Is Your Head Holding Your Business Back?

Is your head holding your business back? The mind does some wonderfully amazing things. It also does some things it thinks it’s doing to protect us when, in fact, it’s actually hurting us. Is your head holding your business back?

William spent part of a recent weekend with a physical therapist he met years ago at the gym. After 18 months of dealing with persistent swelling in his left knee, a thorough session and some testing finally put a name to what was going on.

Arthrogenic muscle inhibition. AMI.

It sounds complex but the concept behind it is surprisingly simple. William suffered a knee injury 18 months ago. The injury has healed. The muscle is strong enough to handle the load. But his mind is still sending a protective signal that prevents the muscle from firing the way it should, because somewhere in the background it is still worried something is wrong.

The injury is gone. The capability is there. But the mind won’t let it happen.

What Else Is the Mind Preventing?

William sat with that for a moment and then asked the obvious question. What else is the mind preventing us from doing because it thinks it is protecting us?

The answer cuts across every area of life. As a kid in sports or school. In marriage, in difficult conversations you know need to happen but keep avoiding. And especially in business, where the weight of responsibility and the fear of getting it wrong can quietly talk you out of things you are perfectly capable of doing.

The mind is remarkably good at building cases for why now isn’t the right time, why the risk is too high, why you should wait a little longer. And sometimes those cases are legitimate. But often they are just the mind doing what it is wired to do, protecting you from perceived danger that no longer exists.

The Confidence Gap

The issue in most cases isn’t capability. It’s trust in your own capability. The muscle is strong enough. The business owner is ready enough. The decision is sound enough. But the mind hasn’t caught up yet to what the situation actually requires.

That gap between what you are capable of and what your mind will currently allow is one of the more quietly costly things William sees in business owners. It shows up in the decision that keeps getting delayed. The conversation that never quite happens. The move the owner knows needs to be made but somehow never gets made.

Retraining the Mind

The path forward for William’s knee is a few months of isolation movements designed to rebuild confidence. Small, controlled exercises that prove to the mind over and over again that it is safe to fire. That the injury is gone. That the muscle can be trusted.

The same approach applies to whatever your mind is holding you back from in your business and your life. Small confidence-building steps, done consistently, until the mind catches up to what you are actually capable of.

Think about the things in your business that you know need to happen but keep getting pushed aside. The conversations, the decisions, the moves. Ask yourself honestly whether the obstacle is truly external or whether it is internal. Whether your mind is protecting you from something real or something that no longer exists.

Then start building the confidence to close that gap.

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I had a chance this weekend to go to the, to a physical therapist that I met years ago. Met him at the Harris Y. He likes to lift and work out as well. And so anyways, been, as some of you may know, been having long, long-term, probably 18 months swelling in my left knee, and been doing a lot of work to try to, um, to get that to go away.

And it’s mostly there, but I, I sat down and talked with him for a while. Great session. We talked about stress, diet, um, lifting, all kinds of different things. And after that, and then some testing and, and different things on my leg, um, he told me that, um, the reality is, is I have something called arthrogenic [00:01:00] muscle inhibition, or AMI.

And that sounds like a fancy medical term, but what it really means is I suffered some trauma in my knee about 18 months ago, and my body’s still, my mind, I should say, my mind is still preventing, um, preventing the muscle from firing in the way that it, it normally would, ’cause it’s worried that there’s still an injury.

And so despite the fact that the injury’s no longer there and that the muscle is strong enough, it’s not handling the load in the way that it’s capable of handling it because the, the mind is worried that something’s wrong with it, and so it’s trying to protect it And I thought about that and I said, “Man, the mind is a crazy thing.”

And what else does the mind prevent us from doing because it’s trying to protect us? Um, and that’s in all facets of life, right? So it certainly [00:02:00] revolves around, um, you know, accomplishing things as, as a, as a kid in sports, at, um, as a kid in school, um, as somebody in marriage, right? Having conversations you’re scared of having.

Um, and then it certainly relies around your professional and, uh, professional life or, or life as a business owner because your, your mind’s protecting you. And so, you know, I don’t know, probably a fairly simple short video today, but think about all the different ways that your mind is preventing you from doing things that you’re perfectly capable of doing, just like my mind was preventing my left leg from firing in the way that it was perfectly or is perfectly capable, um, of firing.

And n- now what we’re gonna have to do is we’re gonna spend, you know, uh, one, two, three, four months, whatever it is, retraining that leg and some isolation [00:03:00] movements to build back up that confidence so that it knows, the mind knows, and the leg knows that it can fire in the ways that it needs to fire. So train your mind, work on your mind.

Think about all the little things that you can do to build confidence, right? Like that’s the, what we’re doing with this leg is we’re gonna build confidence. So what can you do to build confidence in your own mind, in your own business, in your own practice, in your own life, so that you can do the things that your mind’s preventing you from doing right now, but that you are perfectly capable of doing?

So anyways, remember, mind over body, um, and go out and achieve things that you, um, know you can, but your mind’s holding you back from.

If you liked today’s video, hit the subscribe button down below, or better yet, just leave us a comment.​[00:04:00] 

ORIGINAL MEDIA SOURCE(S):

William Bissett: The Only Thing Holding You Back Might Just Be YOU | Portus Perspectives

Originally Recorded on June 8, 2026

Portus Perspectives: Episode 24

By /Published On: June 15, 2026/