Finding Alignment and Embracing ‘Just Enough’ in Biz&Life with Amanda Laird

[0:04] Hey there! Welcome to Inner Impact, a podcast about taking aligned action. I’m your host, Giada Centofanti, coach and founder of Care2Impact. On this show, you will get tools, inspiration and space to take aligned action and create a business that brings joy and positive change to your lives and the world. You know, taking aligned action starts with understanding your core needs and desires. So download the free Find Clarity toolkit to get clear on what you need and plan actionable next steps. Go to care2impact.com slash clarity and grab your workbook and guided visualizations today.

Giada Centofanti:
[0:52] Hey there, welcome to Inner Impact. Today’s episode is going to be a special one because one, we are going to have our first ever podcast guest and two, the guest is a person whose work I admired for a while and then I became her client and admired it even more. I am talking about Amanda Laird and today we are going to explore her work philosophy and approach and how she takes aligned action in her business and life. But first, let me introduce her to you. Amanda Laird is a feminist marketing strategist and business advisor with almost 20 years of experience, providing strategy and support to solopreneurs, small business owners and non-profit organizations. She is the author of Heavy Flow, Breaking the Curse on Menstruation, published by Dunder Press and nominated for the 2019 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Nonfiction. And she was the host of the Heavy Flow podcast from 2017 to 2020. Welcome, Amanda. I am so, so grateful to have you here today on Inner Impact.

Amanda Laird:
[2:03] Thank you. I’m so honored to be your first guest, and I can’t wait to chat with you. Thank you.

Giada Centofanti:
[2:11] Yeah, I’m so glad. And as I mentioned to you, I have a few topics I would love to explore, and I would also love it to be a free-flowing, inspiring conversation. But I guess we start from telling more our listeners about your work and your work philosophy. So what does it mean to you to be a feminist marketing strategist and business advisor?

Amanda Laird:
[2:40] Such a good question. Thank you. And I feel like that really changes day to day, almost client to client and moment to moment. But for me, my background is in marketing and communications, corporate communications. That’s what I went to school for. That’s where my corporate career started. And so I really have a lot of experience in communications and marketing. And I’m, In 2018, I actually, I think it was even before that, but a long time ago, I discovered this concept of feminist business.

Amanda Laird:
[3:17] And when I heard these two words together for the first time, it was like the big bang, right? Where suddenly all of these threads and all of these parts of my work and interests that I had kind of like slammed together. And suddenly I felt like, okay, here’s a world that makes sense to me. And I really have to credit Madeline Shaw and Suzanne Simons, who are the co-founders of a business. It was called Luna Pads. Now it’s called Aisle Period Products for really showing me what a feminist business is and what that means. Since then, I’ve taken Kelly Deal’s feminist copywriting course. I’ve worked with Kelly Diels. I’ve taken feminist business school through Sister. I’ve studied with C.V. Harquail and just lots of conversations and self-study and courses around feminist business. And what that means in practice is really using feminist principles and this, you know, concept of an interceptional feminist lens and applying it to my work in business. And so what does that look like in practice?

Amanda Laird:
[4:39] It really, like I said, it looks different client to client. And that alone, I think is part of the feminist business practice, right? I love Jennifer Armbrus’ concept of the feminine economy, which really sets out principles for a new way of commerce, of economy, doing business, which is about, you know, connecting with nature.

Amanda Laird:
[5:10] Looking at cycles that appear in nature and applying that to our business. It’s leading with gratitude, empathy, really, you know, when we look at traditional capitalism, patriarchal white supremacist business practices, like IE everything in the world, right? It’s really about bigger, faster, more and more and more. And it’s like very extractive. and I feel like the fundamental question that I come back to in my life and in my business and when I’m talking about business and when I’m working with clients is what is enough? What is enough? And what is enough money that we need to make to be comfortable, to live the life that we wanna live, to be able to give to causes that we wanna support, to live a comfortable lifestyle, right? But what is also enough effort that’s going to get us there as well? So I talk a lot about just enough marketing. And that is really all about, we don’t have to be on the hamster, we all doing all the things all the time.

