Favorably Fearless with Emily Adams

Life coach Emily Adams joins host Leah McIntosh to chat about what it means to be favorably fearless.

Episode Key Points:
- You don't have to be fearless. [01:00]
- Emily's background in the Amish community. [08:00]
- The hard work of finding who you are and have self-love for yourself. [20:00]
- Forgive those around you but don't forget to forgive yourself. [26:00]
- Freedom in self-forgiveness. [30:00]
- Make room for something new and something better. [36:00]
- Realize fear is an emotion, don't allow it to keep you stuck. [40:00]

New episodes release on Thursdays!
Follow me on Instagram at @SuperiorThinkerInc and keep up with all things, Leah and the podcast.
Follow Emily on Instagram at @Inspireempowerimpact or https://www.emilyadams.net
Thanks for listening! 

Transcript

Emily Adams' Story

[00:00:00] Leah McIntosh: : Welcome to it might be me podcast. I'm your host, Leah McIntosh who are here to help you understand that on the other side of that pain and trauma is your transformation. There may be some limiting beliefs, negative emotions and private struggles that have led you to having more. It might be. I'm here to help you learn to adapt let that because we are created to be limitless.

My hope is with each episode, you've move free and understood. Willing to accept that. Although some of our past decisions landed us in a place of uncertainty. We are only one decision away from living our best lives. Now let's go.

(Intro)

Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of it might be you. Today, I am Emily Adams. She's the [00:01:00] host of Emily Adams show. And also a coach. It's going to be a good one, but we're going to be talking about, you know, how to overcome fear. Emily, do you want to kind of give a brief overview of your background and.

Emily Adams: 

Yeah. So thank you so much for having me here and a brief overview. So I was born and raised in the Amish culture and left at the age of 17. And I always share this because this was the first time that I really just kind of jumped into the fear of unknown. And as I continue to share my story, you'll see, there was multiple times in my life that I've really just jumped into the fear of unknown.

And when people ask me, you know, how do you build the resilience or how did you have the courage. I've had to reflect that myself. Like how did I talk myself through that? And that's kind of why I am very passionate about teaching people that you don't have to be fearless. You just need to know how to face fear in order for you to work [00:02:00] through it.

Because we often think that we need to be fearless. So born and raised in the Amish culture, I came from Indiana. Left at 17 in the middle of the nights, but with a lot of high hopes and big dreams to become a career woman. And at 18, I got pregnant. So not expected. I never thought I would be a mom to be honest and got married and a year and a half into the marriage.

I was like, man, I need to get out. Like, I need to file for divorce, but it was still very much going through a culture shock. And I stayed because I found out I was pregnant with my second son. And about two years later, and there was a lot of alcohol and verbal abuse and a very toxic environment. I knew I had to leave, not just for myself, but for my boys.

And this was very scary for me because one, I wasn't raised to that there are single moms, I was raised, divorced is wrong. You don't, you don't ever become a single mom. And I was like, how am I going to do this? Cause I don't even know how [00:03:00] so I became a single mom. And through the nasty custody battle instead of getting therapy, I actually joined a gym and that's where I lost 65 pounds and found powerlifting and also made the decision to go to Purdue university as a mom.

And. There is another step. I was very scared to go to Purdue because in the Amish culture, you only go to eighth grade, which is equivalent to a sixth grade education. So I had no idea how to write papers. I had, I had my GED, like I had gotten my GED, but I had no idea like. How am I going to go to college?

And I was determined to graduate in four years. And four years later, I walked away with my bachelor's degree from Purdue university and meanwhile had gotten into another relationship and we ended up getting married, landed. My corporate job looked like I had it all together on the outside. And. He came home two years after we married and wanted a divorce.

[00:04:00] And I was devastated because this was round two now. And I really felt like I was in this, this deep dark place. Like there was no way of me getting out. I had land in my corporate life, but everything else was falling apart. So round two, I, it was a good three or four months. I didn't know if I was going to go down, drink in the path or if I was going to go mentally insane or what it was.

And even. As a mom and I share this with all the parents out there, I had gotten so burned out by pouring so much into my kids, that I didn't even know how to take care of myself. And I gotten to the point where I didn't want to be a mom because I was just over it. I was tired and. I had a friend, tell me you have a choice to make you either get help.

