WBE Feature – Women’s Month & Stress Awareness: Mental Fitness

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios, it’s time for Women In Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:27] Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Women In Motion, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the show we have Amy Yip. She is a Somatic Life Transformation Founder and a Mental Fitness Coach with Amy Yip Coaching. Welcome, Amy.

Amy Yip: [00:00:52] Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:53] I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about your practice. How are you serving folks?

Amy Yip: [00:00:58] Yeah. So, I work with women to strengthen their mental fitness, heal intergenerational wounds, and have agency to let go of all the shoulds so they can be the authors of their own life story. And I work with organizations to accelerate the upward movement under represented groups, so women, people of color, really, helping them to learn things like how do you say no, how do you set boundaries, how do you ask for what you want, how do you take space at the table.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:30] So, what’s your back story? How did you get into this line of work?

Amy Yip: [00:01:34] So, how much time do we have? So, it all started, I spent 16 years in corporate America, so I was leading global teams and organizations like Google, Clorox, Booz Allen. And when I started at Google, I had always said I have this dream. I want to go travel. I want to go explore the world and figure out what I want to do for the rest of my life. Because the thing that I was doing, as much as I loved it, it wasn’t it. I wanted to serve people. I just didn’t know what exactly that was.

Amy Yip: [00:02:07] The thing is, during my time at Google, I hit my mid-30s. And in your mid-30s as a woman, a lot of people have opinions about what you should do next. So, for one, my career at Google was going really well. Everyone said “You should just stay. Why would you leave? What are you thinking?” I got a husband during that time. And when you have a partner, things change also. And the biggest shit of all was that everybody was telling me, “You are hitting that age and you need to settle down and have babies. What are you thinking about going off traveling the world? You really need to settle down.”

Amy Yip: [00:02:46] And so, my husband and I, we really wanted to go explore the world and do this thing before settling and starting a family. So, we had our embryos frozen. A year later, we found out the facility where our embryos were stored lost power. And the tank that our embryos were in lost temperature control and they didn’t know the viability anymore. So, basically, they were like, “Unless you plan on using it, we can’t tell you if your embryos are good anymore.”

Amy Yip: [00:03:18] And that was my rock bottom point because we tried again, you know, it just didn’t work out. And I felt like I was stuck and I had to make these decisions. You know, What do I do next in my life? Do I go off and pursue my dreams? Do I stay here, listen to what everyone’s telling me I should be doing? And that was the start of my self-help journey.

Amy Yip: [00:03:40] And I first started with reading books because, honestly, there was a bit of shame attached to it. Because on the outside everything looked great. I’m working at this wonderful company. I’ve got this great husband, supportive friends and family. But on the inside, things didn’t feel great. So, I figured, you know what? I’m smart enough. I’ll just figure this out on my own and nobody has to know. Reading books, eight months still didn’t get the answer I wanted of, you know, Do I have babies or do I go pursue my dreams?

Amy Yip: [00:04:08] I then went to Peru. A friend told me about ayahuasca. It’s supposed to give you clarity on life. I was like, “That’s what I need, clarity.” I went to Peru, five day ayahuasca ceremony to try to gain that clarity. And I gained a lot of clarity about life, like the power of vulnerability and asking for help. But I didn’t get the answer. Do I settle down, have babies, or do I pursue my dream?

Amy Yip: [00:04:33] And it wasn’t until I returned back to the U.S., a coworker told me about coaching. I had no idea what coaching was at the time. And I was honestly skeptical, like how could somebody who doesn’t know me help me figure out the answers to my life? But I was very desperate, so I hired a coach. And it was the most amazing thing because she helped me to peel back the layers of my onion. I call those the shoulds, all the shoulds of what the world is telling you who you should or shouldn’t be, what you should or shouldn’t do, what should or shouldn’t matter in your life. And she helped me peel all of that back so that I could get to the core of what really mattered to Amy.

Amy Yip: [00:05:11] And I realized two big things. One is I will regret it if I don’t pursue my dreams. I’ll always regret it. And honestly, you know, there’s nothing that I’m really in control of. Even if I stay, I’m not in control of whether or not I can have kids. It’s just not something that I control. But I can control if I pursue my dreams, so I decided I’m going to leave my job and I’m going to go travel.

Amy Yip: [00:05:36] And the second thing that I made the decision of was it sucked to be stuck and I want to help other people. I want to help people to have that self-confidence, to have the courage, and to live life aligned to what truly matters to them and not what the world is telling them.

Amy Yip: [00:05:53] So, I went back, got my coaching certification. And then, in January of 2020, my husband and I sold everything. I left my job at Google. And we took off to Ghana to volunteer at a breast cancer nonprofit. And the plan was to travel after. As you probably remember, the little thing called COVID came along in 2020, we ended up stuck in Ghana for seven months. But it was the best thing that could have happened for me because it gave me the time to focus on building my practice and my business. I started coaching more people, doing group programs, and things just kind of blossomed from there. But that was really how my business started growing.

