102: Amy Green Smith - Self-Worth, People-Pleasing, and Nervous System Survival

0:00 How does a rigid, dogmatic upbringing shape the way we respond to grief, autonomy and the pressure to make other people happy? Why do so many high functioning, successful people default to people pleasing under stress? And what is the often ignored fawn response reveal about our nervous systems? And. How can understanding concepts like self sentiment, consent, and the inner critic help us rewire beliefs that have quietly been running our lives? Stay tuned as we touch on these and many other topics on this week's episode of Untether Your Life. Welcome to Untether Your Life, a show that empowers you to break free of templates related to career, relationships and managing mental and physical health, and looks at key issues impacting the South Asian diaspora. I'm your host, Nikhil Torzakar, and I'm passionate about the power of conversation to catalyze change as busy hard. Working professionals with families demanding jobs and non-stop obligations, it's easy to live on autopilot. We follow inherited scripts about success and worth, often without asking whether they still service overtime. That can quietly turn into people pleasing burnout. Disconnection from ourselves.

1:12 This week's episode is a rebroadcast. Amy Greensmith recently popped up on my Instagram feed dropping some serious truth bobs, and it felt like the right time to resurface this conversation. Amy is a certified life coach and hypnotherapist, speaker, and personal empowerment expert who helped people find their voice and build real self worth. She's been featured in Inspired Coach magazine and on FOX 5 San Diego, and she brings a rare mix of insight, irreverence, and humanity to her work. In this episode, we talk about how a dogmatic upbringing shapes our inner world, why people pleasing is often a nervous system survival strategy, and how concepts like consent, self sentiment, and the inner critic help explain the beliefs running our lives. We also explore spiritual deconstruction, hypnotherapy, and what it means to choose yourself with clarity and grace.

1:58 And with that, let's get untethered. So Amy, you have such an interesting voice and perspective. Is there anything else you want to add beyond the bio that I just shared with the audience? Well, I think similar to your story, I think so many of us end up in these kind of teaching spaces from our own tumult and struggle. And my situation was very much the same. So for just a bit of context, I grew up in an extremely dogmatic, born again Christian family. My father had a master's in divinity and a doctorate in ministry, so he was not not messing around in our household. And so there was a lot of motivation to be quote good. I know that you've talked a lot about your upbringing and what was expected of you.

2:45 And a lot of that for me was infused from a very rigid religion and perspective about right and wrong and a lot of motivation through guilt and fear. But I was, you know, I checked all the boxes. I was the quintessential oldest kid who, you know, I, I started working when I was 14, put myself through college, etcetera. And then everything kind of came to a head in the mid O 5 O 6:00-ish when the secret was getting really big and people were really going off on law of attraction. And so I had really started to expand my, my spiritual idea. But up until that time, every time I went to visit my parents, I would kind of put up this artifice and kind of shape shift.

3:25 And I would tell my husband like, OK, no liberal agenda, no cussing, no drinking, no talking about Jon Stewart, no South Park. You know, they I would kind of say put up this veneer. And it kind of came to a head in in O7 when my father passed and I felt incredibly convicted that I was going to be the one to do his makeup for his viewing. So I had a background in makeup artistry and I felt like it would be kind of a a jerk move to be like, get your own makeup artist dad. But I also felt like I was kind of winning it daughter that day by doing dead dad makeup. And also I spoke to a crowd of hundreds of people and he really was quite, quite an incredible human.

4:07 Well, I get back home to my mom's house and she finds it the most opportune time to say that she feels as though my father and her had failed as parents because myself and my two siblings were no longer subscribed to the faith traditions we were raised in. And I was kind of like, first of all, well, and also to be grouped in with my siblings who had done jail time, had trouble with the law, were not self-sufficient. Meanwhile, here I am, you know, pulling myself up by my bootstraps. And the only thing I could kind of muster there with her at the time was to say, I don't think you should say that to a child. But that really was sort of a pivotal moment for me because I realized that, you know, and in the works that I do now, I don't think that speaking up for yourself or giving voice to things, having difficult conversations, learning to say no, I don't think those are often an ultimatum.

5:01 But in that moment, I kind of went, OK, if push comes to shove and I have to decide between making you happy or making me happy, I'm going to choose me. And I'll tell you what, that was not a linear line. And I had a lot of growing to do before I got to kind of do the work that I do now. But it was kind of like floodgates were open and I was extremely combative and adversarial. I wanted to fight about everything now that this dam had erupted. And it wasn't until many times taking back my delivery, not taking back my stance, my opinions, my beliefs, but saying, hey, I still feel the same way, but I should have never spoken to you in that way.