You go check in yourself or you take a mom cation. And I'm like, that's the stupidest thing. And I didn't like either idea. So I took a mom, Keisha, and that's really where a lot of things shifted for me. And I realized when I took a vacation one, I went skydiving, which was on my bucket list. And [00:05:00] two, I realized I'm not happy with my life and I've got to figure this out here.

I am 30 and I have no idea what I'm doing with life. I've had my corporate career, you know, I landed my position that I wanted in the corporate world. And on the vacation, a lot of things opened up because I was silent enough for it. For myself to start listening to myself. And I started doing a lot of self-development personal development, really changed my life every day I would get up and like listen to video and try to like invest in myself.

And I made the decision. To sell my place, move. We moved an hour away and moved to different, completely different area and ended up quitting my corporate job. And then COVID hits. And COVID was the biggest blessing for me and my boys, because it gave us time. One, we gave me time to slow down because I was the busy person.

I'm always busy. So if I stay busy, I don't have to deal with the stuff that's going on internally. But it gave me the [00:06:00] time to actually slow down, slow down enough to start really pouring into myself. And I found meditation during that time. And I started meditating and I remember the day that it hit me, it was like a curtain had just been lifted from me.

And I was like aware for the very first time of. Oh, my goodness. Like the trees are beautiful. The flowers, the birds, I came back inside and I saw my boys play. Now it could be present with them. And that really led me to dig more deeper on the other side of like reprogramming my brain to be what it wants to be.

So I had all of COVID to try to kind of work through this and through it. I found the most incredible thing. When I started investing in myself and unpacking years of stuff I held onto. And for the first time in my life, I found out one who I was and to what it really was to fully love every aspect of myself.

And it was a [00:07:00] year of massive growth. And then. I made the decision and the end of the year to actually relocate from Indiana to Florida. So that's been the newest thing we just up and moved to Florida. So that's the short version of it. But through every phase of life, there's always been the fear of unknown.

And I could either allow myself to stay stuck in the fear of unknown or to work through it so I can get where I want to go. 

Leah McIntosh: Well, and I kind of want to back track because the Amish growing up homage is that's a big thing, you know, like that's a unusual situation, uh, to say the least. So I guess what was it that made you decide to leave at that young age?

Emily Adams: Yeah, so I think leg looking back, there was a multitude of things. So in the Amish culture, there's zero female empowerment. [00:08:00] So the females don't have any empowerments. There's, it's very male dominant. And I always thought I was made for more constantly. Like, I know there's more to life than what I'm doing right now.

And so when I got out of school at the age of 13, I was with my dad a lot and helped my dad. And I loved like running the business side of things and. It didn't really come full circle until I realized just how much the culture was. So religion based, it was just always in your face about all these rules down to the point of what color socks you could wear.

Like, it was insane and I was tired of the rules and restrictions. And then at 16, I lost one of my friends and she died in a buggy accident, not her funeral. I had heard someone say, you know, we can't be sure that she went to heaven. I don't know. I'm like, wait a minute, like, whoa, like I was taken back.

Right. And I was like, [00:09:00] what? It just happened. Like, I can't believe that. And a lot of me struggled with, you know, it was such practice, you know, God is a God of love, but there are stints that can't be forgiven. And so that's kind of what they believed. And I struggled with believing that. And so it kind of just spiraled from there of knowing.

This is not where I belong. 

Leah McIntosh: Well, and I guess with that, because I, I grew up in a very, I'm gonna say, well, yeah, it was religious home. We were homeschooled. Everything was about all the rules. Don't have sex out of marriage if you do. You know? And so with that, cause we, that was one thing we learned to God, if God is a God of love, what do you mean?

Why wouldn't. A 16 year old girl go to heaven. That would be something that would be hard for me to kind of overcome too. I have that thought. So I get why you was like, nah, let me get outta here. What was some of the [00:10:00] biggest hurdles that you had to overcome once you decided to leave and only being 17?

Not like being out in the real world. Were you familiar with. I hate to, I know that you seen cars and stuff like that, but you know, when, when I think about homage, I thinking about the Amish communities that I've seen on TV and some of that. Yeah. 