Amy Yip: [00:06:35] And then, when the borders opened in Ghana, we started living, working nomadically. So, I was continuing my coaching practice. We were doing a little bit of traveling. And the beautiful thing is I ended up getting pregnant at age 40 overseas, naturally, and that’s what brought me back. And so, there’s this kind of interesting thing of the fear of not being able to have a child was what held me back. And what brought me back was my little kiddo. And he’s just over two years old now. So, that’s why I do what I do and how I got into it.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:13] Now, can you talk about that point of inflection? You were struggling and then you were trying to solve it on your own through reading. And then, you kind of, I guess, accidentally stumbled upon or the universe made appear a coach that you resonated with. Can you talk about during that point of inflection, was therapy ever in the mix there? And then, kind of in a macro level, how does a person decide if coaching is a better fit for where I’m at versus therapy?

Amy Yip: [00:07:48] That’s a great question because I get that all the time. And I considered therapy and I talked to therapists and coaches. And what I learned was the difference between therapy and coaching is, therapy helps you move through past pains and things of the past, whereas coaching is very forward looking and goal oriented.

Amy Yip: [00:08:13] So, the analogy that I often use is riding a bike. If you’re in therapy, a therapist will talk to you about a bike until you’re comfortable talking about it, maybe showing you a photo until you’re comfortable looking at it, and maybe eventually bringing a bike into the room until you’re comfortable with it in the room, touching it, and eventually sitting on it.

Amy Yip: [00:08:31] Whereas, a coach talks to you about what are your goals with the bike, where are you trying to head, and maybe you’re not totally clear. They put you on a bike, you head off in a direction maybe you think you’re going. The coach will take photos and videos and watch how you’re biking, and you come back and they’ll show you. So, it’s almost like mirroring and reflecting back and showing you what they notice. Maybe they’ll see that you’re carrying a backpack that’s holding you back. And we might dig into the backpack and pull some of the things out that you don’t need anymore that’s holding you back from going there. We’ll share your learnings, put you back on the bike and go off again. But it’s very much goal oriented.

Amy Yip: [00:09:07] You can also think about a coach almost like a sports coach, right? They see your strengths, your opportunities, and they can mirror that back and tell you about it and help you work on that to get to a goal or an objective.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:21] Now, in your corporate world, did you ever have a coach there? I’m sure you had mentors and there was people that were trying to help you be a better you in the corporate sense? Was the coaching part of that experience?

Amy Yip: [00:09:33] I never had a coach. So, when my coworker told me about coaching, it was the first time I’d ever heard of coaching. No idea what it was. And I do a lot of research on, well, what exactly is this coaching thing? Because I’ve had sponsors, I’ve had mentors, but I’ve never had a coach. And so, that was my first experience with coaching.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:55] And then, when you went through it, you just kind of got lucky that it was a right fit, that first coach worked out?

Amy Yip: [00:10:02] So, this is what I always tell people, all coaches has an initial, every coach calls it something different, but it’s a chemistry call or a discovery call. And it really is like a matchmaking session. You meet with them 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour, and you see if you’re a good fit. And I tell people all the time, don’t just meet with me, meet with multiple coaches. It’s almost like when you’re going speed dating, figure out if you’re a good fit.

Amy Yip: [00:10:33] Because coaching sessions that really help you get somewhere, you need to be willing to be vulnerable, to be open, to share, which means you need to feel safe with the coach. And if you don’t feel that connection with the coach, that’s not the right coach for you. And you also have to ask, make sure that the coach is willing to tell you the same thing of, “Hey, I don’t think we’re a good fit, but here are these other coaches that I could recommend to you.”

Lee Kantor: [00:10:56] So, is it something that if you were to give advice to a person who’s never done coaching before, like you were in that same boat there, you can tell in a short period of time should you just trust your gut when it comes to this? Or is there certain things that would have been red flags for you, or certain things that were green flags like, “Okay. This has a chance of working”?

Amy Yip: [00:11:19] I think, one is definitely listening to your intuition. And the second is there are certain things you want to look for in a coach. So, one, are they certified? Have they done the training? Because unfortunately with coaching, anybody could put up a sign and say I’m a coach and they’ve never actually done the formal training. There are certain schools that are fabulous out there. Have they done the training? Are they ICF certified? The other thing is asking the coach why they became a coach is a good question to know. And the third is asking the coach whether or not they are working with a coach and their history of working with a coach, and also what self-work they’re doing themselves because the work continues.

Amy Yip: [00:12:05] And as a coach, I continue to do my own work. I continue to work with coaches myself. And I have seen therapists, like when I needed a therapist, I saw a therapist. When I needed a coach, I saw a coach. But it’s are they continuing to grow and develop themselves?

