This is the transcript of an interview hosted on Ruth’s Feel Better. Live Free. podcast.
Ruth Soukup: Have you ever had one of those moments where you think to yourself, is this really all there is? Maybe you finally achieve a big goal and instead of feeling satisfied, you feel a little empty inside. Or maybe you find yourself at a major crossroad in life, a career shift, a divorce, your kids growing up and moving out of the house.
And suddenly you find yourself feeling a little bit lost, not really knowing who you are anymore or who you want to be. So how do you figure out your next step? That’s exactly what we’re diving into in this episode with today’s podcast guest, Amira Alvarez. She’s the host of the Unstoppable Woman podcast and a coach and mentor to ambitious women.
Who’s learned the hard way, what it takes to create an exquisite life that you love. And I think that what she has to share today is so relevant to every woman In this midlife phase of life, especially if you find yourself in the midst of a transition, which is why I can’t wait for you to dig in to this fascinating interview.
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All about what it means to actually tap into the power of your intuition and figure out what you really want from your life. It’s an important topic and definitely a little different from the topics we normally cover on this podcast, but still so important when it comes to creating a life you love. So without further ado, I am so excited to be able to introduce you to today’s interview guest, Amira Alvarez.
Amira, thank you so much for being here today. I’m so excited to talk to you. I am so excited to be here too. So I’m excited for the questions, but also for the conversation and the connection. Yay, I love it. So this is gonna be a fun topic, but why don’t we just start with like a little bit of background?
Tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, what you do and how you got to be doing what you are now.
Amira Alvarez: Absolutely. So, you know, there’s always the question of where do you want to start? But I think the short story of my business and how I scaled it and grew it and then changed it is a good place to start.
So I like many women decided I’m going to start my own business. It’s going to be great. It’s going to be amazing. And you know, I did the thing I started which is oftentimes the hardest decision we can make and I like to share my numbers around this because I think it pulls back the curtain on what it takes and a little bit of transparency on that is, is really important because we oftentimes don’t talk about financial things where we throw that under the rug or imagine what it’s like for other people.
So my first year in business, I made 30k. I was proud of myself, but that was not the income that I wanted to be generating in my business. And so then the second year in business, I worked my patootie off and I tripled my income, which I was also very proud of. So I got it to $90K. But there was that.
Mythical figure number that I hadn’t crossed yet and I didn’t get there. And then my third year in business also did not stop the working my patootie off style of business. And I got to $138,000, which is a $50k jump. And I was also proud of myself. And yet having those moments of like, this is not sustainable.
I can’t be doing work like this. You know, there was a big wake up moment where my husband at the time called up and was like, Hey, dinner’s ready. And I was like, I’ll be right down. And it was like an hour later when, like, he called up yet again and said, I’m starting and great guy, no shame, no guilt, but like that wasn’t how I wanted to run my business.
Ruth: And can I stop you right there? Because this is like, I love talking about business stuff. This is not the podcast where we normally talk about business, which I think it’s awesome. It’s awesome that we’re talking about this, but for those of you who don’t own a business context here, $138 K like sounds like…
A lot of money. Right? But it does not account for like, that’s not take home pay, right? So when you say like that’s top line, that is not bottom line. And that is a lot of work. Like I, even as you’re saying this, I, as a business owner, I’m just like, oh, I know how that like, like blood, sweat and tears that goes into that money.
And then you say the number and people are like, well, you’re doing great. And you’re like, but this is not even paying my bills right now, right? So like just to give that context right there, sorry, sorry to interrupt you.
Amira: No. A hundred percent. And the connection to the, I know you talk a lot about like the weight and the health and how to feel good physically in your body. Well, all through that time, because running your business, your own business, I mean, life is stressful. Let’s just say life is stressful, but running your own business, paying your own bills, being responsible and having to own that. And like you said, top line is not bottom line.
That was really stressful and the weight incrementally increased a little bit at a time because eating through all meals, like I would work. Sorry, I said the wrong thing there. I was working through all meals. I wasn’t stopping. I had all this stress that was causing obviously hormonal shifts in my body.
