The Power of Choosing Yourself with Eimear Zone

Eimear Zone: Here's what's alive and true right in this moment. Authenticity is living into the full expression of who I am and expressing myself bravely from that place.

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human, where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives.

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that’s with our families, co-workers, or even ourselves.

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni.

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore.

BOTH: Let's dive in.

Authenticity means freedom.

Authenticity means going with your gut.

Authenticity is bringing a 100% of yourself. Not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.

Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.

It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.

Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.

It's transparency, relatability, no frills, no makeup, just being.

[EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Hello, Cristina.

Cristina Amigoni: Hello.

Alex Cullimore: We are back with a return guest. I think this is time number three for Eimear.

Cristina Amigoni: I think so, yes. Because she did – I tried to remember the first one. The second one was impostors. One of the two was impostor syndrome, and then something else, and now choose yourself.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. I know at least two of them, and I can't remember which one, it was the first one? It was her first book. This one is obviously her second book and we just talked about today. I know we talked about her first book the first time, and then we have a different one. Now we have a second book. Between all that time, she did, what, four marathons?

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, yes. Three majors. I can't remember what the fourth one. Oh, Dublin. Dublin is the fourth one that's not a major. I am now the rupee, and so I keep track of when's the next one? Also, very likely crashing, whatever she goes, especially because the next one is London and after that is going to be Tokyo. I already told my husband like, I'm crashing Tokyo for sure, and I'm tempted to crash London.

Alex Cullimore: That's a great reason to go to Tokyo.

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly.

Alex Cullimore: And London, frankly.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. And London, yes. Then Boston, and definitely crashing that one. I can't skip London. If I'm going to crash Tokyo and Boston, I have to do London.

Alex Cullimore: No. No, you'll have seen all the majors at that point then.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yeah.

Alex Cullimore: I think the only other major one I know of is Chicago. That's the one –

Cristina Amigoni: Chicago, yes. She did that last year, and she did Berlin this year, a month before New York. That was ridiculously impressive. I did not crash Chicago or Berlin. I started with New York. Now it's a thing. I already told her. That's a thing now. Just to make sure you expect me to be there.

Alex Cullimore: It sounds so insane, but it does get fun.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. It's great to be a spectator.

Alex Cullimore: It's also fun to do it.

Cristina Amigoni: It’s how I choose myself. I choose myself to crash and not run. Crash the marathon, not the body.

Alex Cullimore: It's a great bridge into choosing yourself, which is exactly Eimear's book, Choose Yourself, and the theme she's been on and talked about for a lot of this. It’s getting better in touch with yourself and using that powerfully and really leaning into it. Eimear's is always a great storyteller, as well as has just incredible content that you want to be closer to. It’s always a pleasure.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yeah. It is always a pleasure. I mean, I read the book in two nights. I think I didn't go to sleep, because I made the mistake to start reading at 10 p.m. thinking like, “I'll just read a little bit and then continue tomorrow.” I was just so into it that I was like, 2 am, 3 am, and I'm like, “I need to actually go to sleep now and stop reading this.” I think, I don't think it took me more than two nights from 10 to 3 am, or 4 am until I was done. It was incredible. It's one of those life changing books, where you read it and you're like, “Oh, my God. That's me. Oh, and that's me again. That's me again.” It's very powerful.

She has great activities in there, which I haven't done yet. I'm going to go back and actually do them. I was trying to read as fast to complete it as fast as possible at the point as an early reader. Yeah, it's just very fascinating. The theme is, it's really like, nobody's coming to save you. I love the pre-mortem, pre-mortem piece of when you go look back at your life, it's like, you're going to feel you've wasted stuff, because you didn't choose what you wanted your life to be. You just hoped it would happen. It's very powerful.

Alex Cullimore: It's a common problem. Good one to face. Hard to face.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Very hard to face. Yeah. It doesn't make it easier.

Alex Cullimore: I misspelled her name, I remember the first time we did the podcast. But just to help people find the book, I can spell it right this time, I promise. It's Eimear Zone. That's E-I-M-E-A-R Zone. The book is Choose Yourself. You can find her at all kinds of places, which we talk about later, but this is a very fun conversation with Eimear Zone.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Enjoy.

Alex Cullimore: Enjoy.

[EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Hello, and welcome back to this episode of Uncover the Human. Today we have a return guest, Eimear Zone. Welcome back to the podcast, Eimear.

Eimear Zone: Thank you so much. Great to be here.

Cristina Amigoni: Welcome back.

Alex Cullimore: We're excited to have you. I mean, this is a brief overview. We've both been coached by Eimear, I think at some point. Cristina and Eimear went to coaching school together. Now, we're just here chatting again. Do you want to give any more background, Eimear, on things that you've been up to lately? What's life look like?

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, it's been a while.

Eimear Zone: Yeah. Been a while. I'm still coaching and I particularly focus on entrepreneurs, creators, and leaders and particular interests now in midlife women looking to create regret-proof second chapters. I'm just coming to the end of a two-year training with Jack Cornfield and Tara Brock in mindfulness meditation. I graduate from that program. We have our graduation ceremony at the beginning of February. That's been a really, really rewarding and interesting journey. I have been weaving meditation and mindfulness and visualization into the work that I do for many years. It's just one of these things, right, that you find a modality, or you just follow your curiosity and you say, “Ah, this makes sense. It just gave me that yes feeling internally.” I just followed that guide. Yeah, it led me to doing silent retreats and all sorts of things. It's been a really exciting journey and it continues to unfold since we last were here together.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Lots of stuff. I've been in your – one of your first cohorts in the mindfulness meditation piece. That was very, very powerful.

Eimear Zone: Thank you. Thank you. It's fun to just open up and offer more as you begin to learn new modalities and you see how powerful they can be. I was focusing in that area of confidence and really coming more into yourself and being braver in your life professionally and personally. For me, the mindfulness piece became more and more important, because it's really that experiential piece, and taking people out of just the thinking mind and really beginning to get a glimpse of the experience of it and the okayness of trusting in themselves and getting out of the comfort zone. For me, it was the missing piece for myself.

