Ever feel like something small keeps tripping you up on your path to success?

In this eye-opening and encouraging episode of The Executive Perspective with Neal Reyes, Neal introduces a powerful mindset principle he calls “Legos on the Floor.” Through this metaphor, Neal explores how seemingly minor issues—low energy, anxiety, distraction, poor communication, and even relationship stress—can silently derail your progress and block you from your goals.

With relatable stories, practical wisdom, and a touch of humor, Neal breaks down how to identify and clear these "mental Legos" so you can confidently sprint toward the life, business, and purpose you were meant for.

🔥 In this episode, you'll discover:

• What “Legos on the Floor” really represent in your daily life
• Why high performers get stuck—and how to get unstuck
• The truth about perfection, progress, and launching before you’re “ready”
• How to clear invisible blocks that sabotage your performance
• How to reignite the dreams you've been putting off for far too long

If you’ve ever felt stuck, slowed down, or frustrated that you're not where you know you're meant to be—this episode will give you the clarity and confidence to move forward.

🎙️ Listen now and start clearing the path to your next big breakthrough.

Chapters:

• 00:01 - Introduction to the Podcast
• 03:09 - Dealing with Legos on the Floor
• 08:57 - Understanding the Role of Coaching
• 21:14 - Understanding the Impact of Relationships on Productivity
• 28:53 - The Importance of Gratitude

Mentioned in this episode:

To receive emails and our latest updates, please sign-up at nealreyes.com/email.

To inquire about 1:1 coaching with Neal, please visit nealreyes.com/now.

Hey, what's up, guys?

This is Neal Reyes, and I want to welcome you to today's podcast.

I'm pumped for it.

I'm so grateful you're here.

You know, our podcast focuses on three main areas.

We focus on leadership, business strategy, and personal development.

Well, today I want to take you behind the scenes of something that I work on with my clients in advanced mindset coaching and high performance coaching that helps them to unlock the things that have been holding them back.

This is something I believe that as you listen with us today, you're going to identify some things that you've got going on in your own life, and it'll help clear the way for any type of issues that you have that are blocking you from connecting with your very best performance and your very best life.

Get ready.

This is your captain speaking.

We want to let you know we've been cleared for takeoff.

We have clear skies today with no wind, so we are expecting a smooth and highly enjoyable flight.

However, should you experience some personal turbulence, don't worry as you've chosen the right airline.

As we are trained in navigating unexpected bumps, our destination today is high performance and success.

Sit back, relax, get hyped, or do whatever you do.

As we too are pumped for today's flight, we understand you have options when you fly, and we are grateful that you have chosen to fly with us today.

We recognize by choosing to fly in il Reyes, you are committed to growing personal development and reaching higher than you ever have before.

Enjoy today's flight.

Be blessed, and remember, the best is yet to come.

What's up, champion?

This is your host, Neal Reyes, and I want to welcome you to the Executive Perspective.

For years, I struggled to answer the question, what do you do for a living?

Why?

Because most people who ask only expect to hear one thing.

I am an executive with a deep level of understanding of business, operations, leadership and technology.

I'm also the president and founder of a worldwide ministry and CEO of an executive coaching and consulting firm.

My number one passion is people and I receive significant gratitude in life from sowing into others and encouraging them as they grow to achieve their fullest potential.

If you're a high performance individual like me or.

Or you're simply ready to take your business leadership or inner potential to the next level, then strap in because I'm locked in and all in.

This is the Executive Perspective.

Hey, what's up, champions?

This is your host, Neal Reyes, and I'm pumped that you joined us today.

Today I'm going to be speaking with you you about A concept that I teach my clients when I'm doing deep dives on our advanced mindset training sessions.

The concept I'm going to introduce you today is a phrase that I've coined with them that I refer to as dealing with Legos on the floor.

I know that might kind sound kind of simple or kind of funny, actually, but it's Legos.

And someone's like, did he just say Legos?

