Find Your Room

I'm going to start this episode with something that might sting just a little bit. You can do all of the inner work in the world. You can journal until your hand cramps. You can manifest.

You can affirm, meditate. You can breathwork your way through every block. You can hire the coach. You can do the program.

You can read the book. You can take the supplement. You can work out. You can get the somatic therapy.

You can literally do all these things. But if you're spending your week, your actual week, your real life, your hours, and your conversations in rooms that reinforce the version of you you're trying to leave behind, you're going to keep recreating her. Welcome to the Unblocked Woman podcast. I'm Amy Sanders.

For years, I believed the next level of my life and business would come from a better strategy. Working harder. Figuring out that perfect plan. But eventually, I saw the real truth.

The biggest ceiling in our lives is not strategy. It's identity. The patterns we don't see. The subtle ways we play small.

The version of ourselves that we keep defaulting back to even when we know we're capable of more. This podcast is where we bring those patterns into the light. We talk about identity, leadership, growth, and what it actually takes to become the woman who can truly hold the life and business she wants. No fluff.

No performance. Just honest conversation about stepping fully into your power. So go ahead and subscribe and follow the show. And remember, the moment you see the pattern, you can finally break it.

I'm going to start this episode with something that might sting just a little bit. You can do all of the inner work in the world. You can journal until your hand cramps. You can manifest.

You can affirm. Meditate. You can do it. You can work your way through every block.

You can hire the coach. You can do the program. You can read the book. You can take the supplement.

You can work out. You can get the somatic therapy. You can literally do all these things. But if you're spending your week, your actual week, your real life, your hours and your conversations in rooms that reinforce the version of you you're trying to leave behind, you're going to keep recreating her.

