Meet Amy Green Smith, a certified life coach and personal empowerment expert

Wendy Valentine: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another lively episode of the Midlife Makeover show. Today we’ve got a powerhouse guest who’s all about helping you step into your own power and find your voice. Meet Amy Green Smith, a certified life coach, hypnotherapist, and personal empowerment expert with a knack for blending wisdom and humor into her work. My kind of girl. Whether she’s coaching, writing, podcasting, or speaking, Amy’s mission is clear to move you to a place of radical, and I mean radical, self worth and empowerment. She’s been featured in inspired Coach magazine and on Fox five San Diego, but most of all, stay classy.

Amy Green Smith: And today.

Wendy Valentine: Today, she’s here to share her magic with us. I couldn’t resist. Amy will dive into some game changing topics, like finding your voice, speaking up for yourself, and mastering the art of saying no. Or if you’re windy, you just say, f***, no. If you are someone who struggles with people pleasing or feels overly invested in others opinions, this episode is a must listen. Get ready for a fun and enlightening conversation that will leave you feeling empowered and ready to take charge.

Our intuition and our inner critic are opposite sides of the same coin

Let’s give a warm welcome to. To Amy greensmith. That’s what I do. I can read so well.

Amy Green Smith: You’re so, good at reading.

Wendy Valentine: Thank you, thank you, thank you. It’s nice, though, to hear, like, amazing words about yourself.

Amy Green Smith: I know. I often think that it would be so great to have that be your wake up, noise, you know, your alarm in the morning, and just be like, hey, guess what? Guess who’s a bad b****.

Wendy Valentine: You totally talk to ourselves that way. It actually reminds me of. I got certified in Louise, hayes heal your life.

Amy Green Smith: Ah.

Wendy Valentine: Her workshops. Right? And they did this thing. It’s called the affirmation bath. And you would sit in a chair with your eyes closed, and you would have, like, four or five people around you, and they have a list of positive affirmations, and they shout them out to you while your eyes are closed. And it is the coolest experience. I mean, I just started bawling.

Amy Green Smith: Oh, yeah. I have done a similar exercise with, one of my groups that I work with, and it’s all high achieving, c suite, lots of doctors, group of women, and you would not believe how difficult it is for them to absorb positive commendations. Affirmations. Then I get on my high horse and I’m like, not on my watch. Are, a bunch of bad b* like this going to cower and not take up some g* space?

Wendy Valentine: I know. Okay. Why do we do that? Why do we speak so poorly to ourselves.

Amy Green Smith: Well, I think, we can’t negate how we are biologically kind of formed because so much of our inner critic or the critical factor of the mind is informed by our nervous system and feeling as though there is some sort of impending threat. Right. So oftentimes that critical factor of the mind is constantly scanning for anything that might be interrupting our joy or our happiness. And it searches for threat way more than it searches for exciting things.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah.

Amy Green Smith: And also that’s very much in tandem with how people pleasing comes about. Right. So if we look at primitive humans, for example, there was no such thing as a tribe of one. You had to belong to a group, or that meant impending death. So now the same is true for us, where if Susie in accounting doesn’t approve of us, or our adult child doesn’t like us or our in laws or whoever, on a subconscious level, we think we might not survive it.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah. Isn’t that interesting? I was just thinking, though, too, that so many times we’re so concerned about how others speak to us and if someone says something in a wrong tone or whatever, we’re just like, oh, my gosh, I can’t believe Judy said that to me. But then we don’t think about how we talk to ourselves.

Amy Green Smith: That’s right. That’s right.

Wendy Valentine: And we’re. We are the worst. We are our worst critic.

Amy Green Smith: Well, and I think one of the things that we don’t realize is that the inner. And this might be a little mind blowing, but our intuition and our inner critic are opposite sides of the same f coin.

Amy Green Smith: All of it is. All of it is warning us. Right? So. But when it’s something negative, when it’s something where we know we are in our own way, we call it the inner critic.

Amy Green Smith: When it is something that’s positive moving us towards, like, I know this is the right person for me or I know that I want to start this business, then we call it an intuitive hit. But m, it is the exact same thing. So, for example, if you are walking down a dark alley at night and you have all of this extreme fear and your intuition is telling you, like, we need to be on high alert and nothing happens, it was just trying to keep you safe. It was going, hey, are you okay? but we. We will refer to that as an intuition as opposed to when we talk s* to ourselves about, oh, you’re not. You’re not going to be able to start this company or you’re not going to be able to start over after a divorce, in those situations, it’s doing the same thing. It’s your intuition. It’s your inner critic saying, hey, we haven’t done this before. We haven’t started over. And I know you have this, this very much on, lockdown, right? We haven’t done this before. So what it’s doing is it’s waving this flag going, hey, b**, pay attention. Are we in danger?

Wendy Valentine: Yes.

Amy Green Smith: So one of my absolute favorite questions to ask myself, if I’m in the throes of fear, because fear is going to show up when you actually are in danger, or when you’re onto something, when something is new and you just haven’t traversed it yet, the mind of the brain will go, wait, are you sure? Are you sure it’s safe? Is to ask yourself the question, is this, am I actually in danger?

Amy Green Smith: Or is this just new? M. Because most of the time it’s just new. And the inner critic will just come in going like, are you sure it’s okay? Are you sure it’s okay? And then we’ll send a barrage of commentary to halt any further movement.

Wendy Valentine: I’m laughing because, like, I can totally relate to all of this.

Amy Green Smith: Yeah.