5:43 Will you forgive me for that, for that delivery? And that really informed this concept that I speak about all the time now, which is speaking up for yourself with grace and kindness, that you can end a business partnership with grace, that you can ask an adult child to move out of the house with the utmost compassion. You can ask for a divorce with extreme kindness. And I don't think that's modeled very much for us. So, so that's a bit of the impetus behind kind of the the work I do now. Yeah, I had heard about that in some of your previous appearances where you were talking about sort of like that was the, well, I don't want to diminish it, but it's almost like a come to Jesus moment, almost kind of apropos, literally, because, you know, obviously with the dogmatic upbringing that you spoke about. Let me ask you, I mean, was that something that because I, you know, there's always that people say, you know, I'm spiritual but not religious?

6:36 Or was that something I'd like to understand a little bit more because I went through a similar journey. You know, I was raised Hindu, but it was challenging for me just because it seemed very esoteric. You know, it just seemed like very abstract. There wasn't a lot of definition right where it was like there were too many Shades of Grey. And so I did a 180 and I kind of gravitated toward Christian faith. I actually really did a deep dive into it and you know, it, it's kind of interesting, like when you've been deprived of something for so long that it has an appeal that conversely, people who have been raised in that faith like yourself, you know, where it was very black and white, that that can be very restrictive. So, but you mentioned the secret, you know, which I'm very familiar with the spiritual text, everything and the law of attraction.

7:21 But I I wanted to understand a little bit more, Amy, if we could do a little bit more of a deep dive kind of how you segwayed from being raised in this very devout Christian faith to being more pan spiritual, I guess you could say. Yeah. I definitely have to attribute a lot of it to my incredible partner because there were I think you're you're similar age group. Do you remember the show Dharma and Greg? I remembered I never watched it but it's funny. Dharma is like my my favorite word, right? Never seen an episode, but go ahead. Yeah. Well, she had sort of the the hippie parents. So obviously Co opting some South Asian influence for sure, but it was sort of this dichotomous marriage of one with this socialite kind of upbringing and then the real hippie upbringing.

8:10 So and that was very much the latter was my my husband's. And so his mom actually grew up in a situation where she was heavily invested with the Agua Caliente Native American tribe, and she was a curator for them. And so she had a lot of indigenous understanding. And. And so he grew up learning about ayahuasca and learning about all these really incredible teachings. And. And that was of the devil from in my household, right. Yeah. So. And when was that Amy, that was not? We met in We met in 97 and then got married in 99 and at the time well. I was just interrupt, but I was just going to say it's, it's so funny. It's like every other person I talk to these days talks about ayahuasca like it's this.

8:54 It's almost like getting an espresso. You know, I went on this ayahuasca ceremony and I changed my life. But yeah, I mean, that to talk about ayahuasca in the late 90s, that's pretty far afield from the mainstream, but go ahead. Yeah. I think their family was the first time I ever heard about ROM Das. I think they had cannabis that they grew and they would just out the whole family would get together and like harvest it and dry it. And I'm like fresh out of high school, Christian high school, and I meet this man and I'm like, Oh my God. I think there was a couple of things that happened for me. One was I felt unbelievably lied to because I felt like a lot of the things that I had been taught that were so stringently black or white. As in, if you have sex, you are going to either get pregnant or AIDS, and you're also going to be giving away a piece of your soul that you can never get back. If you gamble, you're going to eventually lose your life savings.

9:53 You know, if you drink, if you do cannabis, you're going to become a binary. Thinking. Yeah, incredibly binary and extreme. So I started experiencing like having a drink and, you know, having cannabis, having sex. And I was like, this is not at all what I thought was going to happen. So you know, there's a grief involved with that. One of the key elements of grief is anger. And so I felt unbelievably lied to. But then it morphed into AI need to find a name for who I am and what I believe so that I can stand behind it. Because I felt like just saying I no longer subscribe to that was not enough. I needed to say because I believe in Buddhism or something new to kind of put my stake in the ground. And it wasn't until many, many years later that I even heard the term deconstructing.

10:46 That wasn't even a thing. That was like, you just left the church you abandoned and the whole there's reasons for everything, right? Like, Oh, you just want to sin. You want to be in. And I'm like, well, what if I don't believe that sin exists? What if I don't think that? And I even as a young child going through a Christian School and all of these things, I remembered having this concept of God and thinking she's probably up there saying that's not what I meant. I didn't mean that. I didn't mean divide and be so mean to each other. I I literally meant take care of one another, love each other. So there are a lot of principles that I think are, are still quite sound, but it's not. I identify now as agnostic atheist. I am very clear that I don't know everything and I'm open to learning, but I can no longer get behind the God of the Bible, you know?