And I, in that little moment of, in my business was like, I had to figure out a different way of doing business. And this was round one, there’s around two of this, but round one was, I had to figure out a different way of doing business. I studied successful people and I got mentorship and I really went for it.
I had a new goal. I was going to make a million dollars again. Sounds like a lot of money and it is okay. But the bottom line was not nearly as grandiose as the top line. And I, that fourth year in business, I said, I want to make a million dollars. How do I do that? I hired a mentor, I studied and I worked, I had that one main toolkit, which was willpower, and I was just going to go for it and I five times-ed my income in that year.
So something did work, right? I went from $138k to $700K. I didn’t reach the million in that year. Subsequently, you know, the business has crossed seven figures, multiple seven figures, all of that, which sounds great. And it was, there was so much of like, I did the thing. It felt great. It was just so exciting.
But then, you know, years into it, you know, 10 years into it, I was like, this is no longer how I want to run my business. This is no longer how I want to do business. And I had to do a rethink of. What kind? I’m now 53. So I know you talk about hormones a lot. My hormones have shifted dramatically at 53 compared to where I was at 40, 44, 48 even.
And I look and say, you know, I no longer want to do the go hard. Like will power it through kind of business. I want to build my business from a place of wholeness. And what does that look like? And I had to really reconceive what I wanted and who I wanted to be. And yet I didn’t want to let go of my ambition.
I don’t believe you have to, I think it just, it finds a different form. So that’s my story is, you know, Revolution number one was okay. I just have to get out of my own way and do this thing. And then that was very exciting. And then revolution number two was like, Oh, well, how do I do this differently? And in between the two, there was a weight loss journey that I’m happy to share about if you want to talk about that.
RUth: Well, I’m more interested in like. Because like talking about this shift, right? Like we talk all the time about weight loss on this podcast. So nobody’s going to miss a week that we talk about some like bigger issues. Cause I, there’s so much that you’re even saying, just in, in talking about this, that I really do so much as a business owner of just that like sheer grit, right?
Like, and I think as women, we do this in all areas of our life. Like I’m just going to power through. I’m just going to power through, whether it’s with parenting or. Or with having a business or with having a job that you’re just going to do, and you’re going to work your butt off and try to please your boss or whatever it is, right?
Like there’s all these different situations and we just like continually wear ourselves thin or think we’re going for a goal. And then all of a sudden, we get there and we’re like, what is this? And I went through the same thing, right. In my business, which is eventually what led to my health journey, which is now why I’m doing what I am doing now and why I’m so passionate about it.
But I think that’s kind of the thing, for women we try to power ourselves through so much without realizing what the consequences of that are on the rest of our life. And that sounds like that’s kind of the journey that you’ve been on a little bit as well.
Amria: A hundred percent. So I think one of the things that we’ve learned. Conditioned in our society. Two things. One, in school, there are containers that other people set. This is how you succeed. This is the framework. You have to study for this test. You have to write the essay like this. You have to show up like this.
This is how you get the good marks and the attagirl, right? And the good grades. And that’s how you get success. That’s someone else’s structure, and we have to fit into it. And then there is the structure that society. Holds up or the model that society holds up about how to do business.
And it’s a very, I didn’t really get this in the beginning when I started hearing people talk about that’s a very masculine way of doing business. I was like, no, it’s not who I’m ambitious. I’m driven. This feels good to me. Like I love this. And sure enough it was invigorating until it wasn’t.
Right. We talked a little bit about sort of age and hormones, and I think there’s. A lot of truth to the fact that, you know, women don’t have as much testosterone as men, and yet we do our businesses. And like you’ve said, our lives in the same way that men have taught us, the culture has taught us to do business in life, which is very, in a very sort of structured, single focused way, like, Rid it out, grind it out.
