Beyond The Autopilot with Engy Neville | Ep. 61

On this week’s episode of The True North Show I am joined by Engy Neville, and incredible woman who is so aligned to her centre, her inner compass and her true north that her clients have no choice but to shift, heal and uplevel.  Engy shares with us the moment in her corporate career when she realised what her true north was and that it had been with her all along, she just didn’t know how to tune into it and feel it because she was on autopilot.  Our conversation is grounded in deep gratitude for the work she does with her clients and the privilege she feels when someone asks her to walk beside them to do this work.

Bio:

Engy Neville is a Conscious Leadership Mentor, Emotional Intelligence Expert, and founder of Embracing Zen with Engy.

After 30 years in corporate marketing, brand strategy, and leadership, Engy now guides individuals who are ready to stop living on autopilot and reconnect with their inner wisdom, emotional clarity, and authentic sense of self.

This work bridges the practical with the intuitive, helping people understand their energetic blueprint, subconscious patterns, presence, and the unseen ways they communicate before they ever say a word.

Her work is especially resonant for high performers, entrepreneurs, and leaders who are moving beyond overperforming, burnout, and self-abandonment into greater clarity, confidence, and purpose-led success.

Engy is a certified Life & Career Coach, NLP Practitioner, ThetaHealing® Instructor, yoga teacher, meditation teacher, and quantum energy healing practitioner.  She brings together lived experience in and out of high-performing environments with deep inner work to help others lead with more presence, make aligned decisions, and create lives that feel as successful on the inside as they look on the outside.

Social Media:

Website:         www.embracingzenwithengy.com

Facebook:       https://www.facebook.com/EngyNeville

Instagram:       https://www.instagram.com/engy_neville

LinkedIn:         https://www.linkedin.com/in/engy-neville

YouTube:        https://www.youtube.com/@TheConsciousPauseWithEngy

Transcript:

[00:34] Megan North:
Hello and welcome to the True North Show. I am your host Megan North, and I’d like to start by thanking the sponsors of the show: Quantum Awakening, Beth Lewis, and Anne C. Clarke.

Today I am so excited to welcome Engy Neville to the show. Engy is a mindset and transformation coach and speaker who helps high achievers and professionals recognise when they are living on autopilot and find their way back to a life that is genuinely, intentionally theirs.

Born in Egypt and now based in Australia, Engy brings a rich cross-cultural perspective to the work of identity, belonging, and self-determination. After years of building a successful corporate life that looked exactly as it should from the outside and felt increasingly hollow from the inside, she began a journey of deep inner work that eventually led her to formal training and the thriving practice she now runs.

Her work centres on a question she asks everyone who comes to her: are you actually living your life, or are you just moving through it? It is one of those questions that sounds simple and lands very differently when you sit with it honestly.

Engy, welcome to the True North Show. I am genuinely thrilled you are here.

[02:08] Engy Neville:
Thank you so much Megan. I am thrilled to be here. This is such an exciting opportunity and I have been looking forward to this conversation so much.

[02:18] Megan North:
Wonderful. Engy helps high achievers step off the autopilot they did not even know they were on and start actually living the life they were meant for. Stay with us because after the break she is going to share what that journey looked like for her and what it can look like for you.

Welcome back to the True North Show. I am here with mindset and transformation coach Engy Neville, and we are about to have a conversation that I think is going to resonate very deeply.

Engy, let’s start at the beginning. What was the defining moment or journey that led you to this work?

[04:02] Engy Neville:
Thank you for starting there. It was absolutely a journey, and I think it is important to say that because I know a lot of people are waiting for a defining moment and sometimes what actually happens is quieter than that.

I grew up in Egypt, came to Australia, built a career, got married, had children. From the outside it looked like everything was going exactly as it should. And for a long time I told myself that too. But there was this persistent sense of flatness. Of going through the motions. Of doing the next thing because it was the next thing, not because I had consciously chosen it.

I was not depressed. I was not in crisis. I just was not really there. And for a long time I could not even name that. It was only when I was having a very honest conversation with someone I trusted and I heard myself say out loud what I had been thinking quietly for years, that something shifted. I could not un-say it. And the truth of it required me to do something I had never really done before: stop. Actually stop. And ask what I wanted rather than what I was supposed to want.

