Tagline
Be A Magic Maker: A corporate executive turned spiritual coach shows us how to bring magic into everything we do.
Bio for Amy Lynn Durham
Amy Lynn Durham is the author of ‘Create Magic At Work’ and the Founder of the ‘Create Magic At Work’ Membership Group. She is a U.C. Berkeley Certified Executive Coach and Emotional Intelligence Practitioner who spent years in the corporate world successfully managing hundreds of employees for private and publicly traded companies.
As an expert in building positive company cultures, Amy designed Create Magic At Work to bring a variety of services and strategies to aid in cultivating teamwork and harmony to improve profits and employee morale through Executive Coaching, Workshops & Virtual Group Coaching Sessions.
Episode highlight
As a corporate executive, Amy Lynn Durham did not feel she was being herself. Listen in on how she discovered the path to authentic self-expression by combining the magic of spiritual and emotional intelligence.
Links
- Email: camille@speakonpodcasts.com
- Website: https://createmagicatwork.net/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CreateMagicAtWork/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/createmagicatwork/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/createmagicwork
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amydurhamexecutivecoaching/
- Profile: https://speakonpodcasts.com/amy-lynn-durham/
Quotes
- “As a woman in the workplace, we tend to feel like our voice isn’t heard as much as maybe a male executive at times.”
- “It’s been a work in progress my whole life having a voice and speaking my truth and being able to do so in a loving way rather than letting it build up and lashing out which can happen because we shut things down.”
- “I believe we have an energy body and that if we don’t… work on… not lashing out and speaking and communicating before we get to that point, I think that things like that can manifest in physical ailments.”
- “Everybody comes from a place where they’re trying to do the best they can as a parent.”
- “If you are a perfectionist, this is the cure – entrepreneurship – because you have to.. constantly take risks and leaps and things are never perfect and you have to move forward or you’ll be stagnant.”
- “The more comfortable I was in my own skin, the more comfortable other people were in their own skin around me.”
- Marianne Williamson: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.”
- “I think that is our deepest fear – we’re afraid to shine our light because we’re afraid that someone else is going to shut us down or judge us or shame us.”
- “Stay curious, just make your approach [that of] curiosity. That immediately takes you out of the judgement space.”
- “You can maintain inner and outer peace by yourself in a cave meditating all day just fine but the true test is when you’re out in the world interacting with each other. And that’s how we heal… through relationships and interacting with each other.”
- “Working on yourself is the number one key to healing the world rather than pointing the finger at others.”
- “If you are going down the wrong path that is not meant for you, you’ll get a few taps on your shoulder from the universe that says, ‘Hey… this is not where you’re supposed to be going’ and if you say, ‘I’m good, I got this’, you’re wrong and you don’t listen to your intuition and you keep going down that road and they tap you again, and they say, ‘Hey, this is not meant for you’, and you push it aside because of.. what your environment tells you you are supposed to be. Eventually.. the universe stops tapping you on the shoulder and… you’ll get slapped across the face like ‘Hey, you need to listen’.”
- “If you don’t hear the universe when it whispers, it’s going to scream.”
- “To me, anything that’s fear-based or anything that separates someone as good or bad is very divisive and is not something that I would subscribe to as someone that believes that we are all one human race.”
- “When you start judging, you’re separating. You’re saying, ‘I am not like them and that makes me feel better for this reason’.”
- “We’re afraid to be big sometimes.”
- “If you improve your SQ (spiritual intelligence), it gives you an ability to think outside the box, it gives you humility, and we can access energies together that come from beyond the ego and come from just beyond your day-to-day concerns.”
Takeaways
Childhood incidents:
Amy’s childhood was defined by her not having an opportunity to make herself heard. She defines the atmosphere at home as conflict-avoidant where her issues were swept under the carpet. Later in life, she had to have her thyroid gland removed and she attributes that health issue to not knowing “how to properly use my voice, how to properly set boundaries” in childhood.
Influential groups
Amy was born into a middle-class, hardworking family and she credits them with her strong work ethic. However, she also struggled with perfectionism due to the underlying implication that she had to get straight-As, that “you’re not worthy if you.. get a lower grade”.
Raised in a large farming community in central California in the mid-70s, Amy says that her worldview was limited. She also claims that being raised Christian sowed the seeds of a divided self which she had to leave behind at home because she considered herself more spiritual than religious.
Travelling for work later in life helped her experience different cultures and expanded her world view. She also was able to own her spiritual beliefs and express them confidently. Being a woman in the corporate world shaped her leadership skills and helped her acknowledge that women and men experience professional life differently.
Temperament and personality influences
Amy says she was born an introvert who was “super happy hiding in my room reading books all day or playing very quietly”. She thinks this may have to do with her fear of expressing herself and of not being a high achiever. She has been able to express herself more as she has grown older, aided by the leadership opportunities she was given in the corporate world.
Cultural Epiphanies
Amy realized that what her Christian upbringing taught her about right and wrong and good and bad people was different from her spiritual self-expression that all humans are one. She recognizes that viewing others as different creates “a false sense of safety within the body and within yourself that ‘no, I’m not like them’.”
Advice to an Employer
Amy asks anyone working with her to trust her and the process to help them uncover their true selves. She likes working with clients who “are looking for higher meaning, looking to improve their ability to access the unconscious aspects of themselves and live a richer and more creative life.”
More Great Insights!
Amy is inspired by cultural anthropologist Dr. Angeles Arrien’s four-fold way:
- The Way of the Warrior: Show up, and choose to be present.
- The Way of the Healer: Pay attention to what has heart and meaning.
- The Way of the Visionary: Tell the truth without blame or judgment.
- The Way of the Teacher: Be open to outcome, not attached to outcome.
Amy also practices rituals around the waxing and waning of the moon. She says the full moon is a good time to release anything holding you back, and the new moon is a good time to set intentions.
Visit Amy’s website to get coaching, join her membership group and access enjoyable tools to use at the workplace. Be sure to read her book to fill your work life with magic and spark your creativity!
Extro
Amy Lynn Durham lived a divided life where her rich inner self and outer corporate selves never met. It was only after life circumstances made her rethink her self and context that she began to incorporate some of her spiritual and emotional practices into teambuilding and saw the results they had on the people she was in charge of managing.
Due to health challenges that resulted in her almost losing her life, Amy decided to move from corporate world success to entrepreneurial success as she learned to negotiate the business landscape as an executive coach. Bringing her business acumen, spiritual intelligence (SQ) and emotional intelligence (EQ) to the table as her whole self and in her own voice, Amy has successfully guided other ‘divided self’ executives onto their own paths to authenticity and purpose.
