Unleashing Inner Strength: Amy Thurman's Inspiring Journey from Disability to Independence

Are you ready for an emotional rollercoaster? Brace yourself for the inspiring journey of extraordinary Amy Thurman, a disabled entrepreneur advocate, story development coach, and motivational speaker. Amy's story of resilience takes us from a harrowing phase of being bedridden with a broken neck to standing tall as a successful businesswoman. Hear her astounding account of navigating through her disability diagnosis, the struggle of feeling like a burden to her loved ones, and her path to reclaiming her independence and strength.

Amy's journey of tenacity continues as she shares how she transformed adversity into inspiration. She describes the gruesome six-month period of getting a correct diagnosis and the relief when her third neurologist finally recognised the tests she needed. After her diagnosis, Amy committed herself to a noble cause - helping others unearth their stories of resilience and strength. As a story development coach and speaker, she gave a new meaning to her life post-diagnosis.

The finale of our conversation is a deep-dive into the importance of acknowledging our emotions and transforming them positively. Amy explains her unique method of developing an impactful story from the 10 stages of emotion, emphasising the significance of recognising our feelings and shifting towards higher vibration emotions to reach our goals. Join us to explore the power of vulnerability, essence of authentic storytelling, and the courage of taking action to be the best version of ourselves. Be prepared to be inspired and uplifted by Amy's transformative journey!

OFFICIAL BIO:

Amy Thurman went from lying flat in a bed for 23 hours of every day for nearly a year with a broken neck to becoming a successful small business owner selling clean, budge-proof, anti-aging cosmetics and skincare and is now a Story Development Coach. Her tenacity and determination to succeed even with her physical limitations is unmatched. Her mission is to help others (people with disabilities included) find that drive within themselves so they, too, can reach their goals!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey there, welcome to the Free to Be you podcast. I'm Megs, a life alignment coach, passionate about helping women uncover who they really are so they can author life they're obsessed with and move from self abandonment into full self expression. I've created this podcast with one purpose to give you permission to finally free yourself up and be you in every area of your life. We discuss everything from mindset, health and vulnerability to relationships, parenting and more.

Speaker 1: 0:27

My guest on this show is Amy Thurman. She is a disabled entrepreneur advocate, story development coach and an inspirational speaker. Amy went from laying flat in a bed for 23 hours a day for nearly a year with a broken neck to become a successful business owner selling clean, budge proof, anti aging cosmetics, and became a story development coach. Her tenacity and determination to succeed, even with her physical limitations, is unmatched. Her mission is to help others find that drive within themselves so they, too, can reach their goals. Amy, welcome to the Free to Be you podcast. I'm so pumped to have you on the show today. I've heard a little bit of your story and I know how inspiring it is. So welcome, thank you for being here.

Speaker 2: 1:15

Hi Megan, Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:19

Amazing and, as we can all tell by your accent, you're not in Australia like me, so where are you based?

Speaker 2: 1:28

I am in the States, in Oklahoma, like right in the middle central, in the center of these states. I grew up in Oklahoma, yes, and so I have this Southern accent that sometimes people have trouble understanding what I'm saying, but it's just the accent of growing up in the South.

Speaker 1: 1:45

Well, the reason I thought it would be super exciting to have you on the show is because I know that you have had a massive journey in your own life. So obviously, the Free to Be you podcast is all about moving away from self-abandonment and becoming the fullest expression of ourselves, and when you and I connected, I was so inspired by your story. So can you? Yeah, like, obviously we're going to get into what it is that you do now, but I think it would be really amazing if you could share what you've been through in terms of that journey. I don't even want to give any kind of spoiler. I just want you to go into, you know, what you told me already, because it's so inspiring.

Speaker 2: 2:30

Just jump right in, yeah, jump in I love what you're doing, megan.

Speaker 2: 2:33

I love what you're doing, megan. This is so, so important for people and I'm so excited to share with you how I have been able to traverse this. Basically, nine years ago, in 2014, well before that, in 2013, I was working at a major university helping schools and communities learn to work more effectively together, working lots and lots of hours as a mom. I was running the kids everywhere, doing everything for everyone, and the very next day I could not take care of myself because I got up during the night and felt ill and ended up passing out, landing on my face on the hardwood floor. The impact sheared my brainstem, caused a traumatic brain injury lots of other issues that I don't have time to go into but the impact actually broke my neck, but that went undiscovered for six months. I was living with a broken neck and did not know it for six months, and I wasn't able to have surgery to repair it for nine months. So there was just so much damage done in those nine months that I just continued to live with a broken neck.

