Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Why Less is More - Samantha Joy on Eliminating the Things and People That are Holding You Back - The Less Effect

Episode Date: July 30, 2021

Samantha Joy is an entrepreneur, identity coach and the author of the bestselling book "The Less Effect". She joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about why less is actually more, the importance of eliminating the things and people from your life that might be holding you back, clearing out old stories about yourself to give yourself more mental clarity, designing an environment that attracts abundance, purpose and fulfillment and more! Learn more about Samantha Joy at: http://thelesseffect.com If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests.  For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: https://chrisvanvliet.com Follow CVV on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, here we are, my friends. Welcome back to another audio adventure on Insight. Oh, that's right. It's always an audio adventure. Thanks for being with us on this episode. And for a lot of you, thanks for being with us on every single episode. I'm excited about this one.

I always love to think about things in a new way or to give it a completely different approach. And that's what this conversation with Samantha Joy is all about. She's an entrepreneur, an identity coach, and the author of the book, The Less Effect. And I know I'm guilty of very often wanting more, more, more

in all aspects of my life. So this chat with Samantha really helped me realize that sometimes less is more. You can find Samantha on social media at I am Samantha Joy. And you can find me. I am at Chris Van Vleet.

Speaking of Chris's, we got a review here from Chris Cato who says, Longtime listener, finally leaving a review. Been listening to CVV for a while, and now that I'm on iPhone, figured I'd leave a review.

CVV's podcasts are a conversation where guests get to open up and he lets them talk. I have CVV on my short list of podcasts that I keep up with. Keep up the good work. Well, thank you, Chris. Also, thank you for having us

on your short list. I know that feeling. I mean, if you are a podcast listener, chances are you're not listening to like 30 or 40 podcasts in a week or 30 or 40 different like podcast hosts. You're listening to like your top five or 10 in a week. So I'm honored to be on that short list of yours. And I'm going to keep reading a review on every single episode. So I appreciate you taking the time out of your

day to leave this one. Really honored to have our guest with us today. So let's get right to it. Please welcome Samantha. I'm so excited to dive into this. Thank you so much. for being with us. Thank you so much for having me. This is exciting. I think the idea behind all of this really terrifies a lot of people, the less effect, because I think that people in their life just want more. They want more, more, more. And you're saying, no, no, no, it should be the opposite of that. I'm not a should person, but what I will say is if we were to boil down the less effect method, which, by the way, found me, I didn't just come up with. this. This was an experience, which we can talk about. But if we boiled the entire method down and all

the work that I do and the message that I would die for, like I'm not extreme about this, is that the solution to our problems is not found in that anymore. It is most commonly, if not always found in removing something, releasing something, shedding something. Do you find that in your experience of personal development and healing and all of that? Yeah. You're, Right. And I think that a lot of people when they hear the concept of this, they think like minimalist lifestyle as in like, I need to live in a one-bedroom apartment and have like one set of sheets. And that's not exactly what you're saying here. No, no, no, no. So I love that you pointed that out because people will say, so you're like Marie Kondo. And I'm like, well, no, I really

respect her work and I understand it. And that's just one layer of it, right? The work that I do is all based around identity, right? And so if we talk about minimalism in the context of the less effect, it is not about living off the grid. Like you said, it's not about, you know, whittling your life down to nothing for what? It's about removing old conditioning, removing old stories. And that's, you know, the action piece of it where we go into action to release a lot of these things around us in these environments. Well, we bring about those old limiting beliefs in the form of physical items in our physical space, right? And people in relationships, in our social environment and the habits and the things that we're

doing every day, right? We're running on this autopilot, the subconscious part of the brain, creating every second, we're creating right now together, right? We're creating every second of our life. We chose to do this podcast together and to be around each other and to exchange energy in this moment. That's a choice. And maybe I think it was conscious, but a lot of times these choices are very subconscious based on those beliefs. So think about running on autopilot, living in those limiting beliefs every second of every day, what we'd create around us. Right. So the less effect, again, in the context of minimalism, and I'm careful when I use that term in this context, but it is about removing old conditioning, old stories, limiting beliefs. So we,

we can expose, uncover our true identity, who we are. And then what are we left with? We're left with a bit of space to then step into more intention, right? Instead of living in this reactive way, we are now in creator mode. It's a huge adjustment for a lot of people. If someone wants to get into this, to dive into this, what's step number one for them? So that's such a good question. And it looks a little different for everyone.

