Mindset is the foundation for success, and Amy Somerville is here to reveal the secrets of cultivating it. Drawing from the ups and downs of her journey, Amy shares practical strategies for cultivating a positive mindset, battling imposter syndrome, and embracing vulnerability. She shares how she navigated a learning disability and found inspiration in figures like Tony Robbins and Mel Robbins. Discover how gratitude, self-belief, and resilience can transform your life as the CEO of SUCCESS Enterprises highlights the importance of curiosity, strong relationships, and self-care in achieving a meaningful and fulfilling life.
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Building A Mindset For Success With Amy Somerville
Welcome to the GAP, the Get Attitude Podcast, bridging the gap from who you are to who you wish to become, and from where you are to where you want to go. Hello, friends. My name is Glenn Bill, founder of the University of Attitude, keynote speaker, and author of the international bestselling book The ABC’s of Attitude.
I have been fortunate to help tens of thousands of people get attitude. Attitude is the secret formula to success not only in business but in your life. This show is going to help you get yours, so let’s get some. I want to welcome everybody. Please remember to subscribe, rate, and review. I promise you, after you listen to this interview or this show, you’re going to want to share this with the people in your life who are looking to bridge that gap for what they want to do.
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We have with us the CEO of Success Enterprises. I’ve gone through one of her courses personally through Success+. She’s an awesome mentor. She’s a professional development leader and a sales strategist, not to mention a podcaster, author, and speaker. She is interviewing some of the biggest names in the country. We are happy to have the one and only Amy Somerville on the show. Amy, welcome to the GAP.
Thank you so much. Glenn. I love the energy already. Change in attitude. You start with a positive attitude. I love it.
Cultivating A Positive Attitude
There’s something about state change. We’re not here for a boring show. We’re here to deliver energy and love to the people who are tuning in to this show. Amy, we always love to start our podcast to try to understand what is your definition of attitude.
If I were coming up with a definition here on the spot, it would be the mindset that drives action and behavior. I’m visualizing almost a string. It’s the emotion that sets everything in outline and pulls you into focus.
When you think about your attitude, how would you define your attitude?
I would love to say that I’m an optimistic positive person every minute of the day, but that’s not exactly my real world. Certainly, stress and anxiety play a part. Imposter syndrome is a real thing. That happens to all of us at different points in our lives. How I try to start my day is going to sound a little strange. I have a family in town. I came downstairs and visited this morning. They said, “Are you having coffee with the dogs?” “Yes.”
[bctt tweet=”CEO of @successmagazine Amy Somerville is a guest on the latest episode of the Get Attitude Podcast with @glennjbill. Produced by: @JasonAaronPro” via=”no”]
I do something. I kick off my day every day with coffee with the dogs just like how it sounds. I have a Great Dane on one side and a sheepdog on the other and a cup of coffee. We talked about our gratitude. We run through all the things that we’re thankful for. It sets the attitude and the right mindset for the day of appreciation, love, boldness, and wanting to provide contributions.
That’s how I start my day. There are certainly times when I get pulled in different directions and you become part of the chaos of the day, where you’re more reactive than you hope you would be. Starting the day with a good positive attitude in a space of gratitude and contribution is a good recipe for a solid attitude all day.
As I’m sure you know, some people are like, “Let’s be grateful and have gratitude.” Let’s talk to the people right now who go, “Shit, I don’t know how to find gratitude.” What are the questions that maybe you ask yourself? What is the process? You start every day with gratitude, so there has to be some type of internal process. Maybe you haven’t even figured out what you do. Could you help somebody who only sees the darkness and is having trouble trying to find a formula to find out what their grateful for? What would you tell them?
That’s an important question because it’s not about big things. You can recognize gratitude for the small things. I’m grateful for the robe that I put on this morning. I’m grateful for a coffee machine that brings me a coffee filled with joy. I’m grateful for the fuzz on the floor because it tells me that I’ve got dogs running through my house. I’m grateful for the family that’s coming to visit. I’m grateful for a good sleep. I’m grateful for it.
You don’t have to go big. It’s not about the big buckets. If I were to give a cue to what I do every day, it is to find something different. I don’t want to cover that are the same every single day. It’s not a speech. It’s not necessarily a repeated prayer. It is challenging me to recognize something that I’m grateful for that I didn’t recognize yesterday, the day before, or the day before that. That drives you to think about the small things.
[bctt tweet=”You do not have to go big to be grateful. It is not about the big buckets but about finding something different to be grateful for every day.” via=”no”]
Influence Of Mentorship On Mindset
That’s powerful and so good. Thank you for that. When you think about your attitude, I’d love to know who was your first attitude coach. Who do you think shaped your attitude?
