Scott Dillingha: 00:21

Welcome to the Wisdom Lifestyle Money Show. I'm your host, Scott Dillingham. Today, I have a really special guest with us, Amy Wong. Amy, welcome.

Amy Eliza Wong: 00:28

Oh, Scott. I have been so looking forward to this conversation. Thanks for having me.

Scott Dillingha: 00:33

Yeah. No problem. It's so great to have you. Amy, first, I wanna dive into your story and a bit about you and your book. I think your book is fascinating.

Scott Dillingha: 00:41

I've read it. I loved it. But first, let's let's talk about your childhood and how you grew up and grew to be the Amy that you are now and where you educate companies and all these cool things that you do now.

Amy Eliza Wong: 00:53

Yeah. So I, I feel so fortunate because my parents, they have they'll be married 50 years this next year, which is amazing. They are best friends. They are truly magnificent people, and I was raised with so much unconditional love and just so much support, and I I feel so grateful for that. Now my parents, they they both were they they had it really hard when they were young.

Amy Eliza Wong: 01:27

My dad grew up in pure poverty, just pure poverty. It's amazing how he pulled himself up for through his bootstraps and ended up becoming the human that he did. He's phenomenal. My mom had a really rough childhood as well. They found each other quite young.

Amy Eliza Wong: 01:43

They got married in their early twenties. They bought a nightclub because my dad's also a musician. Learned That's awesome. From. So, yeah, he's phenomenal.

Amy Eliza Wong: 01:51

And so they bought this nightclub in Sacramento, and so I was raised in a bar the first part of my life as an infant. And, but they're just tremendous, just amazing humans. They're generous. They're kind. They're fun.

Amy Eliza Wong: 02:04

They're funny. They're they just are so in love with life. They're in love with each other. They 2 siblings, and so there's just there's so much love and so much happiness in our household. Now does that mean that we weren't without tragedy or trauma or down moments?

Amy Eliza Wong: 02:20

Oh my gosh. We were we had all of that and then some, but I have to say that, you know, I think I learned my work ethic from them because they are hard workers. They're kind people. And I just my own I I'm in love with life myself, and I actually think it's because of them.

Scott Dillingha: 02:38

Yeah. That's awesome. That's so cool. And then so would you say there was a major event or something when you grew up that kind of led you on the path that you are on now? Yeah.

Scott Dillingha: 02:51

For sure. So

Amy Eliza Wong: 02:53

I I think there are multiple things kind of factors here. So my parents were really hardworking, as I had mentioned. Now when my parents, they sold the nightclub, and then my dad ended up getting into the financial industry, and his story is phenomenal. So the that that big pivot he made was a huge risk because now he's gonna go into the and become a stockbroker, and it's all commission, and it's it he didn't even have a college degree. It was a big risk.

Amy Eliza Wong: 03:21

And so to go from something that was somewhat stable to not that was all that was really scary. So my mom went decided to go back to work. But because she had 3 kids and she thought, I wanna be home with my kids. So she had a daycare in the house. So I grew up with a daycare in my house, and, you know, we had upwards of 12 little kids running around.

Amy Eliza Wong: 03:42

And I had my own sibling, and I I was the oldest by a margin of at least 5 or 6 years than the kids, and so there was always chaos, so much chaos. Wasn't that it was unwanted, but for me, I think, as a as a developing child, right, because I'm in adolescence, my prefrontal cortex isn't fully formed. I think in order to really manage all that stress, I became really OCD and very controlled. And so I developed, a really horrible eating disorder in high school and that lasted a long time, and I think it was the response to the stress and needing to control my environment, feel in control and feel like, okay. I've I've got things are in control.

Amy Eliza Wong: 04:29

It just my personal life really spun out, and it was one of those things where it was so hard, Scott. Oh my gosh. And I had it for years, and it it was one of those things where, debilitating, truly. It's when you're in a living hell, and yet, like, I'm I'm certain that if it wasn't for, though, that dark period from age 15 to 21, I wouldn't be who I am today.

Scott Dillingha: 04:58

And so So

Amy Eliza Wong: 04:59

for me, I had learned all the powers of reflection and strength, the resilience. It really definitely made me who I am today. And so with this, I have really come to realize that we grow equally in the light and in the dark. And so I've I'm now at a place where I can just embrace both very easily.

