WANDS or WEAPONS: UNCORKED with AMANDA O’ROURKE

What if the thing slowly tearing apart your business, leadership, and inner life isn’t pressure, competition, or complexity, but the quiet violence of how you think, speak, and judge? And what if the very thing that could save you isn’t another system or strategy, but a radical return to compassion?

In this deeply human and candid UNCORK conversation, Tim Windsor sits down with Amanda O’Rourke to explore a truth most leaders avoid until it’s nearly too late: the way you treat others often reflects how you treat yourself. From high-pressure leadership settings to personal self-discovery, Amanda shares the moment she realized her judgment toward her team and herself was undermining everything she was trying to build. What followed wasn’t a soft shift but a disciplined, deliberate reorientation toward compassion as a force, not just a feeling. Together, they discuss how judgment can suffocate connection, how empathy can free it, and why loyalty isn’t demanded but earned through how we show up. 

But this episode goes even deeper. It confronts the hidden power of language, the words we casually speak that quietly shape identity, relationships, and reality. Words, as Amanda puts it, are either wands or weapons. You are casting spells every time you speak. The challenge is unavoidable: Are your words building people or breaking them? Are they freeing you, or imprisoning you? This conversation will push you to examine your own patterns, your own accountability, and your willingness to change before life forces you to. Because in the end, compassion is not weakness; it is the bravest, most transformational discipline you can choose.
 
Tim Windsor
the UNCOMMODiFiED Podcast – Host & Guide
tim@uncommodified.com
https://uncommodified.com/
  
PRODUCERS: Alyne Gagne & Kris MacQueen 
MUSIC BY: https://themacqueens.ca/

Transcript

PLEASE NOTE: UNCOMMODiFiED Podcast episode transcriptions are raw text files and have not been proofed or edited. They are what they are … Happy Reading.

 © UNCOMMODiFiED & TIM WINDSOR

What if the thing that could save your business, your relationships, or maybe even your sanity, isn't just another strategy, a system or a surge of hustle, but compassion itself. And what if the most powerful tool you carry every day, it's not your title or your experience or your intelligent, but your words.

 The ones you choose, the ones you avoid, the ones you aim at yourself or others. Because words, they can cut, they can corner people, they can control, or they can heal, they can humanize and help us find our way back to ourselves and to each other. Today we're stepping into a conversation that refuses to treat compassion as soft or sentimental.

We're gonna talk about it as a force, a discipline, a decision, even one that has the power to save us from burnout, isolation, and the quiet violence of how we talk to ourselves and those around us at times. Hey, my friends. Welcome back to the Unmodified podcast. I'm Tim WinDor, and today my guest on the show is someone who's lived at the intersection of pressure and purpose, performance and wellbeing.

Amanda O'Rourke, welcome to the show.[00:01:00] 

Thanks, Tim. It's lovely to be here.

I'm looking forward to this. It's gonna be a lot of fun. Now a bit about Amanda. Amanda has built and scaled and sold a highly successful business. She's led teams carried responsibility and lived inside high stake environments where words matter and stress leaves real impact. And through that journey, she's discovered something.

Most leaders learn far too late in their life that compassion is not in opposition. Or competitive to success, it is the pathway to it. In this conversation, Amanda and I are gonna explore how compassion saves us and others, which is interesting. I'm looking forward to that, how the language we use shapes our lives as well as the lives of others.

And why the bravest leaders are not the hardest or harshest, they're the most human. This is not gonna be a fluffy conversation, but it is going to be absolutely a necessary one that might require a drink. Amanda. So what are you drinking today?

Um, I've got a lovely glass of white, um. Sauvignon Blanc.

Oh, that sounds [00:02:00] good. So I decided to go. I went white wine as well, although I don't drink a lot of white wine, but I do like white wine. And there is a winery, a small sort of boutique winery, not far from where I live in Niagara, on the Lake Ontario. And this is from a private, uh, winery. And it's a beautiful, Riesling.

So I'm gonna pour myself a glass of that. Cheers to you, Amanda.

Cheers, Tim.

Mm. Oh yeah. Quite refreshing actually. I like that. Quite refreshing. All right, Amanda, let's hit the ground running , and obviously uh, I have this belief that. Questions are powerful. They're superpower 'cause they propel, they cause to happen and they actually predict the conversation 'cause they create a boundary in which the answer typically gonna happen.

