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The Alignment Engine is where high-capacity humans tune their inner systems, align with what matters most, and move forward with clarity and power. Host Kaitlin Merchant blends soul, systems, and strategy into sharp insights and grounded conversations for founders, creatives, and leaders navigating their next evolution in business and life.
Welcome to the Alignment Engine where high capacity humans get a glimpse below the hood and explore how soul, systems, and strategy click into place and accelerate the road ahead. Buckle up. Let's roll.
Hey friends. Welcome. A couple episodes ago, we talked about play and I said something that I want come back to today.
Play opens the channel, but action is what keeps it on.
That is where we are headed in this conversation.
Action. Momentum. Belief.
Why it matters, how it compounds, what happens when you actually start moving, even when you don't feel ready. Even when the path is messy, because here is the deal. Action creates momentum. Momentum compounds, and compounded action turns into belief in yourself, and what you're building, and in what's possible.
That's the through line. We're gonna talk about how action not only fuels progress, but recalibration, [00:01:00] flow, and even the fields around you. We'll look at what science says, what entrepreneurs show us, and I'll share some of my stories along the way. Soo, let's dive in.
Action is a force.
It does so many magical things for us. Action creates momentum even when it's in the wrong direction. Even when it is wildly imperfect, momentum fuels it. And it will always get you further than waiting, as long as you're willing to course correct along the way.
You know, we've all done that where we're like, " yep, I'll get to it when." Or "it's not quite the right time." "First I have to dot, dot, dot -- fill in the blank."
Yep. Guilty here, for sure.
It happens in business, in parenting. Maybe for me, in keeping my house clean and tidy and organized, it happens in all areas of life.
Even sitting down to record this podcast, my computer tried to force me into a massive update.
Instead of waiting an hour and [00:02:00] 40 minutes, I switched systems and just kept going. There is always something to stop you. Sometimes it's a real hurdle, sometimes it's an excuse, but the only way through is action.
You can edit and refine a chapter once it's on the page, but you can't edit an idea that's stuck in your head. Until it exists outside of you, it doesn't count. And that's the same with momentum. If the ball is sitting at the top of the hill nothing happens.
Push it, let it roll. Get it moving and then you can guide it back on course.
And here's the thing, those tiny steps don't just add up. They multiply. Action compounds like interest in a savings account, even small moves gather energy. And over time the results aren't linear. They're exponential.
James Clear calls this the 1% rule in his book, Atomic Habits.
If you can get just 1% better each day, you won't end up 365% better by the end of the year. You end up [00:03:00] 3678% better. That's 37 times better than what you are today. That is the power of compounding. Write three sentences today and it feels like nothing but three sentences every day for a year. That's a book, or at least a solid start on one.
Spend 15 minutes sketching. It feels small, but do it consistently, and it changes your style, your confidence, even your identity. Spend 15 minutes of uninterrupted playtime with your child a day and your relationship will transform. Have one significant business conversation a day, and it feels like a drop in the bucket, but stack those up for a year and suddenly you've got an abundance of leads, income, network, opportunities, and momentum that didn't exist before. That is why momentum matters so much.
Small consistent action isn't just about the progress. It's about creating the snowball that gets bigger and [00:04:00] faster the further it rolls, and then those tiny steps turn into exponential shifts. Turns into an avalanche, but you gotta take the step. You gotta do the thing. And then we can tinker and get you adjusted just right.
I think this is why that famous quote by World War II, General George S Patton, he played a major role in D-Day. But anyways, the, the quote goes, A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.
It's actually pretty genius. I heard this for the first time working in a corporate environment, and it drove me nuts because we would act without thinking all the time. It would create so much chaos and people would run around like chickens with their heads cut off. And I'm not saying you have to replicate that exact scenario, but now I see the genius and just going ahead and doing it and figuring it out along the way.
And that same spirit shows up over and over again with today's entrepreneurs, Airbnb's, Brian Chesky, bumbles, Whitney wolf heard Starbucks, Howard Schultz, [00:05:00] Spanx, Sarah Blakely, Netflix, read, Hastings. All of them have said in one way or another that they were not fully ready when they started.
They didn't wait for the perfect timing. They moved and they figured it out along the way. And I'm pretty sure if anyone tells you they did have it all figured out, they're not telling you something.
I remember this one quote jumping out at me watching a movie a long time ago. The original quote comes from Heraclitus and it is "the only constant in life is change."
Simple, but so true. Every day is just a little bit different. You experienced things yesterday that mean you are just a little bit different today than you were yesterday. Every day, the environment, the variables, they're all just a little bit different. Multiply that by the number of people and circumstances on the planet, and it is infinite change.
