I locked myself away for four days to find out if I could actually write a book.

The first morning, I did everything but write. I needed coffee. Then a walk. Then a pen, then a new notebook. And then, finally, I could sit down and write for hours. By the end of my mini retreat I had completed 70,000 words, and something I hadn’t expected: proof that I could trust myself to show up.

That’s the kind of belief nobody can hand you. Someone can call and tell you they believe in you, that you’re going to do this, that it’s amazing. And part of you still won’t buy it. In this solo episode, I share why the only way to really believe in yourself is to take action towards what you want, no matter how small the first step may seem.

I’m in the middle of writing my first book (I’m keeping the details of it close for now), and this episode is an honest look at what it has really taken. Months of reading about writing and circling the idea before I wrote a word. Weeks of flow, followed by weeks when I couldn’t face my desk. And underneath it all, the old stories. Who am I to write this? Is it good enough? Am I good enough?

Here’s what I’ve come to see. Anything worth creating asks you to become the next version of yourself, and the stories you hold about yourself are probably out of date. The only way to update them is to take the first step.

I also talk about why moving slowly isn’t the same as being stuck, what seeds growing through winter can teach us about patience, and Steven Pressfield’s advice to put yourself in the places where your dream already feels possible.

If there’s a creation living in your heart that you haven’t brought into the world yet, this one is for you.

How to Get in Touch:

• Inner Authority Gameplan: https://www.amandaparker.co/gameplan
• Website: https://www.amandaparker.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandaparker.co/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandamparker/
• Substack: https://substack.com/@theamandaparker

Ready to go deeper on your path?

1. Get this episode's full Show Notes with key takeaways, quotes, and resources
2. Start with the Inner Authority Gameplan — a £9 guided experience to cut through the noise and hear your own inner voice
3. Subscribe to Amanda's Saturday Email for insights and essays on inner authority, intuition, and the art of trusting yourself

Amanda left a room full of women she admires and called her husband in a rage.

It made no sense. She'd chosen to be there. She'd paid for the ticket. Every woman who had stood on that stage that day was doing something she genuinely admired. And she spent the whole afternoon getting angrier and angrier, until she ended up outside a hotel in Shoreditch on the phone, shaking.

It took her a while to understand what the anger was actually about. It wasn't the speakers. It was sitting in the audience as a consumer when she knew she could be the one sharing her own wisdom.

Then came the dinner. A private dining room, best-selling authors, founders running million-dollar businesses, a wellness influencer with a million followers sitting across from her. The only empty seat was next to her mentor. And Amanda's first thought was that she wasn't supposed to be in that room at all. Her second thought was the one that changed the night: how many times in her life has she felt exactly this?

This episode is about the gap between who you've actually become and the story you're still telling about yourself. Amanda traces the whole thread back, from picking up a book about angels and stumbling onto the mentor she almost didn't sign with, to the mastermind calls she nearly skipped week after week, to the strangers on Instagram who slowly became friends. She's honest about the resistance, the money stories, the fear of looking stupid, and the lifelong habit of wanting to appear more accomplished than she felt.

If you've ever walked into a space and quietly decided you didn't belong there, this one is for you. Because the invitation isn't to wait until you're ready. It's to go looking for those rooms on purpose, sit down at the table, and let yourself be exactly where you are.

How to Get in Touch:

• Inner Authority Gameplan: https://www.amandaparker.co/gameplan
• Website: https://www.amandaparker.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandaparker.co/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandamparker/
• Substack: https://substack.com/@theamandaparker

Ready to go deeper on your path?

1. Get this episode's full Show Notes with key takeaways, quotes, and resources
2. Start with the Inner Authority Gameplan — a £9 guided experience to cut through the noise and hear your own inner voice
3. Subscribe to Amanda's Saturday Email for insights and essays on inner authority, intuition, and the art of trusting yourself

Someone I admired once told me I was going to win a lot of awards. She meant it as a gift. And for years afterward, every award season that passed without my name in it, some part of me quietly registered it as a shortfall. Even though winning awards had never been my dream to begin with. It was hers, transposed onto me.

This is what happens when other people dream big things for us. On the surface it feels like love. Underneath, it can start to shape a life we never actually chose.

In this solo episode, I draw on Charles Dickens' Great Expectations (by way of an Eddie Izzard one-man show in London) to look at what it does to us when we live inside someone else's vision of who we're supposed to become. I share the story behind that award prediction, and another moment years later when a coach told me to triple my prices and left me paralyzed for six months. Well-meant advice. Real cost.

I also turn the mirror the other way. How easily we do this to the people we love. Projecting our own unfulfilled dreams onto our children, our partners, our clients, our friends. Meaning well, and creating a weight they never asked to carry.

The invitation is to come back to your own center. To trust that you are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. And that the dreams you actually have today, right now, are already enough.

How to Get in Touch:

• Inner Authority Gameplan: https://www.amandaparker.co/gameplan
• Website: https://www.amandaparker.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandaparker.co/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandamparker/
• Substack: https://substack.com/@theamandaparker

Ready to go deeper on your path?

1. Get this episode's full Show Notes with key takeaways, quotes, and resources
2. Start with the Inner Authority Gameplan — a £9 guided experience to cut through the noise and hear your own inner voice
3. Subscribe to Amanda's Saturday Email for insights and essays on inner authority, intuition, and the art of trusting yourself