You know this to be true because it is a part of my career journey. I would say that Success Magazine was my attitude coach. Part of the opportunity in taking the role that I’m in right now was, “My goodness, did I manifest this?” This was part of my gratitude. This was part of my focus and my attitude. Frankly, I wasn’t sure that I had a great connection with potential mentors in my life. I sought mentorship through content. That has been a common thread my entire life.
I’m a learning-based individual. I like seeking opportunities where I can expand my mind, stay in curiosity, and learn and gather things in a space that I probably wouldn’t otherwise have access to in content. For me, Success Magazine was that mentor and mindset coaches like the greats; Tony Robbins, Mel Robbins, John Maxwell, and Jim Rohn. I go back to the founders of personal growth and professional development or development in general. I never heard people talking the way that I was reading in Success Magazine. It was my coach and mentor.
We want to certainly recommend to whoever is tuning in to this right now Success Magazine, Success Plus, and all of the different things that Success offers for content. Jump onto Success.com and order your subscription. Go in there. There are over 880 tools to help you with mindset, money, the future of work, and business. There’s so much, but let me ask this. Before you started reading Success, who do you think affected your attitude the most?
Probably, it would go back to my father. He was a hard-driving individual and success-driven individual. I aspired to be the same. I’ll be vulnerable enough though to share with you that the mindset and the attitude for me as a kid growing up was a little bit more difficult. My father is a technical genius. I’ll say education, intelligence, and general “smart” was in my DNA but it skipped me. I had a learning disability and some other challenges coming up and it made me doubt.
It made me doubt what I would be able to accomplish in life. Do I have what it takes? Am I smart enough? Am I enough in general? Having mentors in my family who had come before me and shown me incredible success. I had to work a lot bit harder and change the dialogue of the conversation I was having with myself, which was putting myself down, judging, or questioning whether or not I had the ability or the opportunities as easily as other people might be afforded those opportunities. It was a negative mindset. It’s flipping and changing that and saying, “I get to create it. I get to create my destiny. This doesn’t define me. This won’t define me and it won’t keep me from great accomplishment.”
Mindset: You get to create your own destiny. It does not define you and should not keep you from achieving great accomplishments.
That’s so true. When I ask that question, we usually get mom or dad. Our parents being our first attitude coach sometimes is not a positive thing. Sometimes it’s a negative thing. With the challenges that you’ve come from, there are people who are tuning in to us right now who are maybe giving themselves the same excuse and may have the same problems that you had.
Overcoming Self-Doubt And Building Resilience
What was your self-talk? When did you realize, “I think I have a problem,” or “Things aren’t right,” or “Things are tougher on me?” What was deep down in your gut, heart, mind, or soul that said, “I’m pushing through this and I’m going to make things happen?” What would you tell that person out there who is going through the same thing and didn’t have that shift or didn’t bridge the gap as you did? What would you tell them?
It’s clear as day memories. You have those line-in-the-sand memories of I could have gone one direction and I’m lucky that I went the right path. I think about it a lot at this point where I’ve got preteens and teenagers that I’m raising in my own household. I am thinking about where I was when I was them and what I was thinking about, and wanting to be a good role model and mentor for them. As a kid, my father was a genius, easy, and super smart. My younger sister is the same way.
I don’t know if this happened in your school, but in elementary school, teachers would identify probably by fifth grade those kids who had a special gift. Back then, they called it gifted. They identify if a child is gifted and they get to go into a different curriculum and courses with each other and segmented from the general population as being and identified as special, and they had special opportunities.
By fifth grade, I hadn’t been identified. By second grade, my younger sister had. I recall in middle school watching all of my friends that I came up with and my sister. They all could share these experiences like, “We did this special field trip,” or “We had a speaker come in and talk to us about these things.” I wanted to be a part of that group with my friends in this extended opportunity. I begged my mom to get me tested. In my head at that point, I’m sure I got accidentally skipped over. I had moved schools. I’m sure they just missed the opportunity.
It was a birthright. Never in my mind at that point did I think that I wasn’t going to qualify or be in that gifted group. I did IQ testing and whatever else it was. I remember my mom picking me up early from school. I was like, “What’s the deal? What’s going on?” She took me to my favorite place for lunch and she had a gift. We sat down and we had lunch. She said, “I brought you here because I wanted to tell you something.”
She hates that I’ve told the story before because she’s like, “In retrospect, that was the worst possible way to handle this.” We joke about it but it was a line in the sand moment. She shared with me that not only did I not pass as gifted but it was recognized that I had a learning disability and I would need to see a specialist for that. It was one of those where everything goes fuzzy like, “Wait a second.” As silly as it sounds, when you’re that age, this was my whole world. I no longer get to spend time with my community and connect with them in this way because not only am I not average but I’m below average.
