Episode Summary

Many high-potential people feel like powerful engines stuck in low gear — full of ability, vision, and energy, yet unable to access true momentum. In this episode, Jehanne breaks down exactly why that happens.

You are introduced to the four driving forces that fuel ninjas — and the three activation levels that determine whether you are idling, misfiring, or fully engaged in your growth.

This episode gives you a clear self-assessment framework to identify where you’re stuck, why it’s happening, and how to begin shifting into your own full power loop of momentum, clarity, and bold action.

In This Episode… (You’ll Learn)

• What full engagement actually looks like in real life
• How to identify the four driving forces that fuel your growth
• The three activation levels that reveal why momentum stalls
• How to self-assess your current state in each driving force

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Transcript

Welcome to the Pocket Ninja Podcast, where big picture wisdom meets practical tools.

I want you to think about this for a minute. If we take the analogy of a sports car, do you ever feel like you’re a sports car in some of these ways? Like you’re this really great machine, but you’re stuck in the garage under a tarp—so much potential, but you’re not being used. Or maybe you managed to get the car out of the garage, but you never feel like you really get to let the race car go for it.

Like instead, you’re stuck weaving in and out of traffic, starting and stopping. If so, then this is the podcast for you. Today we’re driving further into the four driving forces that fuel ninjas and what they look like at different activation levels. In this podcast session, you’ll, number one, get clear on what each of the four driving forces looks like when idle or activated. You’ll also have a chance to assess each one of the four driving forces so you can start harnessing the power that’s already within you.

So grab your notebook, because this episode is very tactical and practical. Also, if you want the worksheet to follow along with, go to pocketninjastrategies.com/podcast and then go to the episodes and go to season one, episode three, and that’s where you’ll find the worksheet.

If we haven’t met, hi, I’m Jehanne. I’m the founder of Pocket Ninja Strategies. I exclusively coach and train ninjas, and I’m not talking about martial arts. I’m talking about people who are ninjas in their personal life and professional life. And I know if you’re here, that means you’re a ninja.

I wanna dive into this topic. My whole life changed when I started to really understand and own that I was a ninja and what that meant, and also realizing where and how I was stuck.

Through my life and all my work coaching, I developed this definition—a certain kind of person—that I call ninjas, which I hope you’re getting familiar with by now, right?

But here’s the thing: I didn’t know I was a ninja. And I certainly didn’t feel like one.

I had so many brakes in place that there was no chance of me engaging the four driving forces. And thus, I lived in conflict, feeling the four driving forces that were trying to ignite and trying to move forward, while also thinking, there’s no way this is me.

Basically, it boiled down to a cycle of two things. One, crippling unworthiness, and two, stifling safety standards rooted in severe fear. I had constructed a complex set of rules, standards, and criteria that had to be met for me to do anything.

This was a vicious cycle, because anytime I would dare to dream, my unworthiness and my safety standards, or brakes, would go on.

I’m sharing all this with you because you can be a ninja and be stuck. The key to getting unstuck is first accepting, or at least considering, that you’re a ninja, and then assessing your activation level in each of the four driving forces and working on getting each force fully activated.

In this episode, I wanna take you through the Ninja Four Forces assessment.

The four driving forces can also make ninjas feel complicated, wrong, different, confused, stuck, lost, unfulfilled. This is because ninjas will only be well, happy, and successful in the long run when they operate from the four driving forces. But the four driving forces aren’t always online, and they’re not always working together cohesively.

And this is why you might resonate with being a ninja, but question if you really are one, because you’re not fully doing it. This means you’re a ninja. You just don’t know where you are in the different activation levels and how to get each of the four driving forces activated.

So first, let’s look at the three activation levels.

We have mode number one: idle. The engine is off. No ignition, no spark. This feels aimless, flat, stuck, or in survival mode. So we have the driving force, but the battery is dead.

Mode two: the second activation level is misfiring or revving in place. This is like a scattered spark. Misfiring looks like you are dabbling, you’re plugged in here and there, but the energy is inconsistent. One piston might fire and then another, but they’re not synchronized, so they’re burning energy but not going anywhere.

Or in level two, you might be revving in place, meaning you are engaged in one or two of the driving forces. But without rotation, it’s just lots of noise and motion. So this could look a lot like dreaming without action or transforming without clarity. This is like one-gear mode. This is a level of activation that feels like maybe you’re getting nowhere, kind of going in circles or spinning your tires.

