Amanda Anderson is one of the coaches that we found this month and we did a little interview with her. She impressed us with her wisdom and strength of character.
She does not romanticise resilience. She tells the truth about what it costs, what it builds, and how high capacity people often carry invisible pressure long after the crisis has passed. Through raw honesty and lived experience, she gives language to what many leaders feel but rarely admit.
She transforms pain into perspective. Drawing from profound personal loss, frontline crisis roles, and recovery from her own stroke, she reframes adversity as raw material for identity, strength, and becoming. Her message is clear: resilience is not endurance, it is integration.
She challenges audiences to stop waiting for rescue or validation and start owning their story. Using precise language, reframing, and identity work, she creates moments that shift how people think about themselves, their leadership, and their future. And sometimes, one sentence is enough to change a life. Here is what she said…
Name: Amanda Anderson
Pillar: The Spirit, The Mind, The Heart
Who is this coach for: High capacity leaders, resilient high performers, and people who have carried invisible trauma while still showing up strong for everyone else.
How they can help: By using various tools and techniques like NLP, reframing, identity work, timeline techniques, and precise language to shift mindsets, integrate adversity, and transform resilience into self awareness and empowered leadership.
It is always crazy times in my family, despite any global health care crisis or geopolitical concerns.
But we are doing okay, because we have been through enough to know how to handle whatever life throws at us.
The chaos of the world stage exposes the pressure people carry quietly.
It also provides quite the backdrop to my writing and speaking because it enables me to show how resilience is built in real life, not just in theory.
When the pandemic hit, I was actually recovering from a stroke, so on a personal level, I was slowed down anyway.
But honestly, being an introvert, I thrived.
Give me pen and paper, tea, a blanket, or a fire and my own thoughts, and I am happy.
It gave me the space to really look at my limiting beliefs and do some timeline therapy and reframing work.
I was able to sit with myself in a way I rarely got to.
For many high capacity people, the external crisis exposed an internal one because when everything external slows down, you cannot hide behind busyness.
You meet yourself.
Not the curated version, but the tired one, the scared one, and the honest one.
That invisible cost of constantly holding it together suddenly has nowhere to hide.
That is when it sunk in most.
Resilience is not endurance.
Endurance is white knuckling.
Resilience is knowing who you are when you have played your entire deck and have nothing left to offer anymore.
There is a difference between coping and real resilience.
Coping keeps you functioning.
Real resilience keeps you from losing yourself.
Becoming comes next.
Becoming is what happens when the cost of resilience reshapes you.
It is when the rubble you have carried turns into the building blocks of who you are really meant to be.
I did not exactly set out to have a career in mental health or speaking.
It kind of grew out of surviving life.
I realised one day while taking a gratitude walk through my neighbourhood that if I had received a phone call during that walk informing me that I had a terminal illness and death was imminent, I would be really p*ssed off.
Not only because of said terminal illness, but because of the disappointing reality that smacked me in the face like a wet fish.
I had not been living the life I was actually meant to live.
I had spent years on the frontlines of high pressure and high stakes environments, both personally and professionally.
I had been a first responder in workplaces, a crisis support person, a mental health advocate, and someone who has lived through enough trauma to know what it takes to keep going when falling apart is not an option.
And all of a sudden, in that moment, it became clear to me.
I was meant to share my story and insights, helping people not just survive, but see what they could build from the struggles they have been through.
That led to speaking nationally and internationally.
This included keynotes, panels, and podcasts, anything that lets me translate lived experience into practical and actionable insight.
Over time, I realised I was not just telling my story.
I was becoming a voice for people who carry the invisible cost of resilience.
Drawing on my frontline crisis experience, high level operational roles, and mental health advocacy, I show what resilience really looks like.
I also show how even when the world does not hand you a safety net, you can build your own.
What made me who I am today is a mixture of all the obstacles I faced.
This includes my brother’s murder, my sister’s death, my father’s death, my stroke, my neurodiverse kids, betrayal within my marriage, and the role modelling I got from my parents.
They showed me how to keep showing up when all was lost.
They taught me what actually matters in life and what does not.
Because of that, I grew up knowing I was good enough as I was.
Their belief in me became my belief in me.
That capability, that self trust, and that resilience led to my growth and the building blocks of my identity.
That ability to turn a sh*t sandwich into an ice cream cake now informs how I speak about leadership resilience in high pressure workplaces, policy discussions, and public forums.
It is the lens I use when I talk about culture change because real culture only shifts when people understand what it actually takes to stand up when everything in you wants to fold.
1. I have learned that I do not need someone else to make me feel safe or validated because I can do that for myself.
2. I have learned that pain does not have to break you. It can be the raw material you use to build a stronger and wiser version of yourself.
3. I have learned to see adversity as a teacher, not an enemy, and that resilience is not about perfection. It is about showing up for yourself, even when the world does not.
4. Most importantly, I have learned that being brutally honest with myself and facing my own truth is how real growth happens.
5. I have also learned that not everyone is going to get me. Not everyone is going to like me. Not everyone is going to see the value I bring and that is fine. No one in the history of humanity has had a one hundred percent approval rating, so I am not about to start chasing one now.
