Ep. 13 | Creative Kids, Origami & the Unexpected Path to Solving Natural Disasters

📖 Episode 13 Summary

In this episode, Amanda explores a powerful and unexpected story that reveals where real innovation often begins: curiosity, play, and creative thinking — before the world teaches us to be “realistic.”

The episode centers on a 14-year-old who discovered that a specific origami fold could hold up to 10,000 times its own weight — a breakthrough with real implications for emergency shelters and disaster relief. But this conversation isn’t about origami or age.

It’s about human potential before it’s constrained.

Drawing on her Stanford-based training in creativity, mindfulness, and emotional intelligence, Amanda breaks down why children are often our greatest teachers when it comes to solving complex problems — and how creativity doesn’t disappear in adulthood, but becomes shaped by belief systems, fear of failure, and attachment to outcomes.

She explores the shift from play to performance, why experimentation fuels innovation, and how environments that encourage curiosity allow ideas to evolve into real-world solutions.

Listeners are guided through a reflective inner-game exercise to uncover:

• where early beliefs still influence their decisions today
• how hesitation, overthinking, or perfectionism may be limiting experimentation
• and what idea or desire has quietly been asking for space to grow

This episode is a reminder that creativity isn’t something you wait to rediscover — it’s something you actively cultivate, strengthen, and refine through curiosity, experimentation, and trust in yourself. Innovation doesn’t start with certainty or permission; it starts with the willingness to explore what’s possible.

Referenced Resources

• A 14-year-old won $25,000 for origami. He discovered a pattern that can hold 10,000 times its own weight, he says.

Transcript

Amanda Escobedo (00:01.74)
Welcome to the Game Changer by Empower House Coaching, your podcast to master the mental game, elevate your brilliance and build a legacy of progress and impact. My name is Amanda Escobedo. I'm your host and intergame coach here to help you change the game. Welcome to episode 13. my gosh. I've been talking for 13 weeks. You poor people hearing me blab. well, thanks for rejoining.

Before I dive into my topic or my article, if you will, for today, this weekend is high rocks. If you are familiar or if you are not, let me just break it down. If you've never heard of high rocks, I only heard of high rocks of last year, maybe the year before I kind of heard about it. And then I've seen it on some friends posts and high rocks.

all the new fab if you haven't heard about it and it's funny because just messaging some friends about it that don't know what it is and then having them spell it back to me is hilarious. It's h-y-r-o-x and I like to call it an endurance challenge. It's almost like CrossFit but they've removed all the obstacles that make it impossible for like a small group of people to join CrossFit. Anybody can join High Rocks and you really just go at your own pace.

It's a bunch of running and then other kind of endurance stuff or strength stuff. And you have to do a thousand meters. I think it's a thousand meters of everything. So for example, you might be running a thousand meters and then you're doing a thousand meters on the skier. You're running a thousand meters and you're doing a thousand meters on the rower. You're running a thousand meters and then you're doing weighted walking lunges or you're doing farmer carries. So you're doing all these different exercises and then you're running in between. for me, I was a little nervous about this.

I'm doing singles, you have the ability to do singles and doubles and doubles means you get to share the work. The weight is a little more, but at least you get to do half of it. There's a bunch of burpees. So I think the hardest or the scariest part for me is really like, gosh, it's strength mixed with runs, strength makes the front. And I always kind of my old mindset starts to come in with running, like running is so hard. I can barely run with my own body weight. And then to run with fatigue legs, when you're doing all these other things, my brain's a little scared.

Amanda Escobedo (02:19.618)
But you train for it. So I've been training and that's what I've learned with all these things. I'm like scared about it's like you just train for it. And now all my workouts have a purpose and I've been super excited, super ready for this weekend, except I've tweaked my knee and actually tweaked it. Maybe a couple of weeks ago I was training for this doing a bunch of endurance stuff. And then I went to do some squats.

and when I squatted I found just a shot between my knee down my calf and generally when I have some type of injury or pain this is where creativity comes in and this is also why I'm bringing this example you know I talk a lot about creativity getting you into your state of flow and creativity on how we're defining it is not about turning you into a painter or an artist where those can be forms of creativity but when we're talking about creativity it just becomes

problem solving and it's the mindset that everything is figure out a bowl. And so for me, every time I have some type of pain or injury, I go on a discovery journey of my body. I know whenever I'm feeling wherever the pain is, the pain is the symptom. It's not the root. So you've heard me talk a lot about, know, some of these previous articles I've brought in about politics and kind of the fight between the right and the left. And one of the biggest

tension points that I start to see with how we're solving problems with our government between the right and the left. know both sides are generally are right to a certain extent they're just looking at the problem from a different angle and we need both angles but as an example a lot of the time I might see you know problem solvers from the right they're solving the symptom and not the root and then people from the left want to solve the roots but they're not considering the symptom.

Right. And so for example, like if something happens to my left, arm or something, I don't know, you know, like, I'm just trying to think if I get a migraine, maybe the migraine is the symptom. I might need excedrin in the moment to relieve the pain, but the migraine roots might be because I have neck tension. It might be because I'm eating poor food. It might be because I'm stressed. And so in the immediate, you need the excedrin to release.

