What if success isn’t something you chase, but something you build? Self-Worth, Self-Belief, and Consistency with Amy Lenius

Notes from the Edge

In this episode of Notes from the Edge, host Lisa Lacy interviews personal development coach Amy Lenius about redefining sustainable success through self-worth, self-belief, and consistency rather than talent or external motivation. Drawing from

Key takeaways

• Amy Lenius attributes her coaching philosophy to navigating chronic illness from childhood, which taught her that resilience and self-belief are built through consistent trial-and-error rather than natural talent.
• The hosts distinguish between self-belief (built through action) and self-worth (your internal standards for what you deserve), noting that low self-worth often creates a ceiling on achievement despite high capability.

Main topics

• Self-worth vs. self-belief
• Consistency and messy action

Notable quotes

Self-belief is built through action.

Conclusion

Listeners gain a practical framework for building sustainable success by prioritizing self-awareness,

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) you Speaker 2 (0:04) Welcome to Notes from the Edge, where we have the conversations we should have been having all along. We talk about the things that we're not talking about. I'm your host, Lisa Lacey, writer, trauma educator, executive advisor, and author of the upcoming memoir, Notes from a Certified Madwoman. Welcome to the edge. Speaker 2 (0:33) Hey, my friends, welcome back to another episode of Notes from the Edge. I am your host, Lisa Lacey, and this is the place we have the conversations we should have been having the whole time. Guess what? You ain't talking about it, so we're gonna. And today's special guest is Amy Linnaeus, who is a personal development and success coach, professional speaker, and the director of group coaching at Next Level University. She specializes in helping women reconnect with themselves by strengthening self-worth, self-belief, consistency, and intentional daily habits. And we love that word intention in here. Having lived with a chronic illness since childhood, Amy's personal healing journey led her beyond physical wellness into emotional, mental, and spiritual transformation. Through rebuilding her own health and identity, she discovered that sustainable growth begins from the inside out, not the other way around, my friends. Over the past decade, she has spoken on stages of Ross, the personal development and health industries, served as emcee for the Next Level Live and appeared on more than 200 podcasts. She is known for combining practical coaching. We love that. We like things that work in here and honest conversations. Go figure. She's on Notes from the Edge and help people redefine success, reconnect with themselves and create lives rooted in purpose. rather than performance. Amy, welcome to Notes from the Edge. How are you today, my friend? Speaker 1 (2:07) I'm so well. Thank you, Lisa. I'm so excited to be here. I can already tell I love everything about your show. Speaker 2 (2:14) Well, we love it too. We're having the time of our lives. It does not get better than this. We were having our mini podcast before the podcast, and I was talking about this being my dream job, talking to brilliant minds who are... went through some darkness, got to the other side and have some tools, skills or resources to help other people just have an easier ride of it. So you have spent much of your life navigating chronic illness before you even thought about stepping into coaching. Looking back now, how did that shape what you do today in terms of where you landed and how you help people today? Speaker 1 (2:54) Yeah, it's so funny how we can turn pain into passion and purpose. And sometimes when you're in it, so when I look back at those years of being really, really sick. Speaker 1 (3:08) I don't think I was thinking this way during that time. But when I look back, in hindsight, it's always 2020. You can be like, oh, that shaped everything that I do, that I believe in, who I help, and why the stepping stones I have taken in my career to where I am now all kind of stem from not only the through line of my illness, which is very female-related, hormonally driven, and And those kinds of things. But the identity, the beliefs that were built, the skills that were built, the resilience that was built, that all carried through into just about everything that I do. And so that's always so fascinating to look back at it from that lens. Because when you're in it, it's a disaster. Obviously, you're not thinking about much in this kind of lens. But what it does do is every time you go through something even more, you realize that, oh, this is just another one of those times, another one of those moments. And because I've gotten out of this, I'm going to get through this. And because these cycles happen so much in life, I'm going to come out the other side, believing something new, knowing something new, having this stronger, more just strong identity. And that's fascinating too, to be able to keep moving through life with that level of perception. I love Speaker 2 (4:32) it. I love it. And I think it's an important reminder for everybody to remember the hindsight always comes. Sometimes it takes a few months. Sometimes it takes a few years. Sometimes it takes 10 years. But it will always come to you where you get to pinpoint that moment and go, that's why. That's why. It always comes for us. It always comes. So you, my friend, talk often about women's self-worth and self-belief. I like that wording, self-belief. and consistency as three gears of success. So why do those matter more than talent, motivation, achievement, the things we're normally told matter? Why do they matter more? Speaker 1 (5:16) Yeah, especially talent, to compare them to talent, motivation, and achievement. Talent, I think we're we're always told we're born with or we don't have it when in reality we've seen time over time, study after study, that practice is what creates talent. And practice over enough time beats out natural talent every time. So that's neat. And what self-belief is, if we want to take those two on together, self-belief is built through action. Self-belief is your self-efficacy. It's what you believe you're capable of achieving with enough time and effort. with it external results. So I built a lot of self-belief during my illness because I just kept going. I kept finding new ways to be healthy, be healthier, take that just next step into, okay, maybe this will make me feel a little bit better. Oh, that worked. Let's move on to this one thing. Oh, that didn't work. We're going to try over here now. It's all just trial and error, but continuing to take that action built a lot of self-belief and high self-belief got me a lot of places. So high self-belief again, meaning I can do what I believe is possible with enough time and effort. It doesn't mean I always know how. If you have high self-belief, you don't always know the how, but you believe in your ability to figure it out and then implement. You believe you can go learn and take action. You can ask the right person and apply it to your life. So we don't always have to know, but we have to believe that we're capable of learning and putting in the action. That's what self-belief is. Speaker 2 (6:51) Well, and what I love that you highlighted is, guess what? If it doesn't work for you, that's okay. Not your fault. Maybe not for your build and design. Move on, right? Yeah. Yeah, there's so much Speaker 1 (7:04) out there when it comes to health, when it comes to success in general. Whatever success means to you, that can look like a health journey, a love journey with yourself or someone else, relationships. It can look like monetary. Absolutely. That's what we deeply believe in at Next Level University is holistic success, holistic self-improvement, health, wealth, and love. Love it. All of those are success journeys in their own right. And when you do something that doesn't help, you're still learning. Everything about success, identity is just as much about what does work as learning what doesn't. Speaker 2 (7:36) Yeah. Speaker 1 (7:37) That's just a part of the journey. When someone tells you that it's not and that you should stop or you feel like, oh, I should stop because I've hit this wall. It's because we haven't been given enough permission, validation, support in the idea that that's absolutely a part of the ride. And when we don't get that kind of knowledge, we typically get off the ride too soon and we blame ourselves or we blame the thing. So everything you need takes time. Everything you want to achieve, we have to give ourselves the grace and gift of time. But we also have to give ourselves self-belief so that we keep going even when we hit those peaks and valleys. Some of us give up when things are really, really good too. So you need to know that about yourself. Do you give up when it sucks? Or do you give up when things are really good and you stop doing the things that got you there? That's a really, really important piece of self-awareness and self-belief. Speaker 2 (8:27) Yeah. Yeah. And that's important to note too, that yeah, self-sabotaging, what's good? Because you don't feel worthy. You're not used to it. I mean, there could be a million reasons lying Speaker 1 (8:40) underneath the surface there. Which brings us to self-worth. So you can have absolute high self-belief. You're an action taker. You get results. But at the end of the day, at some point in time, your level of self-worth is going to come in and either work for or against you. Yeah. And in our community, just like myself, who was drawn into this community as well, we get a lot of people with high self-belief. We get the achievers. But a lot of us have low self-worth or have come from a place of low self-worth. So I had built a lot of resilience through my sickness. I had built a lot of, okay, I believe and I can go learn and figure it out. What I started to learn along the way, especially as I got into the realm of Next Level University and the guys and what they know was, oh, there's a difference between self-belief and self-worth. And here's where my ceiling is. Self-worth is your standards. It's what you believe you're worthy of achieving, of holding, of doing, becoming. If self-belief is with enough time and effort, I can build a wonderful house. Self-worth is do I believe I'm worthy of living in it, of taking care of it, of who... I allow into the space. Do they keep coming in and spilling red wine on my carpets and I keep inviting them