Legos, like kids Legos.

Legos on the floor.

And even as I say kids Legos, I know adults play with Legos and stuff too.

I know even my children who are in college already, they love playing with Legos.

But I'm talking about Legos on the floor.

What do I mean by that?

Well, I'm going to paint a picture for you and then I'm going to take you through some of the things that I come across, commonly within coaching sessions that impact people from achieving their best life.

These are things that impact people from connecting with their best self, their best life, their best, you know, understand that I'm a high performance coach.

And as a high performance coach, what I'm constantly working on with people is helping them to be able to identify first what their very best performance is and then connecting with it so that they can perform at that level on a regular basis.

And keep in mind, when they become a high performer, it's not just one level they're always at.

They rise from level to level to level because they have new unlocks.

In fact, something that I teach people is that when they're working on themselves, they'll find that what is their excellence today, the thing that's given that they give their very best to whatever that output is.

When they look forward in just a few months, three months, six months, and they look back, they should have seen that their performance or level of excellence has increased because they're growing daily.

In other words, they're putting in the work.

You know, sometimes you hear me referred to as putting in the work in the weight room of the mind.

Well, today I want to jump in and what I have taught and worked on my clients as an advanced mindset principle, and it's dealing with the Legos on the floor.

Now let me paint a picture for you.

So if anyone has ever stepped on a little Lego without wearing shoes, I don't care if you have socks or no socks on, but if there's a Lego on the floor and you step on it, it hurts like crazy.

I mean, right there, even as I'm talking about it, anyone who's ever stepped on a Lego, whether they're yours or your children or if you're one of your nieces or nephews or whatever.

But if you've ever stepped on a Lego, you remember that feeling forever.

Because Legos have no give to them.

Even though they're just these little square pieces, you know when you step on them, and I say square, I know the different shapes, but these little square or rectangular pieces, when you step on them.

And those things hurt like crazy because they have no give to them.

So what do I mean when I'm talking about having Legos on the floor and advanced mindset training?

Well, let's paint the picture.

Let's say, for example, you're sitting in your back room.

Let's say it's your bedroom.

Let's say your bedroom's in the back of the house, and in between your bedroom and your front door is your living room.

And let's say that at night, or let's say during the day, whatever.

Maybe before your kids went to school.

But anyways, they were playing with Legos in the living room and they had all the Legos out.

I'm not talking just like a few pieces, but I'm talking.

They had all the Lego sets out and they decided that they were going to take them all apart.

But when they went to bed or when they went to school, they didn't put the Legos away and they just left them on the floor.

Well, now you're in your bedroom, maybe you're working or you're making your bed or you're doing something and you hear the doorbell ring immediately.

If you take off running and you go sprinting to the front door, unfortunately, you have to remember you have a Minefield of Legos all over the floor.

Man, that minefield is going to slow you up.

And the reason why it's going to slow you up is because if you're barefoot and we're, you know, in this scenario, you're barefoot or you have socks on, only no shoes, you're running across.

The moment you step on your first Lego, you're not sprinting to the door anymore.

You're now coddling or nursing your foot because you're in pain.

And if you step on multiple Legos, you're really in some pain.

And other times, let's say the Legos are spread out.

But now you have taken your focus off the front door.

And as you've taken your focus off the front door, you're now having to look at the floor so you can tiptoe through.

But if you don't hurry, you're gonna miss whoever was at the door.

Let's say it was a package that you were expecting and not an Amazon package, but I'm talking like a package that you ordered.

And because it has significant value, it's gonna require a signature to be able to receive it.

But it's Friday, and if you don't answer that door, you're gonna have to wait until Monday before you get the package delivered.

So you're sprinting to that door from your back room, but you got Legos all over the floor.

Those Legos, as small as they are, operate as hindrances.

They slow you down, and in many cases they actually stop you flat.

They're showstoppers.

