Purpose can dim quietly. The tasks you once loved blur into dread, and the calendar fills while your energy thins.
Our guest, thought habit expert and author Amy Kemp, shares how a thriving sales leadership career gave way to a deeper calling when familiar work started to feel heavy. That shift led her to the Habit Finder assessment, a tool that measures subconscious habits of thinking and pairs them with practical rewiring strategies. The result isn’t hustle theater; it’s sustainable clarity that lets you build a life that works in real time.
We explore why two-thirds of your thoughts happen below awareness and how those patterns, built for survival, can stall growth when seasons change. Amy breaks down how to reverse-engineer stubborn loops by tracking thoughts, naming the emotion attached, and surfacing the core belief underneath.
For those wanting to explore this topic further, connect with Amy Kemp on Instagram @amykempinc or visit her website: www.amykemp.com.
If this conversation resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a lift, and leave a quick review so more listeners can discover it. Your words help us bring more honest, practical guidance to your feed each week.
To download a free chapter of host Sylvia Worsham’s bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, visit her website at www.sylviaworsham.com
Transcript:
SPEAKER_00:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt, or worry, and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, Sylvia Warsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, Sylvia Warsham.
SPEAKER_02:
Hey Lightbringers, it’s Sylvia Warsham. Welcome to Release. And I love when James sends over new guests for me to interview on this podcast because every guest he’s ever sent over have been the most amazing women. They have amazing stories to share. And I was looking up Amy’s Instagram because that’s how you can link up with Amy. And she has been described as a thought habit expert. And I know that she has in the background, you see I see you. That is her book that released on February of last year. So without further ado, Amy, thank you so much for joining us this morning.
SPEAKER_01:
I’m thrilled to be here. Thank you for the invitation and welcoming me.
SPEAKER_02:
Yes, it’s so incredible to have you on the show. And I know you have an amazing story of transformation. So please do tell us how you became the thought habit expert and the author of ICU.
SPEAKER_01:
Oh, I would love to. My professional journey has been one of connection but also variety, I would think. There are some themes that you can find throughout. I started out first originally teaching high school English and then started my own business and really worked in a sales capacity. Grew a team, I was leading a team of about a thousand people across the United States for over 20 years in a sales capacity where I was developing leaders, um, helping people to increase their sales and productivity. Um, really loved that work. And in many ways, I would say I was sort of at the top of a mountain. You know, I’d kind of achieved a lot. I I had a microphone in my hand at a lot of events. Um, you know, I was there teaching and leading and and also just had a fairly like public persona in a very small world, but still um was well known and uh respected in this one small universe. That was when I started really experienced probably the second major professional transition and it was personal as well, where I think there are some symptoms of transitions that we don’t often identify or articulate, but that everyone experiences, which is the things that you used to love or at worst just tolerate in the work you’re doing become annoying, boring, even just like you resist them, you don’t want to do them, you kind of dread them. It is a deeply disorienting experience because it’s like wait, I always loved that. I I never had an issue being motivated to do that, that was my favorite thing to do, and now all of a sudden I’m waking up in this thing, I’m dreading it. So if anyone listening is having this experience, I’ll tell you that it’s a very normal one I found, but when if you’ve never heard anyone talk about it, you feel like something is deeply wrong with you. Um I also knew at that time I was having conversations with women that I knew completely outside of the context of that work. And these were very successful women, maybe who I knew through the community or just through my kids or through whatever, you know. All of them were coming to me and talking to me about the experience they were having, which was one of isolation, one of being overwhelmed by the demands of their professional world, married with the demands of the unpaid labor they were doing at home and the work they were doing in the community. Um, but mostly it was this feeling of loneliness in that experience. And I recognized that all of them were coming to me, and I kept thinking, oh, if I could connect these women somehow, I think something magical could happen. I think they could help each other, and I really believed that they needed the community of each other. So I was speaking at an event in Salt Lake City. I had worked with a coach who used a tool called the Habit Finder, and this was maybe four or five years prior to when I was out in Salt Lake City. It was the most transformational work I had ever done. My business quadrupled in size through the work over a period of years, and it was an assessment tool that measured your subconscious habits of thinking, and then the curriculum helped you to replace the habits of thinking that were creating resistance in your work or your life with ones that were more beneficial. All that to say, I had stayed in touch with this coach. We were still friends, and he had worked with many people in my organization, and so I knew I was gonna be in Salt Lake City. I called him up and said, I’m gonna be there, let’s meet for dinner, we had dinner, and I said, Oh, I