And if you have to know all of those variables and all of those pieces and [00:06:00] everything before you get started, you are gonna get thrown for a big old loop when the world and circumstances around you change. But if you're willing to take action now and adjust along the way, you get to skip being thrown for the loop or at least diminish it significantly because you're already used to shifting and adjusting and figuring it out as you go.
You don't have to have the full picture of everything. You've wired it in that you are the kind of person that can shift and adjust and roll with the punches.
And because of that, when that loop inspiring change shows up, you're able to just dance along with the changes instead of having everything implode.
And as a parent, or if you have a stellar memory, like my youngest sister, think about learning how to read.
You don't start with literature. You start with learning the alphabet and sounds, and then you move on to what we call CVC. Words, hop on pop hat, cat sat, you know the ones that are really easy to read. And then you build words that have two vows, like look book, [00:07:00] and then you memorize some sight words and you build into reading simple sentences.
Those simple sentences turn into simple books. You don't instantly start out reading novels. You have to lay the foundation first. You don't start as a five-year-old going, oh my gosh, I can't read Grapes of Wrath. I have failed. You'd never do that. I mean, Grapes of Wrath. I read in one weekend with about four hours of sleep.
It, was brutal. Not my favorite experience. If that was the benchmark for success, I might have opted out right there, but I pushed through and did it anyways. Whether you're five or 15 or 25, doesn't matter. What matters is that you wouldn't expect someone just starting out to set their benchmark of what somebody else has been doing for years, so why would you expect yourself to have the whole thing mapped out. To know every step along the way before you're ready. Don't compare yourself to somebody who's been doing it 5, 10, 15, 20 years.
I [00:08:00] mean comparison in general, you wanna be careful with, but we're human, right? This is probably gonna happen. Just don't set your benchmark to something so absurd.
It's a little bit like the idea of the a plus book smart student that is never brave enough to go do the thing, and then they get frustrated and resentful when they see the C or D student. That gets the huge success because they actually went out and did it.
"But I'm so much smarter. I know so much more than them," but you didn't go do anything with it.
So if you're working on writing that book, just focus on the, the one page, get at least a couple sentences down today, and then you can add to it. That's exactly how bestselling author John Grisham started. Back when he was practicing law and even serving in the state legislature in Mississippi, he got up at 5:00 AM and wrote a page a day before heading into court. One page, small, consistent steps that eventually snowballed into his career as a [00:09:00] bestselling author.
Break it down into bite-sized pieces and over enough time with enough consistency and repetition, it's gonna snowball.
But more than that, action doesn't just create movement or flow, it creates belief. This is something that deserves a deeper dive at some point, but you can hijack the belief, emotion, programs, action feedback loop and overwrite outdated things that no longer serve you simply through your actions.
And belief. Once it's moving, has a way of expanding outward shaping, not just your next move, but the whole field around you. It begins to ripple out on a bigger scale.
At first, my plan was to pull Nike into an example of strategy, but then I got this intuitive nudge and a song popped on called Nike's on my feet, got Nike's on my feet.
Totally not my normal music, but I thought, okay, clearly this is a signal to look deeper at Nike. And when I did woahhh, you see their whole [00:10:00] story through this lens. Play, action, belief, scrappy experiments that didn't look ready, but built momentum and lead to a huge company. By the time "just do it" came around, Nike was already living it.
In the book Shoe Dog, Phil Knight opens by talking about play, framing his whole life in business through that lens.
After graduating from Stanford, he set off on an around the world trip. He had planned to go see sacred sites and wander through ancient cities, but he ended up spending a lot of his time surfing in Hawaii and living like a self-described beachbum. Those detours and adventures did not look like the start of a billion dollar company. But. They were part of the same spirit that would shape everything that came next. When you look at Nike in the early days, it was not a polished empire with the big valuation endorsement. It was scrappy. Phil Knight was a kid in a suit in post-war Japan, convincing a [00:11:00] shoe company to let him import their running shoes in America.
Totally and completely unprepared to run a global brand, but willing to put himself out there and take the step. I mean, he came back from Japan and sold shoes out of the trunk of his car at track meets when they first started.
Anyways, his partner, legendary Track coach Bill Bowerman, shared a similar spirit. Bowerman's pursuit of excellence led him to some wild experiments like pouring rubber into his wife's waffle iron to test a new tread pattern. It looked absurd, and the waffle iron never made it back to breakfast again. But that relentless drive to innovate produced one of Nike's earliest defining breakthroughs, the waffle sole. And that is S-O-L-E. Just for reference there. Bill Bowerman was doing a little bit more than innovating shoes. He was also shaping culture. In 1967, he [00:12:00] co-authored a book simply called Jogging, which introduced the entire idea of running for health and recreation to America. What had been a niche activity for athletes suddenly became a movement.