It hit me very hard. I didn’t anticipate it. I remember thinking I was never going to be a doctor or a lawyer, all the things that I had put in my head and the conversations around the house, “I’m going to be a doctor. I’m going to be a surgeon. I’m going to this and that. I’m going to go to an Ivy League school.” It felt like that entire dream collapsed at that moment.
I am not 100% sure where the switch flipped or how old I was when that happened. I recognized that I had to do special training. I recognized that I had to study harder. I recognized that I had to do my exams verbally and in a separate room, like some of those special support systems. I’m not exactly sure, but I can tell you that I recently wrote a CEO letter about it because it still impacts me in an interesting way.
I had somebody who knew me in the same middle school and high school who reached out through Linkedin recently. The message was, “What an incredible success you’ve become. Who would have thought?” I had two reactions to it. It was like, “What? I’ve always been self-driven. I’ve always been success-driven. I’ve always been this person.” The other was like, “What did happen that other people saw that I was going down potentially another path, that I was deflated by a diagnosis, that I was deflated by the removal from my community?”
When did that happen and when did that switch happen, I’m not exactly sure. Since I received that message, I’ve been trying to pinpoint it. I’ve talked to my family. I’ve talked to my sister, “Do you remember when this happened? It’s hard looking back. When you visualize yourself as a third grader, you still see yourself with your face and your hair and who you are today. It’s hard to see yourself in that six-year-old or seven-year-old space. It’s hard for me to see myself in a deflated mind-space or an attitude that I was resigned to the facts. For very long, I can’t imagine that I did that. Obviously, other people saw differently.
From Helplessness To Empowerment
We’re going to do something called knowledge through the decades. We’re going to work through this a little bit later in the show. Was there a moment where you felt like you went from helpless to emboldened or from helplessness to massive action? Was there a time or a person or an instance in your life where it just changed and you said, “This is how I’m living. I’m making a decision. I’m taking a stand?”
Maybe. My parents would tell you that I was an adult by 6 or 7. My parents had a very nasty divorce when I was very little. Without being asked, I assumed the role of leading my sister and protecting and supporting her, helping my father with even small things. He’s color blind. I was laying out his suit and ties the night before work so that he would not be dressed in funny ways and could present himself.
I lived on my own pretty young. Early in high school, I was on my own. There was certainly a part of that path that whatever happens, I’m the one who’s driving it. There’s nobody else to blame. There’s nobody else to look at. I am responsible for getting myself to school. I’m responsible for the grades that I get. I’m responsible for getting a job. I’m responsible for doing a good job and being compensated for that work. I’m responsible for learning new things. There’s nobody else who’s going to do that for me. There’s nobody else who’s holding my feet to the fire. I’ve always been driven in that way. Part of it was independence at a young age.
Having an attitude or understanding attitude so much has to do with how we define what happens to us. Being a product or a child of divorce can certainly have a negative impact. I always like to ask people, and you’ve answered it, what’s the most positive thing that came out of divorce? I think that’s a question that we need to ask ourselves as we live. Every negative circumstance has a certain positive outcome or path.
Intergenerational Influence And The Impact Of Grandparents
I get what you’re saying when you said, “The positive is that divorce caused me to become independent.” It could be why you’re running one of the nation’s largest magazines and enterprises in America today, which is awesome. I do believe that attitude sometimes can skip a generation. I love to ask this. Were you close with any of your four grandparents? Was there a grandparent that had a particular impact on you? Who was it? What did they do? What was the impact there?
I love that you asked that question. I do want to go back and say I have an interesting childhood or adolescence. It’s not your normal average experience, but I’m very close with all of my family. My father was visiting up until a couple of days ago. My mother and my sister are here. I am lucky enough to have had unbelievably close relationships with my grandparents.
I have grandparents who are 91 and 93. They are coming over this week. I see them on a regular basis. They’re incredible people, incredible leaders, great open mindset. I am certainly blessed to be able to have a family where we could get to tell stories, hear stories, and learn a little bit more about our history. My grandparents on the other side, I would have told you that for at least ten years of my adulthood, my grandmother was my best friend.
She’s just incredible, tough as nails, an unbelievable leader, and didn’t let the small things bother her. She was a leader of her family. She was breakout. She served in the military as a female during World War Two, which was unheard of certainly here stateside, but she did some spectacular once-in-a-lifetime types of things and opportunities that she could talk about and examples and ideas that she could share with me. For sure, I think that the relationships that I have with family and friends, the connection is one of my core values. I feel lucky every day that I get to visit and learn from each and every one of them.