keep on having this feeling about you know, getting these women together, I’m supposed to do something, but it feels so ridiculous because my my business was so big, my the demands at home were really high. My kids at that age were like um I call it the Uber era of parenting where like nobody drives and everybody’s in stuff. And so my husband is a high school administrator and um coach, and so it was like really intensely busy. And he said to me, I think you need to take action on this idea. And on Monday, we’re starting a training for people to use the Habit Finder tool and curriculum, and I think you should really consider using it. Now, up to that point, I was I had never thought about coaching, I’d never thought about using a tool, I’d never, I was not look, you know, it was just the craziest thing that I trusted it. It was so crazy, and I went home, talked to my husband, and he said, every time we’ve ever invested in you, it’s been worth it. I love that. That’s so supportive, yes. So good, so rare. And so we made a very significant financial investment for me to be trained to use this tool. So I thought, oh, I’ll just scratch this itch, I’ll lead a group of women through this process and you know, get this off my chest, and then maybe I’ll I’ll feel like doing this work that’s becoming dreadful to me for a weird reason, right? And so um I started just a few short months later with my first two groups of eight women, uh, and it grew so quickly. So I always kind of tease that I accidentally started a business. I had no long-term strategic plan. I didn’t intend to start a whole new company. Um, I never thought that it would lead to my writing a book, though the book has been a lifelong dream of mine, and yet everything about it when I look back is the same work I loved to do in every role I’ve had, which is the development of people and the helping them free up um any resistance they have to creating what it is that they’re here to create. And so, yeah, so super cool. So now currently, my the company is eight years old. My work is in small groups and one-on-one settings with people using this tool and this curriculum that measures our subconscious habits of thinking.
SPEAKER_02:
That’s amazing, and I love that because most people don’t realize how much how many, first of all, how many thoughts come into our mind on a daily basis. And then they tend to listen to all those thoughts and act on them without realizing that they’re doing it. Even though it’s a conscious ability of your mind, the thought process, we know that there are belief systems that are driving those thoughts. And that’s the subconscious part of us that is on automatic. We just automatically react to these feelings that we’re getting that are being promoted by all these thoughts. So if we don’t change the way we’re thinking, we’re not gonna change the course of our life. It’s just gonna keep on repeat over and over and over again. And I find it fascinating that the way you you came about this, you know, because there is a moment, I believe, in a woman’s life, and it usually starts at the end or somewhere in the mid-30s, maybe towards the end of the 30s, where you realize that perhaps you’re in the wrong act of life, and something’s pulling you, and what used to really fill you doesn’t anymore, and you really start that search for what that divine purpose really is like.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:
And I find it interesting.
SPEAKER_01:
I also will mention that when I tell the story, it sounds like that transition was just very easy and smooth and simple. Yeah, no, no. No. The thing about transitions is that they’re some of the most painful, disorienting parts of our life, and that typically everything in you that needs to be healed comes up when you’re going through a transition. If you rush through a transition, you will not be prepared for the next era, the next thing that is ahead for you. Because what a transition has for you is the character development. In my faith walk, I would say, like, God uses a transition to prepare you for the next thing that He’s calling me to do, right?
SPEAKER_02:
Yes, the next big thing on the horizon. And that’s why sometimes, and this has been a current theme of my previous interview and even from last night. I have a good friend of mine that I met with for coffee, and she was discussing how she had she’s feeling like why certain things keep happening over and over again. And I said, Well, have you learned the lesson that God is teaching you through this dark chapter? And she it just stopped her entirely. I said, There is a lesson here that He is asking you to look into, and you gotta work through it. Yeah, because if you don’t work through it, the problem with not working through it is you won’t uncover the belief system that is really driving this thing. And so it’ll keep coming back over and over and over again because it the belief is what promotes the thought. The thoughts. And so the key is to I identify that maybe work backwards in your mind, is how I coach my clients is okay, you gotta look at the clues that your mind has given you. And your thoughts are very big clues, very big clues, and I would write them down, and I would like to look at them, and then I would also see which feeling is showing up with these thoughts constantly because that feeling is also attached to a lot of the triggers, a lot of the responses, a lot of the habits. We form habits around these reactions and and patterns of behavior get assigned to this feeling as well. So we gotta kind of understand how we’re programming our own mind. Yeah, and we we keep doing that over the repetitive nature of our habits. And so it’s it’s an interesting topic, and I think most women to get unstuck really need to understand where they can start. Can you give some tips on say you you have these repetitive thoughts, they keep you stuck? How do you get people to start working with their thoughts?