And I never thought of myself as being really masculine or anything like that, until I took a step back and realized that I had completely sublimated the kind of flow and the ease and the spaciousness And allowing that comes from owning sort of a more fluid way of running your life and your business that doesn’t depend so much on willpower, but can depend on things like intuition and our direct knowing and our connection to the divine, whatever your spiritual connection is.
But to yourself as well. And like leaning in and trusting yourself. And I think when we do that we have access to so much depth of knowledge. And then that is what fuels our business and our journey, our lives. And it’s less of a depleting using up. Our testosterone and more of a rejuvenating, adding to our lives, enlivening way of being at least that’s how it’s been for me and what I teach in my work.
Ruth: So how did that change? How did that change things for you? Cause you kind of got to this point where you’re like, okay, I’m making the money. I’m doing the thing now. But this is not sustainable for me. So how did you make that shift?
Amira: So it’s really good question.
So the first thing I had to recognize was that I was telling myself a story like that. This was okay. Okay. Like, and then I had been doing that for a number of years. Like, this wasn’t like a couple of weeks. I had really bought my own story. And you know, and and I think that’s the case for a lot of really driven ambitious women.
Like they’re in, and it’s not that it’s all wrong or anything. Like I loved my ambition. I loved my drive. It was enlivening until it wasn’t. And I had this other little voice in my head that was like screaming for spaciousness, screaming for ease, screaming for less, you know, For me, it was less back to back meetings on my calendar.
For someone else, it might be less back to back, you know, taking care of the family on their calendar, right? Like, we all have our different responsibilities. And so I had to first listen to that that knowing in that voice, but I had the thing that I, a lot of really successful women have, which is, this is what has gotten me to this level of success.
How can they change? I think that my success is. A direct result of doing life in this way, when in fact, That might have been part of it, but you have no idea what else was supporting you and building your success. So I had to first recognize my story. And then I had to go back and realize what was driving me was a fear.
And. That wasn’t what I wanted to be driven by anymore. And I talk a lot now about building a business from a place of wholeness rather than from the things that we’re running from. And, you know, I had a core wound of being unlovable and I talk a lot about this. If you go to my homepage, you’ll see stuff on core wounds.
Like if you’re interested in that, but like my core wound was, I was unlovable, like. I could not get the love and attention that I wanted from my father, great guy, got a great relationship with him. Nothing, no trauma with capital T, right? It was just that I never got the love and attention that I so desired.
So, For me, building the uber successful business was a direct result of me trying to salve that wound. And I think we all have wounds like this that drive us and they are powerful because they actually get us to do things. In incredible ways, right? Because we’re we’re running as fast as we can from it, right?
Trying to fill that void, but at a certain point, it gets exhausting and we no longer want to run from we want to run towards. So I had to really flip it around and look at what my core desires were. And that’s that. That’s the flip side of the core wound is the core desire. And when I started to do that.
It became the one thing that unlocked it all for me. And that core desire, which was the lit up relationship, the soulmate relationship the fully seen, fully held, fully supported relationship fully loved relationship, right? All of that. And again, that might not be your thing, but that’s what it was for me.
When I unlocked that. And created that. That was the thing that unlocked everything else in my life. It was the fuel, just like the running from was the fuel before this then became a more positive kind of fuel for creating what I wanted in my life, in my business.
Ruth: So how long did it take you to make that shift?
Amira: A long time.
Ruth: Do you think it’s something that happens at a certain point in your life? Like, like a certain age? I don’t know how you see it, but like, I see this kind of like, Midlife phase of life, right?
That we’re in 40, especially like later forties, early fifties. It’s almost like, like everything changes, right? The hormones change the like focus changes. What, whether it’s like in your work life, in your. In your home life, your kids are older. Like all of this stuff is all of a sudden, like, I feel like I don’t even know who I am anymore.
I hear that a lot from women in this phase of life. And do you think that’s part of it? All of a sudden, you either are going to have to lean in and figure out who you are. At this point in your life and what you actually want, or you’re just going to Spin around in circles and be desperately unhappy.
Or is there something in between?
