You Can’t Outwork Your Thought Habits! with Amy Kemp

Have you ever felt like no matter how hard you try… something unseen keeps holding you back?  

In today’s episode, I’m joined by Amy Kemp—coach, CEO, and expert in what she calls “thought habits”—the subconscious patterns quietly shaping how we show up in our work, our relationships, and our lives.  Amy’s journey began as a high school English teacher and evolved into sales and leadership, where she helped others grow professionally. But over time, she noticed something deeper—so many high-achieving women were still feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or alone. That insight led her to build a thriving coaching practice, where she’s now guided hundreds of women through powerful transformations using her Habit Finder work.  

In our conversation, Amy shares a truth that might just shift everything: you can’t outwork your thought habits. Most of what’s driving your decisions and reactions is happening beneath the surface—and while those patterns were once created to protect you, they may now be the very thing holding you back.  

This episode is about bringing those patterns into the light, giving them a name, and learning how to create new ones that actually support the life you want—so you can experience more clarity, confidence, and ease… without working harder. 

So let’s call in Amy… and let’s Call IT in With Dar.  

Transcript

Have you ever felt like no matter how hard you try… something unseen keeps holding you back?  In today’s episode, I’m joined by Amy Kemp—coach, CEO, and expert in what she calls “thought habits”—the subconscious patterns quietly shaping how we show up in our work, our relationships, and our lives.  Amy’s journey began as a high school English teacher and evolved into sales and leadership, where she helped others grow professionally. But over time, she noticed something deeper—so many high-achieving women were still feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or alone. That insight led her to build a thriving coaching practice, where she’s now guided hundreds of women through powerful transformations using her Habit Finder work.  In our conversation, Amy shares a truth that might just shift everything: you can’t outwork your thought habits. Most of what’s driving your decisions and reactions is happening beneath the surface—and while those patterns were once created to protect you, they may now be the very thing holding you back. This episode is about bringing those patterns into the light, giving them a name, and learning how to create new ones that actually support the life you want—so you can experience more clarity, confidence, and ease… without working harder.

So let’s call in Amy… and let’s Call IT in With Dar.  

Speaker Dar:  

Amy, welcome in. Amy, I'm so excited to talk to you today. “You can't outwork your thought habits.” What a title that is. So before we get started, how about telling our audience a little bit about yourself and how you came to do this work? 

Speaker Amy:  

I would love to thank you for having me.  So I'll tell you just the the quick version of my professional journey is that I started out like you, it sounds as a high school English teacher did that for really only about five years before I launched out into a career in sales that grew into sales leadership, where I was working with leaders of sales teams and people who were in sales to help them grow as people, but increase their profitability, and, you know, just their success. About nine years ago,I accidentally started a business again that I really didn't think would become a business. I had women in my life, personally, who I knew outside of my work, who were having a lot of conversations with just me. These were women who were maybe growing a business or in a leadership role of some sort, and they would come to me and talk to me about how they felt isolated, or they felt stuck, or they felt overwhelmed by the demands of their careers and their personal lives. I kept thinking, Oh, if I could get these women together. They don't know each other, but they all talk to me. If I could gather them, something really magical could happen. You know, maybe they could serve each other. At the same time, I was speaking at an event in Salt Lake City, and I had a business coach that I had worked with years prior. He used this very particular tool called the habit finder. It's an assessment, and then there's a curriculum that kind of corresponds with it. And when I was out there for this event, I would always pop by, or we would connect somehow. And so I called him and said, we're, I'm going to be in town, and we met for dinner. I told him about this idea, this thought, it felt, it felt really crazy, because the demands of my career at that time were high. I didn't know my kids were at that time. I call them, in the Uber era of parenting, where everybody was in things, but no one could drive. Says, driving kids everywhere. But I really thought, he said, I really think you need to take action on this idea. And we're doing a special training, like a certification for coaches to use the tool that I use and so this was a Thursday Darat, and he said it starts on Monday. But it felt so crazy. It was so outside of what I was thinking I was going to be doing that. I just said yes, and we invested in this education for me, and I started with two groups of women who I had taken the assessment and worked through it. And so now, nine years later, this is my full time work, and it's some of the coolest work I get to do around subconscious habits of thinking and how they impact our everyday lives. 

Speaker Dar   

Well, that is so interesting, and I think it's a lesson to everyone that when that calling hits, even though it's not convenient, because you were busy transporting children all over and had a demanding career, you did what needed to be done and you said yes at the right time. So what a great example that is. Let's dive into that whole concept of you can't out run or outwork. I'll say run too. You can both be true, yes, your thought habits? 

