#117 Amanda Nguyen on How She Changed Sex Laws

This week’s guest on Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu is Amanda Nguyen. Amanda is the founder and CEO of Rise, a non-governmental civil rights organization and the power behind the Sexual Assault Survivors' Rights Act, one of 23 bills to pass unanimously through US Congress. In this episode she talks about how to make your goals a reality, what she went through to get the laws changed, and the importance of purpose.

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SHOW NOTES:
How to break down big problems and change the world [3:07]
Where to start if you aren’t sure where to begin in order to make your dreams come true [4:34]
A tweet can turn into a movement [5:33]
How she realized that she had to start changing the law and discovered her North Star [6:08]
How to connect to hope in the face of tragedy and how she’s built a movement around hope [7:45]
How she was strategic about bringing people together and the tools of deploying empathy she used to make things happen [10:45]
How she trains her RISERS so that they don’t face unnecessary division [13:25]
How to apply these tools and tactics into your regular everyday life [14:30]
Why she wants to be an astronaut [16:48]
The “overview effect”: a cognitive shift that takes place when you go into space [17:57]
2 burning questions that she wakes up to every single day [18:56]
“It’s built into our DNA that we want to be explorers” [20:18]
Why she is so dedicated to helping people establish an empowering frame of reference for their life [21:17]
Why she considers herself a “pathological optimist” and actively cultivates optimism [23:03]
How to cultivate optimism [24:29]
Which traits have allowed her to accomplish everything that she has [25:26]
Her unpopular opinion on hard work [25:45]
How to be authentic by figuring out what makes you cry [27:25]
How to heal after a traumatic event [28:03]
Her tips for negotiation, “be like water” [29:20]
The only 4 people who have agenda-making authority [30:49]
“Learn the system, hack the system.” [31:57]
How she deals with adversity by leveraging human behavior [35:03]
How she makes a game out of developing new skills in service of her goals [36:25]
The magic of narrative training [37:36]
The impact Amanda Nguyen wants to have in the world [40:06]

PEOPLE MENTIONED:
Senator Charles Grassley http://bit.ly/2Igq7jY [30:19]
Mitch McConnell http://bit.ly/2G2DH9g [31:20]
Bob Goodlatte http://bit.ly/2I2yTCX [31:36]
Paul Ryan http://bit.ly/2G3asTO [31:38]