Emily Adams: So yeah, I would say some of my biggest hurdles, one was. It was very different culturally, like I was used to always having family.

Right. So the family leaving that family dynamic was hard. It was a very of, it took me like, it took me years to figure out. Where do I fit in? And that was really hard for me. And one of the things that I always felt like anybody, anytime anyone had a conversation with [00:11:00] me that I literally like had Amish, tattooed across my forehead, and people could see that because I still hung on to that identity and not sure how do I get rid of that identity?

And so when I did share, sometimes that I used to be Amish. I used to always get the nickname of, oh, she's just the Amish chick, because I wasn't strong enough to stand up and be like, no, you can't call me that because I'm no longer Amish. Then I just completely stopped sharing that I used to be Amish. So that was one of the biggest things.

And the other thing was really adjusting to the different. Not everyone has your best interest in mind and even in the Amish culture, because the communities were small enough, you kind of knew, right. But here there was a whole world. So you didn't really know, you didn't know, could you trust them or not?

And I was very trusting in many, many situations and got, you know, learn some lessons that way, but that, and then getting my [00:12:00] GED was challenging. Understanding like in school, we didn't have algebra, we didn't have geometry, we didn't have language. We never wrote papers. And so having to actually do that was a challenge in itself.

It took me almost like six months to get my GED. Yeah. 

Leah McIntosh: That, and see, I can kind of relate to that being that I was homeschooled. We didn't have to do that. Our schedules was. I wouldn't say it was completely strict. I was done with school by the time I was 16 and I was like, I'm I'm let me get my GED or something.

I'm ready. I'm ready to be done with this. I don't want to do this anymore. So yeah, I can definitely see going out into the real world. And I hate to say the real world because you know, the Amish, that's still a culture within itself. How big, I guess, was the adjustment [00:13:00] for you. Cause I get, when I'm thinking of a 17 year old girl out there by herself, like no family, no, nobody to depend on, like how did you make a way out of no way basically.

Emily Adams: Hmm. Yeah. So when I left, I actually left and I had a friend that helped me at the time. And when I left, I was so determined to make it. And that was taught. I compartmentalized, you know, not having my family anymore because I was so driven. To actually make it that I knew I had to figure it out. And one of the things was getting my haircut for the first time and not realizing what kind of cut I wanted.

I was like, I don't know, just cut it. And she cut it. All right. Like to the point where I hated it. But that was one of the things that I [00:14:00] learned very quickly that just ask, you know, you have to ask, or you have to figure it out on your own to be able to actually make it. And then the other thing was I had gotten a job right away, so I can start like having income to support myself.

But the challenging thing was you couldn't really get a good job until you actually got your GED. 

Leah McIntosh: Yeah. And I mean, yeah, that would be, I don't know. I just, I'm thinking about myself about myself at 17 and I'm like, could I have done that? Yeah, of course 

Emily Adams: you could. 

Leah McIntosh: I, if I really want to do, like, I knew that I didn't want to be well I'm from Kansas, so there's my disclaimer right there.

I'm from that. Capital city of Kansas. And, you know, I had parents who [00:15:00] had a different viewpoint on how they wanted to raise their kids. And there's five of us. I'm the oldest of five. And I always tell people that I was the Guinea pig because I was the one that was homeschooled from kindergarten until I substance subsequently graduated.

And at 17, I went into college. But it was with a disclaimer because I was still trying to, I hate to use the word people please. Cause it wasn't people pleasing. It was being that how we were raised, your honor, your father and your mother. My father's wish was that we didn't go to major college because.

It was a cesspool of Sodom and Gomorrah. That's his quote. So you didn't want me at the schools I wanted to go to. So I ended up going to a little junior college and it set me [00:16:00] back. You know, I had a fear, I had that fear of, if I go against the grain and, you know, stand up and say, I don't want to do this your way.

I want to do it my way. What's that going to look like, is he going to kick me out? Is he gonna, you know, is he not gonna love me anymore? Like what what's, what's going to happen? And so instead of standing up and saying, no, I don't want to do this. I just kept putting that. I'm, I'm honoring my father and my mother by, you know, staying close to home.