Speaker 2: 3:43

And so the very first year after the accident, like I said, I literally was doing everything for everyone. The very next day, I couldn't even take care of myself, megan. I could not take myself to the restroom. I literally could not even lift my head up off of the bed because it hurt so badly. Nobody knew what was wrong with me. Nobody knew how to help me. Everybody was trying everything to figure out why my head was hurting so badly, because I could not lift my head up without it feeling like a train was sitting on it. So that's what they were focused on and that's why they didn't discover my neck issue for six months, because they were trying to figure out why my head was hurting so badly. So, literally everyone had to do everything for me.

Speaker 2: 4:26

I'm a very independent person. I have always been. My mom used to say I was hard headed, but I think determined is a better word for it. So to go from doing everything for everyone to not even being able to take myself to the restroom was like a form of torture for me, literally. I laid in that bed nine months. I missed. Sorry if I get emotional.

Speaker 2: 4:48

This is emotional when I talk about my kids, totally fine, free to be, I completely missed my daughter's senior year of high school, I missed my son's freshman year of high school and I missed my little guy's fourth year of life. He was four years old and I completely missed that entire year of his life. Do you know how much kids need their mom those important times of their life? And I could not be there. I could not lift my head off the bed, and so I began to pray. I'm so sorry.

Speaker 2: 5:23

And I prayed and I prayed and I prayed that I would die, because I was not living, I was merely existing and I did not like the. I felt like such a burden to my family because they were having to do everything for me and I knew that I had enough medication to make it happen and I seriously considered doing that because I did not like feeling like a burden to my family and missing that, all that they were doing.

Speaker 1: 5:49

Yeah, wow, that is the. I mean. We talk about self abandonment. Obviously it's not always a bad thing, you know. Obviously as a mum, we put ourselves to the side and we nurture our family and we do do everything for everybody else and that's a very loving, nurturing thing to do. But to be in a situation where you have no choice, I can, that's kind of like the ultimate abandoning of self. And to then want to take it that step further and completely, you know, abandon, just be done with it.

Speaker 1: 6:28

yes, oh, like that is. Yeah, I mean I want to hear that second half of the story that come back from that. I mean that is, I wanted to give you a little break there to recover, but I mean I know. I have. Between my partner and I we have seven children, so definitely understand how much they need you and those are extremely important years, and so your family. They must have really, you know, had to rally around you.

Speaker 2: 7:00

Yes, yes, so it not only affected me. Obviously it affected the whole family. Like everyone was grieving, my husband said it was like living in a nursing home or in a funeral home, because I had to. For the first nine months I had to wear a cover over my eyes, I had to wear earplugs in my ears. I couldn't hear, I couldn't see correctly, I could barely talk because just the vibration of forming words made my head hurt. So it was literally like everybody had to tiptoe around and be quiet and have the lights turned down. And it was the whole family was affected and I was blaming myself. This is my fault, it my. What had happened to me is now affecting the whole family, and so I saw it as my fault. I was blaming myself.

Speaker 1: 7:56

So what? Obviously that nine months was the worst. So once you got that they discovered about your neck and obviously would have been on the, you know, starting to make your way back into, on the road to recovery, Like, what did that look like for you?

Speaker 2: 8:11

It. Actually, when I considered using my medication, I had this moment of clarity where all that I was doing was negative, negative. Negative was in my brain constantly, because all I wanted was my life back. I wanted to be able to do things that I could do before. I wanted to be able to talk, I wanted to be able to see, I wanted to be able to read, I wanted to be able to do anything for myself, and I couldn't, and so I was constantly filling with negativity. All I could see was the bad.

Speaker 2: 8:46

And so I had this moment of clarity where I remember thinking you know what? What if I don't just resign myself to lay here and die? What if I actually try to get better? And if I do get better, what if I can use my story to help other people? Now, as a former educator and social worker, that's what motivated me was if I can get better, I can use my experience to help other people. And so I knew, I knew within me that something had to change.