but if I were to kind of summarize it, I have this program and it brings people through the entire process. And I want to emphasize that you don't just do this process once, you know, removing layers of conditioning of the lifelong. In the same way that you just go to the gym once and you're in shape of life. No. If only, if only, right? So we spend a lot of the foundational work in, I'm going to say, the feminine energy. I won't go too deep into this, but it's very much in the feminine

energy that lies within all of us, regardless of gender, meaning that we are going inward, we're connecting, we're harnessing trust again with ourselves, right? And the other part of the program and of this journey through the less effect method is moving into action, right? And that's more of the masculine energy. So if we go back to the beginning, it is about pulling out these stories, these limiting beliefs into consciousness. In this Western world, we, are so conditioned to keep going, keep going, keep adding more, keep buying more, keep fixing, and we label and we want to control and we're just always in this. We are more in that kind of, I'd say, out of balance masculine of doing, doing, doing, doing,

doing, doing. And we don't spend as much time in the being. And so we hear this a lot, right? Especially with mainstream spirituality, it's like, connect yourself, journal, do all these things. And that's true. but it's it's we need to know why we're doing it and so the foundational work is more around moving these subconscious beliefs into consciousness and then we start to deconstruct well is this true slash does this serve me now because a lot of these stories are born when

we're younger and we were uh wanting to be validated we were even in survival mode for a lot of us and it no longer serves us anymore and that's the first part of it and the second piece is, okay, now let's bring into consciousness. Where have I can, like, I've tethered these beliefs now to my environment around me, or I've created that, right? So like, I'm holding on to this thing or this like sweater from an ex-boyfriend because of a limiting belief. And that's just like one example. I'm holding on to this person because of this belief and it's a comfortable dynamic on it. You know, that's a whole, whole rapid hole. We can go down. And then I'm performing these behaviors or I'm stuck in these patterns because of these beliefs.

And we go through those three environments. We start to become aware of what have we created around us that is rooted in those beliefs. And then we can start to release them. The overarching three-step process is discover, declutter design. Yeah, it's deep work. What would you say is like a really common limiting belief? Because here's the thing. I don't know if everybody even is aware of the limiting beliefs that are existing in their life.

And that's why we do that. Yeah. And it can be really intense for some people saying, oh my gosh, that's why I've made these choices. Because again, I'm going to keep bringing back to it. We're choosing every second of every day. Turns into weeks, months, years, our life. I'm going to stop you for a second there. I love that because not everybody realizes that everything in your life is a choice.

I think that people go, well, I have to do this or I have to do that. No, you don't. You choose to do that. And there are extenuating circumstances. There are tragedies and horrible traumas that people experience, and we still have a choice, right? And so I just, I need to put that out there, too, is there are a lot of things outside of our control. But this whole way of learning how to release gives us the freedom back to show that we are in control of a lot of things. have chosen the majority of things in our life. And so we start with simple exercises like,

let's just dip our toe in, right? Because it can get very deep of like, I went from victim mode to now I am like totally owning my life. Right. And so we dip our toe in. We start to examine and deconstruct what we've created. And one of the most common limiting beliefs, and I don't know if this is just, I have a hunch, but I believe it's based on these generational patterns, and we'll get into that in a minute, but one of the most common living beliefs is, because I work with high performers, is my worth is found in my productivity. Sure. Can you relate to that?

Of course. Yeah. The busier I am, the more productive I am, the more successful I am, the happier I am, the happier I am, that's kind of how it goes. Well, and so, and if we do deconstruct what limiting beliefs are, because maybe someone's listening to this for the first time and saying, oh, that's a concept I'm not extremely familiar with. That's how deep these are, is we don't even know that we have them sometimes. And so it really is, it's a belief that is not necessarily true or serving us, you know, in this current state. And there may have been a time when we were younger that that was true, because that was the dynamic we were raised in is, I want to see you have all A's. I want to see you have all A's. I want to see you. all the extracurriculars, I want to see you working around the house or whatever it looked like. And so that is something, especially in again, our Western culture that we bring into adulthood. And then we start to kind of rewire the brain and introduce new beliefs.