And so what ended up happening for me was I stayed at home until I was 25 years old. And then I just couldn't take it anymore. And so I kinda, I laugh at, I laugh about it now, but I kind of snuck off, like at the, in the night I started slowly Melling boxes of clothes to Richmond, Virginia, which is where I live now.

[00:17:00] And two weeks after I turned 25, I have to replay and I left and I haven't been back. And so it's like, yeah, I definitely overcame that fear. Cause I didn't know, I didn't have a job. I had family here and I had my now husband who was at that point, this time, really good friend here. And so I was like, okay, I feel comfortable.

Cause I still feel like I have somebody, but I tell you what, after three months of not having a job. It, you know, the real stuff started to kick in. Cause I'm like, oh, okay. I don't have no money. I don't have a car or anything. So I finally called my dad because I wanted to see what is he going to say? You know?

And he just said, well, if we have to it, wasn't, it wasn't the conversation I was expecting. I was expecting for him to say, well, I told you so, you know, and he told you, but it wasn't that it was. [00:18:00] All right. Well, if we have to wait to sit here, the money for a plane ticket, you can come on back, just come on home and just find a job here or whatever, you know, you can get us like, okay.

But that was not what was in the cards for me. Cause I was determined. I don't want to come back. I don't want to be, you know, in Kansas anymore. So I got gotta, I took the first job that I could get and I think it was at target or something like that. But yeah. A lot of people. And I guess this is the whole reasoning for why I wanted to do this podcast.

They don't know how to jump and then grow their wings as you're flying, because they allow the fear to keep them immobile or not willing to take. The action, you know, it could be in anything personal life career. I think I [00:19:00] made a post about that today on Instagram. That that's the only thing you really have to fear is not doing what you, what it is that you want to do.

You already mentioned kind of with within the last year, taking your mom, cation that you, you could kind of pinpoint that moment when you had. Hey, this might be me. I don't want this life anymore. I had to make these changes. So what exactly did, did that journey look like for you? Hmm, 

Emily Adams: so I'll be honest.

It's a hard reality to face. It's really hard for. It was really hard for me to be honest with myself, because I felt one, I always followed everything by the book. Like I was, I was the parents, I had it all together and I had everything and I didn't really take full responsibility [00:20:00] and full ownership until I really went through the transformation and COVID of, oh my goodness.

Like I'm finding out who I am and I'm having self love for myself for the first time in ever. But. I look back now and see that in every relationship that I was in or even friendship for that matter, I was always looking for that person or that thing, even in my college degree and everything to fulfill me, I was looking and things and people to fulfill me.

And I think all my mom, Keisha and I realized. Things are not going to fulfill me. I've got the corporate job, I've got all these things, but I've just went through a second divorce list. This is my problem. And it was a hard reality to face. And I wanted to blame it on something to make myself feel better because I was like, this is not my problem.

Like I was raised this way. Like I would use that story all the [00:21:00] time. I was raised in the Amish culture. This is bullshit. Like this isn't fair. And I would like go down this path instead of fully taking ownership of it and saying, okay, you choose this. This is yours. This is you. Now you get to do the work and doing the work is not easy or comfortable.

It is never easy or comfortable. And we want to resist it because we are conditioned not to do the work we re re resist it for multiple reasons. One is the discomfort. It is very uncomfortable to realize, okay, I've got a problem. And now how do I solve that for myself? And that's when I had to realize it's going to be a journey to solve this and figure out who I am.

And I knew for years, one, I knew that I was made for more and I was just playing small. Like the corporate job was playing small. And the other thing [00:22:00] is knowing that I, all I kept wondering is this really all that my life is, is this really all that is? And I always would search for it. For hours, I Googled and YouTube.

How do you find happiness? How do you find inner peace? What does it mean to be in alignment? Like I was searching and I found the answer during COVID and the incredible thing is every single one of us, we already have it within us. We just know how it needs to know how to tap into it. 

Leah McIntosh: Right. And for me doing that, my, it might be me moment.

Came in 2016 and it was, I wasn't even conscious of the fact that I needed needed a change. I knew at a early age kind of like you, that there has to be more than this. I was 2021 when I first had that thought and I was [00:23:00] working and pediatrics as a, as a nurse. And I was thinking and looking at all these nurses that had been nurses for.