Wendy Valentine: Like, the silly things that we humans do. But like you said, as a human being, being human, we were built with this fight and flight and freeze response. That’s only natural. But like you said, it’s taking that and going, okay, should I really be scared? Do I need to be scared right now? Am I just. Is my own mind just effing with myself? I m mean, that’s, A lot of times, like, we just trick ourselves into fighting or fleeing or freezing when we don’t really need to. It’s just simply getting out of your comfort zone and doing something miraculous in life. And yes, it can be scary, but, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.

Amy Green Smith: That’s right.

People pleasing is a defense mechanism to stay safe, right

And this is where nuance comes in. Because if we’re talking about are primitive fear responses, right? You just named three of them. Fight, flight, freeze. And there’s a newer one in the conversation, which is fawn. Well, all of those, like, if we’re looking at having some sort of captor or an aggressor for primitive humans, let’s say it’s a mountain lion, we know what that looks like. To fight, to freeze, to flee. But to fawn is to placate a captor or an aggressor or an impending threat. So that would be like, here, kitty, kitty, here’s the meat. Go over there. Well, all of our fear responses have modern iterations, and the modern iteration of, the fond response is to people, please. So, m for example, if you were young and you grew up with a volatile caregiver or maybe a parent who was an abuser and you kind of had to walk on eggshells, that was you fawning in order to stay safe. So you realized, if I acquiesce, if I placate this parent, if I can slide under the radar, I can stay safe. And so we adopt these defense mechanisms, like people pleasing to stay safe. And then we wake up in our thirties, forties, fifties and beyond and go, holy f. This is arresting my growth in my career, in my romantic partnerships and my friendships and more. So I think we have to understand that. And this is one of the things I see really commonly in personal development, where we will take one concept and we will make it mean something forever and always, like, people pleasing is always bad, always wrong. Perfectionism, always bad, always wrong. If I’m going in for brain surgery, you better sure as f hope that person is a perfectionist being called for in a matter of life and death. Right, right. So if, for example, with people pleasing, I identify as queer. If I show up in a, scenario that is heavily anti queer community, that might not be the time to wave my rainbow flag. For my own personal safety. I think most women out there can relate to the idea of people pleasing men in order to not get murdered. So I think.

Wendy Valentine: Exactly, yeah, we have touch. A good point.

Amy Green Smith: That’s why I think the question of, am I actually in danger, or is this just new? Can help us figure out is people pleasing the defense mechanism I want to call upon in this scenario? Or is it arresting me, believing in my own intrinsic self worth?

Wendy Valentine: Yes.

Wendy says her greatest fear in life was being abandoned

So many good points. So I shared with you before we hit record. in the process of writing my book, I have one more chapter to go.

Amy Green Smith: You got it.

Wendy Valentine: I just wrote this chapter about, and it took me literally almost 50 years to come to this realization that as a child, I was abandoned. Right. And my greatest fear in life was being abandoned. This and this. This common thread went into all my relationships, my jobs, everything. Like, it just wove through my entire life. You know, I might be abandoned. And because of this fear, I built these defense mechanisms, right? Of the perfectionist, of the people pleaser, of the codependent, like, you name it. The. The, What am I trying to say? The seeking acknowledgement. I can’t think of the word approval. Approval seeking. All of that. I did all of that to prevent people leaving me right now. That was one of the aha moments. And. Cause it was like, well, I don’t need that s*** anymore. Right? And the biggest aha was like, wait a minute. My greatest fear was being abandoned, but I became my fear because really what I was doing was abandoning myself.

Amy Green Smith: Right? Right.

Wendy Valentine: So I was holding, like, this heavy armor, carrying around my entire life, please don’t leave me. And really I was just abandoning little wendy that just wanted to be out in the world and play and use her, you know, crazy ideas and use her voice in the world. Like, that’s it. Like, I didn’t have to hold on to that anymore. But like you said, there’s times when you can use those. But for it to control your life and for it to just be a burden and a heavy burden to carry around with you, it’s exhausting. As someone like, I can vouch. It was exhausting. I’m like, it’s so nice to have lightened that load and to just breathe and be free of that and to know that you have choices.

Amy Green Smith: Well, and I think something you’re pointing to here is how we employ various strategies to get our needs meth. So for you, the need was, I can’t have anybody leave me. So I’m going to use all of these various strategies to keep them here, which I’m guessing pushed them away. Because some, oftentimes if we’re afraid of abandonment, we become incredibly clingy. We will use different tactics. Like, either, I’m going to leave you first, so I’m going to put all these walls up. Yeah.

Wendy Valentine: I was the lever.

Amy Green Smith: Yeah. And also the sacrifice there is intimacy, right? Like we say, I don’t want to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is too scary, and it involves too much risk. But also, at the same time, we’re deeply craving intimacy, which is directly related to how vulnerable you’re willing to be in any relationship. Or, you know, we become clingy, and needy and we. Or we’re always trying to get attention or we’re trying to get compliments, or we do any number of things that either push people away or are wildly inauthentic to who we are. And I would guess that if I were to take a poll of all the folks listening and I said, who do you want to attract into your life? You’re not going to say a bunch of inauthentic liars. You’re going to say, I want to attract people who are transparent, who tell me exactly what they need so you have to be the person you want to attract.

Wendy Valentine: Full stop. Yep. You’re, you’re so right. Yeah. So how do you, how do you even begin? Like, I know what I did, but, and it was a long journey, and it was so worth it, but what do you recommend? if someone has these, you know, the people pleasing the perfectionists, the, looking for the acknowledgement and caring about everyone’s frickin opinions, where do you even start?

