Leading Change Within

Samantha Hopes on strength, self belief and why knowing what to do

isn’t always enough to change.

There is a confidence in the way Samantha Hopes talks about the woman she used to be, but she doesn’t romanticise her.

For more than two decades, Samantha worked in corporate leadership, in an environment where decisions had to be made, people needed to be understood and sometimes you simply had to get on with it.

When she looks back now, though, it isn’t the seniority or achievements she talks about first.

“I was self contained in a way that knew my strength and didn’t need approval. There was no arrogance in that. I could read the individual, read the room and adapt quickly.”

That ability to read people became an important part of the way she led. She didn’t need to be the loudest person in the room, and she wasn’t looking for reassurance that she belonged there. She knew what she could do and, importantly, she was interested in what other people could do too. That part of her hasn’t changed.

Today, Samantha is a clinical hypnotherapist. It might look like a significant departure from her previous career, but talk to her about the work and the connection is fairly obvious. She is still fascinated by people, what motivates them, what holds them back and why someone who is clearly capable can sometimes struggle to recognise that capability in themselves.

“I can see where another person’s strength is, sometimes before they see it themselves,” she says.

What has changed is the way she responds to what she sees.

“I’m softer now. Less reactive and less ‘just do it’. There is more time to explore.”

She is clear that softer doesn’t mean less strong or less driven. It is more about resisting the urge to arrive at an answer too quickly. There is time now to be curious about what is really happening for someone, rather than assuming that seeing the problem means you automatically know the solution.

That shift is particularly noticeable when Samantha talks about confidence.

“I gently lead the discovery. Confidence is so much about imagining yourself and identifying the feeling.”

For her, there is an important difference between somebody else recognising your potential and being able to recognise it for yourself.

When knowing isn’t enough

Most of us know what it feels like to understand perfectly well what we should be doing and still find ourselves unable to do it.

We know the boundary needs setting. We know we’re overthinking. We know the habit isn’t helping. We might even know exactly what we would tell somebody else in the same situation.

And yet knowing can still leave us stuck.

Samantha believes the inner critic can play a significant part in that.

It can undermine motivation before we have really begun. We remember previous attempts, question whether we will stick with something or quietly tell ourselves that maybe we just aren’t the sort of person who can do it.

If that internal picture remains unchanged, simply knowing what to do may not be enough.

This is why Samantha is reluctant simply to tell somebody they are capable. Encouragement has its place, but she is more interested in helping someone find their own evidence.

She wants the person to be able to imagine themselves responding differently and to begin identifying the feeling that goes with that.

Being told you can is one thing.

Beginning to think I can is something else entirely.

Learning to notice sooner

Working with other people’s patterns has also made Samantha more aware of her own.

In her corporate years, she was very good at pushing through. If something needed doing, she did it. Pressure didn’t necessarily mean stopping; often it meant finding another gear.

She views that differently now.

“I notice the signs of stress much earlier, rather than pushing through until I’m unwell.”

She doesn’t regret the drive she had then, and it hasn’t disappeared. What has changed is her willingness to listen to herself earlier.

There is something almost ironic about it. Samantha spent years being able to walk into a room and quickly sense what was happening with the people in it. These days she is more likely to extend some of that attention towards herself.

She still pushes herself. She still has ambitions and ideas. But she is less likely to assume that continuing regardless is always evidence of strength.

Sometimes noticing sooner is enough.

A career that came with her

Samantha doesn’t talk about her move into hypnotherapy as though she threw away one career and started another.

Much of what mattered to her before came with her.

Developing people and recognising potential had already been a significant part of her leadership. She had coached people long before she became a therapist and had seen how differently people could perform when their belief in themselves began to change.

Hypnotherapy gave her another way of exploring something she had already been interested in for years.

The setting is different and so is the work, but the curiosity is familiar.

Why do we hold ourselves back?

Why can somebody else sometimes see something in us that we cannot?

And what changes when we finally begin to see it too?

Samantha doesn’t pretend to have a single answer to any of those questions. In fact, the longer she works with people, the less interested she seems to be in assuming that there should be one.

Still Becoming

Now in her fifties, Samantha is still learning.

She remains fascinated by psychology and human behaviour, continues to develop her therapeutic work and is increasingly interested in teaching and sharing some of what she has learned.

“I don’t think I’m interested in becoming a finished version of myself.”

It is probably tempting to interpret that as ambition. There is certainly plenty of that in her. But it also seems to be about curiosity.

She doesn’t appear to believe that becoming older or more experienced should make us more fixed.

Nor does changing direction mean that the direction before it was wrong.

Sometimes we carry things forward. Sometimes we leave things behind. And sometimes experience simply gives us a clearer idea of what we want to explore next.

Samantha is comfortable with there being a next.

What she hopes remains

When Samantha talks about what she hopes will still matter to her in another ten years, she doesn’t mention professional milestones.

“I hope to continue being genuinely driven by the fact that in all of us there is a part that wants to be full, to wake up and feel a joy in whatever fuels that feeling.”

What creates that feeling will be different for everyone. Samantha doesn’t see her role as deciding what it should be.

And that brings her back to something she has been doing, in one form or another, for much of her working life: noticing possibility in people.

Only now, rather than telling someone what she can see, she is more interested in helping them see it.

When asked what she hopes the people she has worked with might remember, her answer isn’t really about being remembered herself.

“I want those I’ve had the pleasure to meet to remember when they started to believe and behave in a way that changed their life.”

Maybe that says more about Samantha’s idea of influence than anything else.

She doesn’t need to be remembered as the person who changed somebody.

Being there when they began to see that they could change themselves is enough.