Latest / The Strategize, Adapt, and Overcome Podcast by Brad Young / Momentum Mastery: Turning Action Into Long‑Term Success

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Momentum Mastery: Turning Action Into Long‑Term Success · The Strategize, Adapt, and Overcome Podcast by Brad Young

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  Speaker 1: Good morning, and today we do in episode seventy seven,
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  Speaker 1: building momentum for success. Now, welcome back to strategize, adapt, Overcome.
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  Speaker 1: I am Brad Young, and today we are diving into
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  Speaker 1: something that I believe is one of the most underestimated
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  Speaker 1: forces in human performance and one of the most misunderstood
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  Speaker 1: concepts in the self improvement conversation. We're talking about momentum,
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  Speaker 1: what it is, how it actually works, why it matters
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  Speaker 1: so profoundly, and most importantly, how you build it, sustain it,
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  Speaker 1: and use it to turn small incremental winds into the
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  Speaker 1: kind of breakthroughs that look from the outside like overnight success.
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  Speaker 1: Here's the thing about momentum that most people get wrong.
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  Speaker 1: They think of it as a reward, something you receive
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  Speaker 1: after you've already done the hard work, a feeling that
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  Speaker 1: shows up when things are going well. But momentum is
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  Speaker 1: not a reward. Momentum is a tool. It is something
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  Speaker 1: you build deliberately, something you protect fiercely, and something you
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  Speaker 1: leverage strategically to amplify everything else you were doing. Soun
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  Speaker 1: Su understood this. In fact, an entire dimension of his
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  Speaker 1: strategic philosophy is centered on what he called she the
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  Speaker 1: strategic advantage that comes from accumulated force and favorable positioning.
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  Speaker 1: That concept, translated into the language of everyday life, is
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  Speaker 1: exactly what we are talking about today. What momentum actually is.
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  Speaker 1: Before we get into the how, let us spend a
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  Speaker 1: moment getting precise about the what. In physics, momentum is
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  Speaker 1: the product of mass and velocity. It is the quality
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  Speaker 1: of a moving object that makes it difficult to stop.
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  Speaker 1: The heavier and faster an object is, the more momentum
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  Speaker 1: it carries. And crucially, once an object has momentum, it
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  Speaker 1: takes significantly more energy to stop it than it took
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  Speaker 1: to get it moving in the first place. In human behavior,
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  Speaker 1: momentum operates on the same basic principle translated into the
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  Speaker 1: language of psychology and neuroscience rather than classical mechanics. When
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  Speaker 1: you are in motion, taking consistent action, making progress, building
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  Speaker 1: on previous results, your brain is doing something remarkable. It
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  Speaker 1: is releasing dopamine in response to each completed task, each
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  Speaker 1: small success, each moment of forward movement. That dopamine doesn't
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  Speaker 1: just feel good, It reinforces the behaviors that produced it.
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  Speaker 1: It makes the next action easier. It builds the neural
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  Speaker 1: pathways that associate effort with reward over time. This creates
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  Speaker 1: something very close to a biological momentum, a state in
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  Speaker 1: which continued action becomes not just possible, but genuinely natural.
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  Speaker 1: Sunsu described this principle through his concept of shy, which
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  Speaker 1: translates roughly as strategic energy or positional advantage. He used
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  Speaker 1: the image of a boulder at the top of a mountain.
