I have a particular affection for extraordinarily intelligent women.

02 — About Amy Lee

You're not the problem.
The pattern is.

You've built things. You've made difficult decisions. You've probably navigated situations that would have sent a less resourceful person into a complete tailspin.

And you've gotten pretty good at trusting yourself.

Which is wonderful, until you encounter something in your own life that you can't seem to figure out.

Because now you've got a woman who's perfectly capable of solving complicated problems for everyone else, but has been wrestling with the same issue in her own life for YEARS.

And she's got a very compelling explanation for why.

I love that woman.

I also have some questions for her.

I'm Amy Lee Westervelt.

I've spent more than a decade working with women through some pretty extraordinary chapters of their lives.

I've helped women build businesses, make millions of dollars, navigate major life transitions, and make decisions that changed the direction of their lives.

And somewhere along the way, I became known as the Pattern Assassin.

Which is funny, because years ago I called myself a transformational strategist.

I thought it sounded fantastic.

Nobody knew what I was talking about.

Including, occasionally, me.

I knew exactly what I was doing when I sat down with someone. Finding language for it was an entirely different project.

I've always been fascinated by people. Particularly the relationship between what happens to us, what we decide it means, and how those conclusions influence everything that comes afterward.

An experience becomes a belief. A belief becomes an expectation. Eventually, that expectation becomes so familiar that we stop recognizing it as something we learned in the first place.

We just think it's true.

And once we've decided something is true, we're remarkably good at finding evidence to support it.

Especially if we're intelligent.

That's the part I find so interesting.

A brilliant woman can give me a completely accurate account of everything that happened to her, explain every decision she made along the way, and arrive at a conclusion that makes perfect sense.

And I can believe every word she says while still questioning the conclusion.

Because I'm interested in what she decided was true before she started putting all those pieces together.

Sometimes that's where the distortion is.

And sometimes that one assumption has been quietly influencing decisions in her business, her relationships, her finances, and the way she sees herself for decades.

Imagine how much can change when she finally notices it.

That's the work I fell in love with.

How I Ended Up Here

I never sat down and decided to create a coaching methodology.

Actually, I've never been particularly comfortable with the word coach.

My work developed through years of paying attention to people.

I noticed the contradictions between what someone said she wanted and the decisions she kept making. I noticed the rules people defended without remembering where they'd learned them. And I became particularly interested in the things people were afraid they'd have to give up in order to have what they wanted.

I started recognizing patterns underneath circumstances that appeared to have absolutely nothing in common.

Over time, I developed my own frameworks for identifying those patterns, understanding what keeps them in place, and helping people change them.

And the more women I worked with, the more I realized that the presenting problem was rarely the whole story.

A woman might come to me about her business, and we'd discover that the same pattern was influencing her marriage.

Another might want to understand why she couldn't seem to enjoy the success she'd worked so hard to create.

And sometimes a woman would come to me with a perfectly wonderful life and a desire for something more.

Those are some of my favorite conversations, actually.

Because I don't believe something has to be wrong for you to want something different.

A Few Things You Should Know About Working With Me

I have absolutely no interest in being your guru.

I assume you're a capable woman with a functioning brain and a considerable amount of life experience. I intend to treat you accordingly.

If I see something that doesn't make sense to me, I'm going to ask about it.

If I think you're defending an assumption that's costing you something you want, I'm going to tell you.

And if you think I'm wrong, I want to hear why.

I love a woman who can make a good argument.

Some of my favorite moments with clients have happened when we've challenged each other's thinking and discovered something neither of us had considered.

That's what makes this work interesting.

I don't want you becoming dependent on my perspective. I want you to have access to more of your own.

And I don't believe that requires me to manage you, micromanage you, or tell you how to live your life.

You're a grown woman.

I'm quite certain you can handle that part.

The Rest of Me

I'm a wife, a mother of five, a lifelong New England Patriots fan, and a relatively new but extremely enthusiastic Ohio State Buckeye.

I'm also a songwriter, a voracious reader, and someone who can get completely absorbed in an interesting question for an unreasonable amount of time.

I love beautiful design, good conversation, clever people, and a well-placed bit of sarcasm.

I have strong opinions about things that probably don't warrant strong opinions, and I'm perfectly happy to change my mind when somebody gives me a good reason.

My family keeps life interesting, my curiosity keeps me entertained, and I genuinely love the work I get to do.

There's something extraordinary about watching a woman realize that the thing she's spent years trying to overcome might have been something she could question all along.

I still get excited every single time.

Before You Go

There's something I hope you'll take away from being here.

You can be happy with your life and still want more of it.

You can be successful and want to experience that success differently.

You can love the person you've become and be curious about who else you might be.

You don't have to manufacture a problem to justify a desire.

And you certainly don't have to become somebody else's idea of who you should be.

I think you've probably spent enough of your life doing things according to rules you never consciously agreed to.

I'd be interested to know what you might choose if you started questioning a few of them.