Amy Green Smith: Well, I think that one of the things that, again, I think it’s a little bit of a inaccurate representation in personal development spaces is that you have to do the internal work before you do the external. And I would push back on that. I do think internal is absolutely mandatory, but I don’t think it has to be in that sequence. I think you can target it with various entry points. Right. and so external entry points could be behavior. What you choose to do, you can start changing your behavior before you even believe that you’re worthy of it. Right. Like, there are ways to go into, the boardroom and demand attention even if you don’t feel, feel you deserve it. Right. So you can act as though another external entry point is, your environment, who you choose to surround yourself with. You could, right now, decide to establish boundaries, have difficult conversations, scale down or eliminate folks from your life. That is something that you’re doing environmentally to access and send the message of you matter. You are worthy, you are deserving, even if you don’t feel it.

Amy Cuddy’s work on body language is pretty profound

So I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen, I mean, it’s, it’s pretty prolific, but Amy Cuddy’s work on body language and.

Wendy Valentine: Oh, yes.

Amy Green Smith: Yep.

Wendy Valentine: Kathy. Yeah.

Amy Green Smith: Quite, quite intense, Ted talk that has just had a million, millions of views, and she wanted to see, could you change your emotional state by changing your physical stature. Right. Like, yeah.

Wendy Valentine: Like you get into the Wonder Woman. Da, da, da. I used to do that. Like, when I would go out on stage, I would do that. I’d, like, hold, I’d put my hands on my hips and like, okay, da, da da. Rather than being like, oh, my God. S***. But, yeah, it’s your body language that changes your energy, that changes your breathing. It changes so much of just how you feel instantly. It’s pretty cool.

Amy Green Smith: And so, because we know that we know, and it’s sort of, a take on the fake it till you make it, which I f hate. I would much, I would much rather ask myself if I believed that my voice mattered, how would I conduct myself how would I carry myself? What sort of vocabulary, would I use? What sort of things would I opt out of? And so if you ask yourself aspirational questions like that, of if I was somebody who loved my body, how would I handle myself? How would I carry myself? If I was somebody who believed that I was lovable and deserving of reciprocal relationships, how would I engage with those friendships? That, to me, is so much more powerful than fake it till you make it. It’s more of a acting as though, and looking at what, it is that you want to attain and get to.

Wendy Valentine: I totally agree with you. It’s interesting because, like, when I look back years ago, when I had my meltdown, if you will, and I can remember, I was talking to my Aunt Annie on the phone, and sometimes, like, the simplest things, the simplest teachings are the most profound, right? And, she had said, she’s like, darling, she’s like, you’ve said you always wanted to be an actress. She’s like, just act like the woman you want to be. And I was like, that’s right. I mean, if you think about it, we are acting. Even if it’s an authentic act. We are all acting every single day. How we speak, how we move, everything. Everything is an act. It’s an action, right?

Amy Green Smith: Right.

Wendy Valentine: And yes, like, unfortunately, it’s like, even as children, we absorb poor behaviors. and we act in certain ways that we don’t even realize we’re doing it subconsciously. But when you become conscious of it and you act as if, you act as though you are that woman that you want to be. And I, totally agree with you because, yes, it’s important to watch your thoughts, change your thoughts, think about your behaviors. But you can literally, starting right now, put your hands on your hips and act as the woman that you want to be. You can eat like her, talk like her, you can. You know what I mean? Like, have relations. Like. And you do have to think like, who is that woman that you want to be?

Wendy Valentine: Think about that. Yeah. Think about how. What kind of relationships would she have? What would she, how would she move her body? Would she exercise? What would she eat like, what would her romantic relationships be like? Whatever. But envisioning who that woman is and then literally stepping into her shoes and just acting like her, and eventually you become her.

Amy Green Smith: One of the easy exercises to figure out what that might look like is to envision. And, this works primarily if your sensory acute is more visual. If you’re not, you can press pause for a second. But if you are a visual person and you can visualize viewing yourself, let’s say just how you are when you are in your workplace, let’s say, and imagine that you’re watching that on a television screen or as a play, how would you describe that character? What sort of adjectives, what sort of character traits would you give to your character? How does she handle herself? how does she handle herself when she offended? How does she handle herself when she’s proud of herself? And taking sort of an assessment of that and then comparing that towards, what do I want that character to be saying and doing? So you can have sort of a voyeuristic perspective. And we know psychologically, when we remove ourselves a little bit weak, it’s more palatable for our mind. We can kind of accept it a little bit.

One of the things that you brought up is conscious versus the subconscious

But one of the other things that you brought up is around the conscious versus the subconscious, and that’s another entry point. So if we’re talking about how do we start creating this change? To believe that we’re actually worthy or that we’re valuable so that we can speak up and cultivate relationships that we enjoy. We have those external elements, behaviors, environments we can change. And then there’s internal stuff that we can do. And the way that I approach that is subconscious types of exercises that we can do and then conscious exercises that we can do.

Wendy Valentine: I like that.

Amy Green Smith: If you are talking about how the mind operates, and this is. This is one of the reasons why affirmations don’t work for a lot of people, is because the conscious faculty of the mind, depending on who you talk to, it’s roughly 5% of our mind’s power. The subconscious is 95%. And what that means is you have a, gut response to people, please, to not offend, to not hurt somebody. But it also means we don’t have to tell ourselves that a heart is representative of love. We already have that ingrained in the subconscious. We don’t have to tell ourselves how to drive once it’s wired into our subconscious. Right. So there’s a lot of stuff, that is really beneficial to that. But one of the things that’s embedded into our subconscious part of our mind, is all of our beliefs. So as we are young, we start making and gathering assessments based off of what we’re experiencing, and we create positive or negative associations. So if you have that situation like we were talking about earlier, where your upbringing was one where you opted to people, please, in order to stay safe, you develop a positive association in that large part of your mind. With people pleasing. So then we begin to use that as our tactics to survive and get through life. And then if you listen to a podcast like this or you’re reading a book or being involved in personal development, and someone says, just speak kindly to yourself, that little critical factor of the mind, it guards anything coming into the conscious to see if it’s congruent with the subconscious. So if you are telling yourself, I’m capable of speaking up for myself, I believe that I am worthy. That inner critic is going to go, that doesn’t match what’s down here. F***. all that.

