Investing in Yourself: Ditching Guilt and Embracing Abundance with Amy Kemp

Welcome to Sharing the Middle, where we share our stories of the messy middles of life.

I'm Lacey, your friend in the middle and guide whose claim to fame this week is folding three giant bags of laundry.

And I'm feeling very proud of it.

I am with my daughter, Iris.

You want to say hi, Iris?

Hi.

How are you today?

I don't know.

You don't know?

How old are you?

That's what you read?

I'm three.

Yeah.

Anything else you want to tell the people?

We have a big pumpkin.

Oh, okay.

Especially a hat and glasses.

Uh huh.

And socket.

Okay.

All right.

Can I finish doing my intro?

Okay.

Today's episode, we're talking to Amy Kemp, I think you'll see.

And I talked at literally the exact right moment for me, so I'm hoping it reaches you at the same time.

I did buy her book after this and really enjoyed reading, reading it and got so much out of it.

So I do have it linked in our show notes for you if you are interested.

But let's jump right in and we'll hear from Amy.

I am so excited to talk to you.

The more I read about your book.

I see you.

The just how excited I got.

I also literally just made some merch that says I see you on it.

And so I was like, oh, deputy.

They're actually greeting cards for people to send to each other.

Just saying.

I see.

I would love for you to take.

A moment and introduce yourself to our listeners.

Thank you so much for having me, Lacey.

I'm excited to be here.

Just a little about me.

I live near Chicago, though where I live is more cornfields than skyscrapers.

I am a business owner, a mom.

The thing I would say that I'm most proud of, in spite of professional successes and publishing my first book, is that I have made some very courageous choices about living out my priorities in a way that is different and unique.

It's like my kryptonite.

But it's also the thing that attracts people to me the most, which is living in alignment with what is most important.

When you say it's your kryptonite, what do you mean?

But it's.

It was challenging you for you to get there or.

I just want to know more about that.

I think it's a daily practice.

Yeah.

To not just hop on the hamster wheel of more, more, more, more, more.

One because I'm ambitious and I love growth and I love creation and I really love growing businesses.

So it's this daily decision to run, decisions that I'm making about growth through a variety of filters to make sure that I'm not outpacing my priorities or just saying yes because everyone else is saying yes, or saying let's make it bigger just for the sake of it being bigger.

If it's not really in service of my highest priorities when I say it's my kryptonite.

Yesterday I had a decision to make and had to talk out loud to myself to just say, okay, does this align with quality of life, with the money you deserve to be paid, and with your purpose?

If it doesn't align with all three of those things, then it's gotta be a no.

And it's so hard for me to walk that out.

So I would say I'm a fellow journeyman or journey woman on the path of this alignment and really living in a unique way where you don't have to work more to have more.

We're going to talk more about all of that, but as you were talking, it reminded me of the original reason why I started this podcast.

The idea or concept of the middle is something that I don't particularly enjoy.

It is something that I struggle with and it's not my favorite thing, but I am surrounded by it constantly and it's like, following me.

For me, it's okay, fine, we're just going to keep diving into it and keep figuring out what this messy middle stuff means.

Do you have a reaction to the idea of the middle or the messy middles of life?

I think that's where I live most of the time with my clients.

I think that's where I'm holding space for people in this messy space.

Maybe because I've walked through it with authenticity and honesty.

It gives you the badge of being able to also walk with other people through that same multimedal.

What I really love about the idea, I'll tell a story around this because I think it's important.

I think that we need to have boundaries on not only our relationships with people, but also on our goals.

These boundaries that we set on our goals are allowing us to live in that messy middle where we're not just the thing we want to create on the bigger purpose, but also the commitments we've made to our people and our communities.

I had a call with oh my gosh.

She she was like, oh my people like my ideal client.

And at the end of our call, she said, it's a yes.

How do we get started?

I was walking her through and she said, when we schedule our first call, I just, I can only meet after 6pm goal with a boundary is that I want to get paid like a CEO and work like a teacher.

Which means I work from 8 to 3, Monday through Friday.

I don't really do weekends.

I don't do evenings.

I live within that school schedule.

I take breaks when schools have breaks.

I do light summers.

I want to work that way and live that way.

It's the best for my health, for my business, for my family, for everything else.

But here's this opportunity and like, this person who's like my person and I just said, I have to sleep on it.

I'll let you know tomorrow.

I've learned to do that just to slow myself down.

To me, that's living in the messy middle.

Right?

It's the Yes.

I want to work with you so badly.

And I'm ambitious and I love to serve people and do this work.

Yes.

I'm committed to living this kind of life on purpose, with clarity and very decisive purpose.