Listen. again i'm not calling you weak and i'm not saying that this work doesn't work i'm saying that because identity is contagious and the people you're around aren't just witnessing who you are they are reinforcing who you are every single day in a thousand tiny ways this is in my opinion one of the most under talked about pieces of growth work especially for ambitious high capacity women like like you like me so that's what we're doing today we're talking about why your environment shapes identity more than your affirmations ever will and we're going to walk through how to actually audit your rooms i'm going to tell you about the room that i had to leave to become who i am today and i'm also going to be honest about why that's the hardest part of all of this and it's the most necessary so let's get into it first i want to talk about why affirmations aren't useful enough there's a frustration i hear from women all the time in my dms in coaching sessions in comments i'm doing the work but i'm not actually changing she's journaling she's got the vision board she's saying her affirmations in the mirror and six months later she's standing in the same exact spot wondering what's wrong with her why is this not working for her and nothing is wrong with her nothing is wrong with you i want to name the thing that's almost never named when i'm not working for her and that's the thing that's almost never named when it comes up your environment is undoing your inner work in real time like right now not someday if you slip up if you don't get the morning routine in i'm talking about right now every single day while you sleep on it feeling proud of the work you did that morning you can't outgrow a room you're still spending all of your time in meaning who you hang around with matters and it matters immensely here's what it looks like in practice the inner work happens for an hour in the morning you do your journaling you do your affirmations you meditate you have the vision board you look at it and you feel expansive in that moment you feel like a different woman and you are set up to win the day then you close the notebook and you spend the next 16 hours in environments that pull you right back to who you were the group chat that wants the old you that likes to talk trash the family dinner that only knows the old you so that's how you show up your job that only has room for the old you and they don't want you to grow they want you to stay exactly who you used to be this isn't willpower this is not a willpower problem and i need you to really hear that because most women think that it is they think that they just need to try harder they just need to do more they need to be more disciplined they need to want it more if just i want to be more disciplined i need to be more disciplined i need to be more disciplined i want it more then i'll be able to get it and i'm telling you it's wrong one hour of expansion count out place 16 hours of contraction it's not going to work i'm not calling you weak or saying you're doing everything wrong i'm just saying that the numbers don't add up i have these beautiful roses in my backyard but my backyard is cement with a pool so i have all these beautiful flower boxes and trees and shrubs and everything all over my yard but there's a pool and there's cement so the rose petals blow all over the cement and i have to use my blower to clean off the cement if i try to do it in a windstorm i literally cannot clean the cement and it drives me crazy having these rose petals all over the rose petals blow right back to where i'm trying to clean that's what i'm talking about here and it's same if you garden in a windstorm you can plant the seeds you can water them you can talk to them you can do literally everything right the environment will just keep ripping them out before they're root because they're blowing away you don't need better seeds you need to stop planting a garden in a windstorm and in my case i need to stop blowing the rose petals off the cement when it's windy that's what i'm talking about here so before we talk about how to fix it i want to explain why the environment is not sustainable if you don't have a windstorm is so powerful because once you understand this you can't unsee it and you can start to make the differences that you need to in your life to create real change so earlier i said identity is contagious and the core concept here is that you don't rise to the level of your goals you will fall to the level of your environment and i want to say that again because i think it's so powerful you don't rise to the level of your goals you fall to the level of your environment this is not just a vibe statement that i'm saying that sounds good on a slide or looks really cool it's how the nervous system actually works we are mirroring creatures you know my product called the mirror that's why i named it that we are mirroring creatures it's not a metaphor it's neuroscience our brains are literally wired to attune to the people around us their emotions their emotions their pacing their standards their tolerance for risk their relationships with money their beliefs about what's possible for women like them we mirror them so when you walk into a room your nervous system starts calibrating before you have even said a word that's why you can feel yourself get smaller in one room and bigger in another without consciously choosing either nobody told you to shrink but you just automatically did because your body read the room and it adjusted it think about it i want you to literally stop for a second right now and think about when you have entered a room and you feel totally alive you feel expansive you feel like you belong you feel excited and you're like yes these are my people now think about a time where you enter a room and you look through the room you scan the room and you're like oh i don't know you start to contract a little bit you shrink you feel like you can't speak up this is what i'm talking about here identity is contagious you catch it from the people that you spend time with whether you want to or not you don't get an opt out of this you're catching something from every room you're in all day every day the only choice you have is what room you decide to stand in every room has rules they're not really said out loud nobody hands you a printed list when you join a friend group or marry into a family but they govern what you can do say become and dream out loud in that room and when you break them even a little bit just accidentally even when you break these rules when you enter this room you'll feel the temperature change before anyone says a word think about it have you married into a family and all of a sudden you have to feel different when you're inside that home you have to adjust you join a friend group and you're not really sure if you can speak up because this friend group is different than the last one you're a part of so some of the rules that i've seen in rooms that women have outgrown are maybe the rooms don't celebrate them we don't celebrate loudly here we bond by complaining about our husbands we don't talk about money because that would be boastful don't be too anything don't be too big don't be too small maybe just be a little bit stay where i can find you don't change too much because when you change you're making us feel uncomfortable that one right there like hits me like a freaking brick i am always growing i am always changing i am always filling my brain and my body my soul with what is good and i over the years know that i have made a lot of money and i have made a lot of money and i have made a lot of money and i have made a lot of women feel uncomfortable because they just i almost become too much for them that means i'm in the wrong room right so here's the thing none of these things that i just said get said in a sentence like that they don't actually say that instead they get reinforced through a joke that lands a little sharp cuts a little deep or silence after you've shared your good news you have something amazing to share and you share it and people just kind of look at you or they say oh that's cool and now you feel dumb for sharing it or a subject change when you bring up your goals like people are like i don't want to hear about that that happened to me last week when i talked about my book that is coming out it's coming out in october and it's my solo book i'm incredibly proud of it i can't wait for it to come out and i brought it up and people didn't really want to hear about it and yet i brought it up in another group and they were so excited this is what i'm talking about here you learn the rules fast even if no one ever really states them and then you obey them so that you can fit in every room has unspoken rules the question is whether the rules of your rooms are letting you grow or keeping you small and limiting you so i want to get practical if identity really is contagious and every room has rules the next question is obvious what are the rules of your rooms that you're in right now i want to talk to you about how to audit your environment so that when you do all the things when you're reading journaling when you're doing all these things in the morning you set yourself up for success you continue to have success because you have audited your environment and you have created environment that welcomes more growth so there are five categories and as we walk through each one i want you to ask yourself one question and i want you to ask yourself one question i want you to sit with it not just kind of nod along i want you to sit with it and let it hit and the question is who do i become around them not who do you like around them not who's the most fun not who do you have the most history with history is not the same thing as alignment i'm asking you who do you become that's the only question that matters here because it's the one that tells you the truth so the first of the five categories are your closest friends and your friendships, the three to five people that you talk to the most, do they call you forward or do they call you back? When you tell them about a big idea, do their eyes light up or do they find the practical reason that it won't work? Do they ask you about your growth, your goals, your progression, what you're building, or only about your problems?

Be honest here. Be honest with yourself. Do they get weird when you win? Is there a slight pause, a joke, or something that undercuts it, fast subject change, or do they welcome all of you?

You know the answer. I want you to name it. The second category is your group chats. In your group chats, what are the dominant topics?

If you scrolled back through the last two weeks, how you complaining versus how much building would you see? Group chats are a nervous system readout. They show you in real time what the collective baseline actually is. If you were to bring me your phone right now and I opened it up and you showed me your group chats, I could show you your nervous system, literally.

Group chats are important. Are you adding to them in a positive way? Are you part of positive group chats? Could you adjust?

The third one is your family dynamics. And seriously, this is the hardest one. I want you to be honest. Who do you become at family dinner?

Is she the same woman you're trying to be in your business, in your relationships, in your life? For most women, the answer is no. And it's not that you are self-betraying or there's a betrayal of your family. It's just information.

And I'm also not saying that you need to leave your family either.