Conversations On Living (Chris Brock)

What does success look like? Social media is full of success porn – if it’s not pictures of sports cars and well dressed male models accompanied by motivational texts, it’s self-styled personal growth gurus telling us we’re not hustling hard enough. All designed to make us feel inadequate.

But it success really about the number of zeroes on your bank balance, your body fat percentage and an Instagram feed full of private jets and exotic holidays?

Or is it something else? Is it about being comfortable with not striving, not pushing for bigger, faster and shinier every minute of the day. Maybe success is about finding peace with who we already are, where we already are, and what we’ve already got. Maybe it’s about acknowledging, as Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield says, that “I’m perfect already, with room for improvement.”

In this episode of my podcast I chat with author and journalist Oliver Burkeman about the innate sense of dissatisfaction that humans seem to possess. We chat about our constant desire for something different than what we already have, how we know when we get “there” and even if there is a “there” at all.

Oliver is the author of two books: The Antidote (Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking) and Help! How To Become Slightly Happier And Get A Bit More Done. His forthcoming book, Four Thousand Weeks, is out later this year.

Useful links:

www.oliverburkeman.com

We don’t perceive reality the way it is. We perceive it the way we are. Through the filters of our personality, our ego, our experiences, our circumstances, and myriad other factors, all influencing how we interpret our surroudings and our place in them. Many of these influences which affect our view of the world – and of ourselves – are not us, but baggage that we have acquired along the way. Humans have a natural tendency to focus on all the things that are going wrong, often to the point where we become blind to the positive things that surround us. The beauty, the abundance, the wealth. And we fuel this attention bias by feeding on negativity – the constant consumption of news media, the constant obsessing over our weaknesses and our faults, the constant comparisons and judgement, the constant striving, and the constant focus on everything that we don’t possess, instead of everything that what we do. And life reflects this negativity back to us. The more we focus on the negative, the more we bring it into our lives. The more we behave in a way that feeds it. Our anger breeds more anger. Our outer world becomes a mirror to our inner, and our insecurities become obstacles to our flourishing. But when we learn how to break down these obstacles, we get closer to our true authentic selves, and begin to walk a path through life that is more authentically ours. And as we do so, we get closer to fulfilling our potential, and living a life of joy, happiness and abundance. I spoke about this topic with Gordana Biernat, the author of Know Your Truth: Why Knowing Who You Are Changes Everything. Gordana describes herself as “a writer, a teacher, a keeper of wisdom” and was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as one of her SuperSoul 100 teachers. In this episode of the podcast we talk about how our perception shapes our world, how fear today is rarely reflective of the kind of danger that the emotion was originally designed for, and how we are spiritual beings here to explore the physical reality. Links: Gordana’s website: www.mypowertalk.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/mypowertalk Instagram: www.instagram.com/mypowertalk

What does it take to do more, live more, and be more, when our programming, our culture and our society are all designed to keep us right here where we are. And for the most part, that is in a state of dissatisfaction, of unease, of unfulfilled potential?

How can we really fulfil our potential, and live beyond the day to day, the mundane struggles and mediocrity, in order to spread our wings and fly to the highest altitudes of our potential?

How can we follow in the footsteps of Maya Angelou, when she said “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humour and some style”?

It can be done. We can live extraordinary lives, we can be extraordinary people and the truth is, we already are, we just don’t know how to step into it. But Ken Lindner might just have an idea.

Ken is the founder of one America’s largest news and hosting agencies, representing some of the biggest names in network journalism. But more importantly – for this podcast at least – is that he is the author of a number of books about how we can all take the steps necessary to transform our lives, and realise our greatness.

His most recent book, Aspire Higher, is literally a call to action, offering us some straightforward advice about how to find out what we want from life, and how to take the steps necessary to realise it.

You can find out more about Ken at his website www.kenlindner.com, along with links to buy his book from all main online retailers, such as Barnes and Noble and Amazon, and of course you can also find it in real, bricks and mortar bookshops.

www.conversationsonliving.com

Perhaps it’s part of the human condition, but most of us seem to have difficulty accepting the way things are. Instead, we find ourselves angered by what we see on the news, enraged by some enemy we are told is out to get us, disappointed by the quality of our lives, or the numbers on our bank balances, or the measurements on our waistbands. Constantly striving for more, and better. There always seems to be something to complain about, to be dissatisfied with, to feel aggrieved about, and always someone or something to blame. It’s almost as if we’ve become addicted to chaos and negativity, and that we have created a system that feeds off this addiction, requiring us to exist in a constant state of low level emotional trauma in order to sell us clicks, clothes and vacations. Requiring us to act and think and behave and identify in certain ways which, when examined closely, are not actually in alignment with who we really are. And it is when we are out of alignment with our authentic selves that we don’t realise our potential. As Maslow might say, we remain un-actualized and, indeed, this whole system that we have created for ourselves seems designed to keep us that way. Simply put, we aren’t who we came here to be, and we aren’t living the lives we came here to live. Even though we are experiencing this existence, are we actually the ones pulling the strings? So how do we break free from this state inauthentic living, and step into our most real, most authentic, most true selves? It’s not a new question, but one that has been played with for thousands of years. Lao Tzu said it sometime around the 6th Century BCE, when he stated “when I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” Rumi, the Sufi poet, hinted at it in the 1200s, when he wrote “You think you belong to this world of dust and matter. Out of this dust you have created a personal image, and have forgotten about the essence of your true origin.” Mooji, the modern day spiritual teacher, said it when he wrote “step into the fire of self-discovery, it will not burn you, it will burn everything you are not.” This quest to discover who we really are, despite the trappings of culture, society, and expectation, and to create a life that is in alignment with this true version of ourselves can itself take a lifetime. And perhaps we may never get there, living a life shaped by the dictates of expectation, convention, tradition and culture. But while we settle for anger, discontent, for resentment, and the exhausting bitterness of carrying around a thousand injustices, while also straining to be something we are not, in a world that is not built for us, we cannot begin that journey. At some point there will come a day when many of us decide that it’s time to put down the baggage, and start taking the action of change to unravel and unload everything we’ve accumulated over the course of our lives, and in the process dig down closer to the truth of who we are. This notion of our unique truth, of finding out who we are once we remove all that we are not, is explored by Jim Phillips, the author of the book “The Key to LIFE: Living in Full Expression”. Jim is an entrepreneur, speaker, and coach, and he joined me on the podcast to talk about how our truth, our reality, and who we really are, are shaped by a lifetime of experiences. But once we learn to let it go, we can live a more fulfilling, real, and rewarding existence. http://www.livinginfullexpression.com

Rilke said “the purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.”

This may sound a little, well, defeatist, but what he means is that in order to fulfil our potential, to see what we’re capable of, we need to face those challenges that seem insurmountable, and keep facing them until we overcome them. And then, with the grit that we have obtained from that challenge, we move on to the next, bigger challenge.

And so on, and so on.

This isn’t an easy philosophy to adopt, especially given the hardships of life, in this increasingly difficult and confusing world that we’ve created for ourselves.

But how do we know who we really, or what we’re really capable of, unless we face life, face our challenges, and choose not to let them own us, but to keep pushing forward, to keep getting stronger and more determined, until we own them.

Last week we spoke to professional ultra runner Kieran Alger, in the first of a two-part podcast about ultrarunning or, to be more specific, about how we can go ultra in our own lives. How we can go beyond the limitations of the normal, push through the improbable, and make the seemingly impossible, possible.

And whether it’s running, whether it’s our careers, our relationships, our pastimes, or our long-held yearning for something more, there are lessons to be gained about what it takes, the grit required, and how if we dig deep enough, we are capable of achieving much more than we give ourselves credit for.

Last week we talked to a professional, who runs ultra marathons for a living, and then writes about. Today we’re talking to someone who has just completed their first ultramarathon, to get a first timers perspective, that might be a bit more relatable to those of us who are closer to the sofa than the ultra.

Amanda Eatwell is a photographer that I met when we were both member of the London Independent Photography community. In this podcast we talk about setting small goals on the road to bigger ones, and about how doing gritty things gives you the grit to face tough challenges in other parts of your life.

You can find out more about Amanda and her photography at www.amandaeatwell.com.

I have a favourite quote by the Swiss psychoanalyst, Carl Jung: “Beneath the threshold of consciousness, everything was seething with life.”

This notion – that there is life beyond what we know in the physical world of systems and money and society and iPhones – is reflected in a drawing called Three Worlds by M.C. Escher. It depicts a lake with fallen leaves floating on it. Beneath the water you can see a beautiful carp swimming, and reflected on the surface of the water are the now leafless trees.

What these two works, from Jung and Escher, toy with is the idea that at any one time, we are not simply inhabiting one world, but there are others that exist right alongside it. Indeed, with practice we can even tune in to other ways realities, by seeing past the superficial distractions up here on the surface of the water, and adjusting our own perspectives to recognise what lies above it or beneath it.

In Polynesia there are fisherman who know the ocean so well they can navigate their canoes for thousand of miles across open sea just by watching the behaviour of the water - even if they are far, far from land. This is not something that they doing knowingly, logically, but instead they tap into their intuition, their skill and their experience – their innate knowledge – and let it guide them to their destination.

Author and life coach Martha Beck calls this “wayfinding”, and it is something that all of us can do, if we can open our minds and our hearts, get quiet and listen to what our intuition is telling us. It might simply be about noticing what we notice, the things that our non-conscious minds pick out of the constant cacophony of noise that we are bombarded with from dawn until dusk. Or it might a deeper exploration beyond the limitations of words that connects us to worlds that exist outside of space and time – the sorts of places that indigenous Australians might have called the ‘Everywhen’ – a state of eternal presence that takes us past the physical boundaries of what we know, into a unified space where we can connect to everything that was, is or will be.

Wayfinders find their way by listening to their inner compass. They find their own true north by stepping out of the confines of this man-made world of language and rules and processes, and by connecting to a wordless relationship with themselves, their environment, and the universe.

I spoke with Martha about some of the ideas in her book “Finding Your Way in a Wild New World” and explored the notion that maybe, just maybe, there is a spiritual revolution quietly taking place right now.

I hope you enjoy this conversation.

