Proven Habits for Success with Amy Kemp

Jennifer Norman:
Hello beautiful humans. Welcome to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast, your source for hope, healing, happiness and humanity. My name is Jennifer Norman. I'm the founder of The Human Beauty Movement and your host. This podcast is here to guide you on your journey of self love, empowerment, soul alignment and joy. With each episode, I invite beautiful humans from all corners of the globe to join me for open conversations about their life lessons and the important work that they are doing to help heal humankind. Take a moment now to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. I'm so glad you're here, joining me for today's show.

Jennifer Norman:
Today's episode is all about empowering busy professional women to break free from overwhelm and achieve more without burning out. If you're a woman who's reached an impressive level of success in your career, but you're still feeling stuck, longing for more impact, influence and income without adding more hours to your already packed schedule, you are not alone. In fact, many brilliant and ambitious women face this same challenge. In today's episode, we are joined by Amy Kemp, the owner and CEO of Amy Kemp Incorporated. With over two decades of experience working with female business leaders, Amy understands the unique struggles that busy professional women face. She's the author of the insightful book, I See You: A Guide For Women to Make More, Have More, And Be More Without More Work. This offers a roadmap for transforming thought habits to achieve greater success and fulfillment. Amy is here to share key insights from her book, including the importance of understanding and reshaping thought habits to overcome obstacles and achieve your goals.

Jennifer Norman:
She's going to discuss practical strategies for giving appropriate time and energy to your endeavors, setting clear boundaries, prioritizing self care, and embracing your unique strengths. So whether you are struggling to find balance in your professional and personal life, wrestling with feelings of overwhelm, or seeking to elevate your career to the next level. This podcast is for you. So now, without further ado, I'd like to welcome Amy to the show. Welcome, Amy.

Amy Kemp:
Hi Jennifer. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Jennifer Norman:
It is a delight to have you, and I am so grateful for your book, which is going to be so powerful and so enriching for so many women. But first, I want to start out with the fact that you call yourself a Certified Habit Finder Coach, which I think is going to be a new term for a lot of people. So I'd love for you to explain what is a Habit Finder Coach?

Amy Kemp:
Oh, I would love to. It's a unique one not a lot of people have heard of this, but I use, in my work with clients, I use an assessment tool called The Habit Finder, and it measures our risk of falling into certain subconscious habits of thinking. So these habits of thinking, we have so many thoughts every day that are happening without our awareness. And this tool kind of brings those to the surface and allows us to look at what's happening there and really to identify the patterns of thinking that aren't serving us and to replace them with better habits of thinking. So the habit work I do is different than behavioral habits or external habits of taking care of yourself. It's definitely more of an internal game, has to do with the wiring of our brains. So it's really cool work.

Jennifer Norman:
That is incredible. I had a recent guest on the show, Amy Ballantyne, who talked about, instead of calling it self talk, she called it self communication, because it's not only like the words that you're thinking about, but it's like, how are you looking at yourself? What's your body language doing when you're thinking about yourself or something that you're going to do? All of those things are communicating back physiologically and mentally to our minds. And I think that that's a really powerful way to think about habits, not necessarily just your behaviors, because there's probably a lot of very successful people that can go through the motions but are really feeling very stricken inside and might ultimately get to a place of burnout because of it.

Amy Kemp:
Mm hmm. Absolutely. And many of my clients also get to a place where they can't work any harder or longer or more hours, and they can't seem to either get past a certain point of, let's say, income or impact, or they can't seem to cross a certain bridge, and they are sort of at a loss what's happening that is happening, but I it's not going to be solved by just working harder. I've really got to change some of the ways that I think and find out what's happening inside of me. So it's really, it's actually, I think of it sort of as sacred work. Some of the places that I get to go with people and really to just discover together what sort of noise is in their heads that is holding them back from what they really want.

Jennifer Norman:
I can speak personally from the fact that I think that negative self talk got me so far because it helped to be, like, a negative motivator to, like, perfectionism. And so it gets you so far, but it does make you feel really bad inside. It's like even if you were to get a success, it doesn't really feel like success because there's always another success that you're chasing after that. And so I can imagine that a lot of people who are listening today would probably imagine that they've said to themselves many times, there's only so much I can do, there's only so many hours in the day. And so even those psychologically probably have their impact on us. Feeling a little bit helpless in ourselves.

Amy Kemp:
Absolutely, 100%. And I also think that when you're not even aware of these habits of thinking, you have no agency to choose a different thought. And so we do need to bring them up to the surface. But the other thing that what you just mentioned made me think of is that a lot of survival mechanisms, behaviors, strategies, things that we use to survive situations when we're younger, if we continue to apply them, when we no longer need them, past the point of needing them, they become, they suffocate us, they become detrimental. And so when you're still using. But here's the other trick that's kind of interesting, is that survival mechanisms work really well in corporate America. You know, they cause things like perfectionism, overworking. They have a lot of applications in some of those environments that move you up the career path to a certain point.