Amira: No I mean, I agree. I’m like 100 percent yes on that. So, so the reason I said it took years is because I think I didn’t listen to the whispers. Right. So I, you know, starting when I was around 48, maybe a few years earlier than that, I started to have physical response to the kind of grind and intensity that I was doing.
And even though I talked about making business easier and yes, I was making more money, Doing, doing business the way I was doing it. And that was true. And so therefore it was easier to make money. I still was addicted to the kind of work style that didn’t allow my body to re-nourish itself, rejuvenate.
And so I started to feel those effects. You know, in my late forties, but I didn’t listen. I absolutely didn’t listen. I thought it was the altitude when I lived in Denver. Right. I thought it was right. Like I came up with all sorts of things. I moved cities, you know, like I did all sorts of things.
And you know, ultimately I think that, you know, 2020 hindsight, and I know you talk a lot about hormones. I think that my hormones were definitely shifting and I, you know, About a year and a half to two years ago. Now. I just recognized that. Oh, this is what’s going on. And I cannot push through.
I could continue to do that. But it’s no longer sustainable or tolerable or fun for me to do it that way. And I want to do I want to do it differently. So, so my physical stamina. Was part of the impetus. And yet that was not enough until I unlocked my core desire. I will tell you that I was stubborn and obstinate and I was attached to my identity of being able to be super women and do it all and all of that.
So, so, you know, it took me personally. A long ish time to unpack that. Um, I think I could do it faster now having gone through. So, of course, like hindsight is always funny. I always think about that too. Like, you don’t even know how much time I’m saving you by just telling you the answer right now.
Ruth: Exactly. But so. Questions on here. Like, was there like a turning point for you where all this, like you all of a sudden, like had this epiphany of this is what I actually want. Like, was it, can you pinpoint one moment or was it a slow gradual shift of something’s not right?
And then it. It kind of opened up for you. Like, how did that look for you?
Amira: So I think it’s a yes and a yes. So I think, you know, there’s that small, quiet voice that you don’t listen to, or now I do, but like for many years, I wasn’t listening to like, this isn’t correct. Something’s off. No next initiative.
Gotta go hard. Let’s get that done. Right. And sort of addicted to this old paradigm of how to run my business. So. Hints along the way, then singular moment, and then an unpacking after that singular moment. And the singular moment for me was, you know, I had just done some traveling, put on an event I had been with a bunch of entrepreneurial people and it was super fun and they were like driven and like high and a lot of testosterone in the room.
A lot of vitality. Okay. And I was like, Oh, I love this. And yet. I was also talking to one of my best friends and she was like, if you could, you know, the magic wand question that we’re, we ask, she asked me that, which is like, we have magic wand, how would you do your business differently? And I just got super clear in an instant.
I was like in Sedona, looking at the hill, she had beautiful house, you know, and I was just surrounded by all this beauty. I was like in space. And I was like, I would have so much more space. I would have 10 clients paying the X amount of money. And I wouldn’t be building this business that I was building and loved.
I had a mastermind that had, you know, 40 people going to 50, 60, 70, 80, you know, and The women were getting who were part of that mastermind were getting a ton out of it, but I recognized that it was depleting me and I wanted a different kind of business. So there was that boom drop in clarity. I often talk about that as divine knowing, right?
Like if you’re open to hearing things you’ll get the download. And then it took me. A year of thinking through how to undo that. Now, big piece of that story was, I went on a meditation journey and I went very deep into meditation and having been someone who had tried meditation many times before and was like, that’s not for me.
I’m, my brain is overactive, but it’s. I’m going to fail in this regard and I should just not try, right? Like that was me. And even though everyone was saying meditation, so good for you. Like I was totally me and yet I had this experience where. Several years before I had heard Joe Dispenza on a podcast and I thought he sounded cool.
I picked up his book. I hated his book. I was like, Oh, he’s talking. I had all sorts of judgment. But it stayed on my, like, vision board, my, my mental vision board of like, I really would like to go to one of his retreats. I had stories about like, only unhealthy people go to retreats. Like I had all sorts of judgment.