We normally pursue the things – our curiosity leads us to what we are seeking for ourselves and then we become of service to others through that journey. Obviously, I can see it's behind me and it's behind you, for people who are getting this in video, but I wrote another book since we last spoke, which is called Choose Yourself. That was a long time in the making, probably a long, long time ago, Cristina, when you and I, we were in coach training together and I was talking about this idea of another book. At that point, it was called You Do You.

Cristina Amigoni: I remember that. We've talked about that.

Eimear Zone: Yeah. We were building out a structure in a coaching session one time. I love when it's just an idea. A flicker of an idea becomes a tangible thing and that's exciting. Then from the book, just in the last two weeks, I launched a podcast, my own podcast called Girl Choose Yourself. The second episode of that just came out the other day. It's all new and explorations and going deeper into my curiosity and what I can offer to others.

Alex Cullimore: It's an excellent journey. What brought to the Choose Yourself moment? That sounds like that's been a while in the making, you said, that was a curiosity you were following.

Eimear Zone: I think it was just that fundamental yearning. I think I'm looking now as I'm – there's a notice board in front of me and I have a photograph on it of I'm probably seven years old in this photograph, a little school picture of this little, little girl. Then there's another photograph and it's of my grandmother, so it's the other stage of life. I think the choose yourself is really about the, it's up to you. I think a lot of life is when we're younger, there are people guiding us, supporting us, telling us what to do. Then gently suggesting what we do, and a lot of influence from the external that guides us. We want to please people, or it seems like, oh, that's a rewarding career, somebody else's.

I mean, I think when I was choosing my career, I made it – I was at that stage in school, probably a junior in high school, or whatever, the equivalent in Ireland. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I had some conversation. My sister wanted to be a doctor, always wanted to be a doctor. For a while I thought, “Oh, I'll be a doctor, too.” Then I realized, I have no interest in being a doctor. I am just saying that because I want to know, and she seems very sure, and maybe I'll just copy her. In the end, I made the decision to do a business degree, because on the basis of fashion, because I decided I would like to wear nice suits. I mean, really. There wasn't a lot of really great career guidance. I thought, yeah, just zip around the world in a suit and look important.

I mean, really? I think choose yourself, my life got disrupted and a little bit of an unusual pathway, like 10 years ago when I found myself plucked from the UK where I was living and had been for a long time. My husband's American and his job changed to this big opportunity in the States where he's from. And so, we ended up moving there and I was like, “What the hell am I going to do?” I went to law school in England, useless here. Now, I have three kids who I have to integrate into school again here, so I have very little time again. I don't really know how this country really works.

I was depressed actually for a while when I got here. I was smiling and putting on a good show, while I was doing all the things. Then I would put on my workout clothes and think about working out and shower later in the evening, not having worked out. It took a while for me to go, okay, right. It's up to me now in this place. Nothing's going to change. Nobody else is responsible. I spent a bit of time blaming my husband for moving me to a country that was making things a bit awkward for me. Then I realized, oh, that's not very helpful. I mean, I studied law, so I thought I was like, I'm an argumentative person and God bless my husband. I was going, “I can win this argument. It is his fault. Yes, it's entirely his fault.” Then I was going, “Actually, I like him. He doesn't feel that good when I argue with him like that.” Actually, it's BS because it doesn't help me either.

Within me was alchemizing, I guess, this idea of choose yourself. You have to do it yourself. Then nobody's coming to save you. It's me. It's me. That really began this journey of experimentation of, well, now what am I going to do? I'm 40, something or other. I guess, nearly 45 at the time. Oh, my God, I have to reinvent myself. Oh, my God, I have to meet new people. This is all not in my plan. This seems a bit hard. Once I got over telling myself it was hard and annoying, I started following my curiosity and doing stuff I didn't know how to do at all. I was quite interested in law. I was quite interested in women's rights and women in the workforce. I was interested. I had done a bit of research and work in the area of discrimination law when I worked in law in the UK.

I set up a online business that was a social enterprise that was – it started off just selling t-shirts with resilience, or fearless, or just simple messages like that. Then selling those online, learning how to do that, learning how to design a website, all these things. I wanted to give back to a women's charity and it gave back to the Global Fund for Women. I had done an online course that I found on, I think, Coursera or something. It was taught by the founder of the Global Fund for Women. I was going, “Oh, this is interesting. Maybe I could be of service here.”

Then I started finding women who were creating products that I could sell on that. That was like, “Oh, well, this is interesting.” I was just learning all the time and doing different things. Ultimately, that wasn't something that I wanted to continue with. It wasn't financially very successful, but I learned a whole heap. I was somebody who had never really done anything online. Then I said, “Oh, maybe I'll design an app. Maybe I'll be a programmer.” Because my husband was an IT and I had always thought, that's math. I don't love math. He said, “No, Eimear, it's language. You speak several languages.” I was going, “It's language?” I'd heard people say software languages. I thought it was a different thing entirely. I loved languages.

I said, okay. I found the Code Academy online and I said, I'm going to learn online. I did that. Then I said, this is a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I had decided I wasn't that person, and then I did a thing and I proved to myself, it's like, oh, I can program. This is interesting. Then I was in Miami at the time and they had this new business incubator place. I'm going to go there. I'm going to learn. Then they had this course where you designed an app and there was a prize and it was learning Python or something. I go and it was for complete beginners. I said, awesome. I sign up. It's 12 weeks.

I go the first time and I had a heart attack. First of all, these people were not beginners. You know like when you ever go somewhere like, you ever gone skiing and they say, it's complete beginners, and there's always the false beginners. Them going, “Yeah, when I was in, I don't know.” Aspen, those winters, we used to go when I was a kid, but I end up – Everybody in this place, I was like, you don't – They'd give a little problem to do and I'd be plonking along really slowly and methodically and everybody else would be finished. I'm going, I thought people were beginners. It was highly stressful. It was also a little sign that everybody else had a Mac and I was the only person with a PC. I was going, “Okay, interesting.”

I went for the first day. My husband picked big me up and he said, “So, how did it go? Did you love it?” I was going, “I survived it and I'm getting my money back.” It was about, I was choosing myself to try new things to also say, “No, not for me.” That has been the journey that has become a book. It was really about looking around and saying, I don't know the answer. I'm not going to sit on my ass until the answer comes to me fully formed, really obvious, and I can be 100% secure in choosing it. I'm going to bet on myself, take risks, go into rooms where I don't know what I'm doing, like the place in the incubator where everybody was programming much better than me, and it's going to be okay. I'm going to go way outside my comfort zone and go, it's Eimear the programmer. I'm going to design an app. Actually, Eimear isn't the app designer and that's okay.

I met really interesting people in those rooms and I just started putting myself in more rooms and going places by myself. I went to, I know, Gabby Bernstein event in New York by myself. I went to Tony Robbins by myself. I went to, I forget her name, a big LA entrepreneur who set up an event in LA and I said, I've read her book. I think it's called Girl Boss. She set up Girl Boss.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. I've heard it.

Eimear Zone: Yeah. I forget her name. I bought her book.

Cristina Amigoni: I can’t remember her name.

Eimear Zone: She had a first event and I said, “I'm just going to go to that. I'm going to put myself in the room with people who I find interesting.” In some of those rooms, there was a senior section with Gabby Bernstein, where there was a senior section, and then there was the very enthusiastic younger generation. The same in LA and I'm going, that's okay. That's okay. I'm just going to follow my curiosity and I'm going to be okay. I was. I just kept doing that stuff.

Cristina Amigoni: That's super fascinating. It's a constant journey of yeah, choosing yourself and then going for it and finding that community, finding whatever. It's the next place with people and it's the next place with people. What can I get out of that?

Eimear Zone: I think when I did the social enterprise and I was writing a lot of blogs and I was talking about inequality and the systemic sex discrimination and stuff and I was, it’s so great, but depressing talking about how the system is like, I guess a bit grim. I'd look at the statistics as well and I'd say, all right, just from the UK law system, which was the one I was most familiar with, it's like, oh, Equal Pay Act, I think it was 1970. Hmm, let's look at the data on equal pay in the UK, for example. Oh, look, a little bit of pay disparity. Now, let's look at what the estimates are for given the current rate of progress when there will be pay parity. I'm saying, okay, well, I'm dead and buried by that time. Interesting. What else might I be able to do?

I think that was when I was saying, okay, there's the external system, and I can play into that and think that that has control. I can decide that the control is an inside job. What can I do, me, choosing myself, if I just say, I am the power in this dynamic, how can I maximize what I can be and do and achieve? Well, then I have to look at what I can have most control over and that's me. Then when I started looking at, okay, well, what's happening in my head on an emotional level that's stopping me? There's all that external stuff. Then I might say, well, that's rather inconvenient. Actually, where am I getting in my own way? That was how you and I met, Cristina, because that was when I was on the journey of coaching.

First of all, I wrote that first book, The Little Book of Good Enough, which was a long blog post for a while, but I was saying, well, maybe – and I had the name of that book for a long time, Because I thought, well, I can't write one of those big grown-up books. I know I'll write a little book, because that's set the bar, don't set it way up here and you never do anything. If I call it the little book of good enough and then I found somebody to work with to bring that book to life, nobody ever told me I could write a book, that I was a good writer. That was just, don't people have to have be anointed by, I don't know, Simon and Schuster, or whatever to join that club of those very, very special, sacred sect of the special people who are authors.

Then I just started again going into those rooms, I was going, “Ah, you wrote a book? Wow, you self-published? How did you go about that? Huh, can you introduce me to that person?” Okay. Creating that book and I remember the first time opening it up and physically having a thing and going, my God, that was just this idea swimming around in my head. If I could just think you are, well, I just created who I am. I now became this author and I was good. It's like the first time you go into a room and they say, well, what you know? You say, “I'm an entrepreneur and you're trying not to laugh.” I was anyway.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Or when we were supposed to say I'm a coach after one hour in iPEC training.

Eimear Zone: Yeah. Just owning these new labels, or identities can be a little bit tricky. I think it's just the repetition that you just repeated enough and then you make it true. You have to claim the territory. I claim the territory of author. I think I say in the second book where I was like, then I just ran away from it. They did the publication thing. Then I was like, well, can't be talking about myself all the time. That's a little awkward. Isn't that bragging? I think that was the message is when I was like, it's not bragging. People don't want to. Don't make yourself that.

Cristina Amigoni: Strong messages.

Eimear Zone: Yeah, really strong messages. It was really weird when I got this email from Amazon before Christmas, and they said, “We'd like to use your book in a promotion that we're doing for the new year or something.” I was like, “All right, Amazon.” They're like, “Here are the terms and conditions and we'll set the price.” I'm like, “Just tell me where to sign. Exact spot.” I just wasn't watching it. Then lots of people were buying that book.

Cristina Amigoni: It's a great book.

Eimear Zone: No doubt, helped by Amazon deciding they like the title or something. It's amazing what can happen when you just take small steps, or get in the habit of taking small steps. As we say in Ireland, just giving it a lash. Giving it a go. The lash.

Cristina Amigoni: That sounds very fitting when you're actually thinking about doing a marathon.

Alex Cullimore: That's just a self-lashing.

Cristina Amigoni: It is. Yes. We've got the fans cheering on. It's just lashing for 26 miles.

Eimear Zone: 0.2.

Cristina Amigoni: 0.2.

Alex Cullimore: 0.2.

Cristina Amigoni: I’ve got to say 0.2, because you feel them. I wouldn't know.

Alex Cullimore: When you finish 26 and then there's 0.2 left. You feel that 0.2.

Cristina Amigoni: You feel the 0.2.

Eimear Zone: You feel the 0.2 and you go, is that all together necessary? Or in your girl talk –

Cristina Amigoni: I mean, I was going to say, why couldn't they make it 26?

Eimear Zone: I don't know.

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, actually, I've read this, because I was fascinated by it.

Eimear Zone: Okay, good. I love it.

Cristina Amigoni: I think it was, because it was the distance from Athens to Marathon in Greece. Is that why?

Alex Cullimore: That was the original name of the race. It turns out, apparently, it'd be popular as when I looked this up, too, because I was like, why the hell is this 26.2? I think, it eventually ended up the distance, because there was going to be a spectator sport somewhere in England, and so they raced between two towns and those two towns happened to be, they called it a marathon, because that was originally the Greek name, but the distance there, because that's where they had to end up some royal land, or some landed gentry land. It was 26.2 miles away from where they started. That became just the common distance.

Cristina Amigoni: That makes a lot of sense.

Alex Cullimore: It makes as much sense as the rest of the system of measurement.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Eimear Zone: Well, it's 42 kilometers. But when people start talking about kilometers, I'm going – I don't speak that language. It's 26.2. I don't want to see your kilometer markers. Just show me the miles. Show me the miles.

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, 42 kilometers. There's just mentally, it's way more daunting than 26.

Eimear Zone: They do come along quicker when I did Germany.

Cristina Amigoni: That's true. That's true. Yes.

Eimear Zone: Berlin. It was like, “Oh, I'm 10K in and that felt good.” Whereas, better than 6 miles.

Cristina Amigoni: 6 miles.

Eimear Zone: You’re like, “Shit.” I’d fell over already.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, exactly. What does it take? You and I have talked about this, not just because I read the book and I've known you for now almost six years, and also being a guest on your podcast. We've talked about those moments of when do you first remember choosing yourself the first time and when have you continuously chosen yourself? I guess, the question is, what does it take to feel that moment? Where does that moment come from where you’re like, “This is it. This is the moment.” You've mentioned being in Miami and thinking like, wow, I can't even – I'm putting my workout clothes on and thinking I'm going to work out and then get in the shower and evening and I haven't done anything. Getting into that kind of I can't find the blame anywhere else. I’ve tried to put the blame everywhere and I still don't feel good. What else comes up when it's that moment where you decide?

Eimear Zone: I think it comes either – it's like, it opens one, you come into this decision through one of two doors and one of them is the pain. The pain of the situation. The other is the aspiration door. I think I came in through the pain door. Other people come in through an aspiration door. It's like a deep seeking. I think you can be quite successful on things be okay.

Cristina Amigoni: Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah.

Eimear Zone: I think that's often, it might take you a little bit longer. Say, if I'd become a doctor, for example, I was making good money there and I was relatively competent and I was getting a lot of external validation, which it's very easy to get external validation as a doctor. You're easing pain.

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, my God. You’re a doctor.

Eimear Zone: Yeah, exactly. As well as the socials that, “Oh, you’re a doctor.” It can keep you in a profession, but you might be drawn to something else, or you get to a certain age and you're going, “I got to do more with my time than just this. I get it that this takes a lot of boxes, but there is this something in me that needs expression as we become more aware of our mortality, that becomes more pressing.” I keep those pictures on my notice board of me as a child and asked my grandmother to remind me that it's a brief trip. It's a brief trip.

I also have a picture of a very dear cousin who tragically died before even 50, who just died in his sleep one night. I put him there to remind me that it's incredibly precious and we can't take a moment for granted. That's also from the mindfulness meditation training like it's now. It's always now. I was listening to a brief snippet from a podcast. It was a very successful, financially successful man. He was, I guess, a billionaire. He was saying, he does a pre-mortem. He’s planning not to have regrets. I loved the way he called it a pre-mortem. That take myself to this moment. I talk about it in the book and we see it many places where people talk about the greatest regrets of the dying, even when you come to the end of the year and you're thinking about what you had planned to do and maybe do it and that regret and how it stings.  We regret more what we don't do than the things that we do.

I think that's the coming to that point. You can be aspirational. Things are going okay. I want it. It sounds a bit too, I don't quite like the word optimize, although I've used it before, but I want to unfold really into the full expression, my deepest possibility, right? What would that be like to experience? Maybe I start out in the journey, escaping a pain of this isn't working. I get deeply unhappy and then I'm going, “Nobody's going to do this for me,” that realization. “I'm going to have to take this journey myself.” Either way, it doesn't matter which door you come in, it's just let's begin. Let's begin if you've got a book in you, if you've got a whatever your song is, whatever you want to author, whether it's to give birth to a business, to really embody your venturing spirit and to see places around the world. I think grew up anyway with a very narrow view of what was possible, even career wise.

I think it wasn't true when I was experiencing that as a child. There was a lot more. Because of the explosion of technology and how the world has changed, the real opportunity to reinvent yourself, or to claim a new identity, or to proactively explore the curiosities that flicker within you. I mean, yeah, and you have to accept that you're going to go into rooms where you don't feel that comfortable and it was probably a waste of time. It's not going to lead to anything. You have to be prepared for not everything to work out. I am to stop playing it so safe.

The risk isn't to anything really. What's the risk? I went and I did my one day of I'm going to be an app developer and I'm not an app developer, but I might still be sitting on my ass somewhere thinking, “Oh, I could have been, or I don't want to be that person. I could have been an app developer.” Now I know for sure that maybe I could have been, but I would not have enjoyed it very much. But it was fun to be, bring more playfulness to it, to not make it so bloody all or nothing. It's not all or nothing. You can try one thing and not quite work out. You'll learn some skills that your fuel and your compass needs to be that sense of interest that you have. What are you mostly reading? What do you enjoy? What lights you up? What's a really great day for you? What was the best part of last year? What was the most fulfilling experience that you've had in the last week, in the last year, in the last five years? What was it? What was the thing that lit you up when you were a kid?

When I tracked this back for myself, it's really weird. It was like, just a little out at kindergarten learning to write or whatever and you're writing those short, little, maybe five sentence pieces of composition. Our composition in school was your wish. It was my wish. I remember clearly, my best friend was like, “I wish I had my own fridge in my bedroom and it would be full of delicious chocolates and cakes and everything,” which I thought was reasonable. She was a great artist and she drew this picture of the fridge in her bedroom and the mouthwatering lovely cakes falling out of it. I wrote, I wish I knew what other people were thinking. I thought, “Oh, isn't that funny?”

Cristina Amigoni: That is funny. At that age, that is impressive.

Eimear Zone: You forget. I think there are flickers and signposts. This is, like right here, this is my school report. You can see how old I am. It's 1977, right? It says, written work coming along very well. Has a flare for writing, which should be encouraged. No memory of that at all. Until I came across that several years ago, and I was going, “Huh? Yeah.” Now I've written two books. People see things and there are signs and they're just not – they're not nourished necessarily. You have to come back and you have to pour the water in those seeds. There are seeds there and things within us. You just don't want to be doing a bloody post-mortem on those things and be like, “Oh, well, I'm too old now.”

We were talking before we hit play about running and stuff. I used to sprint, do this 100, 204 by 100 when I was younger. You're not a distance runner. I was like, you don't have stamina. Interesting. Never believed I had stamina. Decided to run a marathon when I was coming up to 50. I have a wonderful older brother who's got into endurance sports and distance running. I had done a little bit in the UK before I came over to the States. I ran a 10K and I ran a half marathon and nearly died. I thought, interesting. This is interesting. Because I was going to lots of classes in the gym and it seemed like, I was going to, for negative reasons in some ways, to get fit, but really, it was to not be fast, or to be able to eat lots more pizza and sugary stuff.

It was an avoidance, rather than something that I was going towards. It felt very effortful. Now, running feels very effortful. When I decided to run that marathon to celebrate turning 50, it was being in a distance running training program was really powerful for me beyond the physical benefits that it brought, because I guess, I had already sharpened some areas within me to say you just keep going, that resilience and persistence. When you're running and Alex, you've trained for some endurance events as well, so you know this through that felt experience, is that you're running up the hill and you're going, “This sucks. This is a terrible idea. I hate this. I can't breathe.” I think, did I just pull a muscle in the back of my calf? Maybe that's a serious injury.

You meet yourself in a ridiculous way where your mind is telling you the worst-case scenario and how you're going to die and you make crap decisions. Then you keep going. Then you realize, “Oh, I feel a bit better.” Actually, that was BS. I maybe shouldn't believe everything that I think. Duh. You can say that, then you go and run. You go, “It makes sense not to believe everything I think, because I wouldn't run to the next lamppost if I did.” Then you're suddenly at mile seven, you're going, “I'm running seven miles. Who is this person? Have we met?” It is like, you meet yourself.

It's like you meet yourself as a person that you didn't recognize yourself to be beforehand. When you're at those higher mileages and the high mile can be just running over a mile. It's personal. It's the same thing when you look around yourself and you say, “Oh, I created this business.” Like, who? You're the only person who gets to decide that's possible. I always thought that there was more special people who came and invited you to do these things and you had to wait on the sidelines, more or less, for that invitation that somebody would notice that flicker in you. They weren't all powerful laws. They would say, “Oh, you. Yes, maybe you should do this thing.” Then you realize, TikTok as time goes on, well, and nobody's coming. That either means I'm not capable of any of this stuff, or out, or be. It's up to me. I choose be, it's up to me.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. I remember waiting for those people that would just anoint me and say like, “You are now ready. You can now be part of it. You can now be in this order.”

Alex Cullimore: It's your turn.

Cristina Amigoni: It’s your turn. Here's three business partners that are perfectly, well, how will make you possible to have that.

Eimear Zone: It's like, when you said Alex, it’s your turn, it reminds me of Seth Godin's book, which is one that I read years and years ago, it's your turn and it's always your turn.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, it's always your turn.

Eimear Zone: It's always your turn.

Cristina Amigoni: It's always your turn.

Eimear Zone: It's always your turn. I think it takes a lot to get past that. I think once you can get over the initial hurdle and get into experimentation mode, it gets easier, because you have to get over the fact that you may be making another idiot out of yourself, because you will. Other people will see you, because now you're stepping into a bigger stage for your life. I actually just said this on my own podcast this week, where I was telling this story of when I first set up that social enterprise, lots of people have opinions about you and what you're doing, which start doing things, and it's not all nice. It's not all nice.

I remember once, I was back in Dublin and I was in a house of the family member and they took out their mobile phone and they pulled up my website. They started reading something from it where there was a typo, which meant that I had said something that seemed a bit comical rather than serious, and it had been the opposite of what I meant to do. Started laughing at it and I'm going, “Oh. Okay, interesting.” You didn't send me an email and say, “Hey, I found a mistake on website.” Somebody who's, it's subtle, but it's like, who do you think you are? Who do you think you are? But hey, I'm just making fun, or don't take it so seriously. You've got to harden up a bit, because who you think might be in your corner, not so much, not so much. That's why I think it's so important and you guys know that from your own journeys. I know of surrounding yourself with people who get you, who are doing the things that you may be aspire to do, or just being in the room with people that you admire.

A mentor once told me, just stay in the room and I'm going, “I think I belong. These people are way ahead of me.” Stay in the room. I think, sometimes you're in these other rooms which are growth oriented and then you find yourself back in a place that doesn't really support your growth, and it's a bit like, ouch. Okay. I've learned, I don't talk about my stuff in some of those rooms, because you're not interested, or not particularly supportive, or supportive but –

Cristina Amigoni: Out of obligation, but not really, or envy, or whatever. Making yourself feel better by something.

Eimear Zone: That's okay. That's okay. Just realizing, just because you've been very close to somebody doesn't mean they're going to be your cheerleader, and that's okay. Go find your people, because your people are there, but you need to walk into other rooms to find them. I think, just like, if you look around yourself, if you're – I bet, Alex, when you started training, you just started spending more time with people who are training, right? That made you get better results. Because if you're not around people who are – when I decided I was going to run a marathon, like my husband doesn't run. There isn't like, I was going and this is just me, myself and I now.

I got myself a coach. Found a run club that I sporadically went once and said, “Jesus Christ, you guys are really fast.” I decided, actually to run by myself until I get decent fitness level. You got to be around the people who are doing the thing that you're doing and even more, or else you'll just sit down and you'll adapt to your environment. You got to change your environment. When you choose yourself, you have to change your environment. Sometimes it's pretty lonely, because you find that some people aren't your people anymore, at least not for this part of your journey. You're going to spend less time with them. They're not going to get it.

I'm 55. I know people who are retired and I'm going, “I don't understand that experience.” I don't want to learn how to play golf, and that's okay. I mean, it's a good sport. I want to create. I think one big thing for me this year, noticing, you create a lot more than you consume, whether it's consuming media, purchasing stuff. I spoke in the book about these industries of soothe and distract. They can be like, I'm online shopping, or I'm just doom scrolling on my phone and three hours have gone by, or, oh here's a series of Netflix. Oh, look, there's 40 episodes. How much of my life and wither away while I'm watching this. It's death to your creativity if you lose yourself in consumption.

This year, I'm engaging in this practice of non-consumption in a certain area of my life. I'm not buying anything in these categories that have taken up a lot of distraction, time, and money. Playing with that idea, looking at that and seeing what is it like to accumulate less, to let go of more and to simplify on that level. I think, I came across the book the other day, and I know I'm going all over the place in this conversation, but –

Cristina Amigoni: That's how we do it.

Alex Cullimore: That’s what this is.

Eimear Zone: Good. I think it's called Swedish Death Cleaning, or something. Have you heard of it?

Cristina Amigoni: Okay. No.

Alex Cullimore: That can be an incredible band.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, the branding is fascinating.

Eimear Zone: Probably not exactly what they call this book, but it's the whole thing, where you get to a certain stage in your life. I'm probably not far off it, if not landed there already, where you plan for your departure. Or you plan on every level from having your filing system from your, do I really want to own these things anymore? What job is there going to be for the person who is cleaning up after I leave? If I die tomorrow, what state am I leaving things in? What burden is that on the person who will have to pick up and deal with this?

They take this really proactive approach to organizing their lives, so that when the inevitable happens, that it isn't an additional burden on those who are going to be the support crew arranging your funeral and sorting out your affairs and all the rest of it. I thought, good hell, that's cool. I just had a black folder, which is the stuff. If my husband pops his clogs, there's a black folder with the main stuff in it. I was going, “No, we're not doing this right at all. I need to read about the Swedish death stuff and get.”

I think my not create more than you consume is just a little flicker in that area. I have been thinking a lot about as I look around me and I have three children, two of them in college, one is a junior. I still have some of those younger people stuff. I have to hold some of it for them for when they set up their own, they're like, “Don't throw out that teddy bear that is like the other five teddy bears that I have that I’ve never got in a box in the bottom of a closet, because that's important to me.” You have to respect that.

I have been looking around going, “Huh, it'll just be the two of us and what kind of living situation do we want to be in? Do we want to be in a five-bedroom house for when our kids visit us twice a year?” I think it's interesting to make those choices, or be thinking about those choices, because I think as, well, that's a big part for me of choosing myself, or it's a different direction for it a little bit, it's like, I think it can encompass that. It's like, I have another thing written on my – I'm going to have to send you a picture of my notice board. It's written, simplify to amplify. I think that's a little mantra that I have in anything that I'm doing. You know when you ever try and write something very succinctly? Well, I do and I'm writing and I'm like, bloody hell, I'm two paragraphs in. Can you say it in a sentence? Trying to reduce something down to that kernel.

I think when I look at the physical environmental footprint, it's like, well, how much am I consuming? Is that who I want to be? Do I want to leave this big task for anybody else to be clearing out this stuff? Also, what am I making this thing mean that I'm holding on to? I will have to admit, my closet is a disaster zone right now. Cristina, you would have connections. You would be like, stressed if you saw it. I go in sometimes and I go –

Cristina Amigoni: It's almost as if you know me.

Eimear Zone: Almost, almost. You get me, Alex, don't you? There is periods of your house that you cannot let Cristina see. You have to close the drawers, clean the surfaces. We know how to do this. I go in and I say, this is weighty. This is heavy. I'm looking at the things and going, what am I making it mean if I let this go? I'm making it mean that you made a bad decision buying it. Or you thought you were going to fit into this size and you're just not trying hard enough to be the same size you were when you were fucking 19 Eimear. I have a pair of jeans and they're from when I was 19. I mean, I need to get through that with my therapist, because I was like, “Get over yourself, love.” Apart from the fact, pathetic –

Cristina Amigoni: I think I have one of those, too, shockingly enough.

Eimear Zone: That's just, it's not in fashion. Let it go. Or then it's like, I get to the black pants section and I'm going, okay, afraid to count these in 20-something. It's killing something. It's more than clothing my body. It is an emotional weight. I think your environment, I think in the tradition that we've all trained in from coaching, we talk about environmental influencers on our energy. Our energy is like, what can we focus on and the quality of our attention and focus on any project is going to be impacted by these influencers. One of them is the environmental, physical, environmental.

As part of this non big reduction in consumption in 2025 and really being very intentional about how and where I consume and putting my focus on creating and service, I will be looking at my larger environment, and letting go of lots of things and really simplifying and feeling that I can amplify how I show up as a creator, how I show up to serve if I simplify many things in my life. I haven't bought this book yet on the death practice of the Swedish. But I will tell you –

Cristina Amigoni: It sounded like you did.

Eimear Zone: Ready. But the thing is with all the books, if you write and you read, I know you both read a lot and audiobooks and everything. I do have a bad habit of I'm listening to two audio books at the moment, and I'm reading too. I can't.

Cristina Amigoni: Simplify to amplify.

Eimear Zone: I cannot bring this other, although I'm so intrigued. I know that I can just read these other books, clean out my closet and then get the book. Then that will be probably a very good timing.

Alex Cullimore: I feel the Swedish death cleaning system needs a good ABBA song to really sail away.

Eimear Zone: Think about my ABBA records one now.

Cristina Amigoni: I know. That's what I'm thinking.

Eimear Zone: We'll tell if someone –

Alex Cullimore: Somewhere between money, money, money and well –

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, exactly. Money, money, money.

Eimear Zone: Must be funny. I remember it just a tiny clutter – 

Cristina Amigoni: It must be funny.

Eimear Zone: I was a big ABBA fan when I was in college. You couldn't tell anybody that. That was so uncool. Then you would go, I remember once going to a party, a house party and then suddenly, ABBA comes on and you just like, “Oh, I'm not going to acknowledge this.” Because that's, and you look around and then suddenly, it was like, these closet ABBA fans. It was the same taste. I was like, it’s okay. The 80s wasn't cool to ABBA.

Cristina Amigoni: Some people may think that it's not cool now. It's cool. It's cool. Definitely cool.

Eimear Zone: It is cool. It's cool to make ABBA.

Alex Cullimore: I never thought it wasn't. My parents were into ABBA and we listen to so much of it. I know too much of it now. Looking back, and this is a call back to a little bit ago, but you're talking about you see through line. What's the through line you've seen through yourself? What does that tell you about what's next?

Eimear Zone: I think the through line, coming from that little I wish composition, from that very young girl is to understand human nature on a deeper level. I think that, through that, to be of service to others. I think going forward where I see that leading is from my own personal journey, I'm leaning definitely more into my journey with mindfulness meditation. I have been on a number of silent retreats and I find that that's a beautiful gift that I give myself. It also helps me be a better teacher and a better coach, and in anything that I create, it's infused with that.

I feel that what's coming next is unfolding naturally from that. The book came and I was like, “I'm just going to do this book. This really feels right.” It really reflects how I like to support people, because it's, I like a little bit of plan. I like to know where I'm going. I'm a planner. It's a bit of a map. It's like a journey. I love to read and I've read a lot. I couldn't tell you what's in any of a lot of the books that I've read, because I remember them for a bit. Actually, I've got notebooks and notebooks of book notes from the years, because I'm like, “I really want to remember that.” I go back to the notes, but rarely the book. I wanted to write a book that was really practical that you would feel – I wanted you to do the work, rather than to read it and go, “Oh, that was interesting. Those are useful ideas.” And then you move on to the next one.

I literally say at the end of every chapter, “Remember this. Then do this thing, do this exercise, do it now. Actually, just stop listening to this book, or stop reading this book. Imagine that I'm looking over your shoulder and just do the thing.” Because that's how I coach, too. I know some people, it depends. Different coaches are going to suit different people. I think what we most want is somebody make us do the thing we know we can do inside.

Cristina Amigoni: We're a procrastinating and not doing.

Eimear Zone: Yeah. I'm a get up off your ass, do the thing. Why are you not doing the thing? Some coaches are nice and gentle, and I remember in the training, we're both in the same training. The answer is within us all, and allow the client to let it unfold and everything. I'm going, do you know what? I don't think that the people who are hiring me are hiring me to get into one session after the other, where they're trying to build up the courage to do the thing. I'm really on them. Do the thing. Getting them to look in the mirror and say, “You know it's the thing. You've said it's the thing and we have a bravery issue here. You know how to cure a bravery issue? Do the thing.”

Cristina Amigoni: Do the thing.

Eimear Zone: I'm the person who’s going to call you.

Cristina Amigoni: The confidence issue. That's the thing. Confidence comes after you do something, not before you want to do something.

Eimear Zone: I think, I wrote the book the way I coach and the way I help people. Yeah, the mindfulness meditation thing can seem a little bit strange for somebody who's so, “Do the thing.” But I blend it in.

Cristina Amigoni: First, sit in silence and figure out what your head is telling you and believe in yourself.

Eimear Zone: That's true. It's like, accessing the thing.

Cristina Amigoni: It is.

Eimear Zone: Too much going on in the head, thinking yourself, because the voices that are in your head, they're not always yours. They're echoes of like, you don't have any stamina, or whatever the other story is. They're echoes of other people.

Cristina Amigoni: You’re not intelligent enough. You should never stand up in a room and speak to people.

Eimear Zone: Not the laugh. Stay in the background, it's safer. All of those things. Or there was lots of messaging from my – people who were incredibly successful, or multi-millionaires, they must have come by that just honestly. They're not good people. They don't treat people well. Just all of the nonsense. I think that's the big piece. Getting silent and going within really helps you with them. You begin to, again, it's simplify to amplify. You bring the attention really in here deeply. You go into your body. You connect into that voice that you so often have ignored, or it's only been a whisper. We know that people talk about it, right? Steven Spielberg talks about inspiration being the whisper. You've got to be listening to the whisper. It really helps you tune into that intuition. That's where the answer is.

I can't be sitting in a coaching session with you where we're in our heads and we're talking about and talking about, and what do you think? Sometimes I'm going to shift what you think. I want you to shut up and then close your eyes, and I want you to listen to the voice. Because this chatter, you need to talk less and listen. Then when you speak, you're scared for people you know who I coach now, Cristina, right?

Cristina Amigoni: No, no. They need it. I'm not scared at all. I'm like, please, please do it more.

Eimear Zone: Then when you do speak, it's almost like a voice that hasn't been heard in a long time. I think you have to create the safety for somebody to vocalize that voice, because that voice will have been belittled before. Somebody will say, “You can't do that. Who do you think you are? You can't. You'd have to go to college for five years to do that. You've already got a degree in one.” That voice has to be allowed space in a really, almost sacred space. I think that's why that mindfulness meditation training really helps me to serve people to create that self-trust on a whole other level that takes a way out of the intellectual. It is that deep knowing.

When you contact that, it's a lot easier to choose yourself from that place, because it resonates. You feel it in every fiber of your being like, I'm really scared that this is true. Sometimes it's like, “Shit, Eimear. I wish you haven't heard me say that, because now you're going to make me do the thing.” There's no rush either. You don't have to beat yourself up over it. It takes a while to let it sink in and to grow into it. It's exciting to think that you can access it.

Cristina Amigoni: Well, what's fascinating is when I have, as I keep learning to listen to that voice, what I've – the more you go into there and you give it more power, you give it more energy becomes louder. When the other voices, the legacy voices come in and they're like, “Oh, see, that's about you. You're not good enough.” That's a rejection. Then this because of this. They listen to that. You're like, “Nah, I don't believe it.” It's just an old thing there. You're like, as soon as you start thinking about it, you're like, “Nah, sorry. Go back to where you came from. You don't belong here anymore. I don't believe you.”

Eimear Zone: Yeah, I don't believe you. I don't believe you. Yeah. Juicy stuff.

Cristina Amigoni: I know.

Alex Cullimore: I've found a funny voice recently, that when you hear that whisper of the thing that things that you want to do or accomplish, and then it comes in and says, “You already knew that and you didn't do it.” That's a fun one.

Cristina Amigoni: That is a fun one. Yes.

Eimear Zone: Do they have that here, like the Mr. Men books? Do you have those? Oh, it's like these series of books that every kid in the UK and probably Ireland too, would know from their early reading years. The Mr. Men, or little Mr. Grumpy, or Mr. Happy, Mr. Ambitious, Mr. Whatever, they're all different characteristics and qualities. They have their own story. Then they brought in the little miss books as well. I tend to, whenever I hear the voices, I just call them one of the Mr. Men, or the little miss.

I remember when I was on the silent retreat the last time and I thought, I'm doing so well here. I'm really quiet. I'm really connected. It's going so – I was like, the whole, they say the whole purpose, or the whole objective of meditators for the meditator to dissolve, right? I'm in the silence. It's going very well. You go and you talk to the teachers and I said, I thought it was going so well. I’m so concentrated, so centered, so quiet. I said, and then I heard it. I said, it was like, you're doing so well. Look at you. You're really such a good meditator. It's so quiet in here. You're not distracted. I was going, “Who's that bitch?” I was like, “Oh, it's little miss better than.” I gave her a name. I was going, I thought I was – and I was striving in meditation. I was like, “Oh, you're so good.” It just came out of the quiet, little miss better than. I was going, “Oh, that one. Just showing up.” I enjoy just giving them these names. Then it's like that shorthand.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. That's a good idea. Yeah.

Eimear Zone: Put them in their place.

Cristina Amigoni: I know we could make this podcast episode as long as a marathon takes to run, and we wouldn't feel it. It would be that people listening to other running, but we probably planned it ahead of time to actually take the whatever, how many hours this could take. For now, where can people find you?

Eimear Zone: I am most active on Instagram, which is @eimearzonecoach. You can find my books on Amazon. My website is my name, eimearzone.com.

Cristina Amigoni: Excellent. We've asked you this before, and you are in our intro, actually. You are one of the people that defined authenticity before the podcast even existed. Talk about choosing ourselves for that one. What is your definition of authenticity, six years later, five years later? I don’t even know how long the podcast has been around. Four years later.

Alex Cullimore: Some time.

Cristina Amigoni: Some time.

Eimear Zone: I can't remember what I said. But here's what's alive and true right in this moment. Authenticity is living into the full expression of who I am, and expressing myself bravely from that place. That's what's true right now. Yeah.

Cristina Amigoni: That is wonderful. Yes. I think it's similar to what you said four years ago, and it has evolved. It's the next level. Thank you.

Eimear Zone: Thank you. It's been a blast.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. We'll have to do it again. I have to go listen to your second episode. I heard the first one as soon as it came out. I've read the book. Because I was reading it as fast as I could, because I couldn't put it down, I did not stop in with the exercises. I actually have to go back and do the exercises.

Eimear Zone: I may follow up.

Alex Cullimore: Eimear suggested in your very shoulder –

Cristina Amigoni: I know. Now I've said it out loud to Eimear, so I'm going to get a text message every single morning.

Eimear Zone: Absolutely dangerous.

Cristina Amigoni: Did you do the thing? Did you do the thing? Did you do the thing?

Eimear Zone: Eimear’s catchphrase, did you the thing? Did you? Did you really?

Cristina Amigoni: Did you really do the thing? Thank you, Eimear.

Alex Cullimore: Thank you, Eimear.

Eimear Zone: Thank you. Thanks, Alex.

Alex Cullimore: Thank you, everyone, for listening.

Cristina Amigoni: Thanks, everybody, for listening.

[OUTRO]

Alex Cullimore: Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Uncover the Human. Special thanks to Rachel Sherwood, who help to produce our theme. And of course, our production assistants, Carlee and Niki, for whom we could not do this, or could not publish this. We get to do, basically, the fun parts. And thank you to We Edit Podcasts for editing our podcasts.

Cristina Amigoni: You can find us at podcast@wearesiamo.com. You can find us on LinkedIn. You can find us at Uncover the Human on social media. Follow us. We Are Siamo is W-E-A-R-E-S-I-A-M-O.com.

Alex Cullimore: Please feel free to reach out with questions, topics you'd like addressed. If you'd like to be on the show, reach out. We're around. Thank you, everybody, for listening.

[END]