May 3, 2024 • 38 mins
Join Gia in this empowering episode as she welcomes Amanda Greaves, an interior designer, author, and mentor. Amanda shares her transformative journey of overcoming limiting beliefs and finding inner healing, leading to the realization of her true purpose. Through her book, "The Chameleon Diaries," Amanda inspires high-achieving women to embrace change and prioritize self-love. Discover the power of saying no, aligning mind, body, and spirit, and defining success on your terms. Tune in for a transformative conversation that will empower you to prioritize your well-being and embrace your next chapter with authenticity and confidence.
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(00:00):
Welcome to Your Future Starts Now, the go-to podcast for
extraordinary women who are ready to step into their next chapter with
authentic confidence. I'm your host, Gia Lacqua empowerment coach,
motivational speaker, children's book author, and girl mom. Whether
you're a corporate powerhouse or an entrepreneur, this show is
designed for you. Your Future Starts Now is more than
(00:20):
just a podcast. It's a movement, a movement towards rewriting
the rules of success for high-achieving women. Are you ready
to get unstuck and step into your next chapter? If
so, you are exactly where you need to be. Your future starts
now. Welcome to Your Future Starts Now.
I'm your host, Gia Lacqua. I want to thank you for tuning in today. I'm so
(00:43):
excited to introduce you to Amanda Greaves. Amanda
is an interior designer, author, speaker, consultant, and mentor. She's
woven the fabric of her life with threads of triumphs, despair,
success, and failure, resulting in the lifelong intention of
getting unstuck, overcoming limiting beliefs, and creating more love
and abundance than she ever imagined. The Chameleon Diaries
(01:05):
is Amanda's first book, and through the cathartic writing journey, she
has discovered that the life she's been seeking all these years is actually
peacefully abundant in her heart. Amanda, thanks
So today we are talking about two of my favorite
topics, embracing change and inner healing. Before
(01:30):
we jump in, tell us a little bit about your backstory and
Yeah, so I think when I was 17, and
I won't go through all of the years between then and now, but that's
when I decided I wanted to be an interior designer. And
I studied it in college. I did some traveling
(01:50):
after college that brought me to Australia and back again. And
then I eventually ended up working in the industry, in
the design industry. And after being in it for, call
it another six or seven years, I got laid off in 2008. I
was also getting my second divorce in 2008 and
(02:11):
was lucky to find another job working with an architect. And a
year into that job, I thought, God, these guys, I
think I can do this better. And so I started my design firm in
2010 and now fast forward into call it 20, 2019, 2020. I
was getting burnt out. I was getting to a point where I thought, all right,
(02:33):
this business has become my baby. I hadn't been
able to really embrace any of the relationships that I had been in
because I was so focused on the business. And
so I missed out on really focusing and
paying attention to what my heart was yearning for, which was a deeper connection
with a partner or, you know, being
(02:54):
able to have that love relationship. And
got to a certain point where I'm like, okay, well now I'm too old
to have kids. And some people will say you're never too old, but my
body was saying you're too old. And so that
plus you add in some of the stresses that happens during COVID and
it really gave me an opportunity to take a very, very
(03:17):
large step back, reassess what I had been doing for
so long. And it was abundantly clear to me that
I had lost my passion for design. I wasn't happy
on the inside. I was grasping at things on the outside
to try and fill my buckets. And I was repeating
the same unhealthy habits with the same type of person,
(03:41):
same type of relationship. And finally, everything
just kind of blew up at the end of 2022. And I said, I'm done. I am so done. I
don't know if you or any of your listeners have ever had the feeling where
it's like, I just want to pack it all away and go, not just
go visit an Island for a little bit, but just go move to a deserted
(04:03):
Island and be a bartender and just pretend that it's all, you know,
that's how I felt. And yeah, fully aware
that no matter where I went, everything was still going
to be with me. I, um, I took the more mature
approach and started doing the work. I really
started to dig in. And that's
(04:25):
where the cathartic writing process of the book came into play. That's
where the full realization that I'm
now in a better position of what my
soul wants me to do than I was working
within the design and construction world. And I'm getting
to a point now where it's like, I can feel how
(04:47):
this transition has made me understand
what's truly inside. and the value of that.
So, you know, yes, interior designer of 20-something years,
business owner of 14-something years, and
(05:09):
I love that. What a beautiful story and journey and recognizing,
you know, where you felt stuck or dissatisfied, you
took that and listened to that inner voice and
It took some time and there were two significant moments that
it was literally like a quack, one on Sunday night
(05:32):
and one on Monday. And I'm like, Oh my God, I can't do this anymore. And
that was, those were the pivotal moments where I said, this
And, and what were those, or can you talk to us a little bit
Yeah. Um, I mentioned I had been dating
(05:52):
the same type of guy for a while. And I,
I had been with a man for a couple of years.
And now that I look back on it, the signs were
all over the place, but I got really good at ignoring red flags. And so he,
once I started to really dig in and was wondering why do I feel so
crazy? Why do I feel so? lost and confused. Why
(06:16):
am I the one that's feeling like I'm doing something wrong all the time when
I genuinely know that I'm doing something right? And the
deeper I got into understanding how and why I was feeling, he's
a covert narcissist and borderline personality disorder.
And based on my research, but
it really, he was leading a double life. He was also dating somebody
(06:39):
else the entire time that we had been together and it, you know, there had been signs,
but like I said, I'd gotten really good at ignoring them. And
between all of this new vocabulary that I learned in the last
couple of years between ghosting, gaslighting, the
narcissistic abuse, the love bombing, all the things, finally
one day I'm like, I cannot, my nervous system was like on
(07:02):
hyper alert. I got a phone call
from, oddly enough, a mutual friend of me
and the woman that he was also dating as well. And
she connected us. And then when
we had the conversation later on that Sunday evening, we
literally went through our calendars. You know,
(07:23):
we got to a point where we're like, okay, enough is enough. Where we overlapped every
other weekend or during the week or weekends that he
disappeared on me. He was with her. He disappeared on
her. He was with me. It was, it sucked. Wow.
And we did all that, you know, and I think the final straw was when
she said, you know, when are you planning on seeing him again? I said, well, we're actually
(07:46):
supposed to have dinner tomorrow night. And she just laughed and
she was like, Oh my God, we have dinner plans for Tuesday. I
was like, that's it. I've never talked to him since. Um,
you know, what they're doing is what they're doing. So then the following morning,
I get to my office and, you know, this is
(08:07):
the other half of that straw, if you will. I get
into my office and I had been chasing payment
from a very large client of mine that I'd been working with for
six years. All, you know, we had started working with
him in 2016 and I'd been
chasing it, you know, Hey, can I get paid for things that had happened back
(08:29):
in the spring? You know, six, seven months late. And he
sends me this. novel of an email just
ripping me apart. And, and I thought there's no
justification for this whatsoever. And, uh,
like I, time, effort, energy, all
of it. And I got to a point where I was like, I'm done. And I
(08:51):
went home and slept on it. Cause I, my emotions were shot and
replied back the following day and basically told him to go
and, and, and fired him. you know, was out
a few thousand dollars at the end of the day. But I thought I just I just
cut 50 percent of our projections for next year. It
(09:11):
didn't matter. My health, my wellness of the of the company was
more important than somebody else's. So it
it literally was a back to back Sunday night, Monday morning. And
that's when you know how you do anything is how you
do everything. That's when it was literally like a big beacon. Hey,
Amanda, you got to Can you pay attention now?