I just had to get back to her and say, I'm sorry, but I can't.

First I asked Carrie, sure, I can't meet during lunch critically, but had I said yes, then I'm out of alignment with everything I'm teaching and I'm not in integrity.

And then everything breaks down from there and the business stops growing.

It just stops being fruitful.

And so that, to me, is living in this messiness of both.

I.

First of all, you are speaking my language because goals scare me.

I'm realizing I don't have boundaries with them.

Like, I have a goal and my.

I will not say beat myself up.

No, I will beat myself up with that goal.

Like, this is my goal.

I have to do it.

It's like a compulsion.

So to hear you say boundaries around a goal just blew my mind a bit because that's the problems that I have with goals.

I'm pregnant right now, and I have gestational diabetes.

And it has arisen in me some food disordered eating, like this intense focus on food.

And it's because there are these specific goals of my blood sugar's supposed to be this number, that kind of stuff.

And, oh, this is good food and this is bad food.

And it becomes an obsession.

And so I'm realizing now have boundaries with it of, okay, I get to have a break sometimes.

It doesn't always have to be perfect.

But it's taken me.

This is my third pregnancy.

I would have some of this down by now.

But it's taken me until now to be like, hey, with my doctors.

I cannot for my own mental Wellbeing and health.

I cannot live this to the T.

And I need you to know that and I need you to be okay with that.

Because I also have a thing with authority figures and following rules.

You just helped me so much there.

And having boundaries around my goals is what I need to focus on because I can achieve anything.

I know that sounds.

I don't know.

Okay, let me give you some language around what's happening because this is so critical in the work I do.

We talk about habits of thinking and there are two families of thinking.

One is systemic thinking, which is all or nothing, right or wrong, black or white, yes or no, success or failure.

It is very extreme.

It is.

You're either this or that.

There is no gray in the middle.

And then there is this other realm of thinking that more relational and nuanced and gray.

And there's give and take and flexibility to it.

When you're dealing with people or relationships, there is nuance.

It's complicated.

And there are a lot of factors.

We get in trouble when we apply systemic thinking to relationships.

The breakdown of most relationships happens because we are applying systemic thinking to relational spaces.

You have a relationship with food, a relationship with your body.

You have a relationship with a goal.

And it's not black or white, success or failure, all or nothing.

If you want to have a healthy relationship, it's never over.

You never say, I went on a date with my partner, so now that's done, you know, brush your hands, like took care of that.

My life, it's this constant, evolving, working at it, changing, investing in it, shifting, flexible, nuanced thing.

That's what we want to have with goals.

Also is not to be so rigid and apply this systemic, all or nothing mindset.

It's more of a relationship that has boundaries that are flexible but firm, that protect you and that move and bend and flex.

I also love that what you just described is my struggle with the middle because it is messy and it is flex and it is gray area and all that stuff.

You are hitting the nail net.

But I do want to get into.

Your story of your messy middle.

I have so many.

I would love to share the story that is in the first chapter of my book.

It is the story of a trip my husband and I took to the financial advisor.

I had prepared all of these reports and given her all of our information.

It took a couple of hours to prepare and we trust her, have a really great relationship with her.

Like our annual meeting, we sit down and I remember the chairs, what I was wearing, the sound of the air conditioner in the office.

She had all these papers and said, I looked at everything and you're actually really organized with your money.

You're not overspending, you don't have debt, you're doing a great job.

There's just one problem if you want to achieve the goals that you've set for college for three kids, these retirement goals, living where we live, et cetera, et cetera.

And she leaned forward and she said, you're not making enough money.

Oof.

I don't remember anything in the whole rest of the conversation.

Felt like all the air left the room.

Here's the reason why.

My husband works in education and he is in his lane.

It is what he is meant to do.

He's vested, staying there, not going anywhere, and the only way he can make more money is to get older.

I was at the top of the mountain in my career path at that time.

Publicly being praised and getting a lot of recognition and well known and celebrated and all of that.

I wasn't making enough money.

I think the reason I'll call that the start of the messy medal, because what it led to was that I had to get really honest about where I really was, and I had to own it in a way that I knew would upset and impact thousands of people.

It was probably, I would say, I'm just on the other side of it, and it's been almost seven years.

It comes up now probably every six months.

But at the beginning of that transitional season, it was many times a day where things were coming up.

I had to really get quiet and reconnect with my intuition, with what I knew to be true, with choices that were best based on my priorities, not on what everyone else would say or think or believe.

I knew I would be misunderstood.

I knew I would be judged negatively and harshly.

I knew I could control absolutely none of that.

Yeah.

And I had to get really, in that season, very deeply focused on the things I could control.

