer. And because of that, I am now this sort of catalyst for people in their business lives and in their personal lives.

That's incredible. So if you had to focus on one thing, like let's say that you could only focus on one thing in helping people get to the next level in their Life, like what is that work that you would focus on?

So the big work that I would focus on are two things. The first piece of it would be, I want to identify the root pattern, the subconscious root pattern that holds you back from all the wealth and success you want in your life and in your relationships. And the secondary piece of that is clearing the emotional blockages that stay stored in our body for ten, twenty, thirty years that also prevent us from having the life we want, the relationship we want, and the business success we're looking for.

Let's dig into that a little bit because you when we were in Cabo, girlfriend, we we had a chance to go through an exercise where you kinda helped us dig into our subconscious and figure out, you know, where are we fearful, where are we shameful. Can you maybe describe just even the thought processes? So anybody who's listening to this podcast driving in their car, trying to think through the things they need to think through, what what are some prompts for them to to start thinking through those things?

So the easiest way to start thinking through, like, where does your subconscious brain block you or where do these emotional feelings block Your, you start and you look at your life Mandy you look for where am I suffering? Like, where do I feel like there's a certain level of suffering? Now it could be the domain of business, domain of personal, wherever it is. The suffering is always what indicates where you're gonna find a subconscious lie. So that is the first step of where you look. Once you find the suffering, you can ask yourself, what do I want to be true instead? Because almost always the lie is difficult sometimes to find. And so you can ask yourself, what do I wanna be true? And that can allow you to get deeper into what you really want Mandy it'll show you what you're not getting. So that's a little bit more intellectual, but if you wanna keep it, like, more emotional, what I say to people is I'm like, okay. So you feel guilt. Right? And you know that guilt in some way in your life is contributing negatively. Right? As a mom, I have mom guilt. Right? It slows me down. It makes me, like, sometimes not willing to do things that I would normally wanna do just because I'm like, oh, I feel so guilty if I don't do this as a mom. So guilt comes from some place. It starts somewhere in our childhoods, and we create a story around guilt, and we hold on to that story for, like, twenty years. So if you're listening in the car, I want you to be thinking about where did I first feel guilt? Like, how early did that start for me, or where did I first feel shame? And if you can allow your mind to go back through your childhood and find some key moments, you're at the beginning of this awesome process of letting it go.

Oh, it's so amazing because so many people are out there reading books, trying to do the work to move you know, how do you scale your business? How do you do all of these other things? And yet, one of our greatest resources is just inside of us. Right? Because we you know, I know you and I align that the external world is just a reflection of what's going on. What would you say is a really unconventional belief or practice that you've used in your life or your business that really accelerates somebody's ability to move forward?

Well, I would say, you know, the ancient Hawaiian Hoona training that I went through has been the most massive accelerator for people letting go of this emotional backlog that causes so many problems in our decision making. The other thing that I've done a lot of work with has been in the past, basically helping people rewire and restructure their thought patterns. And so between those two things, because Kelly it's it's the emotion, it's the way you think, and it is the way you feel in your body that contributes to every decision and the reality you create around you. So that's where I've been trying to focus because I found after fifteen years of researching the neurochemistry, neurobiology, like, what works best for our brains, these are the fastest, quickest ways to get us out of our own way. And as entrepreneurs, you ladies know, like, we do not have a ton of time to sit in our shit if we want to create the life of our dreams, just to be clear.

I love that. I I think, you know, so much of of you we say that you can't scale your network past your self worth, and the figuring you out is where everything really starts. And, you know, we said this before we logged on here, before we hit record, that I have this one life Mandy you are a coach of many. Right? So your end of of where people get stuck is is much larger than my observation of my own life. Right? So I'm I'm wondering if, you know, over the course of your time working with these high performing entrepreneurs and and individuals, where are some common spots that people get stuck, and and what are some things they do to kinda unlock to get to that next level?

So there are, from what I've seen, four or five gaps that people experience that get them stuck. So if you don't mind, I'll just share all of them. That way people know. The first gap is there's always a delegation gap. Right? We think we're good at delegating. We think we're good leaders. We're actually not as good as we think. We we have problems trusting the handoff. Right? So that delegation gap is the first one. The second one is giving and receiving feedback that's connecting. Right? So we'll have teams that we work with, but we won't know how to give feedback that doesn't reduce someone's productivity because people get so defensive in that feedback scenario. Then we've got a planning gap. Most people can tactically plan, but they can't strategically plan. So that will block them all day long. Of course, self worth is always an issue. Right? People think they're not enough, and they think that they haven't done enough or they're not doing enough. That's, when we shit all over each other pretty much. That's always a fun one to say. And then I found that there is always a trauma gap. So there's a gap between what we believe to be true about our lives and what our subconscious is actually playing at 11,000,000 data points in the background. So those are the biggest gaps I've seen with almost everyone I've worked with, whether it's a $1,000,000 business all the way to 1,200,000,000 of the billionaires I've worked with. It's really about how do we get these four to five gaps to stop being in conflict with who we are internally.