Amanda Laird:
[6:29] What is just enough of the right activities? How can we exert just enough energy and attention and budget and whatever the containers are to get us where we want to go so that we’re not extractive, we’re not being our own worst bosses, we’re not doing too much?

Giada Centofanti:
[6:55] Okay. Okay, so I would have so many follow-up questions, but I am going to focus

Giada Centofanti:
[7:02] and I want to ask you something. So it is clear to me, your philosophy is clear to me and how you apply to working with your clients. I am wondering how you apply on your own business and on your day-to-day practices and what you do daily in your business and life?

Amanda Laird:
[7:27] That’s such a good question. And this is where I have to be really honest and vulnerable because I’m not actually that good at it. You know, it’s, I’m really good at sitting down with a client and being able to say, okay, what is enough? But, you know, this is my work. And I also joke that this is like my life school work, right? And this fundamental question of what is enough is, that’s a hard question for me. And so I’m very challenged by my own frameworks, which is probably why they’ve kind of emerged in my own business. And, you know, when I named this business Slow and Steady, that was as much a aspirational vision statement for myself.

Amanda Laird:
[8:28] As it was for any of my clients that I was working with. So all of that to say, sometimes I’m better at it than others. But for me, in my day-to-day business, applying those lenses, it really comes back to my own energy and trying to follow my own energy as well and trying to recognize what I have the capacity for.

Amanda Laird:
[8:59] And also trying to really discern what is real and what is made up and manufactured, right? You know, I’m thinking something that stuck with me for a long time is a long time ago, I was working in an organization. I was freelancing and doing my own thing at the time and I was working with this one client And one of my jobs was to do the, I don’t remember if it was weekly or bi-weekly, but I was in charge of the newsletter, writing the newsletter and putting it out. And I don’t remember anymore what was going on. But for some reason, I was like working on this newsletter at like 1130 at night. And I was so tired. And it was like one of those times where I’m like sitting at the computer like typing the newsletter and I’ve just got like tears streaming down my face because I don’t want to be here I don’t want to be doing this I just want to be in bed it had been a hard day whatever had come up in the day but I’m like but I have to do this because the newsletter has to go out tomorrow at such and such a time. And spoiler alert, that was not my best work.

Amanda Laird:
[10:23] And there was something like something was broken. There’s like broken links or typos or something was wrong. I made a big mistake. And when I was speaking with my client, who is the founder of this organization, like she said to me, like, who cares? The newsletter going out at 8am on a Friday morning. That’s not real. That is like a made up deadline. You said it, it was your deadline. And so you were like, totally overexerting yourself, put yourself to the limit. And the quality of the work showed.

Amanda Laird:
[11:07] And she’s like, next time, just go to bed. We’re not like doing brain surgery here. The newsletter can go out two hours later or it can go out the next day. Like that’s not a real deadline. And that’s really stuck in my head because, and for me, it’s always like a fine balance of having just enough structure, but also giving myself to really permission to like really follow that energy. So if I have a to-do list that has 13 things on it that I really want to get done today and lots of ideas, like what is actually real, what actually has to get done today, what is actually possible in my capacity, and letting enough be enough. Again, I’m not good at this, which is why it’s my life’s work. Some days I’m better at it than others.

Giada Centofanti:
[12:11] Thank you for sharing it with such honesty and transparency, because I think this is, you know, you and I talked about the toxic view on mindset. And I think that sharing our, we’re you know that we’re not perfect helps people feel heard and not wrong right.

Amanda Laird:
[12:37] Yeah and you know i’m thinking about in my corporate job back you know a decade ago when being an entrepreneur doing my own thing um building my own business, doing creative projects was still just a dream. And like I literally worked at a bank at this time. So it was like the complete opposite of all of those things. And I remember listening to a couple of podcasts at the time where they would have people come on who were like building their businesses and talking about all these cool things that they were doing.

