Last week I was interviewed by a group called The Mystics of the DarkMoon, which sounds spooky, but really they are a group of lightworkers – spiritually based practices supporting each other to enhance the professionalism of the industry. As I specialise in communications, I support what Tammie Bowden is trying to do with her group. Here’s the interview for you to have a read of:
Amanda’s spiritual journey really came to the front of her consciousness from about the age of 16 when she started researching all religions and also asking questions of the role models in her
life. She also began her life of travelling at that age too, living in other countries with families to really broaden her appreciation of what life has on offer.
Amanda was attuned to level 3 Reiki in early 2009 and gifts that she knew she had but was unable to (or not awake enough to accept 😉 ) tap into opened and her life took a new path. She does most of her Reiki’s remotely and receives information during the reiki to help with healing whatever needs to be healed.
From a business perspective, Amanda has been working in large international and domestic corporate businesses all over the world utilising her communications and events background in those positions. With the GFC of 2009, the position she was in with a global meat company was made redundant and she set up her own business Foyster’s Communications. She quickly realised her dream of working with the spiritual industry, mixed with her Reiki skills and also communication
skills. It’s ALL communication.
Amanda supports spiritually based businesses to really communicate effectively to a wider spectrum of people, because she believes she has been given her gifts to share with people who are not only strong believers in spirituality, but being as grounded as she is, she is able to converse with ‘sceptics’ to show them that spirituality does not mean you have to be “off with the fairies” as one of her clients stated once.
All businesses, no matter what their product or service needs to understand their demographic, their core message and core outcome – I help businesses do that with a complete understanding and acceptance of everything spiritual.
How would you describe yourself as a person?
Very happy, positive and very loyal. I do my very best to walk and talk my truth. Is it ok to say your are trustworthy? I find people trust me very quickly, which is great they recognise that I am someone they can speak honestly too without judgement.
Tell us about your early career. What skills do you feel you were lacking and what did you do to make up for them?
Early in my career I went about making sure that everyone was happy before I was. My lack of ability to communicate without the fear of thinking that the people around me would be let down was shocking, so I just did everything that was required at the expense of myself to keep everyone happy. I slowly but surely learned that by speaking up and telling the truth or how it is, allowed other’s to support, take a step back or speak their truth in return.
How do you feel that travelling and spending time with families from other countries and cultures from a young aged helped in your development as a person generally and also as a business woman?
Travelling and living with other cultures is one of the most grounding experiences you can give yourself. When you are in a position of need and you need help to exist through language etc, you are handing over your power to others through a high level of trust. Human nature wins out across all cultures I believe. When you let other people showcase their life and their culture, you get to see the best of it. When you live in a first world country without experiencing other cultures you may miss out on very important life lessons. If it’s not your thing to travel, then it’s important to recognise that our world would be a very boring place if it wasn’t for different cultures. As a business woman, and a woman in general, all of my travel and working and living has allowed me the greatest ability to relate to anyone and everyone. I also have a achieved a level of confidence that I don’t believe I would have if not for my travelling and working with business folk from other countries.
You say that spirituality does not have to mean being “off with the fairies”. What do you mean by that?
In my journey, I have had and still have people that question spirituality, my Reiki qualifications and ability to receive information and messages from guides etc. Even though they have known me before my journey took this new path some six years ago, they have past data about spiritual people being “hairy armpitted dope smokers”. Yes some of the most incredibly spiritual people are, but it doesn’t have to be a blanket imagery for lightworkers or people living a spiritual existence. I am a very grounded lightworker, walking my truth and being true to my belief systems. In my work with others, I have chosen not to be a hairy armpitted dope smoker, but a successful business woman who is married, raising two children with her husband and building a business that adds a level of respect that lightworkers, I believe, need to build into their work to assist the naysayer’s, sceptics and doubters to understand that there is benefits of a spiritual lifestyle for every person on this planet.
With your own business comes a need to be a smart money manager. Have you been able to do this and if so, how have you achieved it?
Yes, it was a lesson I needed to learn when I first went out on my own and something I overcame really quickly when I realised that I was now responsible for paying myself and being able to meet my outgoings as a family with two incomes. One of the biggest and largest hurdles I have come across with people I’ve worked with this last couple of years is the ability to know what you are worth. I have written a blog post on it and spoken about it at business networking functions. When you have the ability to support other’s to reach their highest good through their personal life or business presence, you deserve to be rewarded for that IP, skill and service. I have achieved it through hard lessons. Thankfully the hard lessons came early and I rectified my ‘fear’ of charging for my services and managing my business smartly. This is also part of the previous question. When you have a professional presence in whatever you do where there is no doubt in the potential outcome for a client, people will pay for your product or services. I have maintained my professionalism across everything I do, by respecting my clients by knowing they deserve my very best, very focussed attention on their outcomes. That focus, knowledge and outcome is worthy of payment.
What steps did it take for you to get to where you are now?
A great deal of persistence, a great deal of reading, a great deal of networking and a great deal of trust that the Universe had my best interests at heart. The steps I’ve had to take are just one after the other. Thoughts, feelings and actions are the key to where I find myself today. The greatest step anyone can take is to be empowered in your learning. Never knock back a learning opportunity and a mentor – they will make themselves apparent when you least expect it.
What do you think holds people back from achieving their goals?
The fear of being the best they could be and what that brings with it. I coined a concept earlier this year that your heart is your biggest fan. People who are lead by their head rather than their heart are the ones not achieving their goals. When you know in your heart of hearts that something feels right and you head in that direction, you might have a setback, but you go back to that original thought and regroup and start again. Everything is in perfect order. You have to sit there and live and breathe your passion. When you are doing that, nothing will stop you.