Scott Dillingha: 05:21

That's impressive. Yeah. No. Good for you. So for anybody who maybe is in a dark period of time right now and they need to get out of it, what were some of the things that you did to get past that?

Amy Eliza Wong: 05:34

Yeah. So a couple things. And I'll speak personally because I can't speak for everybody, but I knew that when I was in when it was really dark, like, I knew deep in my heart it wouldn't be this way all forever. I knew that there would be a point in time when I would be healed, but the path between where I was and healed, it was so elusive. It I I'm not sure how that was gonna happen, but I did have faith that, k, this isn't gonna last forever.

Amy Eliza Wong: 06:05

And then I this I had to say to myself, but maybe there's something in here that I'm learning that I just can't put my finger on right now, but I'll appreciate later. And so what I developed and I now teach it now as a coach because I work with a lot of leaders and teams. And one of the tools that I didn't have words for it back then, but I do now, and I call this tool painting forward. But, essentially, what this is is you're in the midst of a crappy crappy situation, and it can it can be really bad. It can be really hard.

Amy Eliza Wong: 06:37

It's your down period. You're like, oh, this is so hard. I just don't know how we're gonna get through or so it's those really down hard periods. What you do is in this moment, you do a little bit of a pivot. And the way this works is, you know how, Scott, like, for you, you know how you'll be in your now moment today on what you know, it's Tuesday in October, and you're in your now moment, but you look back in the past and you're like, oh, gosh.

Amy Eliza Wong: 07:03

Remember that thing I went through in my twenties? I was 22, and it was, god, it was so hard. And you know how we'll look back to our past in those moments that were super hard, and we can from our now moment, we look back at that and go, that was awful. But if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have this, and I wouldn't have done that, and I wouldn't and I wouldn't be here, and I wouldn't know what I know. And so we do this all the time with when we look back in the past.

Amy Eliza Wong: 07:29

And so from our now moment, we can always extract the gift of the shit of the past. We can always do that.

Scott Dillingha: 07:38

K.

Amy Eliza Wong: 07:38

But and so what this tool is is if you're in a crappy now moment, it's saying, oh, hold on. There's gonna be a point in the future where I'm gonna look back at this and go, yeah. That sucked, but the and so what painting forward is is it says, hey. Why don't you fast forward? Take a moment.

Amy Eliza Wong: 07:56

Go to your future's vision, say, 3 years from now. And now from that place, just imagine that you've lived into your aspirations. Now explain to yourself why this that you're in right now, this crappy moment, why that's on purpose, why that's necessary to get you there.

Scott Dillingha: 08:14

Nice.

Amy Eliza Wong: 08:15

And so it's a really powerful way of of reframing and, a crappy situation

Scott Dillingha: 08:23

Yeah.

Amy Eliza Wong: 08:23

And converting your resistance to appreciation Because the moment you can do that, then your equation changes, and then what starts to happen on a daily basis changes when you can change that energy of resistance to appreciation.

Scott Dillingha: 08:37

I love it. I love it. I've been reading all kinds of things about visualization and just the power of, like, your subconscious mind, and all of that leads to exactly, like, what you're saying here. So it's so incredible.

Amy Eliza Wong: 08:48

Yeah. So

Scott Dillingha: 08:48

good for you. So you teach us for for businesses? Because you said you're a coach, so you do this for businesses.

Amy Eliza Wong: 08:54

Yeah. So when I work with teams and I work with leaders, I work with on all things growth, transformation, and flow. So that's what I've been doing for over the it's been over a decade. I found it always on purpose in 2011, and I've just been coaching straight. And I've really coached many different walks of life, many different people, but over the past 6 years, I've been really focused heavily on with leaders and teams and and executives, and I would say it's anything pertaining to growth, transformation, and flow.

Amy Eliza Wong: 09:28

And so quite universally, they're all of us get in our own way, and there are very clear themes in the ways that each of us, doesn't matter if you're an individual contributor, if you're a supervisor, if you're a leader, if you're an executive, they're pretty clear themes in the ways that we hold ourselves back. And often, it's below the level of our own awareness. And so what I do is when I partner with leaders, we help excavate those blind spots and then

Scott Dillingha: 09:55

That's awesome.