[06:17] Megan North:
And that moment of hearing your own voice say it. There is something so powerful about that. You can think something for years and the moment you speak it, it becomes real in a different way.

[06:32] Engy Neville:
Completely. And I think for a lot of high achievers, the thinking is very sophisticated. We can think around problems beautifully. We have very good minds and we use them constantly. But speaking something out loud bypasses the management of it. It lands differently. You cannot rationalise it back into the box quite so easily.

And what I said when I finally spoke it was essentially: I have been living a life I designed for who I thought I was supposed to be, not who I actually am. And once I heard that, I could not keep going the way I had been going.

[07:28] Megan North:
Yes. And I love that you described it as the life you designed for who you thought you were supposed to be. Because I think that is so common and so rarely named. Can you say more about that?

[07:46] Engy Neville:
Yes. I think for many of us, particularly those of us who grew up in cultures or families with strong expectations, the blueprint for what a good life looks like is handed to us very early. Study hard, get a good career, get married, have children, be stable, be successful. And those things are not bad. But they are handed to us as if they are universal, as if they apply equally to every person regardless of who that person actually is.

And the version of me that was trying to live that blueprint was not wrong to be trying. She was doing her best with what she had. But she was operating from a map that had been drawn by someone else, for a terrain that was not quite hers.

Coming to Australia added another layer to this. Because in Egypt I had a context. My identity made sense within that context. I knew who I was in relation to my family, my culture, my history. And then I moved to a completely different context, and a lot of what had defined me simply did not translate. I had to figure out who I was in a new environment with new rules and new expectations. And for a while I just adopted the new blueprint and kept going. Without ever quite stopping to ask: but who am I actually, underneath all the blueprints?

[09:52] Megan North:
That is such an important question. And I think that process of disentangling who you are from the context that defined you, that is deep work.

[10:05] Engy Neville:
It is some of the deepest work I know. And I think it is work that most people never do, not because they do not want to but because nobody tells them it is necessary or possible. We are so identified with our contexts, our cultures, our family roles, our professional identities, that the idea of looking underneath all of that feels either frightening or completely abstract.

But what I found on the other side of doing that work, and what I see in my clients, is not an absence of identity. It is something more solid. Something that does not depend on the context to hold it up. Something that is actually yours.

[11:00] Megan North:
Yes. And that solidity, that sense of knowing yourself from the inside rather than from what you do or what you have, that is something that changes everything.

So let us talk about the autopilot itself. Because I love the way you frame this. What is autopilot, really, and why do we go there?

[11:28] Engy Neville:
The autopilot is the brain doing exactly what it is designed to do. The brain is an efficiency machine. Its primary job is to keep us alive with as little energy expenditure as possible. And one of the ways it does that is by automating familiar patterns. The more we repeat a behaviour, a thought process, an emotional response, the more the brain automates it. It becomes, in neurological terms, a well-worn pathway. The signal travels faster, with less effort, and we do not need to consciously choose it each time.

This is incredibly useful. We could not function if we had to consciously think about everything. The problem arises when the automated patterns were designed for circumstances that no longer exist. When the beliefs running in the background were installed twenty or thirty or forty years ago and have never been updated. When the goals being pursued were set by a younger self, or by someone else entirely, and have never been consciously revisited.

And the insidious thing about autopilot is that it does not feel like autopilot. It feels like life. It feels like just how things are, like what you do, like who you are. You do not notice it because there is no contrast. You have never not been on it.

[13:10] Megan North:
Yes. And that distinction you make between a comfortable life and an intentional one. Can you say more about that?

[13:22] Engy Neville:
Yes, because I think comfortable gets a bad reputation sometimes, and I want to be clear that I am not saying comfortable is wrong. Comfort, security, stability, rest: these are genuinely valuable things and we should not be in a perpetual state of disruption and growth. That is its own kind of ungroundedness.

But comfortable and intentional are different things. A life can be comfortable, genuinely comfortable, without ever being consciously chosen. You can slip into a comfortable life the way you slip into a comfortable chair. It just happened. It was there. And you stayed because it was easier to stay than to move.

An intentional life requires actually deciding. Not once, at the beginning, but continually, as you grow and change and the context shifts. It requires asking: is this still what I want? Does this still fit? Is this still aligned with who I actually am?