Amanda Laird:
[13:18] And I had a lot of shame and I felt like I was doing something wrong because I couldn’t just like quit my job and make it happen overnight. And I remember finding out like years later, one of these podcasts that I listened to a lot, it was like Thursday morning, the podcast dropped, I listened to it all the time. I listened to every episode. I really loved it. It was really inspiring. And I remember finding out years later that the host of that podcast had a secret job where she worked part-time in a retail store in addition to doing this creative work and doing these projects. And when I found that out, I was like, wow, I really wish I’d known that. I really wish I had known that a long time ago because I felt so much shame that I couldn’t make my creative projects or I couldn’t make my tiny fledgling business into like a full-time thing right away. And I really had it in my head that like everybody else was and could.

Amanda Laird:
[14:42] And, you know, I don’t know if that was something that, you know, she was intentionally holding back or maybe it just never came up. I don’t know. Yeah.

Amanda Laird:
[14:55] Now, as a business owner and as I’m, you know,

Amanda Laird:
[15:04] Have a somewhat, you know, part of marketing when you are a marketing and small business advisor is doing podcast interviews like this or doing workshops or I have this kind of public persona that’s part of my brand. Blah or my personal brand and I think it’s really important to be really honest about what actually happens because I I would hate for somebody to look at me and be like oh she’s got it all together she’s doing it when that’s like just so not true on the other side so I just try to be super honest and talk about what it’s really like to try and build a business not following the template and to try and figure it out in a way that is aligned. And because it’s not easy. It’s really not easy. And I know how brains work. And when we look at other people, we can it’s so easy to fall into comparing despair and think she’s got it all together they’ve got it all together and I don’t I’m not doing it I’m not doing it right

Amanda Laird:
[16:33] What’s wrong with me. And I’ve certainly been there myself. So I completely understand.

Giada Centofanti:
[16:40] Yeah, I totally get it. And I think we need to be mindful, careful, and caring with what we say or write or publish, because we are probably shaping someone else’s measure of success. Or even though if we’re not actually shaping them, we are influencing them. And having misaligned measures of success means we have misaligned expectation from ourselves, as you mentioned before, and it hurts. It’s not good for our overall well-being. And it is also something you, at least you didn’t mention it actually, but it made me think about that. I was preparing for our interview and I was listening to the Slowpreneur podcast hosted by Stephanie Pellett. And you mentioned that at some point in your life, you were, you know, having all the words, all the promotion, the money, a house, all the traditional measures of success. And you felt miserable.

Amanda Laird:
[17:50] Yeah, I was thinking about this this morning because I know you had mentioned that was a question. And, you know, that was a real turning point in my life for a lot of reasons. And yeah, I was about 30 years old at the time I was working in a PR agency, which when you’re working in an agency model, you know, It doesn’t matter if it’s PR or marketing or advertising or whatever. Agencies are toxic. Toxic workplaces.

Amanda Laird:
[18:25] And this was a really super toxic workplace on top. And I just worked so much. And I just felt like shit. Oh, is that okay to say?

Amanda Laird:
[18:42] I felt like shit all the time like physically mentally I was just like overloaded and it’s funny to reflect on that and talk about it now because you know more than a decade later 12 years later when I’m thinking about that time I can see things in such clarity and I can see how yeah of course I was so miserable because I was so misaligned with myself right and I never thought I was good enough and so I was constantly trying to make up for what I imagined were deficits right and now like and at the time I would have just said oh well I just don’t I just don’t feel good. I’m burnt out. I’m not taking care of myself. And I just need to relax more. And so it’s really not surprising that around that time, I really fell into the trap of wellness. And this was 2012. Wow, that’s a long time ago. This was 2012.

Amanda Laird:
[20:10] In 2013. So this was really when Goop was on the upswing, you know? Oh, yeah. Gwyneth Paltrow is kind of building Goop. It’s just kind of becoming a thing. Online business is just starting to become a thing. Holistic nutritionists and health coaches and wellness coaches. It was really just a fledgling kind of business you know like i started at this time because i thought i could solve all my own problems and that this was really a me problem and then i could solve it by buying things you know i worked with a holistic nutritionist at the time who i had followed online but like I went to an office to see her in person because she rented office space which is so funny to think of now because like a holistic nutritionist like you would never have an office space what a waste of money you can just meet your clients in the zoom room and And so I really fell into wellness and I was so miserable and I was so unhappy in the machine.