Amy Kemp:
And that's where normally people find me. They've reached that point where these are no longer getting me where I want to go and they're not sustainable. And if I keep doing it, I'm not going to be well over the long run, and things are not going to go well for anyone in the long run.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. Plus we as women go through phases in our lives. We have that point where we have all this energy, we're younger, we can work the extra hours and we feel like we don't need the sleep because we're young and our bodies can regenerate a little bit faster. Then you get to a point where maybe you're having children, maybe you've got a marriage, maybe you've got other your caretaking for an elder, and you are being pushed and pulled in a lot of different directions. And a lot of that can create a bit of anxiousness and worry and feeling like we can't focus on our careers. But then we have to kind of sit back and say, okay, well, what are my new priorities? My priorities now are not the same as they were before. And so what do I do about this? That I've been operating in this very same way for so long and I don't know how to get out of it. I can imagine that your habit finder tool is probably very eye opening for a lot of people.

Amy Kemp:
Absolutely. It's also unique to women. There's actually a whole chapter in my book about unpaid labor and how much unpaid labor women do.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, yeah.

Amy Kemp:
Compared to our counterparts, that may be a gender stereotype, but it is actually factually true as well that women carry the bulk of the burden of all of the caretaking in our world. Even things. There's an entire unpaid labor survey that you take as you're working through the book that kind of walks through. How many hours do you spend a week doing unpaid labor? And on average, for most women, it's between 20 and 30 hours, some 20 to 40 hours, especially if you're in that kind of sandwich generation where you're caretaking for elderly parents and you have children that you're raising. But we don't often take into account even things like who makes all of the appointments for everyone, who buys all of the clothes for everyone, who prepares all the birthday parties and gifts and celebrations of my son's graduating from high school coming up. So who's planning the party? I'm sure my husband doesn't even know when the party is right now. This is the other piece, though. I want to do a lot of the unpaid labor.

Amy Kemp:
Some of I don't. Someone came to clean today, for example, someone. I don't want to do all of the unpaid labor, but some of that family investment is really important to me. And so I think as women, we just have to take that into account that if the business isn't growing as fast, if we aren't selling as many widgets as our peer, if there are so many times where we're doing this comparison without taking into account that we are choosing to do 20 to 30 hours of extra labor that perhaps our male counterpart isn't doing at all. So I just had this happen. My son ended up in the hospital. He's fine, but it was an unexpected little stint that we did, and I really wanted to be there with him. Right.

Amy Kemp:
I wanted to set everything down and just be there with him. But I also am the one that sacrifices all of that time invested in my work, in my business. Right. My husband carried on as normal with his work. And again, mine's a little bit more flexible, but we have to take into account when we're looking at the wholeness of our lives that while that was a diversion from my work, it's also a part of what I'm trying to create, which is a whole life, and part of that is a business, but I'm also trying to create a family, and I'm trying to invest in our community and in causes that I care about deeply. So looking at it more holistically just helps us to not feel like there's something wrong with me, that I can't move this forward as much. It's like, no, I can't go as fast because some of my energy is also being put over here. And that's okay.

Amy Kemp:
It's okay. Right? So anyhow, and we had this conversation around launching a book, also with my business manager. She's worked with many authors. And I just said, I'm not interrupting my life to launch this book. I'm going to launch it slowly and consistently over a longer period of time, and I'll sell just as many books, but I don't have the luxury of taking three months and just disrupting everything in my home. And so we're now two and a half months in. And she, she just said to me this week at our meeting, this has been so peaceful and calm.

Jennifer Norman:
I've got used to this.

Amy Kemp:
But I'm designing not just a book launch. I'm designing a life that takes into account the wholeness of my life. And that doesn't mean I can't have a great book launch. It just means I've got to also take into account it may take me longer because I'm not willing to sacrifice on some of those other things right now.

Jennifer Norman:
So, anyhow, yes, I commend you, and I applaud you for being able to do that. And you're practicing what you preach. I, too, have really taken an inventory of my life and how I'm spending my days, and I have committed to myself that I'm going to give myself grace. I am no longer going to pressure myself and beat myself up for not doing x, not doing y, not doing z, because I actively am making the choice. I am choosing to be of service to my family and my loved ones because that's one of the fine languages, as a matter of fact. So and so. If it means putting the career on a bit of a hold or if it means actually not accelerating and getting those promotions, for those of you that are working in corporate jobs, not getting perhaps those promotions, if you're making the active choice and you recognize that you are, by migrating your life in a certain way towards more holism, towards more satisfaction and joy in other places, then really, that's wonderful. And it's something to be commended.