(09:33):
It's happening everywhere. And I just was like, yeah, I got it. I'm good.
Yeah, I got it. I'm good. It's like our mantra, right?
I got it. I'm good. And it piles on and we tolerate and
we accept. Right. And then you finally get
Yeah, I got my whole, I got it, I'm good was like,
I finally get it. I'm done. And
(09:57):
you know, we made it through the holidays. And then starting in January, thankfully, I
have an amazing, amazing team working with me at the design firm.
They stepped right up. You know, we had already been slowly planning it to
begin with, but this just accelerated everything. Yeah, which was fantastic.
Yeah. Good for you for recognizing it and making those changes
and, and really choosing peace, right?
(10:19):
Choosing inner peace and choosing, to your point, the more mature and
healthy path. It's hard and it does take a lot of
inner work, but that's incredible. And I think similarly,
a lot of the clients that I work with, you know, the pain point that
is coming up for them is typically a symptom of something much
greater that, you know, we really need
(10:41):
to sort of dig into. And I think a lot of us carry that with us
and very unconsciously. Right. And it guides our
decisions and our behaviors and our patterns and our
habits. And so you really have to be
very self-aware and get curious with it if you want to
I mean, you just put the entire context of the Chameleon Diaries
(11:02):
into one paragraph. It's like those
two pivotal events are chapter one. And
then as we get into chapter two, it goes all the way back to when I
was bullied in eighth grade. And then it moves forward real fast.
Yeah, you know, it moves forward, but it is the accumulation of
here are the poor relationship decisions. Here are the reasons why
(11:25):
I was yearning for that kind of love to begin with. Here are the reasons why
I never went and actually got the help that I
needed. And it it started, you know, when I
was six, seven years old. It's in it. It
took those two major, major, you
know, strong highlights of Look
(11:46):
what's going on to have me take the step back and
say, I really need to do some work on myself. I really, this
is enough. I need to dig in and pull
back those layers. Pull back the layers, pull them
back, pull them back. See what's inside. Go through the healing
process and then dig in a little bit more. Pull back
(12:08):
the layers. See what's inside. Go through the healing process.
And it hurts. It's hard, you
know, like, I'm all about empowering
change, but when I was 28 years
old, I tried therapy. Ran
like a son of a gun out of that office one day because I was like,
(12:29):
I'm not doing this. I can deal with whatever's going on.
I'm not uncovering this. I wasn't ready. It just
kept building. I
don't know, maybe my soul's journey was meant to not have all this stuff
happen until my late 40s. But being
able to recognize finally that
(12:52):
I had the opportunity and I had built enough of a support system
around me that it offered me the chance to
do the healing, to take the time out. And
I now realize, like I went to an event the following February,
which is just a year ago, And I was actually able
(13:12):
to hear the messages. I was able to understand that,
you know, the universe is talking to me and it is guiding
me in a way that because I
had been resisting for so long, I wasn't
able to hear the messages before. And all this digging in
and all this peeling back, finally I was
(13:34):
like, oh, there's, look at all that space I opened up
for this to come back in. You know, and it was awesome. just
It's so powerful. And I love the how you
it was very powerful when you said it hurts, right? Healing hurts.
And that is a very hard truth. Yeah,
(13:57):
to accept. And I think to your point, that's what prevents a lot of people from
tackling it right from digging in from doing the important
work. But, right, I think we both know
and many other people who've done the work know that it's worth it.
Right. And what's on the other side of that, if you can't move
(14:20):
Yeah. I mean, Winston Churchill has this great little quote that says, if you're going
through hell, keep going. Yes. Eventually you'll
get to the other side. And it Yeah,
it does hurt. I mean, I went back, I mentioned I was getting divorced
from my second husband in 2008. I got married very, very
young. I was 22 years old. I was attracted to
(14:41):
a foreign accent in a six pack and I moved to Australia. And
it was amazing for four years. And
then I came home and, you know, while
I was writing the book, he clearly takes up some space in
these chapters. And it was in 2000, Creed. the
music, you know, the band Creed, I drove up
(15:04):
and down the highway one night just listening to as many like
two albums, and just pushed through
the pain that I never dealt with from 20 years ago.
And it hurt like hell. I had to pull over a couple
of times. I turned the music up even harder and I pushed.
(15:24):
And when I was done, I was like, oh my God, you know, it was 20 years
of anguish that I hadn't let go of. And because
I had accumulated the right kinds of tools, I knew how to
just trigger myself into that kind of a response to
Sure, sure. So, you know,
you talked a little bit about it, but I would love to know, What inspired
(15:47):
you to write the book and, you know,
Absolutely. Yeah, I kind of skipped over
it to begin with, didn't I? So the the
more work I was doing and in all honesty, being
introduced to brand builders, which was something that a friend of
mine back in February at this event said,
(16:10):
you know, I think you should get in touch with them. They should help you. I
started to realize when they go through this process of you
are best suited to serve the you that
you once were, which is, you know, a tagline that just gives
me chills all the time. I started to think, God, there's
so many women out there that are in abusive emotional relationships.
(16:33):
There are so many women that have gotten divorced and never dealt with it. There
are so many women that are younger than me that want to have a
family and are not making the right kinds
of decisions today. to set them up for that
familial success in the future. And
I thought, God, if I can just talk to one
(16:54):
woman to get her out of that negative relationship so she
can actually go and have the children that she's always wanted,
all of this is going to be worth it. And once I really
started to to feel that energy
of being able to serve all of the me's that have wanted love,
that have wanted acceptance, that have wanted to be just
(17:18):
whole, that's when the motivation to
get the book written, to get it published, to get it into the hands of
as many women and men as I can, really
started to come through. And it affected how I edited the
book, it affected how I added things in, and I love it.
(17:39):
you know, unapologetically super proud of the product that
I have put out into the world and it is, although
it was a very cathartic exercise for me to go through, the
purpose of writing the book revealed itself when I started to
understand it's for the reader, it's for the
women that are the 20 somethings that,
(18:00):
you know, the late 20s that are like, I don't need this therapy crap.
And yeah, you do if you think you're there, you know, or the 35 year old
woman that is not in the right relationship, but her biological clock
You know, those types of things. Yeah, that's so
powerful. And I know that your book is going to
help so many men and women. And,
(18:22):
you know, it's coming from a place of love, right, and service, which is
so incredibly powerful. And it's just something that pulls you, right, as
opposed to being pushed in the work that you're doing. It's that
calling of really feeling pulled. It's just
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's, you know, it's funny because, again,
(18:44):
through all of the work, I love therapy, by the way, at this stage.