Oh my gosh. So good. So if I'm stuck, like, let's say that you encounter somebody that's stuck. What do you do right away? Like, they're in it. They're like, I don't know if I'm gonna quit. I'm overwhelmed. I'm, you know, whatever it might be. Like, what would you what would you tell them to do right now?

So the very first thing I would say is I'm like, okay. What's the overarching feeling that you're feeling right now? And if they told me, say I'm in overwhelm, I'm like, okay. We're gonna release that right now, and then we're gonna have a conversation, and your brain will feel very different. So that would be the quickest way I could get them out of it. On another path, right, most often I'll find that women end up in victim. Right? Everybody else is to blame for the scenario that they're experiencing. And so that is a very quick reframe where I walk them through why what they're thinking is a story that is not accurate, and I can show them very quickly how it's not accurate. And then for the people that come to me that have big egos, they're like, there's nothing you can tell me that I haven't already learned. Life, okay. Let's look at the lowest point in your life and the highest point of your life, and let's look at the patterns that still keep you stuck. So when you do that with someone, I remember one gentleman who's a billionaire I worked with. He's like, I've been in therapy for thirty years, and you're not gonna tell me anything. And I'm like, alright, let's make a deal. If I don't tell you anything that you haven't heard before, you don't have to work with me ever again. But if I do tell you something you've never heard before, I get to do some support for your wife because I know what she's going through because of what I can see happening in your brain in your brain. I ended up working with his wife for a year. So he basically was like, I've never even seen this before. And most of the times, we can't. We can't see the things that hold us back the most, but the problem is everyone around us can see it. And no one's willing sometimes to step up and have those hard conversations with us. The Power Up Your Life podcast is powered by GoBundance Women. I could tell you stuff about it or you could hear from some of our members. Here you go. GoBundance

has connected me with an amazing group of entrepreneurial women that I can learn from and support and grow together.

GoBundance gave me a boardroom of sisters who refused to let me settle. You know, within the first two months of me being a member, I enrolled someone to help them with their high ticket sales. I got double back my investment within the first, you know, sixty days of being a member. So it was it's incredible. You guys are just amazing, and there's always somebody to look up to in in, in GoBundance, so I love being a member.

That's why you owe it to yourself to check out gobundancewomen.com. So, Annie, that is that resonates a lot. I I think that in a position of leadership, you know, the the need to have real real feedback. And that's honestly a big piece of what we're building and what we built at GoBundance Women is the ability to have smart questions asked of us, you know, amongst people who we respect and know are brilliant so that we can start to see our own blind spots. Because when you are an entrepreneur, you're sometimes like groping into the darkness and you don't know if, you know, is this gonna work? So I, I love that, that you're giving that opportunity to see around corners for people. I'm curious oh, sorry. Go ahead. I was supposed to say you guys do an excellent job with that. Like, when I attended the Cabo retreat,

there was such a beautiful way, and I'm sure you have cultivated this together, but there was such a beautiful way for people to be able to be vulnerable, but also to get very hard hitting direct feedback. That's a very hard thing to create in this world, and you do it beautifully. So thank you for that because that was really powerful. Thank you, Annie. That matters so much because that that container is what we put a lot of love into to creating.

Love it. Back to you for your for your own life Mandy then also your clients. You know, success leaves clues. So is there Life a ritual or a recipe that you use in your daily life to to find that next level Your one that you introduce to your your clients?

Sure. I mean, I could list off quite a few right here, just ways of thinking that have changed the game for me. Right? So the first thing that I do you know when people have money issues or money scarcity issues. Right? It seems to be Life a pervasive problem for so many people. I remember back when I started doing coaching, the very first thing I thought through was I'm like, what if I had a million dollars in cash in the bank? I had a million dollars in cash in the bank. How would I make decisions differently? And that became a totally different filter for every decision I ever made past that point. So that's the first thing I do anytime I ever feel any inkling of scarcity or money issue or Life, oh, no. What if this doesn't work? I go back to that conversation because if you can feel what it feels like to have a million dollars in cash in your bank account, you make very different decisions for yourself. You can't come from a place of scarcity that way. The other thing that I do a lot is I'm in a pattern of my brain of the constant reframe. Right? So I will literally if something bad happens, I'm like, okay. This is awesome that this is happening because I just know around the corner is my next big win, Life, the next big growth point. And so many times we get so down when we're in these, like, shitty Women, and I'm like, this is amazing. I can't wait. I'm like, I go into the dirt and into the mud to figure out what is that gold that I need as a lesson. So I'm always looking for the reframe of what's my lesson, what's the more positive feeling that I can feel in this moment, and what's the parallel life I would want to lead if I didn't have this negative feeling in me at the moment. So those are just a couple of little snippets, but they Kelly me so much because, again, right, when you're doing work like this with hundreds of people, you have to be impeccable with the work that you're doing on yourself. Otherwise, you can't be in alignment to do the work for others.