Wendy Valentine: yeah, it’s kind of like going back to what you were saying in the very beginning. Like, it’s, natural that all of a sudden that fight, flight, freeze, fawn will kick in and go, err, that’s incorrect. What are you, like, who is this crazy woman that is saying all this stuff? This is inaccurate, this is wrong. And it immediately will try to.

Amy Green Smith: Yeah, so one of the ways. So that means for many people, when they are trying affirmations, they stand in the mirror or they’re saying to themselves, like, I believe that I am worthy. Everything in their body goes, f*** this. And so what do we do? We throw in the towel really early. We don’t continue on with that exercise because it feels like such a bold faced lie. And there’s some workarounds that you can use to help you with that. But that’s why I believe that we have to have palatable entry points in the conscious as well as the subconscious. So. And what that looks like a lot for me is hypnosis. And there are other ways. But one of the things that you can do consciously to drop new beliefs into the subconscious and have them anchor in the is through repetition. But like I said, if the affirmation feels so much like a bold faced lie, we won’t continue with it. So one of the things that I suggest doing is working with something that I’ve called progressive, language. So instead of saying, I am worthy, you might say something like, I’m exploring what worthiness looks like, or I’m re engineering my relationship to self worth. it could be I am open to being worthy. Or you can also use disclaimers like, even though this hasn’t felt true, I am worthy. And those can be a way for the inner critic to go, I’ll m allow it. I’ll allow it. Fine. Because, you have a little bit of, it’s almost like giving that little inner critic, I think of it like a little pit bull. Like a little guard dog, wherever. You just give it a little greeny. And now it’s like, okay, fine. But when you are in a hypnotic state, the inner critic essentially goes to sleep. So you can start permeating into the subconscious. Beliefs, concepts, healing that you want to impart without such an unbelievable kickback from that critical part of the mind. So I think, to answer your question, quite a while ago, I don’t remember. It is like, what do we do? How do we start changing this? I think part of it is the external piece, your behavior, your environment. And part of it is the internal piece. What you are doing consciously and what you are doing subconsciously, those pieces can, absolutely create massive change.

Wendy Valentine: I was just thinking about this when you were. You were talking about hypnotherapy, in which. I’ve done that. I’ve done. I’ve done just about everything out there. Personal development guru. You know, I try it all. Yeah, but. Okay, so, neuroscience, neuroplasticity, rewiring the brain. Right? Meditation, hypnotherapy. I was just thinking about it, like. Okay, because in trying to reach the subconscious, which is crazy, because that’s 95%. Right, as they say, which is a big chunk. But trying to get in there error is. Can be challenging, right? So when I think about, like, with meditation, and you’re. Okay. So whoever’s listening, you know the brain waves. You have delta, theta, alpha, beta. Right? Delta is when you’re sleeping.

Amy Green Smith: Huh?

Wendy Valentine: Beta. Alpha, that’s meditation, slower brain waves. You might be doing yoga, right? Hypnosis. And beta is, like, right now, like, you’re in beta. You’re thinking, you’re very awake, you’re very active. And I was just thinking that maybe that’s part of why affirmations don’t always work, because you’re in this, like, your brain, actually.

Amy Green Smith: Right?

Wendy Valentine: Yeah.

You can’t love other people when you don’t love yourself

Your. Your brain is not asleep enough, like you were saying, so that it can. It’s like. It just, You’re saying, I am worthy, and it’s like bouncing off of your brain because it can’t get in there. But then with hypnotherapy, meditation, you’re slowing your brain down. And then you, like, I am worthy, it’s more likely to be able to get in there and sink in there and hopefully stay put.

Amy Green Smith: This is also why it is so much easier to give other people advice than it is to take your own. Because if I give you advice, Wendy, I don’t have to work through your critical factor at all. I can just give you unmitigated just advice that seems completely normal. But if I were to try to take it on myself, now I have an additional filter of the inner critic.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah.

Amy Green Smith: This is why it makes me. Absolutely. It’s so insidious when people say, you can’t love other people unless you love yourself. And, like, it is so much easier to love other people because we don’t have that self defense, critical factor of the mind.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah.

Amy Green Smith: So, absolutely, you can love other people when you don’t love yourself.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah, for sure. I did it. I did it my whole life.

Amy Green Smith: Yes.

Wendy Valentine: Like, that’s all I did, was love everybody else. And then I was like, oh, yeah, where’s wendy? There she is. Poor thing. She’s trying to love everybody but herself. Yeah. It’s so right. And, you know, I, think of, like, okay, Rome was not built in a day, and neither will the new you. Right? Like, it takes time. And going back to what I was saying earlier, like, you’re recreating, you’re building new neural pathways in your brain. It takes time. And that’s the thing. Like, you really have. You have to be patient with it. Like, it’s not like you’re going to, you know, wake up tomorrow, like, I’m going to be the woman I’ve always wanted to be, and then you’re good to go. Even if you’re super conscious as you go through it, you’re still going to have the triggers, you’re still going to have the setbacks.