So what is the new belief? I am whole and perfect and amazing as I am. I don't need to perform in order to be worthy of all the things that I want. And that blows people's mind because we should. show up in this belief, so many of us. I mean, this is one of my beliefs that I've had to, you know, release in layers because it doesn't just go away immediately. And every time I'm evolving, whether it's, you know, in my healing or my business,

and I'll give you an example of one of my business is I had this breakthrough not too long ago, just I have resistance around hiring a team. And I thought it was because of my past in corporate and I had like little traumas around that of running a team. I just don't enjoy doing that. And that's, well, that's what I thought. And then I'm like, well, I do enjoy people. I do love leading and building and all those things.

So what is this really about? And it was about I needed to be so busy in my business because who would I be if I wasn't? How would I show the world that I'm worthy? Well, there's also this thing when you're an entrepreneur and I can relate to this is nobody will ever work as hard as you on your own business because if you hire somebody, it's not their business. And you have to be able to accept that, like, your employees 80% is going to have to be good enough

because, again, it's not their business. Yeah. Yeah. And this is, being an entrepreneur, I will say, is the quickest way to meet your limiting beliefs and come face to face with them and, like, really unpack them. I will say when I was in the corporate world, you know, in accounting, finance, consulting, that world,

it was, I could just kind of go to work, go home, you know, drink on the weekends or during happy hour and kind of like I thought I was balancing and numbing. Well, I was numbing, but I thought I was balancing out like the work with the play and all of that. And instead I was literally living outside my body the whole time, you know, not connected to myself. So yeah, this is this is about diving deep in there to pull out these beliefs, even get them down on paper and really start to see how is this reflect in everything around me. And then you can say, oh, I, I'm the co-creator of my life. So if I, sometimes it's hard for, you know, hard pill to swallow for people saying, oh, I chose all this. And what is on the other side of that is I can choose differently. Like these were choices,

which means I can do something differently. And it's a journey, you know. I posted something on Twitter on July 1st. And I said, can you believe it? 2021 is half over. That means, means we have six months left in this year to either make this the best year of your life or just another year of your life. And Samantha, I was blown away. Well, of course, a lot of people said, yes, this is great. This is very encouraging. It's blown away by how many people said, yeah, it's not that easy.

It's not that. I can't just choose to make the next six months great. And I went, wow, you've already lost. You've already lost if that's what your mindset is. Yeah, that's a limiting belief is it's got to be hard. It's got to be hard. I have, you know, it's, if you're already, I want to touch on because this is a huge part of this journey of the less effect and decluttering.

And I use decluttering not in the gimmicky way, but really just releasing all of this conditioning. Yeah, you're not just talking about physical stuff that you're decluttering either. No, and that is a component, but it's more of the mindset, right? And so it's learning the art of detachment. And the art of detachment is something that, again, is going to be a lifelong journey. we are taught to attach. We are taught to worry about the future and, you know, live in our pain from the past.

And so going through a lot of this work helps to learn the art of detachment. Like the Buddhists say, you know, suffering is found in attachment. And when we can learn to stay in the present. And part of staying in the present is having a deep connection to self, right, to who we are and who that. identity is, then we can choose better. But until we're doing that and if we're living on the outside of our bodies, pleasing everyone, you know, I'm sure so many people listening right now can relate to being a people pleaser, then we won't find that person. We will choose the same things

over and over. We will get stuck in the same patterns over and over. And the, the premise of the masculine and feminine energies within all of us is so important in this journey, because we can learn how to stop doing in a moment we should be being. I think not should be, but we, we, it would serve us to be. And so that's a huge part of this because so many of us, we aren't taught that. We're taught to produce, produce, produce. Yeah. And it's never enough.

And that's the dead end because you're just going to keep trying to do that and you're not going to get anywhere. Yeah. learn, it's a new way of learning. It's deconditioning, you know, living on the outside versus conditioning, living on the inside and answering to ourselves and connecting to ourselves and being in that discipline because our culture does not, at least where we are, does not encourage that. Right. You said that this method found you.

And I'm really curious how this found you rather than you going out and seeking it out. Well, okay. So I love my mom. I love you, mom, if you're listening. We, yeah, she, she likes. she liked to hang on to things. And again, I don't know if that's that generation, that baby boomer generation of hanging on the stuff.