6. I have learned the power of reframing. It is not just about what you think, but how you think. If you can manage your mindset, you can manage your emotions. If you can manage your emotions, you can manage your actions, behaviours, and responses. That is where real agency lives.
I now use these lessons to influence leaders, boards, and communities, helping them see not just the output of resilience, but its cost and how it shapes identity and capability.
I do not really coach in the traditional sense.
I share thoughts, reflections, and insights, and create a space where it is okay for people to fully acknowledge their pain and experiences.
I inspire people to be honest with themselves and others and use their trauma, struggles, and adversity as the raw material to rebuild a stronger and better version of themselves from the rubble of their own earthquake.
I also translate these insights into frameworks for leadership, boards, and organisational cultures so my reach is not just one on one, it is systemic.
We are making the rubble useful.
I use NLP, reframing, identity work, and timelines.
But what really makes my approach different is that I am not hiding behind fancy language or philosophy.
I call it how it is.
I share my own pain and the insights I have learned so you can see the way through yours.
I am brutally honest.
I name what you are facing, then show you how I made it to the other side.
I am upfront about what really goes on, especially around the hard stuff such as leadership under pressure and carrying the invisible cost of resilience.
That is why people bring me into rooms as an advisor, speaker, and panelist.
Not because I sound impressive, but because I am willing to tell the truth.
I do not really have clients.
I have an audience.
It sounds egotistical, I know, but it is not meant to.
More often than not, people who hear me on a podcast, sit in a room while I am on stage, read an article or an interview, have that moment where something clicks.
It is that mic drop moment when you are watching a movie and you think she is talking to me.
People walk away with language for what they have been carrying.
They feel seen without being exposed.
They understand their own patterns in a way that now makes sense.
They start to reframe.
They realise it is not just about what happened to them, but how they have been thinking about what happened to them.
They do not leave fixed.
There is nothing wrong with them and in fact they are usually the most emotionally intelligent in the room.
They leave aware.
They leave validated.
They leave challenged.
They leave thinking differently about themselves.
Sometimes that one thought, that one sentence that lands at the right time, is enough to change the trajectory of someone’s life.
That is the benefit.
Efficiency for me is not about back to back sessions or productivity tools.
It is about impact that lands fast and stays with people long after I have left the stage.
Yes, I use NLP.
Yes, I use reframing, identity work, and timelines.
What I really use is precision with language.
I am intentional about how I say things because if I can shift how someone thinks in one sentence, I have shifted the trajectory.
From there, everything shifts.
Life will break you.
It just will.
People you love will hurt you.
Things will happen that you did not choose and cannot undo.
There will be moments where you realise no one is coming to save you.
That is reality.
But you do not need saving as much as you think you do.
You have already done the impossible many times over.
You have survived everything you have been through and that alone is proof that you can handle what is next.
That is the evidence.
Stop waiting for someone to tell you you are enough.
Stop waiting for the world to validate your pain before you move forward.
Face your pain and own your story.
Do not dress it up and do not pretend it did not shape you.
Own it, use it, and build from it.
You have got this and even when it feels impossible, especially when it feels impossible.
Strength is not the absence of damage, it is what you do with it.
Through everything, the loss, the chaos, and the heartbreak, I have realised that I am the one constant I can rely on.
I do not wait for someone else to make me feel safe or whole.
I have become my own anchor, my own guide, and my own proof that I can get through whatever comes.
That is not sad or pessimistic, that is power.
I have come to see it like a process.
Coping leads to survival.
Strength leads to endurance.
Resilience leads to knowing who you are when everything else is stripped away.
Then comes becoming.
Becoming is what emerges when the cost of resilience reshapes you.
It is when all the weight you have carried starts to teach you, sharpen your thinking, and give you the tools to handle life better.
The cost of being resilient is that it shows you what you are made of and changes how you see yourself and the world.
Here are my final thoughts.
We talk about resilience like it is inspirational.
It is not.
It is often built because you did not have another option.
Because no one was coming and collapsing was not practical.
Let us stop romanticising strength and start telling the truth about what it costs.
High capacity people are often traumatised people.
The ones who hold it together in crisis, who lead under pressure, and who look fine learned early that being capable was safer than being needy.
That competence came from somewhere.
If you are that person, the reliable one, the capable one, the one everyone leans on, keep this in mind.
Strength without self awareness will eventually turn into self abandonment.
Resilience is not about enduring more.
It is about integrating what happened so it stops running you.
It is about managing not just what you think, but how you think.
Healing is your responsibility.
Not because what happened was your fault, but because your future is.
I share these truths publicly not to teach resilience as a concept, but to model the reality of living it so people can recognise the human cost and opportunity in adversity.
If you liked this interview and if you would love to remember what you were made of, Coach Amanda can help you do that. Contact her here or explore her website and see all that she can offer.
If you’d like to peak a glimpse into her coaching, you can do that by following her Instagram account. Here is a podcast episode that dives deeper into her story and coaching style:
And if you’d like to connect with her more personally, you can do that through LinkedIn or by sending her a direct message via WhatsApp or via her Email talktome@amanda-anderson.com.au. It was an honor having this interview with her.
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