Lee Kantor: [00:12:22] Now, have you developed a sweet spot for you in terms of, okay, I’ve identified my superpower and my ideal fit client that I can make the most difference in their lives?

Amy Yip: [00:12:32] Yeah. I work a lot with ambitious women who have been living life according to the shoulds of the world, carry a lot of guilt, and aren’t pursuing the thing that they want to pursue. They might not even be clear what that is, but they know that something is off, and that’s been my real sweet spot in really helping them to build the self-confidence to pursue that thing.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:58] So, what does an early call with you look like? How do you kind of dig in there? And, again, I’m trying to paint a picture for the person who’s on the fence about this. It sounds like you, early on there was a an itch you were trying to scratch, you weren’t sure, and you were kind of feeling around. And then, you had somebody that was the right Sherpa to help you kind of connect some dots and then really transformed your life. And I want the listener to really see some symptoms that maybe they’re having that a coach is the right move for them to make to kind of create that escape velocity into a new path.

Amy Yip: [00:13:38] Yeah. So, the initial call with me, the chemistry call, we talk through what coaching is and isn’t, just because there are people that come with like, “I’m not sure exactly what coaching is,” so I talk through what is coaching, what is it not. For example, coaching is not therapy. It is not advice giving. People come and think that I’m just going to give them advice. And it’s not that.

Amy Yip: [00:14:03] Because, for example, a lot of people say they want to get healthy. And if I were to ask you, Do you know what it takes to get healthy? Everybody knows. You sleep eight hours, drink water, eat healthy, get movement. And so, what gets in people’s way? It’s not lack of advice or knowledge. It is figuring out what are the specific obstacles that are in your way that hold you back from where you’re trying to go. And so, coaching is very much around that, what are your specific obstacles and how do I partner with you to navigate that versus me just telling you what to do.

Amy Yip: [00:14:34] So, in the initial chemistry call, we talked through what coaching is and isn’t. And a lot of that session is really understanding where are you today, where do you think you’re trying to go, what are you hoping for out of coaching, and understanding the barriers to get there. And then, I share what it’s like to work with me and we decide are we a good fit.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:56] So, there’s a lot more questions than answers, right? you’re trying to help them uncover the path.

Amy Yip: [00:15:04] Yeah. And with all of coaching, it’s all about questions. It really is. Because all of us have the answers within us. And the coach is more like a mirror. I hold up the mirror and you get to see things that you might not have seen or maybe things you don’t want to look at or you haven’t noticed. And I don’t give you the answer. I ask questions that dig really deep to help you get those answers.

Amy Yip: [00:15:31] The other piece that’s a little different is I’m trained in Somatics, which is part of my work. And Somatics is really around using the body and the wisdom of the body to help drive change. For example, one of my clients really wants to say no. And if you think about it, if you already know you want to say no, all of us know how to say this two letter word, why is it so hard? And it is because change and transformation happens in the body.

Amy Yip: [00:15:59] And so, with Somatics, the idea is the tissue has a lot of knowledge, muscles have a lot of memory. They remember things. It’s like riding a bike, driving a car. The first time you did it, you might have fumbled. By the tenth, hundredth, thousandth time, what happens? Your body remembers how to do it. You don’t even have to think about it.

Amy Yip: [00:16:18] So, for example, the client who wants to say no, she’s been practicing saying yes her whole life. So, her body just remembers how to do that. And when she even thinks about saying no, it’s like that first time riding on a bike, she’s uncomfortable, she fumbles. And oftentimes we even go into this fight, flight, freeze, where your heart tightens, your throat tightens, you get sweaty, it gets uncomfortable. And to get out of that discomfort, what do we do? We say yes, because that is the automatic thing to ease that fight, flight, freeze.

Amy Yip: [00:16:51] And so, with Somatics, instead of just telling her go say no, it’s helping her body to practice saying no, getting her accustomed to that discomfort of saying no, and teaching the body something different. It’s like teaching the body to ride a different bicycle.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:10] So, can you share some techniques when it comes to using their body? Is it breathing? Are you physically moving around? How does it kind of work in real life?

Amy Yip: [00:17:22] It depends on what you’re working on. So, for example, with the no, the first step is just awareness. What is my body doing when I’m even thinking about saying no? Most people don’t even notice that right when they’re even thinking about saying no, their body goes huh and their heart starts beating and their throat starts choking up. So, the first step is always awareness. What is my physical body doing in response to this thing?

Amy Yip: [00:17:47] Some people, that happens with when they want to ask for what they want. And this happens with a lot of women in particular, because many women struggle with saying no and asking for what they want. And if they just pause to take notice of what’s my body doing when I’m even thinking about doing that, they’ll start feeling those sensations. And so, the first step for anything is just awareness of how do I do that. It’s like if you were playing a sport and you had a bad technique, your coach will help you point it out. And so, the first step is becoming aware that, “Oh. I’ve got this technique that isn’t working.”