Amanda Laird:
[21:34] Go to work early, work all day, get your billable hours in, networking at night, coming home late, drinking too much, not eating right, never seeing the sun. I should say not eating in a nutritious way, never seeing the sun and just like waking up and doing it all again the next day and the next day and the next day. And there was this part of me that was like, I have to get out of this.

Amanda Laird:
[22:02] I have to get out of this. and for many reasons I thought that the answer was like I need to like blow up my life entirely so I never want to do PR I never want to do comms or marketing I hate this this is the source of my problems I hate having a boss I want to be my own boss I want to feel like I’m actually doing something good in the world. Mm-hmm. Elder millennial woman reporting for duty. I am such a stereotype.

Amanda Laird:
[22:39] And… And I want to be my own boss. And at the time, I shared an office with a woman, good friend of mine. We’d worked together for many years in different places. And we shared an office. And at the time, she had two little kids. And I could see how on top of all of this that I was dealing with, that added responsibility and stress of like picking your kids up from daycare and dropping them off and dealing with the little kids was like amplifying everything I felt by 20 million. And I was like, well, I think I might want to have kids someday. And I definitely don’t want that. So I’m going to go back to school. I’m going to become a holistic nutritionist. I’m going to be able to build my own business, work my own hours. The four-hour work week was like the Bible at the time. I’m going to work a four-hour work week and make a six-figure business, and then I will be happy. being older and wiser now. And I mean, like I did that. I took that path. I tried to do those things. Right. But interestingly, when I was, you know, I graduated school, I graduated from holistic nutrition school.

Amanda Laird:
[24:01] I tried to build that business. And interestingly, I was just as miserable if not more because now I had a toddler on top of it all and undiagnosed postpartum anxiety on top of it all and I was still feeling those way I was still feeling that way so it wasn’t

Amanda Laird:
[24:25] Like, I know it’s such a cliche to say, wherever you go, there you are. But it’s true. Like, give me a different job. Give me a different whatever. Like, if you don’t have that, if things are still out of alignment inside, and if your self worth is still coming from an external source where it’s like, about the job, or it’s about the accolades, or it’s about the things, the stuff, the house, the whatever, then you’re just stuck in this loop, right? Where you’re, it’s going to feel good for a little bit, but eventually at some point you’re going to bump into yourself.

Giada Centofanti:
[25:10] Yeah. So of course I want to explore with you the concept of alignment because I mean, it’s the topic overarching topic of the podcast, but also I want to share with you an observation, the word enough came up a few times here and there with a negative and positive flavor to it, right? And I love how somehow you were able over time, of course, to use it to create something positive for yourself and your clients and the word. So turning that, it’s not enough to let’s do just enough and that’s gonna be okay yeah well.

Amanda Laird:
[25:58] Like I said, this is not stuff that comes naturally to me, you know, like I have to teach this for myself. And, you know, I started saying just enough years and years and years ago back in like 2020, 2020 and 2021. And at the time I was managing quite a large team and we were fully remote we were in and out of lockdown and we’re navigating a global pandemic we’re navigating racial reckoning in after the murder of george floyd and it just seemed like the news cycle was relentless and just you know racially motivated violence gender violence in the news like being a human was terrible. And during this time as well, here in Canada, these like mass graves of Indigenous children were being found from residential schools. This was like our new cycle. And I was managing a team of 20-somethings at the start of their careers, fully remote. They were still quite junior employees, most of them women, many of them racialized,

Amanda Laird:
[27:24] Queer, and this is the backdrop. And we were working in diversity and inclusion as well. And on top of all, on top of being a human in the world…

Amanda Laird:
[27:40] People are coming to work. They’re having babies. Their parents were sick. They were sick. You know, like they were moving, buying houses, moving into new apartments. Like we were still trying to like live life. And so our mantra became, let’s just do enough, right? And in my relationship as a manager, I saw myself in so many of these particularly young women who were trying to do 150% because they’re trying to prove themselves, they’re trying to make their way, they want all the things. And I could see how they were sacrificing themselves. And so our mantra became, let’s do just enough. We don’t have to give 150%. Like a solid 80 is gold. That’s still an A. 80% is still an A.