Amanda Escobedo (04:38.22)
the symptom, the pain, the immediate pain relief you're feeling, but you still have to go on the journey of discovering the root to solve the systematic issue. And so it's similar. I want you all to start thinking of problems this way, whether you're in your workplace, whether you're getting frustrated about what's going on in news and the politics, or even when you're considering your own body. This is an opportunity to get creative.

And when again, when we talk about creative, it's really getting into this world of flow into this world of synchronicity. It's really getting us into everything is figure out a ball. And one of the ways, the fundamental ways I want you all to start thinking about problem solving is starting to look at the angle of both the symptom and the root. need pain relief, immediate pain relief, and we need systematic change. And so when I think of, you know, my bodily pain that I'm experiencing,

Whenever I get a tweak of some sort, whenever I feel pain, I go onto this discovery of my body. go into this journey of curiosity. And so with this knee thing, I immediately generally know the pain and the root are two different things, but I don't know where the root is. So that's where my curiosity and I go into this discovery of my body. And so I literally, I go through like my entire body looking for what I consider hotspots. have

like a ball I lay on and try and find out my hip flexors, I'll lay on my glutes, I might get my roller out and roll out my hammies or my quads, I might get my bowl and roll out my feet. I'm trying to see all these different areas and be like, where is the source? And historically, I've been pretty good about just, again, staying curious and being like, wow. And if you guys remember when I was training for my half marathon, right before I was going in my half marathon, I had this pool.

on my hip I couldn't shake. Every time I was going for a run it felt like there was this claw on my hip and what was interesting I went through my glutes my legs all this different stuff it ended up being an issue on the other side of my hip. My other side of my hip felt fine and I had eventually when I was just like poking around in my hip around my glute I found a hot spot and when I pushed on that it relieved the entire claw feeling on the other side of my hip.

Amanda Escobedo (06:56.328)
I had no pain just on its own. these root causes are very underlining. They're not very obvious. so right now, my gosh, I've been again, I spent like I was going to go to gym and I I spent two hours rolling out my body and I was getting relief. But every time I would relief my knee and my ankle and my calf,

immediately would go back to tightness which tells me I didn't find the root. just was relieving all these hot spots but I still hadn't found the root. And so through a recommendation of a friend I went to a PT specialist this week which was working expensive. you have ever gone to physical therapy I have insurance but my insurance does not cover it. It's like 250 dollars for one session.

And they're just asking you 45 million different questions. They're doing all these tests on the body again, similarly to see where could the root be stemming from. And so, you know, one of the things him and I talked about is maybe it's connected to my lower back. I've been having this lower back issue for a long time, but it hasn't really created a lot of issues. And through kind of some of his exercises and his stretches and his testing, I started to discover, is this related to my ankle?

because part of my ankle when he had me do these exercises when I started to stretch my ankle a certain way I started to feel release in my knee. So we're still on the discovery huns and I've got these exercises and I went to the chiropractor today and the chiropractor did this big old yank on my knee and I was like holy mother that hurt felt relief but still it's still kind of going back so we're still on

the discovery zone. But I share all that. have high rocks this weekend coming back to high rocks. I have been so excited because I've been so prepared. And then now I have this need thing and I was excited to kind of like push myself, see what my time will be. It'll be my first time wanted to see, know, all this effort I'm putting in, like how my results will show up. And now I'm in a place of letting go of expectations. So one of the things I'm constantly teaching

Amanda Escobedo (09:05.805)
Part of creativity, part of getting you into your state of flow is to let go of expectations. And letting go of expectations really means letting go of your attachment to the outcome of what you thought the outcome would be. And so a big part of this outcome that I was attached on was results. And now I have to let that go and reframe what this experience will be for me. And now this experience is just about just getting it done and just having fun.

It's not worth pushing myself and tweaking my knee even more. I have the ability to do it and finish it, but I'm going to finish it on my own time. And it was similar, honestly, to the first time I did my half marathon. I had to let go that this was also going to be a time thing. It was going to be my first time doing it. And I was also kind of initially dealing with that hip thing. It was just, you know, Amanda, it's your first half marathon. Just finish. My simple goals were finish and don't stop.

And that's similar. still have a goal with high rocks. My goal with high rocks is to finish and don't stop. And when don't stop means is they have these areas. So when you're running between or you when you're moving between stations, so you have the running zone and the running zone is where you're doing the lap around the equipment, the thousand meters. And then they have these sections which I believe are called the rocks and the rocks is just the space between you going from one activity to another. And so

That's additional time that could be wasted. so generally you still want to take that as an opportunity to run. So my goal when I say, you know, to finish and don't stop is to keep running. So go from one activity to the other and keep my momentum of running and don't walk. But we'll see. We'll see what the body allows me to do. We're going to listen to our body. There has been plenty of times where I did not listen to my body and we have learned our lessons.

