Embracing Vulnerability in Leadership: A Journey of Healing, Authenticity, and Intergenerational Wisdom

What happens when leaders are encouraged to embrace their vulnerabilities and integrate their personal struggles into their leadership style? Join us for an enriching conversation with Amy Elizabeth Fox, CEO of Mobius Executive Leadership, as we explore this compelling shift from traditional leadership models to those that embody kindness, humility, and spiritual maturity. Amy recounts her own journey through early life adversities and health challenges, revealing how these experiences have shaped her path toward becoming a healer and leader. Together, we delve into the importance of self-exploration and emotional authenticity in cultivating true empathy and effective leadership.

Our discussion uncovers the deep connections between personal trauma and professional life, highlighting the transformative power of creating spaces for genuine emotional expression in the corporate world. Amy and I share our thoughts on how acknowledging and addressing our inner truths can foster deeper connections and combat the epidemic of loneliness and superficiality that pervades today's work environments. We also discuss the profound impact of intergenerational trauma on leadership styles, examining how historical events like colonialism and war have left lasting emotional scars that affect not only those who experienced them firsthand but also future generations.

In a heartfelt conclusion, we reflect on the wisdom and joy found in later life, particularly as we age into our 70s. Amy shares her inspirations from retreats with figures like Ram Dass and the importance of finding sanctuary and adopting a slower, more contemplative rhythm of life. We celebrate the richness that comes with being present in the moment and express our gratitude for the opportunity to share these insights with thoughtful listeners. This episode is a testament to the ongoing journey of healing and growth, and the fulfillment that comes with embracing our vulnerabilities and authentic selves.

This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents

Transcript

Malcolm Stern: 0:46

Welcome to Slay your Dragons with Compassion. My ongoing podcast in conjunction with online events.

Malcolm Stern: 0:54

This is a podcast which explores the nature of how we develop as human beings, how we go through adversity and how it molds us and shapes us and helps us become who we are. Really happy today to greet a friend, amy Elizabeth Fox, who is the CEO of Mobius Executive Leadership in the USA. She's a specialist in transformational change and a pioneer in trauma informed coaching. She co-leads an ongoing certification program with Thomas Houbel, and I hope that's that's enough about you, but if there's more you want to add, then that's fine. I hope that's gathered you a bit, but if there's more you want to add, then that's fine. I hope that's gathered you a bit. Yes, thank you, malcolm. That's fantastic. So we've got about 35 to 40 minutes. Let's just see where we run with this. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 1:43

I'm delighted to be here, both because I adore you and also because I think this topic is such a soulful and important one for leaders to talk about and practitioners to talk about.

Malcolm Stern: 1:53

Lovely, and I grew up in a time when the leaders were sacrosanct. They never shared anything about themselves. I remember my training as a psychotherapist. All of my trainers would keep completely stum about what was going on for them. We never got anything personal, but I've. I made it a practice to bring my personal stuff Not that I take up the space in my groups, but to bring that to the groups and I know from having talked with you that you are very open with who you are as well, and that's, I think, that's, a lovely model, you said, of leadership. And, of course, you're extremely successful with Mobius as well. So perhaps you could tell us a little bit about how your journey started off and developed.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 2:38

Yes, sure, but maybe just to affirm the conviction that we're both pointing at first, I think this premise of the sort of all-powerful, all-knowing, invincible leader has actually led to a tremendous amount of damage and harm and disempowerment to many, many, many people inside organizations, and that model has simply reached its frontier. There's no way, in the age of volatility and complexity that is upon us, for a leader to conceivably know everything and to be, you know, invulnerable in that way. And so I think, for the first time maybe ever, there's kind of a business mandate for leaders to do some level of self-exploration and some self-disclosure and to cultivate qualities of spiritual maturity like kindness or generosity or curiosity and humility or beneficence and service orientation. So I just feel like the thing you're pointing to, malcolm, is exactly the nature of my work, but it's also, I think, the very heart of this particular moment and the sea change that's upon us and how we understand what potent leadership looks like.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 3:51

But let me answer your more tender personal question when to start my story. I mean, maybe I could start by saying, like many healers, I got interested in the healing journey because I was in a huge amount of pain in my childhood and in my adolescence and I remember going to the theater when I was 15 years old and watching Ordinary People and watching the character the therapeutic character played by Judd Hirsch, and realizing how much I long to be received in that depth and cradled in that kindness and safe in that way. And so I started my therapeutic journey, my own inner exploration, at 15. I think the next week, I mean it was like a roar inside me to understand that I needed help, and it's gone on now for 45 years.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 4:45

So maybe what I could say is I really do believe that there are significant gifts in the fact that I had such a challenging lifetime experience early in life. Also, I had cancer in my early 20s. So I had sort of back-to-back crucible moments, one might say one very long and one very acute and intense, and one very acute and intense, and that created in me a softness of sort of vulnerability, because I was in so much pain that there was no hiding it, and also, I think, a sort of dissolving of what might have been otherwise arrogance or, you know, haughtiness that I might have had. I just was on my knees early in my life and that led to a long spiritual devotion that led to a lifetime of looking for ways to be of service and it led to really intimate and, you know, flourishing friendships. So many many gifts, but not an easy walk.

Malcolm Stern: 5:49

No, I think for most of us who are doing the work as I describe it, we've had to go through an awful lot of challenge and shaping to become what we are, and I think it's lovely that you use the word humility and vulnerability, because those two words are very key for me in the practice that I'm involved in, which is parallel to what you're doing as well, amy. Very much so, and I love that you're so open about the struggle you've had to go through, because I think anyone who hasn't been moulded by challenge hasn't really been shaped fully. It's a bit like they say that women who haven't had children there's something different about them, there's something that gets shaped. Having gone through that, I don't know if you have children or not. I think you do, do you?

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 6:40

I didn't have that particular blessing, but I'm sure it's true. And until you've gone through certain I don't know inflection points of real test, you're virginal in that domain. And I think it's also true that the pain body that I walk with, and however much I've integrated my own, you know dragons, demons, terror, shame, guilt, fear that communicates to people a kind of refuge in my presence that says I've walked through great darkness and I know everything can be healed. And those words are hollow if you haven't actually done the painstaking, meticulous job of unwinding your early childhood experiences, but if you have done it. It communicates the kind of faith and possibility that I think many, many people find reassuring and inspiring to then themselves take that leap of faith to open their heart and look at what's been harbored for a long time but unexamined.

Malcolm Stern: 7:48

It's funny because we've had. I used to run a series called Alternatives at St James's Piccadilly. Yes, and every one of the great speakers in the world there in the spiritual world Eckhart Tolle, marianne Williamson and what I realized as I watched probably over a thousand talks take place, is the people who had humility, who'd been tempered by their experience, spoke to me so much more than the people who spoke like they knew it all, because, as you say, no one knows it all and and we are still inquiring- yeah, and my teacher thomas, who will, who you referenced earlier, talks about the difference between knowledge and transmission.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 8:27

um, and and I think this is so important for the listeners who might be desiring to be practitioners of healing or practitioners of coaching, facilitation, any, any, uh, vocational calling that involves helping people to heal, to understand that the ceiling on where you can accompany someone else is the terrain that's unexplored inside yourself, and so I think there isn't another way to refine your ability to accompany people, to witness people, to see through their pain to their beauty, to call to that beauty and that possibility with precision, than to do your own work. And exactly as you're saying, I really believe that.

Malcolm Stern: 9:07

It's funny, you know, because I remember friends saying to me you can only go as far as you've gone yourself. And I was arrogant and felt like, well, now I've got a gift, I know how to do this work. And it was only after my daughter took her own life in 2014 that I realized, a couple of years later, that something had shifted in me and that people were coming to me and I was able to go much deeper with them, because I'd actually had to navigate my own struggle. And what I'm hearing is that your struggles happened very early on. I thought I'd had a blessed life early on. It's like, oh yeah, I'm not getting touched by things, but we all get little landmines that come and blow us up somewhere.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 9:52

Yeah, that's I mean. First of all, of course your tragedy is, you know, life shaping and contoured your soul in ways that maybe will reveal themselves only you know at the end of your life. But I'm sure that your invitation to accompaniment is much deeper for having traveled that tragedy. Of course that's right and there's no question.

Malcolm Stern: 10:04

The funny thing is that after melissa died, three people came to me, having been victims of having been having had to go through suicide themselves of someone who was beloved by them. And where did they come from? I wasn't putting out. I'm I'm looking for people to work with who've had suicidal experience, but somehow I became safe for those people, as I'm sure you've become safe for people. When you talk about cancer in your 20s, I mean that's a big initiation as well. I don't know how that impacted on you.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 10:36

Yeah, I mean, I want to say something mystical and then respond to the cancer question.

Malcolm Stern: 10:40

Let's go with mystical first. Yeah.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 10:42

I mean, I do believe there's an implicate order and that most things are not random. There's a sort of constant energetic exchange and vibratory wisdom in the events that come towards us, the people that we meet, the conversations that expand themselves in front of us, and so I do think things are synchronized in that way. So if you're sending out a ping to the world that says I can hear this, I can hold this, I've walked this, that does literally draw the people who need to meet you in that conversation into your office. I believe that completely. And of course it happens more literally, which is when somebody starts to open up something in front of you that you are uncomfortable with or you find overwhelming. You're sending a transmission that says actually I can't really receive you here, and it just pauses, like the person will intuitively know that they're they're trying to bring something that's beyond the threshold of your receptivity and attunement, and the wider that you can receive, the wider becomes the diversity of things that and the depth of things that get brought to you.

Malcolm Stern: 11:49

That's just how it works of things that and the depth of things that get brought to you that's just how it works, and what I'm finding is within the corporate world, which is obviously much more your world than mine. I'm much more in the development area, although you're very strongly in that also, but in the corporate world it's actually acceptable now to have emotions come up, and I've been able to do psychodrama with, with, with, um, with major uh multals Wow, that's amazing, because I don't want to pretend when I'm working, I really want to bring myself. I don't want to present something slick, I want to bring something that's really true for me.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 12:22

Well, what you just said is so poignant, malcolm, because everyone is exhausted of slick. There's a pandemic of superficiality and routinized exchange and people are yearning to be met in their secrets. They're yearning to be met in their heart and emotions. They're yearning to be met in their unfelt memories. The invitation to profound encounter is the homeopathy to the pandemic of loneliness that most business leaders are walking in and most organizational cultures are fostering. So it has also been my experience that when you make a really sincere and well-crafted invitation for people to drop that wall or that veneer or that sort of slickness, to use your word and meet you for real, in the real, everyone is a yes to that, everyone melts to that in 48 hours. The other thing is an artificiality of untreated trauma. We meet each other at a distance and we meet each other in pretense because, because we don't have to know how to meet ourselves in the truth.

Malcolm Stern: 13:34

Um, yes, when I was talking to an ex-girlfriend recently and she was she was saying that the guy she's with now can't meet her emotionally and he won't go to that place of trauma. And she said how can I have a relationship where I, that part of me, has to be shut down? She said how can I have a relationship where that part of me has to be shut down? And I said it's not that he won't meet you, it's actually that he can't meet you and you've got to decide whether you can hack that or not. But unless we do the work and this is what you said earlier on unless we do the work, we can't really carry the depth of our being into the work we're doing, of our being into the work we're doing.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 14:10

Yes, and now I'm going to say something slightly paradoxical, which is on a regular basis, I'm sitting guiding a group of 20 executives, very senior leaders from all different industries, all different parts of the world, all different walks of life, and within a few days of creating a slowing down and unplugging, a sort of field of artistic inspiration, structured, intimate conversations, they become a field that is fertile and moist, with the capacity to witness meaning.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 14:44

We all have this innately. The barrier to offering it is what we won't face in ourselves. That's it. And so if you create a context in which people can, all of a sudden, safely and with guidance, look at the untold stories of their lives and the recesses of their memories that are constantly churning and operating as unfelt fear, unfelt self-loathing, unfelt existential terror, unfelt aloneness and alienation, when you can start to help people to recognize that there's this layer of their emotional life that's outside of their day-to-day alertness, and to open that terrain safely, it's a natural byproduct of that inner journey to want to extend your caring and your attention and attunement to the repair of others. It's extraordinary to me. You don't have to teach people how to become a village. We know how to become a village. We had to learn how to not do that, because that's the more natural quality of interdependence and communion and mutual investment that we have.

Malcolm Stern: 15:56

That's lovely, because I remember Thich Nhat Hanh saying that the next Buddha will not be an individual, it'll be a community, and I think that's right that we are. We're learning how to to find that that place in ourselves and how to actualize it. And for me, I get tremendous joy from doing the work where something's stripped aside and where I can bring my compassion and my insight into working with that. For me, that's not work, that's actually a privilege that I'm able to go there with people, and I would guess from our conversations, the same is absolutely true for you as well.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 16:29

Oh, it's a tremendously meaningful joy to be part of somebody liberating themselves in that way, even a small part, and to see the tenderness and affection and life force that rushes back into the group as they go through this journey and watch them on the last night, hold each other and cry with each other and dance with each other and sing with each other.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 16:52

You know your word is exactly correct it's a privilege, it's, it's and and it. It touches my heart over and over and over. And, and because I've seen it, that melting happens so many times, I have an absolute confidence that that's the actual nature of our life, of life that's not an artifact of one special group, although, charmingly, every group on Thursday night says how grateful they are that this is the group they wound up with, because what an exceptional group of people it is and it always makes the faculty laugh because it was the same exceptional group the week before and it will be the same exceptional group the week after which is, you know, I think, just the source of such hope about how easy it is and how possible it is to rewire the social agreements by which we operate and what we default to. I'm sure you same in your group therapy process.

Malcolm Stern: 17:42

Absolutely. And you know, this year I thought, oh, this group's the year I run a one year psychotherapy group one weekend a month. And I thought this year, oh, this group's not as good as last year. But it took me a little while to realize. Actually it's people. When you get underneath the surface and gets the essence of who they are, it's magic, magic happens. Then.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 18:03

Yeah, that's gorgeous. That's exactly how it is when you get to the essence of who people are. Magic happens.

Malcolm Stern: 18:08

after working with Thomas for a while, I recognized that intergenerational trauma is part of my makeup too, and I remember being in a workshop where I was sobbing at the trauma of being a Jew, and that was in my frame as well. It's like it doesn't matter. It does matter what happens to me in this lifetime. But as well as what happens to me in this lifetime, we are all carrying the intergenerational nature of who we are, and I wonder if you could say more about because I know you do a lot of work with the intergenerational trauma.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 18:55

Yeah, I said in a speech a couple of years ago that there are two great secrets in corporate life. One is the level of profound trauma that senior leaders have lived through, or whose families have lived through, and therefore the level of reactivity and regression that is driving their choices and style of leadership and how the world is wired. And the other is that spirituality is the gold mine under the conference table, the untapped nourishment that everyone's so parched for. But let me say something about the first one. As part of my intake process for my leadership programs, we do a systematic drama screening with, now, thousands of executives. Almost no one has been untouched by the generations of colonialism, racism, genocide, forced migration, poverty, violence, war. That has been the story of humanity and in some cases they will have, exactly as you said, had a very personal firsthand experience of those impingements and in some cases they will have simply had a parent who had those experiences and can't any longer love with a full heart. So they will have had a childhood that was parched of emotional expression, void of celebration and exact appreciation for their beauty, for their beauty cold and sort of austere in its emotional tone, which of course is equally traumatic as an overt violence or an illness or a precocious death. The range of ways people are hurt is extraordinary, and the capacity of the human spirit to endure what seems horrific is also unbelievably touching. And I deeply believe that because we're walking, all of us, with these multi-generations of untreated hurt and harm. We see the level of polarity, we see the level of animosity, we see the level of, you know, return to sort of more dictatorial and fascistic ways of leading in the world culture, and we see the ecological crisis. All of these things, I believe, source from the numbness that's required to walk with an unhealed heart, and we spend time in the programs actually asking people to look.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 21:29

What are the large scale addictions and small micro hacks in their daily behavior that cost them a felt sense of their emotions, that take them systematically out of self-contact. And, of course, there's many, many, many things that executives are doing all day long, and the actions they're taking aren't intrinsically problematic. I work too hard, I exercise, I check the news, I get distracted, I do social media, I drink, I do pornography, whatever. But they're playing a particular function in their consciousness which is to ensure that they don't feel themselves, and that comes at a very high cost. And when you go further and ask the executives to articulate the cost, they say things that just are so touching like I'm lonely, I don't know who I could ask for help. I can't admit I made a mistake. I feel like I'm an imposter. I don't feel joy, I don't feel inspired, I don't know what my life is about. You know I mean very fundamental costs.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 22:30

So, yes, I think this multi-generational trauma lives epigenetically, it lives energetically, it lives psychologically, it lives relationally. I was raised in a also in a Jewish home and there was an enormous sense of constant existential threat. That wasn't really our lives. It was this hovering anxiety of generations of insecurity and um and oppression and it still lives in my nervous system as a low-level anxiety, you know, 40 years into my healing journey. So it's also to be very modest about. You know how much of that is gets wired into our neurology and really takes a long time to unwind.

Malcolm Stern: 23:13

Yes, what I find is that when I'm running a group one of my friends once called it guru for a day I inhabit something very profound and powerful, and I am a wise man in that place.

Malcolm Stern: 23:26

And yes, in my everyday, everyday life, I can be an utter idiot, and it's like it's quite hard to match the two to actually see what is it that that allows me, because I'm never an idiot when I'm in a group, but I'm often an idiot when I'm not in a group, and I don't know if you've got any thoughts on that and whether you reflect that in your own life absolutely, absolutely.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 23:48

I mean, I think one of the most painful things in an evolutionary journey is touching the highest capacities that you can reach, like I feel when I'm guiding a group and I feel very dissolved, very available, full of love, full of vast, unconditional acceptance precise in my observations, you know, unwavering, you know. And then I, you know, walk into the faculty room and somebody says something annoying and I have no emotional equilibrium and I say things that are horrible and I, it's just, it's very painful to live that gap. Actually, it's not something people talk about a lot, but it's, it's. It's a disappointing and you feel like you're falling short all the time.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 24:28

And what I've come to believe is two things. One, it's a grace to be able to, even for a moment, be an instrument of divine love and divine repair. And the fact that you and I, malcolm, have been so devoted to our own inner process and our spiritual development means, even for a moment, we can touch that possibility and offer that in our work. And you know, that's just such a blessing and so meaningful to me. And it has nothing to do with the fact that in our own intimate relations there's still all the healing to do and all the lessons to learn, and that happens, you know, more slowly, I think.

Malcolm Stern: 25:11

And I wonder whether we can ever crack it in this lifetime that we actually will develop and grow but that actually there will be unhealed parts forever. And I'm not saying that as a defeatist, I'm just saying that that seems to be the reality.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 25:25

I thought that for a long time. And then I met Thomas Hubel and on the evening that I met him he said the following sentence that was a revolution in my system. He said not until you're at perfect peace with your past. He could have stopped there, because until that moment I didn't have even any aspiration or notion that one could be at perfect peace with your past. But he continued. He said not until you're at perfect peace with your past can you virgin birth the part of the future you came to contribute to life.

Malcolm Stern: 25:52

Wow.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 25:53

It was such a gorgeous connection between walking your healing path and being the possibility of fresh air into the future, and I loved the link between the inner life and the ability to be co -creative with the universe. And my other teacher, patrick Conner, also says over and over, everything can be healed. So, if only in deference to the fact that I think they're both wiser beings than I, who I treasure, I am sitting with a hope that, in fact, everything can be healed.

Malcolm Stern: 26:23

That's lovely, because I don't want to believe that there's only a certain distance I can travel, but actually there is a sort of an eternity that can be traversed as well.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 26:35

But that's a very important addition, malcolm, because the notion that everything can be healed also suggests we're walking forever, that there's no rush urgency. This is a lifetime on lifetime devotion and in that sense, all, all will unwind.

Malcolm Stern: 26:54

I do believe that actually there was a beautiful band who used to play the uh at the center that I worked at and they made they had this song that said I'm on an endless journey through eternity. Peace be still. There is nowhere to rush. And those words really landed with me and I think that I haven't absolutely have a sense of that. I don't feel like it's like a sort of an illusory sense. I have a sense that I'm an eternal being and I have to keep coming from this place where this is my life now. What can I do with this life now?

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 27:29

yeah, that that's beautiful peace, be still, I mean and and truly that sense of expanse. You know we're talking about an expanse in time. One could talk about just an expanse of possibility, or an expanse of of receiving miracles, right, the miracle field. All of that does slow you down. It means we don't have to rush through life. We can bring more of our presence to every moment, to each conversation, to each. You know, opportunity, and I think that stillness, that spaciousness, is really part of the resource for continuing to walk through the door of the hard things. The other thing I would say is that there's a pandemic of time scarcity in the executives that I work with. It's very difficult for people to feel like they can eat, and eternity is part of the antidote to that.

Malcolm Stern: 28:24

Tapping into that which is perennial and enduring and the sort of flame of the holy is part of the way you return to yourself yeah, I go every year to skiros, which is a holistic holiday experience so I'm out in july for three weeks and um, and I think what happens there is for the first three days I'm still in that energy field where I'm sort of like rushing, thinking quickly have to get it all done, and then after a while nature has its impact and I start to slow down and I realize there is, it becomes timeless, long for that, and I think if we don't take retreats, we don't find ways of actually getting off the roundabout for a while, then we just get burnt out. I don't know if you've ever experienced burnout in your life. I'm sure you will have done. I'm not putting that on you.

Malcolm Stern: 29:18

I don't even know if that's true.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 29:20

No, I wouldn't say burnout as such, but I certainly hit a wall in my trauma recovery journey where I wasn't capable of functioning in daily life for a period of time.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 29:46

You know, I was doing my trauma healing, my acute trauma healing, 30 years ago when we didn't have the sophistication we have now about how to titrate the process of uncovering that buried memories and, um, we, you know the sort of orientation was to like massive catharsis and massive breakdown and that had huge costs for me and many people, because the psyche can't handle that level of saturated pain.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 30:02

So there certainly have been moments where I, you know, was very crippled by the process in a way that I don't think would happen now. We're so much wiser about measuring and going step by step in the process and I think it's much safer to do the work now than it was when I was doing it anyway. But for sure I've had exhaustion in leading a company and growing a company and all of the windy points in the last 20 years leading it through the downturn in 2008 and 2009, leading it through COVID and in those kinds of stressors, high stress situations I have. It's been essential to do exactly what you're saying to find pockets of timeless refuge where I can really nurture myself and also return to the rhythm of life that has a deeper peace underneath it, and I think that is one of the things that I hope leaders take from our conversation or from any access to wisdom traditions is the urgency of sanctuary, and in a more and more hurried time that becomes more and more prominently necessary. I think.

Malcolm Stern: 31:20

It's funny because I never wanted until I've got it and then I realized I've been missing it. But often I don't feel like I've got time for sanctuary, for retreat, for nature, and that's crazy.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 31:32

Yeah, and that's the craziness we're all living in. We're living in organizational cultures that are disembodied, unemotional preference, autonomy over interdependence and don't have the glistening of spirit at their heart and center. And that's what I mean by spirituality, like we need to return to the poetic, we need to return to the ecological, we need to return to the lyrical, we need to return to the slow it's the slow.

Malcolm Stern: 32:00

Yeah, my, I'm lella cohen, who's t-shirt I'm wearing with his picture on it. Now I've said there's a track you did called slow. I've always liked it slow. I've never liked it fast. It's not because I'm old, it's not what dying does. I've always liked it slow. Slow is in my blood and there's something about that thing of slowing down where there's time to breathe, there's time to really experience our true psyches.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 32:25

Yeah, I'll just tell a funny story. So I have a small group of exceptional healers that have accompanied me body workers for many years, and one of them once took me after a session to sit in a car listening to Sarah McLachlan, and was pouring rain and we were just watching a field of horses and I was so unused to pausing, I was so unused to contemplation, I was so unused to imminent moments. When we got there, I said, well, what are we doing here? And he said nothing, we're just going to sit here. And I said what do you mean? And he said no, we're just going to be still and enjoy the beauty.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 33:00

And I literally had no reference for it. I was agitated, I was activated by it. I was like I don't understand what you want from me, like I don't know what to do. And that sort of desperation of what do I do is the sort of threshold before, the sort of down-regulating of your nervous system that will allow you not only to tolerate that stillness but to find it. You know, a glistening field of golden renewal. But that, that was a thing to learn. You know, that was not my suburban life did not orient me to watching the horses in the rain.

Malcolm Stern: 33:35

And I think you're right. It is renewal, isn't it? And if we don't renew every so often, then we start to feel it. I know that. I start to feel like I'm speeding up or I'm exhausted and I've got no way of coming back.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 33:49

Not to interrupt you, but the fact that you feel it is a sign of your health. Most of the leaders I encounter do not feel, until their attention is called to it systematically, the pain of the distance from themselves they live in and the pace that they live in. It's so taken for granted that that's the only, that's the only possibility, um, that they're. They're living at a distance from that. What would otherwise be calling to change it?

Malcolm Stern: 34:14

you know, I remember doing a workshop with randas and it was just for therapists. There were 40 therapists. We did a 10-day retreat with him and at some stage he did a retreat on on grief. He did a meditation on grief and half the group there's 40 therapists in the room for half the group were sobbing on the floor and I sat there quite smugly feeling like, well, I obviously haven't got that much. And then he turned to the rest of us. He said and your grief is that you can't feel your grief either. And it suddenly penetrated that actually that was the reality, that I'd actually cut myself off from my pain.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 34:49

Yeah, lovely to be reminded that we have RD in common. Um, I had, yes, great privilege of teaching uh, being part of his teaching team at Omega for years, and he was an, an extraordinary, extraordinary teacher. And, of course, what you're saying is right, it's no one really gets away with being unscathed by their life journey. That's just not the nature of the human experience. So either you're in touch with that pain or you're running from that pain. Those are the only two possibilities.

Malcolm Stern: 35:18

And it's not a wicked God who's punishing us for being human. It feels like we are given blessings which don't look like blessings and only later down the track we discover their blessings.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 35:31

Yeah, I mean two things.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 35:33

I would say about that that I've really learned from my time the last few years with Patrick.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 35:37

One, the degree to which we put on top of the face of God our early childhood experiences of our parents and other authority figures and can feel neglected, can feel abandoned, can feel betrayed, can feel many things that really have very little to do with the nature of the divine or the imminence and indwelling of the divine.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 35:56

They have a lot to do with our unfinished healing process. Healing process that's the first thing, and and and looking at that, you know, in a, in a rigorous way, frees you up in your devotion and in your sense of proximity to higher realms in a very beautiful way and and and I would say it sort of unlocked my capacity to pray and do mantra in a way that makes me feel so closely held and cared for by the divine. The other thing is what you just said, which is you could have a philosophy that there are good things in life and bad things in life, but deep, esoteric Judaism, gnostic Christianity, hinduism, native American wisdom, all of the deep perennial wisdom, will suggest that there are really just blessings that look like blessings and blessings that don't look like blessings and that's all yeah. In some ways, the beauty of this podcast that you've created Slay your Dragons points to the fact that the hardest parts of our lives are sources of wisdom, sources of strength, sources of gifts we can give back.

Malcolm Stern: 37:14

They're refining. I should have got you to write my blurb for this podcast. Actually, that's perfect. So can I just look before we finish? We finish and we'll come to.

Malcolm Stern: 37:30

We're coming towards the close, but I just like to look at um. You run an organization called mobius executive leadership and obviously is um is unashamedly incorporating spirituality into leadership. It's probably not named as as clearly as that, but it's clear, very clear to me from the meetings we've had that that's very much a part of your ethos. Now this is this feels quite courageous to step out, because we could be I suppose the times have changed a bit as well but you could be undermined for and and what I also think is very important, which is that there's a lot of spiritual bypassing. That goes on and most certainly you are not part of that, um, but but I think a lot of what poses spirituality is just escapism from from the heart and harshness of life. But you've managed to create an organization that incorporates that. I've seen some of the great people you've had there as well that you actually attract very wise souls to your side. So could you say a little bit about that before we close?

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 38:27

It touches me so much, that question. I do feel a tremendous sense of privilege to be collaborating with the great, vast souls that I'm walking with, both my teachers and my advisors and mentors and my practitioners that literally collaborate with me in co-creating these programs. I don't know that it's courageous, it's necessary Meaning. I'll go full circle back to your question. I didn't answer about what were the gifts of my cancer journey. The biggest gift of my cancer journey was understanding that life is a temporary gift and you kind of leave it all on the field. You just have to give everything you have to give.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 39:09

And I deeply believe that the separation of secular life and spiritual life by which I don't mean traditional religious practice, although it could include that, but a connection to serving and a connection to a sense of calling and purpose and a desire to be of use to life, is the very alignment that we need to rewire the way society functions. So to do anything less in my mind at a time of such devolution and such danger, time of such devolution and such danger, I just couldn't do it, and my sister also. I think we both feel a strong sense of urgency to at least bring the remedies we have at our disposal to bear. And one of the things that we're lacking in society is the voice of wisdom and the voice of equanimity and the voice of compassion and the voice of justice and mercy. And those are deep spiritual capacities that, if leaders will cultivate them and start to express them, we have a much better chance of leaving to the next generations a planet that's sane and sustainable, joyous to inhabit. So maybe it's courageous.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 40:24

I can say that when I started 20 years ago I was more cloaked and less explicit and there was less interest. And post-COVID I feel there's a kind of recognition of the ways in which organizational culture is not really nourishing people and not really holding people and engaging them. And you see it in absenteeism, you see it in health effects, you see it in the sort of great resignation, you see it in the generational conflicts that are happening in the workplace, you see it in the emptiness and hollowness the leaders that come into my classes express. So I guess I feel like the wind is at my back. That's my experience.

Malcolm Stern: 41:10

That's lovely, yeah. Yeah, I think it is courageous, you know, because I think it's about sticking our heads above the parapet. For so long, I think, people have looked for wisdom that some Messiah will come and save us, or some very wise person will know the way to go, and we have to embody that wisdom, I believe, in order for society to take its next step of evolution.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 41:34

I love that very much. Malcolm and I, you know, I hope we will go as a humanity on a wisdom quest. I feel excited to participate in that journey with everyone.

Malcolm Stern: 41:46

I think you're already participating. You're probably leaving it, Amy, so it's very beautiful. So the last question I ask people at the end of the and just whatever comes spontaneously is absolutely fine is what dragons have you had to slay? What difficulties have you had to overcome in order to be who you are? If you had to slay, what difficulties have you had?

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 42:05

to overcome in order to be who you are I mean, it's probably the most central is a singular dragon that has two expressions and they're sort of paradoxical, I guess so I was. I did not feel I didn't leave my childhood with a sense of self-esteem or self-honoring or self-blessing. I really wound up out of both circumstance and the nature of my own psyche, emerging into adulthood feeling a lot of shame, a lot of inadequacy, a lot of self-consciousness and awkwardness. I was really struggling and that struggle has led me to a journey of self-consciousness and awkwardness. Just, you know, I was really struggling and that struggle has led me to a journey of learning to be self-loving and self-accepting and imminent inside myself to even have my voice to say you know what it is in my heart to say so.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 42:59

One part of the struggle of wiring self-esteem is just arriving at a state of self-acceptance which I feel I'm pretty close to. I rest fairly well now in myself, and the other is the reason it's paradoxical is I also have certain visionary dimensions and I can be very shy about that and I can be very shy about that. So it's both a part of me that it feels very small and inadequate and a part of me that because I feel small and inadequate. You know it took a time to take up my place in cultural architecture and you know it's not an accident that I it took me a long time to co-create Mobius with my sister and declare that I had had a dream.

Malcolm Stern: 43:44

But I, but I, now that I'm resting in that dream, I feel very grateful, yeah, and I think it's one of the blessings of aging, isn't it? And I think that you know we can go. Oh, I'm getting old, I'm losing certain bits of me and I'm no longer inspired by the same things, but actually we've become a receptacle, it feels to me, in which wisdom can abide more easily. We have different drivers. I noticed that I'm actually enjoying my 70s more than I've enjoyed any other decade, which is weird because there's so much excitement that's not there and, of course, you're quite a bit younger, but it's also that I can see the wisdom.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 44:14

I'm not that much younger and I do feel, you know, maybe there's a move, a shift is from excitement to abiding, Like I just feel, like I'm just more here. You know, and it's beautiful what you said.

Malcolm Stern: 44:28

Thank you so much, Amy. I really appreciate you coming and being a part of this podcast. I'm so enjoying doing it. So it's just lovely to have friends like you who'll come on and speak their wisdom and their truth, and I'm in great respect of what you have to bring to the world.

Amy Elizabeth Fox: 44:43

Thank you so much. It's really dear to have this time together.

Malcolm Stern: 44:47

So we'll be back in touch again. So thank you and see you soon.