Useful links:

Martha’s website: www.marthabeck.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/themarthabeck

Of all the things we can do to nourish ourselves, sleep is perhaps the most vital. Alongside food and hydration, sleep is the thing that helps us to function at our best, with clarity and confidence. So vital is it, that lack of sleep can slow us down and make life harder. And severe tiredness can also begin to affect our decision-making abilities, our self-esteem, our courage, our grip on reality and our mental health.

Getting enough rest, and good quality sleep, then, should be a crucial part of our toolkit if we are to live and act effectively, with conviction, and integrity. At our best, moving joyfully towards our potential.

At its most fundamental, Yoga Nidra is the practice of sleep. As Tracee Stanley, the world-renowned practitioner of Yoga Nidra, states in her book, Radiant Rest: “rest is vital to thriving.”

But there is more to Yoga Nidra than simply catching some good quality zees. Through deep relaxation we gain access to a deeper part of ourselves that is beyond the cognitive mind, beyond language and all its cultural trappings, and beyond all the baggage that we carry with us. Normally we only experience this part of ourselves while we sleep, and so we don’t remember it when we awake. At best there is, perhaps, a vague sense of it when we rise from our slumber, or maybe we glimpse something profound during a particularly deep meditation.

But with Yoga Nidra we are presented with both a process and a state of consciousness that allows us to remain aware while we are in this state. Known as hypnogogia, it not only allows us to come face-to-face with the void that lies deep inside ourselves, transcending duality and connecting us with the infinite universe of which we are so profoundly a part, but it also offers access to our deep intrinsic and ancient wisdom, returning with insights and clarity otherwise impossible to access.

The practical, spiritual and valuable benefits of a practice like this are nothing new. It is an ancient knowledge that has even influenced the greatest modern thinkers. Thomas Edison, the inventor of the lightbulb, was said to take regular naps throughout the day, clutching a large metal ball in each hand. As he feel asleep the balls would fall from his hands waking him up, and he would immediately note down any ideas or visions that he had seen in the semi-conscious dreamscape that lies between sleep and awakeness, before they evaporated from memory.

Perhaps this is where the idea for the lightbulb came from.

Practices such as this can offer us rich, nourishing rest. And they can also offer us guidance from the deepest part of ourselves, something Tracee Stanley refers to as “a connection to our inner knowing.”

Surely, getting to know ourselves so intimately, gaining access to our own profound knowledge – the light of our souls – that evades us during thinking hours, can only serve to heal our relationships with both ourselves and our day-to-day reality. And more than this, to move us towards our ultimate state of being. That is, a sense of meaning and purpose to why we are here at all.

As Tracee puts it: “Yoga Nidra is a healing salve for the world” and in this conversation she gives me a beginners guide to this powerful and useful practice, which can help us to show up as the best of ourselves, into a reality that is aligned with who we really are.

Useful links:

www.traceeyoga.com
www.radiantrest.com

There is this notion that in order to get ahead in life, to be successful and to receive our just rewards, we must sacrifice ourselves somehow. Working all hours at the office to prove our worth. Constantly giving, giving, giving. In time, money, energy, emotion and attention, to show that we care, that we’re worthy, loyal, or that we’re moral or somehow superior. But sacrificing ourselves like this ultimately has the opposite effect. It wears us down, burns us out, lowers our frequency, harms our energy. Not only do we become tired and unable to properly fulfil the roles and obligations that we believe we must give part of ourselves to, but we can become resentful that life isn’t easier, that we are receiving nothing in return, that we are being drained. Slowly but surely, bit by bit, life is no longer working for us, but happening to us, and our power becomes diminished. The sacrifices we have made for the job, the role, the obligations, have made us less able to carry out those tasks. And that hurts us. But when we put ourselves first – when we care for ourselves, mentally, physically and spiritually – we don’t need to sacrifice in order to operate at a high level for ourselves and for others. By protecting our energy, we can give so much more than we could when our giving was about sacrifice. We remain stable, rested, energised, and ready. In times like those we face today – with much of the world in lockdown, with unrest due to broken leadership, and with dissatisfaction driven by materialism and capitalism, we must nurture ourselves and protect our energy more than ever. I spoke to Cheryl Richardson about how radical self-care can make us more compassionate, help us realise our potential and build lives we love. Cheryl was one of the first life coaches, has written many books and became a regular on the Oprah Winfrey show, helping television audiences around the globe understand that in order to heal the world, we must first heal ourselves. It was great speaking with Cheryl, and I started the interview with a quote from one of my other podcast guests, Leanne Pero: “The best thing you can bring to any relationship, is a healthy, happy you.” If you want to find out more about Cheryl, her books and her work, visit her website at www.cherylricharson.com, or find her on Instagram at www.instagram.com/coachoncall and Twitter at www.twitter.com/coachoncall.

“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.” So said stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca.

And certainly, if we all knew what we wanted to be, we’d all either be there by now, or at ease we’d be well on our way there. When we were kids it’s easy to get excited about being an astronaut, a movie star, a scientist, or lumberjack. But for many of us, with growing up came a dulling of these lofty ambitions until, rather than a seat on rocket ship, most of us end up settling for a comfy chair and a widescreen TV to take the edge off another hard day at the office.

Zadie Smith seemed to capture it well when she observed: “What modest dreamers we have become.”

We focus so much on the being – the end result – that all too often we lose sight of the doing. It is the doing, the action, that leads to the being, after all. We’ve all heard the saying, fall in love with the process, but we rarely stop to think what the process looks like.

The idea of being a brain surgeon, highly revered, wandering around fancy hospitals in a nice clean white coat sounds fantastic. But for most of us, the years of studying, dissecting brains, learning the phrases and the stress of the daily job don’t seem so palatable.

The idea of being a Hollywood actor sounds fantastic. But the years of working in restaurants to make ends meet, desperate to be chosen by casting agents, only then to have to spend weeks, months, learning lines and waiting around all day in dusty studios, might not sound so fantastic.

So, as I discuss in this week’s podcast, maybe the quest of being a fulfilled, happy human, is not about seeking the thing that we want to be, but instead the thing that we want to do. The thing that lights us up, floats our boat, that is most definitely our cup of tea.

This week I’m chatting with Nick Childs. Nick is the co-founder of Dirt, an agency that uses neuroscience and big data to enable creators to gauge the impact of their work upon their audiences. I approached Nick after I saw a video he created during lockdown – part of an initiative called IsolaTED talks – where he talked about:

Knowing what you want
Choosing a life plan
Facing up to life and its challenges
Going into the day with courage

And these are some of the themes we discuss in today’s conversation.

You can find out more about Nick by following him on Twitter where he is www.twitter.com/nickchilds, and Dirt can be found at www.wearedirt.com. You can watch his IsolaTED talk at www.isolatedtalks.com/talks/facing-things/

Competition. Winners and losers. Zero sum. Here in the west it’s part of our bread and butter. We’ve been brought up with it, whether it’s in the structure of our education system, on the playing field, in the markets, or in the workplace, there’s a notion of that in order for us to get ahead, it means that we have to get ahead of someone else.

It’s so ingrained in our collective cultural identity, that we project it onto everything and everyone else. We assume it’s a law of nature, because it’s a framework that defines our way of life. In order for there to be a winner, there has to be a loser.

It’s no surprise, then, that it’s so easy to feel like a loser, if we aren’t constantly winning.

But what if it isn’t natural at all? What if we redefine what winning actually is? What if, rather than winning at the expense of someone or something else, we win based on what we can give to someone or something else? What if winning means helping others to win too? What if winning means bringing people together, delivering value to others, and raising the waters so that all ships can rise together?

This week I speak to Lindsay Hadley. She is the founder of Hadley Impact, an agency that brings together organisations in order to realise projects that do huge social good. From massive charity events to marketing campaigns, UN initiatives and mental health projects, she works with big players from non-profit, governmental and commercial sectors, convincing them to work together, to do something that delivers huge benefit around the world, with the philosophy that doing well for yourself means delivering value for others.

In this episode we talk about how you find yourself when you lose yourself, how you need to create a sense of faith – your why – to keep you motivated in the early days of a new endeavour, and how self awareness is vital in order to deal with the self doubt, the imposter syndrome, and the necessary discomfort of stepping into the void beyond your comfort zone that’s required in order to grow towards your goals and your potential.

You can find out more about the work Lindsay does by visiting her site at www.hadleyimpact.com

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life,” asked poet Mary Oliver. As children we wanted to be astronauts, movie stars, wizards or unicorns, as grown-ups we generally just settle for a reasonably comfortable existence with something good to watch on TV and a beer at the end of a hard week.

As that other great literary mind Zadie Smith said: “what modest dreamers we have become.”

So what does it take to live a life of fulfilment, of impact? To leave a dent on our small part of the universe? What does it take to explore what’s possible, and then realise it, and much more, as we step towards our potential and live the life of our dreams.

Joining me this week is Nikki Eiberhardt, and she believes that if we align with our purpose – that thing which keeps us awake at night and gets us up in the morning – and set our sights on servant leadership, we can empower ourselves and others to take on the biggest challenges and find audacious solutions.

Nikki is professor of business at Minerva University, Manager of Delta Airlines Global Talent Team, she works with Global Citizen, NASA, The Sundance Film Festival, The Nelson Mandela Foundation, she’s given a TEDx talk, and has achieved so much more, in an effort to move towards a better world for everyone. And she believes we all have to power to find our purpose, engage with empathy, and develop a systems thinking approach to achieving amazing things.

Instagram: www.instagram.com/nikkieberhardt_

www.conversationsonliving.com

Life is hard enough as it is. But what kind of person wants to make it harder for themselves by, for example, choosing to set up their own business, rather than just getting a job? And who in their right mind would want to make it even harder by choosing to make it an ethical business, with moral and sustainable practices and supply chains? And what kind of person would choose to do this in a world that is designed to make it harder for them – a world designed for white, middle class men, when they are not a white middle class man?

I am a white, middle class man. And I have, many times, struggled to simply get by in a system that was designed for people who look like me. So I’ve always wondered how people find success. Particularly people who choose to do it against even tougher odds than I have faced, and who choose to do it morally, and with decency.

I have huge respect for everyone who chooses to go it alone, but even bigger respect for those who don’t look like me, who don’t have the advantages that people like me have going in their favour, but choose to make the leap anyway. I want to know how they do it. What’s the secret to making stuff happen, against the odds?

So I reached out to Kalkidan Legesse, hoping that she might share her thoughts and experiences with me. Kalkidan is the managing director of Sancho’s, an ethical fashion company operating out of Exeter in the UK. I wanted to speak to her to find out how you overcome the fear and the mental roadblocks that can stop you trying build a life for yourself that is different to the mainstream way of doing things. The easy way of doing things.

But I also wanted to speak to Kalkidan because she has spoken and written about racism in fashion and the fashion supply chain, including for newspapers such as the Guardian.

I learned a lot from this conversation – not just about creating your own life and business, and not just about racism in fashion, but also about myself.

As a result of the recent Black Lives Matter protests which continue to reverberate around the world, there was a lot of talk about the continuing impact of racism, segregation and inequality that still affects people today. It was a hot topic, but a few months later the conversations have quietened down. I want to continue the conversation, and during our podcast I learned why my black friends are so exhausted by having to continue to educate the rest of the world about the problems of racism.

It shouldn’t be the burden of those who have been victims of racism – either personally or culturally – to have to explain to everyone else how it manifests every day. it shouldn’t be their duty to try to educate the rest of us about how our society, and even our individual behaviour, is still getting it wrong and perpetuating hundreds of years of pain and injustice. But in conversations like this, no matter how well meaning, people like me are placing this burden on people who are not like me.

So here’s an idea. If every day you are not caused to be reminded and to feel exposed because of your gender, your nationality or the colour of your skin, maybe take time to research why it may be draining for others to feel this way. Do the research, read the books, don’t wait for it to be delivered to you on a plate. I’m going to try to be better, not just for me, but for everyone else that I share this planet with. I hope you will too.

Here are some useful links:

Sancho’s website: www.sanchosshop.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/wowsancho

More links on my blog at www.chrisbrock.uk

I stumbled across mindfulness pretty much by accident. In a typically low moment when I felt like there were no options left for me, I did the only thing I hadn’t done and turned my attention inwards. After a while I noticed things beginning to change – both in myself and in the world around me. It was a revelation, and I eventually learned that I had discovered – among other things – mindfulness. “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change,” said Dr Wayne Dyer, and I had learned that by becoming aware of, and changing, my perspective I could not only affect the way I saw the world, but I could affect the world itself. If you smile at people, quite often, they smile back. Mindfulness is simple, but also powerful. I can be used to manage pain and stress. It can be used as a treatment for PTSD. And it is often seen as a near-panacea for a whole range of spiritual, mental and physical ills. It also offers the allure of other ways of being, and the exploration of other realms of imagination and existence. It’s not all sunlight and stardust, though. It can also become an escape from the responsibility of dealing with our emotions. Taken to extremes, we can lose ourselves in it, absolve ourselves from any culpability in this physical realm, and even step outside the moral contract we have with this world and the people we share it with. But it can also be a powerful tool for helping us gain ownership of our lives when, all too often, we can feel like life is dragging us along behind it, unwillingly and with no control or influence. I spoke to Mindfulness Man, Chris Manning, about this and other mindfulness-related topics. Chris is a meditation and mindfulness expert. He is the admin of a rapidly growing Facebook group called Mindfulness In Daily Life, and he has a variety of guided meditations on Insight Timer. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Useful links: Instagram: www.instagram.com/mindfulnessman Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/MINDFULNESSINDAILYLIFE/ Insight Timer: https://insighttimer.com/mindfulnessman/

After my previous conversation about mindfulness with Michelle Butler, I wanted to explore the topic further. So, I reached out to Neil Seligman. He’s a mindfulness expert and former barrister who works both with individuals and also organisations, encouraging them to bring mindfulness into the workplace through his Conscious Professional consultancy. A conscious visionary and inspirational speaker, Neil has travelled the world sharing his thoughts on mindfulness and encouraging others to bring it into their lives. Helping people find clarity, balance and resilience – particularly in challenging times – Neil’s insights and training have helped countless people reframe their perspective in order to live deeper, more meaningful lives. Our conversation took in Neil’s own story, and touched on a variety of different subjects. Due to the COVID-19 lockdown it was my first podcast conducted remotely, something I plan to do a lot more of, and I’ll be speaking with a lot of interesting people from around the world in the coming weeks. To find out more about Neil, visit his sites: www.neilseligman.com www.theconsciousprofessional.com

I love a good quote. There are few things that can be said today, that haven’t already been said by others – most of whom were wiser and more eloquent than me. A favourite of mine, and a repeat offender on this podcast, is Blaise Pascal, the 16th Century philosopher, who said: “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” 

It seems that being alone with ourselves, getting quiet and seeing what might come out of our own internal and dreaded lucky dip is something that we have collectively built a whole world around avoiding. Whether it’s our iPhones, our television news, the internet and social media, our daily gossip, our indulgence in the pleasures of instant gratification, or our latest political scandals, we have built impossibly high walls of distraction to protect ourselves from the uncomfortable messages that we might hear if we just took the time to listen to rushing waters that flow inside us. 

As Nietzche said: “If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes into you.” 

It sounds terrifying, but maybe finding the courage to face that terror is exactly what we need to actualise who we really are, and become who we came here to be. As we’re on a quote trip already, I’d like to offer another favourite, this time from Joseph Campbell, and echoing thousands of years of wisdom from the tao, from zen, from the stoics… 

“The cave you fear to enter, holds the treasure that you seek.”

In this podcast we regularly explore what it means to get quiet and face ourselves. We’ve spoken to monks, to meditators, to mindfulness practitioners, authors and even entrepreneurs, many of whom share the same wise message about how to live a life. To quote the Ancient Greek aphorism, it’s this: “know thyself.” And who can possibly know themselves better – spiritually, mentally and physically – than those athletes who spend hour after hour alone, with just their thoughts and their bodies for company. I’m talking about the ultra athletes who go far beyond the already gruelling challenge of the 26.2 miles of a marathon, and instead push themselves for hundreds of miles, for days and days of solitude and physical exertion. 

What does it take to push yourself to those kinds of extremes? What do you learn about yourself and the world along the way? And what can we learn from these individuals who are pushing the envelope of what’s possible for the human body and psyche that we can apply to our own more modest exertions day to day, as we try to find our path through the tangled undergrowth of life? 

I spoke to Kieran Alger, journalist and ultra runner, who regularly pushes himself and his body beyond what most of us would consider to be possible, about what it takes to go ultra, and what we learn about ourselves and our place in the world along the way.

This is a two part podcast on Ultra Running. Next week I’ll be speaking with photographer Amanda Eatwell, who just completed her first ultra marathon, to get another perspective on that challenge.

www.manvmiles.co.uk
www.instagram.com/manvmiles
www.twitter.com/manvmiles

www.conversationsonliving.com

“The universe is made of stories, not atoms.” So said poet and activist Muriel Rukeyser. And despite the science, despite the particle physics, despite the mathematical equations and the philosophy and the religion and the spirituality – or maybe inspite of all these things – I challenge anyone to prove her wrong.

That’s because we can only see the universe from a human perspective – our unique and individual human perspective. And that itself, is a story.

From our past to our future, to the way we interact with the world, to the way we identify as ourselves, everything about our human experience is made up of stories.

But all too often, we give up authorship of these stories – our stories – to things outside of us. People. Circumstances. Fears and doubts. Cultural norms. Expectations. Trends. Fashions. Opinion. Tribes. Rather than becoming the heroes in our stories, we become 2-dimensional supporting characters, to our past, to our baggage, to other people’s stories, and stories of our own creation which don’t support or serve us, but instead keep us limited, our worlds small, and our lives out of alignment with who we really are.

So what, then, if we start to become aware of our stories, and the impact they have on our reality. What f we start to take ownership of them, rewrite them in a way that serves us much better. And what do we see when we peer beneath them, at our story-less selves.

Today I’m speaking with Krish Shrikumar, a games developer and return guest on the podcast. Krish is the brains behind the meditation-based video game Playne, and the new game Inward, both of which ask us to slow down, get quiet, and connect to a version of ourselves – a story of ourselves – that is less caught up in the constant hustle, bustle of modern life, in worries about the future or the past, and instead be more present and able to connect to the benefits that brings. Krish’s is developing games that build habits which result in positive impacts on our lives.

This is a really great conversation, that explores how powerful and important stories are in our lives, what it means to take ownership of them, and what lies beneath them.

You can find out about Playne and Inward by visiting playne.co, or you can just Google meditation game.

Do you ever wonder where it all went wrong? Find yourself cursing life for being unfair? Struggle with where you are, why you’re here, or even how things would be if you could only just get your act together and sort your life out?

You’re not alone. In fact, I’d wager that most people feel stuck, dissatisfied, or at least a little bit disenchanted – if not with their entire life, perhaps one or more aspects of it.

It’s easy to blame everything outside of ourselves for our unhappiness – the thing that was done to us, our bad luck, the injustice of an unfair world. But when we curse the world for all that goes wrong, we also end up wishing the world we bring us that magical payday we’ve been waiting for all along – our big break – and grumbling our days away waiting for it to happen.

But its not the world out there that’s going to dish up the good life, but the world within us. The energy we bring to our days, the action we take, our attitude towards what is working for us, and what isn’t.

The Sufi poet Rumi said “yesterday I was clever so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise so I am changing myself.”

This week I’m speak with Chris Plourde. Chris is a conscious performance coach who has worked with organisations such as Disney, LuluLemon, and Twitter, as well as high level CEOs, athletes, celebrities and even armed forces special ops soldiers. He says if we want things to be better, we have to do better, and seek out the patterns and triggers inside ourselves in order to make the changes we need to escape the things we don’t want in our lives, and embrace more of what we do want. As I often say, when we step up to life, life will step up to meet us.

You can find out more about Chris at his website, www.chrisplourde.com

www.conversationsonliving.com

Money is the root of all evil, and there is a nobility in struggling without it. Capitalism is a device of the patriarchy, the machinery of oppression, and along with its bedfellow, greed, leads to the innocent suffering while the undeserving rich get richer and richer and richer.