11:40 I'm very, it's interesting, Amy, because you made a great point there, because on my most recent episode was with a gentleman named Masvidal Maheshananda. So he's the gentleman I was telling you about before we started recording. Just a wealth of knowledge about yoga and Ayurveda, but not just Eastern traditions, also Western because, and that's what he talks about in Christianity where it's like at its core, it's about compassion, it's about forgiveness, it's about love. But the message because of organizations not throwing shade, organized religion per SE, but a lot of times when monetary concerns get involved, when power, when the ego comes into play, it leads to a distortion of that message. And that's unfortunately, you know, kind of what what ends up happening with a lot of these movements, you know, it's just they become Co opted and the core message really gets pushed through this distortion field, right. And then that's unfortunately, it sounds like that's what you had been exposed to.

12:35 But tell me more about sort of how I'd like to sort of go a little bit further with that, Amy, about, you know, you mentioned the spirit and maybe just kind of how you kind of came into this spiritual awakening, you know, not necessarily subscribing to one specific school of thought, like, oh, you know, I'm a Buddhist or I'm a Taoist or whatever it is. But maybe if you can, maybe the community that helped you in that journey and some of the practices if you could share with us. I toyed around with a bunch of different things that some spiritual centers near my house that really pulled from lots of different ideas of faith and. This was still in California or this was? Still in California, Yeah, this was still right around that time period. And then I I found coaching and the way I found this is I was kind of dying a slow death in a corporate environment.

13:20 I know you know what that's like. And you were at, was it Mac of the cosmetics place or this was from? Road, yeah, I was a corporate trainer for for Mac cosmetics for for a handful of years. And so, you know, again, company car travelling all over, having an assistant like very much a big girl job in my mid 20s, which was pretty incredible, but definitely dying a slow death. And so I was looking for something that I wanted to shift and I had such a great gig with them that I didn't want to just jump ship just to jump ship. I wanted it to be the next major chapter of my life. So I remember one day I came home from work and my husband said I heard about this person on the radio today. I was back when we listened to the radio. Radio.

14:05 What's that? Well, yeah, old tech alert and he said. I was listening to this person on the radio and it's you. It's what you've been doing your whole life. It's called a life coach. And I was like, oh, really? Oh, that's interesting. OK. And he felt so convicted about it that he sent off to a school to get a bunch of information. And so he presents all these leaflets and pamphlets to me. And I that was sort of the the genesis of getting involved in this internal work. And I, I went to some retreats where I was surrounded by, oh, gosh, like septuagenarians, octogenarians, people who were so significantly older than me. And I was like 25 And, and they, they, I all said, you are so smart to be doing this right now.

14:48 And I felt like I was just having this massive quarter life crisis and that really started shifting everything for me. And I think one of the things that blew my world wide open was this idea of the inner critic, right. And now as I've studied, become quite a student hypnosis, now I understand what's actually happening there in the brain and in the mind with the inner critic. But I just thought everything that I processed in my mind was just true. It was it was just true. And I didn't realize like, Oh my gosh, so much of that has been conditioned to beliefs that I did not consent to. And, you know, beliefs about my body, about being queer, about femininity, about dogma, about all sorts of.

15:31 Things kind of on autopilot. And that that really started shifting things. And I kind of threw in the towel for a while. And when I realized, you know, I had gone to coaching school and then I was like, oh, crap, building a business. I don't think I want that. Wait, who's going to take care of my 4 O 1K though? And and so I kind of threw in the towel. And then when my father passed, I ended up seeing a therapist and she said, I still think there's something here for you with the coaching. And that's when I went back and did my full certification and and then really started crafting a business. And that was probably in O9 when I really got serious about it. You touched on one thing, Amy, while you were talking about your journey, which really, as you and I were talking before the show, show is, is something that I would say I'm still in the initial stages of really diving deep into, and that's hypnotherapy.

16:23 You know, it's funny, even in this day and age, I think when people hear about hypnosis, they think about some seminar where, you know, you get programmed to cluck like a chicken or, you know, do some crazy shit, right? But I would love if you can give us a little bit more of a enlightened or maybe nuanced view of hypnotherapy, kind of your journey with it. And you know, we don't need to make this like a super esoteric discussion, but there is a lot of science to it. You know, we talk about alpha brain waves, Theta brain waves. So that's totally my jam. So I'd love if you can talk about that to your heart's content. So I did also think of the ideology that I started experimenting with, and that was universal Unitarianism.

17:07 That's what I meant to say earlier when I had a little brain fart. So the chicken stuff. Yeah, it's tricky because what is happening essentially when somebody is is hypnotized is exactly what you were mentioning earlier, is simply a slowing down of the brain wave state. So if you're familiar with Bruce Lipton, he talks about it sometimes as well. I don't. Know if you could see it as you can't see it up there, but it's biology belief. Yeah. I love Bruce Lipton. Perfect. Well, in, in sort of the, the impetus behind this was I was doing a lot of coaching work and really wanting to concretize changed beliefs. I didn't want it to just be these sporadic classes that people would take, get good ideas, consume data, and then not actually change anything.