As a grandfather of six. I have to tell you that it’s heartening because I love my grandkids to death. We’re the oldest grandkids. I’m curious if you’re the first one.
Yeah.
I see you’re like my Jane. What’s your grandma’s name who was your best friend?
Beverly, Bev.
Beverly this is for you. I hope Bev gets to hear this. Can you come up with one or two antidotes, sayings, or lines that Bev told you that stick with you and that you live by? I would love to hear a Bev mantra.
One of them that is clear is “Don’t borrow trouble.”
That’s good. Can we delve into that? How does that manifest itself? How do you see people borrowing trouble? What does that mean and how can somebody learn from that?
It is clear to me that it is staying out of judgment and staying in curiosity. Borrowing trouble is it wasn’t yours, to begin with. Why are you creating something potentially out of your judgment that doesn’t exist? The best way to stay out of judgment and not from a place of interrogation but in a place of open-mindedness and truly seeking to learn and understand is staying in curiosity and asking questions.
For me, the minute judgment comes, I can feel it. You know it and you’re playing pretend in your brain, “I’m sure that this is what happened.” You create this narrative and these dialogues that are not necessarily true. When I find myself in that space, there are some narratives that you can roll through in your brain that are helpful. It’s pushing you outside your comfort zone and asking questions, “Could it be this way? Maybe I’m playing a little pretend. If it goes in this direction, I’ll set up for this.”
I’m going to say the majority of the time that I find myself doing that, it is a quick reaction. Note taken, stay out of judgment. What do I need to know to understand the situation better? Could I be open? Can I assume that? Maybe it’s not what I think it is. Who knows if I dig a little bit deeper, something else is going to reveal itself that is not as problematic? Again, don’t borrow trouble. It’s not yours, to begin with. Don’t create it out of thin air. That comes from immediate judgment.
I love it. GAPers, probably what you’re learning about Amy and what I love about her is she speaks in question. Stop, rewind, and write down. My guess is she’ll have asked 100 questions or given you, our GAPers 100 powerful questions for you to sit after this show and meld into that will improve your life. We talk about how you feel and what you focus on. We talk about that internal story of if you focus on crap, you’re going to feel like crap. Sometimes we need to check what stories are we telling ourselves. Does it give us the positive attitude that we need? Any other Bev-isms that you want to hit or is that good?
That’s the one that comes to mind. We think about them all the time around the holidays and we throw them out. She has since passed, but we throw them out. She’s always with us and through us. Going back to the judgment piece, something else that I was thinking about that I might lend is recognizing the judgment language, which is “Why.” It is a word of judgment, “Why did they do this? Why is this happening to me?” It is a judgment word.
“How and what” are questions of curiosity, and getting to thoughtfulness and understanding of different perspectives. The triggers for me are when I catch myself saying “This is why.” Nope, that’s a word of judgment. How did this come to be? What is going to happen? What can I do that’s different? What happens so that we’re in this place right now? I can deal with what. I can deal with how, and it tells me more about what’s happening, but “Why” is a judgment word.
[bctt tweet=”When you catch yourself judging, remember that why is a word of judgment, and how and what are questions of curiosity.” via=”no”]
Many of our GAPers are coming here seeking answers and seeking solutions on how to bridge the gap in their life and their profession. We have a lot of people that listen to this podcast who are freaking successful. They are on the road, listening in an airplane, or driving to their next sales call. They’ve accomplished a lot of things. I love our GAPers. I love them. I’m so thankful for all of you who continue to email text, write in, share, review, and all that stuff.
Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
You mentioned a word earlier called imposter syndrome. Maybe people who are still searching and finding who we’ve been talking to have imposter syndrome. Maybe they do, but maybe some of our most successful listeners are feeling this thing called imposter syndrome. I’ve started to look into it. I think I’ve been through it but I got such a good attitude. I don’t care. I just bulldog it and move on over. Can you give us a three-minute course on imposter syndrome, what it is and what’s the best way out of it?
I had a coach who said to me, “The strongest leaders and the most successful leaders that I coach who are female have the highest incidences of imposter syndrome. I hear it in your language.” It’s that self-doubt. “Why would anybody listen to me?” It’s capping yourself in your growth. It’s questioning whether you have the skillsets, the ability, the relationships, the connection, and all the things that tell us, “I’m good right here in my comfort zone. This is good. I’m comfortable here. This seems to be the space for me.”
You may aspire to do something bigger or larger or go harder, “I’m good here. I don’t think I have what it takes to get to this level. I’m not going to go talk to the leader about my next promotion because I don’t know that I have what it takes right now. I’ll just wait and I’ll develop.” All the excuses for why you won’t take yourself to your aspirations are the imposter syndrome’s role. The same coach and now I’ve heard others define it the same way.