Speaker Amy:  

Yeah, yeah. So I want to talk about, well, let's start with just what is a thought habit? Because I don't even know that most people have ever heard that phrase used. We talk about habits a lot, but more think of them in terms of, you know, what time do you wake up in the morning, or habits of spending your money, or what are you eating? More in those behavioral terms, this is not the work I do. So thought habits we have about different scientific studies. Say different things, but somewhere around 80% of our thoughts are happening at a level we're unaware of. So subconscious habits of thinking are all below the surface. You're not aware of them. You're not consciously thinking about them, and this is largely because we're hardwired to survive as human beings, so we don't want to have to think about breathing or blinking as an example. You know, you just want that to happen. So when a pattern of thinking helps us survive, our brain creates a groove, and then those grooves are traveled very easily. The more times that groove is traveled, the deeper it gets. You know, it's just an easy entry. It doesn't take a lot of energy. So all of our habits of thinking are designed or created with survival in mind. The problem is, and I may say this several different times, in different ways, but the problem is, when you employ a survival mechanism, a habit of thinking that helped you survive past the point of needing it, it becomes detrimental and damaging, or at least creates resistance. But we never talk about the subconscious mind. We never even talk about these habits of thinking, much less name them, identify them, and then work to create new patterns. So that's really the work I do, is giving people language around what these habits of thinking are. And then let's consciously choose a different choice and start to create a new groove. 

Speaker Dar:  

Thank you. Thank you for defining terms before we really got started. How about talking about some client examples next without, you know, using names, we'll keep those confidential. 

Speaker Amy: 

Yeah, absolutely. I can tell a couple of stories, even from my book, that are really great examples of how subconscious habits of thinking can impact us. I'll tell a story about one  client who was raised in a home with a parent who is an addict, and from a very young age, she had to take care of everything and kind of operate as the adult, and paid all the bills, made sure siblings had gifts for their birthdays, and she really did an incredible job of, you know, kind of meeting the needs of everyone around her. She was sort of hard working to figure it out. It was, I mean, the fact that she made it out as incredible as she is, as miraculous. But what happened is this habit of thinking was formed through those years that just said, like, everyone else's needs are more important than my own, and if someone needs something, I should drop everything and go meet their need first. That was kind of what she learned through that experience, and it was true, it helped her survive. The problem is, 25 years later, she's building a business, that habit of thinking, that groove in her brain is very deep, and she was working, you know, 7080 hour work weeks, because she was putting everyone else's needs before her own, really like prioritizing what they were wanting from her, and just had no, no boundary between her work and her life, and had she continued on that path? I remember the day we had a conversation where it's this conversation I have, gosh, it's actually kind of scary. How often, but I'll say, What happens if you continue like this for another 10 or 15 or 20 years, and she says, I'm going to get sick or worse, like you know, I'll it's going to become problematic. I cannot keep working at this pace, or it will destroy relationships in my life, or I'll become so resentful of this business I'm just going to quit it all together. And so you can see where a habit of thinking that helps you in one season, once you don't meet, is particularly a subconscious survival pattern when you employ it past the point of meeting, it becomes detrimental. And it was actually the thing that was creating the greatest resistance in the growth of her business 

Speaker Dar:  

That is so interesting and you made it so visual for us that when we are in a survival pattern, it works at the time. And then later, you need a new pattern, right? 

Speaker Amy:   

Oh my gosh, I'm living it right now. Darla, it's funny because for so long my life, I had a certain amount of time to work, and then it was like the kids would get home, and it was just a really intense home, right? Like you were doing all of the home things, and I learned to create really tight margins with my time. And it helped me during that season, like I got through it that was like, kind of how I survived. But now I find myself doing the same thing where, like I'm creating these tight margins, and I don't need to, and it creates stress in my life, even for silly things, like I was late to an appointment the other day, and I'm like, why am I doing that over and over now it's creating resistance and stress, and I no longer need to have those tight margins, like the kids don't need me. They're grown. You know, it's that I don't need to but that pattern is so deep, and so I've really been working on just myself, trying to create better margins with my time and energy, and not living so close to the edge like I had to for so many years. So it's like constantly discovering these patterns, thinking and then replacing them. 