So I wanna talk about this idea, 'cause when you and I first met, you said something to me that I wrote down and I highlighted in my notes because it just pierced. My mind, and more importantly, it pierced my soul. It was just like a wonderful, not a [00:03:00] knife that wounds, but a scalpel. And when you said it, I was just provoked by it.

And you made a comment about compassion and how compassion saves us. So I wanna get right into the teeth of this and just start there and then we'll see where we go. What does that mean to you? Why would you say that to me? And what in your life and experience has informed that belief? 'cause that is interesting.

So let's start there. How does Compassion save us?

It's a great question and I think to answer it, I really need to sort of. Give you the context of my story and, and when I said to you, compassion saved me, it was, I felt at that point in my life that I needed to change. I, I, I knew that I had that, um, kind of, not an epiphany moment, but a moment where I knew that something needed to change.

And I realized very quickly that that had to be me and the way I was behaving. Um, nobody was coming to [00:04:00] save me. I was in business and it was one of these things where I was running Ship. So I had to do something different, and it occurred to me that the way I was behaving to others was not fair to them.

Hmm.

But more than that, the way I was behaving to myself was unfair to me too. And. It was almost as if I had this knowing that I needed to start being kinder to myself and if I showed more compassion to others, that would enable me to be compassionate to myself and vice versa. So I think the more you give, the more you get when it comes to kindness.

But I also think you have to give to yourself first. It goes back to that you can't pull for an empty cup, but one of my employees actually said to me, Amanda, you can't give what you haven't got.

Hmm.

And I think that. Of compassion.

Interesting. So, you're running a business, um. You've got a lot of things going on. You have a fairly large staff at that point, if I [00:05:00] recall, in the journey, and you start to have this, this epiphany, not an epiphany that you said, but something changes, A shift happens, and you feel somehow badly about how your business has taken you to a point of how you're treating your staff.

Yes,

But more importantly, or as importantly, I wouldn't say more importantly, you recognize that part of this is that the way you're treating your staff is actually a reflection of how you're actually treating yourself.

correct.

Wow, that is a powerful revelation. And I'm just gonna pause right there. Again, if you're listening in listeners, I always say you're listening for a reason.

Uh, you'd have, you have a lot of other better things you could be doing with your time, but you are choosing to spend time and share space with Amanda and I today. Uh, wow. Maybe that's your situation in your life or in your business. And maybe you need to just really ask yourself, what is this conversation gonna hold for me?

So, so you have this idea, this big thing begins to percolate. , Let's take two paths. So [00:06:00] where does that revelation lead you in relation to your employees and your business? And where does it start leading you from a personal perspective?

So I think, I think it led me firstly to look at how I was treating other people, how I was regarding them. And I knew from previous, uh, incarnations in the way that I worked, I was quite judgmental of others. And, , it was something that I wanted to change. I wanted to be more considerate, more compassionate about other situations rather than judging it on what I saw to be the truth of what was going on for them.

, And I read certain books around it. There's a great book called Judgment Detox by, , Gabrielle Bernstein. And she talks about, , seeing people for the first time.

Hmm.

And that was something that really struck a chord with me is that, you know. Forget the baggage, forget the history that you have with somebody.

See them for the first time.

Hmm.

And then alongside that, I came another, across another, , paper [00:07:00] about seeing the child in, in the person in front of you and meeting their needs rather than your own first. And so I decided that was the opportunity for me to try it out. And so I started practicing that and. In tandem with that, I started to see the good in people that I hadn't yet seen.

Wow.

As soon as I started to see light in others, I saw more light. In others, it grew.

Wow. It's fascinating to me that you, your journey towards compassion takes you through confronting judgment. So I'm not sure that we necessarily see these things together when we talk about them, and I'm not sure that we recognize that connection. But judgment clouds our ability to show compassion.

In this case, you're saying it makes us less compassionate. I guess that makes sense. There's a proportional nature. [00:08:00] The more judgmental I am, more than likely, the less compassionate I am. There's probably a sliding scale. Keeping these things together, I find that really interesting and I would say that's probably a problem that many people have.

