Episode 178: Stop Trying to Figure Things Out – Feel Them Instead With Amy Wong
Amy Eliza Wong is the Founder of Always on Purpose. The name tells you everything you need to know. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering how you ended up where you ended up, or at a job that used to make your socks roll up and down now makes you want to crawl into bed and not come out, Amy has answers.
What is going on there? How does that happen? Why does that happen, and what do you do about it? If you’re feeling like everything is starting to unravel, chances are you’re on the precipice of something very cool.
This episode is like two girlfriends who picked up the phone and started talking about how to cause magic in life, how to get unstuck, why women find themselves in closets and laundry rooms just crying, asking, “What has happened to my life?”
From figuring it out to feeling it out
Since Amy was very young, she says she’s always been fascinated by consciousness studies and the big conversations like who are we? Why are we here? What does it mean to be alive? She also loves math and later studied mathematics at UC Berkeley. This led her to teaching and facilitator roles.
“What was so enthralling to me was to be able to listen for what it was. They didn't know that they didn't know because it wasn't a matter of not knowing the thing. It was really a matter of not knowing what they didn't know and that kept them from asking the right questions, and I so understood that,” says Amy.
After working for 10 years in tech, she had a massive breakthrough when her son was born.
“I was hit with this extremely significant and very powerful insight that literally reverberated through my body that I was going about it all wrong,” says Amy. “And the insight that hit me that changed me in a moment was it's not about figuring it out, it's about feeling it out. The wisdom of that just completely changed all aspects of my being.”
Amy says she realized she’d been chasing a strategy that had been laid out for her; she wasn’t fulfilled. She went back to school and got her masters in transpersonal psychology. She said the similarity between psychology and math is the search for truth, and that’s when coaching found her.
Universal themes holding us back
Over the thousands of conversations Amy has had, she says it became clear that there are some fundamental themes that are universal in the way we hold ourselves back. Ones that go beyond habits of action, like saying you’re going to work, but not.
Through the conversations, Amy found five fundamental perceptual shifts that can help people unlock themselves into true thriving, true joy, and true fulfilment that goes beyond moving the pieces of their life around.
Read more in Amy's book 'Living on Purpose'
Disconnect between goals and soul
“Our soul knows what we are meant to do, the thing that gets in the way is our head,” says Amy.
She says people think they want all the goals that they set, all the aspirations that they have, whether it's more money, a bigger job, a bigger house, whatever. But it's not for the thing. What they want is the feeling we think we would have as a result of the thing.
She says people never think about it that way, and they blindly put all of their faith in the thing. Then oftentimes they forsake the feeling because they didn't pull that into awareness. For example, they want that promotion, they want that bigger title, they want senior VP. They want senior VP because they want more money.
But what they want is spaciousness and the ability to be present with their family. They want a sense of freedom. They want a sense of presence. If they haven't really focused on what they want to feel when they take the job, it completely conflicts with what they want to feel. So their life looks great on paper, but now they're miserable.
Now they’re really confused and disheartened because they did what they just said they were going to do and made it happen, but now they’re even more lost.
Navigating a feeling
Nobody teaches people how to navigate a feeling, and so figuring it out is chasing the thing blindly, and thinking we’ll reach the promised land. But feeling it out asks the most fundamental question: What do I want to feel?
The moment you can bring that feeling into awareness and get really clear about it -- I want to feel energized, I want to feel impactful, I want to feel peaceful – the work is moment by moment. Choose the thing that is resonant but more importantly, makes you feel. That’s the difference between asking “is this a good idea?” to “This feels incredible.”
Doubt versus self-doubt
Amy’s path to coaching saw her follow what she calls inspired thoughts and just start doing. She says there’s a very big difference between doubt and self-doubt. Her take is that doubt is healthy, but self-doubt is destruction.
Healthy doubt is discerning. It doesn’t judge but assesses. Do I know this? Is there enough here for me to go forth and do what I’m intending to do? Is my understanding full? For example, she knows if someone asked her to go perform heart surgery, she would say no. That’s healthy doubt. But self-doubt might influence her ability to learn how to do it. Would it take a while? Sure. But self-doubt questions someone’s inherent capability.
That’s the difference between self-doubt and doubt. It’s to very objectively look at what’s known and what’s not known. What’s missing? What’s there and what needs to be there. Versus, is there something wrong with me? Is there something lacking?
Figuring it out is the long path to a decent life, and it’s OK, but it’s not on purpose.
Feeling is a skill
Amy says the ability to feel it out rather than figure it out is a skill. It’s a muscle. The path of least resistance to the most abundance is one that we feel out and not figure out. It requires us to heighten the sensitivity to our feeling, and that tends to be an obstacle for people.
Sometimes people say ... what if I’m numbed to feeling. I can’t tell the difference. What if I don’t know what I’m feeling?
Amy reminds people that we are all born with this ability and some people might just need to strengthen this muscle. She created a text-based awareness practice to help guide people through it and provides a gradient of emotions when they check in. How we feel is everything. And how we feel is an indicator of what we’re focusing on. Amy says we have the remote control in our hands to shift focus to affect how we feel. So living on purpose essentially is remembering we have the remote.
Let’s get to it!
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