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  Speaker 1: The effort required to start it rolling is enormous, but
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  Speaker 1: once it is in motion, the force that carries is
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  Speaker 1: nearly unstoppable. He wrote, the momentum of one skilled in
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  Speaker 1: wars overwhelming and his attack precisely regulated. The key phrase
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  Speaker 1: there is precisely regulated. Momentum in Sonsou's view, was not
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  Speaker 1: a wild, uncontrolled force. It was something cultivated, directed, and
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  Speaker 1: channeled with care. The momentum of one skilled in war
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  Speaker 1: is overwhelming and his attack precisely regulated. Sun Sue the
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  Speaker 1: science of small winds. If momentium is the boulder rolling
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  Speaker 1: down the mountain, small winds are the hands that first
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  Speaker 1: set it in motion. This is where the practical work
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  Speaker 1: begins and where most people underestimate both the difficulty and
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  Speaker 1: the power of what they are doing. There is a
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  Speaker 1: natural human tendency to dismiss small winds as insignificant. You
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  Speaker 1: made the bed, you sent the email you'd been avoiding,
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  Speaker 1: You went to the gym once after long absence. You
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  Speaker 1: wrote two hundred words of the book you've been meaning
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  Speaker 1: to start. These feel like drops in an ocean. They
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  Speaker 1: feel like almost nothing compared to the enormity of the
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  Speaker 1: goals you were working toward. But Terresa Mobeley and Stephen Kramer,
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  Speaker 1: in their landmark research on workplace motivation published as the
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  Speaker 1: Progress Principle, found something that fundamentally challenges this dismissal. Of
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  Speaker 1: all the things that can boost a person's inner work life,
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  Speaker 1: their emotions, motivations, and perceptions on any given day, the
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  Speaker 1: single most powerful is making progress in meaningful work, not big,
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  Speaker 1: dramatic breakthroughs. Progress even small, incremental steps forward had a
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  Speaker 1: profound positive effect on cognitive function, created, problem solving, and
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  Speaker 1: sustain motivation. The researchers called this the power of small wins,
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  Speaker 1: and their findings have been replicated across dozens of subsequent studies.
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  Speaker 1: Soon Sue captured this intuition millennia before the research existed.
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  Speaker 1: His approach to military campaigns was famously incremental. He preferred
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  Speaker 1: to secure advantageous positions, consolidate gains, and build from a
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  Speaker 1: foundation of demonstrated strength, rather than gambling every everything on
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  Speaker 1: a single dramatic confrontation. He wrote, he who advances without
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  Speaker 1: seeking fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought
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  Speaker 1: is to protect his country and do good service for
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  Speaker 1: his sovereign is the jewel of the kingdom. Replace country
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  Speaker 1: with goal and sovereign with vision, and you have a
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  Speaker 1: perfect description of the momentum building mindset, why momentum breaks down,
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  Speaker 1: and how to protect it. If building momentum through small
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  Speaker 1: winds is so powerful, why do so many people struggle
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  Speaker 1: to sustain it? Why do we see pattern after pattern
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  Speaker 1: of strong starts followed by stalls of initial enthusiasm, giving
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  Speaker 1: way to drift and eventually to quite abandonment of the
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  Speaker 1: thing that once felt so important. The answer has multiple layers,
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  Speaker 1: and understanding them is essential to protecting the momentum you build.
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  Speaker 1: The first layer is what psychologists call the what the
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  Speaker 1: hell effect, a phenomenon observed behavioral research where a single
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  Speaker 1: significant deviation from a gold directed behavior causes a person
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  Speaker 1: to abandon the behavior entirely, at least temporarily. You miss
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  Speaker 1: one workout and suddenly you haven't been to the gym
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  Speaker 1: in three weeks. You have one unproductive day, and somehow
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  Speaker 1: it becomes an unproductive month. The deviation itself rarely causes
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  Speaker 1: the real damage. The narrative you build around the deviation does.
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  Speaker 1: I've already broken the streak, so it doesn't matter anymore.
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  Speaker 1: This story is momentum's greatest enemy. Sunsu had a principle
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  Speaker 1: that speaks directly to this. He believed deeply in the
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  Speaker 1: strategic importance of never fully retreating, not from a position
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  Speaker 1: of stubbornness, but from an understanding that every retreat requires
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  Speaker 1: a fresh start, and fresh starts are expensive. He wrote,
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  Speaker 1: there are roads which must not be followed, armies which
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  Speaker 1: must not be attacked, towns which must not be besieged,
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  Speaker 1: positions which must not be contested. In the context of momentum.