Yeah, and I think it's a reflection of, you know, the quotes, be curious, not judgmental. I think it is a reflection of that, that we judge too quickly. We don't get curious about what's going on for you.

Yeah. It's so true. It's interesting 'cause the word compassion is a fascinating word when we look at the root of it. I always love sort of where words come from and what they mean when you break them down. Although we often don't think about it, but calm literally means the calm and passion. We look at just COM, it has to do with to be moved with or almost, driven by, and.

So we take the second word, compassion actually literally means to be moved by, or to be moved to move with passion. So within compassion is this desire [00:09:00] of, if I have passion for you, if I, if I have appreciation for you and I move with it's this urgent action, that passion. Brings that where I move with a positive passion towards another human.

So I find that interesting, but I'm also seeing a connection again that it's very difficult to do that when I'm judgmental of others. Now, you had this revelation about your employees during this journey, and of course this has led you on a path. You ended up eventually selling your business. We'll talk about that.

And then you now are in a whole nother sort of career path. But were you fundamentally as judgemental of yourself? Or even more than you were of your own employees and your team.

I think we're always our own worst enemy, and I think I've seen that in hundreds of people that I've coached, that we are the harshest critic that we will ever meet on this, on this earth. And I was definitely. Worse towards myself than I was to others. , And I love the way you framed it [00:10:00] earlier as, as a reflection.

I think that is so true that, you know, what we see out is a reflection of what's within, you know, it's that principle, that law of correspondence as within so without, so how you treat yourself will actually then be reflected out and it's a reflection. So I always think it's not as, as sharp as what the actual image is, which is the way you treat yourself.

Yeah, I totally agree. And I think maybe there's also a role of empathy in this too. You know, as you talk about it, I'm reminded of my own experience more historically with my parents. I came from a rather difficult upbringing and. I was very critical and judgmental of my parents, , most of my life.

, And that led to, I think, really unhealthy relationships at times with them, but also an unhealthy relationship with myself. And I came to a point in my life, , and I wrote about it actually in, in my first book on commodified. And what I said is, the revelation I had is. [00:11:00] I, I looked back, I began to look back at a series of experiences that I had as a young child with my parents.

And I chose, I made an active choice no longer to look at them from the place of being victimized by them, but actually being an what I called an empathetic observer of those experiences. And so as I took the role, almost like I recreated those scenarios and I was. You know, metaphorically floating in the room watching it happen, I decided to say, what if I took a more empathetic observer role of this situation, or of my parents' life, or of their experience?

And when I started taking a more empathetic observer role as opposed to a judgmental role. I actually found freedom for myself because I recognized that the pain that my parents were experiencing or the circumstances of their lives had led to both intended and unintended consequences for them that were really shaping their behavior.

Probably no different in some ways, and maybe some of your [00:12:00] employees who had complex challenges in their life at times. And maybe that meant that it led to performance problems or maybe led to, uh, an inability to do certain things. Of course we have to have standards, but at the same time, taking an empathetic observer role of somebody's behavior starts to make us potentially, more empathetic and therefore leads to more compassion.

I think that's a beautiful articulation of what, what goes on when we allow forgiveness to come in as an aspect of compassion. You know? And I think what you said there is really true that. What I noticed was the more compassionate I was towards my employees, the more loyal they were to me.

That. You know what? That is very interesting because I have worked with so many business leaders and coached so many people, frankly, who still sort of believe that loyalty is something demanded and expected as opposed to earned. And [00:13:00] so that's interesting that again, we're seeing maybe this proportional thing that as judgment rises, compassionate lowers as works in verse.

But maybe we get back to this same thing here in relationship to loyalty, which is interesting. And again, if you're in, whether you're looking at this from a business perspective, if you're listening or maybe a personal perspective or you know, it's a great question and maybe you ought to pause the podcast and reflect on this.

Are you demanding loyalty from people? And maybe you need to ask yourself, is that the best way? And maybe you ask, yourself, how do I actually create an environment where loyalty would be more granted as opposed to required? That is really an interesting connection, Amanda.

Just became an organic, reflection of what was going on for me. But I, think it's really informed me going forward now when I work as a leadership coach , is, you know, that that humility, that, that sense of [00:14:00] understanding that sometimes gets lost along the, way is so, so important.