Even the Bible, if that’s your tipple, says that it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

There’s no doubt about it, money is bad.

But let’s be honest, most of us wouldn’t mind a little bit more of it. At the very least, we could put a roof over our head, keep the heating on, and feed our families.

And just think how much better our lives would be if we could afford a bigger house, or get that thing fixed that’s been on our mind for the last six months. And perhaps a few new clothes in the wardrobes wouldn’t hurt. And we could finally book that holiday we’ve been wanting for all this time.

As just think what we could do if we didn’t have to about money any more. If we didn’t have to go to work everyday. How much better would our lives be if we didn’t need to worry about paying the bills? And when we’ve covered all the essentials (and maybe a few luxuries too) for ourselves, we could help our loved ones. And once they’re looked after, maybe we could do something grand, something great, something with a huge impact.

Ok so maybe money isn’t so bad after all, maybe it’s not intrinsically evil, but maybe we’ve just been using it wrong all along. And maybe we’re not distributing it properly.

This week I’m speaking with Noleen Mariappen, who is a business consultant working to promote conscious capitalism and encourage organisations big and small to seek not simply to turn a profit, but to use their wealth and their clout to create impact for good.

This is a far-reaching conversation that begins by exploring how companies can turn negative ideas about commerce and money on their heads, and become part of the solution instead of part of the problem. We chat about how money, often considered the root of all evil, can become a force for good.

And then we go a little deeper, as we explore how we can individually break free from the notion that it’s shameful to be financially comfortable, and talk about how we can use self-awareness to act authentically and find our purpose, discover our why, attract our tribe, and enjoy the rewards that a life lived in alignment with our values can bestow upon us, and others.

Useful links:

www.noleenm.com
www.saffaglobal.com
www.thinkocean.earth
www.linkedin.com/in/noleenm

www.conversationsonliving.com

It’s got to be perfect, sang Eddi Reader, the lead singer of Fairground Attraction. And, in today’s material world of social media and personal brand building, it’s easy to assume that if you’re not perfect in all areas of your life, then you’re somehow falling short. As we digest yet another personal development craze, try to keep up with the latest diet craze, fitness craze, fashion craze, or technology craze, this push for perfection can even send us the other way. 

Throwing our hands up in defeat before we’ve even begun to try, instead finding solace in all the things we’re supposed to be avoiding. So how do we know when the striving to become better, slimmer, wealthier, happier, is actually becoming an obstacle to our progress, forcing us, not to thrive, but to become stuck? 

Perfectionism, the constant seeking to be better, to achieve more, to fulfil our potential, can actually prevent us from doing exactly that. It can lead to a fear of failure, a fear of not achieving what we set out to achieve and, rather than excelling, crashing and burning instead. And this fear can leave us paralysed, unable to move at all. 

In this episode of the podcast we speak with Dr Patricia Zurita Ona – affectionately known as DrZ. She specialises in acceptance and commitment therapy for high achievers and over thinkers, helping them become unstuck from worries, fears, anxieties, obsessions, perfectionism, procrastination, and ineffective playing-it-safe strategies. 

We talk about how success can easily lead to shame, how high performance can lead to emotional paralysis, and how fear of failure can lead us to take the easier option, even when we are capable of much much more. 

Useful links: 

www.thisisdoctorz.com
www.eastbaybehaviortherapycenter.com

As we hopefully begin to emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, we step into the harsh light of a world on fire. Social injustice, climate change, corruption, inequality have never appeared so prominent. A landscape of crisis begging to be solved, and the failed detritus of all previous attempts at stewardship are calling for a new approach.

Is a spiritual revolution the answer we’re looking for? And what would that look like in a world where the genie of materialism has been out of the lamp far too long to be pushed back in?

Perhaps, instead of looking for answers ‘out there’ we should follow the advice of Thich Nhat Hanh, who said, “the way out is in.”

But is contemplative introspection really the answer? Can that lead to the real change we need, or is it merely turning our backs on the problems of the world?

In this episode of Conversations on Living (the new name of this podcast) I speak with Jeff Krasno, founder of Commune and The Wanderlust Festival, about how we can first do the work on ourselves that is required to give us the strength to lead others towards healing.

Useful links:

www.onecommune.com

www.wanderlust.com

www.jeffkrasno.com

We spend so much time in the future. Working towards goals and dreams, trying to meet our targets and KPIs. Deadlines, to-do lists, showing that we're good enough, worthy enough, capable enough.

Or we find ourselves stuck in the past. Worrying about the things we said or did. Haunted by trauma, regret, anger or bitterness.

Alternatively we're lost in our phones, absorbed into media, our attention drawn to the agendas of others, feeding the attention economy and the outrage economy. Manipulated, exploited, our eyeballs and brainwaves somewhere else, belonging to someone else.

But we live right here, in this present moment. This is where we are, and as long as we're either in the past or the future, we're fighting against reality. Because the past if fixed, the future hasn't happened yet, the only place where we can be, do, live, is now.

Meditation and mindfulness are buzzwords of the moment. They often seem woo-woo, or naive or impractical, but in a world that not only feeds off our anxiety and our dissatisfaction but, in these days of Covid-19, fuels it, its vital that we reclaim this moment for ourselves. And mindfulness and meditation can help us to do that. To take a break from all of the external pressures of the world, of the past and the future, and just to be here, right now, as ourselves, in this moment.

It's not easy, and sometimes it helps to have a practice that you engage in. For some this might be a gym routine, or yoga classes. For others this might be guided meditations or meditation apps. For Krish Shrikumar, he's hoping that his game, Playne, will help.

Playne takes the escapism of video games and turns it on its head. It encourages meditation using interactive experiences and goal setting. It is a refreshing take on integrating this ancient activity into our busy, modern, digital lives.

In this conversation I speak with Krish about why meditation is so important in living a fulfilled and healthy live, and how technology can help that.

Useful links: www.playne.co

As we hopefully begin to emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, we step into the harsh light of a world on fire. Social injustice, climate change, corruption, inequality have never appeared so prominent. A landscape of crisis begging to be solved, and the failed detritus of all previous attempts at stewardship are calling for a new approach.

Is a spiritual revolution the answer we’re looking for? And what would that look like in a world where the genie of materialism has been out of the lamp far too long to be pushed back in?

Perhaps, instead of looking for answers ‘out there’ we should follow the advice of Thich Nhat Hanh, who said, “the way out is in.”

But is contemplative introspection really the answer? Can that lead to the real change we need, or is it merely turning our backs on the problems of the world?

In this episode of Conversations on Living (the new name of this podcast) I speak with Jeff Krasno, founder of Commune and The Wanderlust Festival, about how we can first do the work on ourselves that is required to give us the strength to lead others towards healing.

Useful links:

www.onecommune.com

www.wanderlust.com

www.jeffkrasno.com

Being who we came here to be, living and experiencing life in a way that is authentically ours, and remaining true to ourselves, is incredibly difficult when, from our earliest days, we become encumbered with the experiences of culture, the programming of society, and the big and small traumas of life.

Whether or not we’ve been through catastrophic events or situations, the low level stress of life, of getting by, doing and being our best every day, in world that seems – according the to 24-hour news cycle – increasingly broken and divided, is traumatic.

As we’ve explored in previous episodes of this podcasts, our emotional, mental, physical and spiritual selves are all closely interlinked, often to the point of being indiscernible from one another. So when negative patterns appear repeatedly in our behaviour, in our mental and emotional wellbeing, our health, or even our circumstance, the cause of our problems might be just as likely to come from within as from without.

In this episode I’m joined by psychologist, doctor, meditation teacher Radhule Weininger, who says that with compassion, loving self awareness, and a willingness to forgive and let go, we can unpick the deep seated traumas that cause the negative patterns that prevent us being who we really are, and having the life experiences we came here to have.

Radhule is the author of Heart Medicine: How to Stop Painful Patterns and Find Peace and Freedom - a book that helps us to identify our emotional and behavioral patterns – patterns she calls Long-standing, Recurrent, Painful Patterns of hurt (or Lurps!) ≠ through the lens of loving awareness—without self-judgment or blame, learning to hold ourselves as we would a dear friend, with space and grace. If you want to know how highly recommended the book comes, the forwards were written by his holiness the Dalai Llama and Joanna Macy.

You can find out more about Radhule and her book, at www.radhuleweiningerphd.com and also at mindfulheartprograms.org

What happens when we get quiet, push past the distractions of the world around us and the noise within us, and come face to face with whatever lies deep inside?

What monsters are waiting for us when we turn the volume down and listen to what is whispering beneath the hubbub? And how can we be sure that they’re monsters at all, and not instead, angels, keen to shine a light on our true authentic selves?

What happens when we shed all that we are not, and tune into everything that we really are.

I’m Chris Brock and this is Conversations on Living, and podcast about how to be well, do well, and live well. And these are just a few of the questions that I tackle in today’s episode with Donna Bond, spiritual psychologist and author of the book Original Wisdom: Harness the Power of the Authentic You.

Donna believes that if we can harness the courage to push past the fear, push past the cultural, societal and experiential programming of the ego-mind, and tap into the intrinsic, essential self that lies beneath, we can live much more in alignment with who we came here to be. And the rewards of a life in alignment are very much worth the journey to get there.

You can find out more about Donna at her website, www.donnabond.com.

www.conversationsonliving.com

When we think about nature, or we talk about spirituality, it’s easy to see it as something ‘other’. Something disconnected from the modern world that we have to live in, day to day.

We save it for the weekend or for our morning meditation sessions, and we view the wisdom of the ancients as something quaint – but certainly not something that we should bring into the office.

But this cultural disconnect could actually being doing us more harm than good. By turning our backs on nature, and creating lives that are more processed than ever in terms of what we consume – both into our bodies and our minds – we are making ourselves ill, or at the very least, living lives that are lacklustre and dull.

What if, instead, we were to find a way of connecting with the spiritual wisdom of nature, of ancient cultures, and bring into our daily lives – in a way that didn’t seemed perfectly, well, natural.