And because of that, you either get to the front door late or you don't get there at all, or you stop thinking about the doorbell completely.

And that important package you've been waiting on, that thing that you had high expectation for, that thing that you ordered that was so important, you missed it, you missed the opportunity because you had Legos on the floor.

You see, when I'm working with my clients, sometimes I and I'll have people who are some of the very top performers.

They are so, so high energy or high performance and whatever industry they're in, whether they're athletes or whether they're executives, whether they're running big companies, if they're small business owners, it doesn't matter what it is, but they are working and they're high performers.

But they have these little blocks in life and these blocks in life as I'm working with them and understand that as a coach, and I know I refer to coaching a lot in these podcasts, but when I'm working with them, whether if it's my teams or one on one coaching, when I'm coaching someone, a great coach, and I'm going to help you with this, a great coach always knows when to support, they know when to push and they know when to push hard.

That's something that I learned even working with my own coach that I work with, and she helped me be able to understand that what a good coach does is they help support, they help to push, and then they know when to push hard.

And I was so grateful for that early on.

And it's something that I learned to cultivate in my own coaching style.

I will also tell you that there's a big difference between working with a coach and working with a consultant.

When people hire me to come in as a consultant, they're Hiring me to give them the answer to their problem.

Now, sometimes as a consultant, when I go in, the people haven't identified what their problem is, or maybe they have, but they've misdiagnosed it or not seen that there's multiple problems that they're not seeing.

But as a consultant, they're paying me to come in and to give them the answer on how to fix their issue.

But when you're working with a coach, a coach's job is not to give you the answer, but rather to help you identify and connect with your own answer.

That's the power in coaching.

Because when you have a powerful coach who can help you do that, you'll learn how to unlock your own mind for the thoughts and challenges and issues that you're facing.

You'll also learn how to be able to go through those constructs of identifying and figuring out what the issue is.

And it helps lead to long term success because long after that coach is gone, that coaching stays embedded in you.

And if you remember principles, it can help you grow.

Now, when I'm working with people, sometimes what we have is we find that there's this thing that they know they're supposed to do.

Maybe it's a dream that they have, it's a desire of their heart, it's a goal they're pursuing, and they have all the right equipment, maybe they even have all the right resources, but they just can't seem to connect with this thing they're supposed to be doing.

In other cases, it's because they're lacking the resources or they're lacking the knowledge, but inside it rings so loudly in them that they know that they know that they know they're supposed to be doing this thing, but for some reason there's a block and they don't know what it is.

Well, what I do as a coach is I help them identify what these things are and I refer to them as Legos on the floor.

In fact, consider it like this.

Let's say we spent our session cleaning up the Legos on the floor and we thought we got them all, but buried in the carpet of the living room was still one little Lego.

And the doorbell rings.

And you can't call flying from the back room because you're waiting for that package, that thing you've been expecting, but you encounter the missing Lego.

You might have walked by that living room three or four times that morning already and not stepped on it once.

But in the moment of the expectation, when you're trying to connect with that thing, you've been waiting for.

You take off through the living room and you find the last Lego.

But sometimes what happens with my clients, as we clear all those Legos off the floor, we clear them off the floor of their mindset, we clear all the Legos out of the way.

But because sometimes life can get in the way, or their character can get in the way, or sometimes they're just their behaviors, really, what I should say more than anything, what happens is it's like they walk in their living room and scatter some Legos.

And oftentimes it's the same Legos they already picked up.

It's the same issues they already dealt with.

It's the same thing they already overcame, but somewhere along the way, they got complacent and scattered the Legos back out on the floor.

And now we have to pick these up again.

This is an important concept because what happens is I'm giving you the example of someone ringing your front doorbell, and it's that package you were waiting for.

It's that thing you've had high anticipation for, but it's Friday afternoon, and if you don't answer the door, you're not going to see it until Monday.

And this was something maybe you not only desperately wanted for the weekend, but maybe you actually desperately needed it for the weekend.