I've had a few different coaches I've
been exposed to so many different modules of healing. I
went through some EMDR, which is where, you know, you go way back into
your inner child. I've done some
Jovian Archive research to understand how my stars align
(19:05):
and all of those things, you know, my zodiac sign, I'm water, water, water,
so God help me, you know, all these things. And so learning
some of those aspects, I had been pushing
pushing, pushing, pushing what I thought I was supposed to be
doing for the last 40-something years. And
when I really started to line up all of this knowledge, even
(19:28):
though it was fits and spurts and there wasn't a ton of it everywhere, all
of a sudden I was like, whoa, Amanda, back up. Like, you know, go
with the flow. Just let it
happen. and listen to your intuition along the
way. And you know, if you think that you're supposed to stay straight, well,
and something is telling you to go this way, go
(19:50):
that way, see what happens. You can always turn around and come back. So
it's the accumulation of all the different opportunities that have really, or
Yeah. And tapping into that inner wisdom, I think the healing, right?
When you heal, you allow yourself to listen to that inner wisdom and
go right, instead of going straight. And it's hard,
(20:13):
it's hard, because it's different than what maybe you had imagined, or you think
you should be doing. And we have these blinders on, right? Nope,
don't look over there. Yeah, keep looking forward, keep looking
And you sound like you know, exactly what I'm talking about, which is awesome,
because you've done the work, you know, and, and you've been
through the transition, and you've embraced the change. And
(20:36):
you've you've done the healing aspect. And I
am looking at it as an opportunity for you and for me, for
your listeners as it's never going to stop. And just how
awesome is that to wake up every morning and be like, Oh my God, what am I going to
learn about myself today? Share all this bold
(20:57):
Or taking growth mindset to a whole nother level. I
love it. I love it. So I have to tell you that the cover
of your book and the title are so intriguing to
me. So talk to us a little bit about how you came up
with the name The Chameleon Diaries and what that represents for
Yeah. Dinner with a really good friend
(21:20):
of mine. His girlfriend ends up meeting up with us
and she's like, tell me about your book, you know, and I had just started writing it. And
we got into overlapping conversations of people pleasing
and poor relationship patterns. And they were on this project all
about what is your, um, you know, are you
anxious avoidant? Are you, are you secure attachment, all
(21:42):
your attachment styles? And so they had all that vocabulary
and she goes, Oh, you know, the people pleaser, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And we went through all of those things.
I said, well, that's me. And I've always had an affinity. I've
always loved. lizards, and you know,
I've got that I've got, I used to have a turtle, it's just like all these different things.
And somebody was like, Oh, the chameleon. I'm like, Ooh, you
(22:03):
know, and, and when I started this process, I
had stacks and stacks of journals that I started to go through to pull all
of these stories from, because When
you write in your journal, I'd say that the majority of us write
about all the bad stuff that's going on. When we're in a great place and
things are going wonderful and all of these things, your journal's kind
(22:26):
of empty. Thankfully, right now, months have gone by and I
haven't made any notes. But it evolved.
So I thought, no, I don't want to be a people pleaser. And then
I thought, I've evolved. There
is that chameleon-like skin that has been shed. So
the chameleon diaries really started, it really started
(22:49):
to resonate. And then, you know, there's a watercolor element about
the cover itself of the chameleon where it's like, is it in front? Is
it in the back? Where's all of this different coloration coming from?
And that's where I felt there's a solid image,
but there's the watercolor element behind it where it's like, okay, well, this is
kind of fading away. This, this, this, feeling
(23:10):
of having to please everybody and shift and change on
a constant basis has actually started to wash itself out.
Yeah. And so, you know, there's more colors on there
than I, in my previous life ever would have imagined I would have done
on like, it's got the whole rainbow on it, for God's sake. So but it's, I
love it. And I'm very, very pleased with how it turned out. I had a great design
(23:33):
Yeah, I love it. It's gorgeous. And I love I think for what comes up
for me and definitely what you're saying resonates, I think also the
piece of it that ties to your identity. Right. And I I'm
not a reptile fan, but I will say I have used the snake analogy where
the snake sheds their their skin, the outer layer.
Right. Because that is such a powerful analogy for
(23:55):
us evolving into our future selves and recognizing that
doesn't mean that what we did previously was wrong or bad. Right?
It probably served us in some way, in some
capacity at a certain point in time, recognizing
that now those things are no longer serving us, those habits and
behaviors. And so how do we learn to shed
(24:23):
I mean, you got it. We're constantly evolving. So
it's not a bad thing that there have been so many iterations of
Amanda. And it got to a point where, although
I had been hurt and traumatized and what
have you for various different situations and relationships and
(24:43):
whatnot, in the acknowledgments, I thank every
single person I've dated, my two ex-husbands. it
wasn't, if it wasn't for all of those situations, you and I would
not be talking right now. And I would not have had the strength and the, and
the endurance and the agility to turn around and be like, all right, now I'm going to
go put my hand out and do my very best to
(25:07):
pull this other woman up. And that's where
I think a lot of the beauty has started to evolve more
and more in this. It's about serving not
just being like, yeah, woo-hoo, I'm an author. I mean, yeah, woo-hoo,
I'm an author. It's pretty exciting. And I'm
excited about the speaking aspect that's going to be
(25:28):
going along with it. But the reality is
I want to serve my younger self.
I want to go back to my 14-year-old self and scoop myself
up and just be like, I love you. You are everything you've
ever needed to be. Let's not worry about
what these kids are saying over here. you
(25:50):
are everything and, and teach others
how to do that to themselves as well. Because if
my 14 year old self can now feel that love, it means
that the 48 year old self is going to have even more of
Definitely. Yeah. The concept of enoughness, the
(26:13):
Yeah. There's on the last page of the
book, one of the last pages, it says, um, Where
am I? It says, you are enough. You are worthy. You
are lovable. And it's for
me, you know, that at one point I was like, Oh, it seems kind of cliche. And
then I'm like, no, it does not. It's it is people. I
(26:36):
need to hear it every day. You know, I want everybody isn't you
aren't the perfect amount today for what it is that
Like we all need to hear it every day, right? Yeah. So true. So
true. It's great. Great advice. I would love to know, you know, to all
the high performing women that are listening, what's one thing that
(26:56):
you want our listeners to consider doing differently or changing after
Oh, doing differently or changing. Well,
we will only change ourselves if we are ready and
willing to change ourselves. And there's
the old saying, you know, like, I've tried to change every guy I've ever dated.