It is, it's very powerful. And you know, I wanna port the conversation towards, how you apply this now. But before we do that, I wanna talk into the other part of this. 'cause the other part that really struck me in my initial conversation with you was this idea, there was this compassion part and that it saves us and others and you were saved by it.

Then you, we had this interesting conversation about the power of our words and how this interplays with our, our lives and our destiny, and even the situation about how we judge people or we're compassionate. So how does that start to come into your psyche and how do you start to begin to understand why is that so important and what has that led you to think about and consider in your own life and your professional journey?

Well, I think. I have a thing that I say is words are wands or weapons,

Huh?

and there's this lovely idea that, you know, that there's no coincidence. It's [00:15:00] called spelling. When we talk about how you frame words. Because basically you are casting spells every time you speak.

Um, and you can use them well. You can use 'em kindly or you can use them harshly and they become weapons and those weapons can leave scars. And we, probably both know that there's memories we have where people have said unkind things to us and we've kept hold of them. Interestingly, my mom used to always say, sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt me.

And I used to think that's just not true though.

Mm-hmm.

And it was, I knew what she was trying to do, she was trying to protect me. But actually I wish she'd been honest and said just. Just don't take notice of words because they can be more harmful than any physical injury you might endure.

Yeah.

And so I noticed when I was talking to my employees, first of all, the way that I spoke to them garnered different responses.

And so again, going back to the compassion, the more compassionate I was with them in the language that I used, the better the [00:16:00] response, the better the outcome for both of us, not just for me. , And then as I was, exploring with my self-development, I looked at the words I am, and the power of those two words is incredible, especially when we think about the way we talk to ourselves.

And I think one of my superpowers now is actually being able to spot and isolate those words when people say them out loud. So it's, sometimes we're not even aware, we're not conscious of what we're saying about ourselves. So if you can catch somebody in the I Am or the I can't, or I cannot, or, it's really interesting when you ask them deeper questions around that phrase that they've just said because it, it's not necessarily true, but it's something they tell themselves.

So it's belief for them, it becomes their truth.

It does. , And I love that. I love that construct words are wands or weapons. And, as you say that to me, I'm, you know, it makes me think first of all, that more than likely there's no [00:17:00] other third option There are wonderfully positive magical force that casts a spell that.

Actually moves people towards, or moves me towards who a greater expression of positivity for myself or others, or they're the opposite. , they can be weapons, I suppose. In some ways we could use that wand in positive negative ways. We could cast bad spells, but it's really interesting construct to think about.

And again, if you're listening, are your words wands or weapons for yourself or others? What a great question to consider. Maybe you need to pause a podcast again and ask yourself in the last week, what have my words been? I mean, that is so powerful and amazing. It reminds me of a conversation I had with my wife recently.

We're, my wife just turned 65 last year. I turned 60. And we're sort of looking at some change in our life and how, what we're gonna do in the next season. And my wife. Has feels that she struggles with change. But the other day we were having a conversation and , she, she made a comment, [00:18:00] you know, I'm not good at change.

I hate change. I'm afraid to change. And I said, to her, Pam, I said, I know that change is difficult. I think you're talking to yourself in a way that is absolutely not helpful. Could you potentially rephrase what you're saying and say, I find change uncomfortable, but I know it's good for me. Could you change maybe some of the way you're talking to yourself?

'cause I think I, I use an example. I said, I think your words are becoming a prison. , They're imprisoning you in a way that you are, have to then feel scared and bad about this because you're telling yourself that's the way it has to be. And it was a really interesting conversation because she said, oh, I, I, did I say that?

I don't know. I said, yeah, you said it that way. And I think sometimes again, we're not conscious that sometimes we are. Creating these negative constructs with the way that we're speaking to ourselves and others, and we're just become so unaware and un attuned to what's happening around us and how we're actually [00:19:00] not being our most loyal, best friend.

, We are actually may and we're not even being, we're surely not being our hero or our ally. We're becoming our own enemy in some ways.

I think that's so true. And it you're absolutely right. It's the unconscious things that we say to ourselves. , And I think the antidote to that is to try and become more aware of what it is you're saying to, to kind of isolate and say, is that true? To start questioning it.