Every time I don't listen to my body it takes me out for months. Literally. What I find fascinating about the body, I don't know about you, but for me whenever I have some type of injury, sometimes exercise, well exercise generally is what triggers that injury, but sometimes exercise can actually fix the injury. So a lot of the time for me it's about testing the body to see

Amanda Escobedo (11:31.68)
Is this a moment where the push will actually benefit me? So for example, I've had felt different tweaks in my hips or my glutes or my knees or my ankles. And then when I've gone and gone for a run or I've done some squats or whatever it is, that movement has actually stretched the body out in a proper way that I feel more balanced and that injury actually dissolved itself. So I'm constantly continuing to move and test to see.

Oh, is this a time, a moment of time that it's appropriate to push? Or do I take that feedback and be like, Oh, no, this is a moment of time where you listen to the body and back up. So I'm in tuned. The goal is when you're testing to not be mindless, right? But it's to go in and it's not using this as an excuse, at least for me, if I'm injured, well, I guess I'm injured. I'm just going to sit on the couch, right? One of my dad's favorite comments, he's a massage therapist. One of the things he loves to say is

Motion is lotion. It's like the most hilarious comment, but it's so true. Motion is lotion. And I really take that comment or that statement by heart because again, when I'm injured, if I stay stagnant, makes it worse. Like joints get more, I don't know, more tense, more achy. So you've got to keep moving. this, and I share that and I express this again.

When you're injured, if you've got a health thing going on, it's another opportunity to get curious. It's another opportunity to get creative. It's another opportunity to embody the mindset that everything is figure-addable. All right. That's my little update for you this week. Next episode, I'll tell you how I did, if I survived or not. So you'll get my results in episode 14. So for this week, we are reviewing what I'm considering a game changer.

article. So I'm going to be mixing, I think I mentioned this in the last episode, mixing up some of what we review within this Game Changer podcast. Everything will be related to Game Changer. It'll just be related to Game Changer from a different angle. And this story today, what caught my headlines, or the story title is called A 14 year old won $25,000 for origami.

Amanda Escobedo (13:53.166)
For origami $25,000 a 14 year old he discovered a pattern that can hold 10,000 times its own weight he says. And so creativity, childhood, a 14 year old and also he's looking to reinvent emergency shelters through origami. This article just lets me up. So when I stumbled across this, why did this light me up? Well one, a 14 year old won $25,000. How does a 14 year old win $25,000?

I want to win $25,000. And then it goes into he discovered a pattern that could hold 10,000 times its own weight. Immediately then my reaction goes, there it is. That's the game changer piece right there. He discovered a pattern that can hold 10,000 times its weight. And so that grabbed my attention because I see kid, I see origami, I see discovery, I see physics, I see curiosity, I see creativity, I see innovation, I see possibility.

all from the headline. Now this is to me the type of clickbait that is inspiring rather than the type of clickbait that fuels that furious emotion. And this is the game changer mindset to me at its purest form because this story is expressed from a child. It is about a child because creativity and innovation it does not

suddenly arrive when we become 18 and an adult right it does not suddenly arrive when you graduate from college creativity does not suddenly arrive when you last when you land your first job creativity is not something you earn it's not something you prove or something you achieve creativity is something that we are all born with which is why i was drawn to this story i love getting examples especially from children that

this is what we are born with, this is what we all have. And when we are born with this, it has the opportunity to be nurtured, it has the opportunity to expand, but when it's stifled, it starts to hide. When it's stifled, our creativity starts to feel like it's disappearing, but it actually never disappears. So this headline to me wasn't about origami and paper, just paper. It's really a human potential story from my perspective.

Amanda Escobedo (16:16.566)
It's about a young, curious mind before the world has had the opportunity to really influence it and shut it down. And to me it's a perfect game changer story because it's just ordinary people, a child, doing extraordinary things, just simply following his own curiosity, using his own passions to solve real world problems.

Now before I dive into the summary of this article, and this summary is about a child named Miles, and before I start talking about the summary and the creativity itself and how it's related, I want to just give you a little more background about creativity. Now, creativity, as I mentioned, doesn't just disappear as well. So if I talk about we're born with creativity, it just doesn't disappear in adulthood, but it does become harder to access as you get older.

Why is that? Why does creativity become harder to access as we get older into adulthood? Well, it's because the way our core belief systems start to form for us. So our belief systems, all of your core beliefs, how you think, what you see about the world, what you believe about the world, what you believe about yourself, they are all installed in our tiny little brains. They are installed in our brains between the ages of five and seven.

And so this is the age when child children, start to create internal narratives. We start to create internal narratives and beliefs like I know who I am. This is how life works. This is what's possible for me. This is what's dangerous. This is how I get love. This is how I stay safe. And it's these beliefs, they really come from our environments that we grew up in. They come from our family systems. They come from cultural expectations.

They come from how adults start to respond to our early attempts, our behaviors, how failure was treated, how we've started to observe how failure is treated, how we have started to observe how risk is seen or experienced. It's how much psychological safety we have had when we try and we fail and we have the ability to try again.

Amanda Escobedo (18:30.252)
Now these early influences of our upbringing start to shape how we engage with our creativity. But what I want to be very clear is, you know, our early belief systems, our early environments, they might influence these influence and shape us a bit, but I want to be clear that they do not define us. They do not define our creativity. So your creativity is not gone. Your creativity is not lost.