Amy Eliza Wong: 09:56

Convert inaction to powerful action.

Scott Dillingha: 09:59

That's awesome. And then just for anybody listening here, do you provide these coaching services regardless of where the potential client may live in the world?

Amy Eliza Wong: 10:08

Oh, totally. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Amy Eliza Wong: 10:11

Yeah. I've got p I've coached people all around the world for sure.

Scott Dillingha: 10:15

That's so cool.

Amy Eliza Wong: 10:16

Time sometimes it can be a challenge with the time zones, but we'll always make it work.

Scott Dillingha: 10:20

Yep. No. That's awesome. Yeah. No.

Scott Dillingha: 10:23

Good for you. And you you've written an amazing book. Right? Can you tell us about that? Like, how long did it take you?

Scott Dillingha: 10:28

Where were some inspiration behind writing it? I'm really excited to hear this.

Amy Eliza Wong: 10:32

Oh, thanks, Scott. Yeah. It was so I what an amazing, truly transformative process it is to write a book. Now it was in 2014 going into 2015 that I knew exactly what this book needed to be, and I knew in my heart I was gonna write it. But I also knew that I wasn't it wasn't time.

Amy Eliza Wong: 10:56

It was not time to write the book because I was still in process of gathering all the research and doing really, I was immersed in in all of the coaching conversations because I've I've had thousands of conversations, and I knew what the essence of this book needed to be because what I was doing at that point in time, it was genuinely helping people. People were absolutely transforming, and the thought was, shoot. I'm really just limited to the people I can work with, but there's this process that absolutely helps, and I wanna get this out to those that really wanna take this on, but I can't physically work with because I just there's not enough of me to go around. This book has to be in existence. And so but I knew, but I'm still getting the I'm still doing the case studies.

Amy Eliza Wong: 11:40

I'm still getting the examples, And so it was around 2019 when I was like, okay. But now is the time. But here, I have to tell you, there was this there was a pivotal moment, and it was in 2016. And I am I'm getting certified in conversational intelligence. And so part of a huge area of expertise and passion of mine in my coaching is all things communication.

Amy Eliza Wong: 12:05

Yep. Because this is where everything is happening in this medium of communication, and we don't tend to think about it that way. We just tend to show up with our noble intention and then hope for the best and then wonder why things fall apart. Right? So Yep.

Amy Eliza Wong: 12:20

So there is just so much opportunity in getting this medium right. And for me, this medium really is is is really symptomatic of the deeper stuff within us, and so this is a big entry point to do the deep work with people. But, anyway, communication is a big fascination and focus. So I'm getting certified in conversational intelligence, which is all about the neuroscience of trust and communication. And, Scott, oh my goodness.

Amy Eliza Wong: 12:45

When I learned that rejection, as an experience, literally registers as physical pain and is and it is literally perceived as like death to the brain. Rejection is truly like death to the brain. The when I learned that, it was almost as if everything that I had been studying and bringing together in this, it all fit, and it was the final missing piece that I absolutely needed for this whole book to make I was like, that is it. And so that's when I'm like, okay. This book is absolutely gonna happen now.

Amy Eliza Wong: 13:21

I've just gotta get the final this, final that, and it was 2019. And I'm like, alright. It's time. I'm doing it. We're getting this book out there.

Amy Eliza Wong: 13:28

And then it was just it was flow. And as you know, we know Yes. We know how flow works. Right?

Scott Dillingha: 13:34

Yes. Yes. That's how we met. Yes. It's a high peak performance flow training course, so.

Amy Eliza Wong: 13:41

That's right. What a pleasure to be together in that course. Yeah.

Scott Dillingha: 13:45

Yeah. No. For sure. I I loved it. But, no, I love that too.

Scott Dillingha: 13:48

And do you find because of COVID, do you think that also helped because now there's more working from home, there's less physical meetings? Did that help to really get the writing done for you?

Amy Eliza Wong: 13:59

So I I think of this nothing short of synchronicity because what happened was at the end of 2019, I'm like, alright. We're gonna do this. I'm gonna I'm gonna take this serious, and it was the 1st week of 2020. And my mentor and dear friend, Christine Carlson, she's the coauthor of don't sweat the small stuff series, and she's like, Amy, I'm gonna take you under my weight. Let's do this.