I’m totally outing myself here. And But I got my business to a place where I could actually take a week off and go to one of his retreats. And that was my test for my business was like, okay, I’m going to take a week off fully unplugged. Like I’m at a fricking meditation retreat. I am not doing any work here, like no little check ins or anything.
And so I signed up for that having never done any of his meditations, crazy ass decision. And in the sort of month or two leading up to it, I decided I needed to. To learn a little bit about this and I started to meditate. And I had Type A approach, totally like throw yourself, like, that’s the bill of the plane while you fly it kind of thing, like, Oh, now I’m going to learn this and I’m going to master it before I go.
And it was like build the business out of fear, right? Like I talk about building your business from a place of wholeness. This was like, I’m going to do meditation out of fear. Like I don’t want to be shamed when I go to the retreat, but I’ve never meditated before. So now I’m going to, I’m going to use that as leverage.
Yeah. But you know, it got me here. So it’s, it all works. And I will tell you as one sort of overactive mind to another his meditations are great because one, he builds an intellectual model. So you understand why you’re doing it. And that really makes it much easier. And then he uses a combination of I think there’s a little bit of hypnosis in there.
There’s like, Music that gets you into, you know, a theta state and it quiets. There’s a lot of tools and resources within the meditation that help you be able to drop in. And I will tell you now, a couple of years into that journey, I can drop in a second, even without his stuff. If podcast, I could just like dive into the divine.
And that has been tremendous. And so that to close the loop on this story, and you can ask me whatever you want and go for it. I don’t want to go too long into that if you don’t want to. But like, through that, I got super, super clear about what I desired, right? I, my own practice. In sort of the laws of the universe and manifestation, things like that, I understood the power of desire.
And like, when you get super clear about what you desire, you give yourself a directive. And so I was doing that in concurrently with the meditation. So I was moving away from the core wound. I want to heal this. The thing I want is the relationship, but more than the relationship, I want to open my heart and be able to really be love.
I know that’s a little, maybe a little airy fairy, but like I wanted to be the transmission of love. Okay. And and I did that through some deep work and I manifested the man of my dreams and have created that relationship. And happy to share more about that. But that was the thing that unlocked everything for me because I could no longer, I wanted that more than I wanted my attachment to my old paradigm of work.
And so if I was going to be in this new relationship. I needed to create the space for it. I couldn’t be working 12 hour days like that wasn’t going to, and I couldn’t be constantly in my masculine and be open to receiving that level of love. It was not going to happen. So that unlocked a bunch of things in my business, not just in my personal life.
Ruth: Interesting. And I think like, there’s so much that I could unpack on this, but I want to make sure that I’ve got so many questions, but I think that like, I don’t do meditation. I’ve tried a little, I’ve dabbled, but it’s, it hasn’t gone well for me. So we, but I do, one thing I do talk to people about a lot is the importance of like, Figuring out what you want, right?
Like, and it sounds like this was the vehicle that you used and probably is, was, well, it sounds like it was very effective for you and probably would be effective for a lot of people. Is the meditation of just really thinking about it. Like I, I choose journaling, right. As a different vehicle for that, of just like asking yourself the question, what do I want?
What do I want? What do I want? Journaling on it every single day for until as long as it takes. to actually like, figure that out because sometimes you get to this point. So bringing it back to like this point in life where everything feels fuzzy, right? Everything’s changing. We’re changing our state of our, the circumstances around us are changing.
The hormones are changing. How do you, Get to that point of you figuring out what you actually want and what the next phase of your life is actually going to look like. And I know that’s something that you kind of work with a lot of women on. So what, like what do you see as some of the most common, like psychological, emotional challenges that happen sort of during this Phase of life.
Amira: Yeah. So I use a very similar technique about like getting clear about what you want and you can do it through journaling that’s sort of self directed, but it’s also very helpful to work with someone who is inquiring what is beneath that desire. Okay. And getting at what the core desire really is. So that’s one of the things that I do with my clients is getting at the truth of their core desire.