17:56 And so I wanted to look at the science of change, like what actually changes your belief system? That's when I really started getting heavily involved in understanding the subconscious versus the conscious. And I'm sure you've talked about this, but it depends on who you who you talk to. But we know that the conscious faculty of the mind is roughly 5% versus subconscious really running the show at 95%. Well, there's a little guard dog kind of in between there checking for congruence between those two elements, which is the inner critic, that critical factor of the mind, which we don't typically develop into, you know, age 8:00-ish. So you walk around basically completely suggestible. That's what we call it in in hypnosis, like is somebody suggestible?

18:40 And it's basically where the inner critic or the critical factor of the mind goes to sleep. And that happens when the brain waves slow down to a Theta wave. So we, you know, we have a certain level of brain wave activity in our awakened state. You can actually right and then completely being asleep is delta. But so we pass through this Theta wave state where our brain is slowing down and it, and this is also why sometimes in hypnosis people will say, like, try to lift your arm, you can't. And that is because you are nearing delta. So when we're in delta, when our brain waves have slowed down that much, it's so that the subconscious can be available, but you're not flailing around your, your body isn't hyper mobile. If you are running and jumping in your dreams, right, starts to shut down in that part of your body. So the same can be true as you're passing through Theta. So it's not anything that's like woo woo or not able to be calculated.

19:41 It's it's a very scientific process. So we all go through a hypnotic trance every single morning and every single night as we awaken or as we go to sleep. So that can be a great little hack is if you start to become attuned to what that feels like. And this is what I do every day. I'll have a set of beliefs or maybe 1. Major belief that I want to cement into the subconscious. And when I can feel myself starting to drift off to sleep, I'll just repeat that in my head over and over and over again. And same when I start waking up I'll do the same thing as well. But I'm sure you probably heard this too. People describe the separation of the subconscious versus the conscious where you're driving somewhere, you get to your destination, You're like, how did I get here?

20:26 So your conscious mind is like replaying what you should have said in that argument earlier today. Or like, your subconscious knows how to drive. It knows how to get to that location as long as it's, you know, a place you've gone a million times before. Our subconscious is embedded with things that are known or it will register danger if something is unknown. So for many of us, we start developing positive associations with things that kept us safe in our youth, like a positive association with overachievement, perfectionism. For a lot of the folks that I work with, it's people pleasing. Let me shape shift, twist and contort myself in order to garner the approval that I'm desiring.

21:10 So then if we're trying to talk to the conscious part of the mind that's just 5% and we're trying to say, no, I love my body or no, I'm capable of creating wealth or I deserve to speak up or I, I can establish boundaries. Everything in that, that little guard dog, that critical factor of the mind is like bullshit. That's how it says down here, down here. Exactly, Yeah. Exactly. And the same is true if we look at it through a neuroscience lens. You know, the with neuroplasticity and the neural pathways in the brain. So whether we're talking about mind or brain, it's both very much yes. We can teach old dogs new tricks. You know, that's sort of the fixed versus growth mindset idea. Just because you haven't been good at tough conversations or starting your own podcast or starting a business doesn't mean you have to always be that way.

22:02 Or if you've always felt that you can't speak up, you know, I know you worked against a belief around being extroverted versus introverted. And that for sure. Oh, I don't. That now is known as something negative in my mind. Now I know being extrovert is negative, so now I need to change behavior. Deep shift belief. Yeah, I get I get fired up about this stuff. Yeah, it's totally my jam as well. And I think that there's so many meditation teachers out there and I wouldn't say I'm exclusively subscribed to one, but I think for people who are trying to get into it, Amy, I think the school of thought that resonates with me deeply. The Silva ultra mind system.

22:43 I'm not, I don't know if you're familiar with Jose Silva. And it's interesting because I think he was like a radio technician or he worked for the military, but basically he worked on radios all day. And I think he got it into his head about how do we treat the human mind like a radio? And it's so apropos because I tell you, I mean, I can I can attest to this morning. I just woke up and I'm like, I got so much to do. And you know, just bills. I got the kids camps, all this, you know, just kind of in the mud, so to speak, right? And I just kind of, as we were talking about just, it was like I was driving through the mountains and I was trying to listen to my favorite radio station. Again, I'm dating myself here, but trying to listen to my favorite radio station and it was just static. But then I sat down for like maybe 5 minutes, just did some, you know, conscious breathing and it was like I tuned to the right frequency, that right radio station. I think you and I are on the same page here about it's frustrating, right?

23:38 Because I think this stuff is not this ethereal kind of woo woo stuff where it's just there's so much science behind it. There's this amazing book called Altered Traits. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it does talk about you, you're familiar with it, or. I've heard of it, I haven't read it. OK. Yeah, I mean, and they talk about, you know, trying to get into these higher states of consciousness Really, you know, we don't have we don't have all have the luxury of being able to go to A and, you know, meditate for days on end. But if we can interject some of this into our day-to-day, it's going to really help us to have those big breakthroughs and those aha moments that not to be too, you know, kumbaya about it, but they can really push humanity forward. 100% And I think talking about sort of the, the spiritual journey and sort of the religious journey that we started off with, what changed for me is I kind of felt like, oh, I already have divinity.