(27:16):
That doesn't work, by the way. For
me, I realized that because I
wanted to have deeper connections with
the people that were important to me, I needed to
change how I had a connection with myself. because
(27:40):
otherwise here I am grasping all this outside stuff
trying to think that they're supposed to be a certain way when really I
just needed to get comfortable with me and I
realized that a lot of these overachieving women that, and
I'm not saying overachieving in a bad way. I mean, more power to
all of the big, bold, beautiful women out there that are doing all
(28:02):
the things, you know, the businesses, the moms, the
pickups, the drop-offs, the dinners, the laundry, all
of every single, every single thing. It's being
able to gift yourself the time. If
you feel like there's something wrong in your life, taking
the time because you deserve it and you are worth it,
(28:25):
taking the time to step back and understand what is it
that's inside of you that is helping to add
to the benefit or fuel the chaos starts
inside. And when I was able
to really put the brakes on the roller coaster that I've been on for years,
(28:45):
oh my God, it was so liberating. You
know, I used to have this saying with my coach where she's like, you're like
this, you know, it'd be like the roller coaster, the scariest one
at whatever the biggest park is
in the world, whatever it may be. And I was like, I just want to get on the Caterpillar roller coaster,
the little baby one. But
(29:07):
I had to dig in. And so if there are
women out there that want to change something in their
lives, and men, depending on who's listening, My
advice is look inside and
see where the adjustment needs to be made within
you. Because I found once I started making my
(29:29):
own adjustments within how I communicated, how I
received information, how I presented
and sometimes projected myself out there, when
I started changing, people were responding to
me differently. The energy that was happening around
(29:49):
me felt different. My relationship with
my parents, because I finally
healed a lot of the resentment, a lot of the unknowingness,
realizing that, God, they did the absolute best
they could with the tools that they had at the time that I was being raised.
You go back, you know, 40, 50 years in a
(30:11):
generational gap, there's a big difference between
then and now. they didn't have a fraction of
the vocabulary and the knowledge that we do now. And
it's I was carrying around this bag of resentment for
years and years and years. And finally, I was like, it's not serving me. And
it's changed how I approach to them. And it
(30:33):
naturally had them approaching me differently. So
Still, that is amazing. Amazing. Such incredible work.
Yeah. Amanda, tell us how Do
you define success for yourself today and talk
Yep. Um, when I had started my
(30:55):
business in 2010, I think it was maybe 2013 on the
phone with my coach. And I was desperately
afraid because I had a
potential client that I knew I knew wasn't
right for me, but I was still a
young entrepreneur. I was still just starting out. You know, I'd
(31:18):
only been in business a couple of years. I was afraid to say no.
Because I needed every job. I needed every client. I needed all
the things coming in financially. That's where I was. I had a financial fear.
And the day that I turned around and I called somebody back and I
said, I'm sorry, this isn't going to work. I don't think I'm the right designer for
you. And I got off the phone and I was like, that's not really going to affect
(31:40):
my bottom line. So that to me. in
an entrepreneurial aspect, the ability to
say no was amazing because
I've been saying yes to everything, hence the people pleasing aspect. So
it was it was outrageous for me to say, oh, gosh, I can say
no and not have all this like reverberation of
(32:02):
guilt or shame or God, did I disappoint them?
Did I not meet their expectations and come
full circle now? It's In the process of
writing this book, I spent the entire summer inside.
Not necessarily what I wanted to do, but gosh, I
got so much out of it. I'm sure. I hadn't been
(32:24):
dating and I sat back and of course I
had opportunities and such, but I thought, I
started to make my priorities different. And
so even I had to get through my fear of being
alone. That's one of the biggest things that I've been working on over the
last couple of years. Like the guy,
(32:45):
gosh, he'd be a great person to have a relationship with. Oh,
you know, all the things, the chemistry was there. I
unselfishly and unapologetically put myself first and
said, no, thank you. I
just got chills saying that again. I said, no, thank you. And
(33:06):
he said, OK, great, maybe we can next week. And I said, I'm
sorry, I'm just not available. And
he said, I don't understand. And I said, I'm
not sure I fully do either, but I'm not going to be the best version of myself
if I were to come and be with you. So therefore, I don't think that
being with you right now is the right answer. And for me, it was
(33:26):
like, woo! The fireworks were
going off because it wasn't something that
I premeditated. It wasn't something that I thought about. It came from
my heart and it just came out and
it was like, wow. And for
me, between the business professional success
(33:47):
of being able to understand what my priorities are
within my company and saying yes and or no to
clients appropriately, to doing
the work within myself to
not, excuse me, to keep
myself as a priority and ensure that my
(34:09):
health is, is my mental health, my emotional health,
my physical health is definitely on top. That to me is when, you
know, success is aligning all of those
three things, getting your brain connected with your soul, connected
with your higher spirit, with, with the things that keep
you running. That's where the success lies.
(34:30):
And that's where
It's that balance. I love that. It
sounds like it was such a liberating moment for you, both professionally and
personally, when that came from within, right? And you were
able, you gave yourself permission to say no, which is something that you probably
(34:51):
I mean, what people please or does say no. Right. Not
Not too many. Exactly. So I love the alignment of
like mind, body and spirit and then making yourself a priority and
It's great. You know, there are people that don't understand and
(35:12):
that's okay. Yeah. It's Maybe
they're not your people anymore. Maybe they're not meant to understand. And
if they are permanent fixtures in your life, then I
bet there's a different way that you can explain it. But if they're not,
it's OK. They're not meant to be there anymore. And for
me, I really, really see
(35:36):
one of my best friend's daughters is going through some things right
now. And we had a quick conversation the other day. And I was like,
you know what? How does it make you feel on the inside?" She's
like, kind of icky. And I said, how long do you want to feel that ick? And she says, I
don't want to feel that ick. And I said, you just gave yourself the
(35:59):
Being able to define how we want to feel. Yeah. What
It's a powerful shift because we weren't taught that growing
up, right? So we sort of have to teach it to ourselves later in life.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Amanda, it's been so great talking to
you. Where can our listeners learn more about you and the work that you
(36:19):
Yes. So the book, I'll start there. I'll start at the end and
work my way backwards. The book is Amazon Barnes
and Noble. So it's a
paperback as well as a Kindle version. I do plan on doing
an Audible soon, just haven't figured that part out yet.
So I'm very excited about that. and the rest of
me is on amandagreaves.com. I'm
(36:49):
on instagram as amanda underscore greaves. I'm on facebook as
amandagreaves9, linkedin amandagreaves9. So
that's where I'm at and I
encourage anybody that's interested to reach out say hello. I
We'll definitely respond back to you and I would love to get to
know who you are and just know where you are in the world and
(37:13):
Amazing. And congratulations on your book. I am so
excited for you on the launch and want to thank you for being here, for
This has been great, Gia. Thank you very, very much. It's an
Thanks, Amanda. And of course, you can visit my website at gialacqua.com. Reach
out on Instagram at Gialacqua. And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and
(37:33):
leave a review. This is Gia signing off with gratitude for your
time and energy. Our mic drops, but the movement continues. Until
next time, your next chapter is waiting. Take care. That
concludes another empowering episode of Your Future Starts Now.
Before we wrap up, I want to thank this incredible community of high-achieving women.