Yeah. Mandy that's so important. So one thing I I talked about this on our our Power Up Your Business call, which is something we do in GoBundance about just where some of the things can go wrong in a business. And one of the areas that I talked about is when somebody's, like, personal health or they have relationship challenges that are happening on the outside. And and, you know, I know you've gone through similar things as me with the divorce and other things. How do you code somebody to be able to keep, you know, keep the ship sailing in spite of all of the other things? Like, I've got an aging dad now. It'd be easy to use that as an excuse Your things are going on in this area. Like, how do you help somebody through something like that Mandy not lose the momentum that you've built scaling or growing your business?

Well, I think you're speaking to a very specific thing that happens to so many hundreds of people. Right? Like, if there is instability in our personal relationship life or or in our intimacy life, it really can throw us way off of momentum. It can stop us from scaling teams. It it can become the excuse. What I found is you need to have one cheerleader in your life that holds the vision for you in order for you to then stick with that vision. Right? So for a lot of the women that I'm working with who have gone through the divorce, who are in that transition, they're so and and I don't mean this a bad way. I was here too. You're so discombobulated just trying to survive. You need someone to be like, nope. This, not that. Nope. We're moving in momentum this way. This is who you are. This is your amazing genius. Let's monetize this. Right? So you need someone to hold the vision when it comes to your genius, the momentum, and how to keep you inspired. If you have a coach that does that, then there's no way that you're gonna stop momentum. And if you have those movements where you just have to cry, you have to release it, or you have to, you know, take a break, I'm gonna be the first person that's like, sister, go take a twenty five minute nap because that's the ideal time to reset the subconscious. Come back, and let's hit it hard. Right? Because most of the times, we need more gentleness. We need more support. We need more love Mandy nurturing

those Kelly intense moments of our lives. And that's what I give to the clients that I work with because they don't get it anywhere else. Yeah. Well, I'm just gonna follow-up on that. A lot of people think, you know, like, you need a coach there even when things are going great because we know there's gonna be a time where they're not going great. Right? And that's where the coach will already know you and be there rather than waiting for rock bottom.

Well, everyone's in a cycle. Whether you believe this or not, your subconscious and your conscious patterning is such that you will always been in a cycle, trajectory Up, then a trajectory down, trajectory up, trajectory down. You have to decide how quick you wanna stay in that downward trajectory and how quick you can move into the upward trajectory. So for me, I'm like, everyone's gonna have cycles. You have to decide, is this a five minute cycle downtrend, or is it gonna be, like, days of staying in that downtrend? Right? So that's Life

To not believe in cycles is like not believing in Tuesdays. Like, I say this in investing a lot too. Like, oh, this is a bull market for us. Like, you're you're you have cycles. Everything in the universe has cycles. And I think it's worth noting that the most powerful people also have down times. You know? Life, even if you learn that lesson one time, it might come back, invite you, and you might need support and to be the learner again. I I absolutely love that. You know, we talked a little bit about, if you don't have a relationship that's going great, let's talk about the other side of that coin. You talk about working with power couples. So let's say you're in something good and you wanna make it great. What how is that work different that you do with the individual entrepreneur versus couples?

So for couples, the most important thing that I do, I think there are two things. Number one, I help both sides of the couple understand what is your trauma cycle or the pattern that you both get stuck in, because ultimately, couples are pulled together by a trauma bond almost always because they're here to be an unhealing partnership for each other. So if you don't understand the triggers of that trauma bonding, then you really can't take your relationship to the next level. So that is the primary focus when we start. And then the secondary focus is most couples don't have a shared purpose that they've created together to redirect them when the relationship gets difficult or when the business gets difficult. So that is the foundation of everything I do. And then for some couples that have been through very trying times, we often set up a clean slate contract that is their reset contract Your, okay. We used to be like this. We used to do it this way. We used to communicate like this. What do we wanna create from this moment starting moving forward that is an indicator of who we're becoming and this epic new relationship we wanna step into? Most couples let it go. And at the seven year, fourteen year mark, thirty year mark, have massive issues because they haven't done this work just to create the solid foundation.

