As busy, hard-working professionals with families, demanding jobs, and multiple other obligations, we often go into auto-pilot. We mindlessly follow scripts and templates that were passed onto us about what success looks like. We rarely stop to ask "why?" and fail to see that saying yes to too much may in the end lead us on to the people-pleasing road to ruin.
This week's guest, Amy Green Smith, has successfully navigated this dance, and has helped many clients get out of this trap.
Amy is a certified and credentialed life coach and hypnotherapist, masterful speaker, and personal empowerment expert. Amy uses her roles as coach, writer, podcaster, and speaker to move individuals to a place of radical personal empowerment and self-worth.
With acute focus on helping people “find their voice”, she is highly sought after for her uncommon style of irreverence, wisdom, and humor and has been a featured expert in Inspired Coach Magazine and on Fox 5 San Diego.
We touched on many fascinating topics during our discussion including:
- The artificial distinction between intuition and inner critic, which are actually in many ways just opposite sides of the same coin
- The common tendency to focus on the fight / flight response associated with the sympathetic nervous system, and ignore the 3rd “F” – fawn. How people-pleasing plays into all of this.
- Amy’s powerful conception of “self-sentiment,” which is a bit more nuanced than the traditional notion of self-talk. How emotional “entry points” help us unpack moments of high anxiety, and prevent us from getting taken down by black and white thinking.
- Amy’s spiritual journey, which started with a dogmatic, devout Christian upbringing, and evolved into her exploring Buddhism, Universal Unitarianism, and numerous other schools of thought
- Amy’s transition from a successful (but unfulfilling) career in corporate training for a large cosmetics manufacturer to life coaching, which was far more aligned with her soul purpose
- The role of consent in following the voices of our inner critic as adults (vs. when we were children)
- The power of hypnotherapy in unlocking alpha, theta, and delta brainwave states. And how does it differ from the traditional notion of putting people to sleep and then making them cluck like a chicken?
- How injecting mindfulness even in small doses can ultimately push humanity forward.
- The importance of distinguishing between "am I in danger?” or “is this something new?" when entering ambiguous situations.
- What it truly means "outsource our self worth" - i.e., please others for the sake of feeling better about ourselves.
- How progressive language, and a more incremental approach, can help us break down those “big hairy audacious goals,” and prevent us from getting mired in self-sabotage and defeat.
- The analogy of smoke alarm to help us take a more measured, nuanced view of our self-defense systems.
- The valuable insights of Bruce Lipton, Jose Silva, Richard Davidson on mindfulness, hypnosis, and meditation
- Amy’s signature 9-month transformational group immersion program for women entitled “Worthy,” which includes two 5-day retreats, a supportive community, as well as numerous online and offline resources
Do you want to feel more worthy? Get a better handle on your inner critic (or...intuition)? Reach out to Amy Green Smith today on Instagram or LinkedIn, check out her podcast, or visit her at amygreensmith.com.
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