That package represents the things in life that we're personally pursuing, whether it be our goals, our dreams.

Maybe you have dreams in your life that are starting to fade away because it's been so long.

You know, you're supposed to do it, but you just haven't connected with it.

Or maybe you're wording, waiting for the perfect conditions, the perfect opportunity to be able to do what you need.

You know, oftentimes I work with people who want to start off by making YouTube videos or they want to make podcasts.

And as I'm helping them and coaching them and giving them the tools they need, or telling them and helping them to connect with the tools they need, one of their biggest things is they feel like they have to speak perfect or be perfect on the camera or the microphone.

And so they'll try to do it over and over and over.

And they get stuck in this rhythm or routine of not producing, and I have to help them understand.

Just get in there and do it.

You'll get better as you go.

Don't wait for perfection.

Launch the thing.

Do the thing.

We have a podcast coming up in the future where I'll teach you a concept that I teach to people, where I call it Good, Better, Best.

Good.

Better.

Best.

I've seen so many companies that are working on perfection on things that they'll miss their go to market windows because they're too busy trying to perfect it.

I'll give you a more realistic example.

I've seen so many people that when they're launching out into the new business, they spend so much time focusing on the minute details of their business card that they don't even focus on building the business the way they're supposed to.

They're not even focused about opening the store or setting up the website with their e commerce site, or setting the product up that they can sell, or the course or the coaching or the consulting or whatever it is they do because they're overly focused on a business card that they may or may not hand to somebody.

And no matter how beautiful a business card is, most business cards either get put in a wallet or a purse that get buried at the bottom or buried in the back that the people forget about or they get thrown away.

And all the time they're putting all their energies and focus on the wrong thing.

They're focused on the business, but they're putting it on the wrong thing.

I'm going to go through a list of some of the most common things that I encounter through coaching with people.

Now, there's many more than this, so this is not an exhaustive list, but these are the things that I felt about that as I was praying about prepping the show that I felt would made me resonate with the audience the most today.

So the first one I'll talk about is low energy.

Wow.

Low energy.

Well, first of all, how does a person have low energy?

It almost always starts with the quality or quantity of their sleep.

You know what I'll tell you is that they have proven studies that are out.

And I'm no doctor, but there's proven studies that are out that a person should get at least eight hours of sleep a night.

Now some people may be at seven, but you need at least eight hours of sleep at night.

Let's say you have someone who consistently goes to bed at 10 o'clock and wakes up eight hours later.

And you also have a different person that consistently goes to bed at 12 o'clock and wakes up eight hours later.

The person who goes to bed at 12am and wakes up eight hours later, even though they get the same amount of sleep consistently as the person who goes to bed at 10, the person who goes to bed at 12 because they went to bed so late in the evening, their cortisol levels naturally go up even though they're getting the same amount of sleep as the other person.

In addition to that, it's not just about the quantity of sleep, but the quality of it.

And sometimes people think about sleep and they think about rest.

And sleep and rest are not the same things.

Sleep is when you're sleeping, and yes, you can rest while you sleep, but how many times have you been to bed and you slept, but you wake up in the morning feeling wiped out because your mind was racing all through the night?

You kept on having thoughts about things throughout the night.

Maybe you had your pressures or stresses on your life that were running with you all over through the night.

So sleep and rest are not the same thing.

There's a way where you can rest.

I will tell you that my wife and I, I should say our family, but we have an infrared sauna in our home.

And that was one of the greatest investments that I've made.

And when I'm sitting in that infrared sauna, oh, the rest that I get, the recuperation that I get is phenomenal.

There's a difference between rest and sleep.

But low energy can also be impacted by.

Are you getting enough fluid in your system?

Specifically water?

Are you getting enough water in your system?

Are you getting the right type of nutrient nutrients in your system, the nutrition?

Are you eating the right type of macros?

In other words, are you eating enough protein or you overdoing it on the carbs?