It is simply buried under conditioning. when I say buried, it depends on who you are, depends on your upbringing, and it also depends on your personality. What do I mean by that? Well, there are some kids in the world that, you know, lot of parents, a lot of teachers, they start to identify as rebellious. They push back so much. Right. Those kids stay bold. Those kids stay imaginative. Those kids stay committed to dancing at the beat of their own drug.

While other kids absorb external factors, both still carry creativity inside of them. So how we might code is rebellious versus the one that learns to blend in. Both have the ability and are born with creativity. One expresses it, whereas the other might protect their creativity.

Now, children, I truly believe, are some of our greatest teachers. If you watch a child long enough, you will see the purest form of creativity before that conditioning starts to hit them, before conditioning begins. If you observe a very small child, let's say before the age of five, right? They're in their

just new to the world phase, they're learning how to walk, learning how to talk, they're in their toddler era. They're so curious, they're so curious because no one has told them not to be yet. They create without asking, is this good? They play without worrying, how do they look? Do they look dumb? Do they look stupid? They try things without feeling stuck. There is no failure for them. They're just trying and getting into things.

Amanda Escobedo (20:51.352)
They explore possibility before understanding limitations. They imagine because imagination is just a natural instinct for them. They attempt because they have no story yet about what failure is. Children haven't lived long enough to hear, that's not practical, that's unrealistic, that's silly. You're not good enough to do that. Be careful, don't embarrass yourself.

A child's mind is innocent. A child's mind is curious. It's expansive. It's inhibited. It's fearless. It's authentic. And this is exactly the mindset that innovation requires. And so what I want to share you is a little bit of a background of the coaching tools that I have been certified in, the roots of these tools. It's funny because I had a client that I had recently onboarded.

And she was very curious on kind of the science and the studies behind the tools that I was using. And one of the notes and the inquiries that she had shared was what she has recognized is a lot of research out in the world has actually been done on men. And it doesn't take into considerations the difference between men and women. So she wanted to know how my approach

of my coaching was, what kind of tools they were and what kind of research was backed and what did they research. And I shared with her, I was like, wow, what an interesting perspective. One thing that did come to mind with what she said on research is I have also read, you know, a lot of the health and wellbeing research is done by men. So for example, I had learned and I had read this study or something that fasting is really good for you and fasting is really good right before a workout.

and when later working with my nutritionist I learned that's actually really bad for females that really messes up our hormones it's actually really important for females to have pre-workouts to eat before we work out just to ensure that we have a hormonal balance so that's a something that I could connect with that was something recently I had learned and then like with her statement and curiosity I was like wow how many other research is only based on men and not women

Amanda Escobedo (23:04.712)
and just got me curious. But when I brought her a bit of my background and my tools, I shared, you know, a big part of my background. I'm actually certified in a couple of different certifications, but one of the core tools that I really bring my clients through is this Stanford University system and this self-discovery course in mindfulness and emotional intelligence. And this story or these tools are really actually based on the research of children.

And so, and she was very excited to hear that. I was like, all of this is actually research based on kids because kids are some of the most creative beings in the world. So a little backstory on these tools and why they were researched and why they were formulated. So there is a professor that used to be a professor at Stanford University, he's a professor and a researcher. And quite a few decades ago, a lot of the MBA programs were getting a ton of criticism because

The criticism was these MBA programs were producing these MBA students that were too overly data driven. They didn't trust themselves to make decisions without data. They were getting into analysis paralysis. They froze with ambiguity. They really lacked intuition and really at the core creativity. So Dr. Michael Ray went on a journey of studying creativity and he studied some of the most creative beings on the planet.

Children! He found with studying children, what do they do all day? let me just back up again. Why are we studying children? Because children are some of the most imaginary beings on the planet. How many of them have like fake friends, imaginary friends? They're like creating these stories of la-la land and they are just dancing to the beat of their own drum.

And so he's studying these children, what he recognized and realized with children, what do they do all day for like almost eight hours of day? They are playing all day. So what he've learned about them as children, they are playing all day. They have a huge imagination. They are just full of experimentation, wonder and curiosity.

Amanda Escobedo (25:15.822)
When I talk about experimentation, think about one of the things I love to watch. you follow my Instagram feed, my algorithm is a bunch of personal development, dogs and babies. I find babies so fascinating. What I love about watching some these baby videos is just one, the experimentation piece as I just highlighted here. Imagine this kid eating real food for the first time. They don't know how to hold a fork.

They're just grabbing like whatever's in front of them. They're not even making it in their mouth. The food's all over their place, all over their plate, all over their face. It's all over the floor. There's no perfection there, right? It's the first time they're ever eating real food. They don't know how to do it. They have no self judgment in the process, right? Think about kids experimenting. You know, they started not even being able to hold their heads up and then they figured out how to crawl, to walk, to run. But even just that

from figuring out how to crawl to walk, to stand on their own. It's a lot of experimentation. They just keep trying. They just keep trying. They just keep trying, right? And then full of wonder. I can't tell you how many parents I've come across that are like so annoyed that their kids are part of that like hyper question phase. They're just asking 45 million questions. Like, why is the sky blue? Why is the grass green? Why do we do that? Why, why, why, why, why?

