The Designed Life

Last week's guest named the fear that comes with choosing to leave a career: what people will think while they watch you do it. This week is about the woman who never got the choice.

Ameera shares the day a calendar invite turned into a restructure at 50, what a title carries for you, the meaning you give it, and why rebuilding identity can take longer than replacing the work. You will hear the difference between holding a title and having a design, one weekly habit to build before you need it, and the question to carry into your next season. What would you do if the title didn't matter?

This is for anyone who has faced a restructure, or who may be sitting at a crossroads asking Which Way Do I Turn?

New Intro Feb 2026 

Complimentary Series - If No One Was Watching. 

7 emails over 7 days of self-discovery. Before the end you will know which of your goals are truly yours and which ones to release. 

Connect With Ameera Virani

Website: www.ameeravirani.com
Instagram: @ameera.virani
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ameeravirani/

Substack

The Designed Life Weekly Edit

If this episode inspired you, please follow the show and leave a review. 

Disclaimer

The Designed Life with Ameera Virani and all associated content is intended for general informational, educational, and inspirational purposes only. The insights shared on this podcast, as well as any linked resources or materials, are not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This podcast is not intended to replace the guidance of a licensed therapist, medical professional, financial advisor, or other qualified professionals. Always seek the advice of your personal support team.

Kristina Bartold walked away from a corporate career she had spent years building - a career that by every external measure looked like exactly where she was supposed to be. In the five years since, she co-founded The Social Snippet, a done-for-you marketing and podcast agency serving seven-figure brands, and High Vibe Women, a community and events platform for women in business.

In this conversation: 

• What the identity shift of leaving corporate actually costs. 
• Why Kristina thinks 'burn the boats' advice leads women into unnecessary struggle. 
• Her clear-eyed read on the current social media landscape and what a small, engaged audience can really do for your business. 
• What she's seeing change in the podcast space right now. 
• The difference between service that fills you and service that quietly depletes you.

Kristina is generous, honest and so insightful. You're going to love this conversation.

Connect with Kristina:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristina.bartold/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinabartold/?isSelfProfile=false

Website: https://kristinabartold.ca/

New Intro Feb 2026 

Complimentary Series - If No One Was Watching. 

7 emails over 7 days of self-discovery. Before the end you will know which of your goals are truly yours and which ones to release. 

Connect With Ameera Virani

Website: www.ameeravirani.com
Instagram: @ameera.virani
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ameeravirani/

Substack

The Designed Life Weekly Edit

If this episode inspired you, please follow the show and leave a review. 

Disclaimer

The Designed Life with Ameera Virani and all associated content is intended for general informational, educational, and inspirational purposes only. The insights shared on this podcast, as well as any linked resources or materials, are not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This podcast is not intended to replace the guidance of a licensed therapist, medical professional, financial advisor, or other qualified professionals. Always seek the advice of your personal support team.

Are you saying yes to goals you picked up from someone else's life? 

In this solo episode, Ameera walks through:

• The goals she let go of after a layoff at fifty and diving head first into her business
• Why the goal of owning a beach house she would never use stopped making sense
• The two-question test she uses to tell a borrowed goal from one that's truly hers. 
• If no one was watching and there were no likes or applause - what would you design for your life?

She also shares the boundary she wrote before keeping her speaking goal so that it never comes at the sacrifice of her Why.

Find your true desires and goals with the 21 questions Ameera offers in her seven-day email series. 

Seven Day Email Series "If No One Was Watching"

New Intro Feb 2026 

Complimentary Series - If No One Was Watching. 

7 emails over 7 days of self-discovery. Before the end you will know which of your goals are truly yours and which ones to release. 

Connect With Ameera Virani

Website: www.ameeravirani.com
Instagram: @ameera.virani
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ameeravirani/

Substack

The Designed Life Weekly Edit

If this episode inspired you, please follow the show and leave a review. 

Disclaimer

The Designed Life with Ameera Virani and all associated content is intended for general informational, educational, and inspirational purposes only. The insights shared on this podcast, as well as any linked resources or materials, are not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This podcast is not intended to replace the guidance of a licensed therapist, medical professional, financial advisor, or other qualified professionals. Always seek the advice of your personal support team.