Jennifer Norman:
It's not something to beat ourselves up over, is it?

Amy Kemp:
Here's another thought, too. I just was talking to a good friend about this. If you want to be really countercultural, let's start having women pursue those higher level roles in those companies and have the same boundaries and say no, like, we're going to do this a little differently, taking the wholeness of life into account. Therefore, while it could be risky giving other women permission to do the same, who are following you, I just talked to my friend about this. She has an opportunity on the horizon. She's considering it another company. And she said, I know. I just have such, I've built so much trust, and I have so much flexibility in my current role.

Amy Kemp:
I don't know if I want to make the leap and lose that. And I said, well, what if you made the leap? And if that culture isn't that way, you start to pave a path to make it more that way so that more women want to work there and can have the fullness of life. Why do we have to choose? And so we've just been talking about, like, we can do that no matter what the circumstances are and we don't have to sacrifice, but it is going to bring up some interesting conversations along the way about that. I just think it's important, though, because we're missing great leaders in our workforce, and we're also missing that holistic perspective of what we're building in any kind of business or organization. When we're just forcing people to only think in that one lane, it's not good for the company either. You're just losing great talent. So.

Jennifer Norman:
And that's why I think the name of your book is so wonderful. I See You. We recognize the issues that we have faced as working women, as busy women. We understand the struggles and the pressures that we put upon ourselves. And we're also saying it doesn't have to be that way because we empathize, we know how it is. If we step up and are leaders of these companies that enable more holism, that enable more compassion towards those that are caring for others and give more flexibility. And I think more companies are leaning this way because they must. People are just opting out.

Jennifer Norman:
You know, it's beyond quiet quitting. People are all together, quitting them, becoming digital nomads. And that's great, too, because it's like the environment is going to work. We have a wonderful ability to survive as humans and to adapt, thrive, and to figure shit out. And so we are going to create systems that are going to work for us and we're going to break down and dismantle these systems that are not serving us anymore because we won't be able to survive.

Amy Kemp:
Yes, the whole, this is actually another chapter in my book. You're, you're leading me there without even knowing you're leaving me there. This whole idea of the traditional work world was created for a world that no longer exists. It was created for a family with two parents where one person left the home and went and made money and the other person stayed home and did all of the unpaid labor. And the economy supported that for a period of time, but it no longer does. We very rarely see, and it's such a small and shrinking percentage of people for which that model works or even is accessible. And so there have to be changes in structures, even things. I've been talking to my husband as a basketball coach at our high school, and they always did all of their summer camps from like nine to eleven in the morning in the month of June.

Amy Kemp:
And you're excluding a whole group of kids because they have working parents. How are they supposed to get them there? How are they supposed to get their kids to school from nine to eleven? And so he's doing it this year. He's doing it in the evenings because then more kids can be there. But we have all of these structures baked in, all these systems that are baked in, that were not designed for the world in which we now live, and they are slowly shifting. But even the idea of like summer breaks for kids, I mean, it's just so hard for working parents to navigate that. And again, our teachers need breaks too, but it's just like we've got to continue to look at some of these structures and systems so that it's workable for the economy and the world in which we live today.

Jennifer Norman:
Exactly. I want to shift gears and talk about thought habits because I think that that is such an interesting concept that a lot of people don't think about. So I would love to dig a little deeper on how, like, what are thought habits, first of all, and then how do you think that they affect people and, you know, keep things?

Amy Kemp:
Well, I'll give you an example. I just actually came from a meeting with a couple of clients who own their own businesses, and we were talking about this one particular habit of thinking, and it's the risk of this habit of thinking is that you are resistant to structures or to rules that are mandated or that are imposed upon you that don't make sense.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Amy Kemp:
And do you have this resistance. Also seeing your body language.

Jennifer Norman:
Well, it's so funny, because I always thought, is it because I was a rebellious teen? But I was like, no, every teen was rebellious. We all went through that. And it's like, do I just like, always have this habit of questioning authority? That was always what I think. I was always like, the sticky bramble that I would be really good at managing down, but managing up was like, oh, boy, yeah, I can.

Amy Kemp:
Really difficult. Yeah, yeah, it's. About 98% of entrepreneurs face this habit of thinking to resist structures that don't make sense or rules or mandated policies, which that in and of itself is not bad. I'm not applying judgment to that because in a lot of ways, it makes us great business owners. We can decide that's inefficient. I don't want to do it that way. That doesn't make any sense. And we can pivot and make changes.