How do you combat imposter syndrome? Imposter syndrome is focusing too much on the outcome. It’s like gratitude. It’s going too big. I couldn’t possibly get the promotion that I wanted. Focus on the processes that will. Focus a little more narrowly. Focus on the processes and not the outcome. It helps you pull out of the selfish nature of the end product and focus on the building blocks, and perfecting the building blocks, and then the outcome happens.
Battling imposter syndrome is to stay in the process and stay in the specifics. Stay in the area that you can control with the vision of where you want to end up or the outcome. Letting the outcome drive it or measuring the outcome every single day is the recipe for disaster. That was the advice given to me. When I find myself in that space of insecurity and self-doubt, it’s like, “You’re focusing up here. This is not where you need to be focused. Focus down here. If this is where you want to be and this is intimidating to you, what are the building blocks to get there? Focus here.” Start taking those things off with excellence and you’ll reach your outcome.
That was awesome. That helped me big time. That’s really good. Thank you, Amy. That’s very insightful. Thanks for paying for all the coaches and giving us all the advice for free.
I would just like to give a nod to both Jon Cheplack and Ed Mylet.
Lessons Learned From Memorable Interviews
You’ve been interviewing some of the most influential and impactful people. You said you’ve interviewed Mel Robbins. I know you love them all. If we had maybe top 3 or top 5 where you went in and you’re like, “I can’t believe I’m interviewing this person,” what’s that like? Can you give us 2, 3, or 4 people who you said, “These are the biggest interviews I had.” Tell us a little bit about the attitude lesson they gave you after you interviewed them.
It would have to be the Robbins duo, Tony Robbins on the front end and more recently, Mel Robbins. The reason it was so intimidating and I’m going to say more intimidating than any interview I’ve ever done is because they don’t know how impactful they’ve been to me. They don’t know how much they’ve inspired me. They don’t know that they have been my mentor from a distance. Without having an actual close relationship, I feel like I know them. I feel like I know how they would answer the questions that I would ask them.
There was joy when I would ask. I’m like, “I know the answer. That’s how much I study. This is how much I believe in you.” There is a great picture of Tony Robbins. We did a shoot for the magazine cover and he was a great interview. I said to both of them, talk about imposter syndrome, “I have to tell you. This is the hardest interview I’ve ever given or been presented with.”
The nervousness of sitting across from somebody who has had a profound impact on you is difficult. That’s harder than interviewing people you don’t know, but that you are impressed by. You want to learn from them. Sitting with two mentors when I review back, I can see why I do this. I can see myself in you. I can see you and myself. Those were probably the most memorable because they were the most scary.
I love that and that’s good. Let’s take that to speak to our GAPers today. There are people out there listening right now who are scared as hell to do something. It’s not interviewing Tony Robbins or Mel Robbins. It’s daunting. What was your attitude to “Amy interviewed everybody that’s on the cover of Success Magazine?” Is that correct?
Sometimes. My editor-in-chief does a lot of that.
Dealing With Daunting Challenges
For those who are facing a daunting challenge, for those whose boss said, “Here’s this project. You’re doing this,” you have to do it. What’s your attitude? What questions do you ask yourself? How do you break through? How do you get rid of the fear, get rid of the nervousness? What did you do? If it were me, I’d be the same way. Give us a little attitude mindset on doing that.
That’s so funny. I can speak to it because it was so recent. Before the kickoff of the interview with Mel Robbins, I looked at her and said, “I can’t believe I’m doing this in front of you.” I looked at the camera and I said, “5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Hi, I’m Amy Somerville.” I jumped into the thing. Mel Robbins wrote a book, and she has another one coming out. Check into it. It’s called The Let Them Theory. It is her new one. It’s fabulous. It talks about mindset, doing things that are scary, and worrying about people’s judgment. She gives you all of the tools to shut that. Why do we care so much about what other people think of us? It’s a mind-blower. It can be overwhelming.
The book that made the biggest impact on me up until this point was called The 5 Second Rule. The concept is there is something psychological to counting backward. You say, “1, 2, 3,” and I’m going to jump at 1, 2, 3. You can talk yourself out of that. Studying the effectiveness of rocket ships and the countdown, and then the action. There is something to the psyche of counting backward, hitting one, and then tying it to immediate action that drives results and gets you out of that fear factor.
