About Amanda Anderson, The Playing Small Speaker
I played small for forty years without knowing it.
I've spent my career studying what makes people do what they do, in boardrooms and in crisis. I've seen the same human patterns from every angle. When people are thriving, when they're surviving, and when they've stopped bringing the thing that made them worth hiring.
Where this comes from.
17+ years in NLP, resilience and real-world mental health
Led Global Mental Health at L'Occitane En Provence
Frontline domestic violence and homelessness response across NSW
I mention this for one reason. Playing small got me through it, which is why I take it seriously as a strategy, not a weakness. My brother was murdered. My sister and father died of illness. I survived a stroke, a divorce, and I'm raising two neurodivergent kids while working a frontline job that doesn't care what kind of week you're having.
At fifty I worked out I'd spent my whole life playing small, and there wasn't a single person I could blame for it. That's not a nice thing to find out.
I teach people how to take the raw, twisted remains of what detonated their lives - and build something fierce and true from the rubble. Because once you change what it means to you, you change what it fuels.
I've sat with people at the worst moment of their life, and I've watched what happens in someone's face the second they stop editing out the part of them that was worth the most. People adapt so well to surviving that they lose the very thing that made them valuable. I've done it myself.
I've seen what happens when people adapt so well to survive that they lose connection with the very thing that made them valuable. I've experienced that pattern personally, and spent my career understanding how it shows up in people, teams and organisations.
It also nearly cost me everything... more than once.
When I tell a room that small isn't the safe option, I'm not making a point. I'm reporting.