Louisa Jewell, founder of the Canadian Positive Psychology Association and author of Wire Your Brain for Confidence, has spent twenty years inside the science of well-being. In this conversation she makes the case that resilience, the ability to return to where you were, is not enough for a world being rewritten faster than our brains can track. The skill she teaches now is psychological adaptability, and she walks through the three-part model behind it.

IN THIS EPISODE

•  Why the brain cannot keep pace with the rate of change, and what to build instead

•  The three moves of psychological adaptability: think, respond, recover

•  The self-compassion test Louisa teaches to rocket scientists

•  What an adaptable leader does differently when her team is under real pressure

•  How to raise kids who embrace lifelong learning

CONNECT WITH LOUISA

louisajewell.com  |  Book: Wire Your Brain for Confidence  |  Instagram @louisa.jewell  |  Canadian Positive Psychology Association (cppa.ca)

CHAPTERS

•  00:00  Why this conversation, and who it is for

•  01:43  The two Louisas: life before and after positive psychology

•  07:24  Daily practice: move your body, nurture relationships, just say yes

•  10:24  Loneliness, belonging, and deciding to love the barista

•  15:11  Curiosity instead of judgment

•  16:55  Self-compassion and the way we speak to ourselves

•  23:05  When positivity is not the answer

•  29:39  Why resilience is not enough: psychological adaptability

•  31:50  The three-part model, walked through

•  34:10  Adaptable leadership: clearing the way for high performance

•  37:38  Raising kids who are ready for anything

•  41:37  The Louisa Jewell Impact Award and the drop in the pond

•  44:15  One shift to try tonight, and what a designed life means now

New Intro Feb 2026 

Complimentary Series - If No One Was Watching. 

7 emails over 7 days of self-discovery. Before the end you will know which of your goals are truly yours and which ones to release. 

Connect With Ameera Virani

Website: www.ameeravirani.com
Instagram: @ameera.virani
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ameeravirani/

Substack

The Designed Life Weekly Edit

If this episode inspired you, please follow the show and leave a review. 

Disclaimer

The Designed Life with Ameera Virani and all associated content is intended for general informational, educational, and inspirational purposes only. The insights shared on this podcast, as well as any linked resources or materials, are not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This podcast is not intended to replace the guidance of a licensed therapist, medical professional, financial advisor, or other qualified professionals. Always seek the advice of your personal support team.

You know the relief. The call goes to voicemail, the proposal goes out by email, the price gets typed into a DM instead of said out loud, and for a day you don't have to hear the no.

Ameera used to pray for voicemail. In this solo episode, she pulls the threads from last week's episode with Gazzy Amin, on buying conversations, and shares how she rebuilt her sales mindset, from a 15-year-old on a retail floor to a founder making offers in her DMs today.

You'll trace your first memory of being sold to and the belief it planted. You'll pause for a short exercise to notice where the fear of selling lands in your body before you ask. You'll see how service can become a hiding place that keeps you from ever making the offer.

If you're a high-achieving woman who still feels it in her stomach before a buying conversation, this episode gives you a new way in.

Listen now, then send it to the woman in your life who still finds selling is something she braces for.

New Intro Feb 2026 

Complimentary Series - If No One Was Watching. 

7 emails over 7 days of self-discovery. Before the end you will know which of your goals are truly yours and which ones to release. 

Connect With Ameera Virani

Website: www.ameeravirani.com
Instagram: @ameera.virani
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ameeravirani/

Substack

The Designed Life Weekly Edit

If this episode inspired you, please follow the show and leave a review. 

Disclaimer

The Designed Life with Ameera Virani and all associated content is intended for general informational, educational, and inspirational purposes only. The insights shared on this podcast, as well as any linked resources or materials, are not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This podcast is not intended to replace the guidance of a licensed therapist, medical professional, financial advisor, or other qualified professionals. Always seek the advice of your personal support team.

In her first year of business, Gazzy Amin had 113 buying conversations. Eighty-six of them ended in a no.

Before founding Sales Beyond Scripts, Gazzy spent nearly a decade running national-level campaigns for Canadian prime ministers, premiers, and cabinet ministers, often as the youngest person and the only woman at the decision-making table. Today she teaches women founders to sell in a way that feels like care, and to lead their businesses as CEOs instead of carrying every task themselves.