And you're talking about physical items in the house? I'm going to start there. Yeah, yeah. So physical items, just a lot of stuff. But the, you know, it didn't end there. It was a lot of, yeah, like it bleeds into everything. Hang on to stuff, scarcity, lack, all that, right? That energy.

And so hanging on to things in the past, not just physical, but experiences and beliefs. And there was just a lot of like hoarding in that way. And, you know, my mother went through her own journey of, you know, learning law of attraction and learning all this, you know, these different tools that she took on to start stepping out of that, which helped open my eyes. But in that environment of being surrounded by the energy of lack,

like it's so interesting how when we hang on to things, that's our energy. is we're actually in lack, right? When we can't release, it's because we're in lack. So I grew up with so much of that. So we got to hang on to everything because we might lose it, and it's hard to get it back and like all these notions, right? And so I experience a lot of anxiety growing up.

It was that environment, but it was also just a really tumultuous household with my parents and they got divorced and it was it was the way that it manifested in me was just tons of anxiety. And this, a lot of beliefs were made, a lot of conditioning was happening. And I moved into my, you know, adult life with this same issue. And I found minimalism years ago and really dove into the concept because I didn't have a lot of control growing up. So it almost gave me back a sense of control and choice. And I started to dive into that and realize I felt relief from my anxiety when I would declutter my desk or my closet or reorganize.

And I started to understand the concept of energy. You know, I have this concept with the less effect called energy residue. And it's really about like what in your home contains this. Again, is it from a traumatic event? Is it from a past that brings up a feeling inside you that you're not even conscious to? Is it something that is aligned with a person that you aren't anymore? You know, there's a lot of layers to that. I didn't know it at the time, but I was starting to understand detachment and releasing and letting go.

And it felt good. And it was like, maybe I don't have this clinical diagnosis that I've been told that I have. Maybe it is as simple. it's not easy, but as simple as understanding what my belief systems are and how it created it around me. And so I started to dive into that. I'm like, well, what about the people around me? What about socially what I'm choosing?

Why can't I take inventory of that and declutter that? And then I started to notice that my habits were changing and taking stock of what are my habits, diving into habits, you know, what habits are comprised of, how the brain works when you create a new habit and the habit loops. And it became fascinating to me because it started to teach me. I wasn't broken. I didn't need fixing. I could start to create something different.

I'm not a little child anymore. I'm not living in my parents' home anymore. I'm not experiencing abuse anymore or hoarding or any of that. I have an entirely new life that I can step into. And I started to put all that together. And I was working with a coach at the time. And he's like, well, what's the message here? You know, like, what do you want, what do you think someone would experience going through this art of taking inventory, decluttering, and becoming intentional with that space and creating something new?

Yeah. And I just realized, like, the less effect just came to me, like, the problems that we have are because we're adding, because we're searching for a solution in something else. And it's, it's here. We're born perfect. and then we cover it all up with who we think we're supposed to be. So much of this sounds like it's the idea of letting go. It's the idea of letting go of physical things, of emotional things, oftentimes physical things that represent emotional things.

And I think that the concept behind that is so, so smart. Anyone that's listening to this right now is looking around their house going, why do I have this from that relationship that didn't work out? Or why do I have this, that thing that my mind, mom or dad gave me that I've never even liked, things like that. Yeah, it's, we just do things on autopilot all the time every day. So it's, it's really so critical to, in order to have a actual transformation, I don't mean you did a mindset challenge for 30 days and you're this new person,

because that doesn't work. And you know where I stand up. Yeah, day 31, you're like, back to the old stuff. And I will just share a part of my experience is I moved like six or seven times in a decade, whether it was I got a promotion or a new job. Yeah, yeah. Or a relationship or I just got stagnant and I'm like, this is the solution. And, well, it felt great.

I would purge all these items in my space. I would leave relationships. I would leave jobs I didn't like or, you know, things, situations I wasn't happy in. I would break routines. So there was like, you know, I know. I know this now, but I was leaving old cues and triggers for patterns behind, but yet I'd go to the new place and then I'll come back. Because I was in the same identity.

I was in the same belief system. So I thought that I was resetting and I was kind of escaping all of those things. And so it took me a lot of moves and a lot of running away to understand that no matter where I am, it starts within, right? And the within reflects on the outside. Sure. And so, yeah, it was a real wake-up call when I had my son. I'm not a single mother, but, you know, now we, we are, I'm in Denver and because his father's here, we're staying here, we're staying put, and it was really good for me to have to stay put and really dissect what I've created and how to create a new reality no matter where I was.