24:32 I already have an internal God that is my compass and that is helping me discern oh, that's a red flag or that's a green flag or oh, that's a pink flag. Keep an eye on that, right. And what we don't talk about often times in personal development is that your inner critic and your intuition are the exact same thing. They're the same they're same coin, different sides. So we refer to it as an inner critic when it feels like it's getting in our way or if it something negative. We refer to it as intuition when we're on to something, when it is a clear path we need to follow. So for example, like if you are walking through a dark alley at night, your intuition, we would call it intuition would say like, oh, you might not be safe.

25:20 You need to really watch and be careful. My intuition was picking up all of these red flags. Well, the exact same thing happens when we get nervous to start our own business when we're actually not in present danger. But the inner critic goes, hey, this is new. We've never done this before. Again, registering knowns and unknowns, this is unknown. I don't think this is safe throwing up all these red flags. So one of the discerning questions that I use all the time is, am I in danger? Or is this just new? Because fear shows up and so does inner critic or intuition. In every situation where there's fear, right, or a new situation, those things will always be present.

26:02 So we have to discern, am I actually in danger or is this just new? And I think that's also exponentially worse, or I would say applicable for people who are, who find themselves a part of a marginalized identity or an intersection they're in. I was talking to a really amazing woman one time, a black woman, and she was talking about giving birth. And we know that of the developed nations, we have the highest mortality rate for women and it's exponentially worse for women of color, specifically black women. So she was saying, do you think I was people pleasing by trying to get the staff to take care of me and like be really, really sweet and saccharine with them so that they would take care of me?

26:43 And I said, no, I don't think because you are not outsourcing yourself worth. That's often times what we're doing with people pleasing is we're trying to outsource our self worth versus self preservation. You were coming from a place of I need to care take for myself. So for many of us out there, we have to discern and I actually in danger here or is this just new and that can also serve to help us choose the appropriate behavior. I love what you say when you talk about people pleasing specifically, you know, I've done a lot of research on and like, you know, sympathetic parasympathetic response and the mental shortcut is people say fight or flight, right? That's always the shorthand version of characterizing parasympathetic versus sympathetic.

27:28 One of the things that I found very interesting that you talk about is this notion of fawn sort of interject with that. And I had never thought about the fact that people pleasing is sort of like going into that sympathetic response, right? So maybe if you can talk a little bit more about that and kind of, you know, how it's played out in your life and maybe, you know, some clients you've worked with, maybe just how people pleasing can sort of be a factor and a contributor to that sympathetic response, which is, you know, less than ideal. Right. Well, and it definitely serves a purpose. However, that's not when we are our most creative and resourceful. It's quite a testament to how the modern world works.

28:09 Like we're forced into a sympathetic nervous system state quite frequently. Not through the lens of I might die, so call in fight flight, but rather putting out all these fires and mitigating threat. So even if it's I'm going to be late, dropping my child off, that feels like a threat, right? So even though we're not going consciously, we're not going, I might die. The nervous system is going, oh, we need to be on high alert all the time, which is why stuff like breath work, hypnosis, meditation is so imperative to the human condition because we're also living in this ridiculous hustles culture. So all of our primitive fear responses fight, flight, freeze and fawn obviously to show up when we're in near death experiences, right?

28:59 Well, they all have modern iterations and the modern iteration of the fawn response, which is basically to placate or acquiesce to an aggressor. So if you're being attacked by a Mountain Lion, let's say to fawn as a fear response would be like here Kitty, Kitty, here's some food, go over there. It's not fighting, it's not freezing, it's not fleeing. So the modern iteration of that when we are feeling some sort of sense of threat, if we tend to fawn that looks like people pleasing. But again, in some situations, we actually are in danger where people pleasing might literally keep us alive. So for many people growing up, that was the case. Maybe you had a volatile parent or caregiver. Maybe you had a sibling who needed a ton of additional attention.

29:52 So you in order to be seen, you became the perfectionist or the people pleaser. And one of the things that I find a lot, Nikhil, is that people will say, oh, I don't identify as a people pleaser because they see it as somebody who's maybe really soft spoken, maybe a repressed or depressed posture, super introverted. But then if I say, are you highly invested in the opinions of other people, they'll go, oh, yeah. And I'm like, well, then there's the chance that there's some people pleasing behavior going on here. So I don't think that it's useful to RIP out defense mechanisms that you've had for decades upon decades. I think it takes some time to create a different association with people pleasing one in which we can discern. So instead of it being positive like this always keeps me safe, Now we have a positive association with discernment. I was just going to say that's like my favorite word is just not.