Yeah. So now, so you take all of this, this revelation that you're having these. These, these thoughts for yourself. You're seeing it working on your employees. You're asking yourself better questions about yourself. You eventually end up selling that business and you go on a different career path and, and now you're in a whole different space.

So tell me in my listeners about the space that you're in and how you're taking some of these lessons and others and applying them into the world now where, where you're using this magic.

Oh, I [00:20:00] like the way you call it magic. That's so nice. Um, so. I now work as a coach. I'm a business and a leadership coach, and, , that was born out of the last couple of years in my business. I saw, as I said, the power of words, and I was really kind of intrigued as to how I could use that to help more people, particularly in the, you know, on the, at the back of my own transformation.

I'm a real advocate for behavioral change. I've read the neuroscience behind it, so I know now that I can kind of use that. To help others transform themselves if that's what they want. Um, I work predominantly with entrepreneurs and with business leaders to help them not only do well in business, but be well at the same time.

Hmm.

I think it's, it's that balance of being and doing. And I think, you know, a coach once said to me, this was years ago, success is more about being than doing.

Wow. So that's fascinating too. That's a whole nother [00:21:00] podcast. , The difference between, or , the tension between doing well and being well. So, let me ask you, do you find that in this day and age, we're in 20, 26 challenging times, uh, that the world is living in.

Uh, there's a lot of the, the crankiness around the globe

Mm-hmm.

lots of different things. Um. There's a lot of great things of course, as well, but there's some crankiness. Is this a message that you think the leaders you're working with are becoming? Are they more or less receptive to this, or is the receptivity not changed much around the kind of things you want them to think about and encourage them about?

I think there's a huge appetite for it. In my experience, I've seen so much, , receptivity to it. I think the organizations I've been working with ,, are becoming more and more people centric. There's more of , a devotion to the people. , I think there's much more of a, a notion that. People matter more than we ever thought.

You know, [00:22:00] with the advent of ai and, and you know, what we're seeing is, you know, all this talk about they're gonna take our jobs, it's all gonna, you know, I think there's such a lot of drama around it, but I think you can't ever replicate that human touch that comes within business. And so I think people realize that.

We have to pay attention to human values. We have to address those and make sure that people are seen and heard, which is all that they want really.

Yeah. Yes. I, I agree. I think that, we, it's kind of interesting. I was doing, , some work recently with a client. We were doing some training around communication and. I actually was speaking about this very thing that when we, when we think about communication, we think about oratory, we think of the art and craft of, of speak, speaking or speeches.

We think of email. We think of all these things, and I was saying like they, all these things are part of it, but actually the basic part of human [00:23:00] communication is being heard and being listened to and being honored. It doesn't get more simple than that. You can be the best orator in the world.

You can give the best quarterly updates in your business. You can get all your people together and be all of that, and then some. But if people don't feel fundamentally heard, then they will always perceive and believe, and they will always be a sense that communication is labored and lacking.

I think that's true, and I think it is that fundamental need that you talk of, that if that is addressed, then people feel that they belong. And most of us seek that in our lives. That's why we have families is because we want to have that sense of belonging where we can be ourselves.

Absolutely. Well, listen, I've, I've found myself recently realizing that I'm guilty of, , cheersing a glass of wine with, with a person like you. And then I'm the only one that gets to drink it. So, 'cause I'm asking all the questions, [00:24:00] so I'm gonna give you a chance to have another drink of your wine. Mm. That's really good. So, Amanda, first of all, I love the conversation. There is such a careful consideration. An underlying compassion in this conversation, which I really, really love. And obviously, you, you came through that you learned that you were harsh with yourself and others, uh, harsh with the, in your judgment, maybe harsh in the way you spoke to yourself and others.

Uh, and that's led you on a really wonderful journey, which by the way, I, I, I, I, I wanna acknowledge that. I don't think that the revelation sometimes that people have, that they're harsh or not compassionate enough actually leads to much behavior change. To be very frank, I think they have a, I think they feel guilty.

Sometimes about it, but unfortunately that guilt doesn't, uh, get, get enough penetration to do. Its good [00:25:00] work. It doesn't drive action, and I think guilt that doesn't drive action becomes insidious and difficult. When we feel a little bit guilty, I don't think that's a bad thing, but if we don't actually move beyond that guilt to action, that actually addresses it and dilutes it.