Your energy, resilience, and commitment to growth are the driving force
(37:55):
behind what we do. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate
it, leave a review, and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Your
feedback fuels our mission to empower high-achieving women just like
you. And of course, share Your Future Starts Now with the extraordinary women
in your life who are also on a journey of healing and empowerment. Connect
with us on social media, share your thoughts, let us know what topics you'd like to
(38:17):
explore in future episodes. Stay connected on Instagram at
GiaLacqua. I encourage you to carry the energy of this conversation
into your day and keep on supporting the incredible women around you.
Welcome to Your Future Starts Now, the go-to podcast for
extraordinary women who are ready to step into their next chapter with
authentic confidence. I'm your host, Gia Lacqua empowerment coach,
motivational speaker, children's book author, and girl mom. Whether
you're a corporate powerhouse or an entrepreneur, this show is
designed for you. Your Future Starts Now is more than
(00:20):
just a podcast. It's a movement, a movement towards rewriting
the rules of success for high-achieving women. Are you ready
to get unstuck and step into your next chapter? If
so, you are exactly where you need to be. Your future starts
now. Welcome to Your Future Starts Now.
I'm your host, Gia Lacqua. I want to thank you for tuning in today. I'm so
(00:43):
excited to introduce you to Amanda Greaves. Amanda
is an interior designer, author, speaker, consultant, and mentor. She's
woven the fabric of her life with threads of triumphs, despair,
success, and failure, resulting in the lifelong intention of
getting unstuck, overcoming limiting beliefs, and creating more love
and abundance than she ever imagined. The Chameleon Diaries
(01:05):
is Amanda's first book, and through the cathartic writing journey, she
has discovered that the life she's been seeking all these years is actually
peacefully abundant in her heart. Amanda, thanks
So today we are talking about two of my favorite
topics, embracing change and inner healing. Before
(01:30):
we jump in, tell us a little bit about your backstory and
Yeah, so I think when I was 17, and
I won't go through all of the years between then and now, but that's
when I decided I wanted to be an interior designer. And
I studied it in college. I did some traveling
(01:50):
after college that brought me to Australia and back again. And
then I eventually ended up working in the industry, in
the design industry. And after being in it for, call
it another six or seven years, I got laid off in 2008. I
was also getting my second divorce in 2008 and
(02:11):
was lucky to find another job working with an architect. And a
year into that job, I thought, God, these guys, I
think I can do this better. And so I started my design firm in
2010 and now fast forward into call it 20, 2019, 2020. I
was getting burnt out. I was getting to a point where I thought, all right,
(02:33):
this business has become my baby. I hadn't been
able to really embrace any of the relationships that I had been in
because I was so focused on the business. And
so I missed out on really focusing and
paying attention to what my heart was yearning for, which was a deeper connection
with a partner or, you know, being
(02:54):
able to have that love relationship. And
got to a certain point where I'm like, okay, well now I'm too old
to have kids. And some people will say you're never too old, but my
body was saying you're too old. And so that
plus you add in some of the stresses that happens during COVID and
it really gave me an opportunity to take a very, very
(03:17):
large step back, reassess what I had been doing for
so long. And it was abundantly clear to me that
I had lost my passion for design. I wasn't happy
on the inside. I was grasping at things on the outside
to try and fill my buckets. And I was repeating
the same unhealthy habits with the same type of person,
(03:41):
same type of relationship. And finally, everything
just kind of blew up at the end of 2022. And I said, I'm done. I am so done. I
don't know if you or any of your listeners have ever had the feeling where
it's like, I just want to pack it all away and go, not just
go visit an Island for a little bit, but just go move to a deserted
(04:03):
Island and be a bartender and just pretend that it's all, you know,
that's how I felt. And yeah, fully aware
that no matter where I went, everything was still going
to be with me. I, um, I took the more mature
approach and started doing the work. I really
started to dig in. And that's
(04:25):
where the cathartic writing process of the book came into play. That's
where the full realization that I'm
now in a better position of what my
soul wants me to do than I was working
within the design and construction world. And I'm getting
to a point now where it's like, I can feel how
(04:47):
this transition has made me understand
what's truly inside. and the value of that.
So, you know, yes, interior designer of 20-something years,
business owner of 14-something years, and
(05:09):
I love that. What a beautiful story and journey and recognizing,
you know, where you felt stuck or dissatisfied, you
took that and listened to that inner voice and
It took some time and there were two significant moments that
it was literally like a quack, one on Sunday night
(05:32):
and one on Monday. And I'm like, Oh my God, I can't do this anymore. And
that was, those were the pivotal moments where I said, this
And, and what were those, or can you talk to us a little bit
Yeah. Um, I mentioned I had been dating
(05:52):
the same type of guy for a while. And I,
I had been with a man for a couple of years.
And now that I look back on it, the signs were
all over the place, but I got really good at ignoring red flags. And so he,
once I started to really dig in and was wondering why do I feel so
crazy? Why do I feel so? lost and confused. Why
(06:16):
am I the one that's feeling like I'm doing something wrong all the time when
I genuinely know that I'm doing something right? And the
deeper I got into understanding how and why I was feeling, he's
a covert narcissist and borderline personality disorder.
And based on my research, but
it really, he was leading a double life. He was also dating somebody
(06:39):
else the entire time that we had been together and it, you know, there had been signs,
but like I said, I'd gotten really good at ignoring them. And
between all of this new vocabulary that I learned in the last
couple of years between ghosting, gaslighting, the
narcissistic abuse, the love bombing, all the things, finally
one day I'm like, I cannot, my nervous system was like on
(07:02):
hyper alert. I got a phone call
from, oddly enough, a mutual friend of me
and the woman that he was also dating as well. And
she connected us. And then when
we had the conversation later on that Sunday evening, we
literally went through our calendars. You know,
(07:23):
we got to a point where we're like, okay, enough is enough. Where we overlapped every
other weekend or during the week or weekends that he
disappeared on me. He was with her. He disappeared on
her. He was with me. It was, it sucked. Wow.
And we did all that, you know, and I think the final straw was when
she said, you know, when are you planning on seeing him again? I said, well, we're actually
(07:46):
supposed to have dinner tomorrow night. And she just laughed and
she was like, Oh my God, we have dinner plans for Tuesday. I
was like, that's it. I've never talked to him since. Um,
you know, what they're doing is what they're doing. So then the following morning,
I get to my office and, you know, this is
(08:07):
the other half of that straw, if you will. I get
into my office and I had been chasing payment
from a very large client of mine that I'd been working with for
six years. All, you know, we had started working with
him in 2016 and I'd been
chasing it, you know, Hey, can I get paid for things that had happened back
(08:29):
in the spring? You know, six, seven months late. And he
sends me this. novel of an email just
ripping me apart. And, and I thought there's no
justification for this whatsoever. And, uh,
like I, time, effort, energy, all
of it. And I got to a point where I was like, I'm done. And I
(08:51):
went home and slept on it. Cause I, my emotions were shot and
replied back the following day and basically told him to go
and, and, and fired him. you know, was out
a few thousand dollars at the end of the day. But I thought I just I just
cut 50 percent of our projections for next year. It
(09:11):
didn't matter. My health, my wellness of the of the company was
more important than somebody else's. So it
it literally was a back to back Sunday night, Monday morning. And
that's when you know how you do anything is how you
do everything. That's when it was literally like a big beacon. Hey,
Amanda, you got to Can you pay attention now?