And then lastly, we have the third mode: full engagement. And this is where the driving force is firing at full force. It’s not just moving, it’s accelerating with purpose.

And if we take full engagement with the four driving forces, this is what we call the full power loop. It’s when all the driving forces are firing, cycling in rhythm. Fuel efficiency is high, and momentum and progress are building.

So if you are in mode one or two—that’s idle or misfiring and revving in place—don’t discount that you are a ninja.

Now let’s take a moment to self-assess and look at the four driving forces and the three activation levels and see where you are in each of the activation levels for each of the four driving forces.

This is when you wanna go grab the worksheet. If not, you can just do this yourself in a notebook.

So let’s look at the first activation level, which is idle.

When it comes to your dreams, if your dreams are fuzzy, or all you do is daydream, or your dreams are all like someday, someday, someday. Or you keep questioning your dreams—is this the right dream? Is this my dream? Should I have this dream? Or you keep pushing your dreams down, like, no, no, that’s not for me, or don’t listen to that, or this is good enough—whatever it is, if that’s how you feel about your dreams, you are probably in activation level number one: idling.

Now if we look at activation level number two, that’s misfiring or revving in place when it comes to your dreams. If you keep switching your dreams—like, oh, I wanna do this, no, I wanna do that. No, I wanna do that. I don’t know, let’s go back to this thing. Or you keep backing down. You’re like, I’m going for it, and then you back off. And then you’re like, no, I’m going for it, and then you back off. Or if you’re trying to do everything at once—you’re trying to do nine dreams at one time—so you really get nothing done, then you are in level two of misfiring and revving in place when it comes to being a daring dreamer.

If you are at level number three, full engagement, you’ll notice you are clear, you’re focused, you say no, and you stop questioning. Momentum starts to build. You get unstuck fast. And challenges, although frustrating, don’t derail you. And that’s how you know you’re in full engagement in your daring dreamer driving force.

So I want you to look at this now and ask: am I idle? Am I misfiring and revving in place? Or am I in full engagement in this area?

If you have a lot going on in your life and maybe different areas, it might be simpler to pick an area of life, because maybe in one area of life you’ve got the dreams all sorted, and in another area of life it’s foggy and idle. So you might need to pick an area of life or look at your life overall in general.

Also, by the way, this applies to your organization or business too, because all of this spirals outward from the self to a team to an organization.

Now let’s look at purposeful learning.

If you’re idle, it means you’re not learning even though you’d like to. It’s like, yeah, I wanna learn this, I wanna do that, I wanna be better at that. Learning excites me, but you’re not doing any of it.

In level two activation—misfiring or revving in place—in purposeful learning, either you’re learning too many things, you’re in a never-ending cycle of learning, or you’re learning things that are adjacent to what is really gonna make a difference. Or you are learning things that are totally not at all what you need to know in relationship to your dreams.

This would say you’re misfiring or revving in place. So you’re learning, but it’s not really going anywhere.

And the third level is full engagement. You’re learning things that fuel you. You’re learning things that actually make a difference and that you can apply. And you’re cutting unneeded learning, and you’re focusing on your strengths.

This is how you know if you’re in full engagement in the driving force of purposeful learning.

So again, when it comes to learning, are you idle? Are you misfiring or revving in place? Or are you in full engagement?

Onto the third driving force: courageous transformation.

If we look at the first level of activation here—idle—it means there’s no actual application of learning or your dreams. So you’re not applying your dreams to your life, or you’re not applying the learning to yourself, so you’re not changing and growing.

Or what I see often is you’re so focused on conditions. It’s all like, well, I wanna change, but… I wanna change, but… I wanna change, but… And so you’re trapping yourself instead of pushing through those barriers and really using your dreams and the learning to accelerate.

In this idleness, we’ll see you keep doing things the same way. So if you have these dreams and you’re learning lots, but you keep doing things the same way, it means that when it comes to courageous transformation, you’re idle.

Now if we go to the level two activation for courageous transformation, we have misfiring or revving in place. And this looks like going around issues instead of through them.

So instead of changing my boundaries, I’m finding passive-aggressive ways maybe to go around or solve it instead of actually, formally, thoroughly changing myself so that I’m not just always working around my problems.

We’ll also see misfiring or revving in place when there’s change on the surface, but it doesn’t address the core. So I might become better at communication, but I’m not addressing the underlying issues that make me need to do so much communication.