Nothing changes and I think we become harder over time. So I love the fact, and I want to just acknowledge the fact that you allowed this moment of time to move you to a different way of wanting to live and be maybe do and be. And now the fruit of that is, and, and maybe this is part of our own journey, sometimes we see it about ourselves, but often it's a gift to others.

So now this journey's become this gift to others. But you could have doubled down, frankly, on your lack of compassion. You could have doubled down on your judgmentalism, which many people do. And so I just wanna say, I appreciate that you allowed that to really penetrate into you and [00:26:00] create that change.

'cause you talked about. Behavioral change before, and I wanna go back to that 'cause changing behavior is very, very difficult.

Is it.

when, when you look at coaching and you're working with a leader, when you're looking at trying to help a person create an environment where there's a possibility and potential and probability of behavior change.

How does that work , for you when you're working with another human? How, how do you consider that? What do you, what do you encourage?

I think the first thing that the other person needs to have is their own awareness of, of who they are.

Hmm.

And their own behavior, and like you said, knowledge, if it's not what they want it to be, so that they can actually do something with that. I think then there has to be desire. You have to want to change.

Yeah.

And I think that's, that may be the, the difference that you were talking about just then is that people, some people don't change because they haven't [00:27:00] got a strong enough why to change. For me, I was backed into a corner. My business would've failed if I hadn't changed or I, I would've gone on struggling and I would've.

Run myself into the ground, burned out, whatever. So I kind of felt that I had no option but to change. So there's a big desire there. Kind of like I've gotta, I, I want to because I have to. Um, I think a lot of other people that I work with know this. They know they have to change as well.

They know that it's not working. I think fundamentally as human beings, we're really, we're intelligent. We know that. Things are going well and we can acknowledge them. I think when we find ourselves moaning a lot about the situation that we're in, our, , personal situation, whatever, then we can sort of reflect is this, you know, what's my part in this?

What have I done to not deserve it, but to see this play out in my, world? So it is that opportunity then to sort of say, okay, do I want this to continue or would I like to see something [00:28:00] better? And what do I need to do to orchestrate that?

Yeah. So there's this clarity that needs to come, , the reality, the truth of the situation. And then to your point, , it needs to be empowered by desire. , I, I think your observation is very, very wise and very interesting to me. , Sometimes the desire is something, uh, that feels forced upon us. , We almost feel like we have no choice for change and then we have urgency.

And, um, I guess what I hope for myself, Amanda, and maybe you for the future and people you work with, is that we won't be so DAF that we would need. The desperation, uh, and the demand of change to make us wanna change, but we would choose change for other reasons. And I do agree that often it takes a catastrophic event or, , an unmaintainable situation that often drives people towards change.

I would [00:29:00] love it to believe, and I'd like to believe about myself, that I don't need that to make myself change. But if I'm really honest, sometimes that's what it takes. Um, I did a podcast recently with somebody and they made an interesting comment, different context, but they made a comment in sort of, in, in a military sort of metaphor, they said we should enlist before we're conscripted.

And I thought it's fascinating language and I, I'd apply it to this situation for myself. And again, if you're listening in for you, please enlist, sign up for the change you want and desire and require for yourself and others. , Please don't wait to be conscripted by the problem, and, , required to be in service.

It would be a better day for us to enlist on our own. Uh, but that's not easy to do.

That's such a wise thing to remember, isn't it? I think that's something I will. Will take away from this conversation for sure.[00:30:00] 

It was a real, provocation. So, let's create a scenario for a second. Let's say you're coaching me, which by the way, it'd be a great day for me. , So Amanda, Amanda O'Rourke, you're my coach. uh, and, and by the way, coaching sessions with wine even better. days it supposedly, it might be ethically not correct, but we'll pretend.

So you're coaching me and I'm at a moment, where I'm trying to, I'm wrestling a problem in my business, but you have a, forming belief as a coach that the problem is not ancillary to me. It's within me that the problem may not be others, it might be me. How do you. Construct that conversation to help me find my way when I'm struggling to find my own part in the problem.