Amy Kemp:
Here's where it becomes problematic, and this is what we were talking about today. If you resist that structure imposed on you by someone else, when you step into a role where you are your own boss and you begin to tell you what to do, then you kind of do the same thing to yourself where you say, I made this list of things to do today, but then I don't have to do that. I don't want to do that.

Amy Kemp:
We rebel and we resist even the structures that would really benefit us because we're bringing that habit of thinking into every area of our work, not just in specific ones. So I think that's one example of a habit of thinking. Another one is this idea of the habit of thinking. If you have a high risk of obligation kind of motivating you, you're doing a lot of have to, need to should. It can start tiny. This is kind of a sneaky habit of thinking. So it can start even with, oh, I have to take out the garbage, or I need to steam my shirt for tomorrow, or, oh, I have to get an outfit to wear to this upcoming event or whatever. The thing is, when you get yourself into that habit of thinking, I just want you to imagine every time you say have to, need to or should, yourself picking up a really heavy backpack and strapping it on your back, you're already going to climb the mountain of doing the thing.

Amy Kemp:
But now you're adding this extra weight of obligation.

Jennifer Norman:
Definitely.

Amy Kemp:
And all it is is a habit of thinking. That's it. So if we can shift that habit of thinking to I get to, I choose to, I want to. It's like you're taking the backpack off. There's still resistance, you still are climbing a mountain, or you're climbing a hill, depending on the task. But there's less, and so you'll get so much more done, you'll feel less heavy about it, and some of the very same tasks will feel so different, the absolute same thing. So again, that's what we're looking for in habits of thinking are very rarely are people aware that they're walking around doing, have to, need to, and should all day.

Jennifer Norman:
Mhm.

Amy Kemp:
But once you're aware of it and you start to hear yourself say it, it's all day long, you think, oh, my goodness, there it is again. And it just continues. And so as you shift that, you'll find you have more energy. You're bringing that to the task of the day. You're getting more done, you're bringing better energy to the meetings you're having, you're getting better results. And it's just from shifting this one.

Jennifer Norman:
Habit of thinking, it's interesting about even the word work, it's or, oh, thank you so much for your hard work. A lot of people will say that, but it's like, yes, why do you think that it was that hard? Or why do I have to think that it was hard work? And, you know, maybe it was enjoyable. Maybe I loved doing it, and. But if you all of a sudden, like, catch yourself framing, like, oh, I gotta go to work, or I have this hard work or something was, you know, just a difficult task do list. It does. It gives you a different frame of mind and thinking about it, rather than the, you know, I get to play all day, I get to do stuff that I love all day, I enjoy what I'm doing, and I wake up and I feel like I'm really contributing to, like, this self fulfillment. And irregardless of pay, I know that we'll talk about that in a second. But, you know, as women, it's just like everything pays me back in some form or passion from either an energetic standpoint, whether it be money or sense of accomplishment or a feeling of love, no matter what it is, it's like you.

Jennifer Norman:
You are getting paid and you are receiving by actually contributing.

Amy Kemp:
Absolutely. I love it.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. And you also talk in your book about doing things that feel easy for you and astonishing everyone else. I would love to hear what you mean by that.

Amy Kemp:
Yeah. The question is, what do you do that feels easy to you and astonishes everyone else? And I'll give you, I'm trying to think of one of my favorite examples from the book. Okay, I have a good one. So I have a client who worked in sort of like, project management systems kind of work for a chemical company for 25 years. She was really good at it. So she would make sure that processes were really efficient and well done and seen through when they were implementing a new process from start to finish. Well, she had no idea that the way she thought wasn't normal for everyone. So we were talking about, she had this barn, sort of like an outbuilding.

Amy Kemp:
She lives in rural property in Indiana, and they wanted to make it into sort of a community center. And so I said to her, well, why don't you just come up with a project plan like you would at work, and then you can baby step your way through the transformation of this part of your property to really bring this dream into fruition. So we hang up, I kid you not, within 30 minutes, she has sent me a picture, and it's a poster, and she has colored post it notes. And up at the top, it says barn. That looks like a crack house all the way down to community center in the bottom corner. And it's in 30 minutes. She did step by step by step by step by step, about 40 steps to getting this barna transform. And I said to her, do you know that's not normal, like not everyone can? And she said, no.

Amy Kemp:
I thought everyone could do that because it felt so easy to her. She thought everyone could do that. And so she didn't value it as highly as she should. And that's the problem. Particularly women do this. The things that we do that feel so easy to us, we tend to undercharge for them or not recognize their value in a workplace and demand that we're compensated fairly for them because they feel so easy. It's so easy for us. I'll give you another example.