Speaker 2: 9:16

I couldn't do anything for myself. I had to find something I could do, find something I could change, and I realized that it's the negativity going on in my head that was fueling all of this. So I knew I not only had to change that, I had to replace it with something. And so I had someone find an audio book or a podcast. I put the earbuds in, I turned it down extremely low where I could handle the sound, and I had them press play because I couldn't see what I was doing, and I began pouring Tony Robbins, dr Wayne Dyer, rumi, all of those luminaries I just began pouring those teachings into, into, into.

Speaker 2: 9:59

Instead of the negativity, I did not leave room for negativity, I started pouring in positivity.

Speaker 2: 10:05

And that's when I came across this quote by Rumi that I have named my business after, and it goes like this ye who seek God, apart that which you seek, thou art, if you wish to seek the beloved space, polish the mirror and gaze into that space. That spoke to me on such a deep level, and it told me that you know what Every answer I seek is found within. I have to polish the mirror, I have to look myself in the face, I have to look my soul at its core, and all the answers are there. I just have to be willing to look in there, be open enough to hear them and listen to them, and they will be found there, and so I named my business polish the mirror for that reason, because every answer we seek can be found within, and from that moment on, I go within now to find the answers, to find the motivation to find my hero. My hero is within there. I found her in there and that's what I want to share with other people.

Speaker 1: 11:10

Oh, my God, I love that so good. Polish the mirror that's amazing. Yes, I love it and I couldn't agree more. It's so in alignment with what I believe as well. I feel like all we all have in a wisdom and we have to find the courage to access it. And, yeah, I had to find courage and I love that you used, obviously, is all this amazing medium that we have, like podcasts and, you know, the audio books I love audio books as well Is that sense that you could do like amazing, that moment of clarity, and I think that moment comes what we're not expecting it and it's not always what we want to hear either in terms of like, do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1: 12:05

It just would rather it to take the easy road. Most of the time, the moment of clarity is not the easy road, right, and so you, yeah, yeah and so, and then you've got a choice to step over the line and go for it or be like that's too difficult. So I really believe that finding that, you know, wisdom takes so much courage and there's so much courage in what you've shared so far. So, polish the mirror what an amazing business name. So what happened? I just want to, I want to hear the rest of your story. I'm like so hard to know when to actually ask you a question or say anything. It's so amazing. So what happened after this? Obviously, you've started putting all of that into your mind and I feel like that's so important to. Sometimes you have to hear other positivity, to hear your own Right. It's kind of you've got to switch tracks like change the direction of your thoughts.

Speaker 1: 12:57

I love that you did that. So what happened after you were able to to bring that positivity in and have that moment of parity.

Speaker 2: 13:06

After that I decided that, okay, I'm going to try to fight this, I'm actually going to fight to live. So it is in that moment that I decided to fight to live instead of. I was actually fighting to die in the other way, you know, but I decided to switch that around and fight to live instead. And so none of my doctors knew what was wrong with me. They were doing everything they knew. I do not people ask me all the time do you blame them? I mean, you lived with a broken neck for six months. No, I don't blame them. They were doing the best. They knew how they would. They did not know what to look for. They were not trained to look for the injury that I had, and so it actually took my third neurologist. It was my third neurologist that knew which which test to look for. Or he said has anyone ever looked at your neck? And I said no, and he said we need to look at your neck. And so it was my third neurologist that figured out that it was my neck that was injured. I know and I'm actually on my sixth neurologist now, because they look for different things, they're trained in different things, but they all helped me in some way. But I said all that to say that I began advocating for myself because, like I said, the doctors just were not trained. So I began to become my own advocate. That became. My mission was to find someone who knew what was wrong with me, who knew what to look for, who knew what test to run.

Speaker 2: 14:30

So even after we figured out that it was my neck, or had the surgery and everything, I still had a lot of issues. I still have chronic fatigue syndrome or chronic migraines and what's called POTS or dysautonomia, which just means that my autonomic nervous system is not working right. So sometimes my blood pressure drops and I just pass out and it causes other issues as well Chiari, malformation. There are lots of things I have going on, and so, because my neck was so injured they weren't able to like, I still live with a broken neck and so, even having that surgery, I still had lots of issues.