Most people do not ask those questions because they are either frightening or they feel indulgent. Who am I to redesign my life? Who has the luxury of asking what they really want? But I think those are the most important questions any of us can ask. And the cost of not asking them, of staying in the comfortable chair for decades without ever checking whether it is the chair you would choose, that cost is real.

[15:18] Megan North:
And what does that cost look like? What are the symptoms?

[15:28] Engy Neville:
The first symptom is usually a kind of flatness. Not depression, not sadness exactly. Just a muting of things. The things that were supposed to feel meaningful do not quite land. The wins feel hollow. The milestones arrive and there is a moment of satisfaction and then just more of the same. There is nothing quite wrong but something is also not quite right.

The second symptom is busyness used as avoidance. Staying very full, very scheduled, very occupied, because when things quieten down there is something uncomfortable waiting in the silence. The busyness keeps you from having to feel it.

The third, which I think is perhaps the most diagnostic, is a sense of performing your own life. Going through the motions of a role you have been cast in without quite feeling like you chose it. Saying the right things, doing the right things, being what you are supposed to be in each context. And somewhere underneath, a quiet voice saying: but this is not quite me.

[16:58] Megan North:
That third one is so recognisable. The performance of a role you did not quite choose.

[17:09] Engy Neville:
Yes. And I think for women especially, the performances are multiple and simultaneous. You are performing the wife, the mother, the professional, the daughter, the friend, the community member. And somewhere in the middle of all of that performing, you lose track of which one is actually you.

[17:30] Megan North:
Yes. And I think the women who come to coaching, who come to this kind of work, are often the ones who have been the best at the performing. Because it requires intelligence and empathy and attunement. And those are also the things that can keep you on autopilot the longest, because you are so good at reading what is needed and providing it that you never stop to ask what you need.

[17:56] Engy Neville:
That is exactly right. The skills that make you very good at living for others are often the same skills that make it easy to lose yourself in the process. Empathy, attunement, the ability to read a room and respond to what is needed, these are beautiful skills. But they can be used entirely in service of other people for decades without ever being turned inward.

And one of the most profound experiences many of my clients have in our early work together is when I ask them: what do you actually want? Not what do you think you should want. Not what would be reasonable or realistic or responsible. What do you actually want? And they cannot answer. Not because they are not intelligent. Because nobody has ever asked them before. Including themselves.

[19:02] Megan North:
That is such a powerful moment to witness, I imagine. And also quite confronting for the person.

[19:12] Engy Neville:
It is confronting and also, usually, accompanied by a kind of relief. Like something has been waiting a very long time to be asked that question. And even if the answer does not come immediately, the fact that the question was asked, seriously, with genuine interest in the answer, starts something moving.

[19:32] Megan North:
Yes. So from a mental health and wellbeing perspective, what do you do to maintain yourself given the depth of the work you do with others?

[19:48] Engy Neville:
This is something I take very seriously because I know what happens when you do not. I have been there. The work requires a lot of me. It requires genuine presence, genuine attunement, the ability to go into difficult territory with someone and not be destabilised by it. That is not possible without consistent, deliberate self-care.

For me that looks like several things. Movement is non-negotiable. I need to move my body every day. Not performatively, not for a particular outcome. Just because my nervous system needs it and my mind is clearer afterward.

Silence is equally important. I spend time every day in genuine silence. Not meditation with a structured practice necessarily, although I do that too. Just silence. Not consuming anything. Not producing anything. Just being.

And I am very deliberate about my inputs. What I read, what I watch, what I listen to, who I spend time with. Because this work requires a kind of internal clarity that gets muddied very easily by too much noise. I am protective of that clarity in a way that sometimes looks antisocial but is genuinely necessary.

And I have my own coach and supervisor. Non-negotiable. Not because I am struggling but because this work requires ongoing accountability and ongoing challenge. You cannot ask clients to go where you are not willing to go yourself. And I want to keep going.

[22:04] Megan North:
Yes. That walking the talk piece. And the silence piece really resonates with me. I think silence is so undervalued and so feared. And the fear of it is actually information.

[22:20] Engy Neville:
Completely. What are you afraid you will hear if you stop? That is a very important question. Because often the thing we are busying ourselves away from is exactly the thing we most need to hear.

[22:33] Megan North:
Yes. So let us talk about the nervous system piece, because I know this is central to your work. Can you explain why knowing something is not enough?