Amy Eliza Wong: 14:19

I'm gonna help you birth your book. So she she was a massive support, went up to her place in Mount Chastis that 1st week of 2020, map out the whole book, the whole outline. I start writing, come home, and I'm like, okay. I've got this. I've got all this trouble, but I'm gonna get the writing in and then, boom, the world shut down.

Amy Eliza Wong: 14:40

Sure.

Scott Dillingha: 14:40

It's

Amy Eliza Wong: 14:40

like, oh my gosh. So and now all my keynotes are canceled. Workshops are canceled. All this stuff is canceled. Now we're not entertaining anymore, which we entertain all the time.

Amy Eliza Wong: 14:49

Oh my gosh. There's all this time. 100%. I am certain that if it wasn't for that weird wonky shift, I don't know if I would have been able to finish the whole book and the full the whole year because I started that 1st week of 2020, and I finished the manuscript on December 27, 2020. Wow.

Amy Eliza Wong: 15:07

And it was it really it took me that long. Now does it tip normally take that long to write a book? No. But I really trusted the process. And for me, in order to find flow, I'd have to go through those periods of, like, struggle and then release, and and there were there were chunks of time in between.

Amy Eliza Wong: 15:24

And so it but that's how long it took. Yeah.

Scott Dillingha: 15:27

No. But that's impressive. I think that's pretty I think the timing's actually pretty good. When you hear different podcasts and people speaking about how long it took them to wrote a book, I would say, yeah. Usually, it's, like, within 9 months to a year the average.

Scott Dillingha: 15:38

So I I think you did really good. So good job.

Amy Eliza Wong: 15:41

Thanks. Yeah. No. I I feel blessed. Yeah.

Scott Dillingha: 15:44

I love I loved it. So for anybody here who's listening, like, where can they find your book? Because I bought it. I loved it. Where would you recommend that they pick it up?

Amy Eliza Wong: 15:52

Scott. Yeah. So the book is called Living on Purpose, and the subtitle is 5 Deliberate Choices to Realize Fulfillment and Joy. And it is available where all books are sold. I think the easiest place is probably Amazon.

Amy Eliza Wong: 16:06

The and I do I have the audible. The actually, I got to narrate, which was awesome.

Scott Dillingha: 16:10

Nice. I was gonna ask that. Yeah. I was gonna ask that.

Amy Eliza Wong: 16:13

Yeah. Yeah. So you can get you, you can if you like audible, there's that there's that option. But, but, yeah, it's you can pretty much pick it up wherever.

Scott Dillingha: 16:25

Yeah. And I really so compliments you. I really like your readings or your writing style. It's very easy to read. Some self help books, It's dense in the way they wrote it.

Scott Dillingha: 16:35

It's hard to follow and you're drinking caffeine to stay awake, but yours is not like that. It's so easy to go through. It's almost like a, you can go through it like a story, but you really learn along the way. So I really enjoyed it.

Amy Eliza Wong: 16:48

Thank you, Scott. It was important to me. I I'll just share with with everyone that, you know, my the first part of my life. So I studied math at UC Berkeley, and so my undergraduate was in pure math. And so as a mathematician trained very rigorously, and just understand logic, argument, reasoning, and for me, discerning truth and finding patterns and meaning, and then being able to articulate that in a very clear and very irrefutable way.

Amy Eliza Wong: 17:19

That's just something I've been very rigorously trained in. And then on the flip side, my graduate degree is in transpersonal psychology, which is the complete other the other side of discerning truth in a, you know, in a subjective, nonlinear way, and how do we make sense of this when it's really quite irrational and and then being able to hold both. And so what was important to me with this book was that it was as clear and as bulletproof sound, like logic and argument wise as a math proof, but really truly honored just the humanity of our experience and just how, you know, and just how illogical we can be and how stories really teach. And and so it was important that I really bring both because for me, I understand best when there's a sound argument, but I also need story to understand the context. So Yeah.

Amy Eliza Wong: 18:13

That's how it came together.