SPEAKER_01:
That’s a good question. Well, first, it’s very important that you have language to describe even what’s happening. And so I would recommend um, in the work that I do, just taking the free habit finder assessment because we’re actually really bad at seeing ourselves. We and then I I have a hunch. I’m actually working on this a little bit lately, but a hunch that we don’t see ourselves. That’s why we’re designed to live in community with other people, because we need other people to help us understand ourselves. And so this tool, um, two-thirds of the thoughts that are happening in our brains are happening below the surface. We’re unaware of them, and we are hardwired to survive. So most of our patterns of thinking have been created to conserve energy so that we can survive. For example, you don’t want to have to think about breathing. You don’t want to have to consciously remember to breathe. And so we have a subconscious wiring where we just breathe. It’s a pattern, it’s well worn, and we do. Uh that being said, some of those patterns that we used to survive at certain stages of life no longer are serving us, and they’re actually harming us or preventing us from making progress. We don’t need them anymore. But you don’t really know. And so, this tool, it’s the only tool I’ve ever found that really captures that. And I often have people when I walk through it with them say, like, how did it know that? Because it resonates as so true, but they don’t recognize that that’s what’s happened. Really important also that you understand that you are not your thoughts. Thoughts are just things, they’re out there happening, but you are deeply impacted by your thoughts. And so the retraining or rewiring of your brain can lead to vastly different outcomes. Let me give you maybe just a more concrete example of this because it can get a little bit fluffy or a little bit like vague.
unknown:
Again.
SPEAKER_01:
Entrepreneurs tend to resist that kind of structure, right? Uh, in some ways that’s beneficial because a lot of entrepreneurs, we’re just not going to do something that’s inefficient, or we don’t have a lot of red tape. We don’t want a big bureaucracy where things get slowed down by processes. And so you can move quickly, you can create things quickly, you can change quickly, you can innovate, and there are benefits to that. The problem is that groove in your brain of being resistant to process and procedure, then you become your own boss. And you say to yourself, self, you need to have a budget for your business. And your resistant patterns of thinking say, I don’t want to. We create resistance to the growth of our business because we do need to know where our money is moving, and you know, we need to make wise financial decisions and that kind of thing as we’re growing a business. So these patterns of thinking that are just absolutely running your world are happening below the surface, and until you recognize what’s happening, you will resist them. I’ll give you a funny example that I just realized I did today. Um, so I use a tool called the six most important things list every morning. Um, I do it the day before, but before my day is over, I make a list of six things that are the most important things that get done the next day. And usually throughout the day I’m making the list, like I’ve already got three things on the list for tomorrow because I know, like, oh, that needs to get done tomorrow. Well, I created a sheet that this is so funny. It has four days of six most important things on it, and it’s just a cute little sheet, it has my branding, and it’s just a fun little tool. I’m so resistant to structure in this pattern of thinking that today, for some reason, I decided I didn’t want to write my list on that sheet that I created, so I made my own little list, right? I mean, it’s so silly, like who cares? But but my wiring, and it’s I’ve learned to like let myself do that at times just to like get it out of my system. I’m still doing the list, it doesn’t really matter where I wrote it, you know. But I laugh out loud because I’m like, wow, that is very strong.
SPEAKER_02:
But it just it happens because it’s it’s helping me think of one example that is also kind of relatable. You know, you’re on this health plan, right? And your body, you know, those changes are tough changes to make because your body’s used to the sugar, it’s used to this. Like right now, the one of my doctors has me on this plan where I can’t have anything with added sugars. And so your body can really kick into like it’s craving sugar. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01:
That’s an addiction.
SPEAKER_02:
It’s an addiction. And I remember having a nutritionist that said, Sylvia, when your body’s doing that, you also have to allow it from time to time. Because otherwise, then when you want to do another major change, it’s gonna resist it. So you may just want to have that slice of cake. It’s fine, it’s not gonna kill you, it’s not gonna hurt you, you know, because our fear mind will sometimes be like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, and it goes into total overwhelm. And it’s like, no, it’s not gonna do that. So this morning I needed carbs because I was gonna get on the pickleball court, and I’ve been like just completely like, I was like, no, I need to have carbs because I’m on an antibiotic right now. And the doctor specifically told me, Sylvia, have something like carby, like starchy. And I was like, I didn’t have crackers, I didn’t have the normal stuff that I could normally have, and I didn’t want to make oatmeal this one. I was tired of it, and so then I just said, you know what? I made pancakes for my family yesterday. I’m going to have one of those, it’s not gonna kill me. And I just had it and I didn’t feel guilt or anything, and my body is just fine, my joints are fine, it’s not gonna kill me, you know, but it reminds me of that. It’s don’t let your mind kind of kick you into that crazy overthinking, overwhelm because it will sometimes if you allow it, but it totally, but you gotta kind of bring it back to center.