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  Speaker 1: There are setbacks which must not be used as reasons
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  Speaker 1: to stop entirely. The discipline to return quickly and to
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  Speaker 1: not perfectly but persistently is what separates people who build
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  Speaker 1: lasting momentum from those who cycle endlessly through enthusiasm and collapse.
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  Speaker 1: The narrative trap. A single misday is not a failure,
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  Speaker 1: and the story you tell yourself about that misday is
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  Speaker 1: what determines whether momentum continues or collapses. Watch the narrative,
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  Speaker 1: not just the behavior. The cost of restart. Every time
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  Speaker 1: you allow momentum to die completely, you pay the full
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  Speaker 1: cost of starting over. Protecting even minimal forward motion during
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  Speaker 1: hard periods is always worth the effort. The recovery protocol.
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  Speaker 1: Develop a predetermined response to setbacks before they happen. Knowing
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  Speaker 1: exactly how you will return after a disruption removes the
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  Speaker 1: decision cost of re engagement entirely. Turning small winds into
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  Speaker 1: big breakthroughs now. Let us talk about the part of
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  Speaker 1: the momentum conversation that gets people genuinely excited, The point
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  Speaker 1: at which accumulated small winds begin to compound into something
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  Speaker 1: that looks from the outside like a breakthrough. This is
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  Speaker 1: the phase that confuses observers and sometimes even the person
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  Speaker 1: experiencing it. You've been working quietly, consistently, building day after day,
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  Speaker 1: and then something shifts. Progress accelerates, opportunities appear. Results that
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  Speaker 1: once seemed impossibly distant suddenly feel close. People around you
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  Speaker 1: start taking notice what happened. What happened is compound growth.
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  Speaker 1: In financial terms, compound interest is the phenomenon by which
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  Speaker 1: a sum grows not just by the original amount, but
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  Speaker 1: by the accumulated total, so that each period's growth builds
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  Speaker 1: on every previous period's growth. The same dynamic operates in
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  Speaker 1: human performance. Each small win does not just add to
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  Speaker 1: your results, It adds to your capacity to produce results.
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  Speaker 1: You become slightly more skilled, slightly more confident, slightly more connected,
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  Speaker 1: slightly more visible, and each of those improvements creates conditions
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  Speaker 1: that make the next improvement more likely and more significant.
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  Speaker 1: Soun Sue described this compounding dynamic through the concept of
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  Speaker 1: advantageous positioning. The general who consistently secured superior positions did
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  Speaker 1: not just have a tactical advantage in each individual engagement.
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  Speaker 1: They had a strategic advantage that compounded across the entire campaign.
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  Speaker 1: Each position made the next position more accessible. Each victory
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  Speaker 1: made the next victory more probable. He wrote, Victorious warriors
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  Speaker 1: win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors
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  Speaker 1: go to war first and then seek to win. The
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  Speaker 1: breakthrough is not a sudden event. It is the visible
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  Speaker 1: manifestation of invisible compound growth that has been building for
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  Speaker 1: a long time. Sustaining moment them over the long term.
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  Speaker 1: Building momentum is one challenge. Sustaining it over months and
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  Speaker 1: years is another. Entirely many people find that they can
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  Speaker 1: generate short bursts of incredible forward motion, a product launch, fitness, transformation,
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  Speaker 1: a creative project completed with passion, but struggle to maintain
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  Speaker 1: that level of engagement and progress once the initial excitement
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  Speaker 1: is faded. The initial energy of a new goal is
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  Speaker 1: a powerful but finite fuel source. What sustains momentum over
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  Speaker 1: the long term is something different. Sinsou's answer to this
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  Speaker 1: challenge was structure. Not rigid, inflexible structure, but the kind
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  Speaker 1: of disciplined organization that allows a force to remain effective
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  Speaker 1: even when conditions change, morale fluctuates, and the initial passion
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  Speaker 1: of engagement has given way to the grinding reality of
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  Speaker 1: sustained effort. He devoted considerable attention to the maintenance of
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  Speaker 1: army organization, supply lines and leadership structures, not because these
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  Speaker 1: things were glamorous, but because they were what made sustained
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  Speaker 1: operations possible. Without infrastructure, even the most motivated force will
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  Speaker 1: eventually exhaust itself and collapse. In personal terms, this means
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  Speaker 1: building the systems and habits that allow momentum to continue
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  Speaker 1: even on the days when your motivation is low, your
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  Speaker 1: energy is depleted, and the goal feels very far away.