And that is the wander that we are talking about that kids are just full of wonder and curiosity. again, going back to before the ages of five and seven, know, kids really live outside of rules. They don't know what rules are. They're dancing to the beat of their own drum. This is before their belief systems have been installed in them. They have no boxes. They have no limitations. They draw outside the lines.

They have so much at this young age willpower. have so much strength. They have so much compassion. They have so much intuition. And Stanford University really talks about the essence of creativity is willpower, is strength, is joy, is compassion and intuition. Now, what do we mean by that? You know, if we go to, again, know, willpower, I love like, hope a couple of parents have told me I don't have any kids, but.

Amanda Escobedo (27:36.138)
All you're doing as a parent at this very young age is you're just trying to negotiate with your kid, right? You're just trying to get them to do what you want them to do. But it's so hard because they have so much willpower. Go back to thinking when you're in Target and they want that toy, they will scream bloody murder, have a temper tantrum. They will do anything. They do not care that you said no. Okay.

They will keep trying to get what they want. I even think of my dog. That's my dog. My dog, took me up to friggin three months to create train him. He was not going to listen to me. Right. So think about willpower. We're actually all born with strong, strong willpower. When we talk about strength, resilience, this is a bit about, you know, the frustration, the brick wall of frustration that many adults come across. We get so frustrated when we come across one brick wall.

But going back to the example of just thinking about how hard it was for us to figure out how to walk, how many trials and errors it took from crawling, attempting to stand, fall, rolling, attempting to crawl, stand, falling, rolling, over and over and over and over again, right? Whereas as adults, we try to do something once we fail at it and we just stop. Joy. are as kids are born with so much joy.

That's another reason why I really love watching kid videos online. They are so easily pleased. They're like easily fascinated and pleased by like a chip bag, by crinkling foil. They don't know what a toy is to make them happy. They are so pleased by the simple things in life. But you know, as adults, it's almost like things do not become good enough. It's like, I need that Gucci bag to be happy. I need to make a certain amount of salary to be happy. I need to have this type of

house to be happy. Our joy comes from things, from the outcomes. Whereas when we were all born, it was simple. Kids didn't know the difference between rich and poor. Give them a chip bag and they're happy. Right. But somehow we have lost our way as adults. Compassion. Kids are filled with compassion. Right. So much love and so much compassion. Whereas as adults, it's we hit one

Amanda Escobedo (29:56.591)
traumatic moment and it's almost like that bad thing that's happened to us that heaviness it becomes this baggage that we carry with us it becomes our permanent mood we're always searching then for the worst in people we believe everyone is out to get us and then intuition when we're talking about intuition you know as kids we know when we're hungry right we know when we have to poop when we have to pee and as adults how many times do we eat pass full

As adults, how many times do we work past stress? As adults, how many times do we stay up and scroll past tired? This is where we are starting to lose our intuition, but we're born with these key essence of creativity and play. know, again, going back to kids move to the beat of their own drum, they do things just for the sake of it. They just not for any type of external reward or anything. Whereas adults, I like to say that we do things

that are always connected to one of the three Rs. We do something because there's a responsibility, the have to, right? We do something because there's a reward. We do something for recognition. And as an example, you know, doing something for a responsibility, that might look like I have to pick up the kids from school. I have to take, I have to do the laundry. I have to vacuum. I have to pay the bills, whatever it is. It's all the have to, the to dos, the responsibilities.

If we're talking about reward, we might be doing something because I might be getting a bonus, I might be getting a promotion, I might be getting a People First Award, really that paycheck. And then recognition, right? Maybe I want recognition, a hurrah, hooray, like Amanda did this whole thing. I want that title. Or maybe that's really where People First Award comes in. Either way, that's that recognition. We're doing something for one of the three Rs. Adults have now become

outcome based. We act because there is an outcome whereas children, they just play for the experience. And that shift, that shift from play to performance is where creativity starts to dim for us. And it's not to say we don't lead with intention. It's not to say we don't lead with standards, right? That's not what we're saying here. It's not to say we don't lead with direction. That's not what I'm saying at all. Clarity is important.

Amanda Escobedo (32:18.744)
But this is why Miles' story, the story about Miles and his origami to me is so much more of why all of this matters because he shows us exactly what creativity looks like before the world starts to interfere on us. Now let's bring you in on Miles' story. So Miles' story, he is 14 years old. This is a 14 year old from New York City.

A young adult now, but he's been on a journey of origami and you know, he didn't set out with origami to win awards. That was not his intent. He didn't set out with origami to solve global engineering problems. He started with just origami. He started with folding paper because he had an interest in folding paper at a very young age.

So over six years, so from the ages of eight to 14, he started folding animals, started folding insects, geometric shapes, and eventually he began designing his own folds. And later in life as well, he learned about natural disasters. So the recent wildfires in California, Hurricane Helene, the challenges of emergency shelters is what he started to learn about world problems.

And he wondered, huh, I wonder if origami can help solve this. This is really a true game changer question. Not a lot of questions that most adults ask now, because maybe it feels like we wouldn't ask that feels impossible venture. It feels like a lot of work, right? Maybe you feel like you don't have the resources to answer a hard question like emergency shelters, but kids, this is the kid.

that is very particular, he is asked the question because he doesn't have those thoughts yet. He doesn't have those beliefs yet. And maybe in another home environment he might, but not in his home environment, not how he grew up. In reading through this article, it doesn't seem like he was surrounded by anyone that questioned his capabilities, his curiosity, or his hobbies. It sounds like he's actually been encouraged to wander, which is exactly what creativity means.

