What I learned about the EOS life I wasn't living

I've spent the last few years doing some deep internal work to turn around my business and finally reclaim my EOS life.

For a long time, everything looked great from the outside: I had right-fit clients, and I always pushed myself to deliver excellent service consistently. But when I looked honestly at my actual version of the EOS life, specifically my time for other passions and making time for myself, things were completely off-kilter.

If I'm being completely honest, my score for taking care of myself used to sit at a dismal 3 or 4. I wasn't giving myself time to go to the gym, take walks, or just decompress from the high-energy work we do.

I always naively thought that if I just kept altruistically serving everyone else and showing up for everybody else, it would all just figure itself out one day. It doesn't.

Turning those scores around and finding my footing required a complete shift in how I run my practice and how I show up as a person.

Looking back, that progress didn't come from trying to outwork the chaos. Instead, it came from a series of distinct shifts: learning to accept my own human imperfections, ruthlessly cutting out the hidden drains on my energy, and finally learning to stop looking for answers on the outside.

This is the honest, internal work it took to finally let go of the vine and make that turnaround real.

The permission to be human

Not long ago, I was sitting with someone who told me they were generally averse to coaching. Even though I happen to be their EOS Implementer, they were speaking specifically about one-on-one coaching, explaining that they need a coach who has done it all and understands it all so they can learn directly from that person's experience.

They challenged me with a specific example, pointing out that if you go to a doctor who is very overweight, but he's telling you how to be healthy, you naturally wonder why you should listen to him.

For a long time, that kind of logic made sense to me, and it made me feel like I had to be flawless to help anyone.

But as I thought about it more, I realized it's not a hundred percent accurate. Just because the doctor doesn't necessarily follow his own advice, it doesn't mean the advice he's giving you is wrong. To the contrary, he still knows exactly what is right; he's just as human as you are, and he's struggling through his own journey to get it done.

That conversation gave me permission to finally forgive myself for not running my own life and business to the absolute highest degree of perfection. I'm just as human as my clients, and it's okay if we aren't perfect at all of this.

It doesn't mean you aren't a good coach or that you are doing something wrong; it simply means you're on a journey just like everyone else.

Turning off the energy drain

For a long time, I blamed my exhaustion on my schedule, assuming I was just too busy or had too many clients. The real breakthrough happened a few years ago when I was participating in the entry-level signature program at Strategic Coach.

During a break, we paired up for five minutes to go over our struggles and listen to one another. The person I sat with, who wasn't an implementer, completely reframed my situation.

He told me that nobody gets burnt out from always loving what they do. He guessed that my burnout wasn't about the volume of work, but because I didn't actually love all the clients I was working with, and that I was engaging with people I didn't align with.

He was exactly right.

The truth is, I had a subconscious people-pleaser attitude and a nervous tick in my head about covering my expenses and maintaining my lifestyle. I was taking on business ventures and clients where there wasn't a 100% alignment because I was afraid of losing the client and losing the money.

Because I was too focused on holding onto the client rather than actually helping them, I wasn't asking the right questions or showing up as the best coach I could be. That bad energy just fed more bad energy, making coaching harder and ultimately causing me to lose those clients anyway after a few sessions.

Once I saw the real source of the drain, I started actively screening clients.

I used to be a dismal 3 on the column of "working with people you love." But I started asking upfront why I was taking a client, recognizing when they weren't ready, and admitting when an engagement was going to be absolute murder.

I've managed to bring that score up to a 7, which is huge progress for me.

The streetlight and the internal work

When things were at their worst, my instinct was always to look for quick fixes on the outside. I blamed the business, or the economy, thinking that if I just outworked the problems, did more business development, and chased more clients, it would all fix itself.

But the real issue was inside of me: it was my belief system about abundance and what I needed to let go of.

It reminds me of a story Wayne Dyer tells about a person who drops their car keys inside their pitch-black living room.

Because they can't see anything, they look out the window and notice the streetlights are still on. So, they go outside to search for their keys on the sidewalk underneath the streetlight because the light is so much better out there. When a neighbor stops to help and asks where exactly they dropped them, the person says they dropped them inside the living room.

The neighbor asks what they are doing outside, and they say, "Well, the light is so much better out here."

It sounds completely ridiculous, but that's exactly what we do. The hard work is looking inward versus looking outward, and realizing that what we thought was true is no longer true.

The five-minute reset and the cascade

That inward work is a constant journey, because my perfectionism tells me that if I do it, it will sound better and come out better.

My coach, Mike Kotsis, has been brilliant in helping me take those stubborn beliefs out of my head, separate myself from them, and stop trying to force life to happen. He taught me to simply let the dust settle by stopping for five minutes, taking a few deep breaths, and letting everything rest without any complex or mystical meditative style.

When you calm that frantic voice telling you that you must work harder, do more business development, or chase more clients, you suddenly realize that your compulsion to outwork problems was completely counterproductive and didn't make sense.

The moment I gave myself permission to do less in the evenings or on weekends and shed the internal guilt, my entire energy transformed.

Because I showed up differently, my relationships naturally began to flourish on their own without forcing any artificial processes. My relationship with my wife became significantly greater simply because I was taking better care of myself and projecting a completely different energy.

This positive transformation quickly became a continuous cycle.

Because things at home were thriving, I showed up with far better energy as a coach in the session room, which made my client relationships deeply fruitful, which in turn naturally attracted premium, right-fit clients to my practice.

It is the ultimate reality of addition by subtraction; the more you let go, the higher you elevate and the more you get.

I am still human, I am still on the journey, and I still struggle with letting go of certain operational elements in my practice. I easily could have benefited from these concepts ten or fifteen years ago, but I am incredibly grateful to be embracing them now.

In this business, hitting a perfect one hundred percent is complete utopia, and our goal is not a flawless fantasy but true mastery. Every single stage of growth means hitting a brand-new ceiling that requires looking inward and learning to let go all over again.

Mastery is never about reaching a static final destination; it is the rewarding, lifelong journey of learning and understanding yourself a little better every single day.

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This article is based on Episode 2 of the newly launched Practice Builder Podcast, featuring Expert Implementer Tzvi Schwartz in conversation with Chris Beer. You can listen to the full episode onSpotify andApple Podcasts, or watch the full conversation on YouTube.