¶ Intro / Opening
I am here with Amanda Graham, screenwriter, speaker, and neurodivergence advocate. Hi Amanda. How are you? Welcome.
Thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure.
Great. Okay, so Amanda, what matters to you and what's the story behind it?
Okay, this is quite the story, right? So you have to picture this. It's a bulletin. This is like Manchester, UK. It's December, it's about eight years ago, and it was the second worst day of my life. And it was one of those times where, you know, when you're in bed and you don't know what has happened to your life, nothing is working. You've tried everything and you just can't get anywhere.
And I had crisis in every aspect of my life, relationships, jobs, money, the whole thing, full blown existential, everything. So what I had done was, prayed to whoever. I was like, I just need something to get me going in the right way. The next morning on my YouTube suggestions, there were, those motivational videos, the ones that have the cheesy, sports guys and women doing stuff. And then they have somebody talking very low, very dramatically.
And then they layer in these quotes, from motivational speakers and whatever else. And then Steve Jobs comes up and I was like, oh, this will be interesting. Let's see what he has to say. And he starts talking about, okay. We have these times in our lives where we go through crisis where nothing makes sense. And obviously that got my attention, Mike, and I was like, oh my God, is this going to be something for me? And they said, there's something that you should know about.
Those moments and I was like thinking, oh my God, he's gonna give me some wisdom. He is gonna give me some wisdom that is gonna help me get out of this. And then he says, it's only once you get out of the crisis and look back and connect the dots that you can see that all of that stuff had to happen to get you where you wanna go. And I was so mad. I was so mad because I was like, that doesn't help at all.
So basically what you're telling me is with no money in my bank account, can't afford heat, can't find a job. I'm a single mom. I have no help. I'm supposed to wait until I get to the other side to connect the dots.
Right.
And I, didn't even know what to do with that, but I, was furious. Let's just put it that way. I did continue.
hope.
I hope, I felt like. Hope. I, yes. And I, think that I had already had enough of faith because, I had been going this whole time, despite all of my circumstances getting worse and whatever, what I needed was to not feel so tired anymore. I needed a solution. And, the thing that was the most infuriating about it was he was right. He was right and.
And when did you realize that?
it took, a while.
¶ The Wilderness Period
because what had to happen, I call the last 12 years of my life, the wilderness. And, there was a lot of isolation, a lot of failure, a lot of false starts. And I learned to connect the dots because life and forced me to be resourceful, it forced me to try new things, get new skills. And most importantly, it forced me to work on the foundation of who I was as a person. I had a lot of childhood crap to get through.
and if I hadn't had that wilderness period and all of those things that I learned and forced myself to try because of the sheer desperation, I wouldn't have got to where I am today. And it's crazy the connections that happen that completely
¶ Building a Strong Foundation
change your life.
So what is the foundation? Well,
the foundation is, good wiring, right? Cause we can make decisions, right? We can upskill, we can try and network with people and whatever else, but if we haven't sorted out the issues that we've got on the inside, we're going to make bad decisions and we're not gonna honor who we are as people and we're not gonna be able to use our gifts. I really believe that. I had a foundation of a really traumatizing childhood. Half of my family was violent and, we grew up broke.
I was in an apocalyptic cult for a while that ended really badly where the guy tried to kill us. It was just a lot of stuff and I hadn't realized how much that had impacted me and who I was as a person and the choices that I was trying to make. And when, it's funny, when you go through crisis and there's nobody else around to help. You have to take a long, hard look at yourself. you have to see where is all this coming from? Why am I not where I need to go?
So when you start working on those internal issues, then you can start to see, oh, I didn't choose these healthy things because of this problem. And I was self-sabotaging here because of this problem. And because I didn't have self-worth and honor who I was, I didn't choose a path that. You made the best of my gifts, and what I was naturally good at. And that was the kind of foundation to really change things. And it's incredible.
Like you look around, you look back, and you cannot believe that some of the big things you're doing right now are literally down to one sentence or something 12 years ago or five years ago or whatever else.
My kids all the time, especially one of them will say, I remember, they're, 12 and 14, and my 12-year-old, I remember when I was six and you said, blah, blah, blah to me. And I'm like, how do you remember that? But it's impacted her. She remembers it all the time. So you can imagine something small- like that. Somebody meaningful says to you.
Oh God. Yeah.
all the stuff that you went through, that was actually, those were actually big things.
¶ The Importance of Introspection
So you're saying that introspection is important. That's what matters. And self analytics.
Absolutely, like getting honest with yourself. Do you know what I mean? And really, you have to absorb as much information as possible. You know, reading, there's a million YouTube videos therapy if you can afford it and whatever else. But really, we can make all the decisions we want in the world, but until we get real with who we are as people. Nothing is going to change, nothing is going to change.
But once we do get real, everything changes and life will take you in the most surprising places. You just have to let go of what you think life is going to look like. You know what I mean? And that's why what is important to me right now is letting people know who are in crisis. Because everyone knows there's loads of us in crisis right now in lots of different ways that there are dots.
There are dots there, and if that is the only thing that keeps you going while you figure this out and make sense of why you're going through what you're going through. It is enough. I think it is enough to help you get through.
Thanks for sharing, Amanda.
¶ Speed Round: What Matters?
That's great. we're running outta time, So let's move on to the
speed round. Okay? Yes.
Just say matters, not matters or skip and matters just means if it matters to you. Obviously, everything matters to somebody, but does this matter to you right now? Is it on your radar? So here we go. Creativity.
Matters a hundred percent. because you need creativity for solutions to get out of problems, for ways to come up with collaborations. And you need creativity to make the best of your gifts.
Storytelling.
Absolutely matters. That's basis of everything I do professionally
comedy.
Absolutely matters. If you can't laugh, then you are going to cry all the time, every day.
Neurodiversity.
Absolutely matters. I think acceptance of all levels matters. Do you know what I mean? We have so much in common and we need to focus on what we have in common instead of the divisions
Writing.
Absolutely matters. Yeah. I do it all the time. I can't stop, it's my favorite way of communicating.
Pizza,
Oh, Neopolitan Pizza for the win. Absolutely the best.
Exercise.
I love exercise, but I'm better at faking doing exercise than I am at doing exercise.
so it matters or not matters Sushi.
not matters.
Work life balance, Not matters
at all. I have no balance. I have no balance
coffee.
Matters. this is a confession. I drink about a liter of coffee a day.
Me too. Any other topic that matters that we didn't touch on that you wanna talk about?
Dogs.
Dogs.
they are everything. cheese is one of my favorites. and plants, I love them. They give us oxygen and they're just wonderful.
Amanda, you're in the UK, right?
Yes.
Yeah. Do they have pickleball in the UK? Have you heard of
pickleball? No, they don't do the pickle ball. They might in London, but they don't do it here. I know what it is though. It looks cool.
I've been asking everyone pickleball, but that doesn't work. Does that means it just doesn't matter to you. Your country has not been overwhelmed by pickleball yet. So good for you.
I like calisthenics, but I only do it like I do about 20 minutes a day, because I have to, otherwise I'll have a heart attack or whatever.
All right, Amanda, thank you for sharing. Appreciate it.