Oh my gosh. That's so great. So since we're on relationships, I'm gonna take it to to an interesting level and get your feedback here. So, you know, being somebody that's in personal growth and development and and focusing on EQ and success and all of the other things, there are a lot of women that believe that there aren't enough men at that same level because they might not have done the work or whatnot. What are your thoughts on that, and how can we support men in getting because we do want the emotion. You know? And and when women get to about 50 in that midlife journey Mandy our hormones that used to keep us contained are no longer doing that anymore, and we're like, I will not be in a situation like this anymore. So how can we support the men too?

Well, I think that what I've learned from working with a lot of men over the past fifteen years is that men are some of the most sensitive creatures in the entire world. Right? They literally do not do well if there's any level of criticism or confrontation. And so what I try to remind myself of is Women men are especially over the age of 50, it's much harder to get a man to shift or adjust or be more open to different thought patterns. And so what I'm a big fan of is when you're dating and you're in that realm, creating that safety for both of you so that the man can feel like his sensitivity has a safe place and a safe escape to go to. Most men have never had a safety they haven't had they haven't had that sort of, like, safe place to be super emotional. And for many of Up, as women who have had to go into very masculine jobs in this masculine world, we haven't really created safety either for ourselves. So a lot of this goes back to when I coached the couples on how can we create safety and peace for both of you with each other through the language you use, through skin on skin contact, through taking it out of sexual connection into more of this, like, emotional sacred connection. I have a background in tantra. I've been certified in a fair amount of tantra. And so when I work with couples, I'm also helping people to be more in contact with the emotional intelligence, the emotional connection before they go down the path of massive physical connection. Because once you do that with a man, it almost changes the game into how safe they feel and how sensitive they can get with you.

Mandy, there there's a lot to unpack there. A lot to unpack. A lot of tips to take home, but always be touching is the one that I wrote down.

Always be touching and Mandy unskid naked time in the morning where there's no sex, no orgasm, just skin on skin for five to ten minutes, and that man will go take a mountain. And you better believe it Women he comes home from work at the end of the day, you guys are gonna be ready for some steamy stuff. So I wrote down naked time, and I feel like somebody's gonna enjoy that in my life. Gonna love this episode.

So ladies, write down naked time Mandy send a thank you note to Annie Yatch at the end. But so many gifts here, Annie. We had the, the opportunity to meet you Women we were in Sundance, Utah, you Life local to Utah, and then you joined us again as a, an expert speaker in Cabo. I'll tell you just I see your hearts. I Life the chance to meet your partner, Ty, and I just I thank you so much for what you put into the world. It it matters a lot to me that you're a girl who supports girls. And, you know, because of that, the container we're building here is women who help women. Right? And you served Up. We wanna serve you. What is an introduction or a, a resource that changes the ballgame for you?

I think the resource that changes the ball game for me, honestly, was meeting the women that you brought together for the GoBundance retreat. Because, you know, the only way I can help more women is by meeting women who are doing beautiful things for women in the space. Right? And so I was so grateful for that introduction. But if you know of other groups of women that are really looking to up level how they think and feel about themselves, that they don't hold themselves back in business or in their relationship, that would be an incredible connection for me.

You know, I I wanted to also say a couple things that I wrote down besides the naked Life, just as a a key takeaway. Where am I suffering, and what do I want to be true instead? That is something that I intend to journal on to to feel through. Kelly, what what's something that you took away from the conversation?

You know, I love that you identified five things that get somebody stuck. And I think when we are feeling stuck, if we could just stop, go back to the list Mandy try to figure out, like, where am I Kelly? That's super impactful. The other the other part is just when somebody is in in that, you know, rough space to identify the emotion Mandy then get the support that's really needed. So, of course, we are just so grateful for you. I am so grateful for you personally, professionally, and just, you know, encourage anyone to find Annie. What's the best way that our that our listeners can find you?

Easiest way to find me is on Instagram reinvention x o dot annie, a n n I e. I still respond to all my DMs personally because that is the level of intimacy and touch that I want for the people that I help. So feel free to reach out. Incredible.

Incredible. Well, thank you guys all for joining us on the Power Up Your Life podcast. Make sure you go home and get your naked time in. Share the episode Mandy really come back, see us again, and we will see you next time on the next Power Up Your Life podcast. Thanks, Annie.

Thank you so much, ladies.

Thanks for joining us today on the Power Up Your Life podcast. If you got value from today's episode, make sure that you like and subscribe and send this episode to someone who needs to hear some wins like this. If you need to power up your business, head over to Power Up Your Life Now, where you can see all of the resources that our team has to power up your business. We'll see you on the next episode.