Speaker 2: 15:08

But I knew inside there's something, there's something that someone can help me with. There's got to be. I can't. I can't live like this the rest of my life. I just wasn't. You know, you have that unsettling feeling like there's just something, somebody's missing. I just kept pushing and pushing and advocating for myself. And finally, six years later, six years after the accident, I finally found a specialist who knew what test to run to give me the diagnosis of dysautonomia, who figured out that's why I passed out in the first place, and so it was through all of that that I learned. You know what? There's more here than I thought. Like I went from not being able to do anything for myself to look what I have done. It's like my mindset totally switched on. Yeah, I did like not not, you know, being bragging about it, but I did this, I advocated.

Speaker 1: 16:02

Oh, you're allowed to brag.

Speaker 2: 16:03

This stuff.

Speaker 1: 16:05

Totally allows a brag key.

Speaker 2: 16:07

This is a bragging zone.

Speaker 1: 16:09

Absolutely. Hey, are you ready to uncover the BS story that's stopping you from being the real you? I've created a quiz so that we can uncover that in a mean girl and the lie that she has you believing. That's keeping you stuck in the passenger seat of your life you know the one that has always been there when you've screwed up, waiting to revel in the shitty feelings you inevitably are left feeling after you abandon yourself. Yeah, let's give her a name, uncover the lie and let her go. The quiz link is in the show notes and in the meantime, let's get back to this amazing show.

Speaker 2: 16:49

But I did this. I found this specialist, I did not give up. I kept going and kept going until I found someone who knew what to do and it just kind of snowballed from there and just I mean, there's so much more to it. I don't know if you want to interject anything here or keep going. No, I love it.

Speaker 1: 17:07

So what I mean when you obviously got your finally got the right diagnosis so that you can know how to move forward what I would really love to know is that journey of just getting your health sorted has now shifted into something much bigger, into, obviously, you now telling your story here and many other places, I know, to helping other people bring their own story out, plus a number of other business sort of ventures that you've got going on. So how did you then find a way to, I guess, express this, I mean, bring this out of you, and where did you find that strength to share it with others, like you are?

Speaker 2: 17:53

It has been a journey, obviously, of almost 10 years worth, and so it's like I just grew a little bit, a little bit, a little bit at a time. So I got to the point where I thought, well, and side note, I have been on disability like I don't know in your country how that, how that works, but because a judge in the state of Oklahoma said I am not fit to work Like I can't, I can only hold my head up for a few hours at a time. I have to lay down and rest a lot, so I can't like be Be. What's the word? I'm looking for reliable.

Speaker 2: 18:27

To work for someone, because my life is different every day, and so I the the state pays me money just to be able to pay my bills because I can't hold the job. Yeah, so being on disability and having again other people do things for me is just doesn't settle well with me. And so I've got to the point where I thought I want to try to do something for myself. I'm I'm, you know, I've done all this so far. I want to keep going with this Because I didn't know what I was capable of. People were doing everything for me and they God loved them out of fear that I would hurt myself again Literally, would not let me do things for myself. So I didn't know what I was capable of because I wasn't being allowed to try. So I got to the point where I was like I'm gonna try, you all stop, Let me see what I can do.

Speaker 2: 19:16

And so I decided I found, first of all, I have lots of chronic illness. So not only do I have to be careful what I put in my body, but I have to be careful what I put on my body. I mean, our skin is our largest organ. So I had to do extensive research to find a clean company, company that has clean products, and I found one that's located just a couple hours from me. It's called Senagence and they they make clean, long-lasting, smudge-proof, anti-aging cosmetics and skincare with. Your listeners can't see, but I was smudging my cosmetics, beautiful by the way.

Speaker 2: 19:54

Thank you. It's not going anywhere, it doesn't smudge or smear off, it lasts up to 18 hours and it's actually good for your skin. And so when I turned 50. I was like I don't like looking 50. I need to do something about this 50 is the new buddy.

Speaker 1: 20:10

Now come on.

Speaker 2: 20:12

Exactly right. So I found this company, senagence, and began using their products. They made such a difference in my life that people started noticing, and so I began to sell them. After seven months with the company, they got wind of my story and asked me to share my story from stage at the largest conference they have in front of 2,000 women.

Speaker 1: 20:35

Wow I.