Okay. So I would say that I did that piece myself. I had to look at the core wound. I had to like identify what my core wound was. And then I had to identify what my core desire was. And they’re often linked. To, you know, flip sides of the same coin, but you have to get really honest and truthful with yourself.
And sometimes that takes inquiry with someone else like myself or, you know, some level of honesty around it. Yourself. And then the meditation work was one vehicle to get out of my own way, right? To bypass the conditioning, to bypass the subconscious programming. But it’s only one of many things that’s required.
Another key component that I think it is equally as important is we’re, we are living a human existence, this 3D on this plane. Physical, like I’m in this body plane and we can say I want whatever I desire, whatever. But until we actually, when faced with a situation where our core wound comes up and we want to retreat into our old patterns, our old paradigms of behavior, our conditioned self image of who we are, that’s comfortable.
It’s not until we actually have a lived experience of doing it differently, and it’s not going to feel safe. It’s going to feel like you’re moving through huge discomfort, like this is wrong to do it like this. Okay. And you have to do it anyway. And that’s the place where I think most people fail. They retreat.
And I mean, I’ve had my own experiences of retreating, but I’ve also had more experiences of leaning into it. And that’s what I really help people to have an embodied experience of leaning into a new way of being in this world that claims in that act of doing it differently. You claim your core desire.
Ruth: But it doesn’t feel right of like, I feel like it’s very theoretical and I totally understand what you’re saying, but to make it a little more concrete, do you have any examples of clients that you’ve worked with or even in your own life of like how you’ve gone from like this old paradigm to actually leaning into the new paradigm, even when it doesn’t feel safe.
Sure. A hundred percent. So I’ll get, can I give two examples? One I’ll do for me and one I’ll do as a client. So, to continue the theme of feeling unlovable, right? That was my core wound. I was in a a relationship where I was getting fed just enough to feel like we had Something special, but not enough to fully have that feeling of being fully loved, fully seen, fully adored, fully taken care of, supported all of those things.
And. My old programming was saying things like, this is fine. You have to understand his workload. You have to understand how he’s doing the best he can given the situation, how he’s doing that, right. Like all of this. And you know, that was a loyalty pack also with my mom around. I remember her very early on saying, you know, this is how men are.
And I decided I was going to agree with her. And. I had to say no to that, even though it felt like love, it felt like the correct way of being supportive and loyal in a relationship. And it wasn’t until I said no and said, I’m not available for this. And it felt a hundred percent wrong in my heart to say that, but I had to use my intellect to move towards.
The desire wasn’t until I did that, that I then became available for what I truly wanted. Okay. So that’s an example of like, Oh, like excruciating, painfully hard, usually hard, right? Cause you know, you think this is the one and it’s not, okay. So that’s a personal life related to me, but also personal life as opposed to professional life.
One from a client, I had a client once who. Had a core wound of not belonging, right? Not feeling like she ever fit in or belonged. And what that would drive in her is a way of supplementing her own needs and desires and jumping through hoops for other people in her business life. Instead of sort of claiming what she wanted and going directing her business from that perspective.
And she had a huge situation come up where she was buying the, a law firm from her then partner. And they had an agreement that had her paying over, you know, another year, right. Of time. And, but there was this, Clause that allowed her to the partner to call that early and her partner called it early and she needed to come up with forget what it was.
It was either $150 K or $200 $300 K. It was a lot of money in a month and and it triggered all her not belonging stuff, right? Like that this. This was, I have to jump through all these hoops because if I don’t, she’s not going to like me, I’m going to get hurt. I’m going to lose the protection of the tribe.
And so I really had to talk through this with her and help her understand that this was the best thing that could ever happen to her and that she had to, you know, say good riddance to this person pay the money. I also teach business from a very strategic perspective. And I taught her how to do sales and make sales.
And there were some very practical things that happened there. And she made the money that she needed to make, to go pay her off and not make her wrong or herself wrong. So that she could just be free of it instead of feeling like, Stuck in this old wound of not belonging.