Amanda Laird:
[28:40] And that became our mantra. And then when I left that job in 2022 and I started building slow and steady and I started working with clients and we started talking about, you know, building out communications and marketing plans, I found myself saying the same thing where it was like, okay, what is just enough, right? What is just enough? And that doesn’t mean like we’re trying to phone it in, right? Like I’m always clarifying that when I talk about just enough, it’s not about doing the bare, it’s not the bare minimum. That’s not what I’m talking about, right? But especially if you’ve been socialized as a woman, and particularly if you are a millennial, and if you’re in my generation, really, there was this expectation that we’re going above 100. And you got to push, and you got to give more and more and more, right? Like that was what was happening to me in the PR agency, right? Where I’m working seven to seven every day. And like, for what?

Amanda Laird:
[29:51] For what I got paid the same as my male counterpart who came in at nine and left at five and took an hour lunch every single day. So let’s pull it back, do a good job, but you don’t have to 150 when 100 is amazing. 80 is probably going to be better. And it’s so important because I want But for myself and for my clients and like literally for everybody in the world, I want there to be enough left over that at the end of the day, I can like meet my kid when she comes home from school and. And actually enjoy her company instead of like yelling at her because I’m totally frazzled or to go and work out or take a walk or go out with my friends, right? Like I want to do just enough work so that I can live my life.

Giada Centofanti:
[30:50] Yeah, I love that. And also your perspective on Just Enough makes me think about something we studied in my neuroscience, applied to coaching, training, of course, not a neuroscientist yet.

Giada Centofanti:
[31:07] So there’s this thing we used to call the goldilocks curve of stress which is about how surprisingly too much stress and too little stress can hinder in the same exact way your executive functions so it is all about to find the just right spot for your stress level and of course, it can be different every day. So it resonates with me what you were saying about let’s find what it means just enough for you now, this month, in this quarter, right?

Giada Centofanti:
[31:46] Okay, so I wanted to explore alignment. We talked about many things in your career and things that happen throughout your life and how also feminism has shaped your values and how at some point you were able to create something, this new solopreneur business, which is more and more aligned to you, your core self. So, Year after that, you know, 2012, how does alignment and taking aligned action to look like for you?

Amanda Laird:
[32:29] I mean, it was a process and a journey. And like I said, in the beginning, in the beginning, I thought it was like having a perfect diet. And I went to nutrition school, right? So like everything was through this lens of like food is medicine and it can, you know, add to your health or take it away. I don’t believe this. The best thing I got in nutrition school was an eating disorder. Like, let’s be clear. Let’s be clear. and so it really changed because in the beginning it really was I thought I could kind of like buy my way out of it it’s if I could just eat the right organic food or take the right supplements or go to the gym enough or have the right crystals like it was really about like what I could buy And, you know, I don’t want to talk about the silver lining of a pandemic, a global pandemic, because it was horrific. It’s not over yet. And we are continuing to last with those effects. But, you know, at some point.

Amanda Laird:
[33:56] If it was either like during the pandemic where I like ripped my glasses off my face, threw them at the wall, and I screamed, I can’t take it anymore. I just had reached this breaking point and like I broke my glasses. I broke my glasses and I didn’t have any contact lenses left.

Amanda Laird:
[34:21] And I couldn’t go to the store. I couldn’t just go to the store because we were in lockdown and I couldn’t just go and fix my glasses. I just couldn’t go and buy the thing that was going to fix my glasses or make me see again. Like I had to just sit with those feelings. And since June of 2020, I have done a lot of therapy. Like a lot, a lot, a lot of therapy, crazy amounts of therapy. Like there were times where I was going two times a week to therapy, individual therapy, couples therapy, like just so much therapy to learn about myself and how I relate to other people. And now like what I have learned like four and a half years into, and I’ve done therapy on and off many times, but I think it was being ready to really dive deep and confront things and having a really good therapist and who had really good frameworks and who I have a really safe and trusting relationship with really allowed me to learn that,

Amanda Laird:
[35:46] Oh, I am enough. I have enough. And everything that I need is available to me. And actually it comes inside. It comes from inside. And for me in lockdown, So many things in my life changed simply by taking away so much like there’s nowhere to go. There’s nowhere to numb out.