Speaker 2: 20:37

Was terrified, but at the same time, I knew I made that commitment to myself when I decided, when I was laying in that bed, that I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna use my story to help other people. This is my opportunity. I have to do it. So I said yes and I got on that stage. I wrote out my story, I developed it and I shared my story with 2,000 women, got a standing ovation. I've been, message after message after message, people telling me what an inspiration I was to them. I even got messages from people who weren't even there, who heard about it and asked me if I had a link I could send them to watch it, and so that changed my life.

Speaker 2: 21:17

Literally Just developing my story, putting it, putting it down like that so that I could share it, was the first thing, but sharing it with other people was a whole different level of oh my word, this is powerful. There's so much power in people being able to share their stories, and so I then became a story development coach, because I believe everyone has a story worth sharing. Yes, mine is very dramatic, and not everyone's is dramatic as mine, but you know what? Everyone has a story, some kind of story, something that they're holding in, something they they're hoarding, not wanting to share with others. That can be a power, a source of power for them and for other people. It can be life changing for other people for you to share your story, and so I developed this whole system of helping people Develop their story so that they can share it with others, or that they can hold it further, sell for themselves Until they're ready to start sharing it with others, and so that's what I'm doing now. They're causing anti-aging cosmetics and skincare and oops, the story development.

Speaker 1: 22:24

That's so good. I mean, what an opportunity to step into Self-expression. Huh, like front of two thousand people.

Speaker 2: 22:34

It's just push the extreme like.

Speaker 1: 22:36

That's what I love about your story. It's like the extreme of what I talked about, that self-event of it, and the extreme like at the other side, the self-expression. It's just so, so amazing. And you're right, it is inspirational and it's. It's been Quite the journey for you to get to where you are, but all those little steps along the way is just one brave step after another, like doing the work, stepping into yourself, being brave enough to you know, say yes to an opportunity like that that you're terrified of. I had a similar Experience, actually, when my first business was in Tupperware. Believe it or not, I was a Tupperware lady and and I got asked to come and I did quite well.

Speaker 1: 23:19

And I got asked to come and share my story at a conference 1500 people, it's quite large for 10 minutes. We want you to talk about you for 10 minutes Absolutely terrified as well. So I totally was like there with you in that moment. You were sharing that, but the feeling that you get afterwards is Incredible and you were so right. That was a turning point for me as well, where I realized that actually my story Inspires other people what I and that was just a very small part of my story, obviously, that part of my journey. But you're right, I feel like we all have Something within us that can inspire somebody else, and it doesn't necessarily mean you have to do it on a big stage like that.

Speaker 1: 23:58

That's why I love podcasting, because we're talking to one person right now who's listening in, and then obviously there'll be many of those one people are personally seeing him and it's such an intimate setting to be able to bring your story and have your message out there like that. So when you say your business name is Polish the Mirror, which I love, what?

Speaker 2: 24:25

are you?

Speaker 1: 24:25

sort of yeah, so you've got two different avenues that you're working with. Do they fit together nicely? And sort of, how does your story sort of play out in bringing that?

Speaker 2: 24:36

to life. I do help them merge together nicely because I work with individuals and business people, because it's just a fact that being able to relate to other people If you can share a story, you have a connection, like people will connect with other people who have a story to share or who are sharing a story. It's just how we are as humans, and so, not only as individuals but as business owners, people who can develop a story to share will also be able to attract more people. And so what I did was I created this program. I call your Story in Stages where you do mirror work.

Speaker 2: 25:19

When you ask someone how they feel, most of the time they will say one of five things, like we can name about five emotions and that's about it. We're just not trained into naming emotions, much less knowing how they feel in our body, and so I am passionate about emotions, and I think it's because that nine months I spent in that bed I did such deep introspection that I became very familiar with these emotions, how I'm feeling, what I'm thinking, all of that. So I took 100 different emotions and I put them into 10 different stages and I created an emotion frequency chart, because emotions, thoughts, feelings have a vibration, they have a frequency to them. The lower level, the lower stage emotions are negative. We see differently, we have a different perspective. We look at life from a different, through a different lens. When we're on the bottom stages, when we move up that chart to the upper stages of emotion, frequency, vibration, our life changes. We see things from a different lens. We have a completely different perspective. We look at people differently. We look at situations differently, and so I take, as we're developing their story, we start at stage one.

Speaker 2: 26:43

I share a version, a little piece of my story, a stage that's why I call it your Story in Stages.