Ruth: Yeah, I think, I mean, I feel like that’s very relatable in so many different situations, right?
Like, of all the things that we do to be like, please other people and, you know, Deny ourselves. And I see that honestly with health and weight loss so much for so many women, right? Like they’re, Oh, but I have my family and I don’t want to cook differently because they might not like this food. And like, you like deny, deny, and I don’t have time to cook two separate meals.
So I’ll just cook what they like. And I won’t worry about my own health and my own stuff and my own, like, there’s so many different situations. Where that comes up, but like over and over again. And I think like that really tapping into the thing that you want and running towards that desire. So what do you do then if you don’t know?
And because I hear that all the time too, right? I just, like, I just want to want something. So what is like, how do you know?
Amira: Yeah, I think that when we don’t know what we want, it’s that it’s not safe to want to have our own desires.
Ruth: Oh, so you think that’s a cop out or subconscious? It’s subconscious cop out, but not a conscious cop out.
Amira: I think people really don’t know. And I think, but it’s the conditioning of it’s not safe. There was a time. When you, like the way I phrase it, frame it up, it’s like when we were little toddler, little, we wanted things and we were not like at all ashamed of asking for what we wanted, right.
You know, and we cried out, we pointed, we grabbed what we wanted and our parents at the time were our mother, God, and our father, God, they were where our love, our safety, our belonging, all our Survival came from. And so when we said the example I use for myself is like, I would be sitting there playing on the floor drawing or doing some lost in my own Like creative imagination, right?
And my mother would say things like, come on, let’s go. We have to leave now. And I’d be lost and I would just be doing what I wanted. Right. And she would then up the ante and she’d be like, come on, let’s go. Hurry up. Well, you’re not listening. Come on, let’s go. Right. Hurry up. And suddenly I had this woman who was upset.
And frustrated with me and it felt like the love had been cut off now for a little one when it feels like the love is cut off. We know that our security is in doubt. Our survival is not is threatened. Okay. And our subconscious can’t make our mother God wrong because that’s where our survival comes from.
So we turn it on ourselves. Not consciously. This all happens subconsciously on ourselves and we make ourselves wrong for wanting to continue to play for wanting the candy for wanting whatever we want. Okay. And we then don’t know how it becomes very unsafe. You claim. Our desires because we think we’re going to lose love and in losing love, we’re going to lose safety, belonging, so, that’s sort of a frame up from my perspective on why it’s hard for people.
Now, what do you do about it? Right. So, you know, that’s the big question. Yeah. So I think having an intellectual understanding of what’s happening does help. It helps you go, Oh, I’m afraid here of. What’s going to happen. So, so I would ask yourself, what are your biggest fears? Like, what are you worried about losing?
Okay. And although that’s a negative frame, if you will, it’s less positive than what do you desire? Sometimes we need to see what we’re afraid of losing to understand what fear is driving us. Okay. And let’s say you have a fear of being left alone or abandoned or not having enough money or something like that.
Okay. Let’s use the not having enough money. Okay. No, this one’s, this might trigger your audience, but let’s just go there. Okay. And if they if they make different food for their family, particularly for their partners. Husbands, wives whatever their partner is there, they might be afraid if I do it differently, I’m not doing it the same.
I’m not going to fit in. I’m going to offend them. I’m going to make them feel bad. And then they’re going to not love me, not take care of me, not pay the bills not they will abandon me. Is it a direct line? No. Intellectually. We know if I make different food for my spouse. It’s going to be fine.
Okay. Right. But on a subconscious unconscious level, you’re afraid of losing something. So ask yourself, what are the things that you’re afraid of losing and see how they relate to what you want. And sometimes it’s just. Flipping it around, you know, doing a little flip there.
Ruth: That’s it’s that’s so interesting.