Amy Kemp:
Even from when I was a child, I created a fort. This is so funny. In my neighborhood, where you had to give a piece of gum to get in, you had to stick a piece of chewed gum on a tree. That was the entry rate. And then I would lead discussions, small group discussions, about how to make our neighborhood better or what business we could start, where we could sell something in our neighborhood. Like, I would lead these little meetings in our club. But when I look at the trajectory of my life, I have always gathered people in small groups to talk about getting better, to talk about improving them, and then our world from a very, very young age, I just thought that was normal. I thought everyone could do that.

Amy Kemp:
I built a huge business doing just that. I developed so many leaders doing that, gathering in small groups and leading discussions and reading a book together and then talking about how we were going to implement it and really growing people that way. Right. I thought that was just so easy to me. I didn't even know it was valuable. And as I've grown my new business over the last seven or eight years, I've come to realize and watched other people try to do that, and they can't. Either they dominate the conversation or they end up teaching, but they're nothing, not really facilitating conversation with people. They're just talking.

Amy Kemp:
And that's natural genius. That feels so easy to me, but it astonishes other people and they can't do it. That's what we want to harness and really use to serve the world, but we also want to get compensated for it handsomely.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. And to the point of what you just said, which I think is brilliant, and it's worth pausing, like, for our listeners to really take stock. If you're at the place where it's like, you feel that you have gone down a career path, because if it wasn't hard, it wasn't worth it. Or if because it's hard and there's struggle and there's suffering, you feel that you are due compensation for that. Whereas if you were to go back to the core of the things that bring you joy, of the things that you're just naturally, you have a natural proclivity to, and there's always an opportunity to improve skill. That's not what we're saying. Like, you're good at it, and then you stop, and that's what you get paid for. But starting from that place where you just have a natural genius, a natural tendency, a natural penchant for it, and you build your skills upon that so that it is, you're just, like, living more fluidly from something that is authentically good and wholesome and holistic for you rather than becoming something because somebody else told you that it was going to make you a lot of money.

Jennifer Norman:
How many times have kids heard, like, you need to be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever, and it's just not, you know, maybe they were meant to be artists, maybe they were meant to be musicians and that they just, like, completely walked away from that because somebody else told them that they needed to do something else. It's like, let us get to the place where we can feel empowered enough to come to those places that really do bring us joy and a lot of people, they have these hobbies or side hustles, and they're like, oh, this is where I get my pleasure, but it's not worth getting paid for, right?

Amy Kemp:
Oh, this is the worst. Yes.

Jennifer Norman:
I'll put in the hours for this day job that I have because that's going to pay the bills, but this is where I derive my pleasure. And at least they have that. At least they have an outlet it for pleasure. But how? Or the question is, could that be something that you pursue in more gusto?

Amy Kemp:
Absolutely. And are you just undervaluing it and bringing it into every space and giving it away for free? Are you really demanding that you earn what you deserve for it? Is the other question. Can I ask you what you feel like your areas of genius are?

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, this is funny. This is a very funny question. It's changed over time. I think that I've always had a natural tendency toward art and artistry and creativity and color, like, just visual composition. And so I used to be able to just go in people's closets and be like, yes, yes, no, no. Put this together, and they'd be like, oh, my God. It's just like putting random things together and being able to compile them and develop something that is beautiful. And that led me down the path of the beauty industry.

Jennifer Norman:
And so I ended up in the beauty industry for 25 years, doing makeup and hair and all of that. And then I recognized that for myself, the natural tendency and the creativity was something different than the superficial. It really kind of, I reflected upon it in my older years and really have turned it inside out. And so now I'm, like, developing the beauty within, inspiring others to find that color and that wisdom from themselves. So it's a little bit of a different take on things, but I'm expressing it in different avenues.

Amy Kemp:
But it's actually the same thing. Right. It's finding beauty, creating beauty.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. Alchemizing, making magic. I think that that gets to the other part of your book, which is all about the woo woo. I am like the Wu Tang clan woo woo girl. So. And I totally believe it. I know that people are like, what does it have to do with career? What does this have to do with work? And the answer is, everything.

Amy Kemp:
Everything.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. So I would love for you to share a little bit about intuition, what you know about this energetic abundant source, and how you build that into your philosophies and your work.

Amy Kemp:
I would love to. I have so many thoughts, but I will share. I work with clients from tons of different faith backgrounds, or some with no faith at all.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Amy Kemp:
And I have yet to meet a client that doesn't agree. There's five statements. One is that there is a source of unlimited abundance and energy. Like there is something bigger, right? Even the fact that when you hit your knee, you respond, says that we were built in response to something bigger than us. Like, even our physical bodies sort of lend proof of that. And then two, we were created by that source. Three, that we are still connected to that source, that we have access to it. And four, when we open ourselves to it, that energy that is beyond anything we could ever create on our own flows through us and out into the world in unique ways.