You talk about creating a reality and we've touched a lot about, I talked a lot about identity during this conversation. Do you believe that anyone can be anything or anyone that they want to be? I do. I do. I think there's always exceptions there. And there's a way to think outside the box even in those cases of exceptions. And so,

I don't I'm going to go extreme I'm so blessed I'm healthy I have a body that works I have this is a lot of this has you know this journey has taught me too like I have everything you know I was trying to go after more and I realized how futile that is you know but um I would say an example someone without a leg I'm never going to run again and it's like you're right if you don't ever want to run again, you won't. But then there are solutions around it. And it may not look like what you thought it would. But that's just one example of many that, you know, we just, we, who said this quote?

You're good with this. I feel like whether you believe you can or you can't. You're right. It's Henry Ford. Is it? Okay. I knew you would know this. Yeah.

Whether you believe you can or you believe you can't, you're right. Right. And so I truly believe that if there's the belief behind it, it will happen. And again, it may not, and it usually doesn't look like how we thought it would. Yeah. And I mean that in terms of the journey to it and even when you get there. Do we ever get there? I don't know. But it sometimes or always looks different than we thought. I think so many people focus on the end result instead of focusing on what the next step is in front of them. And I'm a big person that says, you know, we've got to reverse engineer. Like, you can't just wake up tomorrow and be Tom Brady. But you can wake up tomorrow and start doing things that Tom Brady does to start getting on that path to being, if you want to be a quarterback in the NFL, to being a better quarterback. And that's you stepping into the being.

That's stepping into already being. You know, Tom Brady had to start somewhere. Everybody has to start somewhere. And think about it this way. If we are operating on autopilot, letting our limiting beliefs choose for us to create our environment, well, that's the feedback we're going to get. It's only, you know, maintaining an identity that isn't fill in the blank.

Tom Brady, we don't want to be someone else, we want to be ourselves. But it is only going to continue to uphold and support that false identity. Yeah. Right? And so I do want to touch on this whole thing of mindset that's happening in personal development and mindset is so powerful.

Like, yeah, we have to change our mindset. Well, what's deeper than mindset? It's our belief system. What's deeper than our belief system? It's our identity. It's how we perceive ourselves. It dictates everything we do, feel, see, here. Like, we're curating everything based on that identity.

right if you've heard of cognitive dissonance like a smoker who smokes there's copious evidence that smoking is detrimental to our health and sometimes fatal but the smoker keeps doing it because of the dissonance that is happening which is whatever payoff they're getting from it they continue to do it despite the evidence that shows it's harmful and we do this in so many ways right and so we are if we're so deep in that identity unwilling to wake up and look at what's or around us and and start stepping into releasing a lot of that, we're just going to continue and get deeper and deeper and deeper into it. And there are three components that I go through that maintain that identity for better, for worse. And I would say we'll talk about the false identity,

three things that maintain that is environment. So I'm obviously really big on that. I'm emphasizing that a lot because I can't even explain how huge that is because it's just going to keep supporting what we're doing. It's predictability. We as human beings, we love the comfy, the cozy, the familiar, right? And so we'll do anything to stay in that. And we have this huge story that moving out of that is painful. And guess what? They're both painful. They're both painful. Staying comfortable has its own type of pain. We all know this. And then moving out of that, yes, there's a growing pain that happens with that, but a massive reward, like which pain you're going to choose, right? And the third part of that that maintains that identity is attachment.

And so if we can learn how to move out of that and learn how to be in the present, right? Like you said, we're always kind of moving to the next thing. And we are never going, we will achieve and achieve and achieve. If you heard about, you know, Tony Robbins talking about the science of achievement, science of attachment, or excuse me, signs of achievement, science of fulfillment, we'll just continue to achieve, but we will never really reach that feeling of fulfillment, ever. I think a lot of people are stuck in an identity and they're not even aware of what their identity even is. So Samantha, if someone's trying to figure out, like, who am I really? Where does that begin? Oh, yeah. So it begins with,

