Following a traumatic and tumultuous childhood, Amber Lyon sought healing. Her early life in Auckland, New Zealand, was wracked by her father’s drug addiction and the high-profile criminal case that sent him to prison just as she was heading to college. After years of internalizing the shame of her father’s choices and trying to distance herself from her family’s chaos, she became paralyzed by anxiety and depression.
“I was in a really dark space,” Lyon recalls.
She turned to some of the most prominent voices in self-help, personal development, and spiritual wisdom. The teachings of author and seminar leader Tony Robbins were particularly valuable, launching her on a journey of healing and self-discovery. “His work helped me get clear on conscious attention, focus, goal-setting, and forward momentum, which was a wonderful place for me to start and an anchor during some hard times.”
After graduating from the University of Auckland in 2018, Lyon moved to New York City to be close to her sister and pursue a career in modeling. But chasing modeling jobs left her feeling increasingly disillusioned and distant from what she felt was her true self.
Lyon’s continued self-education led her to other popular sages, including meditation teacher Tara Brach, writer Michael A. Singer, and spiritual teacher Gary Zukav. Along the way she delved into visualization, self-hypnosis, neurolinguistic programming, and other tools for cultivating self-awareness and healing.
As she forged her path, Lyon turned to writing — a practice she began as a child as “an outlet for my own processing of the world.” She launched Modern Mind, “an online journal of philosophical ideas and reflections on how to show up in alignment with more joy, ease, and
opportunity.” She soon extended her reach to Instagram, created the Light Work With Amber Lyon podcast, and started privately teaching what she calls the Magnetic Method as a self-development coach.
Published in June 2024, her book, You Are a Magnet: Guiding Principles for a Magnetic and Joyful Life, synthesizes the principles and teachings that have supported her, as well as the lessons she’s gleaned from working with clients. Her Magnetic app offers daily meditations and affirmations to help rehearse new inner narratives.
Lyon uses the metaphor of a magnet to explain the nature of our minds and how to make lasting change.
“Magnets are always attracting or repelling. We are no different,” she writes in the book’s welcoming first pages. “Like a magnet, when we change our point of attraction, we change what we pull into our lives. …Whether consciously or not, we are co-creating our lives with our thoughts, feelings, and responses to our external environment. Magnetism requires us to take responsibility for our internal world and how our inner state shapes what we experience.”
At 28, Lyon is translating age-old wisdom for a new generation of seekers and those wishing to live more authentically and joyfully. We spoke with her about the approach she lays out for others on a path of self-discovery.
Q&A With Amber Lyon
Experience Life | Could you elaborate on the way you see the idea of magnets and how they either attract or repel as a foundational element of your book?
Amber Lyon | Our minds are magnets for information that validates our thoughts, feelings, and inner narratives. We don’t create our lives so much as we curate them. It’s fascinating to see this confirmation bias in real time. We have the same triggers and then the same flow of thoughts, and most of the thoughts we have today are the same thoughts we had yesterday. So what was once a conscious thought has now become unconscious.
But we each have the capacity to make our lives more conscious. It can be empowering to recognize our role in what we notice in our lives. I want people to feel a sense of possibility that they can draw in different data points and reaffirm a new story that leaves them feeling more capable, more joyful, and more loved.
EL | Can you summarize the basis of your Magnetic Mindset principle?
AL | Having a Magnetic Mindset is about trusting yourself to be the best source of your worth, of your decision-making, and of your values. This is where you shift away from trying to find answers from friends, family, celebrities, your job, your relationship, or the role you play for other people. It now comes from within, and you radiate it out. You bring it with you into every room you enter.
There’s a deep sense of peace and grounding that comes when you no longer need to prove or justify yourself. The Magnetic Mindset is about living aligned with your values and your goals and building a life from a sense of self-trust and self-worth.
EL | In your book, you outline a path toward living more authentically and joyfully, starting with the principle of Alchemizing Fear. What do you mean by this, and why do you begin here?
AL | We’re all coming from different energetic spaces. Working with clients has taught me that if we try to jump ahead of where we’re ready to work — if we dive into creating visions or taking new action too soon — we can shut down or pull back in a sort of fight-flight-freeze response. So I encourage people to start where it feels manageable and digestible so they can stay in a regulated emotional state.
Each section of the book is centered on a guiding principle. The section on Alchemizing Fear is about distinguishing between the fearful thoughts in your mind and your own internal guidance system, which is what I call intuition. It’s about building self-awareness so that you can create space between a situation or thought and your response to it.
It’s not sexy to be self-aware, but everything starts with self-awareness. Journaling is one way to get your thoughts out and see them in front of you. Breathwork and movement practices can be helpful. My practice, every day without fail, is meditation. I wish I could jazz it up and introduce different elements, but meditation is what allows me to become aware of my thoughts.
EL | How does the principle Cultivating Courage move us beyond being stuck in our resistance to change and growth?
AL | Cultivating Courage is about embracing the vulnerability to get it wrong, knowing it’s all forward motion toward the outcome we’re trying to build. Once we have more self-awareness and a reference point for what feels good in our body and in our heart, we can practice showing up in our life in new ways. We can take new action — giving ourselves permission to get it wrong sometimes and knowing we can make adjustments.
Fear festers in not making a choice, in our inaction. The more action we take, the more data points we have, and the more fine-tuned our decision-making becomes.
EL | You’ve said you could have written an entire book about the principle Living in Joy. Why is this so powerful for you?
AL | Many of us believe that joy is reserved for certain moments, and it can be triggering for someone in a lot of pain to hear that joy is available in every moment. Life is challenging, life is difficult, and life is pain. At the same time, life is joy, delight, connection, and beauty. It’s really two sides of the same coin, but we may forget there’s another side.
I have a lot of compassion for that resistance. For someone who’s feeling far away from joy, I would just start with what’s in reach. It could be a simple pleasure — drinking your favorite beverage, recalling a fond memory. What brings joy? What thoughts lift you up a little higher? And how can you make a little more time for that in your week?
When you are connected to joy, you bring that into every conversation, every room you enter. That energy is magnetic.
This article originally appears as “Becoming Naturally Magnetic” in the November/December 2024 issue of Experience Life.
Harnessing Choice and Change to Live a Magnetic Life
With Amber Lyon
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