The cultural shift created the very market that Nike would go on to dominate. Talk about defining your market. How freaking cool is that? They played, they adjusted. They experimented not knowing where it would all lead, but they built that momentum one imperfect step at a time.
None of it looked ready.
None of it was perfect. But those messy experiments, those scrappy actions created belief, belief in the project, belief in themselves, and belief that they could build something bigger.
By the 1980s, that same ethos shaped some of Nike's boldest moves. Most famously, their partnership with them, well, a guy named, uh, Michael Jordan. What began as a risky bet turned into one of the most iconic [00:13:00] athlete endorsements in history.
And then came 1988 Nike's ad agency coined. Just Do It. It became the catchphrase for the motivation that we throw around all the time now.
For Nike, it captured the story that they had been living all along, playful enough to experiment, bold enough to act before they felt ready, and persistent enough to recalibrate as they went.
The combination snowballed into one of the world's most recognizable and studied brands.
Play open the channel, action, widened it and belief, locked it in for Nike, but also for millions of people who put the shoes on their feet and started moving.
And one more piece I wanna touch on with regard to action is pedestals and attachment. We often build something up in our heads, especially when it's something that we're not taking action on, right? Or that we're trying and we're trying and we're trying for, and it's all going to be amazing when -- this one thing happens. [00:14:00] But when you put something up on a pedestal, the universe has no choice but to knock it down.
In college, I thought owning an art gallery was going to be my dream. It pulled in the art, it pulled in the business degree, the entrepreneurial focus. I took every entrepreneurship class that I could at ut. My degree was technically in finance because I wanted to figure out money. Plus it had all the cute boys. Art was my passion. Owning an art gallery felt perfect. So I graduated, played in Europe for a little bit, and I came back to apply for a gallery job, assistant gallery director at one of the biggest galleries in Austin. Perfect, right? Nope.
The owner was what we'll call one of the most reflective people I've ever known. Another way of saying he was a total jerk. I I learned a ton, but I absolutely hated it. I lasted all of three months and I'm not one that usually leaves things that I don't like easily. When I [00:15:00] turned in my letter of resignation, he said, you can't leave.
You just got an apartment. Oh, buddy. I had leased it out already. Thank you very much.
Taking action on my dream career taught me so much. It showed me a lot about what I didn't want, and it pushed me in a direction that ended up being a beautiful adventure.
I doubled down on business and research, which led into instructional design, marketing, branding, coaching. All of the things I do today that I love. It showed me that I didn't just wanna be around other people's art all the time. If I was gonna be around art, I wanted to be creating my own. It made so many decisions that I had to make later way more clear.
That experience was my first professional recalibration. A reminder that pedestals collapse, but movement keeps you learning.
And that same principle shows up in the creative process too. Whether you call it writer's block or [00:16:00] artist block, the antidote is always movement.
When a friend or client hits a slump, I always tell them to go make something, make it ugly, make it silly. Go for a walk, doodle, ride your bike. Whatever you do, don't just sit there and wait for the inspiration. Figure out if you have a not-that-real excuse or a hidden fear or limiting belief is standing in your way, and then find a way to sidestep it. Go do it anyways. Stop telling yourself "I'm stuck." Stop telling yourself "I'm blocked." Stop telling yourself "I'll be ready when dot, dot, dot." Push through and you'll open up the channel for that best, most aligned stuff to arrive.
Steven Pressfield talks about this in The War of Art. The difference between amateurs and professionals is that amateurs wait for inspiration. Professionals show up anyways knowing that inspiration comes and goes. They know that the muse will often wait to strike until you are already doing the work.
Julia Cameron echoes a similar vein in The Artist's Way. [00:17:00] Morning pages are messy, stream of consciousness, three pages of writing dumped to clear cobwebs, write without stopping. No judgment, no filter. Just go, go, go. And what comes out? Might surprise you. You get all these scattered pieces that have been ping ponging around in your mind, conscious or subconscious, all laid out on the page for you. You get to see what you've been afraid of avoiding, or have your mind circling in loops that you didn't even realize were there.
Entrepreneurs lean into morning pages too. Tim Ferriss has called them his spiritual windshield wipers. Marie, for Leo has said that she's done them for years as part of her creative rhythm. Productivity leaders like Tiago Forte and Ali Abdal also use or recommend morning pages as a way to clear mental clutter and spark fresh ideas.