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  Speaker 1: A system is what you do when you don't feel
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  Speaker 1: like doing anything. It is the scheduled time, the accountability structure,
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  Speaker 1: the environment designed to make the right behavior easy and
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  Speaker 1: the wrong behavior inconvenient. James Clear in Atomic Habits makes
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  Speaker 1: precisely this point. The motivation is unreliable, but systems are not.
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  Speaker 1: Sun Sue would have recognized this immediately. In his framework,
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  Speaker 1: sustained military success was never primarily a function of individual heroism.
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  Speaker 1: It was a function of organizational excellence. There is also
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  Speaker 1: a psychological dimension to long term momentum that deserves explicit
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  Speaker 1: attention the management of your relationship with progress itself. As
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  Speaker 1: goals become more ambitious and timelines extend, the feedback loops
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  Speaker 1: that generated momentum in the early stages become less frequent.
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  Speaker 1: You have to learn to find satisfaction not just invisible results,
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  Speaker 1: but in the quality of your process, in the discipline
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  Speaker 1: of showing up, in the craft of doing the work well,
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  Speaker 1: and the subtle but real satisfaction of being the kind
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  Speaker 1: of person who does what they said they would do,
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  Speaker 1: even when no one is watching. A final word, every
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  Speaker 1: episode of this podcast begins with the same three words
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  Speaker 1: in the title, Strategize, adapt, overcome, because I believe those
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  Speaker 1: three words capture something essential about the life well lived.
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  Speaker 1: Strategizing means thinking before acting, building frameworks, and making choices
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  Speaker 1: that serve your long term vision rather than your short
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  Speaker 1: term comfort. Adapting means holding your plans loosely enough to
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  Speaker 1: update them when reality pushes back, staying nimble in the
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  Speaker 1: face of change without losing sight of where you are going.
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  Speaker 1: An overcoming means persisting through the inevitable difficulty of any
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  Speaker 1: meaningful endeavor with enough resilience, resourcefulness, and self belief to
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  Speaker 1: reach the other side. Sun Sue embodied all three, and
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  Speaker 1: in studying him and sitting with his ideas and turning
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  Speaker 1: them over and finding their contemporary expressions, I find myself
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  Speaker 1: continuously reminded of something that I think we all need
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  Speaker 1: to hear more often. The capacity for strategic, adaptive, resilient
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  Speaker 1: living is not a rare gift distributed to a fortunate few.
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  Speaker 1: It is a skill. It is learnable. It requires attention, practice,
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  Speaker 1: and patience, but it is available to every person willing
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  Speaker 1: to show up, do the work, and keep going even
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  Speaker 1: when the path is not clear. That is the invitation
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  Speaker 1: this podcast extends with every episode, not to become Sun Sou,
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  Speaker 1: not to turn your life into a military campaign, but
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  Speaker 1: to borrow the depth of his thinking, the precision of
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  Speaker 1: his observation, and the elegance of his principles, and to
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  Speaker 1: apply them with full creative adaptation to the specific and
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  Speaker 1: irreplaceable challenge of being you, living your life, pursuing your goals,
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  Speaker 1: navigating your obstacles, and building something that matters. Thank you
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  Speaker 1: for listening, thank you for thinking, and thank you for
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  Speaker 1: doing the ongoing, courageous, necessary work of becoming who you
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  Speaker 1: are meant to be. I will see you in the
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  Speaker 1: next episode.