Amanda Laird:
[36:15] To just get caught up in doing all kinds of things that you don’t want to do, but you’re doing them anyways, because these are the things we’re supposed to do on a Saturday, go to the mall, go grocery shopping, visit with people maybe you don’t like that much, or don’t make you feel good. And taking that away and spending, like, and I, like, I don’t want to sound like I’m painting a rosy picture of, like, pandemic lockdown because I recognize how truly horrific it was. And like yes I spent hours on my phone doom scrolling right like I did all of the things and I like went for a walk in the forest for the first time in like 10 years right

Amanda Laird:
[37:08] In 2020 and it was like those things where I was like wait a second going for a walk outside with my little family like these are the things that are aligning right I was thinking about this question because you’d sent me the notes and when I was reflecting on this time of my life like I talked about when I was 30 when I had this pivot point when I was working in the PR agency when I had all of the things. And even I would say in the first iteration of my business, even when I was, you know, publishing Heavy Flow, the book and the podcast, I really had this understanding that like happiness was or like success or whatever it was, was like over here.

Amanda Laird:
[38:09] This is a podcast. So I’m like holding my arm at arm’s length, right? Like if I just get this new job, if we just buy a bigger house, if we just, if we just, if we just, if we just, When I get 10 clients, when I make $50,000, when I make six figures, when I work with this brand, whatever it is, then I will be, if I just lose weight, if I just do whatever, then I will be in search.

Amanda Laird:
[38:54] Happy, rich, hot, smart, whatever. And I think the biggest shift for me, I’m looking, keep looking off camera here because I have this sticky note that has been up on my wall for like two years that says everything that you need and everything that you want is available to you. And I can see how that might get like twisted and turned into like a toxic positivity. But for me it’s really like I was all those years that I spent looking outside and looking afar what I have learned over the past four and a half years thanks to therapy thanks to parts work thanks to Zoloft all these things like if I actually look at what I have if I actually look around if i actually tune in and drop into myself i can hear myself and if for people who are familiar with internal family systems or parts work like i’m talking about self like with a capital s and i can see that things are kind of good here yeah

Giada Centofanti:
[40:11] Yeah so i am wondering probably one of your tools is that sticky note. But do you have any other kind of practice of something that you do to actually tune in and reconnect with yourself, recenter when you have noticed you are maybe not acting in alignment with yourself?

Amanda Laird:
[40:39] Interesting because I feel like my tools are changing right now. So this is kind of an interesting place to be. I am first and foremost, of all my job titles, I am a writer. That is how I process, it’s how I think, it’s how I express myself, how I communicate. And so Morning Pages has been so instrumental and being able to clear out the gunk, you know, to be able to just get off of that surface level of, oh, I didn’t sleep well last night. I have a headache. And then like eventually getting to that nugget of like, oh, I’m really scared about the world or what’s happening in my business or for my daughter, whatever it might be. And so morning pages is something that I come back to again and again.

Amanda Laird:
[41:40] Interestingly, I would say in the last six months, my morning pages and my journaling has really dropped off because I’ve gotten kind of skilled. And now I’m able to recognize when I’m feeling dysregulated, when I feel off, and to say, like, wait a second, something doesn’t feel right. I feel noisy. I feel crowded and I have a lot of parts and they can get me very noisy and you know maybe six months ago I would be like okay I’m gonna sit down with my journal and I’m gonna journal through it and I’m gonna figure it out and now I’m able to just sit with it in a way that I’m just kind of learning how to do it. And so I’m a big fan. Also, an important tool for me is meditation. I do not have a regular practice. I do not practice a certain type of meditation. I don’t know that I’m good at meditation. But that being able to sit still has been instrumental.

Amanda Laird:
[43:01] And I really enjoy on Insight Timer, there’s this one particular meditation teacher, I think her name is Julie Donovan, and she does a lot of parts work meditations.

Amanda Laird:
[43:15] And so she does this meditation that’s called the morning huddle, a morning parts huddle, and it’s about inviting all the different parts of yourself together and to see how parts, maybe are feeling if they have anything that they want to say, if they need tending to.