SPEAKER_01:
I write about this in in the chapter of my book called Surrender to Structure. Um, people who embrace high levels of structure also have periods of rest from it on a consistent basis. We are designed to live in rhythm and we are designed to embrace structure, but then also to rest and enjoy. Yeah, absolutely. The other interesting thing about structure, I love to pay attention to where we resist it most. Um, you know, on the beach, those when people walk along and they find the treasures, you know, the metal detectors. Yes. So if you can imagine, uh, if you can step back from yourself and observe yourself, the places in our lives where we resist structure, if you dig down under the surface, like it beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, dig down right there, almost always you will find unhealed pain. So in my case, um, the place where I will resist structure the most is in money. And when I dig down there, I have some um, I wouldn’t call it unhealed pain, I would call it um healing pain around um finances and running businesses for so long, just some events that were really challenging and difficult, and a lot of pressure and a lot of um decisions that I would feel shame around or um that were difficult. So when when you have that kind of situation like in your past, embracing a rigid structure in that area is not a good idea. Uh so for me, I have a budget, but it is not a to the penny budget, and I give myself a lot of leeway. I have people around me who help me embrace the structures around money. I have systems that help me embrace structure and make wise decisions, and but I know that this is a risk area for me. For women, a lot of times we have a lot of unhealed pain around our bodies, the way our bodies look, the way they function, the size of our bodies, what’s been done to our bodies, how our bodies have been treated, what’s been said about them, right? And so when we get really rigid around our bodies, it is unsustainable and unhealthy, um, and will not create lasting change because of that. And so it’s just a really, yeah, it’s a fascinating, it’s basically all the things that you set news resolutions about, you know, your your budget, your money, your you know, all of those. Yeah, all of those things, our health, our time, um, are all of those areas where we tend to resist structure.
SPEAKER_02:
Yes, we do. But like we said, there’s there’s moments where we need rest. And I do think we need to emphasize that because women in general, we tend to keep going. Go, go, go, go, go. We don’t understand the concept of rest sometimes. Or joy, forget joy. That one, that one should there should be more books written on how to be more in joy, and I’m saying that very specifically because we know how to check things off our lists, we know how to achieve. We’ve been conditioned to do that since we were very little. What we haven’t been conditioned to do is to rest, to enjoy, to just be in the moment. We don’t understand that concept. We certainly don’t understand it in this country. I know that when I lived abroad in France, I understood it more because the French were very keen on, yes, they work hard, but they also know how to rest. Yeah. Just be in community, having a cup of coffee, just chatting.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah. We I probably am best known for my work with guilt-free play. Um, I am absolutely committed to scheduled guilt-free play time. Oh yeah. And if you are an overworker or you know that you feel guilty when you are resting or taking time off, I’ve rarely heard I’ve rare, I’ve rarely seen it work where you restrict yourself. I’m not gonna work as much. That doesn’t really work. What works is I’m scheduling dinner with my friends for five o’clock, and so I know that everything has to be done before them. Like today, I’m playing pickleball, I know, at five o’clock, right? That’s I’m actually giddy excited about it. It’s gonna be a really fun game. I know, you know, but I have scheduled guilt-free play because when we play the synapses in our brain that create solutions to problems that um give us an attractive energy that grows our businesses, that keeps us from overworking, overthinking, overdoing, over-creating, like hyper-functioning. Um, we we actually like open new pathways in our brain. So whether that be reading a great book, whether that be dinner with friends, or you enjoy some sort of sport or whatever, it is vital that that is a scheduled part. And then not only on a daily basis, but also on a quarterly basis of giving yourself time away, and then on a yearly or annual basis, looking at how many vacations you want to take, but that that is scheduled and protected, uh, probably at a higher level of like intentionality than your work is. That is actually the key to me creating what it is that I want to create in my life.