(09:33):
It's happening everywhere. And I just was like, yeah, I got it. I'm good.
Yeah, I got it. I'm good. It's like our mantra, right?
I got it. I'm good. And it piles on and we tolerate and
we accept. Right. And then you finally get
Yeah, I got my whole, I got it, I'm good was like,
I finally get it. I'm done. And
(09:57):
you know, we made it through the holidays. And then starting in January, thankfully, I
have an amazing, amazing team working with me at the design firm.
They stepped right up. You know, we had already been slowly planning it to
begin with, but this just accelerated everything. Yeah, which was fantastic.
Yeah. Good for you for recognizing it and making those changes
and, and really choosing peace, right?
(10:19):
Choosing inner peace and choosing, to your point, the more mature and
healthy path. It's hard and it does take a lot of
inner work, but that's incredible. And I think similarly,
a lot of the clients that I work with, you know, the pain point that
is coming up for them is typically a symptom of something much
greater that, you know, we really need
(10:41):
to sort of dig into. And I think a lot of us carry that with us
and very unconsciously. Right. And it guides our
decisions and our behaviors and our patterns and our
habits. And so you really have to be
very self-aware and get curious with it if you want to
I mean, you just put the entire context of the Chameleon Diaries
(11:02):
into one paragraph. It's like those
two pivotal events are chapter one. And
then as we get into chapter two, it goes all the way back to when I
was bullied in eighth grade. And then it moves forward real fast.
Yeah, you know, it moves forward, but it is the accumulation of
here are the poor relationship decisions. Here are the reasons why
(11:25):
I was yearning for that kind of love to begin with. Here are the reasons why
I never went and actually got the help that I
needed. And it it started, you know, when I
was six, seven years old. It's in it. It
took those two major, major, you
know, strong highlights of Look
(11:46):
what's going on to have me take the step back and
say, I really need to do some work on myself. I really, this
is enough. I need to dig in and pull
back those layers. Pull back the layers, pull them
back, pull them back. See what's inside. Go through the healing
process and then dig in a little bit more. Pull back
(12:08):
the layers. See what's inside. Go through the healing process.
And it hurts. It's hard, you
know, like, I'm all about empowering
change, but when I was 28 years
old, I tried therapy. Ran
like a son of a gun out of that office one day because I was like,
(12:29):
I'm not doing this. I can deal with whatever's going on.
I'm not uncovering this. I wasn't ready. It just
kept building. I
don't know, maybe my soul's journey was meant to not have all this stuff
happen until my late 40s. But being
able to recognize finally that
(12:52):
I had the opportunity and I had built enough of a support system
around me that it offered me the chance to
do the healing, to take the time out. And
I now realize, like I went to an event the following February,
which is just a year ago, And I was actually able
(13:12):
to hear the messages. I was able to understand that,
you know, the universe is talking to me and it is guiding
me in a way that because I
had been resisting for so long, I wasn't
able to hear the messages before. And all this digging in
and all this peeling back, finally I was
(13:34):
like, oh, there's, look at all that space I opened up
for this to come back in. You know, and it was awesome. just
It's so powerful. And I love the how you
it was very powerful when you said it hurts, right? Healing hurts.
And that is a very hard truth. Yeah,
(13:57):
to accept. And I think to your point, that's what prevents a lot of people from
tackling it right from digging in from doing the important
work. But, right, I think we both know
and many other people who've done the work know that it's worth it.
Right. And what's on the other side of that, if you can't move
(14:20):
Yeah. I mean, Winston Churchill has this great little quote that says, if you're going
through hell, keep going. Yes. Eventually you'll
get to the other side. And it Yeah,
it does hurt. I mean, I went back, I mentioned I was getting divorced
from my second husband in 2008. I got married very, very
young. I was 22 years old. I was attracted to
(14:41):
a foreign accent in a six pack and I moved to Australia. And
it was amazing for four years. And
then I came home and, you know, while
I was writing the book, he clearly takes up some space in
these chapters. And it was in 2000, Creed. the
music, you know, the band Creed, I drove up
(15:04):
and down the highway one night just listening to as many like
two albums, and just pushed through
the pain that I never dealt with from 20 years ago.
And it hurt like hell. I had to pull over a couple
of times. I turned the music up even harder and I pushed.
(15:24):
And when I was done, I was like, oh my God, you know, it was 20 years
of anguish that I hadn't let go of. And because
I had accumulated the right kinds of tools, I knew how to
just trigger myself into that kind of a response to
Sure, sure. So, you know,
you talked a little bit about it, but I would love to know, What inspired
(15:47):
you to write the book and, you know,
Absolutely. Yeah, I kind of skipped over
it to begin with, didn't I? So the the
more work I was doing and in all honesty, being
introduced to brand builders, which was something that a friend of
mine back in February at this event said,
(16:10):
you know, I think you should get in touch with them. They should help you. I
started to realize when they go through this process of you
are best suited to serve the you that
you once were, which is, you know, a tagline that just gives
me chills all the time. I started to think, God, there's
so many women out there that are in abusive emotional relationships.
(16:33):
There are so many women that have gotten divorced and never dealt with it. There
are so many women that are younger than me that want to have a
family and are not making the right kinds
of decisions today. to set them up for that
familial success in the future. And
I thought, God, if I can just talk to one
(16:54):
woman to get her out of that negative relationship so she
can actually go and have the children that she's always wanted,
all of this is going to be worth it. And once I really
started to to feel that energy
of being able to serve all of the me's that have wanted love,
that have wanted acceptance, that have wanted to be just
(17:18):
whole, that's when the motivation to
get the book written, to get it published, to get it into the hands of
as many women and men as I can, really
started to come through. And it affected how I edited the
book, it affected how I added things in, and I love it.
(17:39):
you know, unapologetically super proud of the product that
I have put out into the world and it is, although
it was a very cathartic exercise for me to go through, the
purpose of writing the book revealed itself when I started to
understand it's for the reader, it's for the
women that are the 20 somethings that,
(18:00):
you know, the late 20s that are like, I don't need this therapy crap.
And yeah, you do if you think you're there, you know, or the 35 year old
woman that is not in the right relationship, but her biological clock
You know, those types of things. Yeah, that's so
powerful. And I know that your book is going to
help so many men and women. And,
(18:22):
you know, it's coming from a place of love, right, and service, which is
so incredibly powerful. And it's just something that pulls you, right, as
opposed to being pushed in the work that you're doing. It's that
calling of really feeling pulled. It's just
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's, you know, it's funny because, again,
(18:44):
through all of the work, I love therapy, by the way, at this stage.