Speaker Dar: 

So realization would definitely be key. As you're talking it's like realizing that there is a pattern, and so I think you have the tool for that. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that 

Speaker Amy:  

I do, and it's so it's realization, it's also language. I think when we have language to describe things, it gives us agency to choose a different path. So the tool that I use that I  mentioned earlier, it's called the habit finder, and it's an assessment that you take online. It's actually on my website, which is Amy kemp.com, a, m, y, k, e, M, p.com, a really short name to remember, and it's a free tool. It takes about five to 10 minutes to take it. And I don't want to tell you a lot about the tool, because that's part of how it gets an accurate response. What I want to say is, don't overthink your answers when you take it, so just go in, be relaxed, you know, fill it out without trying to over analyze it. And what it measures is not this is so important, not characteristics. It's not like a personality style or like a strength. This is measuring risk. So it's measuring the risk that your brain will fall into a certain pattern of thinking. And when you see there's like these bars, and they're either red, orange or yellow or green, like a stoplight when it's red, it's high risk. And so then you'll know, oh, my brain, when I'm not paying attention, is at high risk of just sliding down that slide. It's sort of like the game shoots in ladders. When you land on the piece, you just slide down that slide if you have that high risk. So what you have to remember this is not like I'm good at this or bad at this. This is just measuring risk. It's also measuring habits of thinking, not you and we aren't our thoughts. Our thoughts are just things, but they are impacting us every day. 

Speaker Dar:   

Well, that certainly sounds like something that I'm going to take for sure. So the whole idea that you and I were talking about earlier is resistance has a reason. Could you give us some examples of that? 

Speaker Amy:  

Yeah, sometimes it's just helpful to know when you're not doing something that you know you need to do or want to do, even if it's beneficial for you. As an example, this is kind of a simple, well, maybe a simple example, but I have a lot of resistance to you following a budget really closely. I don't like it. I don't want to. I know it's beneficial when you feel resistance in your life. When you dig down underneath that resistance, you will almost always find a subconscious habit of thinking. In addition, you typically will find unhealed pain, some sort of unhealed pain. So I've done a lot of work around this with money because of that resistance, like. Why am I not just embracing this thing that I know would be so beneficial for me, and when I really dug down with the help of a business coach of mine, what I realized is that I had some really kind of traumatic business experiences that had happened around money, and until I kind of process through those experiences, I was not going to embrace the structure that would benefit me. None of this was consciously happening but what I've learned through it is that I now have guidelines I follow. I definitely can embrace structure that is flexible in that area, I have brought people in to support me and to help me embrace structure in that area, but that a lot of these subconscious patterns of thinking that we're creating resistance, even if I had tried to overcome them by like working harder or figuring it out, or forcing myself into discipline, I would do it for maybe a couple of months, maybe max six months, but then I would just revert right back to old patterns. And when you see that happening in any area of your life, you can know that underneath it, there is some sort of subconscious situation happening that is creating that resistance, and if you don't really get to the root of it, any change that you make is going to be fleeting. 

Speaker Dar:  

Yes, getting to the root of the problem is so important in many areas. So let's talk about your book? 

Speaker Amy:  

Yes, my book is called “I See You", and it is a book that I wrote for women who want to have more impact and influence and income without more work. The core message of the book is that you can't outwork your thought habits. So just like the title of our episode today, and basically, what I mean by that is that these patterns of thinking below the surface, if you don't address them. It doesn't matter how hard you work. And so for most of my clients, they have worked really hard, and they've hit a point where they can't work any harder, or there are no more hours to work in the day even, and yet they still long for more. And so what do you do then? What is it? What when you reach that impasse where it's like, I have no more to give, but I will. I am ambitious. I want more. What do I do then? 

Speaker Dar: 

Oh my gosh, that sounds so powerful. Now are we going to be able to see that on your website or on Amazon, or where do we get hold of your book? 

Speaker Amy:

Yeah, so there's a whole section on my website called book. You can just click on the book tab, but of course, you can order it anywhere that you can order books online or in   person, and in addition, it is on Audible, and it is in my voice. A lot of people will ask that, so I did record the book so you can hear me. It definitely is written in my voice, so it's fun to hear it in that voice. 

Speaker Dar: 

Wonderful. Wonderful. Now all this information will be in our show notes, on our show notes page. But is there anything else that you would like to tell our audience before we wrap up today. 

Speaker Amy:  

I think the only final thought that I would add is, no matter where you are in your journey, investing in yourself, growing yourself, kind of discovering yourself in new ways isn't an endless process. And I, I guess I just want to encourage you to continue down that path of discovery and digging and exploring and figuring out these internal things because they open doors to so many external things that we want. 

Speaker Dar:  

Yes, I agree. So let's keep self growth rolling. Thanks for being with us today. Amy, I appreciate you so much. Thank you so much. Bye. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai