I recently had the pleasure of running into Allison Sutter on Clubhouse, Her Instagram profile greeted me with wisdom from her garden and has inspired me in many ways. A fellow writer, Allison Sutter has a book out where she teaches her strategies for accessing our intuition, our mojo, the liquid gold, within.
Here’s Allison in her own words, responding to some of my questions.
Hello Allison, can you tell us where you were born, raised, grew up, and now choose to call home?
I was raised in Northern Michigan. Charlevoix is a town of approximately 2,500 people but increases greatly in the summer due to tourism.
When I was eleven years old, my dad built a house on Oyster Bay in Charlevoix. Our driveway traversed a mile of thickly wooded land. There, I was awakened by the soothing sound of waves on the shoreline and put to sleep by the same rhythmic beat.
There were no highway rumble strips to keep me awake at night and no chatting with the neighbors over the fence, like I do these days in Highland Park. It’s a suburb twenty-five miles north of Chicago. Being close to Lake Michigan is an added bonus.
In my fourth year of college, I spent a semester in Paris. On the boat from Italy to Greece, I met my husband, Geoff. As synchronicity would have it, he was attending University of Wisconsin and grew up in Neenah, Wisconsin. Chicago was a logical place to live, work and be together after college. We ended up in Highland Park because I had nannied for a family here and it seemed nice. It also had a decent-sized downtown area. We felt it was a great place to raise our kids.
Tell us a bit about what made you write “Accelerate Your Mojo”?
“Accelerate Your Mojo” (AYM) was born from not listening to my intuition and being overly tolerant of my anxiety. I can see how starting my answer this way might sound negative but stick with me on this one.
I worked with a well-known personal development coach for a few years. During this time I learned what I didn’t want to do as a coach. His whole process from start to finish made me anxious and never felt quite right but I ignored that feeling. I gave more credence to his status than what my inner voice was telling me.
By seeing how he operated, I learned how NOT to market a program and how NOT to treat MY clients. I also learned that when you know what you don’t want, you get clear on how you want to feel and what you want your clients to experience.
I realise that my coach wasn’t an evil person and working with him was exactly what I needed to see what wasn’t right for me. Anything can be seen in a positive light, even owing $15K for something that doesn’t turn out the way you imagined.
It was a great starting point to creating my own material. My work wouldn’t be what it is today without those anxiety-inducing few years so I’m super appreciative. In hindsight, it was the painful labour before the beautiful baby was born.
While the idea of Accelerate Your Mojo (AYM) was gestating, I wrote online classes exploring topics I loved such as visualisation, intuition, abundance mindset, and the Law of Attraction. I combined what I knew about real learning (not memorisation) from my years as an elementary teacher with the self-help concepts I wanted to explore further.
Once I tested my principles and teaching methods, I needed to organize my thinking in writing so I wrote the book Accelerate Your Mojo: 7 Simple Steps to Ignite Intuition, Shake off Fear and Unleash the Real You.
Then I created the AYM online course to visually organize, explain and transmit the ideas and practices to students who wanted to experience more joy out of life. There are all types of learners in this world so I cater to at least three types: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic.
I also offer a 1-2-1 year-long mentorship program. I’m able to transfer my knowledge to other people through conversation and accentuate the importance of experiential learning. I made it a year-long program because we need the time and space to solidify the concepts. We start with an orientation to lay the groundwork and then each of the seven steps is covered twice within the year.
A year gives us time to take vacations, have sick days, and work around unforeseen circumstances. It gives the client time to process what’s happening in their inner and outer reality. It removes the excuse of life getting in the way because after all, we want more vitality and more life!
By traveling this path together for a year, students are given the opportunity to see the AYM concepts in play, in real-time. In this way, self-awareness is given the grace to expand in perfect timing. Clients don’t feel rushed.
Time is essential to fully absorb and integrate the concepts.
You’ve written children’s books too. Were they for your children and what themes came up in those books?
I’ve written two children’s books. Ebb and Flo: A Day at the Beach and Wow Cat’s Adventure with Adjectives. Ebb and Flo was inspired by the relationship between my middle and youngest child.
Ebb the elephant is scared of the world at large and everything in it. My middle child has social anxiety and doesn’t enjoy going out into the world. Flo the mouse wants to go exploring but not without her sibling. My youngest is very very close with her sibling and doesn’t want to do anything without them.
I used these two as my inspiration for the characters and scenes. The story progression follows the AYM process but in a simplified format. The characters face fears and insecurities about themselves and life. They transform their fears by following their intuition and taking authentic, inspired action. They ease the tension of crossing the threshold and moving into the big, scary world by telling a knock-knock joke. The joke symbolizes how beneficial it is to be easy about change.
Wow Cat was inspired by a friend’s comment while on vacation in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She mentioned that kids in Scotland learn about “wow” words in a writer’s workshop. “Wow” words are used to help young students improve their writing.
Writing children’s books is about following my passion. I’m not looking to be on the bestseller list or in every book store. That probably sounds strange because society is so focused on external success. Authors are often quoted as hoping their books “change the world”. It would be lovely if more people found joy in my children’s books but I created them because I love creating!
What is a challenge for you these days?
My biggest challenge has always been self-worth, self-acceptance, and self-confidence. I was plagued by anxiety as a child; I wanted to be invisible. I was suicidal in my teens. I gave away my power to others for approval from my earliest memories into my forties.
This fear of judgment from others, this fear of being misunderstood and disliked, guided every decision I made. It wasn’t until I started writing the AYM program that I began to rewrite these destructive paradigms.
I still struggle with believing in myself to a certain degree but it’s not debilitating like it was most of my life. I’m a work in progress just like you. Creating and utilizing the AYM process saved me. It repeatedly repairs my unhealthy self-image and aligns me with my inner being which is unconditionally loving.
We can’t eliminate fear and doubt as human beings. It’s part of our narrative. It’s an essential part of this reality. However, we can learn to understand how negative energy is structured, recognize it when it shows up, and transform it into something better every time.
What was the best thing that emerged out of the writing process?
The best thing that’s emerged out of my writing process is the ability to connect with my higher self. Writing quickly became a channeling process for me. It started with the online curriculum I was writing. I trusted what was intuitively coming through and blended that with what I’d learned in standardized education. By the time I started writing AYM, I fully trusted the intuitive process. I allowed myself to be guided by my heart and used the information in my head too.
It was wonderful to be able to write without worrying about what others would think of the AYM book. I wrote it to learn more about what I think. Writing brings clarity. Clarity is fun! I also wrote AYM in case something happens to me. This way my kids will have a guidebook for leading a happy, fulfilling life. I want them to have access to all the things I’m telling them now that they never seem to hear.
Another interesting point about my channeled writing process is that Anna Mae came through. Anna Mae was the name my higher self gave me in the writing process. She also came through visually. I had an artist do a rendering which I added to the book.
This might sound strange to those unfamiliar with channeling but it’s actually a very relatable idea.
It’s no different than when a writer allows an imaginary character to narrate their story. We’ve all heard of writers talking about how they tried to write the story one way but the character insisted otherwise.
Anna Mae is a wiser, more expanded part of my broader consciousness and an invaluable part of my writing process.
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Thank you for your generous sharing, Allison.
Over to you
To find out more about Allison’s approach to life, coaching, and how to accelerate your mojo, check out her website, AllisonSutter.com, and sign up for a free “Is AYM right for me?” coffee chat (30 mins) and a complimentary introductory AYM course.