Cause you know I wrote a book on fear actually called Do It Scared. And and I talk about these different fear archetypes. And so that like the ones that you’re talking about and you know, there’s the fear of there’s the Perfectionist Procrastinator, who’s afraid of making mistake and the People Pleaser, who’s afraid of being judged and letting people down and the outcast who’s afraid of rejection and all of those things that you’re saying is.
Is like very much like coming to mind. But I think the thing that is so important, and this goes exactly to what you’re saying too, is that since so much of this fear happens subconsciously, the real key to overcoming whatever fear it is shining a light on it. You have to like actually see it and identify it.
It’s that name it and claim it thing, because the minute that you see it, you can actually see it happening and recognize that it’s happening. Like, oh my gosh. Yeah. The reason why I am so like belligerent when it comes like, this is me, I’m an outcast. So the reason I’m so belligerent when it comes to like anything that happens, right.
People try to give me advice or do things, whatever. I’m like, Nope, but it’s because I’m afraid of rejection. So my defense mechanism is. Rejecting other people before I can be rejected in return, just like a people pleaser. And like, you’re probably would score high on people pleaser. Or I would guess like your fear of not being loved comes and that manifests itself in wanting to like, make sure that you’re getting everything that you need and you’re letting everything go, right?
Like it’s so interesting how this, it comes up again and again, that’s just all these things that you’re saying. Sorry. I don’t even know what’s going with that. It just is like, Oh my gosh. It always comes down to that, right? Like all these things that we do to self sabotage ourselves comes back to like this deep fear inside of ourselves.
And if you don’t do the work, you’re not going to see the results.
Amira: Absolutely. And life is just so much better. It just feels so much better. If you come from a place of desire, if you’re come from is desire versus fear. You will feel so much better about everything that you do now. Is that easy work?
No, not really. Yeah. You know, I spent many years working on myself and when I work with my clients, I shortcut that obviously, because, you know, it’s it can be shortcut, right? Like that. I did a lot of deep work on myself and I wouldn’t trade that for the world, but I think you can shortcut it.
And that there’s You know, there’s practices around embodiment practices around, you know, how you can live from an open heart, like so many people I know, talk about like I just want my heart to open because we become when we, Live our lives from a place of fear. We become defended and we close our hearts off.
And we, but we have a memory of what it felt like at one point to be open hearted. And to me, in a clear way. Who is it? Life like to really feel like we’re living in life worth living. It’s when you feel lit up when you feel alive and we can’t feel that way if we’re constantly on defense and defending ourselves and coming from these core wounds instead of.
From core desires and having it feel safe to come from the core desire, right? That’s the big work.
Ruth: Yeah, I love that. So I feel like we could keep talking about this all day, but we have to be mindful. So how can people find out more about this? Like, tell us a little bit about what you do and how you work with people and how they can, where they can find you and how they can find you for more.
Okay, sure. So I work with women. And these are the high achiever women, and I really help them make the kind of transition that I’ve been talking about in my story, right? It’s not about giving up your business. It’s not about giving up your ambition. It’s not about giving up your career. It’s about using that.
And transmuting it into a much more powerful way of living and being. So if it’s business, it’s building your business from a place of wholeness. If it’s going after the things in your life that you really want, it’s really doing that from this place of wholeness, but it’s not denying. It’s not denying.
Your ambition, your drive, your, the practicalities of life. It’s a real beautiful integration. So I work privately with women on that. And I have a very intimate, small mastermind called The Exquisite. And that’s all about creating an exquisite life and an exquisite business. And you can find out more about all of these things on my website, which is called The Unstoppable Woman.
And. If you’re interested in the core wounds and loyalty pack conversation that we started, there’s a private recording private podcast on the homepage on that where I go into a lot more detail on this. So if that’s of interest, there’s that I talk about the seven shadows of success. You can read about that on our Home page.
And then also we have, you know, our social media channels and you can find me on social media, either under Amira Alvarez or The Unstoppable Woman. And I guess the last thing would be we have a podcast called the, guess what it’s called? It’s called The Unstoppable Woman. Perfect. Yeah. And we have these kinds of conversations and I do a lot of teaching there as well.