Amanda Escobedo (34:32.258)
needs just a little encouragement of its possibilities. Why not me? Why can't I solve this problem? Now coming back to origami, before coming to the question of how to solve a natural disaster, initially was fascinated by a specific type of fold. I might be butchering how you call this fold. A mirror-ori fold? Am I really right?

knows what this is called and it's like, maybe that's not how you say it. I think it's a Meru-i-ori-folds. I'm going to call it the M-fold. Okay. Let's just simplify it. The M-fold. So the M-fold is a repeating geometric pattern that collapses and expands with incredible precision. And it's actually already used in aerospace. It's used in medical devices, robotics, solar arrays. And so Miles really wondered, you know, he was curious about

much weight this origami fold could hold. And this question left him into a full curious, scientific mode. And part of this scientific mode, he actually joined a like an innovation thing which I'll share in just a second, part of this question of curiosity brought him into experimentation mode. And this experimentation mode actually produced 108 trials

54 variations of folding. Zero fear. So Miles tested 3 pellulagrum widths, 3 angles, 2 heights, 3 types of pieces of paper. Again, 54 variations, 108 trials. He folded the paper by hand, used guardrails for consistency, stacked weights until each structure collapsed. So again, he's trying to test the weight of paper.

He's putting weights on pieces of paper. He used items around his house to support the experiment. He eventually ran out of books. He ran out of textbooks. His parents actually had to buy gym weights because the origami started exceeding his expectations of how much weight it could actually hold. His hypothesis was partially right. He predicted smaller angles.

Amanda Escobedo (36:59.246)
um in his fold would actually help the weight so that piece was accurate. He predicted a thicker bold paper in favor of holding more weight and it actually turned out ordinary copy paper the cheapest material had the best strength to weight ratio so not the thicker paper. Now one of his structures that he produced held 10 000 times its own weight.

I want you to think of that. structure that he created, hold it 10,000 times its own weight. Equivalent to a New York taxi holding 4,000 elephants. Think of that people. Just let's just hold on to that visual for one second. A New York taxi holding 4,000 elephants. That's 10,000 times its weight. Wow. So a child discovered that printer paper folded a certain way becomes a structural powerhouse.

He does not have an engineering degree. He is not in a corporate lab. He has no fear of failure, just curiosity and experimentation. Now it's examples like this, I'll be honest, that I do get a little frustrated. Why would I be frustrated on such a positive story? Well, it's the HR side of me. So for most of you that know, I have a background in HR and some of the laws in place and some of the...

I'll say legacy HR way of thinking, I believe block creativity. here's, and I'll give you a perfect example of why. If you're familiar with how we pay employees, there is what's called non-exempt and there's what's called exempt employees. And so non-exempt are generally hourly wages. You clock in, you clock out, right? And then exempt is generally salary wages. There's no overtime within that.

And so one of the battles I've seen specifically in the tech world is level one engineers are coded as non exempt. And I've partnered with executives and tried to go to battle with them to make exempt, make those level one engineers. And when we talk about level one engineers, it's someone fresh out of college. means they probably came into the organization through an internship. So we've already tested, we've put them on projects, we've trained them, we've got to see their type of work, we've got to evaluate their.

Amanda Escobedo (39:20.462)
critical thinking. And then eventually when they graduate from school, we might convert them to a level one engineer and the job family matrix, if you will, the leveling of the organization codes, a level one engineer is non-exempt. And so I've had executives really push hard that it does not make sense that these level ones are non-exempt. They are, they are critical thinking. And so some of the determination, there's actually these law tests that you have to pass, like

Depending on the salary, depending on how much you make, it might make your job non-exempt versus exempt. But a big core of the test is really evaluating your job. Is it task oriented? Do you have to be told what to do? Do you have to follow a process? Something like that would be more non-exempt hourly. But on the other side, there's really the ability to act autonomously. It's the ability to really solve problems, have critical thought. And one of the battles I've come across was specifically in California.

where some of the cases that has come to the organization, it's been California specific, and it didn't matter what proof you had, California really did not believe that someone graduating from college had the ability to have critical thought. And my brain exploded. I'm like, someone has to graduate from college first off to have critical thought. Two, you're saying someone graduating with a four-year degree does not?

have critical thought, it doesn't make any sense to me. And so coming back to this example with Miles, this is a perfect note of you do not need a degree to have critical thought. We're actually all born with this, but it's the belief system, the upbringing, our systems, our surroundings, our environment that might start to dim our critical thought, that might start to dim our creativity. So it's a bit frustrating. I just recently was just partnering with this executive trying to help them with their whole job.

and helping create a case for them, but we got denied. And the frustrating part of the denial was less about validating, you know what, Amanda and executive, you are both right on the critical thought. I think I was more frustrated because I was like, I can understand if you say the law as the blocker, but you as an individual do not believe that someone can have critical thoughts graduating fresh out of college. And that's where I'm like, you're projecting, you're limiting beliefs on other people. Maybe you can't have

Amanda Escobedo (41:46.327)
thoughts but don't be speaking for other people. And that's where I just get frustrated. That's my demand event. But going back to I think this is a perfect example of critical thought. This is a perfect example of creativity and innovation without schooling, without education. This is a child that has come up with an innovative solution. And so Miles won. So part of this whole experiment he was a part of an innovation challenge.