I've had a few different coaches I've
been exposed to so many different modules of healing. I
went through some EMDR, which is where, you know, you go way back into
your inner child. I've done some
Jovian Archive research to understand how my stars align
(19:05):
and all of those things, you know, my zodiac sign, I'm water, water, water,
so God help me, you know, all these things. And so learning
some of those aspects, I had been pushing
pushing, pushing, pushing what I thought I was supposed to be
doing for the last 40-something years. And
when I really started to line up all of this knowledge, even
(19:28):
though it was fits and spurts and there wasn't a ton of it everywhere, all
of a sudden I was like, whoa, Amanda, back up. Like, you know, go
with the flow. Just let it
happen. and listen to your intuition along the
way. And you know, if you think that you're supposed to stay straight, well,
and something is telling you to go this way, go
(19:50):
that way, see what happens. You can always turn around and come back. So
it's the accumulation of all the different opportunities that have really, or
Yeah. And tapping into that inner wisdom, I think the healing, right?
When you heal, you allow yourself to listen to that inner wisdom and
go right, instead of going straight. And it's hard,
(20:13):
it's hard, because it's different than what maybe you had imagined, or you think
you should be doing. And we have these blinders on, right? Nope,
don't look over there. Yeah, keep looking forward, keep looking
And you sound like you know, exactly what I'm talking about, which is awesome,
because you've done the work, you know, and, and you've been
through the transition, and you've embraced the change. And
(20:36):
you've you've done the healing aspect. And I
am looking at it as an opportunity for you and for me, for
your listeners as it's never going to stop. And just how
awesome is that to wake up every morning and be like, Oh my God, what am I going to
learn about myself today? Share all this bold
(20:57):
Or taking growth mindset to a whole nother level. I
love it. I love it. So I have to tell you that the cover
of your book and the title are so intriguing to
me. So talk to us a little bit about how you came up
with the name The Chameleon Diaries and what that represents for
Yeah. Dinner with a really good friend
(21:20):
of mine. His girlfriend ends up meeting up with us
and she's like, tell me about your book, you know, and I had just started writing it. And
we got into overlapping conversations of people pleasing
and poor relationship patterns. And they were on this project all
about what is your, um, you know, are you
anxious avoidant? Are you, are you secure attachment, all
(21:42):
your attachment styles? And so they had all that vocabulary
and she goes, Oh, you know, the people pleaser, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And we went through all of those things.
I said, well, that's me. And I've always had an affinity. I've
always loved. lizards, and you know,
I've got that I've got, I used to have a turtle, it's just like all these different things.
And somebody was like, Oh, the chameleon. I'm like, Ooh, you
(22:03):
know, and, and when I started this process, I
had stacks and stacks of journals that I started to go through to pull all
of these stories from, because When
you write in your journal, I'd say that the majority of us write
about all the bad stuff that's going on. When we're in a great place and
things are going wonderful and all of these things, your journal's kind
(22:26):
of empty. Thankfully, right now, months have gone by and I
haven't made any notes. But it evolved.
So I thought, no, I don't want to be a people pleaser. And then
I thought, I've evolved. There
is that chameleon-like skin that has been shed. So
the chameleon diaries really started, it really started
(22:49):
to resonate. And then, you know, there's a watercolor element about
the cover itself of the chameleon where it's like, is it in front? Is
it in the back? Where's all of this different coloration coming from?
And that's where I felt there's a solid image,
but there's the watercolor element behind it where it's like, okay, well, this is
kind of fading away. This, this, this, feeling
(23:10):
of having to please everybody and shift and change on
a constant basis has actually started to wash itself out.
Yeah. And so, you know, there's more colors on there
than I, in my previous life ever would have imagined I would have done
on like, it's got the whole rainbow on it, for God's sake. So but it's, I
love it. And I'm very, very pleased with how it turned out. I had a great design
(23:33):
Yeah, I love it. It's gorgeous. And I love I think for what comes up
for me and definitely what you're saying resonates, I think also the
piece of it that ties to your identity. Right. And I I'm
not a reptile fan, but I will say I have used the snake analogy where
the snake sheds their their skin, the outer layer.
Right. Because that is such a powerful analogy for
(23:55):
us evolving into our future selves and recognizing that
doesn't mean that what we did previously was wrong or bad. Right?
It probably served us in some way, in some
capacity at a certain point in time, recognizing
that now those things are no longer serving us, those habits and
behaviors. And so how do we learn to shed
(24:23):
I mean, you got it. We're constantly evolving. So
it's not a bad thing that there have been so many iterations of
Amanda. And it got to a point where, although
I had been hurt and traumatized and what
have you for various different situations and relationships and
(24:43):
whatnot, in the acknowledgments, I thank every
single person I've dated, my two ex-husbands. it
wasn't, if it wasn't for all of those situations, you and I would
not be talking right now. And I would not have had the strength and the, and
the endurance and the agility to turn around and be like, all right, now I'm going to
go put my hand out and do my very best to
(25:07):
pull this other woman up. And that's where
I think a lot of the beauty has started to evolve more
and more in this. It's about serving not
just being like, yeah, woo-hoo, I'm an author. I mean, yeah, woo-hoo,
I'm an author. It's pretty exciting. And I'm
excited about the speaking aspect that's going to be
(25:28):
going along with it. But the reality is
I want to serve my younger self.
I want to go back to my 14-year-old self and scoop myself
up and just be like, I love you. You are everything you've
ever needed to be. Let's not worry about
what these kids are saying over here. you
(25:50):
are everything and, and teach others
how to do that to themselves as well. Because if
my 14 year old self can now feel that love, it means
that the 48 year old self is going to have even more of
Definitely. Yeah. The concept of enoughness, the
(26:13):
Yeah. There's on the last page of the
book, one of the last pages, it says, um, Where
am I? It says, you are enough. You are worthy. You
are lovable. And it's for
me, you know, that at one point I was like, Oh, it seems kind of cliche. And
then I'm like, no, it does not. It's it is people. I
(26:36):
need to hear it every day. You know, I want everybody isn't you
aren't the perfect amount today for what it is that
Like we all need to hear it every day, right? Yeah. So true. So
true. It's great. Great advice. I would love to know, you know, to all
the high performing women that are listening, what's one thing that
(26:56):
you want our listeners to consider doing differently or changing after
Oh, doing differently or changing. Well,
we will only change ourselves if we are ready and
willing to change ourselves. And there's
the old saying, you know, like, I've tried to change every guy I've ever dated.