Scott Dillingha: 18:15

That's awesome. Back to your synchronicity. Right? Everything worked out and all fit together perfectly. So

Amy Eliza Wong: 18:21

Yeah. That's

Scott Dillingha: 18:22

awesome. Cool. So what do you find? So say you pick up a new coaching client. What do you find is some of the most common struggles that people face in their life, that they need to get through?

Amy Eliza Wong: 18:36

Gosh. It's there's there's various themes, and I would say

Scott Dillingha: 18:41

Okay.

Amy Eliza Wong: 18:43

Where I always get really interest is one's inner dialogue because the inner dialogue that we sustain tells us so really dictates so much of our own experience and the ways in which we tend to get in our own way, it's either gonna be out of fear. Right? Un unchecked unresolved fear. Like, we're worried about some future state or we're worried about failure where there's some aspect of fear that's holding us back in ways that we don't realize. And then the other way in which we hold ourselves back is self doubt, and self doubt shows up in various ways and in different forms, but that self doubt is is can be really quite debilitating.

Amy Eliza Wong: 19:23

And I would even say the most ambitious, the most, successful individuals are like, I I really don't that's not an issue. Believe it or not, it pops up in ways that are somewhat insidious and and identifying the ways in which we hold ourselves back due to unrealized self doubt is actually it's a huge opportunity. So I'd say fear itself doubt. Those are big ones. And then the other another way that we tend to get in our own way a lot is unnecessary resistance to what is.

Amy Eliza Wong: 19:57

All of us tend to push against reality unknowingly, but then that just that we just hold ourselves back by doing that. So that's a whole big other conversation, but

Scott Dillingha: 20:07

Yeah.

Amy Eliza Wong: 20:08

But that's a big one as well.

Scott Dillingha: 20:11

Yeah. You're right. You're right on all 3 of them. I was gonna say, for me in my industry, I find people it's fear. I find, that would be our number one thing, but you're right.

Scott Dillingha: 20:22

So many people limit themselves by their beliefs, and, it's crazy to to imagine. But one thing that I recently heard was, I might be butchering it, I might be saying it wrong, but pretty much we fear things that we actually shouldn't really be scared of. If you're gonna be hit by a train, right, that's a logical fear that we should have. But if you're scared, like speak in public, right? That's not actually something that's scary or that you should be fearful of.

Scott Dillingha: 20:53

So they're saying to grow as a person, whenever you feel that fear that's not an actual dangerous fear, just to do it no matter what it is. And then you get over your fears. Yeah.

Amy Eliza Wong: 21:03

Yeah. Gosh. There's so much to say about this right here, and I'll just if this is interesting because this again maps back to that big for me in 2016 around the neuroscience of trust. Most of our fear, I I have yet to have any conversations that are gonna invalidate what I'm gonna say, but I would say, I'm gonna just throw out a number, 97% of the time, every single one of our fear is going to map back to how we are being perceived. Some fear in our in how we are being perceived by others.

Amy Eliza Wong: 21:36

So think of it this way. A lot of us say, oh, I'm a fear afraid of failure. Okay. Yeah. Maybe.

Amy Eliza Wong: 21:41

But, actually, no. Because if you fail, what does that imply? That That implies that you're not good enough. If you're not good enough, then now you're gonna be seen unfavorably. If you're seen unfavorably, oh my gosh.

Amy Eliza Wong: 21:49

This maps to what? Rejection. And so what's really interesting to me is that everything that drives us, honestly, as social creatures, we are driven to be connected in in belonging with one another, but what's the flip? We are driven to avoid rejection like we avoid the plague, and so we can take every single one of our fears, whether it's fear of speaking in public, fear of speaking up in a meeting, fear of failing, fear it all maps back to rejection.

Scott Dillingha: 22:20

Sure.

Amy Eliza Wong: 22:21

All of it. And It's true. When we can see this logically and then we can work this out for ourselves through the process of just inquiry, oh my gosh. This is what holds me back. It that it can unlock a lot.

Scott Dillingha: 22:37

It's so true. And you don't have to necessarily attack your fear head on. You can do it indirectly and still receive results. And I'll give you an example. I was helping my dad.

Scott Dillingha: 22:45

He used to build houses when I was younger. I was a teenager. And I was on the roof. I was doing the roof with them, and I almost fell off the roof. So I became scared of heights because I literally almost fell off like a 3 story roof.