Amy Green Smith: Yes.

Wendy Valentine: And you still have to just pull up your bootstraps and get right back at it.

Amy Green Smith: And that’s why I say that personal development is not about an elimination of hardship. It’s about creating a new user manual where when hardship surfaces, you can really acutely assess what’s happening, and then you know, how to engage with hardship differently. It’s. It’s sort of the, the concept of, this situation sucks, but I don’t suck. It’s untangling what you’re experiencing in life and allowing that to be the breadth of human emotion and not make that mean anything about your worth.

Romeist says our worth stands outside of any emotion that we experience

So I have a metaphor that I use all the time about, sort of viewing yourself like a house. Okay? So this is the sort of the analogy. So imagine that you are a house, and you have everything decorated, and it’s uniquely you, and there are some. Some rooms that you would not want anybody to see, and then others that you want everyone to see. Right. It’s your unique home. And then we have, a myriad of different experiences in our life. So everything that feels like approval or acceptance or love is as though somebody is dropping off a beautiful gift on your porch. Right. And so, oftentimes we say, okay, if I take this gift, that must mean my house is worthy now. That must mean I’m valuable now, if I get all of these accolades and honors. No, absolutely not. It is that experiencing those things give us a positive emotional response, but that is different than our self worth. So it’s to say, hey, I appreciate that commendation. I love that you love me and I’m worthy without it. My house can stand without it.

Wendy Valentine: Yes.

Amy Green Smith: Conversely, there will be the opposite end of the emotional spectrum. You will get rejected, criticized. You will be passed over for the promotion. You will be broken up with or divorced, and somebody will say, I do not love you. And that’s like them dropping off a giant pile of s*** on your porch.

Wendy Valentine: My porch had so much s*** on it, I was like, we got to clean up. We got.

Amy Green Smith: That’s right. And. But oftentimes we think, okay, I guess I’m just going to take that into my house and let it stink up the place.

Wendy Valentine: Yes.

Amy Green Smith: My favorite thing is to just say, oh, I’m currently not accepting any piles of s***. That can also be people who try to inflict inflict guilt on you. Right. Guilt is an uncomfortable emotion that we experience, but that does not have to mean that that’s my responsibility, that that’s something I need to bring into my home. So I think we have to realize that our worth and who we are stands outside of any emotion that we experience, whether it’s positive or negative or I should say comfortable or uncomfortable. Years ago, when I used to do community theater, I would be really excited for a specific part that I wanted to get right. And if I didn’t get it, I had to mourn that loss. I had to grieve. So the next day, I would just let myself bawl my eyes out all day because I didn’t get something I wanted, not because I thought I’m a disgrace. I’m not worthy, I’m not good enough. It was. No, I simply didn’t meet the criteria that was necessary in this one isolated incident. That does not equal me not being enough or me not being worthy. Right?

Wendy Valentine: Yeah. It doesn’t mean that you don’t like that. You just reject emotions. We all have emotions. You deal with them. You face them. And, I mean, like, if someone, God forbid, like someone were to pass away, of course you’re going to grieve for that person. You grieve for them and let it go. Right, but I. Going back, I love the house analogy. I can tell. Like, I I’m picturing like, this gorgeous, like, little colonial house with this nice front porch, you know, some flowers and stuff. Yeah, but it’s like when you were talking about that, admit m that that is boundaries.

Wendy Valentine: Like you said, sorry, I’m not taking any s*** today.

Amy Green Smith: That’s right.

Wendy Valentine: That’s a boundary.

Amy Green Smith: That’s right, that’s right.

Wendy Valentine: And I think, I mean, that was one thing I really had to face. The fact that I had boundaries. I had boundaries, but they were drawn with a frickin pencil. And there was a gigantic eraser in my other hand. Right? Like, I had to start making very clear boundaries because that’s when the people pleaser and the perfectionist would come in. Like, well, we can erase that one for this person. That’s okay, that’s okay. We’ll let that slide maybe 100 more times. And then finally it’s like, why? Why? You know, like, why do we punish ourselves? Like, and that’s. That’s part of it, too. Like, we think we deserve that punishment because we don’t think we’re worthy. It’s like. No, like it’s just changing the. Yeah. yeah. And it’s. Again, Rome is not built in a day. Neither will the new year. It takes time. And you have to, like, I love that you said too. Like, there’s these different entry points. Try several different things. Whatever works for you. Because even for me, it’s like, Emdr did that hypnotherapy, which I love. Meditation. I mean, in some of them, I would do all of them. And sometimes it’s just getting in there. And once you’re in there, when those keys can unlock the doors to that beautiful room, and then it’s like, oh, finally. And get the s*** out of this room, you know? but, yeah, my advice is, it’s like, try, try whatever you need to do. Heck, I even did ketamine.

Working on your personal growth is akin to mental health, M.

Amy Green Smith: Totally.

Wendy Valentine: My last final, you know, room, I had a cellar of garbage. I had to get out. I was like, oh, my God, the s*** has got to go. My house stanks. so, yeah, you do what you can so that you can, like, if you think about the house, like, that’s you. You live there.