Speaker 2: 26:49

I share a stage of my story from those negative emotions that are on in stage one and then I ask the person to respond to that.

Speaker 2: 26:58

Think of a time when you have experienced these stage one emotions and they write it out in their journal and then we go through all 10 stages, working up to the highest level, stage 10.

Speaker 2: 27:08

And by the end of it we have, there are patterns that emerge through what they're writing in their journal and so we're able to take those patterns, put them together, develop it into their story and then they have a story that they can share with others or that they can keep for themselves to whenever they're ready to share it with others, and so there's there's a lot more to it, but that's basically it, that we're coming, becoming familiar with what the feelings feel like in our bodies, how to move up, because we don't want to live in the lower stages. Once you experience the higher level emotion and vibration vibration you want to live there. That's where you want to park it, and so if we're constantly in the lower stages, if that's where we spend most of our life and most of our time, we don't know what it feels like to be in those upper stages. So I help walk them through how to get up to those higher vibration emotions, so that you can have the life that you want and you can reach the goals that you want to reach.

Speaker 1: 28:07

Oh, that's so powerful and it's so true, you do. If you don't know what it feels like to be up there, you will park. You're right, we do. We park in there and that's all we know. And it's almost like this comes as self-fulfilling way of being and that's where we go back to the courage. It's comfortable, it is comfortable and that's where we go back to that courage to get uncomfortable, the courage to go within, and so, yeah, that process is so interesting, I love that. And so you've got a.

Speaker 1: 28:38

You've got a chart that I feel I'm pretty sure you said you were going to let people have a little look at that, which is very exciting. So we'll pop the link to that chart in the show notes, along with your links and things that people can connect with. You Feel listening and you feel like you're sort of parked in an emotion, that you've got comfortable with it, but obviously you're not overly fulfilled in your life. What would you say would be the first thing that someone could do? Obviously, your chart is awesome, but what would be the first step, sort of to move out of that space?

Speaker 2: 29:16

Yes, the first step is realizing or acknowledging where you are like. The first step in changing anything is understanding, realizing, acknowledging it. So the first thing I show them is that how does this feel in your body when you feel? Does it feel good? Is it a good feeling or is it unsettling? Is it a bad feeling? You can usually tell by how it feels in your body. Your body knows, our bodies know we have emotions.

Speaker 2: 29:46

A lot of times we want to bury our emotions, we want to push them down because they don't feel good, they're negative. But you know what? We don't need to do, that we need to let them rise up to the top, because we have emotions for a reason. We have emotions to teach us something. They help us show when something's wrong. They help us show when we need to change something. They help us show what's really going on in our lives.

Speaker 2: 30:09

But we don't want to see that. We don't want to see when, when we see the ugly, when we see the things that we don't like, we push it down and push it down and try to bury it. But that's not where it wants to live. It's gonna keep trying to come up and come up and come up and it's gonna do that over and over again until we acknowledge it and say, okay, this is a feeling. It doesn't feel good, it's negative, I don't like this, but it's okay, I'm gonna deal with it. I'm going to acknowledge that it's here, I'm gonna figure out how to. Whatever it is, I need to learn from it. Learn from it so that I can move to the next stage in this journey or along this chart. So the first step is just realizing, acknowledging that I don't need to push it down, I need to let it rise up and I need to be able to deal with it in a way that's healthy instead of in a negative way.

Speaker 1: 30:59

I love that, so true, and I think that you know it can be. Do you feel like sometimes people, people want to stay there in that emotion because it's all they know and they only know how to show up in the world that way? So acknowledging it is one thing and then, obviously, stepping over that line is the next thing, right, and actually doing something about it, which I feel like what you're saying is writing that down is the next step. Acknowledging it, writing it down, getting it out of you so that you can see it and view it and acknowledge it in another way.

Speaker 2: 31:35

That is the reason that I have them write it out, because if it's, if you're not writing it out, if you're not getting it out in some way, it's gonna live. It's gonna stay there. It has to. It wants to come out, and the healthiest way to do that is to write it out, to let it come out through your hand and pen and paper. The next step I would say, though, after you realize what it is and acknowledge it, is your thoughts, because it is your thoughts, our thoughts rule our world. That's just plain and simple.