Are you maybe taking too little carbs?

Are you getting enough healthy fats?

Are you getting enough veggies?

Are you getting the right supplementation?

There's so many things that dig into low energy that impact a person.

The next one I would have for you is distraction.

There are so many people out there who suffer with clarity issues or focus issues.

They're busy.

They're busy, busy, busy, busy.

In fact, that's the next one that I have on there.

It leads to productivity.

There's a difference between being busy and being productive.

There's a difference between being busy and productive.

I remember years ago, I had multiple businesses and I was working and I was a busy individual.

And I remember my wife telling me, neil, the God wants you productive, but the devil wants you busy.

And right now I see you really busy.

In fact, she Said the other way.

She said, neil, I see you busy all the time, but I.

But you need to remember that it's the devil who wants you busy and it's God who wants you productive.

In other words, if you're busy, you might feel like you're being productive, but you can be busy being busy and accomplish absolutely nothing.

But if your clarity and your focus are dialed in and you know what you need to work on, why you need to work on it, and how come it's important you can knock things out, you can just be knocking them down.

And your productivity is high because you're focused on being productive over being busy.

The next one I have for you and some of the biggest Legos I see on the floor, people, are relationships.

And it can be either relationships at home or relationships at the office.

Maybe you don't get along with your co workers, or there's this one coworker that you guys just tend to butt heads.

Maybe it's a supervisor you work for, or maybe it's an employee.

Maybe you are the supervisor and it's one of your employees.

But relationships, Or I'll tell you, you know, there's that saying out there, happy wife, happy life.

You know, I joke about that, but at the same time, if you've ever had a blowout with your spouse before you go into work, man, sometimes you don't start the day at your best.

Now, as the day goes on and you get busy, you might kind of forget about that situation and get busy as you're involved in your day.

But if you don't take care of that situation, you're not starting the day at your best.

And if you are able to have a massive blowout and go to work and it's no big deal and you're top performing, then maybe you're a little too comfortable within having arguments within that relationship.

You know, sometimes people refer to that as that intense fellowship.

I will tell you, in a marriage, it is so important to respect the spouse that you're married to.

You're meant to love them, you're meant to honor them, you're meant to respect them and in kind, hopefully they reciprocate that back towards you.

But sometimes it can be your relationships that are your biggest distractions.

For some, they may have a good marriage, or maybe they're single, no big deal.

But they have kids and some of their kids have issues.

Now, not all people who have kids have kids with issues, but there are those out there that do.

Why?

Because children are their own people and they're going to make their own decisions and their own choices.

And as a parent, it may be easy for you to see how their choices are going to impact them because you're older and you're more mature in life and you've been there, done that, maybe you've made the same mistakes and you're trying to help them.

But children sometimes still need to figure out on their own what life is about.

You're there to help guide them, you're there to help influence them.

But as a parent, you're not there to control them.

And so sometimes it's the relationships that are the Legos on the floor.

For people, maybe they have the greatest idea on how to accomplish or do something or the next great business.

But they got some Legos on the floor because their house situation so messy they can't put their focus on their business the way they need to.

Maybe those relationship issues are even causing them to miss out on promotions at work because they look like they're distracted to their employer.

The next one that we have, and this is a big one, this is a real common one that's going around is fear.

But you often hear about it more in the term of anxiety.

It just seems like that is such a buzzword nowadays where people struggle with anxiety.

Or maybe they sometimes call it stress, but it's fear.

But anxiety is fear based.

There's an unease in a person.

They're constantly concerned about things, they're constantly afraid of things.

Maybe they get in a high pressure situation and they lose their focus because their anxiety kicks in and they're overwhelmed or they're uncomfortable or they're emotionally compromised.

That's something that can happen.

Some people may not like the way that sounds, but you are compromised.

When a person is dealing with strong anxiety, that anxiety or that fear is compromising their emotions.

It's compromising their emotional well being, their emotional state.