Amanda Laird:
[43:34] And that has been really helpful. And so I really like to do that. And when I’m starting to feel scattered or dysregulated, and also this like, when I’m talking about this, like, sometimes this can happen like three times a day, like, like, let’s just be real, right? Like, maybe this is happening once a week once every couple of weeks but there are times where it’s like I have to recenter and reset like three times a day. Being able to really come to the present. So one thing I didn’t mention as well was somatics was also really helpful. And I don’t know, I don’t want to say her name because I don’t know what her vibes are these days, but I took an online course about somatics. And that really taught me how to feel and to like look around the room and to get out of myself and to be able to turn my eyes outside.

Amanda Laird:
[44:41] And sometimes when I’m at my best, I will do this on purpose. Like first thing in the morning, after all my people leave, I’ll go out to my garden. I have a rooftop garden or if it’s too chilly for that. And when I say too chilly, it has to be like snow on the ground minus. Like it’s seven degrees today. I can go outside when it’s seven degrees and do this and just sit. And I think this is a practice that I learned from Ziva meditation where it was like, find what’s the loudest, closest noise that you can hear. What’s the furthest away?

Amanda Laird:
[45:22] What’s the like most prominent thing that you can taste in your mouth and what is just like the wisp like what can you feel right and just going through all your senses and I find it really grounding and once you like call in what you can hear what you can see through your closed eyes what you can feel on your skin the breeze the chair that you’re sitting on the ground under your feet. Like I just find that practice to be so grounding and And so where maybe six months or a year ago, I would be like furiously writing in my journal to try and like figure out what I’m feeling. Now, if I can just pause, ground down, tune in with my parts, then generally I can kind of get there.

Giada Centofanti:
[46:18] Okay, thank you. So to recap, you mentioned the morning pages, journaling, and then over time you practice and practice and you became able to notice what is happening to you and to just, just quote unquote, sit with your feelings and your emotions and the people, as you said before, you know, your parts and made them have a chat and conversate with them. And also highly effective and important tuning into your body as a way to get grounded and present. So I wanted to recap the tools for our listeners because they can be highly helpful to them.

Amanda Laird:
[47:09] Yes. And I would say, I think what I’m referring to there too, like the meditation is the vehicle, but I think the framework of internal family systems I love the book No Bad Parts which is a great introduction to internal family systems finding that framework using that framework in therapy learning about it for myself working with a business advisor who understands parts Kate Smalley, that was also a key. And so that framework has really been a great foundation for me.

Giada Centofanti:
[47:50] Okay, and we’re going to put all the links and all the resources Amanda mentioned in the show notes.

Giada Centofanti:
[47:57] But first, I want to ask you, what’s the next aligned action that you’re planning to take?

Amanda Laird:
[48:04] Like after we get off this call, I actually, you know, what I have to say is I actually think I want to go outside and sit and feel the cold air and listen to the sounds of my neighborhood. I haven’t been outside today. So that actually feels really good.

Giada Centofanti:
[48:30] Okay. Okay, so before we conclude this, I want to ask you, what’s the best way for people to connect with you? Where can they find you?

Amanda Laird:
[48:42] Yes, they can go to my website, which is slowandsteady.studio. Sign up for my newsletter. The links down at the bottom are in the main menu. I send a newsletter every Friday about marketing, growing a slow and steady business. and I also host Just Enough sessions once a month where you can come. We have topics for discussion, answer your questions. You can get to know me, get to know the Slow and Steady community and we can connect there.

Giada Centofanti:
[49:14] Yeah, and I highly recommend the Just Enough sessions because there are more than enough actually in terms of inspiration. Okay, before we part ways, First of all, thank you so much for being here and for being my first podcast guest.

Giada Centofanti:
[49:34] And I want to invite you listeners, and maybe you too, Amanda, to reflect on two questions. First, what are your main takeaways and insights from this conversation? And how can you apply them to take aligned action this week?

Giada Centofanti:
[49:53] And that’s it for today. You can find the show notes, all the links and the transcript at caretoimpact.com slash podcast. And while you’re there, don’t forget to download your free Find Clarity toolkit. So thanks for listening. Bye for now. And keep sparking your inner impact.