What do you feel has been the secret to your accomplishments so far?
Believing in myself and living my truth. The minute I stopped worrying about what if this and what if that, everything started to fall into place.
Did you ever reach a point where life became difficult for you and you considered giving up? What kept you going?
That thankfully, happened when I was in my early 20’s. The thing that kept me going was that I have always been someone who loves being happy. I love laughing. In fact last week I laughed that hard at something I put my neck out and had to go to the chiropractor. One day I looked at my life – all of it – and said, this is not making me happy. What do I have to do to find the state of happiness I want to live in all the time. I had to pack up my life and I went and lived overseas for two years without anyone of influence with me. I had the most personal growth of any other time in my life. While I was overseas I connected with a person through a work colleague in another country again and he taught me how and what it meant to live a life that was positive and in complete gratitude. His guidance was a major turning point for me. We have never met in ‘real life’ and it’s been 13 years now. What he taught me was life changing. I came back a new person.
What is the biggest mistake you have made and how did you overcome it?
My biggest mistake in my business life was not listening to all the warning signs before taking on a large contract because I had a mind set of “I just need the work”. The contract failed. I overcame it by just dusting myself off, taking responsibility for what I attracted into my life by not being in the right mindset about the work and also not listening to the messages. I made the realisation of where I needed to shift my thoughts on unconditional love of myself and started again. I let myself have a pity party for two days ran through every fear that I had due to the outcome, and released it back to the Universe.
In your opinion, what are the characteristics that make a person successful?
Honesty, integrity, truth AND last but not least perception.
What are some of the key ideas and messages that you have learned from others that have stuck with you?
Living in gratitude for everything you have in your life, from the smallest of the smallest to the biggest of the biggest. If anyone has trouble with that concept I tell them start with “I am so grateful I have eyes to be reading this interview with.”
I worked with a Brazilian man around my age who taught me “not to take on other people’s sh*t”. He taught me to see when I was taking on other people’s ethics and mindsets and how they didn’t serve me. He taught me that focussing on my task at hand, and only that, as I am only responsible for myself and my job, that I would be able to function at greater capacity in my personal life and business life. He was right.
What are your seven top tips to improve the way in which you communicate with others?
1. Take the YOU out of any dialogue you have with others – address things from the perspective of I.
2. Present time consciousness. Give the people you are communicating with your undivided attention – always.
3. You have one mouth and two ears – there is a reason for that.
4. Respect that everyone is on their own journey.
5. Be curious rather than judgemental in your approach to things around you. If someone is grumpy or being rude for no reason (in your mind) they probably have something going on that has nothing to do with you, so be curious, do not take things personally.
6. Greet every situation with a clean slate, without fear and with a smile. Never underestimate how much the other person might be in the same situation and if you come in smiling it might change the dynamic of the exchange.
7. A persons reaction to something says everything about them, and absolutely nothing about you. How you react to something is where you can find your greatest levels of empowerment.
In what ways has communication been a key factor in your success?
All forms of communicating have been a key factor in my success. Verbal and visual. People just want to be honoured and respected. If I turn up to a meeting in unkempt clothes without make-up on or the way I answer my phone – says miles about how I feel about the pending meeting or conversation. I’ve had to network my backside of talking about myself to get my business known and recognised. I’ve had to have superior communication skills to discuss with my husband my hopes and dreams and how I see that fitting into our life and that of our children. I’ve also had to have amazing internal communication skills to protect myself from anyone around me who has said that the task ahead for me is going to be a hard slog. “Thank you for your warning, I am looking forward to the challenge.” CHANGE SUBJECT.
If you had your time over again what, if anything, would you do differently?
I would remove fear from my list of emotions. Having said that though, all in perfect order. I’m only 39 years old and I am so excited that I have 60+ years to go to live out my life with my spirituality and mindset. The world truly is my oyster.
What do you see as being the biggest challenge facing people in spiritual businesses today and what can we do about it?
As I said earlier, it is removing the stigma so that more and more people are given the opportunity to wake-up. The other one equally as large, but is in direct correlation to the stigma is fear. What we can do is to stand together in our truth and show people who are just new to the concept that we are continually growing and evolving. We don’t have all the answers, but we do have very pleasant outcomes more often because of our belief systems.
What advice would you give to others about change?
Change is important and vital to survival. Without change you have no growth.
Where do you see yourself in 20 years time?
Living somewhere that is totally connected to Mother Earth. I also see myself speaking to children all over the world teaching them how to embrace who they are from an early age so they can grow into happy healthy strong as white light souls as they become adults. I also will have a plethora of health centres that will never in our wildest dreams be considered alternative which will be supporting people’s mental and physical health requirements from spiritually based practices – there will be Medicare rebates for all these services if it’s still there, otherwise they will be fully funded.
What are some of your goals for the next five years?
1. To build my business to the point where our communication practices and philosophies are regarded as best practice.
2. To have my version of Reiki as a key element in the support systems available to all my clients whether they are lightworkers or general corporate businesses – small through to large.
3. To have successful divisions of my business being managed by likeminded individuals while I work on the big idea things.
4. To have my series of Workshops and Retreats running throughout the country.
What do you love most about being where you are today?
The freedom of knowing that I am completely responsible for myself and it’s all up to me.
Is there a significant quote or saying that you live your life by?
“The truth will set you free.”
At the end of your life how would you like to be remembered?
A couple of ways. As someone who made a difference. You know that question, ‘if you could have anyone to dinner alive or dead who would that be?’ I hope that by me living and walking my truth, that someone will have received validation from that for their own life and I would make that person’s list. Most of all I hope that my children will pass on my teachings to their children and so will begin the new generation of awakening for which I am responsible. My kids chose me for a reason – I’ve got a big job to do.