20 and 30 years how miserable they were. I was like, this is not what I want my life to look like. Like I don't, I don't know what I want it to look like, but it's not like this. And I noticed like every decision that I had made up to that point in my life was solely based on trying to please my parents and live up to an identity that they put on me when I was.

A baby that, oh, they'd call me nurse, Leah, but that's ultimately not what my heart desired. That's not what I truly wanted. And so it took someone, it was really a rejection, but a blessing in itself to telling me that [00:24:00] you're not serious. So I don't want to work with you and you need to work on your personal development and go read these books.

And one of those books was asking is given. I love that I ugly cried. I have never, I ever read a book like that, you know, in the, in the black community, we're not really. Open are taught about personal development. It's go to church, go pray, go do this, go do that. It's not look within yourself. Or my big thing is self-forgiveness, that's what me and that alone.

I say in 2019, I had my moment of freedom is what I call it, because that was when I was able to finally. Release. I say it felt like this heaviness [00:25:00] in the middle of my, my chest. And I was like, it was released after years. I would wake up with this heaviness, just hold me down and I could never let it go.

It didn't matter what I tried to do. I did girl, I did all kinds of, I did this one. Like I still to this day, I'm like what in the world was that it was this guy who. He told me I had a heart Walbro block. And so he was doing this energy work, but we were doing it over zoom and he had his girlfriend sitting in like, like she was me and he was, it was weird.

And I was like, I don't think that works, fill this block, but okay, go off. Maybe, maybe after I wake up. And then I worked with this other lady here in town and that did work, whatever it was, [00:26:00] I did feel lighter, but what I have found is you can go to therapy, you can go and you can heal from the traumas.

But the one step that I. Notice that people fail to do. They'll forgive everybody else around them, but they won't forgive themselves. 

Emily Adams: Amen. Amen. 

Leah McIntosh: And it is hard to do, and there's going to be a lot of ugly crying and, and pain, but you have to purge that if you don't hurt it and you don't move and navigate through that stuff, you're just going to stay stuck.

Adrift. And you're not going to be able to face the fears and all those things, because you're just going to be stuck as I've stayed stuck for decades. And didn't even realize it. I think a lot of people do and they don't [00:27:00] know how to navigate. So what was, I guess you said you've found that thing that helps you.

What was that thing that helped you to. Start navigating through. 

Emily Adams: Yeah. It was a multiple things that kind of helped me. So after I had started meditation and really made myself be still and sit and be still, I found one, I wasn't allowing myself the grace. And I wasn't, I wasn't, I did not forgive myself. I could forgive everyone else around me because I could justify what they did and how they were hurting.

So they lashed out toward me. Right. But I couldn't justify why I did the things I did and I had. A mentor, tell me, he asked me when I told him I was like, I'm struggling with, you know, really forgiving myself for these things. And he said, if you go back in that time on the date that it happened, that you made the decision you made, whether it was to get married or [00:28:00] to get divorced or whatever it was with the information you had at that time, did you make the right decision?

And when I looked back on my life, every single thing. In that moment, I made the right decision for me because that was my path. And I realized that and I was like, oh my goodness. Like it's so right. And it's so true. And then I started realizing, okay, we've got to forgive ourselves. So I started working on it and you want to talk about an ugly cry for days.

I even wrote myself a forgiveness letter and it was so hard to do, to sit and say, I forgive myself. For not fully loving myself for waiting to love myself until I reach XYZ. Cause it was always, I love myself when I dropped 20 pounds because I needed to lose weight. I love myself when I can hit that career point.

I'll love myself and want to get my degree. I'll love myself when [00:29:00] and I, I realized I had to stop.

Right. 

Leah McIntosh: And you're just putting conditions on loving yourself when it should just be unconditional 

Emily Adams: all the time. Yes. But, and I think part of it too, was being raised in the Amish culture. I was never said they never said, I love you ever in the Amish culture. Yeah. So I didn't know. So I had a hard time even understanding what is love.