She talks about things like the internal snooze button. “I’m going to deal with that later. That’s so intimidating. I’m not going to do that today. I’ll snooze for right now.” Even the real deal snooze button. The alarm goes off and you snooze for a little bit. “My hair looks pretty good. I don’t need to spend a little extra time on that. I got 20 more minutes. I can lie down.” You negotiate with yourself around the fear instead of dealing with it and tying an action to it.
One of my biggest fears has always been public speaking. I have had unbelievable leaders around me. I never had public speaking training or anything, but leaders around me have said, “Practice makes perfect. You keep doing it and it’s going to get easier and easier.” I will be honest with you, it never has. It has never become easier for me. I still panic, the sick stomach, the complete blackouts, all of that happens. It still happens after all of these years of public speaking. There I am, interviewing Mel Robbins, public speaking. The tool that I used was the countdown backward, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
I bet she loved that.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
That’s awesome that you would do that. I’m sure that had to mean so much to her. I’ve tried to get Mel on my podcast, but she won’t respond. We’ll keep working on it. It’s okay.
She is a super important lady, changing the lives of others all day long. I get it. I got to see it in Impact. They are doing a lot, especially around the idea of the new book. I think she’s the queen of mindset. She’s the queen of taking action now. Once you get over the flip side of that, you’re proud of yourself. It encourages you to get outside of your comfort zone more and more. “I can do this. I can try something scary. I can get out of this space.”
The other thing I would say and I can tie it directly to public speaking is I had a leader who is still to this day a great mentor, Brian Buffini, who is one of the best in the real estate or sales training space. He saw me doing my panic thing behind the scenes once off the stage of 7,000 people, MGM Grand in Vegas. I am sick. I was pacing back and forth behind the stage. I looked up at this podium and he was standing there, staring at me. You don’t want people that you respect to see you in your space of the most weakness and awfulness.
I said, “I’m sorry that you had to see that.” He said, “You did this before. Don’t be sorry.” He said, “The reason that you have the anxiety is because you care about the impact. You care about what you’re about to share. You care about the connection. The minute that you are not feeling stressed, anxious, or afraid of something, you should stop doing it. Now, for other things that feel scary, I asked myself a question. Does this feel scary because I am dedicated to the impact, to the outcome, to the connection, and to the value I provide?” If it is, I jump all in, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
[bctt tweet=”When things feel scary, dedicate yourself to the impact, outcome, connection, and value you provide.” via=”no”]
Knowledge Through The Decades
I’ve always heard, “Say thank you, self. Thank you for being there.” I have limited time with you. We’re going to do this thing that I’ve coined called knowledge through the decades. I do this with every single guest. It’s something that I love doing. What I want to do is walk through your life in each decade. I want you to tell me the attitude lesson of being 10, 20, 30. I don’t know if you’re over 40 or not, but we always start with childbirth. I don’t know if you have children. You probably don’t remember being born, but when you think of the attitude lesson of childbirth or new beginnings or being born, what do you think the attitude lesson is in that?
Are you asking me to go to the decade of 0 to 10, or are you asking me when I had children myself?
I’m asking you what was the attitude lesson because sometimes that’s easier. People are like, “I don’t know what the hell you’re saying.” You can think about what was the lesson in creating a life for you, like when you had them, or what it means to you. What’s the attitude lesson in new beginnings or the beginning of life?
Blessings. How blessed we are in this life. I can say that I’m a recovering control freak in some ways. There are times in life, including in childbirth when you realize you are not in control and that there is something bigger. There’s something greater and there is a massive need to lean into trust, trust your body, trust doctors, trust that you have what it takes to be a good parent. Trust that you have the love in your heart to give as much as you give and love as hard as you love. I think trust.
That’s so good. Now I want to talk to little Amy who’s 10, maybe in third or fourth grade. I don’t know if you remember your third or fourth-grade teacher. You probably do. Everybody does. When you were 10, something happened in your life, whether a teacher, a bully, a parent, or whatever. What was the attitude lesson for you when you were 10 years old?
I think by 10, it was the power of relationships and support systems. You don’t need to do this all on your own. You can lean on others. Relationship and friendship.
Mindset: Relationships and support systems will make you realize that you do not have to do everything on your own. You can always lean on others.
That’s a very grown-up answer. You said your parents said you were grown up when you were six, so that doesn’t surprise me. GAPers hear her when she says, “You’re not alone in this.” This is coming from a woman that’s doing some pretty amazing things. I want you to breathe that in and figure out who in your life can you lean on, support, and trust, which gets back to another one. Now, let’s talk about Amy at 20. Loved to have known her. Where were you at 20? And what was your attitude lesson? What was going on with you?