Amy Kemp:
So that's your natural genius, right? It's. If you imagine, like, a musical instrument, maybe your sound sounds like a flute and mine sounds like a violin or a trumpet. I played the trumpet when I was in grade school because I felt like girls were underrepresented, which I think is so funny. That's how I made my decision. I felt like there needed to be more women and so, well, girls at that time, but so that's why I chose the instrument volumes right now. And then the last thing about is that when that flow of energy flows through us and out into the world, we feel most alive.

Jennifer Norman:
Mhm.

Amy Kemp:
That is where we do our best work, where things happen that are beyond what we are capable of creating. So can you create without it? Of course. It's just really difficult and hard and exhausting, and you're limited by your own capacity. But creating through an openness to receiving and then channeling through you and out into the world through your unique gifts, has a joy to it. It has an ease to it. It has a feeling of sort of miraculous adventure to it where you don't know the hows. And then it just sort of comes together out of the blue in quotation marks. Not really right.

Amy Kemp:
But there is this thing that happens that is inexplicable. And all of us, at some point, even if it's only a drip, have experienced it. And when we see it in other people, we know it right away. When they do something and it's beyond them and there's something sort of magical and woo woo about it. We are drawn to them. We just feel it. There's a really great video that I describe in the book. It's on YouTube, but it's from The Greatest Showman, the movie.

Amy Kemp:
And it's when they greenlit the movie, so they were trying to get funding for it. And it's the first time that Keala sings This Is Me. And they're in this room and they're just like in their everyday clothes. But you can kind of tell that it's like a tryout sort of a situation. You know, the investors are there. She is super nervous. And it is not a great performance at first, she's real shaky, but as the song goes, she sort of starts to feed off of the background singers. And then you can sort of tell she starts to really live in the words and she's opening. She's getting all the noise out of her head and just letting that flow through this amazing musical instrument of her voice and her presence and her energy.

Amy Kemp:
And this video, it's been watched like a hundred million times.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, really?

Amy Kemp:
But it's worth the search on YouTube to just find it and watch it because there's this magical woo woo feeling about it that even I've watched it, probably 10,000 of the 100 million, because it elevates me to be in the presence of someone who's experiencing that in live real time.

Jennifer Norman:
Right?

Amy Kemp:
All of us, everyone around you is elevated when you allow that to happen. Everyone wins. Everyone gets to experience that. And then they leave and go off and then are elevated in what they are creating. So it's sort of like the rising tide lifts all boats sort of a thing.

Jennifer Norman:
Yep.

Amy Kemp:
Yeah.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, man. Amy, you are channeling Napoleon Hill and Jen Sincero. And like all of these wonderful, great thinkers and feelers of what the essence of source truly is, it extends beyond religion. It's just something where that there's this. We are alive. We are life force, energy, and we are also in tune to others and our environments. And if we can step away from ego, if we can step away from the fact that it's like, oh, I'm going to embarrass myself or I'm going to make a fool of myself or I'm going to put myself out there. I'm going to fail.

Jennifer Norman:
Like all of those negative thoughts and those thought habits that you get into your head are getting in your way of being a channel for this beautiful greatness, for this intuition and this beautiful creativity to flow through you.

Jennifer Norman:
I remember I was working for Stila Cosmetics at the time, and one of the women who was our head of education was such a natural getting in front of the camera and being able to do makeovers and explain exactly what was going on. She could do it, like, one take only. And I said, oh, my gosh. And her name is Sarah Lucero. I adore her. I want to give her props, because I said, how is it that you are so good at this? And she said, I'm just a vessel. This is just my job. I just communicate what I need to in order for the message to be revealed. And I was like, oh, my God, you just nailed it. You just nailed what life is all about. Like, let us just remember that we are vessels for all this goodness. And when we. I think that Andrew Huberman calls it something like extraceptive versus intraceptive, it's like when we're able to more extraceptive and think about our work as service for others, then we stop suffering, we stop feeling all of those things that go on in our bodies that prevent us from this greatness that can truly thrive. So, yeah, and I think that that's probably, it gets to that place of intuition that you're talking about in your life, too, because there are some areas where we feel, okay, we're gifted, we're intuitive. And then in other places, we're like, oh, I don't have access to it.

Jennifer Norman:
It's just not there. And you say, we can't stifle our intuition in one area of life and have access to it in every other. And I'd love for you to speak.

Amy Kemp:
A little bit about so the client, I'll tell you about that. I share her story in the book. Grew up in a really unpredictable home. Her mom had substance abuse issues, and she was basically adulting at a very young age, making sure that everything was taken care of at their home. And she all along felt like, this isn't right that I'm having to do all of this. She kind of knew it wasn't right that she was having to parent her younger siblings. She was having to take care of her mom. She was having to pay bills.