Amy Green Smith: That’s right. Well, I think something that you kind of brought up earlier about, like, why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we care so much? And if we go back to what we were talking about as being a primitive human. we had to belong in order to feel safe. And that’s even how we’ve seen Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. One of our core human needs is for one of belonging. So that means if a sense of belonging is threatened, we will get worried, we will get scared. We will call in different strategies. So I think that one thing that’s really important to understand is that working on your personal growth is akin to mental health. It is. It’s very. It’s akin to other types of health in the sense that you don’t arrive. A lot of times people think that you’ll get to a point where all of a sudden the clouds part and you are imbued with worthiness and you’re like, it’s here. That’s not how it works. it works in the same way that if you’re making all these health decisions for yourself and you’re implementing new supplements and you’re doing different stuff with your sleep, et cetera, and all of a sudden you realize, like, oh, my bloating’s kind of gone. Or like, oh, my gosh, I have a lot of energy right now. That is exactly what it is like in personal growth as well. You will all of a sudden hear yourself go, I don’t think that’s going to work for me today. And you go, who the f* said that? How did I just set a boundary? Holy s*. And so the same is true for we will never get to a place where, okay, I’m done with dentist appointments. Never have to go to the dentist. I’m done with all my water consumption. I’m done. No, you have to maintain all that stuff. Which is why we have to figure out which of those tools work for me. Is it hypnosis? Is it, you know, working with mirror work or EMdr, eft or whatever else modality it is. Throw everything at it because everything works. It’s about figuring out which of these tools do I have an affinity for.

Wendy Valentine: Right, exactly.

Amy Green Smith: To my right, you know?

Wendy Valentine: M. Yeah. I mean, for some people, they’re like, oh, meditation. That, and that took care of it. Well, it kind of did a little bit for me, but not everything. I still had more to do.

The number one grud of the dying was living for everyone else

I was gonna make a point about something and just left my brain. What was it? What was it? What was it? Oh, help me out. What were you talking about? I was listening the whole time, but I thought, oh, God.

Amy Green Smith: I went from Maslow’s, like, our sense of belonging.

Wendy Valentine: Oh, I got it, I got it, I got it. Okay. I can’t think of the author’s name, but she wrote a book, and she was saying that the number one regret of the dying. Oh, yeah.

Amy Green Smith: Roni ware.

Wendy Valentine: Yes. And the number one grud of the dying was living for everyone else.

Amy Green Smith: That’s right. That’s right.

Wendy Valentine: Like, isn’t that crazy to think, like, people are on their deathbed going, oh, I live for everybody else except for myself, basically. Taking care of everyone else’s houses and not taking care of your own.

Amy Green Smith: that’s right. And we’ve also been sold some false goods here. We’ve been assaulted, false bill of goods.

A lot of the beliefs that we hold now have been conditioned

And this is one of the other things that I do a lot in my work, is looking at what are the beliefs that you hold now that you didn’t consent to. And a lot of the beliefs that we hold now have been conditioned to us by a society who tells women or anyone who’s femme presenting, really, that your job is a, one of self sacrifice and that your value is in your beauty. And so if you don’t have any of those things, if you can’t have children, if you’re not caretaking for everyone else, your worth starts to be stunted. And we see that in the way we reference women as they age. We have, and they’re all in proximity to men. We talk about them being an old maid, an old hag. That’s if you choose not to marry men, if you are, a cougar, it’s because you’re taking advantage of younger men. Whereas we have men who get to be the constant bachelor, the silver fox, that are not in proximity to women necessarily as being their worth. So we have to understand that there’s a lot of s*** that we’ve been conditioned into. I never consented to the idea that my value was in child giving. I’m not interested in children. I’m child free by choice. I don’t really enjoy being around them at all. I never consented to the idea that in our society, men are better than women or should be paid more. I never consented to the idea that straight is better than queer, that skinny is better than fat. I didn’t consent to any of that. So part of it is starting to evaluate what are the things that we think. That’s just how it is, or that’s just how I’m wired. Not necessarily. It’s likely that it’s something that you have been taught or programmed to believe. And now you have the faculty and the, agency to be able to discern. Do I still want to be governed by that. And then we start to figure out, how can I start changing those external things, those internal things, to actually change that belief of I have value outside of any other proximity to anyone else?

Wendy Valentine: Yeah, you. You have to take a step back and ask, like, do I believe that? Do I really think that’s true? I mean, when do we ever ask ourselves about something that, like, is a belief? And we. Yeah, you can’t just say, well, that’s. That’s the way I was raised. That’s what my culture says. That’s what the church says. That’s what my friends say, it’s what my family say. But what do you say? What do you really believe?

Amy Green Smith: That’s right.

Wendy Valentine: And to stand up for that new belief that you have.

Amy Green Smith: That’s right. And that’s one of the major things that. That I do in my work, is like, okay, well, now that you. We get you to this place where you genuinely believe that you are enough and that you are worthy, how does that inform difficult conversations or boundaries? And so much of that we’ve never been taught or we’ve been made wrong for that. Like, if you are that, then you are shrill, you’re a b*. You’re trying to be a man instead of accessing all of this power that we already have. So for me, it’s about. It’s kind of this hybrid of being graceful and kind on one hand and then being assertive on the other. To me, that is powerful. So in my life, I had to go through many, many times of walking back my delivery because it was incredibly assertive or, acerbic and combative. And I had to take that back and say, I should never have said it in that way. I still feel very strongly about what I shared, but you didn’t deserve to be spoken to in that way. And so often when we’re at odds with someone else, we walk back the whole thing because it’s so d uncomfortable. Instead of saying, no, what I really need to clean up is my delivery, not my opinion, not my stance.

Wendy Valentine: And I think it says on your website, right, you. About standing up for yourself without being a d*** or something.

Amy Green Smith: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That is my answer.

Wendy Valentine: I used to say, you can stand up for yourself without being a b*. Right? Like, I used to always say, I’m like. And I find it more powerful to be able to go, okay, like you were saying earlier, like, no, I’m not taking any s today. Thank you. You know, you don’t have to scream. You have to yell, you have to stomp. It’s actually, when you say it, very direct. It’s like, oh, the other person, what are they. What are they going to. I mean, they’re going to be like, oh, okay. You know, and, you know, it does.