That's a good question. 'cause normally my go-to question is what is your part in this? And, and sometimes people. Straight out now. It was nothing to do with me. There's a denial there. Mostly people will pause and, think about [00:31:00] that. Um, because unlike what you've just said is they don't think about their own part in it.

They're projecting out. The blame is elsewhere. It's nothing to do with them. And so I think it's really useful to go direct with that question and say, what is your part in this? And so if, if you were to turn around and say, well, it's all about them. I would then just wanna go deeper in. So where do you see, where do you see your lines then Where, where is it that you are in some way involved in this?

Why is it in your world even.

Yeah. So first of all, I love the fact that your answer is just really on the nose, which I really like because I think I would agree because I do a lot of coaching. actually believe that being a little on the nose respectfully, uh, is actually the right way, particularly with senior leaders.

And so that question, because it's just so appropriate, but just so wonderfully violent in the sense that it [00:32:00] assaults that person and arrests them. . Because it asks the question directly, which I think is the problem for senior leaders is that many people do not ask them or speak to them in direct ways 'cause of the authority structure, and they're afraid.

I think the gift that a coach like you can give a senior leader is you can speak to somebody with compassion. While being unusually candid, you can be both unusually candid and unusually compassionate, but I think a lot of people are overly compassionate or tolerant to their leaders, but they're not candid 'cause they're afraid because of the way they sit in the org chart or how it works.

This is, I guess, the wonder of being outside of that and being that coach coming in from a perspective. And so I love your, just ask the question. The moment of sort, of reckoning where a person has to say, either say, you know what, no, I'm absolutely not. I have no part of this problem.

And then that's probably not the truth. And that's by the way, really hard. I had a situation in business recently that I suffered some loss in my business [00:33:00] and it was very difficult. And when it first happened, uh, you know, I typically, I became angry, frustrated, a lot of other things. I said a lot of things , to my wife, my dog, and to my pillow.

I probably shouldn't have, but I did and I was struggling to find my, my place in the problem. And my thing, and this is just me, when I struggle to find my place in the problem, then I tend to find blame of everyone else. And so I sat back and I really challenged myself and it was, it is tough because I asked myself the question.

How am I at all? And can I find any responsibility at all for of myself in this problem? And I have to admit, my first gut reaction was absolutely not. I am a victim. People are bad. Everyone else is terrible. And then I began to think back and said, well I did make this decision. I didn't intend it to create this consequence, but maybe the [00:34:00] unintended consequence of this decision was this.

I also did this, which I had a choice of, I had agency of, and although I don't believe people should interpret it this way, I could see how they could. And as I began to meander down this road , of accountability at some points it became very windy and dark, but it led to. Place a greater revelation of light where I had to say whether I liked it or not.

You know, there's probably four or five things that I did that contributed to this. The wonderful thing about that, that I found is, is that I felt the, I felt unusually empowered. And I guess the reason why is because when you find your accountability or your responsibility, you actually found your, empowerment.

'cause if the problem is all you, Amanda, I can't do anything about it. But if I am somehow complicit or part of the problem, I can actually be then a greater part of the solution 'cause I can control something. So it's a very interesting sort of argument. We get into a dilemma and I think it's really hard, but this goes back to [00:35:00] agency accountability and all the things that go with taking responsibility for our behavior.

Absolutely. I love the fact you said that your knee jerk reaction there was no, it's not, it's, it's everyone else's fault, you know? 'cause that's the ego talking, isn't it? I don't want to accept that I could have had anything to do with this. But actually when you. When you allow yourself that space, which is, I think what coaching allows is that time and space to reflect honestly in a safe space where you know somebody is gonna be candid with you and hold you accountable.

If you are not gonna hold yourself, then that gives you that ability to feel lighter afterwards as you describe, because you've brought the shadow out, you've actually, looked at yourself truthfully. I think there's magic in that. It's that whole know thyself principle.

You're here to learn more about yourself, and if that means that you have to be more honest with yourself to do that, then that's only a good thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks that, that's a really great observation. This is a great conversation. It's about magic, it's about mystery. It's about the messiness of dealing with this [00:36:00] stuff. It's about, I love it. It's about this idea that our words our wands or weapons. That's a. Brilliant idea, and I love that, and I need to become even more conscious of that.