This week I’m speaking with Ben LeVine, he is a herbalist and co-founder of Rasa. It is a coffee alternative made with adaptogenic plants, mushrooms and herbs. Designed to nourish our nervous systems, enhance and balance our energy, and calm our stress, it is based on a relationship with nature that is not exploitative as in most western industries, but instead reciprocal. It’s about flavour and feeling – spiritually, emotionally and physically – as a form of communication between ourselves and our bodies, and the natural world around us.

I chatted with Ben about the science behind our relationship with plants, and how we can enter into dialogues with them that are beneficial to everyone – you, me, and the planet we live on.

To find out more about Rasa, and what they’re all about you can find them at wearerasa.com, and listeners to the podcast can get a discount of 15% on their first order – just enter the voucher codes LIVING15

You don’t need to go far to find something or someone to be angry at. If it isn’t our eyeballs and our attention that turns the golden bloated cogs of the attention economy, it’s our anger. The more enraged we become, the more tribalised we become, the more morally offended we become, the faster the wheels turn, and the more our manipulated emotions become currency. So how do we avoid becoming spiritual fodder for the political/economic meat grinder? Could kindness be the answer? Our lives happen in high definition. Every minute of every day is filled with vast amounts of information, much of it with added emotional and spiritual value. Someone smiled at us. We stubbed out toe. Our children aren’t feeling well. Is my manager angry at me? I hate this song on the radio. The shop has run out of my favourite breakfast cereal. What’s that awful politician done now? But we generally see other people’s lives in low definition. They become two-dimensional characters in the soap operas of our lives. We are only privy to that part of them that appears on the screens of our day. We are encouraged to judge them based on a flimsy dearth of information, often presented to us with a hidden agenda. by those who serve to benefit from our opinions. But if we can start to imagine that other people also have high definition lives, that they love their children, that they didn’t sleep well last night, that they got stuck in traffic today, that they can’t find their favourite pen this morning, that they’re as nervous and afraid as we are… then perhaps there’s a chance that the tribalism can break down, and we can start acting like grown ups. We can start talking to each other rather than shouting at each other. We can start listening to each other rather than judging each other. We can start understanding each other rather than demonising each other. I spoke to the author Giles Paley-Phillips for the latest episode of my podcast. Giles is well known for his illustrated children’s books, but his latest book, One Hundred and Fifty Two Days, is a more mature story. Partly biographical, it resonates deeply and emotionally in this Covid-era. We talked about the book, and also about kindness. You could call Giles a kindness evangelist, and his sharing and promotion of kind thoughts – as well as his books – have created quite a following. He is also the host of two podcasts – A Little Bit Of Positive and The Blank Podcast. Both of which are extremely popular. Enjoy this episode of the podcast, and if you want to find out more about Giles, follow him on twitter at https://twitter.com/eliistender10

I am a middle-class white man, born and raised near London, England, and I have found life to be hard to navigate. I have found it hard to navigate, despite living in a system that has been created and established by people who look like me, for people who look me, over a period of many hundreds of years. So, if I’ve struggled to get by, and to make sense of it all, what must it be like for people who don’t look like me? What must it be like to navigate this life when the very structure of the society we live in is not only not designed by people who are different to you, but in almost every circumstance it has been designed to make things harder for you, and have even profited and exploited that difference? Furthermore, what if it has been built with the sweat, blood and broken bones of your ancestors? Ancestors who were brutally taken from their homelands against their will, and treated little better than cattle, and whose descendants have only been offered, at best, nothing more than a passing acknowledgement of these injustices. And at worst resentment and aggression for daring to be, or worse, to be vocal about it. And what if, every day, you had to live a life where you were victimised because you are not a middle-class white male who looks like me? Opportunities taken away. Assumptions made about your character, your intelligence, your intentions, based on what you look like. I can’t even come close to understanding. But I want to try. And since the Black Lives Matter protest that have hit the streets around the world, if felt like I couldn’t avoid it any longer. It’s been too easy for me to hide behind my lack of perspective, my lack of knowledge on the subject. Call it white fragility, but I’ve been wary of being called out for not being clever enough, for not having educated myself enough, to have those conversations. It’s easy, as “well-meaning” white people, to voice our objections to the obvious hate that we see manifesting in the media, in racially motivated crimes, in politics. But what about our own racism? What about the biases programmed into u, by a biased education system, a biased culture and a bias society from very soon after birth? Can any of us really say “I’m not racist”? So, I reached out to meditation and yoga teacher Michael Ernest Nwah. He has been speaking about how we need to check ourselves for our own prejudice, identify where we are revealing our racism through microaggression, and start being part of the solution rather than part of the problem. If we, as white people, want to see a just society, where everyone is treated equally, we need to stop being afraid of the R-word. We need to accept that, in all likelihood we are racist. If we don’t, how do we ever hope to be the change we I hope you find this conversation useful. To find out more about Michael and his meditation and yoga classes, follow him on Instagram at: www.instagram.com/micernest.

In the Ayurvedic tradition, our constitutions are categorised into different types, called doshas. These doshas – Vatta, pitta and kapha – define the best types of food to eat in order to to be healthy, vital, energised and to avoid inflammation and illness.

It’s a beautiful idea, and for thousands of years people have adopted this Ayurvedic principle to live a bright and energetic life.

But what if we could take it beyond diet. What if we define our ‘type’ and then use this in order to create live a life of fulfilment, meaning, and contentment.

This week I’m joined by author and minds expert Jaya Jaya Myra, who turned to ayurvedic principles when doctors couldn’t solve the chronic illness that was costing her not just her health, but also her career, her relationships, her financial stability and more.

But as she explored and played with the concepts behind Ayurveda she found that not only did her health improve, but also her wider life, too. This lead her to present an eye-opening TedX Talk, become a television wellness expert, to set up her own boutique PR agency, and to write several books, including her latest, The Soul of Purpose.

Her message is this – that all aspects of our lives are connect, that when we live in alignment with our purpose, we can live a life filled with health and wellness, and that by understanding ourselves, we can discover that purpose.

Find out more about Jaya Jaya Myra and her work at www.jayajayamyra.com

www.conversationsonliving.com

If us humans are exceptionally good at anything, it’s overcomplicating life and our existence. 

We are experts at thinking too much, adding meaning where there is none, taking offence where none was intended, becoming confused, befuddled and utterly discombobulated in the process. And the harder we try, the more we complicate things. The result is that we become misaligned with our values and our identity, and further away than ever from living a life of fulfilled potential.

The French poet Guillaume Apollinaire famously stated that “now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.”

Could it really be that simple? Could the secret of being – and being well –  just be about letting go and stopping to simply be?

In my latest podcast I spoke with author Jamie Catto, who was a founder member of the band Faithless, and who directed the Ram Dass documentary, Becoming Nobody. Jamie runs workshops, retreats and mentoring programs that aim to encourage us to lighten up and have personal breakthroughs that lead us to more fulfilled, gentle and human experiences. 

We talked about learning to sit in acceptance with who we are and how we feel, and how to just be.

Enjoy our conversation, and for more information about Jamie and his work visit www.jamiecatto.com.

There are very few of us who would say that there is nothing we would change about ourselves or our lives, and of course a vital part of making change happen is taking action. And one of the simplest ways of taking action is to change the way we show up in the world.  

One of the people who knew this very well, was the poet and performer, Leonard Cohen, who famously said:“Act the way you want to be and soon you’ll be the way you act.”  

Call it “fake it 'til you make it” or “practice makes perfect” but if we want to step into a different version of ourselves – maybe one that’s more confident, more outgoing, more assertive – we need to start taking ownership of how we show up. We need to start acting as the person we wish to become, and soon we habitualise those traits and they become a reality.  

It makes sense really. If we want to become a runner we need to get out and run. If we want to become a better speaker, we need to get out there and speak. Embodying the energy of the thing we wish to be.  

Amy Scruggs has spent her life in front of either an audience or a lens. From the age of four she was learning and performing music. For fifteen years she worked with some of Nashville’s greatest musicians, singing in stadiums and arenas, before turning her attention to the media, where she became a television presenter. She hosts “Financing the American Dream” on CNBC, and also works as a coach for professionals who want to become better speakers and presenters. Because, ultimately, she knows that how you show up in the world has a big impact on how the world responds.  

If you want gravitas, respect, confidence, opportunities, if you want to overcome fear and seize life by the horns, if you want to step into your potential, then think about the energy you bring to life. Because often that energy gets reflected back at you.  

As a coach Amy has helped scores of professionals discover this for themselves, and now she’s sharing her wisdom with the rest of us, in her new book: “Lights, Camera, Action: Media Coaching for Any Professional in Today’s Digital World.”  

Amy sat down with me to share her story, her knowledge, and also her infectious enthusiasm.  

www.amyscruggsmedia.com

There can only be room for one winner. Success means first place on the podium, and second or third are simply consolation prizes for the best of the losers. This zero sum notion that in order for someone to win, someone else most lose is a cultural cornerstone of western society. It is hammered home in school sports lessons, in contests such as spelling bees, debating societies, and even in performance tier groups in school.

But what’s worse is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Losers get chosen last, and sent to the bottom where they get no special attention, whereas winners get more and more support and before long they’re miles ahead of the pack, and there’s no way for anyone to catch up.

But what if it didn’t have to be this way?

Motivational speaker Jim Rohn famously stated that “you are the average of the five people you surround yourself with.” And with this podcast I’ve be surrounding myself with amazing, inspiring, wise and wonderful people who all have a take on how to live life, make it work, and turn struggles into successes.

Today I’m speaking with EA Csolkovits, who wants to turn the idea of winning on it’s head by literally gamifying success. If we were to surround ourselves with people who each committed to raising the others up, like a mastermind group of individuals competing to see who could bring the most success to the others, then surely there could be no losers.

This brilliant ideas echoes the convener model that we explored in episode 68 when I spoke with the fantastic Lindsay Hadley, who described how it’s possible to work together for shared success, and in doing so create a tide that raises all ships together.

Whereas Lindsay Hadley worked with organisations to make it happen, EA Csolkovits works with individuals through his free GIVERS University project. It offers step by step instructions on how to create your mastermind group – which he calls a Junto, which is a historical word meaning a group of people joined together for a common purpose – and how to bring everyone together in order to help each other succeed.