Amy Green Smith: Not have to be. I’ll give you an example of a boundary that did not have to devolve into a giant Ted talk and debate. So I was doing community theater again many years ago, and there was a gentleman who showed me a meme on his phone that was very disparaging of a mentally and physically disabled child, which to me does not constitute humor, nor is that something that I want to be involved in. So I have a personal stance around, I will not allow my silence to make me a liar. Meaning m I’m not going to be silent in the face of something that makes me look complicit because I haven’t been vocal. But I also am not interested in getting into a big debate about whether or not that’s appropriate or nothing. So this is what I said. I said, you know what? I actually don’t find that funny, and I just really appreciate it if you didn’t show me stuff like that in the future. So anyway, are we running scene two right now? Who’s in the green room? Who’s on the stage right now? Just totally changed subjects. But I will be God damned if you think that I’m going to be okay with that. And so I think that’s the fear that many of us have, is if I do speak up for myself now, I’m opening up a can of worms. We have all these idioms, right? Yeah, but you can simply say, I don’t share that opinion, but we certainly don’t need to get into it, or, I’m not interested in getting into it right now. So having those sort of stock bridge phrases can be really helpful. Just basic ways to advocate for yourself, to say, hey, I don’t agree with that, but I also don’t want to get into it.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah, that is such a good point. I love that.

As you’re going through personal development, your tolerance levels change dramatically

And then, going back to, we were talking about this earlier, that as you’re going through this transformation and you’re changing your beliefs and your thoughts and how you act, what’s so cool, though, is that let’s say you get into a confrontation with someone and then you realize either right in the middle of it or later on, you’re like, d***. Actually, like, I handled that pretty good, and it’s not bothering me. I’m not hanging on to. I wasn’t triggered. I’m nothing traumatized by it. Whereas the old you may have been, or it might have, like, taken a week to get over it, or you’d been, like, rehearsing in your head over and over.

Amy Green Smith: that’s right.

Wendy Valentine: I’ve had that, like, in the last year. I’m like, oh, wow, that’s nice. It didn’t. That didn’t bother me. Like, I was just like, whatevs.

Amy Green Smith: Yes.

Wendy Valentine: It’s such a good feeling.

Amy Green Smith: And that’s exactly what I was talking about, where it’s almost like the change happens, where you recognize.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah.

Amy Green Smith: A headache going away, where you’re like, oh, I can jump on the trampoline with my kids. And it actually. My head doesn’t hurt. Oh, s. It’s conscious competence where you recognize, oh, I’ve developed a competency in this area, and it’s really, really encouraging and powerful. And I oftentimes will call this where the gestation period gets a lot, lot shorter. Yes. and your bullshit tolerance gets a lot lower. So the things that you might have tolerated for a week, it almost becomes physically impossible for you to not say something. And it’s like, I need to handle it right now. The pain of tolerating it outweighs the pain of actually doing something about it. And that’s the ratio that you start to flip. And that’s the part of personal development we don’t talk about a lot. We talk about either how s** it is or how euphoric it can be. And we don’t talk about all of the elements and the nuance of the journey that actually create the change.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah. I mean, think about it. You spent all that time clearing out the front porch and getting all that garbage out of the cellar. You’re like, oh, my gosh, no. Do not put any s*** on my front porch. I just spent hours and years cleaning this up. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. You almost be like, no, no, no, no. We’re not doing that because we know how long it does take to actually change a lot of this.

Amy Green Smith: And then here’s what’s different, though. What’s different is the ratio starts to flip where now you have mostly gifts that are left on your porch that, you get to take in. And those are, like, the really uplifting friendships that are always there for you where you go, hey, you make my life easier, but I’m not worthy because of you, right? Like, I’m. My worth stands outside of all of that. And this feels good. So I’m going to move towards that. And then if you get a pile of s*** here and there delivered on the, on your front porch, now you know exactly how to deal with it. Instead of being like, well, I guess I have to take it in. That’s what we do when we say yes, automatically, or when we allow ourselves to feel like something’s our, responsibility that is not, that is someone else’s to manage, you know, declining invites and feeling horrible about it. It’s like, no, no, I don’t need to bring that into my house. And you are able to grab the dustpan and the hose and everything so much faster. Those are your tools. And you’re like, oh, I know how to deal with this s. I know how to deal with this s. And so you, you crank it out so much faster than it used to be. It used to be like, what am I going to do? I guess I have to take it in my house, right?

Wendy Valentine: Like it was so overwhelming, but now it’s not anymore. I’m just imagining the little Poop emojis.

Amy Green Smith: Yes, yes. I.

Wendy Valentine: Those have been like, yeah, putting a bunch of the smiley face emojis, the laughing emojis all over my front porch. Right.

Amy Green Smith: Those have been used in many a PowerPoint, I will tell you.

Wendy Valentine: You know, it’s interesting. Now I like, I know, right? I’ve looked back on my episodes and the perfectionism, people pleasing, that’s always in divorce. Those two topics are always my most top downloaded, which, I mean, it goes to show like, it’s something that we all have to work on and continue to work on. And like you said, it’s not like you just arrive, it’s, it’s a moment to moment, day by day. You’re, we’re all works in progress.

Amy Green Smith: It’s practice. It’s just practice.