And for the longest time I struggled and even during COVID it seemed like it got so clear to me. What love is the unconditional love, and that's what I needed my entire life. And I needed to give that to myself. To unconditionally love myself because when people used to say self love or self care, it'd be like, yeah, that's all nice and cool, but I'm not about to go shopping for myself for self-love, but that's really not what it was about.

And so I understood self love is [00:30:00] showing up for yourself. You know, self love is calling yourself out when you know, you need to check yourself. And so understanding that really was a moment of. Of truth for me of like, wow. 

Leah McIntosh: Yeah, yeah. That would be, if it's powerful, once you get that knowledge in is freeing.

I always say that was my, I found the freedom and I self forgiveness because what the problem was with me is that I had adopted this identity of I'm a victim of. Instead of saying that I'm a survivor. And when I was able to reframe that and change the way that I viewed myself, I was like, okay, I don't feel so.

I didn't, like I said, that that heaviness lifted off of me. I was able to [00:31:00] truly not only forgive myself, but the people that wronged me. Cause I was saying for years, oh, I forgave him. I forgive him, but I didn't really forgive them because I couldn't forgive myself. And, you know, being that I was really young when some of the stuff that came up for me during my journey happened, I had to take a step back.

Cause you know, sometimes it's hard for people to do the journey or have an understanding of why do I need to forgive somebody for. You know, causing trauma when I was a child. Well, because a lot of the times those old emotions get stuck and you don't know how to purge them in a lot of the times when we were young, we don't know how to purge that.

So people doing the work as adults, just think about if you're able to heal yourself [00:32:00] as an adult, and then you have children. That's breaking generational pain and suffering.

So don't just think of it as, I don't know how to do, you'd better do the work because you don't want your kids and their kids' kids having to carry some of the burdens because I look back at some of the stuff that, that came up for me and I'm like, what? Some of this stuff, isn't even my, my stuff. Why am I holding onto this?

Money money's problems, money blocks. I don't believe that, but that's stuff that I adopted because of my environment at the time, 100%. So yeah, I don't, I'm trying to think of, I don't want to keep making you go back, but where does he, well, I know I do. I have a question. Where did you go? Where was your mom?

[00:33:00] Cation. 

Emily Adams: So interesting enough. So when I, she had told me that I actually went home and opened my laptop and I was like, okay, where have I never been in my life? And I started Googling places, you know, Google was my best friend back then. I would Google and everything, my life problems on Google. See if I could fix it.

And I Googled California and I'm like, man, California is really nice. It's really cool. Like. And I looked at different locations and I picked San Diego and that's where I ended up going. I went to San Diego and then didn't plan anything the whole entire time I was there except for going to skydive.

Cause I want to go skydiving. 

Leah McIntosh: How long was, was your trip? 

Emily Adams: It was only Friday through a Sunday. So it was literally 

Leah McIntosh: okay. It was this quick, but that was enough. And that's the thing too. Let's talk about that because a lot of people think when you decide that you want better for yourself, that it has to be this long drawn out journey.

And it [00:34:00] does not, it can literally happen. Like for me, it was one weekend. Oh my God. It was Friday through Sunday that I decided that, Hey, I'm going to go on a trip. I went on a trip to North Carolina. And I think it was Saturday, Saturday evening was like that just decades of pain gone. Yeah. So, no, it does not have to take years and years if it takes you years and years, that means you've got a lot of stuff that you're shifting through.

Emily Adams: Or sometimes like, and I'll be honest, like there's, there's times that we're going to resist it because it's uncomfortable. And if you can't deal with the discomfort and sit in that, then it's going to take a little bit longer. 

Leah McIntosh: Yeah. And that's the truth of it. Cause they're still, you know, everybody's a work in progress.

Yes. There's always going to [00:35:00] be something always, but if you have tools and you know, that. You made a commitment to yourself to be the best and highest version of you. Then you're going to sit there and you're going to deal with the, the pain and the awkwardness and the ugly cries and whatever else that may come up.

And when you are free, it's, it's just kind of a undescribable feeling. And you want everybody around you to kind of feel that same freedom. But not everybody is ready for that. Have you had any, like people that are in your inner circle resist the new and improved 

Emily Adams: year? I did. And that is, was one of the things I learned and because when I started changing, you know, I got questions.