I think it’s a wonderful and powerful idea, and it’s delivered by a man who has enjoyed its benefits first hand. EA is a great storyteller with a great story. He’s founded many business, made fortunes, flies airplanes, has hosted radio talkshows and much more.

You can find out about GIVERS University at giversuniversity.com.

www.conversationsonliving.com

In this episode of the podcast we meet Joanna Chanis.

Joanna is an author and mentor, helping people taking ownership of their lives. After being diagnosed with and treated for breast cancer, going through a painful divorce and a lifetime of living out of alignment with who she really is, she had an epiphany. This led her to develop a practice based on gratitude and acceptance that asks us to stop fighting with what is, and instead work through our experience so that we can realise what could be.

To find out more about Joanna and her work, visit www.joannachanis.com

Life is hard and full of challenges. Buddhists would even go so far as to suggest that life is suffering as a result our attachment to it. It stands to reason, then, that the ultimate goal in life is not necessarily happiness, but the cessation of this suffering.  

There are, perhaps, three routes to this goal. I’m sure there are many more if you were to explore the sutras, or read up on the philosophy of life, but for now I’ll settle with three.  One is to identify those things in our life that we’re unhappy with, which we perceive to be causing us suffering or unhappiness, and work to eradicate them. However, this can cause problems – further suffering – in itself. The constant striving for something different, something better, amplifies our dissatisfaction with where we are now. It amplifies our dissatisfaction with ‘what is’ and we find ourselves increasingly dissatisfied, disempowered, and resentful of how unfair life is.  

There is an alternative though. If we find ourselves wrestling with some aspect of our existence, and suffering as a result, we can reframe our relationship to it. We cannot lose a fight we do not engage with, and so by letting go of our desire for something different, something better, and learning to accept where we are and what we’ve got, we find an alternative route to the cessation of suffering. Attachment is suffering, so if we detach, the suffering is no more.  

There are monks in the Buddhist temples of Thailand and San Diego who dedicate years, even their whole lives, to this detachment from desire and its suffering. And although I do have the best intentions, I am not a monk. Seriously. Just ask my friends.  There are bills I have to pay, things I want, luxuries I desire, daily discomforts I must face, both in my own life and in the world that I see around me. A world that has become much closer and more vivid thanks to modern media, bringing all of the injustices of the world – or at least those injustices that the news editors deem worthy – into my consciousness.

And I’m torn. I seek peace within me. A nice life. A carefree existence. I meditate and I embrace loving kindness, mindfulness and compassion. I forgive and I forgive and I forgive.   

But is it enough?  

Should I be out there on the streets, with those good people who are challenging hundreds of years of oppression and marginalisation? Should I be giving my income to those who need it more than me, who sleep rough in doorways or who are sick and dying from easily preventable disease? Should I take on the suffering of the world as if it were my own – because it is my own – or should my own inner peace be enough? How much of mankind’s irresponsibility is my responsibility?  

How much should we take on the suffering of the world as our moral duty? How much should our own private sanctuary be disturbed by the cries for help from our brothers and sisters around the world? By the cries for help from the planet that sustains us, yet which we cavort over like mindless yahoos.  How much is enough, to soothe our delicate, western, middle class egos? At what point can we say – “it’s ok, we fought the fight in our ownway, and we did enough”? At what point can we sleep at night?

This is a conversation I had with Trudy Goodman. She is one of the senior Buddhist teachers in America, and a shining light for compassion, love and kindness. She most graciously gave up her time to remind me that you can walk across continents one small step at a time. You can bring about change one small action at a time. And that by finding peace in ourselves, and becoming beacons for love, forgiveness and awareness, we can contribute a small part to a better world, a brighter future, and a global cessation of suffering and injustice.  

Useful links:  

www.trudygoodman.com

www.insightla.org

A few months ago, I was lucky enough to host Dr Maggie Gilewicz as a guest on my podcast, to discuss her book How to Make Sure Your Life Doesn’t Suck. Her book is unique and well worth reading, and it also share a few common themes with my last book, Shine Manifesto. So she decided to return the favour and invited me as a guest on her podcast, and has graciously allowed me to share the recording with my listeners, too. We spent nearly two hours discussing a wide variety of themes.  We explored how how materialism Is driven by dissatisfaction. We touched on how, when we live life according to our own internal compass, instead of seeking approval, validation, affirmation or permission from others, we are much more likely to gain the success we crave. And we discussed how we need to abandon judgement and complaining in order to find beauty in life and lift each other up. Enjoy this wide ranging conversation, conducted via zoom under COVID-19 lockdown conditions.  Maggie’s website: www.drmaggieg.com

There’s far more that we don’t know about the universe than we do know. Sure we have a basic understanding of physics, of biology, mathematics, and the big brains at CERN are working hard exploring the smallest building blocks of existence, from quarks to gluons, bosons, and leptons.

But beyond the measurable, beyond that tangible knowledge that makes the light come on when we flick the switch, that makes the wheels turn when we get in our cars, there is the less tangible. There are near infinite unknowns that we have yet to even encounter in our exploration of existence, as well as other things that we are very aware of, which are very real, but which are less easy to quantify. The feelings stirred up by a piece of music. The sense of amazement at a beautiful sunrise. All the things that make us angry, make us happy, fill us with joy, with love, with frustration, or sadness.

These more ethereal - more spiritual - facets of human existence, are nonetheless just as real as the quantifiable aspects of life and, indeed, are undeniably connected to them. Certainly mathematicians, engineers and physicists can build rockets to the moon, but the drive to get there in the first place must surely be recognised as a spiritual endeavour. We can create processes and formulas to make paint and canvas, but creating a work of art is very much a spiritual exercise.

Life, then, is both spiritual and material. And acknowledging this connection, being open to the known and the unknown, in a holistic way - whether we fully understand it or not - can lead us to a healthier, more fulfilling and more rewarding life, more aligned with who and what we really are - and where we factor in to the bigger picture. We can give ourselves the tools we need to pay our bills, alongside the presence, openness and imagination we need to find awe, magic and poetry in the waves crashing against the shore, and the swaying of the meadow grasses.

Kim Forrester is a holistic wellbeing consultant and the author of the book infinite Mind: An Exploration of Psi and the Capabilities of the Human Mind. She works with people who seek to find that connection between their spiritual selves and their place in the world. And in the process realise their potential and get the most from their human experience.

She chatted with me about how we can embrace the uncertainty of what we don’t know, and combine it with what we do know, to live a purposeful and happy life.

www.kimforrester.net

Get the book: Infinite Mind – An Exploration of Psi and the Capabilities of the Human Mind

www.conversationsonliving.com

How do you take ownership of your life? How do you overcome all the obstacles, the challenges, and carve out a you-shaped hole in reality? What does it take to become the artist behind the masterpiece of your life, and really make shit happen?

If you anything like me, the sheer terror of what might go wrong, what people might say, of being outed as not good enough, not capable enough, not clever enough not whatever enough, is all it takes to stop it happening. Better to keep your head down, work hard, don’t rock the boat, and wait for amazing things to find you which, of course, they never will.

But how about trying something different? How about going out there and getting stuck in. Try something. If that doesn’t work, try something else. Put your energy into it. Experiment. Get your friends, colleagues, contacts involved. Just do it.

Easier said than done if you’re a terrible extroverted introvert like me. But in these days of global pandemics and lockdowns, where the frameworks of routine that we have come to rely on to guide us through life have fallen apart, we have two choices – what for the new normal to be decided by someone else, or make it happen for ourselves.

In this episode of my podcast I spoke to Jamie Klingler. She is a serial starter of things. She founded National Burger Day at ShortList Media. She created the London Seafood Festival. But in a bizarre time when bringing lots of people together in a single space has suddenly become a terribly dangerous – and illegal – thing, she’s had to reinvent herself.

We talked about how to harness your energy. We talked about working with people who make you raise your standards. And we talked about asking for what you want.

And we talked about getting Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to record a viral birthday message for your friend’s 100thbirthday.

Enjoy this conversation.

Links:

www.manifest.rocks

http://incite.global

www.creativeinfluencealliance.com

Photo credit: Callum Baker

From the moment we are born we are acted upon by the influences of the world we are born into. The programming of things like language, culture, aesthetics, behaviour, and etiquette all start to imprint themselves upon us. And so too do experiences, expectations, incidents and accidents, joy and happiness, and also trauma and hurt.

All of these things embed themselves in our memories, our neural pathways, our subconscious, and ultimately our ego, our identities, our inner narratives, and this, crucially, impacts the way we perceive the world, and interact with it. This then, in turn, has huge implications for our quality of life. If we go smiling into the world, sometimes the world smiles back.

But with all of these things from our world and our experiences imprinted upon us, it can be difficult to see where we end, and our baggage begins. And when this baggage begins to weigh heavy upon us, and ultimately impacts the direction and quality of our existence, we can very easily start to believe that life, and the world around us, are treating us unfairly and that none of this injustice has anything to do with what’s going on deep inside, within our own psyches. That is, until we start to dig, and offload, some of those things that have been dragging us off course.

This week I’m speaking with Polly Bateman - she’s a mindset performance coach, but that title is huge simplification of the work she does with her clients. She believes that in order to truly get the most out of life, we need to align the way we go into the world, with who we really are. And that means unstitching the internal narratives, digging deep into the past experiences, the stories, and traumas that impact who we think we are, and we go about our daily lives.

And we also talk about the books she is writing for Children, about the Grumpet, a character that she has created o help them manage their thoughts and feelings.

You can find Polly online at ThePollyBateman.com, and also on instagram at ThePollyBateman

We are not our circumstances. And while privilege, environment, the past and our place in the world play a huge role in our outcomes, we are not completely without a say in the way our lives twist and turn. And although copying the morning routines of billionaires is unlikely to turn us into billionaires, our mindset can play a huge role in the quality of our lives.

It’s been said a thousand quotable times over a thousand years, but Henry Ford said it well enough when he uttered the words:

“if you think you can do a thing or you think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.”