Another way we might know that we’re misfiring or revving in place is that our actions are disconnected from the ideas. So actions are not aligned to our dreams or our priorities or what we learned.

And then the last thing is that I reject the learning in practice. Like when the opportunity comes up to apply the learning, I never do it in that moment. So that’s how we know we’re misfiring or revving in place in our transformation.

Now, what does it look like to be at level three—full engagement—in courageous transformation?

It looks like using the clarity of the dream and the learning and applying it to ourselves and changing everything from the inside out. So you’ll change your internal structures, your mindsets, your paradigm, your routines, your habits, your systems. This is integration from the inside out.

You’ll see this in people. They don’t announce a change, and you’re like, things are different. I notice you’re doing that routine differently, and you’re more effective in this way at work. And how you email is totally different. And you’re like, yeah, because I have integrated my learning and I’ve made changes.

So I want you to again look at yourself or the area of life that you’re focused on and ask: when it comes to being a courageous transformer and applying what you’re learning, are you idle? Are you misfiring or revving in place? Or are you in full engagement?

Let’s move on to the fourth driving force: bold action taking.

Again, we wanna look at where you are in the activation levels for this driving force.

You can be idle, and this is where you know what to do, but you’re not doing it. You keep talking about it, but you don’t do it. No action. That means you’re idle.

Now you could be in level two activation, which is misfiring or revving in place. And this is doing actions, but they’re not needed or they’re a distraction. So it feels like you’re doing something. There’s lots of action, but they’re small, they’re scattered, they’re inconsistent, and you don’t follow through.

So you might see yourself taking action, but you might go, oh yeah, I’m misfiring or revving in place, because I’m taking lots of action, but it’s not the right action, or it’s scattered, or it’s inconsistent, or I don’t follow through. I’m not really moving anything forward, even though I’m taking action.

And then if you are in full engagement—the activation level for bold action taking—you are in full action. There is clarity on the dream, new learning, personal insights, and that has you doing bold new actions that don’t make sense to other people or seem different.

Or you’re able to just break through and do a lot of things where you’ve been held back. You’re just like, all of a sudden, I’m doing that, I’m doing that, I’m doing that.

If you’re in full engagement, you’re taking actions that you didn’t see before, or you’re taking actions that you were too scared to take before. And you keep going again and again and again.

So even when you know an action doesn’t work out, you go back to the dream. You go back to see if there’s any learning or changing that needs to happen. And then it’s action again, and you don’t let the momentum slow down.

So when you take that area of life you’re looking at, or your whole life in general, when it comes to bold action taking, are you idle? Are you misfiring or revving in place? Or are you in full engagement? Have a look.

Now that we can really understand the four driving forces that fuel a ninja and the three activation levels that we might be in for each force, this points to where you might be getting stuck and where you need to refocus your energy and work on getting unstuck.

You can have a look at where you’re stuck and where you need to focus in order to start creating the full activation loop, which gives you full momentum. And I wanna note that the whole point of this podcast is for you to be able to harness the power of the four different forces and identify any time you’re stuck in one of them and be able to address that.

So that’s a wrap for this session on the four driving forces and the activation levels. And I would say this is the first big step on the journey to be a fulfilled ninja.

Before I leave today, I wanna ask you: what’s your one takeaway from this podcast session? Take a moment to identify a key learning that’s changed or expanded your mindset or given you a new tool or something to practice.

For me, my takeaway is don’t lose hope when I get stuck in one of my four driving forces. I need to remember that if I’m stuck or sputtering, it’s not because I can’t do it or I’ve hit my limit. It’s just because I need to work on the activation of that driving force.

So what’s your takeaway from today?

Next week is all about the power of clarity and why you wanna forget about confidence, so don’t miss that.

Thank you for tuning in to the Pocket Ninja Podcast, where big picture wisdom meets practical tools. If this episode has sparked something in you and you want to ignite your inner ninja in business, career, and personal life, go to pocketninjastrategies.com to book a complimentary clarity conversation. Your inner ninja will thank you later.

Disclaimer: This podcast is designed to help you unleash your inner ninja because we want you to experience wellbeing, happiness, and success altogether. That said, the ideas and insights shared here are not customized to your unique circumstances and therefore are not a substitute for personalized professional advice.

You are the expert in your own life, career, and business. So take what you learn here with your own discernment and discretion. Only you know what’s right for you, what feels empowering, and what risks you are ready to take on.