Samantha Joy is an entrepreneur, identity coach and the author of the bestselling book “The Less Effect”. She joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about why less is actually more, the importance of eliminating the things and people from your life that might be holding you back, clearing out old stories about yourself to give yourself more mental clarity, designing an environment that attracts abundance, purpose and fulfillment and more!
On what “The Less Effect” method is:
“I’m not a should person. But I will say that if we were able to boil down the less effect method, which by the way found me, it was an experience. But if we boil the entire method down and all the work that I do, it is the solution to your problems is not found in more. It is more commonly found in removing something or releasing something.”
On how “The Less Effect” is not going minimalist:
“People will say to me ‘Oh so you’re like Marie Kondo?’ Well no, I really respect her work and I understand it, but that’s just one layer of it. The work that I do is all based around identity. If we talk about minimalism in the context of the less effect, it is not about living off the grid. It’s not about whittling your life down to nothing. It is about removing old conditioning, removing old stories. That’s where we go into action and release a lot of these things around us in these environments. We bring about those old things in the form of physical items or physical space. It’s also, the people around us, our social environments and the habits that we do every day. We are running on this autopilot. There is the subconscious part of our brain that is creating every moment. We chose to do this podcast together, to be around each other and to exchange energy. I think it was conscious but a lot of times the decisions we make are very subconscious, based on those beliefs. Think about running on autopilot every day and what we create. The less effect is about removing old conditioning, old stories, limited beliefs, so we can expose our new identity. From there we can step into creator mode.”
On what is step one of the programme:
“If I were to summarize it, I have this program, and I emphasize that you don’t just do this program once. Removing layers is a lifelong process. We spend a lot of the foundational work in the feminine energy. This is an energy that lies in all of us regardless of gender. We are going inward, we are connecting. We are harnessing trust within ourselves. The other part of this journey is moving into action. Going back to the beginning, it is about pulling out these stories. In this western world, we are so conditioned to keep going and keep adding more. We keep buying, keep fixing, keep adding more. I would say we are in this out of balance, masculine energy of doing, doing, doing, that we don’t spend as much time in the being.
On the next steps:
Then we bring the subconscious thoughts into consciousness and we ask ourselves ‘Is this true?’ A lot of these stories started when we were younger and we wanted to be validated. We were in survival mode, and it doesn’t serve a lot of us anymore. The second part is now that I have tethered these beliefs to the environment around me. I am holding on to this thing, like a sweater from an ex-boyfriend, because it is a limiting belief. I am holding onto this person, because of this belief and the comfortable dynamic. So I am then stuck in these patterns because of these beliefs. We start to go through these environments and we start to become aware of what we have created around us that is rooted in those beliefs. We can then start to release them. The over arching process is discover, declutter, design.”
On a common limiting belief:
“I work a lot with high performers. One of the most common limiting beliefs is my worth is found in my productivity. If we deconstruct what limiting beliefs are, it’s a belief that is not necessarily true. There may have been a time when we were younger that it was true, because that was the dynamic that we were raised in. Parents may say ‘I want to see you get all A’s, I want to see you do extra curricular, I want to see you work around the house…’ That is something in our western culture that we bring into adulthood. So we start to rewire the brain and start to introduce new beliefs. A new belief might be I am whole, I am perfect, I am amazing as I am. I don’t need to perform in order to be worthy of all the things that I want. That blows people’s minds. This is one of my beliefs that I had to release in layers, it doesn’t just go away immediately.”
On how work affects your identity:
“Being an entrepreneur is the quickest way to come face to face with your limiting beliefs. When I was in the corporate world in accounting and finance consulting, I could go to work, go home, drink on the weekends. I thought I was balancing out the work with the play, but instead I was literally living outside of my body. I was not connected to myself. This is about diving deep in there to pull out these beliefs. Once you see how these beliefs affect the things around me, you can say ‘I am the co-creator of my life.’ Sometimes it can be a hard pill to swallow to say that I chose all of this. What is on the other side of that is that I can choose differently.”
On how The Less Effect found her:
“So mom, if you are listening, I love you. She liked to hang onto things. I don’t know if it’s that generation of hanging onto stuff. There was a lot of stuff. She was also hanging onto things in the past that were not physical. Things that were experiences and beliefs, there was a lot of hoarding of that. My mom learned the laws of attraction and a lot of these different tools to start stepping out of that. In that environment of being surrounded by the energy of lack, it’s so interesting of our energy of hanging on. When you have that energy, it’s what you put your energy into. There are these notions that if we lose it, it will be hard to get it back. I experienced a lot of anxiety growing up. It was a combination of that and a tumultuous environment growing up with my parents. They got divorced and the way it manifested in me was tons of anxiety. A lot of beliefs were made and I moved into my adult life with the same issues. I found minimalism years ago and dove into it. I didn’t have a lot of control growing up, so it gave me back that sense of control and choice. So I realized I felt relief from my anxiety when I decluttered, so I understood the concept of energy. I was starting to understand detachment and releasing, which felt good. Then it expanded to the people around me, so I started decluttering that. I then moved onto my habits and started decluttering my habits. It taught me I wasn’t broken and I could start fixing myself.”
On how people can change their identity:
“There’s so much that goes into that. The identity starts when we are young. We start to learn who we are through the labels that we are given. The starting place is going all the way back. Learning about the concept of our inner child and where the conditioning started. Where and when did we start learning these limiting beliefs? There is usually some type of experience about 4 or 5 years old, where we are so impressionable. You get to realize why you formed these ideas in the first place and why you dragged them into your adulthood. It is really transformative and you realize how the change can happen.”
On what she is grateful for:
“All of the insightful human connections, my son and being a mother.”
Samantha Joy can be found on Instagram here.
Featured image: Coloradopreneurs
