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📖 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.