I don’t know if I even want to share 20. I was very much enjoying life and freedom I had met who would be my future husband. He was my best friend. I had faith that that was going to be the case. I met him and it was one of those like, “Yep.” I told people I was going to know this man for the rest of my life. I didn’t mean it even in that way. I remember friends and family saying, “She lost it.” I’m like, “No. I mean, in some capacity, this person is my soulmate. I’m supposed to be connected to this person.” We’ve been married for 21, together, 28. I’ve known him since I was a teenager.
The lesson I learned at 20 is it started shifting into hard work and commitment. It’s like, “Maybe my grades aren’t exactly what I want them to be. Can I continue the party and still bump along?” Nope, there’s a point in life where you recognize that if you want to achieve your goals, you have to change the way that you do things. I was that kid in college who in group projects always wanted to do the spearhead, would handle even the weakest link if that was dropped off, and take on extra responsibilities. I think it’s the value of hard work.
I think that answer is boring. I think the real attitude lesson is soul mates and true love do exist. For all my romantic GAPers out there, although her answer was good, believe that there is a person in your life who is truly your soulmate. I found mine in sixth grade. I’ve been married for 37 years. It can happen. For those of you who are out there looking for love, she just told you. I agree. The hard work and the commitment are all good, but the love story there, come on.
It’s a pretty good love story.
That’s pretty. What’s his name?
For me, and I imagine it’s the same for you, the secret sauce is I married my best friend. There’s not anybody I would want to do all the things in life with, tell all the stories and the experiences, and share all the vulnerable moments and emotions with, other than my best friend.
My wife and I never tell each other we’re best friends because there is stuff that I do with her that I would not want to do with my best friend. Let’s leave it at that and we’ll move on. Let’s talk about Amy at 30. What was going on in your life? Where were you and what was your attitude lesson at 30?
At 30, I’m still proving myself in my leadership. I have one baby. I realized I have to drop the attitude that everything needs to be perfect. That’s probably the first time I experienced burnout. I was certainly in my 30s and probably more than once where I was comfortable with my drive in leadership, less comfortable in my role as a mother, trying to be perfect at all things, and running into a wall.
If there’s an attitude and an approach that was the biggest learning lesson of my life in my 30s, it was accepting myself as a real person and giving myself grace. On top of that, I probably learned this lesson 3 or 4 times and ignored it. Vulnerability is a superpower. Not having to wear the armor of I’m perfect, I can handle it, no emotion, don’t ever let them see you sweat. It took me to burn out. It also taught the people who were coming up underneath me that that was my expectation and that’s not great leadership. Vulnerability is a superpower is what I learned in my 30s.
[bctt tweet=”Vulnerability is a superpower. You do not have to wear the armor of perfection.” via=”no”]
I love Brene Brown, correct?
I love Brene Brown.
At that point, you were big-time up in the Remax C-level people. I mean huge deal at 30, which is crazy. Are you 40 now?
Yes. I’m going to be 47 in a few months.
Way to go. This will be your last decade. Seven years ago, what was going on with you? Where were you? What was your attitude lesson at 40?
At 40, it’s self-love. From vulnerability to focusing on the concept that I can’t give from an empty cup, so I took care of myself physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually with who I decided to surround myself. Protecting my energy became a big deal in my 40s. I feel like accomplishing, and by accomplishment, I mean helping others grow into a space of success that they aspire to. I feel like that’s my purpose.
That’s why I was put on this planet on the leadership side of things. It was connecting with the team, franchise owners, agents, and people that I was so lucky to serve. I am very much in the role of a servant leader and helping others recognize things in themselves, helping elevate them, helping support them, and giving them some direction to reach their next hill, if you will. That was fulfilling. To me, that was a success.
You get to see that impact and celebrate with others, but also clarity around being with people who strip the energy. Don’t see the benefits of certain things or on selfish missions and say, “Life is too short to spend time with people who are energy suckers. I want energy-givers. I want collaboration, and relationship is everything. Focused on the things that I value, including self-care.
Mindset: Life is too short to spend time with people who are energy suckers. Seek energy givers.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are talking with Amy Somerville, the CEO of Success Enterprises. As one of your students, you did that for me. We did an eight-week course together. She was our facilitator at Success Plus. She also has a leadership certification coming out. If you like what you’ve been hearing, look up Amy. Check her out on LinkedIn. Check her out at Success.com. Join the Success+ program. I am a member of Success Plush. You can look me up there too. Thank you for walking through your life with us. I hope you felt that was a fun exercise.
It was super fun and what a great timing of exercises in a place of gratitude. I am certainly one of those people who would say that I don’t have any regrets. My life has been exactly in my mind as it was supposed to play out so that I am where I am today. I am incredibly grateful.