this is the ambiguous answer is going in, but there's so much to that. And it all starts, the identity starts when we're young, when we're little. And we start to learn who we are through the labels that we're given. And so the starting place is going all the way back. It's going all the way back. So learning about the concept of our inner child, you know, Carl Young coined this and then it turned into, you know, really big concept in psychology of this wounded inner child and where the conditioning started and where we started to develop these limiting beliefs and when. And like four years old is when I work with people and what I've learned is that it's such a big age for when we do

a lot of the wounded inner child work that there's some type of experience around four or five years old. So it starts really, really young and we're so impressionable during that time. And so that's where it starts is where it started, is going back to those moments of when they were taught our worth as in productivity or, you know, I myself suffered from, you know, the good girl syndrome of like, I got to do everything right perfectly because I was in a co-dependent dynamic growing up. So it was like if I show up as a good girl and do everything I'm told and please the people around me, it will affect the way they show up. No, that's not how this works, right? And so you get to open your eyes to what was the dynamic and where did these beliefs get formed and why did I

form them in the first place? And oh my gosh, look at how I've dragged this and held this weight of these beliefs into my adulthood and look what I created because of it. And it's like, it's really transformative because you really wake up and you're conscious to so much of it. And that's when the change starts to happen. You know, you dropped a great quote for us and I'll drop one for you. I'm sure you've heard this, you know, a thousand times. But the two most powerful words in the English language are I am. Because anything that comes after that, you believe.

leave. I am, to use your example, I am a smoker. I mean, it's like anything that comes after I am is your identity. Absolutely. And the I am comes out of our mouth. It's in our thoughts and it's everywhere around us, right? And so if we are, you know, I do tend to use examples of addiction in a lot of this to make sense of it because we are, again, I want to go back to this whole concept of mindset, you know, like we're going to do a mindset challenge for 30 days and then we fail. I have so many clients who are addicted to their phones and addicted to technology. It's like I want to try to go to bed at eight o'clock or whatever time it is or wind down and I can't and I'm stuck in my work, especially, you know, the entrepreneurs I work with. And we tend to, we aren't taught this and we tend

to lean on the limiting belief saying, I knew I'd fail, I am no good at this. I'm not the person that I want to be X, Y, Z. Instead of learning, all right, a habit is comprised of three components. And there's a cue or a trigger. There's a behavior, which is the actual what we think of when we think of a habit. And there's a, in psychology, it's called reward. I call it a payoff when it's an unhealthy habit. And so, of course, you're going to go back to the addiction if you're around people that are drinking and you have an alcohol problem, right?

Or of course, you're going to go back on your phone. if it's near you and it's on and it's in the other room. Like there are, we have to start curating our environment to remove cues and triggers. And that's part of the releasing. That's part of the decluttering. And then understanding, well, what is the payoff? What is the reward that I'm getting from this behavior? Oh, wow, I just had a light bulb moment.

It's linked to a limiting belief that's no longer serving me. And you can start to deconstruct this and release it so that you can step into, and I'm not even going to say Tom Brady or someone else, You step into you because that's where all your power lies. That's where all your joy and your fulfillment wise. And so when we are in a false identity created from limiting beliefs and conditioning from when we were younger, we can only stick to a new mindset if we're, you know, we're trying to build a new habit and we're repeating it. And it feels so good and we're seeing changes.

And then we go back, right? And that's never going to change until we start to curate that environment around us. to our true identity. That is why when I go through this work, we start in the physical environment. We move to social environment and our relationships, and that's why habits are last, because we've done so much work

and we're so rooted in that true identity and the truth, right? We're rooted in that truth that we can start to produce healthier habits. But a lot of this personal development that we're being, you know, advertised is starts with this mindset and then people fail. And then it's this loop that continues of,

I can't do this. I'm no good at this. And we get stuck. And this is how to get unstuck is to really focus on the identity piece and the reflection of that identity in our environment. I think we've all had a lot of time to reflect over this last year and a half. And it's been a crazy time. And we've all been in this together,

no matter what part of the world that you live in. what's been the biggest thing that you've learned since last March with COVID? That is a great, that's a great question. I'm going to be, I love being transparent because we're all in this together, right? Please. Yeah. I was in a relationship at the time and it was just such a mirror for me. And I realized how much more healing I really needed.