Ameera and Gazzy get into:

• The zone of genius audit, and why the work you are worst at quietly costs you revenue
• Why profit solves most of the problems founders try to fix with more content
• Where the fear of selling comes from, and how to stop taking a no personally
• Why 3,000 views with zero conversations is an expensive marketing spend
• How Gazzy's sales team posts every no in the group chat
• What salsa lessons taught her about control, trust, and letting a team lead

If this conversation shifts how you feel about selling, share it with one woman who needs to hear it.

Connect with Gazzy: authenticgazzy.com  |  Instagram @authenticgazzy

New Intro Feb 2026 

Complimentary Series - If No One Was Watching. 

7 emails over 7 days of self-discovery. Before the end you will know which of your goals are truly yours and which ones to release. 

Connect With Ameera Virani

Website: www.ameeravirani.com
Instagram: @ameera.virani
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ameeravirani/

Substack

The Designed Life Weekly Edit

If this episode inspired you, please follow the show and leave a review. 

Disclaimer

The Designed Life with Ameera Virani and all associated content is intended for general informational, educational, and inspirational purposes only. The insights shared on this podcast, as well as any linked resources or materials, are not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This podcast is not intended to replace the guidance of a licensed therapist, medical professional, financial advisor, or other qualified professionals. Always seek the advice of your personal support team.

You said the goal out loud and waited for the room to rise. Some rose. Some went quiet. One asked if it was smart, this close to 50.

This solo is about the part of change nobody warns you about: the people. Ameera shares leaving a secure job with a pension, getting laid off 18 months later in a restructuring, and choosing to go further into the work instead of back to safe. Inside is the one question that tells you whether you'll hold your vision when no one claps, and the reframe that decides whose reaction gets to move you.

The Design Table waitlist is open. Link in the show notes.

Highlights:

01:20  Why this one matters: leaving the secure job with the pension, near 50

02:40  Laid off 18 months later, and choosing to go further in, not back

04:00  Callback to the last solo: becoming the person who already holds the change

05:00  The uncomfortable truth: you can invite them, you can't carry them

05:40  Would you go anyway?

06:20  Whose reaction gets to move you

07:00  Circle one: the people you build with, and shared authorship

08:40  Circle two: the people who love you regardless

09:30  Circle three: the lukewarm, and releasing the expectation

10:15  The new frequency, the RAS, and what clears out of the way

11:30  Grief, quieter roads, envy, compassion, their journey to come around

12:45  What I don't want for you, and the Design Table invitation

13:45  Community prompt and close

New Intro Feb 2026 

Complimentary Series - If No One Was Watching. 

7 emails over 7 days of self-discovery. Before the end you will know which of your goals are truly yours and which ones to release. 

Connect With Ameera Virani

Website: www.ameeravirani.com
Instagram: @ameera.virani
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ameeravirani/

Substack

The Designed Life Weekly Edit

If this episode inspired you, please follow the show and leave a review. 

Disclaimer

The Designed Life with Ameera Virani and all associated content is intended for general informational, educational, and inspirational purposes only. The insights shared on this podcast, as well as any linked resources or materials, are not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This podcast is not intended to replace the guidance of a licensed therapist, medical professional, financial advisor, or other qualified professionals. Always seek the advice of your personal support team.

Chelsea Andreozzi connected one job to the next for years: bartending through college, interning at a nonprofit that funds small businesses for women recovering from war, spending ten years as a restaurant beverage director, before she built her own consulting business, First Call Imports. 

Just as that business started to scale, she found out she was expecting her first child, and she and her husband bought their first home, all in the same season. 

This conversation is a real look at what it took to hold both: hiring help before she could technically afford it, setting boundaries most founders are afraid to set, and telling herself, more than once, that she didn't have to do everything alone or do it perfectly. 

A story about what happens when a woman designs her own version of holding it all, instead of inheriting someone else's.

Connect with Chelsea Andreozzi

Website: https://firstcallimports.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chelsandreozzi/

Substack: https://chelseawashburnandreozzi.substack.com/

New Intro Feb 2026 

Complimentary Series - If No One Was Watching. 

7 emails over 7 days of self-discovery. Before the end you will know which of your goals are truly yours and which ones to release. 

Connect With Ameera Virani

Website: www.ameeravirani.com
Instagram: @ameera.virani
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ameeravirani/

Substack

The Designed Life Weekly Edit

If this episode inspired you, please follow the show and leave a review. 

Disclaimer

The Designed Life with Ameera Virani and all associated content is intended for general informational, educational, and inspirational purposes only. The insights shared on this podcast, as well as any linked resources or materials, are not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This podcast is not intended to replace the guidance of a licensed therapist, medical professional, financial advisor, or other qualified professionals. Always seek the advice of your personal support team.