A Message Of Hope
We have one last thing. We always want our guests to speak to that person walking on the beach, to speak to that person who may be sitting in their car during the holidays, who is all alone, who’s going through a divorce, who lost a job, or whatever. There are people out there hurting. There are people out there who tune in to this show to get a message of hope. If it’s okay with you, I’d love you to think about those people who are listening to your words. Could you give us your attitude message of hope to finish our episode?
First of all, I hear you, I can relate, I can connect, I can put myself, I can empathize. I can put myself in your shoes. I can tell you that coming into this position as CEO of Success, you see these incredible celebrities that a lot of people know on the cover of Success Magazine. One of the big things for me as the CEO coming into this organization was they weren’t born that way. This is not the Ivory Tower. They just walked in. They were born to be Tony Robbins. They were born to be Daymond John. The idea was to peel back the layers and reveal the stories behind the stories.
I was on a shoot not too long ago where I was telling a gal with the video production crew the vision and where we’re moving with Success intention. She said, “I get it. It’s like you see the glory, but you don’t know the story.” I wrote it on my dry-erase board and now I say it as many times as I can. Write that one down. It’s easy to sit in self-loathing, pain, and doubt yourself when you’re comparing yourself to others and only seeing what you want to see.
We all have stories. Tony Robbins was living in his car and had mail delivered to a local 7-Eleven, and still found money to bring pumpkin pie to friends’ houses on a Thanksgiving. He was living in his car and we all know who he is today. They all have stories. We all have the pain stories. We all have the loneliness stories. We all have the come up. If you can see that where you are today is not where you’re going to be tomorrow, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, the exercise of going back through the decades is a great example of that.
What a beautiful opportunity. If you’re sitting in that space of frustration, hurt, or pain right now, go back and recognize the lovely lessons that you’ve learned through your life and how much you’ve grown from 10 to 20 to 30 to 40, to work on 50. You evolve as a person. You’ve changed. You can become who you want to become. There are no limits to your success if you have a dream and aspiration, you are committed, and you jump all in. You have to do something, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Take an action that is going to move you forward today, whether it’s little gratitudes, whether it’s sitting down and writing where you want to see yourself in a year, and then back out, what are the things you need to change about your behavior, your day-to-day, the people that you need to meet, who do you need to be connected to? What do you need to do to accomplish that? Put it in bite-size pieces so it doesn’t feel so daunting. Pain, loneliness, and frustrations are big concepts and attitudes out there. Dial it back down and recognize the small little gratitudes and what the process is to move you into a space that you want to go.
I love it. Amy Somerville dropped bombs on our show. They said that you weren’t gifted as a kid. I was in that group. They called us special. I’d rather be special than gifted anyway, but I will tell you, Amy, they were wrong. You are a gift to everybody who is tuning in to this show right now. You are a gift. You are special and we are honored to have you. Thank you so much. Please follow Amy Somerville. Please go to Success.com, Change your life now. They have all the tools that you need. This is Glenn Bill on the Get Attitude Podcast. We will see you on our next episode.
Important Links
- University of Attitude
- The ABC’s of Attitude – on Amazon
- Success Enterprises
- Success+
- Amy Somerville’s website
- Amy Somerville on LinkedIn
- Amy Somerville on the Success website
- The Let Them Theory
- The 5 Second Rule
About Amy Somerville
Amy is a mission-driven leader with demonstrated success in developing highly effective teams, delivering dynamic learning strategies, and building engaged communities. Prior to joining SUCCESS® Enterprises, she was vice president of professional development and industry engagement at Buffini & Company and the founder of Moment of Clarity, LLC. In her previous role as an executive with RE/MAX, LLC, she led professional development, technology engagement, multi-media production, and education.
Recognized as a go-to, high-energy speaker, panelist, and facilitator, Amy has shared the stage with Jay Leno, Wayne Brady, Brian Buffini, and many other industry leaders while delivering value to audiences exceeding 7,000.
She is a master of client engagement who responds to challenges with confidence, determination, and focus. She is also a passionate community builder, gathering like-minded, successful entrepreneurs and businesspeople to share best practices for success.
Amy earned a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Technical Communications at Colorado State University, did MBA coursework at the University of New Mexico’s Anderson School of Business, and completed the Executive Development Program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She has served on several curriculum and education advisory boards and is a passionate contributor to the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.
Amy and her college sweetheart, Lance, are proud parents of two tween daughters and regularly celebrate their “executive management leadership skills.” She loves spending time with family and friends and finds pure joy in cooking, hosting, and playing outdoors.
Amy lives her life intentionally and is driven daily by the acronym L.I.V.E.: LEAD, INSPIRE, VALUE, EMPATHIZE.