(27:16):
That doesn't work, by the way. For
me, I realized that because I
wanted to have deeper connections with
the people that were important to me, I needed to
change how I had a connection with myself. because
(27:40):
otherwise here I am grasping all this outside stuff
trying to think that they're supposed to be a certain way when really I
just needed to get comfortable with me and I
realized that a lot of these overachieving women that, and
I'm not saying overachieving in a bad way. I mean, more power to
all of the big, bold, beautiful women out there that are doing all
(28:02):
the things, you know, the businesses, the moms, the
pickups, the drop-offs, the dinners, the laundry, all
of every single, every single thing. It's being
able to gift yourself the time. If
you feel like there's something wrong in your life, taking
the time because you deserve it and you are worth it,
(28:25):
taking the time to step back and understand what is it
that's inside of you that is helping to add
to the benefit or fuel the chaos starts
inside. And when I was able
to really put the brakes on the roller coaster that I've been on for years,
(28:45):
oh my God, it was so liberating. You
know, I used to have this saying with my coach where she's like, you're like
this, you know, it'd be like the roller coaster, the scariest one
at whatever the biggest park is
in the world, whatever it may be. And I was like, I just want to get on the Caterpillar roller coaster,
the little baby one. But
(29:07):
I had to dig in. And so if there are
women out there that want to change something in their
lives, and men, depending on who's listening, My
advice is look inside and
see where the adjustment needs to be made within
you. Because I found once I started making my
(29:29):
own adjustments within how I communicated, how I
received information, how I presented
and sometimes projected myself out there, when
I started changing, people were responding to
me differently. The energy that was happening around
(29:49):
me felt different. My relationship with
my parents, because I finally
healed a lot of the resentment, a lot of the unknowingness,
realizing that, God, they did the absolute best
they could with the tools that they had at the time that I was being raised.
You go back, you know, 40, 50 years in a
(30:11):
generational gap, there's a big difference between
then and now. they didn't have a fraction of
the vocabulary and the knowledge that we do now. And
it's I was carrying around this bag of resentment for
years and years and years. And finally, I was like, it's not serving me. And
it's changed how I approach to them. And it
(30:33):
naturally had them approaching me differently. So
Still, that is amazing. Amazing. Such incredible work.
Yeah. Amanda, tell us how Do
you define success for yourself today and talk
Yep. Um, when I had started my
(30:55):
business in 2010, I think it was maybe 2013 on the
phone with my coach. And I was desperately
afraid because I had a
potential client that I knew I knew wasn't
right for me, but I was still a
young entrepreneur. I was still just starting out. You know, I'd
(31:18):
only been in business a couple of years. I was afraid to say no.
Because I needed every job. I needed every client. I needed all
the things coming in financially. That's where I was. I had a financial fear.
And the day that I turned around and I called somebody back and I
said, I'm sorry, this isn't going to work. I don't think I'm the right designer for
you. And I got off the phone and I was like, that's not really going to affect
(31:40):
my bottom line. So that to me. in
an entrepreneurial aspect, the ability to
say no was amazing because
I've been saying yes to everything, hence the people pleasing aspect. So
it was it was outrageous for me to say, oh, gosh, I can say
no and not have all this like reverberation of
(32:02):
guilt or shame or God, did I disappoint them?
Did I not meet their expectations and come
full circle now? It's In the process of
writing this book, I spent the entire summer inside.
Not necessarily what I wanted to do, but gosh, I
got so much out of it. I'm sure. I hadn't been
(32:24):
dating and I sat back and of course I
had opportunities and such, but I thought, I
started to make my priorities different. And
so even I had to get through my fear of being
alone. That's one of the biggest things that I've been working on over the
last couple of years. Like the guy,
(32:45):
gosh, he'd be a great person to have a relationship with. Oh,
you know, all the things, the chemistry was there. I
unselfishly and unapologetically put myself first and
said, no, thank you. I
just got chills saying that again. I said, no, thank you. And
(33:06):
he said, OK, great, maybe we can next week. And I said, I'm
sorry, I'm just not available. And
he said, I don't understand. And I said, I'm
not sure I fully do either, but I'm not going to be the best version of myself
if I were to come and be with you. So therefore, I don't think that
being with you right now is the right answer. And for me, it was
(33:26):
like, woo! The fireworks were
going off because it wasn't something that
I premeditated. It wasn't something that I thought about. It came from
my heart and it just came out and
it was like, wow. And for
me, between the business professional success
(33:47):
of being able to understand what my priorities are
within my company and saying yes and or no to
clients appropriately, to doing
the work within myself to
not, excuse me, to keep
myself as a priority and ensure that my
(34:09):
health is, is my mental health, my emotional health,
my physical health is definitely on top. That to me is when, you
know, success is aligning all of those
three things, getting your brain connected with your soul, connected
with your higher spirit, with, with the things that keep
you running. That's where the success lies.
(34:30):
And that's where
It's that balance. I love that. It
sounds like it was such a liberating moment for you, both professionally and
personally, when that came from within, right? And you were
able, you gave yourself permission to say no, which is something that you probably
(34:51):
I mean, what people please or does say no. Right. Not
Not too many. Exactly. So I love the alignment of
like mind, body and spirit and then making yourself a priority and
It's great. You know, there are people that don't understand and
(35:12):
that's okay. Yeah. It's Maybe
they're not your people anymore. Maybe they're not meant to understand. And
if they are permanent fixtures in your life, then I
bet there's a different way that you can explain it. But if they're not,
it's OK. They're not meant to be there anymore. And for
me, I really, really see
(35:36):
one of my best friend's daughters is going through some things right
now. And we had a quick conversation the other day. And I was like,
you know what? How does it make you feel on the inside?" She's
like, kind of icky. And I said, how long do you want to feel that ick? And she says, I
don't want to feel that ick. And I said, you just gave yourself the
(35:59):
Being able to define how we want to feel. Yeah. What
It's a powerful shift because we weren't taught that growing
up, right? So we sort of have to teach it to ourselves later in life.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Amanda, it's been so great talking to
you. Where can our listeners learn more about you and the work that you
(36:19):
Yes. So the book, I'll start there. I'll start at the end and
work my way backwards. The book is Amazon Barnes
and Noble. So it's a
paperback as well as a Kindle version. I do plan on doing
an Audible soon, just haven't figured that part out yet.
So I'm very excited about that. and the rest of
me is on amandagreaves.com. I'm
(36:49):
on instagram as amanda underscore greaves. I'm on facebook as
amandagreaves9, linkedin amandagreaves9. So
that's where I'm at and I
encourage anybody that's interested to reach out say hello. I
We'll definitely respond back to you and I would love to get to
know who you are and just know where you are in the world and
(37:13):
Amazing. And congratulations on your book. I am so
excited for you on the launch and want to thank you for being here, for
This has been great, Gia. Thank you very, very much. It's an
Thanks, Amanda. And of course, you can visit my website at gialacqua.com. Reach
out on Instagram at Gialacqua. And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and
(37:33):
leave a review. This is Gia signing off with gratitude for your
time and energy. Our mic drops, but the movement continues. Until
next time, your next chapter is waiting. Take care. That
concludes another empowering episode of Your Future Starts Now.
Before we wrap up, I want to thank this incredible community of high-achieving women.
Your energy, resilience, and commitment to growth are the driving force
(37:55):
behind what we do. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate
it, leave a review, and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Your
feedback fuels our mission to empower high-achieving women just like
you. And of course, share Your Future Starts Now with the extraordinary women
in your life who are also on a journey of healing and empowerment. Connect
with us on social media, share your thoughts, let us know what topics you'd like to
(38:17):
explore in future episodes. Stay connected on Instagram at
GiaLacqua. I encourage you to carry the energy of this conversation
into your day and keep on supporting the incredible women around you.
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