And that can be massive Lego.

Sometimes for people, they are having anxiety about what it's going to take to go out and do their dream or to do their goals or accomplish them or to fulfill that business that's a dream of theirs.

And sometimes you have people, maybe they're a singer, but they get their big break and they get ready to go on stage to sing and they freeze up because their anxiety kicks in, because their emotion and their mindset is working against them.

This false presence of fear is overcoming them and making them uneasy.

Another one that we deal with is rejection.

Specifically, this shows up in approval issues when people have what's called approval addiction, or they constantly try to earn others approval, or they constantly feel rejected.

Maybe they were rejected early in life by their parents, or they were rejected in life by the spouse or a boyfriend or a girlfriend or whatever it is for you.

And now they carry that into other relationships or other situations.

And whenever it kind of feels like what they went through before those rejection issues show up all over again for others, it can be, and this is a big one, especially in business, over committing.

Another way of saying it is you have a hard time saying no.

In other words, you need to be more selective about what you say yes to, but you need to be very selective about what you say no to.

I remember reading an article one time about a interview that they gave to Steve Jobs and they were asking him, Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, that how was he so successful and how did he know what to.

Why was it that everything he touched seemed to just be amazing?

You know, he created the iPhone and they have the MacBooks and the iPads and things of that nature.

And he said that what he had worked on was becoming more focused on what he said no to than what he said yes to.

In other words, he was more selective about what he said no to than what he'd say yes to.

And if you talk with other people, what they'll tell you is the very significant high performers will tell you that what they say no to is far more important than one they say yes to.

And even when it's a good deal or showing up as something that's a good opportunity, if that good opportunity pulls them in any way from the opportunity that they need to be focused on, then even though that may be a good thing, it's a good thing that shows up as a distraction.

Another one that people deal with is what I refer to as IQ versus eq.

What is iq?

Well, in the business world, IQ, simply put, refers to their intelligence or their smarts.

But what is eq?

EQ refers to their emotional intelligence or their emotional aptitude.

And there are so many times in life where you'll have people who are very smart, they're brilliant, but they don't have what we refer to sometimes as a thick skin, or they have a weak constitution when it comes to their emotional state.

They're overwhelmed easy, they're easily offended, they get angry easy.

If they get upset, they don't know how to communicate, or they communicate in harsh tones.

Maybe they start incorporating profanity, they start, you know, throwing around slurs towards people, or maybe it's not slurs, but it's insults, but they don't have a high eq.

And other cases it can show up where if you get criticism from your supervisor or you get critique from your spouse or a supervisor or someone like that or a co worker, they just shatter and fall apart because they don't know how to process the critique they were given.

And unfortunately, sometimes critique isn't given in positive ways, but even when it is, it's hard for them to handle.

And the next one I have for you is communication, which ties into that not knowing how to be an effective communicator, whether it be verbally written or nonverbal communication.

Maybe you make funny faces at people when you communicate with them, or they make funny faces at you and it throws you off.

And the last one that I want to cover today is gratitude.

One of the biggest things that people have a hard time with, that they got Legos on the floor with, is they have a hard time being grateful for what they have.

Early on, I would train my children.

I learned this early on in my own personal walk with the Lord.

And we've trained our children, train our children to learn how to be grateful for what they have instead of ungrateful for what they don't.

When you become grateful for what you have and you learn to cultivate a lifestyle of gratitude, all the doors in life seem to open up.

In fact, you'll start to attract things in your life that just seem better and better because you're just more grateful.

Gratitude attracts things.

In fact, what I will tell you the way I start off my coaching sessions by asking people, tell me about a win that you had this last week, guys.

I hope you found this instruction today beneficial to you.

I want to remind you to swing by our website@neal Reyes.com where you can connect with all of our podcasts and TV shows.

But in addition, I want to remind you that I believe in you.

I'm cheering you on.

Thank you and have a blessed day.