That's a real gift that I'm receiving from the conversation. Again, if you're listening in, I hope that you're taking these things and you're gonna uncork them, like this conversation uncork them in your life. That's the goal that I would have for this conversation. So. Amanda, let's bring this conversation in for a bit of a landing.

So first of all, if people wanted to hunt you down and find Amanda O'Rourke, how would they do that? Because you are, I, I'm in Canada. You are in the uk. This means that I, either you're drinking in the middle of the night, or I'm drinking early in the morning. I'm gonna let my, listeners determine which paradigm they want to embrace as a possibility. That being said, how would they find you, Amanda?

I think the easiest way to find me is either a search on LinkedIn. It should be pretty easy. I don't think there's too many Amanda o Ros there. Maybe a couple. Or my, [00:37:00] website, which is happy coach.co uk,

Happy Coach. I like that. Happy coach.co uk.

correct?

Love it. And O'Rourke is O apostrophe, so capital ORI told Amanda that whenever I say her name, I feel like there's gonna be like princes and knight storming the castle. So I love, I I appreci I appreciate the heritage of your name and I love Scotland. So, but now you live, now you, your Scottish heritage I think.

But you live in the uk.

And yeah, my, , father-in-law was Scottish. Yeah, but the, but the name of Iraq is actually from County Laumum in Ireland.

Oh, Irish. Okay, well we got the, we got all, we got all the aisles

Absolutely.

That's brilliant. That's brilliant. So listen, lemme ask you this question. You know, this idea of un commodified is important for me, and of course it's a, for me, it originally birthed as a business idea, consulted in highly commoditized markets and industries for 30 years, and, started wandering on this idea about what, how do you un commodify a [00:38:00] commodity?

And that led to this whole journey. Over the years, I became much more interested, fascinated, and focused on applying on commodification or being unmodified, not to products, but to people. , 'Cause I actually believe that, the typical problem is products get commodified. I said, I think the more insidious problem is people become a commodity.

That's a problem. And I think that that's part of what I'm trying to address in these podcasts and in myself on a constant basis. So I have this question. So Amanda walks into a room. This is not a by, it's not a set up for a joke. It's not a man, it's not Amanda. A butcher and a priest walk into a bar. So that's not, it's not a setup for a joke.

Amanda walks into a room, . You decide what room. Okay? It could be a room of your friends, a community room business. You would decide the room. But Amanda walks into the room and you,, you bring into that room the thing that you believe is your unmodified self. The thing that Amanda brings into a room with her presence and the way that she wants to be and show up in that room.[00:39:00] 

For the positive benefit of others, what's Amanda typically wanting to do or doing that she knows we're talking about? Amanda as this third person that Amanda knows is gonna actually bring life to that environment.

Such a great question. I think for me it's about embodying what I stand for, and that is that I see the light in you. And that's all I see.

Hmm.

And I think that's what I want other people , to experience is so that when I walk in a room, it lights up and so that everybody feels that light within themselves as well.

It's not about them seeing me as some sort of angelic force, it's more that they feel that and they then feel it within themselves too.

Wow, that's powerful. I really appreciate that. And, uh, I, that would be my wish for all of us that we could bring that kinda light into room. But maybe more importantly, as you're articulating, not bringing the light, but releasing, or people, getting people to recognize the light within,

Yes.[00:40:00] 

That is a really awesome way to un commodify the world and the world needs more of that.

Amanda, what a beautiful conversation. I really appreciate that your time sharing space with you. Again, if you're listening in, I always say you're listening in for a reason. If you're still listening, you're still here for a reason and my challenge to you is to uncork these ideas in your life.

You know, when we think of this idea of uncorking for me and imbibing of a drink together, there's some power in what we choose to draw into ourselves. So as you draw these ideas into yourself and. See what they're gonna bring in you, how you uncork them in your life. And as you do, do me a favor, DM me or email me at tim@unccommodified.com and let myself and Amanda know how you are uncorking these ideas into your life, how you're choosing your words to be, more wands than weapons.

How you're moving towards a more compassionate expression, a less judgmental expression towards yourself and others. What a gift this [00:41:00] conversation is gonna be to me, to others. Amanda, thanks so much for sharing space. Have a wonderful day. Cheers.