And so Miles ended up winning the top national prize, beating other nearly 2000 applicants. Judges were not just evaluating his project. They evaluated problem solving. They evaluated leadership, collaboration, emotional intelligence, resilience. They evaluated critical thinking and how he handled setbacks. And one judge really said that and highlighted that Miles shine as a leader.

Now what is Miles's dream now? Because the dream don't stop here by winning the $25,000 reward. Well his dream now is to build a prototype emergency shelter based on the M design of origami. What a powerful dream at age 14 his dream right now is to build a prototype emergency shelter based on origami.

inspired by his learnings about natural disaster, wildfires in California, I mentioned Hurricane Helene, the challenges of emergency shelters. And this is example people where I talk about how do you turn your passion into purpose? How do you turn your passion into impact? He's turning a passion of piece of paper folding into solving world problems, national problems. I share this people because this is what I'm talking about.

What are your desires that you wish to follow? What are you passionate about? What are you frustrated about? And how can we transform that frustration into purpose for you? Miles at age 14 wondered, how can I solve this with origami? How simple. Now let's bring back the inner game process and bring in some coaching connections with this Miles story. I do feel like I've highlighted a lot, but I do want to break up.

Amanda Escobedo (44:04.216)
Just a few core ones that really want to sit and resonate with you. Number one, Miles followed his interests, his desires. In the coaching world, we really believe that everyone has desires that are very unique to you. Again, one of my desires is connection. I love depth. I love connection. Whereas other people are like, ugh, get that heaviness, those emotions away from me. I am drawn.

to people's emotions. I am drawn to getting to know their soul. Whereas other people are like, keep me in the surface level. No, no. Surface level feels like a heavy weight for me. Get me away from surface level conversation. I am drawn to death, which brings me into this coaching world because I have the ability to get to know a soul, to unlock human potential. When we talk about desires,

I've had this innate desire for so long to get into a fight. Literally as a child, it has been sitting in me. It has been just stored inside my soul. And at age 38, I now am finally finding an avenue to store and have a platform for that energy, is jujitsu. And following those desires, I'm finally starting to build a community and building people of other interests of similar mindsets.

And so following these desires we really talk about in the coaching world bring you to your innate gifts. They bring you to your community. They bring you to your purpose. And so continuing to just follow your desires because your desires are unique to you. We do not all have the same planted seeds in our hearts and our minds and our souls. They are unique to you. And so when you follow your desires, I want you to understand what comes with following and engaging in your

desires. What comes with following your desires comes with enthusiastic enthusiasm. Right? If someone tasked me, if I were in an organization, if someone tasked me with Amanda, your job, I'm going to put you on this project and your project is to eliminate toil, create efficiencies with all of our technologies, remove redundancies, right? Find duplications and remove them. I could probably do that. I mean,

Amanda Escobedo (46:25.492)
me on anything I'll figure out anything I can I can do that for you but that would really drain my battery I have zero desire to create more efficiencies with technology and identify redundancies and duplications I have zero desires but if someone put me in an organization and was like Amanda we've got a ton of people issues nobody's getting along everybody's fighting it's all friction we need your help I'd be like done

That would excite me. That would energize me. Your creativity is dependent on your enthusiasm. And dependent is a strong word. You can be creative without it. We're talking about activating human potential. We're talking about getting you into your state of flow. The more we can get you into things that excite you, that energize you, that you are enthusiastic about, the more we can get you into your creative world of flow. Here's one more example of following desires.

and understanding what connects with you, what energizes you, understanding any gifts. I went to last year in an Nvidia conference, okay? The big speaker, Jensen Huan, right? He was the big speaker and everyone was super excited. I'm here at his little conference. He's doing his speaker note thing and his talk is energizing. Like everybody's energized. I'm energized. We're talking about an AI. We're talking about the future. It's so cool. And then he hits a point.

where his speech gets super technical. Okay. It starts to get super technical and literally I've been sitting there. My brain starts to go system down system crashing. And I literally my whole body starts to just break down my energy. My fatigue starts to sit in. Whereas all the engineers around me are hyped by this conversation. All the technologists are like super like, yeah, wow. So fascinating.

not me. These are different human experiences. That's okay. But this is where I'm talking about following your innate desires. You will start to discover your innate gifts. You will start to discover how to activate your full potential, your creativity when you start to engage in activities that create enthusiasm inside of you. Now the other part that I want to talk about for miles that really is about

Amanda Escobedo (48:47.758)
creativity is the environment that supported his experimentation. Supportive environments, they don't just create creativity, but they allow your creativity to stay open, energized, and playful. Right? And so how can we apply this to you? You know, your upbringing is your upbringing. We can't take away how you were brought up, whether your parents discouraged you to do certain things or encouraged you to do other things that were less you, whether teachers, whatever.