[22:48] Engy Neville:
Yes. This is something I feel strongly about because I have seen so many intelligent people frustrated by the gap between understanding and change.

You can understand your patterns completely. You can trace them to their origin, name the belief underneath them, articulate the mechanism by which they operate. And then walk out of the room and do the exact same thing you have always done. Because understanding lives in the prefrontal cortex, the thinking brain. And patterns live in the body, in the nervous system, in structures that are much older and much less responsive to logic.

The nervous system’s job is to keep you safe. And it does that by cataloguing experiences: this is safe, this is not safe, this is familiar, this is threatening. And when a new way of being, even a genuinely better one, has been catalogued as potentially unsafe based on old experience, the nervous system will resist it. Not because you are weak or uncommitted. Because the nervous system is doing its job.

So the work has to happen at the level of the nervous system as well as the mind. It has to include the body. It has to involve repeated experience of safety in new territory. And it takes time. Not because something is wrong with you. Because the nervous system updates through experience, not through argument. You cannot think your way to a regulated nervous system. You have to feel your way there.

[25:12] Megan North:
And that is why the pace of this work matters as much as the direction.

[25:20] Engy Neville:
Exactly. Rushing the nervous system tends to produce overwhelm and shutdown rather than change. The nervous system needs to feel safe enough at each stage to take the next step. And that safety is built through small, consistent, repeated experiences of: this is okay. I can do this. Nothing terrible happened.

That is what we are doing in the coaching work, over and over. Building a body of evidence that the new way of being is survivable. And eventually, that evidence accumulates until the nervous system updates its catalogue and the new way of being becomes the default.

[26:04] Megan North:
Beautiful. So what are the first signs that someone is beginning to step off the autopilot? What does that early stage of shift look like?

[26:18] Engy Neville:
The first thing I usually notice is curiosity. A quality of genuine wondering rather than managing. People start to be curious about their own patterns rather than just frustrated by them. They start asking why with real interest rather than as a way of blaming themselves.

The second is a return of preference. People start to notice what they actually like and dislike again. Small things. This coffee, not that one. This kind of morning, not that one. It sounds trivial but it is actually significant. Preference requires a self to have it. And when the self has been very suppressed for a long time, the return of preference is a sign that she is coming back.

And the third, which is perhaps the most moving to witness, is a kind of tenderness toward themselves. A quality of kindness in how they talk about their own patterns, their own history, their own limitations. Which is the opposite of the self-criticism and high standards that tend to characterise people on autopilot. When someone can look at themselves with genuine compassion rather than judgment, something has shifted at a very deep level.

[27:59] Megan North:
Those are such beautiful markers. Curiosity, preference, and self-compassion. I love that.

[28:09] Engy Neville:
And they tend to build on each other. Curiosity opens the space for preference to emerge. And when you can be curious about yourself without judgment, self-compassion tends to follow naturally.

[28:22] Megan North:
Yes. So we are getting close to time and I want to make sure I ask you the question I ask all my guests before we close. What is one lesson or truth that you have learned on your journey that you wish you had known earlier?

[28:40] Engy Neville:
The truth I wish I had known earlier is that not knowing who you are is not a failure. It is a starting point.

I spent years feeling ashamed of my own confusion. Feeling like the fact that I had built a life and still could not answer the question of who I was meant something had gone wrong with me. That I was behind somehow. That everyone else knew and I had missed the memo.

What I know now is that the confusion is not a problem. It is an invitation. It is the self saying: pay attention to me. There is something here that wants to be understood and lived. And the willingness to sit with that confusion, to be genuinely curious about it rather than trying to fix it or outrun it, that is not weakness. That is the beginning of everything.

[29:50] Megan North:
Not knowing who you are is not a failure. It is a starting point. That is beautiful, Engy. Thank you so much. This conversation has been everything I hoped it would be and I genuinely cannot wait for Part 2.

[30:06] Engy Neville:
Thank you Megan. This has been such a gift. I feel so seen and so heard and I am so grateful.

[30:14] Megan North:
And I would like to thank all of my amazing and dedicated audience, my supporters, and my sponsors. I hope everyone has a wonderful week and I look forward to seeing you all again next time. Thank you again Engy.

[30:28] Engy Neville:
Thank you.