You reached a goal you'd wanted for years, the promotion, the relationship, the money, and you couldn't quite hold it or feel at home with it. This episode is about why, and what to do about it.

This is the finale of Ameera's three-part series on why change feels so hard. If you're new to the show, start with the Episode Titled: The Wiring, then come back here. In this one she reaches the heart of lasting change: you cannot transform your life without becoming a different version of yourself, not a better one, a different one, the version who can actually hold what you're calling in. She shares the one question that shows you exactly where to begin, the grief that comes with letting an old self go, and how to give your nervous system the safety it needs so it stops pulling you back to what's familiar.

If you're ready to embrace the change, the awakening, you can feel coming, this one will meet you there. The Design Table, Ameera's twelve-week room for exactly this work, is open now, with details inside the episode and in the show notes.

Highlights:

00:00   Welcome, and where the series has led

02:00   The thing you got, and couldn't quite hold

04:00   You can't change without becoming someone different, not better

06:30   You fall to who you are, not your goals

08:30   The series comes together: wiring, energy, becoming

10:00   The future-self question (the peak)

13:00   The gap is the map, not a verdict

14:30   Becoming her, one choice at a time

16:30   The grief of letting the old self go, the chiseling

19:00   Your nervous system, and how to give it safety

21:30   Grief makes space for joy

23:00   The invitation: The Design Table

25:30   Lead yourself with compassion. Close.

New Intro Feb 2026 

Complimentary Series - If No One Was Watching. 

7 emails over 7 days of self-discovery. Before the end you will know which of your goals are truly yours and which ones to release. 

Connect With Ameera Virani

Website: www.ameeravirani.com
Instagram: @ameera.virani
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ameeravirani/

Substack

The Designed Life Weekly Edit

If this episode inspired you, please follow the show and leave a review. 

Disclaimer

The Designed Life with Ameera Virani and all associated content is intended for general informational, educational, and inspirational purposes only. The insights shared on this podcast, as well as any linked resources or materials, are not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This podcast is not intended to replace the guidance of a licensed therapist, medical professional, financial advisor, or other qualified professionals. Always seek the advice of your personal support team.

You think of a friend and they text you an hour later. You wish for a parking spot and it opens up. You glance down and there's money at your feet. Coincidence, or something you had a hand in?

This episode is about what happens when you stop letting your brain scan for what might go wrong and point it, on purpose, at what you want to receive and create. Ameera walks through the science first, the filter in your brain that decides what you notice out of the flood of information around you, and then shares what she believes about the energy underneath it, leaving you free to keep what resonates and set the rest down. 

You'll get a practice for calling something in, a true story of a speaking engagement that arrived days after she wrote it down, and a simple assignment for the week.

What doesn't change either way: your thoughts, your inner dialogue, and your actions are all within your control. Align those three and change stops feeling impossible.

00:00   Welcome, and a look back at last week

02:00   Your brain scans for threat. What happens when you redirect it.

03:30   Coincidence, magic, or manifesting: the moments you've felt

05:00   The filter: your reticular activating system, explained

07:30   Your brain. What is it filtering for?

09:00   What I also believe: energy, and drawing it toward you

11:00   The Instagram story: a speaking engagement I called in

13:00   How to hold it: keep what resonates, leave the rest

14:30   Trust the nudge: intuition over analysis paralysis

17:00   The practice: name it, feel it, hold it open, act on it

21:00   Come back to it, and this week's heart assignment

23:00   What's coming: the work of becoming

New Intro Feb 2026 

Complimentary Series - If No One Was Watching. 

7 emails over 7 days of self-discovery. Before the end you will know which of your goals are truly yours and which ones to release. 

Connect With Ameera Virani

Website: www.ameeravirani.com
Instagram: @ameera.virani
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ameeravirani/

Substack

The Designed Life Weekly Edit

If this episode inspired you, please follow the show and leave a review. 

Disclaimer

The Designed Life with Ameera Virani and all associated content is intended for general informational, educational, and inspirational purposes only. The insights shared on this podcast, as well as any linked resources or materials, are not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This podcast is not intended to replace the guidance of a licensed therapist, medical professional, financial advisor, or other qualified professionals. Always seek the advice of your personal support team.