We can't take away how you were brought up. All we have is today and the future. And when we talk about today and the future and we talk about an environment, you all have heard the quote that you are the average of your five friends. Who's around you, right? When we talk about who's around you, what do they think? What do they believe? What do they believe is possible? What do they believe can and cannot be done, right? What do they think of themselves? What do they think of you? And so, you know, for me,

I went on this fitness journey as an example I've been trying to get into new fitness and I was working out in my gym in my apartment which is fine but you you max out at a certain weight and I was feeling like super strong I was like I'm so strong I can do the strongest weight in my gym and then I decided to invest in this really expensive gym which is kind of like an equinox it's a car payment a month and I met all these people

And then I met these people that I was like, wow, these are next level fitness people. Everyone has next level fitness goals. They're doing marathons, Ironman. They're doing, I don't know, they're in fitness competitions or in jujitsu competition. Everyone's in something. And the amount of weight that I'm looking around me because this gym has everything. I was like, wow, I'm a teeny bopper. I can't lift crap.

But being around these people motivated me, energized me, inspired me. And so think about the people around you. Are they a group of people that keep you stuck, limit your possibilities? Are they the ones that are afraid of discomfort, getting out of your comfort zone? Are they afraid of risk? Are they about certainty? And that's what we want you to think about. You need an environment that's going to cultivate your creativity.

Amanda Escobedo (51:04.378)
The other part that I really want highlight with Miles is in his process of experimentation, it required him and it requires you to work without expectations. Letting go of expectations, letting go of your attachment of the outcome. This is really related also when you're letting go of your attachment of the outcome then comes in the opportunity of strength, determination, and resilience.

There's no fear. There's no perfection. There's only exploration. And this is why one is capable of doing 108 trials. This is why one is capable of doing 54 variations because every time you fail on that first trial and you're going to the second trial and the third trial, you're letting go of your expectations, right? You have no attachment to the outcome. You're just approaching this as a curious scientist, as a curious scientist just observing what is.

Nothing's bad and nothing's good. And this is the mindset that most adults lose. The mindset that is required to unlock innovation is very rare in today and it doesn't need to be. I'm trying to teach you all the secret formula. You know, if you're familiar with the platform, the application Canva, as an example, the founder, Melanie Perkus, she got over a hundred nos on her idea before an investor believed in her, believed in investing in her idea. Walt Disney.

We know the powerhouse of Walt Disney. got rejected over 300 times by 300 banks before one bank believed in his idea. That's about letting go of expectations. If you let go of your attachment to the outcome, you keep your intention. And this is where we talk about keep your intention, keep your vision. But as you're trying to achieve that, things are not going to go as expected. So you have to let go of your attachment of everything you're trying and experiment.

and keep the mindset of trial and learn, trial and learn, trial and learn. Now let's bring all of this back to you. If we bring this back to you, I want to guide you into a reflection moment. I want you to reflect on your upbringing. What kind of behaviors were encouraged for you? What behaviors were discouraged? What hobbies were encouraged versus discouraged? What was your internal monologue? I'm capable.

Amanda Escobedo (53:27.384)
My ideas matter. It's safe to try. Or did you think, I need to be perfect. Failure is dangerous. I need to fit in. How did you feel as a child growing up? Did you feel confident? Did you feel anxious? Did you feel grounded, joyful? How do you feel today as an adult? What's the internal monologue you have today? Is it similar or different from your childhood?

And how does that belief system show up in your actions today? Do you hesitate? Do you overthink? Do you wait until you're ready to take action? Do you wait to get to be ready to make a decision on a business decision? Are you waiting for perfection to get married, to have a children, to have a child? Do you avoid risk or do you trust yourself easily? This is the inner.

game work. And what are your desires? What's been whispering to you for years? Starting a business? Launching a podcast? Opening a wellness center? Writing a book? Opening a cafe? Changing careers? What idea has refused to go away? If you haven't started on the venture, what stops or slows you down? Is it time? Is it money?

Experience? Fear of failing? Uncertainty? Fear of being judged? Looking stupid? Fear of starting over? These thoughts come from your childhood, your belief system, not your actual capabilities. And where can you begin experimenting today? Just trying. Just folding your first metaphorical piece of paper. Your origami. For miles,

His whole journey started with just an interest in folding paper. Miles's story is not about being 14. It's not about talent. It's not about origami. It's a reminder of who you were before the world told you to be realistic. Before responsibility replaced curiosity, before recognition replaced play, before survival

Amanda Escobedo (55:55.328)
replace creativity. Your creativity is still there. Your intuition is still there. Your inner innovator is still there. Your game changer mindset is still there. It is waiting for you to return it. Just like Miles did one fold at a time. All right, folks, my name is Amanda Escobedo and you've been listening to Game Changer. If today sparked

Ah-hahs, appreciations, new perspectives. I'd be so grateful if you subscribed, left a review, and shared this episode with three people in your network who are ready to master the inner game and unlock their potential. Your support helps others discover this resource and invites them to be the next game changer. Join me next time for another conversation on leadership, culture, and creating impact that lasts. Thanks for listening.