And a huge piece of this is taking action. You're physically creating movement with your pen on the paper. You're [00:18:00] creating a way for the most aligned action to become obvious, whether it's morning pages, painting, or just showing up at your desk.
Once you're in motion, you have something to shape, something to refine.
That is where recalibration comes in.
Sometimes when we get on this action train, we get tunnel vision on that dopamine boom and bust cycle. The need for more the next mountain, the next health next accomplishment. "I'll finally be happy when." Neuroscience tells us that dopamine is not just the reward. It is deeply tied to prediction error.
The difference between what is expected as a reward and what arrives. The dopamine also reflects anticipation, not just the pleasure of the outcome. That's why making the pursuit be the reward is the way to hack the dopamine system.
Being off by a tiny [00:19:00] imperceptible difference on the flight trajectory from LA to New York City could land you in DC instead of New York.
Correct general direction, but without making course corrections along the way, you end up in a whole different city. Being in motion matters because if you don't launch the plane, you're not even gonna get to the East coast. But making those tiny tweaks along the way will be the difference between landing in the city that you intended to go to and somewhere else entirely.
So when your brain senses that your actions are moving you closer to something that is meaningful when you believe you are on the right track, those small steps themselves light up your internal circuitry with micro rewards, you get a little, you get a little hit of dopamine, for just believing that you are on the right path.
And my friends taking action puts you on the right path.
If the only dopamine that you chase is tied to external wins to the goalpost, at the end, [00:20:00] your satisfaction and your happiness are going to be incredibly elusive. Again, deeper dive for another day. I can nerd out on this all day along.
Total sidebar, but we're gonna go there anyways, starting this podcast was a lot like thinking about becoming a professional artist. When I was in college, I was so worried that I was going to run out of. Images to paint, not ideas, not will people like my work not Will it be good. Just pictures to paint? Yeah. That has never once been an actual problem. With the podcast. I was worried about having enough information and enough stories to talk to you about, and guys, look at all of these deep dives we've already pinned for later episodes. Talk about. The power of taking action anyways. All righty. Sidebar over back on course.
So if each small correction in the flight path is really about alignment, getting to the right city, the very act of moving, even when the path [00:21:00] bends and shifts and carries its own signal, movement tells the field around you, your creator field, that you are somebody who takes action. You create, you participate in the unfolding, taking action signals to the universe, to the world, to all matter and circumstance that you are someone who moves. You don't just sit on your butt and watch life happen around you. It sends a clear message out that opportunities won't be wasted on you.
You will do something with them.
When you're willing to pause and look at the path that you're on, to notice how you're moving, to stay open to the small adjustments that align you to the destination.
That is when something powerful happens. It's the doorway to recalibration.
Once you've signaled movement, once the universe knows you're in the game, the magic is in listening, adjusting, and realigning as you go.
And to build on that even more, if. [00:22:00] Dopamine rewards us for believing we're on the right track, then it's even more critical to reinforce that signal by noticing the breadcrumbs that show us we are on the path.
Play is what opens the channel. Action is what keeps it on. And recognition, noticing the evidence, is what strengthens it. And with enough consistent movement, what starts out as a snowball can become an avalanche.
The kind of energy that reshapes everything in its path.
So how do you know when it's time for recalibration?
Truthfully, I recalibrate all the time. I check in with where I'm going, how I'm getting there, which decisions are accelerating my path, and which ones are at drag.
But, if we're talking about those big recalibrations, usually it's a nagging feeling that won't shake.
Sometimes it shows up as a door that simply won't open. You are doing all of the right things consistently. [00:23:00] You are not taking shortcuts. You're not not doing things and expecting it to happen. You are doing all of the things and the doors stay closed. That's another sign.
Sometimes it's a total life implosion. Everything has fallen apart and you're left picking up the pieces trying to decide what you want to reassemble them into.
And if you're really lucky, it's a quiet whisper that you catch quickly.
So my question to you today is, what are you not taking action on that you know you should be?
What is the one thing stopping you from taking that next step?
You already know what it is, call it out.
Bust out three pieces of paper and a pen and put those morning pages into play. See what shows up.
If you wanna go a little bit deeper and dig into a recalibration guided by my scientifically precise intuition, head on over to the website, the alignment engine.com links up in the top right and we can get started.
But whether it's with me or not, to borrow the slogan from our [00:24:00] friends at Nike, just do it.
And that is what I've got for you today. Thanks for joining me, friends. Until next time, stay aligned.