The Morning Question That Kept Holly Moving Forward

So I want to start with a moment from the conversation, because I think it sets everything up.

Holly Porter, 15-time international best-selling author, founder of over a dozen companies, someone who has raised eight children while building businesses simultaneously, is describing what life looked like after she left the hospital. And she does not gloss over it. She says there were two full years she called hell. Long COVID fog, a manuscript sitting untouched for almost a year, a deal backed by a billionaire that she had to walk away from, and a brain that was still clearing while she was trying to build things. She went from twenty percent function to fifty, then to seventy. And seventy, she made a point of saying, still stuck.

And yet she kept moving. So I had to ask: what was actually powering that?

You can hear the full conversation with Holly in the full episode, but I want to walk through the piece that I have not been able to stop thinking about since we recorded.

Better is better

At her sickest, Holly leaned on a motto. Better is better. Every morning she would wake up and ask herself one question: what can I do today to be better than I was yesterday?

That is it. Not a five-year plan. Not a massive strategy session. Just one small, honest question aimed forward.

What I find worth paying attention to is how simple it is, and how much it asks of you at the same time. Because to answer it honestly, you have to actually look at where you are. Not where you wish you were. Not where you were six months ago when things felt easier. Where you are right now, today, with what you actually have available.

Holly paired that with something she came back from her near-death experience really believing: gratitude as an active practice. Not a feeling you wait around for, but a lens you choose. She said when she felt stuck or low energy, she would go serve somebody. Do something good for someone she did not even feel like helping. And that would shift things. It is not complicated. But it is disciplined.

What this has to do with clarity

The six principles of the Prime Performance Process are resilience, intentionality, clarity, optimization, influence, and opportunity. Holly is honestly hitting all six of them across everything she has built. But the one I keep coming back to when I think about her story is clarity.

One of the core ideas inside the Prime Performance Process is that you cannot take effective action from a foggy state. You have to know what is going on inside first before you can build anything meaningful on the outside. Holly's better is better question is really a daily internal calibration. What is my capacity today? What is actually possible right now? Where am I starting from?

Asking that honestly every morning is what let her keep moving, even at seventy percent function. Even at fifty. She was not waiting until she felt one hundred percent to start. She was just being honest about where she was and finding the edge of what was possible from there.

That is clarity in practice. Not a grand vision pinned to a wall. A real, grounded, daily check-in with yourself.

You do not need a ventilator to start asking this question

I want to name something directly, because I think it matters. Most of us are not going to have a near-death experience that hands us this kind of perspective. And honestly, you should not want to need one.

But the question itself is available to you right now. What can I do today to be better than I was yesterday? The catch is that you have to actually answer it. Not the version of it that sounds good. The real version, the one that starts with an honest look at where you are.

If you have been grinding through a foggy stretch, where the effort is there but the direction feels off, this is usually where I would point you. Not to a bigger plan or a better system. To a more honest internal check-in. The fog does not clear until you stop pretending it is not there.

What Holly built on the other side

I also want to make sure I give you the full picture, because the struggle is only half of it. Within four months of leaving the hospital, Holly had incorporated two new companies. Two years after that, she finished the book she knew she was supposed to write, Near Death Shift, released on November 11th, a date that was not random to her at all. She is building the International Retreat Association to support the retreat industry, and running the Adventure Bucket Wish Foundation, a nonprofit built to empower women to lead with purpose and presence.

She built all of that while still clearing. That is the part worth sitting with.

She did not wait until she felt fully recovered to start. She just kept answering the question every morning, and let the next right step show up from there.

The one thing to sit with this week

So here is what I want you to actually do with this. Tomorrow morning, before you open your inbox or check your calendar or start reacting to whatever is already waiting for you, just sit with the question Holly asked herself every single day when things were at their hardest.

What can I do today to be better than I was yesterday?

And answer it honestly. Not aspirationally. Honestly. Pay attention to what that answer actually is, and start from there.

If you want to go deeper on where your awareness is strongest and where your clarity might actually be slipping, the free 6-Principle assessment is a good place to start. You can find it at primeperformanceprocess.com/assess. It takes a few minutes and it will give you a real picture of which of the six principles needs the most attention right now.

And go find Holly. Her book, her nonprofit, her retreat association, all of it is in one spot at her Linktree in the show notes. If something from her story lands for you, she made a specific ask: reach out and tell her. She meant it.