Amy Green Smith: But here’s what I think is so encouraging is how we got to this point was mostly subconscious, was mostly without intent. Right? Like when you have a troublesome upbringing, you don’t think consciously, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to start totally self sacrificing and put everybody else in front of me. And that’s going to negatively affect my or negatively impact my work life, my first marriage, my. We don’t do that. We just go, holy f***, how do I stay safe? But now we have that consciousness to go, oh, I see why my 20 year old self had to do that or my 40 year old self had to make that decision. I see what that was about. Those were the only skills I had at the time, and, of course, I adopted those because of how I was raised or because of various experiences that I’ve had throughout my life. And now I can be intentional about changing them. And when you have that intentionality and consciousness change is so much more accessible.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah, exactly. It’s very empowering when you realize, when you take back your power and know, like, wait a minute, I can actually control all of this. Like, that’s the time when you step in and being a control freak.

Amy Green Smith: Right?

Wendy Valentine: Like, control your front porch. Right? Like, that’s right.

A lot of people will move their perfectionist tendencies into personal development

Amy Green Smith: Well, and that’s interesting, too, because I will find that a lot of people will move their perfectionist tendencies or their people pleasing tendencies into personal development. So they will want to please me as the practitioner or they want to look at the program as academia. Like, I checked off all, ah, I’m getting an a in personal development. And I’m like, that is not what it looks like. So I had, I had one of my students who was worried because she was dealing with a death in the family, and so she was getting a little bit behind on the actual curriculum. And I said, no, no, no, no. Look at all of the ways you are doing, quote, the work. You establish boundaries with your father about not paying for the funeral. You came and talked to all of us and said, here’s what I need. That’s you advocating, that’s you believing that you’re worthy. And I just showed her all of the ways that she’s living into the work that is always going to be more powerful than filling out a worksheet or listening to an audio.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah.

Amy Green Smith: The change is what happens in between the coaching sessions. Right. And so we have to, we cannot change or take our perfectionism and layer it on top of personal development.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah, exactly. I know I’m going to be a perfect personal development or.

Amy Green Smith: Right, right.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah. Very rarely do we pat ourselves in the back for the progress that we’ve made. And I think that’s just key to do that, to cheer for ourselves as we go through this, as Prince would say, this thing called life.

Amy Green Smith: This thing called life. That’s right.

Wendy Valentine: You’re so awesome. I love this topic.

Amy Green Smith: Oh, good. Me too. I can talk about it all day.

Wendy Valentine: I know, I know. so where can we find you?

Amy Green Smith: So my corner of the Internet is over@amygreensmith.com. and I like to say all those names are spelled the basic b* way. Nothing exciting. I desperately wanted to spell Amy differently, but no, just Amy greenhouse Smith. and you will see the workbook that Wendy’s been talking about. It’s called speak up for yourself without being a d. And that’s a free workbook that has nine different challenges to help you actually get into action around some of the things that we’ve discussed. I am no longer. Well, actually, I did a limited edition series on my podcast, but there is a. I’ve been doing it for like, 13 years. There’s a back catalog of, like, 500 episodes if you want deep dive. And then coming up on September 2, I’m opening up applications for my worthy program. And this is a nine month deep dive. Intimate, intimate circle. I don’t ever take more than eight women. And it’s bookended by two in person retreats that are all inclusive. So it is a fun, fun journey. So if you’re.

Wendy Valentine: I love that.

Amy Green Smith: Yeah.

Wendy Valentine: Oh, I need to go. is it in North Carolina is where you’ll do the. In person.

Amy Green Smith: There’ll be one in North Carolina. So I do. I always do. One east coast, one west coast. So the east coast one will be at this incredible estate on, I think it’s called Lake Gaston, but I call it Lake Gaston.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amy Green Smith: A nod to beauty and the beast and my french heritage. So I love to say Lake Aston. And so we’re in this gorgeous, gorgeous, estate. Ten bedrooms. So we do that the first one, and then the second one will be even larger mansion. It’s like 10,000 sqft. Something crazy in, wine country in Temecula, California.

Wendy Valentine: Oh. Oh, I love it. Okay. And then that opens up next week, right?

Amy Green Smith: That does that. It will open up for applications next week.

Wendy Valentine: I’m dreaming.

Amy Green Smith: And it’s so great. It’s.

Wendy Valentine: I mean, just think, though, like, I mean, I know you know this, but when you watch people go through these transformations, it’s fascinating. And I’m thinking like, these, you know, eight plus women or whatever going through this. And after a few months, just how different they will be.

Amy Green Smith: Oh, yeah. And usually it’s. This is the most common feedback I get is other people in their lives will say something’s different, or you seem like you’re okay speaking up more or you seem happier, or more at, ah, ease. And those are all the side effects of, letting go of that constant perfectionism, people pleasing control, self doubt, all of that s. And it blows my mind when I hear people come back years later telling me, like, guess what else I did? Guess what else I did. I cannot. I know it sounds like hyperbole. But when you actually believe in your own intrinsic worth and enoughness, however, you would, whatever semantics you would use, every f*** thing else in your life changes. Your relationship to money, your relationship to your body, your relationship to other people, feeling confident and speaking up, boundaries, all of it. All of it changes because you are rooted in this idea that my worth is internal. I don’t have to outsource it. So if you’re interested, go. You. You’ll find it on my site if you click on worthy or, yeah, you can read all about it, so.

Wendy Valentine: I love it. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for letting me scream into the microphone for an hour

Thank you. You’re amazing.

Amy Green Smith: Thank you for letting me scream into the microphone for an hour.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah, me too.

Amy Green Smith: I appreciate it. You’re done.

Wendy Valentine: All right. Thank you, everyone. Have a great day.