SPEAKER_02:
I totally agree with you. And what I’ve done, I we have Erin Condren here in Austin, Texas. I’m not sure where you’re at, Amy, but it’s a it’s an awesome story. We get our planners and stuff, and they’re really bright and beautiful planners, and I love them because they have lots of space for us to build. But one of the things that I remember doing and is color coding my calendar to see, like, for example, for joyful events, they were in yellow and bright yellow. If they were, you know, plans with my husband, they were in a blue shade. If I’m doing anything housework-wise, it was pink because I think of Barbie and I think of housework doing that, and all these things. And then I would like take an inventory of like how many yellows do I have on there? Is there enough yellow on my calendar or is it just work? Because work was all purple. That’s my branding. And I was like, if I just saw like all purple, I’m like, nope, that’s not gonna work because I can’t be there a hundred percent for my family if I’m on fumes, operating on fumes, right? And so we really, as women, got to understand that we need to take care of ourselves, and how we do that is to inject more joy in our lives and intentionally inject more joy because we have a tendency to just keep going because we’re the nurturers and we have our family, and we’re constantly being pulled in 150 directions, and and people are always wondering, how did you write a book? And I I I had to I had to do it at five o’clock in the morning because that’s the only time in the morning that no one’s pulling at me, and I could actually devote to writing a book and to stay obedient to Christ, like prompting to write this thing. So I know that the tips you’ve shared so far have been life-altering, and I know that women listening to this episode are gonna gain so much out of it. How can we reach you, Amy? How can we hook up with you? We want to do the habit finder or get your book.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah. Anyone can take the habit finder for free on my website, which is just my name. So am Y K-E-M-P dot com. And it just says take the free habit finder, you get your results immediately. You can look at um a full report of six different habits of thinking areas where we have habits of thinking, and that’s a really, just a really fascinating way for you to kind of start to even consider what’s happening below the surface in my brain. Uh, like you mentioned at the beginning, I love to have people follow me on Instagram. So Amy Kemp Inc is the official handle of my Instagram, and you can follow me there as well as on LinkedIn.
SPEAKER_02:
I’m definitely gonna well, I’m already following you on Instagram, but I’m definitely gonna hook up with you on LinkedIn. One, because when this thing releases, I certainly wanna hand you um the episode so you can share with your audience. But second, because I do think there’s a lot of alignment here in the way we’ve we’ve operated into star stories. There’s some alignment there. And pickleball, of course, because you know, pickleball unites us all. I was a college tennis player and this was like such an easy transition from you’re fortunate. That’s a that is a good.
SPEAKER_01:
I played basketball in college, so not the mission.
SPEAKER_02:
You still have to like aim and fire and you know, get it in a court. So, you know, if you can do basketball, you can do pickleball. It’s not that hard.
SPEAKER_01:
We were giggling yesterday, the fourth son that I played with. We were saying, I said, I’m almost embarrassed to tell you how excited I was all day yesterday to play this game. And we were comparing it to when you were little and you would get home from school and you couldn’t wait to get outside and play with your friends. Yes. That’s how I feel. That’s how I did that.
SPEAKER_02:
When I looked at my calendar this morning, I said, okay, when did my interview start? And because I saw a group of my friends getting together just down the street to play. And I thought, and my first interview wasn’t till 11 a.m. Texas time, and they were getting together at 8. And I was like, I can do that. I can I can get my girl into camp and I could drive back. I was there by 8:15, and it’s perfect because the weather down here, it’s getting hotter and hotter. Where are you at, Amy? I live near Chicago. Oh, bless you. Yeah, but you’re actually your summers are cool too. It’s hot now. It’s hot, yeah. But my parents lived in Chicago when they first moved to the United States. Um, my father was finishing his medical career here, and they he ended up doing um an internship at what was once known as St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. I don’t think it’s in existence anymore. My dad um passed away last year from um from a tumor he developed uh and from his service in Vietnam. So that’s another story for another time. But um, but yeah, Chicago, they always talk such beautiful things about Chicago, but they did not like the weather. They said the winters were super harsh and the summers were real hot. Like I know you’re in heat. I’m sure you do very late in the evening or probably early morning pickleball, or you would die. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:
Or you just sweat a lot.
SPEAKER_02:
So I really appreciate your time here today, Amy. I know that we’ve learned so much from you, and I I look forward to keeping in touch with you, sharing pickleball stories over time. And for the listeners of Released Out Revealed Purpose, remember Matthew 5.14 to be the light. Have a wonderful week. Stay safe. Love y’all. Bye now.
SPEAKER_00:
So that’s it for today’s episode of Released Out Reveal Purpose. Head on over to iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on iTunes. We’ll win a chance to grand prize drawing to win a twenty-five thousand dollar private VIP day with Sylvia Worsham herself. Be sure to head on over to sylviaworsham.com and pick up a free copy of Sylvia’s gift and join us on the next episode.