Scott Dillingha: 22:57

So then later in life, I was like, well, you know what? I wanna get over my fear. So I'm gonna jump out of a plane. I'm gonna go skydiving. And I did it.

Scott Dillingha: 23:03

Right? And so now I'm not scared of Heights, but also what it did. And I mentioned public speaking, but I can speak better in public now because I'm like, you know what? I just jumped out of a plane. Of course I can go talk to these people.

Scott Dillingha: 23:14

Do you know what I mean? So by getting over your fears, even if it's not a problem in a different area, by getting over your fears on one side, you know, the room, you can get over your fears on the other side, just by getting confident in facing them. So it's

Amy Eliza Wong: 23:30

it's super cool. Percent. I love that so much. You're absolutely right. And, oh, it's I think for a lot of us, it's the discomfort of you mean, fear creates sensations that we our brain maps to unwanted and discomfort.

Amy Eliza Wong: 23:45

It's really, oh, I don't want that. I don't want that. And so we naturally just bounce back into safety when anything fearful arises. But if we can think about those sensations as wait. Hold on.

Amy Eliza Wong: 23:57

Those are just sensations that maybe are accurate inaccurately mapping to, oh my gosh, death is on the other side of this? No. Actually, what if these are just sensations that I'm about to transform, that I'm about to grow? And so if we can meet those sensations as wanted instead of unwanted, it's amazing how what you've just described. It it will completely change your experience where what was once now fearful, now it's just exciting.

Scott Dillingha: 24:29

Yeah. It's so cool. I I love the psychology of this all. Like, I love it all. No.

Scott Dillingha: 24:34

That's awesome. So, no, and I, I know we're getting close on the time here. So for your coaching, so say I'm a business owner or an entrepreneur, and I want to leverage your services, do you offer, like, a consulting call to see if it's the right fit?

Amy Eliza Wong: 24:50

Or how

Scott Dillingha: 24:50

does that process look

Amy Eliza Wong: 24:51

like? Absolutely. Absolutely. Because, you know, it's for for any organization or team or leader really that is looking to grow, is still looking to transform, is to is to so because another like, I was mentioning, the all things communication really is my happy place. So when I'm I tend to work with teams and leaders where they want to improve all aspects in the ways in which they operate and collaborate and innovate together because they get okay.

Amy Eliza Wong: 25:21

That's how we're gonna get the most bang for our buck is how do we make this more how do we make us more cohesive, more higher trust, higher performing? And so that that it's if that's interesting for folks, that's really where like, oh, hey. Let's chat. And so then we'll chat, and then it could be a matter of, hey. Let's do a series of workshops for your team, and then we'll follow-up with 1 on 1 coaching or let's you know, the sky is the limit in what we end up designing, but Okay.

Amy Eliza Wong: 25:49

It it's really the idea is how do we partner to create wild aspirational success?

Scott Dillingha: 25:57

I love it. That's awesome. And then so somebody's interested in that, how would they reach out to you to get that process started?

Amy Eliza Wong: 26:03

Yeah. So my website is always on purpose.com. And so the best thing to do is to check out my website. You can reach out to me at amy@alwaysonpurpose.com, or you can just reach out via my website on the contact form and lots of information there about what's possible, but best is just shoot me an email.

Scott Dillingha: 26:22

That's awesome. Awesome. I really appreciate your time, Amy. It was such a great shot. I love hearing your story, and your book was amazing.

Scott Dillingha: 26:28

And I'm not just saying that, like, I literally we're in our course, and I don't know if you remember, but I I saw your books behind you in the course.

Amy Eliza Wong: 26:36

That's right.

Scott Dillingha: 26:36

Like a little advertisement, to the team. And I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna get that. And I got it. And I told you I got it.

Scott Dillingha: 26:43

And I read it, and I loved it.

Amy Eliza Wong: 26:44

Oh.

Scott Dillingha: 26:45

Anybody who's who's out there, you definitely want to check out our book. But now we have to wrap up, but I really appreciate you coming on. And it was a great chat.

Amy Eliza Wong: 26:53

Oh, Scott. Truly a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Scott Dillingha: 26:56

No problem. Thank