And so that is actually what led to the creation of a new business, but also the creation of my first book, working half the amount of hours and earning a lot more.

All of it happened in ways I wasn't expecting and I never could have orchestrated.

The only way for me to get there was to stay in the discomfort when I wanted to run, be done with it, when I didn't want to feel all the things I was feeling.

That was really what it asked of me, to stay in it.

Okay, I have so many questions.

I want to go back to just.

That beginning of you were so prepared.

You were doing all the things that you were supposed to be doing.

I think that's something that a lot of people can relate to right now.

But I'm doing what I'm supposed to, and I'm still not meeting expectations.

I could have decided I'm going to lower the goal.

You know, that was part of the conversation.

You don't have to pay for all three of your kids college.

It's really expensive to go to college.

You can work longer and you don't have to retire at that age.

But there was something in me, and I think part of it is this mom instinct that wells up in you where it's, I will knock down a brick wall.

I do know there's this energy that is beyond human when it comes to standing up for something or providing for your kids, where you are just like, no one will get in my way.

I refused to lower the goal.

There was just something in me where I just said no.

I'm so grateful that I had that.

Whatever that was that caused me to draw the line in the sand and say no.

I'm going to choose these commitments, these values of mine, these priorities, and I'm going to figure it out.

It took many months before the how showed up.

The decision had been made.

There was a commitment made right then that I would not lower the goal.

I would actually figure this out.

That's critical, I think, in that moment, because I think there's part of me that wanted to just be like, this is not my responsibility.

And part of it's that I've been thinking about this word a lot.

I think as you're talking, I'm like, oh, my gosh, she's so brave.

And I wonder if you would agree with that statement.

I felt so scared.

Yeah, maybe that is being brave.

I don't know.

I don't.

This is a conversation I'm having with my son right now because he's going through a lot of being afraid of many things.

He's five.

I think his imagination is getting a hold of him and what I keep having to say to him.

And every time I say it, I'm like, man, I think this might be for me too, is, yes, you can be scared, but it's a signal.

You need to either stop or be brave.

You need to pick one or the other.

I am starting to see in ways that maybe I never gave myself credit for of like, maybe I brave.

And, baby, fear is a requirement of bravery, too.

Maybe you can't be brave if you don't also have the.

It's like in Inside out to the Joy character, where you can't have joy without both the sadness and the happiness.

You have to have both.

That's why her hair is the different color.

Right?

And maybe that's true of Courage or Bravery also, because you have to have both.

This is a fun story.

My daughter's in college, and there was a professor who was above everyone's head.

She said, mom, no one was asking any questions or saying, we don't know what you're talking about, or we need you to slow down.

Finally, one day she raised her hand and said, I'm confused.

I need you to back up and slow down.

She kindly said, hey, we're not following you on behalf of the whole class.

And everyone then started chiming in.

And he said, oh, your name is Avery.

And she said, yeah.

And he said, I'm going to call you from now on.

I'm going to call you Bravery.

Thank you for stopping me and asking that question.

I love that.

I used to work in higher education.

I love those moments where that is a true moment of growth for her and something she could remember the rest of her life.

Another thing I struggle with.

So I'm going to ask about it.

I am in a similar place.

I am chronically ill, and it has completely changed my life.

That is my inciting incident.

But it does mean that I am required now to work differently than I did before.

And even though I, quote, unquote, have an excuse, I still really struggle with the idea of the answers not working more.

And so I'm wondering how you navigated this, because there's a lot of society's messages there, right?

So, like, you work more, you do things this way in order to be successful.

I'll be honest, right now, I'm in a place where I've been really trying to not do that, and I'm not getting to the quote, unquote, success yet gonna happen.

I've told my husband, we're gonna pay off this house with my income.

It's gonna happen.

I know it is.

But those moments of doubt, I'm just curious about what was going on with you.

What kept you going?

How did you drown those messages out?

It's interesting how our bodies will force the lessons upon us that we most need to learn.

If we don't learn them, I don't think it's a punishment.

But it's interesting how your body is forcing you to be the sun in the solar system and to be the center of decision making.

You have to prioritize your health, your body first.

And there's something there that brings up, particularly for women, feelings of worthiness, feelings of value, feelings of.

Is that even okay?

Yes.

You know, here's the interesting thing.

That's also the thing that attracts the movement of money toward you is a feeling of value and worthiness.

Most people believe that you work hard, then you get money, and then you feel whatever it is that you want to feel.

Successful, safe, secure.

What do they think the money will give them?

I think, admiration.

Right.

Other people seeing you and that you're doing the.

What you're supposed to do, Security, respect.

And even just a sense of value, purpose.

Right.