Lee Kantor: [00:18:23] And then, the thing is that you’ve been doing it on autopilot for so long, you’re not even noticing kind of the nuance to what you are doing.

Amy Yip: [00:18:32] Exactly. And so, the first step with the coaching is let’s become aware of what we’re doing. And then, the second step after that is can I sit with the discomfort. Because my automatic response right now is to get out of that discomfort, so can I learn to sit with it?

Lee Kantor: [00:18:48] And then, they’re sitting with it, is that kind of a breathing technique or is that just becoming aware that, “Okay. I’m feeling discomfort now”?

Amy Yip: [00:18:57] It is just the noticing of the sensations without putting meaning to it. Have you heard about how a lot of people are doing cold plunges?

Lee Kantor: [00:19:07] Yeah.

Amy Yip: [00:19:08] So, it’s the same thing. Like the first time you do it, it’s very uncomfortable. But the more you do it, you get accustomed to it. But it’s can you sit with that discomfort of that cold water or the ice? So, it’s the same thing with this. It’s, “Oh. My heart is racing. Oh. My throat’s choking,” and just paying attention to that without saying that’s bad.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:28] But there’s also the discomfort of the moment before you do it of how do I really want to do this? Oh, this is going to be freezing cold. And like all of those kind of imaginations of what it’s like prior to it actually occurring.

Amy Yip: [00:19:42] Yes. And so, the whole idea is to get out of your head, which is why I’m a mental fitness coach. It’s your head will always create stories. Emotions, sensations in the body are very informative, and then the head will create stories. It’s like if I’m about to go on a stage to speak in front of a hundred people, my heart rate might start going, I might start sweating. And those are sensations, and that’s an emotion. And then, my head will create a story about it, “Oh, my gosh. I’m going to go on stage and people are going to laugh and I’m going to fall on my face and I’m going to forget things.” And then, you start spiraling in that headspace. So, the whole idea is, how do I get out of the head space into just feeling those sensations without creating the stories?

Lee Kantor: [00:20:25] And so, you’re just supposed to be kind of neutral and just experience them and be aware of them without kind of making, like you said, a story or a judgment about them.

Amy Yip: [00:20:37] Yes. Exactly that.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:39] And then, once you’ve done that, then you’re just executing that whatever it is you were trying to do, whether it’s saying no or it’s getting on the stage.

Amy Yip: [00:20:49] So, once you start doing that, so that takes time. After time —

Lee Kantor: [00:20:55] Well, it sounds very easy. We just said it in, like, a few seconds.

[00:21:01] I know. Over time, eventually, you have higher tolerance for it. You don’t notice it anymore. It’s just a backdrop. And as we’re doing that, we’re also practicing something. So, for example, saying no. Some of my clients, I put them on a no diet. And what that is, is you decide how long, so it might be two weeks, for the next two weeks your job is to say no to every request. And you’re going to tell your closest friends, family, coworkers, “Hey, when you ask me for something, my automatic response is going to be saying no, because I’m trying to practice this new skill. And if you catch me saying yes, call me out on it.” And friends, family, coworkers, people just love calling you out on things so they’ll call you out on it. And it is about that practice. So, you’re building a practice in a safe way, while also building the awareness and the tolerance of the discomfort.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:02] Now, you mentioned earlier that when you got into coaching, a certification was important for you. And for somebody thinking about hiring a coach to make sure that they’ve done the work, why was it important for you to join WBEC-West and to become part of that community?

Amy Yip: [00:22:20] A couple of reasons. One is just the learning. There’s so many opportunities to learn from others around their work and what they’re doing. There’s just so many fascinating people out. And that goes to my second, which is the network and the connections. I’ve met so many amazing women doing amazing things. And it’s very inspiring to be connected to that. I attended the WBENC Conference recently and there’s this energy to be around with these amazing women. So, the network, the community, the connections and the learning.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:03] Now, what do you need more of in your business? How can we help you?

Amy Yip: [00:23:07] What do I need more of? I think it’s just any referrals or things. I’m expanding my work. I’ve started doing a lot of work with organizations because I want to reach more people. So, I’ve been bringing workshops and year long training programs to organizations to help them accelerate their underrepresented groups into leadership. And so, that’s my passion. I really want to share this work with more people, and that’s the way that I’m heading into doing it.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:42] So, if somebody wants to connect with you and learn more, what is the website?

Amy Yip: [00:23:46] It is amyyipcoaching.com, so it’s A-M-Y-Y-I-P-coaching-.com.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:53] Well, Amy, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Amy Yip: [00:23:58] Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:59] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Women In Motion.