In a society with such heavy constructs, frameworks and conventions around the idea how life should be lived, it’s very easy to give up our ownership of life, and instead wait in vain for our time to come, for our big break, or to put the blame on external factors for everything that goes wrong in our lives. Surely it’s not our fault we’ve put on all this weight when they’ve only gone and opened a McDonalds next door?

But when we start to take ownership of our choices, of our situation, of our failures and also our successes, the world starts to bend to our will. We see our results improve. We begin to find out what works and what doesn’t.

All that we need to do is get out of our own way.

As I discuss with Gabriela Blandy, who is a mindset coach for writers and creative entrepreneurs, we can reprogram ourselves to go from can’t to can. It just takes awareness, faith, and a little bit of effort.

As motivational speaker David Brooks said, “almost every successful person begins with two beliefs: the future can be better than the present, and I have the power to make it so.”

And we can train ourselves to have those beliefs, as this conversation highlights.

Useful Links:

Website: www.gabrielablandy.org
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo9Hbh7Ic55ZzpXmZXAlUKw/videos
Masterclass: https://tinyurl.com/gabrielablandymasterclass

Knowing what we want can be the hardest task many of us will ever face. After all, if we all knew what we wanted we could move ourselves towards it. But much of the time we put obstacles in our way that prevent us from answering that question, or stopping ourselves from taking the action we need to get there.

Sometimes these obstacles are a manifestation of fear. We say we don’t have the time, the money, the intelligence or the right timing, but what we really mean, is that we’re scared. Scared of what might happen if it goes wrong. Scared of what might happen if it goes right. Scared of what might happen if get found out as imposters.

But as Oliver Burkeman will tell you, “everyone is totally just winging it, all the time”.

Or the reason you might be struggling, and that life seems much harder than it needs to be is because the path you’re walking is misaligned with who you are. Ask yourself this – are the things you doing, the decision you make, the actions you take, serving your own values and your own purpose, or are you doing it for approval, for acknowledgement? Do you seek guidance and approval in your actions, or do you act entirely of your own volition, heeding only your own counsel?

These are a few of the topics we covered when I spoke with the inspirational self-made entrepreneur, educator, and coach, Rachael Aprill Phillips. Rachael found empowerment and success when she started to step into her own life, making her own decisions, and building a life in alignment with who she is.

I hope you enjoy this conversation, and if you want to find out more about Rachael’s work visit www.rachaelacademy.com

Our experience of life is very much defined by our perspective. This then influences the way we interact with the world, which influences what happens to us, which influences the quality of our life experience.

Many of us are programmed to look for the worst-case scenario. In the jungle this might have kept us alert to strange noise that might be venomous snakes or sabre tooth tigers, or other beasts that want to eat, trample on us, or skewer us with their tusks. But today this attention bias makes us focus on what could go wrong, instead of what might go right. And this, in turn, limits the quality of our life.

But we are reprogrammable. The brain is incredibly plastic, and if we choose to put in the work, we can shift to a much more positive perspective. We can see opportunities. We can see possibilities. We can start to recognise the beauty of the world instead of just its ugliness, see how much we’ve got instead of what we’re lacking, and we can change the way that we interact with the world, and therefore change the results that we get back.

We can start to focus on our successes rather than our failures

One of the most powerful ways that we can do this is by adopting an attitude of gratitude. By simply looking out for things that we can be grateful for – even on the darkest of days – we can literally tune in to a different world view. And in doing so our world can become much more detailed, textured, colourful and wonderful. And we can become happier, more fulfilled people.

The great Roman statesman Marucs Tullius Cicero said: “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”

Author AJ Jacobs decided to explore the power of gratitude when he set out to thank everyone involved in the making of his morning coffee. As he met with the farmers who grow the beans, the truck drivers who transport them, the designer who made the logo for the coffee shop and many hundreds more people all involved in the creation of something most of take for granted, not only did his cup of coffee take on a new level of depth and detail, but so did his life.

Gratitude reminds us that we are all connected. That a thousand things work out for us every day, even though we always focus on the one thing that didn’t. It shows us that there are a multitude of intents, efforts, process and textures in everything from the grass we walk on to the cutlery we use to the chairs we sit on. And that by being grateful, the world begins to open up to us, revealing itself to be deep and amazing.

Useful links:

www.ajjacobs.com

What does it mean to be a consumer? It often feels that this is an interchangeable term - another way of saying “the public”, when framed in terms of the economy. We are not humans but consumers – buyers of things. Fodder for the capitalist machine.

Wikipedia, that great bastion of absolute truth, defines a consumer as “a person or a group who intends to order, orders, or uses purchased goods, products, or services primarily for personal, social, family, household and similar needs”

It then goes on to quote President John F. Kennedy: “Consumers, by definition, include us all.”

It’s true. We must consume. We must nourish ourselves. We must fuel our cells and muscles so that we can live. And if we’re to continue up Maslow’s pyramid, we must also be consumers of those material things that keep us safe, dry, and warm. We consume the attention of those most important to us to satisfy our need for love and approval. And there are our material needs that make us feel validated, that reinforce a sense of status, self-esteem and worth.

But in this capitalist, consumerist world, it’s very easy for our identities – our very sense of self – to be attach to that which we consume. The bigger cars, bigger houses, newest sneakers, suggest that we are somehow better, more important, more worthy. The news and information that we consume align us with ideological tribes which give us a sense of belonging – whether that’s real or not.

But just as we consume food to sate hunger, what emptiness is it that are we trying to fill with our rampant consumption of other things, and why do we seem to get hungrier, the more we devour.

Back in episode 57 I spoke to meditation expert Tom Cronin, who suggested the idea that we consume because we believe that there is a hole inside us – a sense of lack – that needs to be filled. Only when it is full can we be happy, content, and realise our potential. But the truth, and the reason we can’t stop consuming, is that there is no hole. We already have everything we need to be happy, content, and fulfilled, and when we realise that, when we start to actualise ourselves and the inner abundance that is already within us, we will no longer be attached to all those things – that diet of food, information, ideas, emotional need, material excess, whatever – because we will no longer find ourselves lacking. We will no longer need to consume.

We will no longer be consumers.

So if we are not consumers, what are we?

In this episode I speak with Charles Clay. Charles is an empowerment coach and author, and through his own story of a devastating back injury and his self-driven recovery he went on to develop a practice he calls the Laser Focus Method, to help individuals actualise their own potential. As part of this he encourages a shift from a consumer mindset, to a producer mindset. And as producers, rather than being subject to the world we live in, we become fully realised creators, ready to give back to – and shape – the world we live in, rather than simply consuming, and being shaped, by it.

You can find out about Charles at www.charlesclay.coach, and also on his instagram where his handle is www.instagram.com/charlesclay.coach.

We’re surrounded by information, and it’s easy to turn this information into stress within us, allow it to begin influencing how we feel, how we act, and how we experience life. Whether it’s a work deadline, the subtext of an email, the news media, advertising, past experiences, or so-called cultural norms, sometimes we can feel overwhelmed. Sometimes we can feel triggered. Sometimes we just want to yell “stop the world, I want to get off.”

But what if there was an easier way of being. A way of feeling, being and acting, that wasn’t dictated by the stories we attached to the information that swim in, but instead chosen by us, for us, in order to experience our days and our lives in the best way possible. And what if it all starts as simply as taking a breath?

This week I’m joined by world-renowned meditator, breath work expert, and mindful alchemist, Scott Schwenk.

Scott believes that in order to choose our reality, instead of having it chosen for us, and to show up effectively and with our full potential in that reality, we must interrupt the routines and habits that allow our attention to be drawn to things which don’t serve us. And instead we must take ownership of who we are, how we feel, and the energy we embody the day with, and it all begins in the breath.

You can find out about Scott at his website, www.scottschwenk.com, or an instagram where he’s most active, and his handle is @thescottschwenk. You should also check out his classes on commune, and onecommune.com

Everything vibrates. Every atom, molecule and particle has a frequency. Even the rotation of the planets have a frequency as they revolve around the sun.

Things that vibrate can induce a similar vibration in neighbouring things. That’s how wireless phone charging works, for example. And it’s also how ideas are shared, and how we can have emotional reactions to music, literature and events. Things resonate with us.

And how we vibrate also influences how we experience life and the world around us. Our frequency influences our relationship with existence.

So when you hear the phrase “good vibes only” what does that mean to you? When you hear people talking about raising their vibration, what does that mean, and how can we do it? And what are the benefits?

In this episode of my podcast I speak to Andy Wang, host of the podcast Guns, Roses and Spirituality, and an enthusiastic proponent of raising your vibration.

Enjoy this conversation.

Useful links:

www.twitter.com/andysvibe

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/guns-roses-and-spirituality/id1453188531

Rarely do you hear the phrase “money isn’t everything” said by someone who has no money. Money is the fuel that keeps our society running, and it is hard to do anything without it. Unless we choose to live off grid eating windfall apples, the fruits of the forest and the animals we catch with our own hands, at some point we’re going to need money.

And in a society where money keeps the lights on and the water running, it also means more than mere survival. Money has become a signifier for success, with status symbols and luxuries and Instagram lifestyles becoming proxy signals for the worthiness and validity that we have attached to having lots of money.

But not having money can be extremely damaging. Speaking from my own experience, I understand just how big an impact being broke can have on self-esteem, confidence and sense of self-worth. Debt becomes a worrisome burden.

The stress of money, of debt, of not having enough, literally kills people.

The rules of money, like the rules of diet and the rules of pretty much anything, are simple. Spend less than you earn. Yet so many of us struggle with this. So I wanted to speak to someone who knows all about money, and recorded this conversations with Mark Allan Bovair.

Mark has been in a great deal of debt – twice. But he has escaped it – twice. Mark’s approach to money is accessible, realistic and relatable. No pictures on his Instagram of him posing with Lamborghinis and Lear Jets. No flashy watches and fake lifestyles. Just real advice, real wisdom, for real people.

I hope you find this conversation as insightful as it is useful. And if you want to find out more about Mark, you can find him on twitter at www.twitter.com/markallanbovair and you should also subscribe to his newsletter at https://markallanbovair.substack.com.

