What is a Good Life? #68
Keeping Your Heart Open with Amy Elizabeth Fox
On the 68th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I am delighted to introduce our guest, Amy Elizabeth Fox. Amy is one of the founders and CEO of Mobius Executive Leadership, a global transformational leadership firm. She has served as a leadership and culture change advisor to Fortune 500 companies. Amy is considered an expert in healing individual, family, and collective trauma and has been a pioneer in introducing trauma-informed development and psycho-spiritual principles into leadership programs. She is also on the faculty of the African Leadership Institute's Desmond Tutu Fellows program at Oxford.
In this glorious conversation, Amy shares with us her journey towards a life of inquiry, contemplation, healing, and a more mystical engagement with life. She talks of the deeper unity that exists between us all beyond the fractures on the surface, ways we can connect more deeply with ourselves and each other, and ultimately ways to keep our hearts open to all the suffering and beauty that exists in the world.
If you are not satisfied with the level of connection and intimacy in your life, this episode will give you so much to contemplate and reconsider regarding the societal norms we follow when relating to each other. Amy is a well of wisdom and this whole episode serves as an invitation to opening our hearts to the world and those around us.
The weekly clip from the podcast (4 mins), my weekly reflection (4 mins), the full podcast (59 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
2. My weekly reflection
There was one line in this interview with Amy that really struck a chord: “Life has your back when you make that invitation to intimacy.”
Intimacy, for me, involves a state of presence, a level of attention, and a willingness to share what we are feeling, thinking, or noticing in whatever particular moment we find ourselves in.
It immediately made me think of so many conversations I’ve had with individuals or group conversations I’ve facilitated. Also of times I’ve gone into corporate settings with the work that I do, wondering if the group I am about to engage with will open up or feel aversion to the experience we are creating.
In all these circumstances, when I’ve led with an invitation of intimacy, people have responded in the best possible ways I could have imagined, whether with friends, clients, or someone I have just met.
Amy also shared an idea from her teacher, Thomas Hübl: “the notion of a stranger is an artificial notion,” which instantly reminded me of the number of times I’ve marvelled at how quickly we can develop a connection if we are willing to do so, even with people we haven’t met before. It seems perpetually within our grasp.
To be clear, it doesn’t mean we have to share our deepest vulnerabilities or traumas or haphazardly share everything. In fact, I have frequently noticed in the last few years how I’ve often heard someone share a personal story or something that we might consider vulnerable and felt very little intimacy. Perhaps the person had told the story so many times before that it didn't connect us, and there was very little presence or spontaneity left in how they shared it.
However, even if someone shares a simple noticing, like saying they are feeling a little tense right now in their body or what their present emotional state is, or a random thought that has just crossed their mind, and it feels true, that instantly creates a connection for me.
We don’t have to work on it, learn any theory, spend a lot of time together, or see each other at regular intervals. When we are both present and willing to share what we are experiencing in the moment, a momentary connection is possible that can feel stronger than with people you may know a lifetime, but the conversation remains in the realm of the predictable or guarded.
It is not a skill to teach necessarily; it feels far more innate than that. More like a remembering than a learning, akin to how you don’t have to learn to sit in a forest for the forest to naturalise you or for you to feel acclimated with nature. Our bodies are already receptive to this process. When you lead with intimacy, the other person, even if it's not their usual way of engaging, seems to know what to do.
What’s more, the relationships rarely tend to revert back. We rarely lean back on the usual fodder of situational conversation that is considered appropriate for any given moment.
Once experienced and noticed, engagements that lack intimacy begin to feel rather stark in comparison. You start to notice the guardedness with which we usually speak or the mechanical and predictable patterns through which we often communicate.
In this interview, Amy refers to intimacy as “a natural forthcoming” and suggests, in contrast, that our standard ways of communicating lead to a “suppressed soulfulness.”
This resonates a lot with me. When it is present, most of my engagements feel like they recharge me, regardless of how heavy or light the conversation is. When it is absent, the conversation can be something that saps my energy, and I have to think and work much more in the conversation.
I will end by saying, when you lead with this type of intimacy in conversations, you throw yourself into the unknown of what you or someone else will say. Very few things make me feel more alive. Very few things lead to a greater sense of knowing myself and exhibit more acceptance of myself.
What’s more, it is available to us at every moment we are with someone. We don’t need to book a course, fly to a retreat, or wait for a special occasion before the opportunity to engage this way presents itself once more. All it requires is you to be you; what else are we meant to be? How else could we feel a genuine connection with someone if we are not simply being ourselves?
3. Full Episode - Keeping Your Heart Open with Amy Elizabeth Fox - What is a Good Life? #68
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4. This week’s Questions
When do you sense your heart open or close? What typically leads to either scenario?
When leading with intimacy or vulnerability in a conversation, how often have you been pleasantly surprised with how people have reacted to you?
About Me
I am a Coach based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I left behind a 15-year career in Capital Markets after I became extremely curious around answering some of the bigger questions in life. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed around 200 people, to provide people with the space to reflect on their own lives and to create content that would spark people’s own inquiry into this question. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience, beyond the facades we typically project.
If you would like to work with me for individual or executive team coaching or executive silent retreats, or you simply want to get in touch, here’s my email and LinkedIn.