Amy Kemp:
But she had to override that intuitive voice that said, this isn't right to survive. So brave. And she did a remarkable job doing it. The problem is, fast forward 25 years, she's building a successful business for so long, she overrode that intuition. And so that same little voice that said, this isn't right also is the voice that says, you're tired, it's time to be done working and to go home. It's also the little voice that says, you're full, you don't need to eat any more food or you're hungry, stop and eat. It's the voice that tells us you're tired, like, go to bed. It's that intuitive voice.

Amy Kemp:
I'm pointing to my stomach as I'm talking, as if everyone can see me, but it's because it's like, inside of us, there's an intuitive knowing, that voice that says, this is enough, or that's not okay, or that is okay. Right. But when for so long, we've overridden that voice, and we've just overridden it. Overridden it. Overridden it. Then we lose access to it in every area. And so kind of, instead of becoming punitive and trying to structure and control our time management and our food and our. We're trying to make all these logical head decisions around these things.

Amy Kemp:
If we can reawaken our connection with that intuitive voice, we can really hear it again. We won't have to fight to stay within those structures. So much of rigidly deciding what to eat, your body will tell you if you'll listen, if you'll reconnect with that intuition. So there are so many applications of this are important, but it is a slowing down. And instead of my client, instead of me saying, you have to leave work at 05:00 every day, our work together was much more work about her starting to trust herself and that feeling that said, I've done a lot today, and I'm tired. I'm ready to be done, and go home and rest. Right. And then listening to that and honoring that voice and leaving work.

Amy Kemp:
And now she sent me. I share this story in the book, but she takes two vacations a year for two weeks. She takes every Friday off in the summer. She's home in the evenings, and doesn't bring her work home with her anymore. And again, it's the same business, and her business has tripled in size. So it was this process of, she wanted to hire me so that she would stop overworking and get control of her time management. But it wasn't really about that. It was just about her learning to trust her intuition again and kind of to hear that voice inside of her so she could make the better choice that made the difference.

Jennifer Norman:
What a great example. Because I think there are so many people who are listening, who are probably thinking out of obligation, I must do these things, or else everything's gonna fall apart. If I don't do it, my husband's not gonna do it. He doesn't know how, or my assistant's not gonna do it. She doesn't know. It's like we just don't trust enough that other things are gonna get done unless we do it ourselves, unless we worry about it, unless we take it on. And it's not sustainable. It's really sustainable.

Jennifer Norman:
And look what can happen from listening to your intuition. It may be disruptive for a period of time when you're going through this transition and people aren't used to it. Like, they have to be retrained as well, like, know what to do and how to plan a birthday party, or it allows you to have that good balance in just feeling healthy. And that's really what this is. It's like every choice that we want to make, we want to do it so that we can be healthy, so that we can serve more, have more energy for others and. And particularly for ourselves to just be and living lives that really just harmonize and vibrate to this wonderful level, so that we just fill the entire world with joy and love and kindness. That's really what it's about. And I think that what you're giving are these practical tools on how we can do that, how we can do well, I say do more with less, but it's kind of like how we can do less but gain more money.

Jennifer Norman:
In particular, in one of your chapters, chapter eight, you talk about money being a mirror. And I would love to talk about that for a second, because I think that a lot of women who are working are like, okay, if I were to sacrifice my work, that means that I'm not going to make enough or I'm not going to make as much as I am. And I'm used to a certain lifestyle, or I have obligations. I have rent or I have a mortgage. I have, whether it's college tuition or parents, to take care of those sorts of things, like, I just can't stop or else everything will fall apart. From a financial perspective, can you talk a little bit more about what we can learn from taking a closer look at our relationship with money?

Amy Kemp:
Yeah, money has such great information for us. If we just observe it and we watch our relationship with it, it says a lot. Even one of the exercises that I challenge readers to do in the book is just to write out if I just said, describe your money for me, and not necessarily, like, how much, but just how do you feel about it? Where is it? Do you know about it? Do you talk to it a lot? Are you interacting with it all the time? Is it chaotic? Is it. Are you scared about it? Are you feeling overwhelmed with abundance? Are you. There's so many thoughts, but our relationship with money is a direct reflection of our relationship with ourselves, so we can learn so much about it. And we can also learn to separate our feelings of safety and security from the money. Because when you do that, you have a tendency to create more. Money tends to move toward you when you're not operating from scarcity and fear.

Amy Kemp:
Money responds to energy. It's a reflection of energy, and we want money moving. Just today I was talking to a client who is working to let go of some stuff, actual physical stuff that's in her house. And she was raised in poverty, and she's having a really hard time. She has collected a ton of stuff, but she feels like it's so wasteful if she doesn't sell it for a certain amount. But she's running a huge business, and she can't, doesn't have time to sell it on wherever. It's not even worth that much, honestly. Probably right.