Like, why are you changing? [00:36:00] What's going on. And I even got questions to the point of, you know, I'm really concerned about you because you're not the same person anymore. And I had to learn, as people walked out of my life, one, let them go, don't hang on. And two, if I'm always in an abundance mindset and somebody goes out of my life, it's for my highest good, because anytime something old leaves you.

It's making room for something new and better. And I have found that to be very true. So when people, you know, choose to leave my life and I went from a completely different friends circle to barely having any friends and yes, it was hard because that scarcity mindset would come and be like, oh my goodness, what did you do with your life?

You have zero friends now. And so I went down this path of like, Not having friends, just having a few, right. That stayed with me. But what I [00:37:00] realized is I had to shift my mindset around it of, you know, I can still find friends that are on the same path I am. And anytime someone leaves, like I would try to cling to the friends of like, oh my goodness, why are you leaving?

And, you know, try it, try to make it work. But I was like, I got to the point where I'm like, that's coming from a scarcity mindset. And so when I released them, I know something better is coming into my life. 

Leah McIntosh: Right. And another thing too, is some people, you know, kind of circling back around to the fear.

That's one of the fears that, that creep in. Like, if I change, nobody's gonna love me or want to be around me or whatever. But one thing that I had to like remind people of is that not everyone. Is meant to be with you through a lifetime. Some people are there for a season and you had to be okay with [00:38:00] that.

Yes. I have friends that I've been friends with for over 30 years, and then I have friends that I've only known for a couple weeks. And what I've noticed too, going down my journey is that. I can't relate as much to my friends that I've known for 30 something years, even though they've known me since I was six years old, we're not on the same wavelength and path.

Right. And so, you know, it's easier to talk to and be with like-minded people that are on the same journey, same path as you. And so that scarcity mindset that's. That keeps people so immobilized and it doesn't serve you. It doesn't serve anything really other than to keep you fearful and not [00:39:00] be the best version of you.

Really. So I'm going to ask one last question here. For our listeners. What piece of advice would you give someone that maybe just starting their journey and kind of how to overcome the fear that might be keeping them stuck? 

Emily Adams: Yeah, the purse, the piece of advice I would give is realize. That one, you're never going to have all the answers and that's okay.

And when the fear creeps in fear is an emotion, just like being happy. The fear is there. And if you can figure out a way to actually work through the fear, instead of allowing it to keep you stuck, you will [00:40:00] go. And, and so many different directions, like you're just going to go like head first, if you realize that fear is just an emotion and you don't allow it to keep you stuck.

And one of the ways I would say, if you're wondering, like, how do I get there is when you realize that fear is kicking in, you're like, oh my goodness. Fear is here. And like, you starting to panic a quick and easy way is acknowledged the fear. And you know, you'll be like, okay, The fear is there. Thank you for trying to keep me safe, because fear is just there to keep us safe.

Once you acknowledge it, you can tell yourself like it's there, but I can still take action even then, even though it's there because it's there to keep me safe. There's nothing like coming to scare me out of the woods or anything like this. I don't need to run, but it's just there to keep me safe. And if you can realize that when you start your personal development journey, you'll realize.

Just how powerful that is to keep going. 

[00:41:00] Leah McIntosh: That is a very useful tip and it will definitely help a lot of people because I didn't know that, you know, I didn't know, sit with it. Welcome it. And before, you know what, you're on the other side of it in your life has changed? Cause I definitely, for me. Just the one, the five years that I've been on this journey, I'm not the same person at all.

And, and you won't be either. If you take that one step, that's all, it is just the decision. Make the decision that even though I'm scared, I still know love and accept myself and I'm going to do this for me. Cause I want to be the best, best version of me that I can be. So yes. I want to thank you for coming along.

It might be you and sharing your story. [00:42:00] It was amazing. And you're amazing. Your story is just amazing. And I know that somebody is going to get a lot of, a lot of joy from hearing it and.

Or in their lives. 

Emily Adams: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. 

Leah McIntosh: (outro)

Thanks for listening to another episode of it might be you. I release new episodes on Thursdays and make sure to follow me on Instagram at @SuperiorThinkerInc so that you can keep up with all things, Leah and the podcast. Thanks for listening.