30:52 Yeah, just seeing Shades of Grey and applying context to the situation. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, and context is huge as well, but we don't get that message when we're under 8 years old where everything is true. Because remember, you're walking around without the critical factor of the mind, also without intuition. So you're not going, oh, that feels wrong. You're just kind of, I'm not quite sure what to put that in. Or if you have a parent that says no, you have to be a doctor like like us. Or if you're told no, use your beauty because that's your currency as a woman, then you start to live into that belief. And again, I think one of the most powerful pieces of this is most of the beliefs that we live into as adults, we didn't consent to.

31:40 And so once we can start to dismantle that a little bit, this is one of the reasons I love hypno so much, is because we can now consciously inform and reprogram that subconscious part of the mind to be what we really want to be, the beliefs that are true for us. I think also one of the things that I see quite prevalently with the women that I work with, and it sounds like a lot of your history as well, is that overachieving is that constant hustle, but also hyper individualism of not coming into contact with community and there's a lack of vulnerability and then subsequently intimacy, right? And that's what we want as humans. We just want to be connected.

32:22 So I think, you know, This is why we see autoimmune issues on the rise, burnout on the ride, all of that. That is being in a prolonged nervous system, state of being in that sympathetic nervous system for a prolonged period of time, and we're just not supposed to be there. Yeah, and I want to segue into something else that I found really interesting, Amy, is that, you know, there's all this talk about self talk, but one of the things that I found interesting that you, I don't know if this is something you coined or, but it was very powerful. And that's self sentiment because I'm sure you're familiar with the book The Body Keeps the Score. But you know, it's just basically when we're saddled with all these obligations, when we are kind of stuck in this people pleasing trap of just constantly if I get to this next promotion, if I get that new car or whatever, then I'll be happy kind of thing. It definitely takes a toll.

33:11 So maybe could you talk to me a little bit more about self sentiment and how listeners maybe how they can help manage that and harness it and you know, use it as a force of empowerment rather than this additional weight that they're carrying? Yeah. So that yes, that is a term that I coined and it was actually informed from a lot of my work in hypnosis because I found that, and we talk about this a lot in NLP or neurolinguistic programming about sensory acuity. So if somebody is incredibly visual, for example, they might do really well with guided imagery and meditation where someone's saying you're going into your favorite safe place or you're going into this forest and you see all these trees.

33:57 Now, if you're not visual, it's a madding. It's like, no, I can't see the damn trees. I can't. What are you talking about? Like. Speaking a foreign language, yeah. Exactly. So if you can tap into these other ways that you communicate the best or how you interpret or compute information the best, you can start figuring out how to start communing with yourself, talking with yourself. So I started using that term of self sentiment because some people really resonated with hearing a literal voice in their head that was dumb. You're so stupid. That's not possible for you. But then there were a whole bevy of folks that I would talk to who would say, I don't hear an actual voice ever.

34:41 But if they're, you know, swiping through Instagram and they see somebody who they went to high school with who's, you know, by all societal standards doing so incredibly well, they will have a visceral response. They might have a feeling of like the heart dropping into the stomach. So I just call those entry points. If you have an emotional entry point of how something feels, emotions are just messaging. They are there to tell you move toward or move away. But pay attention. You might have an entry point that's literal words in your head. You might have an entry point That's behavior, right? Your story. Is per person, yeah. It's not a one-size-fits-all type thing, Yeah. Exactly. I think one of my favorite tools though, with regards to your internal conversation, whether that shows up through your body, through your emotions or through more of NLP also 'cause that audio digital, if you hear a self talking voice quite a bit.

35:36 A lot of people have a medley of both. I I absolutely have both. There's times when I hear very specific language and then there's other times when it's just an internal knowing or just a sentiment really. But one of my favorite tools around this is that one that I created called progressive language. And again, what we're trying to do is we're trying to embed new beliefs into the subconscious mind. But often times when we're doing that with affirmation, that little inner critic, that little guard dog is like, this is dumb. Get this out of here. No, you're not. No, you're, you can't do that. But right, because it's not congruent with what's in the subconscious. So we need something that's like giving that guard dog a little treat, a little green. Chew toy or something a.

36:19 Little chew toy, right? So obviously we can do that with hypnosis, but in our wakened state and with the conscious mind, we can have workarounds. So instead of going from A-Z like in my world, it's oftentimes around worthiness. So instead of going from I'm not worthy to I am worthy because if that feels like a bold faced lie, we are going to stop that tool very quickly. We're not going to continue on with repetition the way we would need in order for it to really become embedded. So using something progressive is instead going from like depending on what you need, A to M or A to D maybe. And it would sound something like instead of saying I am worthy, you would say I'm exploring what worthiness means, or I'm reengineering my beliefs about my worse, or I'm. A more incremental approach, right? It's progressive, it doesn't mean I've arrived at my destination, it doesn't mean end all be all. It's not as affirmative, but it's a something the mind can buy into and stick to much longer without getting such extreme kickback from that inner critic voice. I mean, I think it's helpful to take a gradual measured approach rather than as we as we we know, New Year's resolutions. I don't know what the stats are, but I think like 90% of them fail after the first month, you know, because people have this boil the ocean mentality when in fact, you're right, that guard dog is sort of, you know, the gatekeeper of all your energies and putting those plans into