And I think the timing of all of that was really supportive of that healing journey for me. And so I really started to dive deep into that healing, you know, like being disciplined about going to therapy, being disciplined about I had a healer I was working with learning about the masculine and feminine energies and how I was showing off and all of that. And I think, yeah, the biggest thing that came out of it for me, the biggest lesson I learned was, and this is so cheesy, but that I'm enough. Like I, I just remove so much, so many layers, so much conditioning and, like, found myself on a level that I've never seen myself before. And yeah, I just, I, we have the story that the healing journey is so scary and we've got to face all this stuff. And you know what? It is, but it's like I said, it's that it's a different type of pain that you are rewarded for instead of just sitting in the pain of regret and the pain of what could have been. And I just face everything head on.

And it's helped me in every area of my life because I know who I am. I just show up differently. I don't feel like I have to prepare or be someone else. Or I don't feel this imposter syndrome ever anymore. I hear this all the time. You know, how do I beat imposter syndrome or how do I get rid of it? And it's like, I laugh because it's not the imposter syndrome you need to get rid of, right? It's the stepping into you that needs to happen and the truth and being aligned in all the choices that you're making.

And the transformation I experienced was stepping into myself. It was incredible. And it's, again, a lifelong journey. And we get tested all the time. We know this. You know, the universe comes in and says, oh, we think you made that shift. Let's like really make sure that you did that. And now with adversity and things of that nature, especially the adversity of going through a pandemic, it tests every area, right?

It tests our businesses. It tests our confidence. It tests our relationships. It tests all of the things. And, you know, I got to use that to my advantage and understand that adversity is such a beautiful way to learn about myself and to show up for myself and level up in myself. that. Before I ask you, my final question, I just want to thank you. This has been so great. And thank you for being so open and honest and transparent about everything. And I think there's so many great takeaways here for everybody that's listening who maybe has just been putting

more and more and more on their plate as the years and months have gone on. So thank you for that. Where can everybody find you? Yeah. Well, so I'm pretty present on Instagram. My handle is I am Samantha Joy. I am. I am. Yeah, look at that. Yeah. I'm nobody else. I am Samantha Joy. Yes. And I'm also on Facebook, Samantha Joy. And you can actually find my book on Amazon, The Less Effect, Design Your Life for Happiness and Purpose. And I pop in a clubhouse every now and then. I don't know if anyone listening is on there, but it's such a wonderful place to be and make so many human connections. So you can find me there as well. Samantha Joy is my handle. on podcast. And I start and end every day with gratitude. And I say I allowed three things that I'm

grateful for. So I end every interview with that. So what are three things in your life that you're grateful for right now? I love this. I am so grateful for all the amazing, insightful, human connections that I get to make because I do live in choice. I live in choosing for myself. So interactions like this have been so transformative for me. So I'm just so grateful for this interview. I'm so grateful for my health. I have seen, you know, as we get older, we see a lot of our loved ones and people we know go through a lot of that. And I'm just so grateful.

I was, again, transparent kind of dealing with some sickness on and off for a few months, including COVID in the recent past. I'm just, I do not take that for granted for a minute. And I would say, honestly, my. son and being a mother, it has brought me this whole new perspective of life and just watching him be so present, be so expressive. You know, we're taught to suppress so many emotions. That's where our wounded inner child is born is based on suppressed emotions and unmet needs. And I get to learn through him how to fully be mean. So I'm so grateful for that experience. Thank you so much. This has been great. Yeah, it was great. Such a great. Such a

way to start the day. What a way. Thank you so much, Samantha. Well, there you go, my friend. That is a lot to think about and chew on this week. Who are you really? And who do you want to become? There's just a ton to take away from this conversation. So please share this with someone who you know that it will help. Take a screenshot, tag us on social media. Samantha is at I am Samantha Joy. I am at Chris Van Fleet. And Samantha has has a quote on our website, which is the less effect.com. It's from the poet far away. And I'll share it with you here as we wrap up this episode.

To everything I've ever lost, thank you for setting me free. Be great. Be grateful. We'll see you on the next one for some more insight. Jim Rome takes on sports. Why? Because I have a job to do. With rapid fire takes.

So I don't want to hear from you lava pigs on this. this notion today. No idea what you're talking about. You're complaining more than you like to breathe air. It's like you get up in the morning only to complain and cry and moan on social media about things that you don't even understand. He's the spitfire of sports smack. Take advantage of it. But get up in here.

The Jim Rome Show podcast. What's your beef? Follow and listen on your favorite platform. You've been warned.