Speaker 2: 32:10

It is our thoughts that determine our feelings, and so you have to understand and be more cognizant of what am I thinking? What thoughts am I thinking that are keeping me here in this stage? If I want to move up, if I'm at stage four and I want to move up to stage five, I've got to change my thoughts somehow. I've got to look at one of those emotions in stage five that I want to get to and say if I want to feel, if I want to experience that emotion, what thought do I need to think to be able to get to that emotion? And we don't want to. I mean, our body is not going to let us move, jump from stage four to stage 10. It's just it's not going to do that. So we have to move up the stages a little bit at a time, and that all starts with thoughts. It's our thoughts that will help us get from this stage to the next stage and move on up. So the next step would be your thoughts. Change what you're thinking.

Speaker 1: 33:07

I find that there's so much power in choice, like knowing that we have the choice to choose.

Speaker 1: 33:15

Our emotions I can't remember where I first learned that, in terms, of our feelings are a choice right, but it's our thoughts that create our feelings.

Speaker 1: 33:26

So if we can change what we think, then we're automatically going to change our feelings. I remember finding that so empowering when I first heard it, and I love the way that you've just put it there as well. And I think with with our kids, we need to teach them at a younger age how important it is for them to be in control of what they think, because they're starting out in the world and most of us don't learn this too a lot later in life, and obviously so I find myself sort of thinking out loud, if you will, with my kids at times, just well, especially when they were small. They're all grown up now, but when they were smaller, I would sort of think out loud and I'm thinking about this and it's making me feel this way. And you know, let's go and do something fun, or do you know what I mean? Like modeling that behavior, because, yeah, as adults, we are set in our ways, aren't we? In terms of how we do things and how we think.

Speaker 2: 34:23

Absolutely yes. Yes, it makes me think of Tony Robbins says life is not happening to us. Life is happening for us and it's as simple as that switching how we see it, switching the way we think about it. Life is not happening to us, it's happening for us. I can take the same situation and I can look at it from life is happening to me, why is this happening? Or life is happening for me. This is happening, it's going to lead to something else, and so it's just a. I say it's a simple switch. It's not an easy thing because we are so ingrained in doing it the way we do it that once you learn how to make that switch, it opens up a whole new world. Literally it will change your life. But it's a simple thing, but it's not easy to do.

Speaker 1: 35:14

Absolutely. I bet that was hard for you to take on, when you were obviously in a position where not where you chose to be would have felt like it was definitely happening to you about, yeah, hearing that and making it work for you, but you have totally done it. So inspirational to see you know that journey and what you've been, how you've been able to create something where you can come through and express yourself, and I can hear it in your voice how passionate you are about it. It's extremely inspiring. So I just want to say to you like I want to acknowledge your strength and your courage and I know it was emotional at the start, so thank you for being so vulnerable. I feel like vulnerability is a massive strength that's not recognized enough, especially with men you know we tend to find we can sort of step into that sort of feminine.

Speaker 1: 36:11

you know, sharing space a lot easier, but as a mother of boys as well, I feel like it's so important to to model that for our, for our boys. So, yeah, I just want to acknowledge your vulnerability, your strength and your courage, sharing your story with us today and I'm going to pop in the show notes so how people could get in touch with you and got some, some links that they can reach out and that beautiful emotional frequency chart. I'm going to have a little look at that myself. Actually sounds incredible. I'm so excited that you're going to share that. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 36:44

You are so sweet. Thank you so much for sharing that with me and for having me on here. It's such an honor to be here.

Speaker 1: 36:51

Amazing. Well, I may have to get you back later on because I feel like there's a couple of other powerful ways we could take this conversation, but I just want to say again, thank you. Please have an amazing evening, because I know it's not daytime over there. I'm just starting my day and you're just finishing yours, so thank you, thank you for taking some time to be here and keep looking after you. Keep being that beautiful, self-expressed version that I have met here today.

Speaker 1: 37:19

And if you've enjoyed this episode and you feel like somebody could really benefit from hearing Amy's story, I would love it if you would share it with them. Leave a review. Please Send AIME some beautiful words of acknowledgement as well, if you feel called to, and in the spirit of the Free to Be you podcast, just remember that this is not a dress rehearsal. This is it, so please get out there and be you, and I will see you on the next show. Hey, don't forget to go and take that quiz and uncover you're in a mean girl. Let's get rid of the BS story that's stopping you from being the real you.