37:50 motion. So, yeah, I mean, I definitely, I always live by the, you know, Rome wasn't built in a day philosophy, right? We definitely have to have goals. We're all high achievers. But, you know, yeah, I think I think you do have to make it. And you talk about Bruce Lipton, I'm sure if you're familiar with the community of 50 trillion cells analogy that he uses, right? So we have to think about this thing not. And I I struggle with this myself, but I found it to be very helpful in that when I'm mobilizing to do a task, I'm thinking about all the mechanics behind that, you know, like just opening up your computer, just getting a cup of coffee, all the steps that go into that, right. So going back to your progressive language model, it's just like, it's almost like, yeah, breaking down a task, whether it's, you know, doing in your taxes or starting a business, you know, just sort of going from A to M rather than trying to go from zero to 60 in, in, in 5 seconds.

38:41 That's exactly right. Well, and I think a lot of the there becomes these waves in personal development where it's, you know, like self-care is the big thing or right now I see a lot of like labeling of people being toxic and I'm like, are they toxic or are you not able to speak up for yourself? Like, or is there something in the middle right nuance and being able to discern context here? Yeah, it's wild to me. But, you know, I also think about putting that little guard dog to sleep. We want that guard dog to be awake and alert if there's ever any type of danger, right? Like walking in that dark alley at night. Then we call it intuition. Then it gets to have wings and be this beautiful, you know, like Pegasus or something. But I think it's important to understand that what it's always doing is fighting for safety.

39:33 So it's trying to figure out like, is it safe for you to claim that you are worthy or that you can speak up for yourself or that you're capable, right? It doesn't look like that safe. Remember that time when you were eight years old and you tried to say that and you got smacked or you got, you know? Well, the analogy I use, Amy, is just the smoke alarm, right? Think about in your house when your smoke alarm, the batteries have gone out and it and makes that beeping noise. And that's unfortunately present company included. I think that's what a lot of us are going around with is it's not that we want to disable that smoke alarm because that'll kill us. But the point is it's like we need to calibrate that. Maybe we need to replace the batteries, you know, go for a retreat, go for a spa day or whatever, you know, or, or we just need to replace the stinking thing, you know, make this radical shift in what we're doing, you know, try and try a new career or start a new venture or what not.

40:22 And I and I use the word retreat because I. I do want to understand a little bit more, Amy, you have a lot of amazing resources on your website. You call them free sources, I think, right? That's sketchy, but you have a lot of great free Reese's on your site. But one that I want to learn a little bit more about is your, I think it's called the Worthy Program. So if maybe you could talk a little bit more about that, maybe about kind of the objectives, what people can look forward to, because I think everything you've talked about I think will resonate with our audience, men and women. But I think for, you know, female listeners, can you talk us a little bit more through the Worthy program? Yeah, so this is my major signature program. It's it's different than the freebies. So this is consume the freebies enjoy like just the medley of tons of content that I have out there. But then if you want to do a deep dive, my main signature program is called worthy.

41:19 I do it with individuals, but also as a group program once a year and it spans about nine months. So it's it's a very substantial container, but I would say it usually where it hurts the most is for folks who are clear that self doubt and constant berating of themselves is despite checking off all those boxes and being so accomplished, they are still coming up empty. They still feel not enough. They still don't feel worthy. And then it also will create a ripple effect. So sometimes it's now they isolate and they just don't have really rich friendships or now they're realizing that they're in a really detrimental marriage or partnership or, you know, they want to go after something.

42:06 So it shows up in your behavior. So tons of people pleasing or caring what other people think. Perfectionism. I work with so many doctors. It's so interesting. Lots of folks in the medical field. It's really fascinating. But I think it's really similar to like, OK, wait, the boxes have been checked. Why the hell am I not happy? So the chronology is such that we start by amplifying emotional intelligence because I feel like that's one of your most guiding principles. And I also think that when we feel something uncomfortable, shame, guilt, overwhelm, stress, we oftentimes will make a cataclysmic jump to that must mean I'm not worthy.

42:46 That must mean I'm not good enough. Instead of no emotions are just messaging. They're just there to tell us like, hey, maybe we need to re evaluate this. So we go through a whole bunch of stuff with inner child forgiveness work, But the big chunk is the belief systems that we start changing. And then once we start changing those deeply held beliefs, which for many people it's something around not good enough, not deserving. I don't matter. I'm not, you know, it's something quite analogous to worthiness, sometimes love. I'm not lovable. I'm not innately good. I see that a lot from people with extreme religious trauma, that there's this good bad binary. And then we move into a lot of identity work, speaking up for yourself, a ton of stuff around communication. So the idea is such that once I believe that I'm worthy, now how does that have this ripple effect in the rest of my life? And 1 of this things I see like clockwork is I often say people's bullshit tolerance starts to get really low. So The thing is that they would tolerate the ways that they would allow people to speak to them or treat them. You just see it through this completely different lens and you're like, that's unacceptable. And it almost be.

43:57 Stepping into your sovereignty, it sounds like, yeah. Yes, 100%, yeah. So and then I, I kind of bookend the whole program with two different live retreats where we get to commune in real life, which is just so fantastic. One domestically and then one usually out of the country. And I keep it to a really, really small group. But I know you've talked about this a lot too, about just the the way in which community heals. And I will say, just also speaking as assist woman, I do feel like a lot of my upbringing and messaging about other women was to fight with them to find errors with them. They're too slutty, they show too much skin, they're too maternal, they're too matrally, they're too.

44:37 Right, relationship, yeah, that's. Exactly right. But my God, we're so powerful when we come together and support each other. And I think that's that's a testament kind of through the whole human condition, really. This could be an episode in and of itself is just and we we touched on it a little bit in the last episode. It's just the notion of evolution has always been this Darwinian survival of the fittest, when in fact our species was really meant to collaborate. And yes, I mean, there has to be some emphasis on achievement and performance, but this whole dog eat dog world, I think is is a very outdated notion that we need to kind of disabuse ourselves up a. 100%. Yeah, so Amy, I've, I've just really enjoyed this conversation. I so much we align on in terms of, you know, our, our views and just in terms of a lot of commonalities in our journey. So, you know, I really appreciate you taking the time to, to come on the show.

45:28 You know, at the end of the episodes, one of the things I was asked my guest is the title. This show is untether your life. And so it's about breaking free of templates, whether that's career or health or relationships. And as we've talked about, I think you've done an amazing job of that. How would you tell a listener if they're listening and they're like, you know, I want to try to untether my life? How would you tell them to go about that journey? I would say the first item of the business would be check yourself talk or yourself sentiment for absolutes. And what I mean by that is if you hear in your mind a narrative of that's not possible, I can't, won't never have to no one else.

46:09 Like where there's this stamp of affirmation, it has to be this way that's indicative of a belief. So just exploring, is that a belief that I have consented to can open up your entire world of have I just been feeding into a belief system? Have I been tethered to a paradigm that is stifling and not not genuinely what I want to believe any longer? But it shows up most often when we say I have to, I have to do that or there's no other possibility. And usually if you examine that, it's, Oh no, I think I have to do it because who will I be if I'm not overachieving? Who will I be if I'm not the savior or the perfectionist or the one everyone can lean on?

47:00 That's a belief. Where did that come from? We need to start searching that out because I can tell you right now, you have more value than just what you do for other people. There's more to you than just filling somebody else's bucket. You get to also have your bucket filled. You also get to feel alive and fulfilled regardless, and that's a piece of owning your worth. And that's a really difficult thing to wrap your head around. So first item of business, let's figure out what paradigms need to shift and what you've been subscribed to without your consent. Evaluate those affirmative self talk self sentiments. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Yeah, I think we just we really need to discernment, I think is is really the watchword. So for anyone listening, yeah, you don't know what that means. Grab a dictionary and and I think it'll it'll definitely change your life.

47:49 So, Amy, thank you again so much. This was this was a great conversation. I really enjoyed it. If people want to find out more about your program worthy, if they want to find out more about you in general and maybe work with you, what's the best way for them to do that? Yeah, so my little corner of the Internet is over at amygreensmith.com and I often times will say all those names are spelled the basic bitch way. There's nothing fun about those spellings. They're just very regular. But there's tons of freebies like Nikhil said that you can snag. There's a a free hypnosis track as well around anxiety and fear and that's available for you. Also a free workbook. And, and then yes, you can read up on the Worthy program.

48:32 It's something that I take people through one-on-one at this point and then we'll do the group version of it. That will include the retreats that will probably be launching sometime in September. But like any self respecting Gen. Xer, I hang out the most on Instagram. So you can find me kind of all across social, but mainly on Insta under Hey Amy Greensmith and I'd love to say hi. OK. Thanks again, Amy. This was a great conversation. Thank you, Nikhil. I appreciate it. Thanks so much for listening and I hope you enjoyed that episode. For more of these types of conversations, please visit us at untetheryourlife.co. You can also find us on Instagram and Untether Your Life, as well as on Apple, Spotify and other platforms by searching for Untether Your Life. And if you did enjoy this episode? Please leave us a.

49:21 Review or share it with someone who might also benefit. Thanks. And until the next time we meet, stay untethered.