That's the equation we've been taught.

Work hard, make money, then you'll feel these things.

I'm going to offer the equation.

Find the feeling first.

Live in the feeling of enoughness, of choosing you first, of value, of knowing your worth.

Then you will receive inspired ideas.

When you are in that kind of energy, that sort of expectant believing you're worth it, knowing your value, energy, you will receive inspired ideas.

Then you can do the work to see them out.

It's not that there's no work involved, which then give.

Then money just moves toward that.

Money's just a sideshow.

But we're messing up is that we think the work comes first.

But if you can first align the feelings of value.

I just had a conversation with someone I knew and hadn't spoken to 10 years in a different professional realm.

She had gotten on my website and she said, so people pay you that much for this month?

I said, they do.

And then she asked me how many?

And I could hear the calculator in her mind adding up numbers.

And I said, what's really great?

To earn that amount of money, do you want to know what's even better?

And she said, what?

And I said, it's knowing that I'm worth it.

Not knowing it logically, but knowing it in my core.

When you want to earn more, focus on growing.

Grow your roots.

Do the deeper healing.

Work the coach, take the course, grow.

Invest in growing you.

The money will come, but it's not the focus, it's not the reason, but it's also an intention.

It's not like I'm doing the work without wanting to earn the money.

But there's something deeper there where you just can't outwork your thought habits.

You can't outwork this deeper work that needs to be done.

No amount of hard work is going to get you through that.

And you can work your way to more money, but you also are probably going to end up sick, not well emotionally, if you're hating what you're doing as well.

And I, I really appreciate that you specified you're just coming out of it after seven years.

Because I think when people hear these concepts, they're like, well, it didn't work.

And it's been three months.

As someone who's two years into my journey of doing that inner work, my body made me.

But I'm still getting to the point where I made a TikTok the other day about doing the inner work and I'm exploring more spiritual ways which I never explored before.

But it's, it's starting to resonate with me, especially in human design and specific parts of my chart.

And everything keeps telling me you're supposed to share your story.

Your abundance in life will come from your self love.

And you're meant to shout it to the rooftops and that is what will bring things to you.

I'm still really working on this idea that is even possible, that is true for me.

And I recognize that it's going to take time for me to believe it.

I believe it in parts.

But to truly embody it, that's taking me time.

You say these things and like, oh, it's allowed to take me time.

It's supposed to take me time.

And if you want to speed up the process, the actual requirement is falling in love with the journey.

The tiny boring millimeter steps that no one is seeing or paying attention to.

Just the daily I checked the things off my list and celebrating and finding joy in all of that is the fastest way to move you through that growth.

And yet sometimes it just feels like I just want to be there.

I want it to be over.

But if you are in a transition, do not rush through it because you need what it has for you in the next season.

If you rush, you will miss it.

You will return and relearn until you get it.

Just take your time and give yourself the space to feel all the feelings because you're.

You're backtracking to catch up to where you are now.

Just stay in this in between.

And then I double dare you to mess it up and to just do it wrong or to do it weird or to land funny, or to fall over and then to find joy in that too.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for sharing your story.

You've given a lot of advice, but do you have a piece of advice that really helped you or a little nugget of advice that people can think about in their day to day Eliminate.

Guilt from investing in yourself Guilt is a feeling we can choose, but we feel guilt when we're doing something harmful to others or that we should not be doing because it might cruel or mean.

Investing in yourself is not bringing harm.

It is not cruel.

It is the most loving thing you can do for the people you love around you and eliminate guilt from that equation.

Just say I'm choosing not to feel guilty about investing this time and going to yoga or investing in this money therapy or in book that's going to help me move to the next level.

Let's just eliminate guilt.

Let's just say that has no place here because it's a misguided feeling.

I love that one of the things that I say to myself is stop shoulding all over yourself.

And so I feel like that really aligns with what I've been working on too.

So thank you so much for joining me.

Amy.

Where can people find you?

We'll put links to everything in the show notes, but where can people find you and work with you?

I'd really love for you to follow me on Instagram amykemp Inc.

I also would love to invite you into the front door of my work, which is my book.

I think this book is the perfect way for you to make a very small investment in yourself and gain a lot in return.

You can find the book anywhere you get books, Amazon, Barnes and Noble or your local bookstore.

You can request that they order it for you.

You also can listen on audible if you're a listener instead of a reader.

It's my voice.

This book was designed for you.

It really has the reader in mind in terms of women who want more money, more income, more influence, more impact.

But you just can't work more.

Working harder is no longer the answer.

Just come in the front door and engage with this with me.

Awesome.

Well, thank you so much for joining me and sharing the middle with me today.

Thank you.