back? That's a low self-worth move. So they go together, but they work either for or against each other, depending on how well they're going. And we are not born just like with talent. We're not born with a certain amount of self-belief and self-worth. They can be built. So if you think, oh, I don't have enough self-belief or I don't have a lot of self-worth, that's okay. Lots of a start there. You can build both. Self-belief is built through action, messy action. Say you're going to do something. I like that messy Speaker 2 (10:30) action. Speaker 1 (10:32) It's not always going to be pretty guys, but you're going to be doing it. Nothing can be done consistently if you expect it to be perfect, ever. Consistency and perfection don't go together, ever. Speaker 1 (10:47) And we want to be consistent. We need to let go of perfection. So progress over perfection always. Messy action is the way. And what you need to do when you say you're going to do something, you get it done, whether it's to the best of your ability or sometimes it's a check the box kind of day. That's okay as long as you get it done. You have your moment of, oh, nice. I did the thing. I did what I said I was going to do. Because what that does is not only does it tell you that you deserve credit for all the things that you do, not just the big things that you allow yourself to celebrate, but the things that you do every day that actually compound over time and get you the results that you have. Speaker 1 (11:24) What this does is it builds into the identity so that when you actually achieve a result, you don't hit imposter syndrome along the way. Who am I to be here? How did I get here? Do they know that I don't know what I'm doing? It's just because you didn't build it into the identity along the way. You got the results for a reason. But if you're not building into the identity along the way, all of the things that you did to get there. It's going to feel a little funny. So build self-belief through. I say what I'm going to do. I get it done. And then I have the moment of, I did it. Nice. Then Speaker 2 (11:57) move on. I love that. Build the celebration in. So when you hit those mountaintops, right? Because for me, it was mountaintop, next goal, mountaintop, next goal, mountaintop, next goal. It was just, there was, I'd never stopped to go, look what I did. Look how far I made it, right? There was no. Time to celebrate. It was just let me just ignore everything and move on to the next goal and the next goal. So I love building these moments of celebration into a checkbox day. You know, I got things off the list and it was a good day. Speaker 1 (12:30) Yeah, so important. And you build your self-worth when you do that. If you have low self-worth, you struggle. to do that self-assigning, that self-celebration moment. Because you constantly, you say what you're going to do, you get it done. And then right before you feel like you're going to self-assign, you're like, oh, but I should have done it better. Oh, I should have done more. Oh, you know, whatever it is, you're going to should all over yourself and not give yourself credit. And so we want to be really mindful of that because self-worth, self-worth is... is a little more complex. Self-belief is a simple formula. State-proof self-assigned doesn't always mean it's easy. Self-worth is deeper. It's the internal stuff. It's do you keep the promises you make to yourself? Speaker 2 (13:11) What Speaker 1 (13:12) is your understanding and relationships of boundaries and how well do you hold them? What is your level of social courage? How authentically you are you? Do you know who that is and do you live in that often regardless of your situation and who's around you? Speaker 2 (13:25) Do you Speaker 1 (13:25) invest in yourself? And people always think, oh, I don't have the money to do so. Investment in yourself doesn't have to be monetary. You listening to this right now, this is an investment into you. And you can do little things like this every day. And then, of course, you can do bigger things once in a while. Absolutely. But what are you doing every day to invest in yourself, your health, your knowledge, whatever you value? Yeah. Whatever Speaker 2 (13:51) you value. So you have to know what you value, too. Yeah. Yeah, you have to know what you value. I was in inpatient rehabilitation and I'm I went in a dual diagnosis center thinking I might have a slight drinking problem and maybe a bad marriage. I don't know. I came out with a chart this thick, but I had a team of five of the most brilliant women I've ever met. And they asked me what my wants, needs and values were. Speaker 1 (14:18) And I thought they were speaking a foreign language. I was like, what? Speaker 2 (14:22) What are those? What are those? Yes. Speaker 1 (14:25) Because Speaker 2 (14:25) we're not taught it's OK to have them. Speaker 1 (14:30) No. And to have them as yours, that came from you, not those who surround you, those you serve, those who you are someone for. Speaker 2 (14:39) Because Speaker 1 (14:39) that is how women are raised. We are raised that our value is external. Our value is who we can be for other people, how we appear for others. It's very much external. So when women take that power back and... decide where their worth and their values come from because we