Amy Kemp:
What I said to her, like, this is not about the stuff. This isn't about the stuff. It's about you're clinging to it. Why are you clinging to it? Because I'm afraid that if I let it go and then I lose everything, I won't have anything. Okay, well, that's what we're dealing with. So what is it? How can we heal that fear? How can we give you a sense of safety and security separate from that stuff? And then she'll figure out how to get rid of the stuff. She's brilliant. I'm not worried about it.

Amy Kemp:
Right. But it's not about the stuff. It's about this experience in her life. And so money just has a lot for us. It can teach us so much. And the movement of money reflects our energy. And whether we're stuck, we're plateaued, we are expanding right now, or whether we are fearful and shrinking. And that's.

Amy Kemp:
I never. I'm not a person who's like, go quit your job. And I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying, change your relationship with money. The rest will work out. Either a brand new job opportunity will appear, you'll start to have another source of income pop in. I've seen total transformation happen in ways that we never could have ever planned or figured out just by working on, just like what I was working on with my client today, just reestablishing that relationship with money.

Jennifer Norman:
I think a lot of people will be leaning in this part of the conversation and think to myself, okay, what does that mean? What does having a different relationship with money mean? I think, first of all, they have to figure out what that relationship is. But can you say a little bit more about how or what somebody might learn their relationship is and then how to convert it into something that is working?

Amy Kemp:
Yeah, I would first say, we've got to get ourselves. So imagine an ocean, and your money is the ocean. Most people live sort of like on a surfboard in the middle of the waves. They are just being thrashed about. It's going up, it's going down. They're riding the waves, especially entrepreneurs or business owners. They're just. Or if you work on commission only, where your income changes, you just are riding these waves.

Amy Kemp:
And what I want you to do is to imagine yourself paddling to the shore. Go to the store, buy a little beach umbrella and a little cute chair, and set up camp on the beach and get yourself away from your money and all of the judgment and all of the shame and all of the fear and all of the feelings. Get out of the ocean and get on the beach where you can observe it from a distance. It's just money. It's out there moving. There's tons of waves. And yes, sometimes the tide goes out, and sometimes it comes in, but we aren't worried. There's no lack, when you're on an ocean, like, there's no lack of money.

Amy Kemp:
There's. And sometimes there are storms. I mean, we just went through a global pandemic. There are legit storms. But the perspective of, I am safe and secure over here on the beach. The money is doing, what it's doing will allow you to create more money, but there's got to be a separation between you and the money, or else you will literally drown. I mean, you can just wear yourself out, out from the fear and then the elation, and then you'll just absolutely wear yourself out around it. And so you've got to get yourself back so you can even have a conscious, clear thought about what's happening and recognize that it is supposed to move.

Amy Kemp:
It is supposed to come in and out. It is not something to cling to. You would never try to capture the ocean. You would just let it move. You would let it move in and out. So that's a really good, like, exercise I walk people through in the book also, and then some tips for how to really get yourself on the beach around your money. But it is a beautiful thing to transform that relationship because money does start to move towards you when you do.

Jennifer Norman:
Amazing. Wow. That is so intriguing. I would love to invite everybody who's listening to go visit Amy. Amy, can you please tell everybody how they can get in touch with you? And especially, where can they buy your book?

Amy Kemp:
Oh, I'd love to. So, amykemp.com. my name amykemp.com. and you can find all the information about the book there. You can get the book anywhere books are sold. But Amazon, Barnes and Noble, bookshop.org, all of those places, there are all of those links on the website, or you can go to them on your own. I also recorded the Audible, so it's my voice. You can hear me read it.

Amy Kemp:
And it is a conversational book. A lot of people have told me they enjoyed listening to it. So you can catch it there as well. And if you're interested in your habits of thinking, you can take the habit finder assessment on my website for free and you get your results right away. It's a fun way for you to kind of start exploring what's going on in there. And can I start to pay more attention to my habits of thinking to get some different results in my life?

Jennifer Norman:
This is so helpful. Amy, thank you so much for all of the work that you're doing to help women feel more empowered and to have a good handle on their lives and to feel real joy in everything that they're doing. I really appreciate you so very much. Everybody, this is Amy Kemp. Go and take a look at her work at amykemp.com. and buy her book, I See You. Thank you so much, Amy, for being on the show today. It was such a pleasure.

Amy Kemp:
Thank you so much.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you for listening to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow, follow rate and review us wherever you stream podcasts The Human Beauty Movement is a community based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media, and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more at thehumanbeautymovement.com. Thank you so much for being a beautiful human.