I meditate every day. I sit still with my eyes closed. I try to relax and focus my attention on my breathing. When I notice that my mind has wandered and I’m thinking about something else, I bring my attention back to my breathing. And repeat. And repeat. And keep repeating until my timer beeps, or I feel that it’s time to stop doing this. I’ve been doing it for several years now and I’m not sure what I gain from doing this. But I do know that by doing it I get to take a break – even if it’s just for a moment or two – from the constant stream of thoughts that inhabit my head. I get a short rest from the constant push and pull or everything that I’m supposed to be thinking of at any given time. I wanted to speak to someone about meditation and why it’s such a healthy and worthwhile practice. So, I reached out to Nelli D and Jim Martin, the people behind The Unusual Buddha. Jim literally wrote the book about meditation – it’s called The Practical Meditation Journal – and you can get your copy here. We chatted for about an hour remotely, about why it’s good to take a break from our thoughts from time to time, how it can help us be present and find more depth to life. And we chatted briefly about how, when our mind wanders, sometimes it’s not just our daily worries that it wanders to, but fresh ideas, insights and even others worlds. Enjoy this conversation, with all its glitches and background noises. I gained a lot from it, and if you’ve never tried meditation, maybe this will convince you to give it a go! Some links: www.theunusualbuddha.com www.twitter.com/theunsualbuddha www.instagram.com/theunusualbuddha

I haven’t read Frank Herbert’s Dune, nor have I seen the recent movie. Scenes from the cult David Lynch film are, however, imprinted on my mind, and I’m not just talking about Sting in his underpants. I’m referring - of course -to the Litany Against Fear, a poetic mantra recited by the Bene Gesserit, and it goes like this:

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

Who is this I, that remains when the fear has gone? Maybe somewhat tangentially, but this makes me this think of the words of Pema Chodron:

“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.”

This fearless I, this indestructible, intrinsic self, could this be who we really are when we strip away all that we have accumulated, all that we cling to, all that our ego desperately holds onto to give itself substance in this chaotic world of culture and expectation that we have created for ourselves?

Mooji famously asked us to “step into the fire of self discovery” claiming that “this fire will not burn you, it will burn only what you are not, and set your heart free.”

This week's guest is Kevin Krenitsky, author of the forthcoming book, The Still Point.

The premise is this - life gets better, easier, and flows with less resistance, when we stop fighting it, and instead come to it only as it is, and not with all the stories we have attached to it. And furthermore, we get better when we come to it only as we are, and not with all the trappings of emotion, anxiety, worry and ego. The still point of who we are, and where we are. As Pema Chodron might say, that part of us which is indestructible.

You can find out more about Kevin at www.authorkevinkrenitsky.com

www.conversationsonliving.com

What does it take to do something new, a new career perhaps, and to build something bigger than yourself? What do you need in order to keep turning up even when failure and rejection seem to be the lay of the land? How much of finding success it is about experience and know-how, and how much of it is about attitude, courage, find the angles that work, and finding the energy to keep showing up when you just can’t face another day?

Today I’m chatting with Kelly Robinson, the founder of the Kelly Robinson Team of real estate agents working in New York City. She decided to try a career in real estate when her acting career, which was propped up with other jobs, wasn’t going in the direction she wanted it to go.

But building something new wasn’t just about turning up and working hard. It become facing failure and learning the hard way – and still persisting despite it all – until she learned to navigate the landscape and, ultimately, make it her own.

In this conversation Kelly generously shares her experiences about finding the courage to keep showing up, facing the fear of attempting something that seemed much bigger that her, and about how setting boundaries, investing in yourself, and taking scary but calculated risks are vital to building something great.

To find out more about Kelly, find her on Instagram: www.instagram.com/kellyrobinsonnewyork

Sometimes, in the practice of mindfulness, we have to approach things in an intentionally mindful way. We have to drink our tea reverently, as if the whole universe revolved around it.

This can be hard work.

Other activities, though, are just mindful in the way that they need to be done. Half the time we don’t even know that we’re being mindful. Instead, we’re just enjoying ourselves in an activity that gives us reason not to be thinking about work, about paying the bills, about our troubles and traumas, or our obligations and worries.

This is why we have hobbies, interests, and pastimes, to give us a break from everything we need to be thinking about, in order that we can focus completely on something in this moment. For some it’s sport, for others it’s art and crafts. And then there’s foraging.

No matter how much we try to escape it with our cities and concrete, our routines and social structures, we’re never far from nature. Most of us could probably look around right now and see some greenery – whether it’s the tree outside the window, the park across the road, the lawn in the back garden, or the undulating hills and dense forests of the countryside. And it’s a good job too, because as animals ourselves, nature is a part of who we are. It’s no wonder that “getting out into nature” is considered a therapeutic antidote to the stresses of modern life.

While most of us get our food from the supermarkets, where we can find our potatoes and carrots all uniform in their shapes and sizes, nature is overflowing with tasty morsels to sustain us. They might be a bit nobbly and covered in dirt, but you don’t have to go far to find something edible that nature has to offer you. And that’s true whether you live in towns and cities or the countryside.

From mushrooms to berries, leaves and tubers, there is a cornucopia of treats waiting to be discovered by anyone who is prepared to slow down and look. Choose wisely and you can find all sorts of things for soups, garnishes, roasts and salads. But choose poorly and that mushroom or carrot-looking thing can make you quite sick. So it pays to be mindful about what we pick from the forest, the hedgerow, or the park

Foraging adds a new dimension to our daily lives, opening our eyes to a new layer of life that exists parallel to us. It’s right there in front of us, and to enjoy its riches we just need to slow down and look with open eyes and an open mind.

John Rensten is an authority on foraging and has made a career out of it. He is the founder of Forage London and the author of Edible City: A Year of Wild Food. He joined me on my podcast to share how we can discover a whole buffet of tasty treats right on our doorstep.

Useful Links:

Forage London: www.foragelondon.co.uk

Instagram: www.instagram.com/foragelondon

Twitter: www.twitter.com/foragelondon

Facebook: www.facebook.com/foragelondon

Get the book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Edible-City-Year-Wild-Food/dp/0752266136/

Everybody has a story. Whether it’s the story of our lives, the story of our heritage, or the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, that we hang our identities on, our whole world is made up of stories. And it’s not just our own stories that define our world. All you have to do is switch on the television, or take a walk outside, and whether it’s advertising billboards, the television news, the latest soap operas, or the cultural and societal rules and regulations that set out to bring order to the way we live our lives and go about our days, everything is made up of stories. Indeed, even the passing of the seasons, is a story that unfolds over and over again, right in front of our eyes. As Yuval Noah Harari said: “Humans think in stories, and we try to make sense of the world by telling stories.” This week we’re exploring the power of stories, about how the stories we tell ourselves and others can help us own our lives, unfurling it in front of us like a blossoming lotus flower, or they can keep us trapped and paralysed when they manifest as fear, as unsurpassable obstacles that stand in the way of us and our potential. Today I’m chatting with Kerrin Black, international publicist and founder of talentfinders.com. We chat about the importance of grabbing on to our stories with both hands, and how, if we can summon up the courage, our stories can propel us towards a greater sense of being, of fulfilment and achievement. Links: www.kerrinblack.com www.talentfinders.com www.conversationsonliving.com

What does it take to live a fulfilled life, and be a fulfilled person? To realise your potential and reap the rewards of a life well-lived?

Is it achieving good grades at school? Getting a good college degree and a solid job for life? Good holidays, a fast car and a big house? Lots of money, lots of stuff, a six pack and amazing teeth?

And if you don’t have these things, what then? Does that mean yours is not a life well-lived? Does that mean you are somehow not enough – not good enough, not wealthy enough, not as valid?

And how do you measure it anyway? Is it through how much you have, or how many likes your holiday photos get? Is it through praise and grades and acceptance and validation? Is it through how much you’ve struggled and how much you’ve fought and argued for what we’ve got?

It seem strange to think that we are born into this world without everything we need to fulfil our potential. That we don’t already come equipped – batteries included – to live the life and be the person we came here to be.

Yet, we have managed to create a life where we will never be happy until we have, own and achieve more. And there will always be more that we could have, own, and achieve. And in this way our discontent, both with ourselves and our lives, is designed into the system. This modern life we have created for ourselves isn’t built to make us happy, it’s built to perpetuate itself at the expense of our happiness.

But all along, we already have what we need to be fulfilled, to realise our potential and to be… ourselves. Complete, whole and perfect, but with room for improvement.

So why then do we struggle to find it and harness it? To love ourselves, and be ourselves, and live happy, content lives? Why are anxiety and depression and alcoholism and other illnesses on the rise when we have everything we need for happiness literally built into us?

In this episode of the podcast I speak with Donna Lancaster about the idea of shedding away all we are not, all the wrong notions of what it means to be complete, what it means to be us, all the accumulated baggage and trauma, and finally find ourselves. The ‘us’ that we’ve always been carrying with us, but we’ve been unable to see.

Donna is the co-founder of The Bridge Retreat, which helps people get back to themselves by connecting deeply with their body, completing the circle of mind, body and spirit to find the true them, which they were born with. The Bridge was the subject of a documentary titled ‘Loved’ which is an excellent place to start if you want to find out more about the work carried out by Donna and her colleagues.

To find out more about Donna and her work visit these links:

www.thebridgeretreat.com

www.instagram.com/thebridgeretreat

www.instagram.com/donnalancs

 www.loveddocumentary.com

We experience our own lives in high definition.  The frustration when we’re already running late, and we can’t find our keys. The moment of irrational hurt when we allow a throwaway comment from a friend to get under our skin. The dissatisfaction of not being where we want to be in life. The taste of that first cup of coffee in the morning. Those sounds and smells that remind us of holidays. This vast patchwork of feelings, emotions, sensations, macro and micro, makes up our lives. Birth and death, television and toothpaste, allergies and habits, sorrow and joy. Such an intricate mesh of details that only we are aware of. Because when we see other people, we see them in low definition. What they say and what they do. We don’t see the nuance, the daily battles, the struggles and the confusion, the same things we enjoy and endure day to day, and minute to minute. This makes it easy to judge others, and hard to be compassionate. It makes celebrities the target of cruel attention when they reveal themselves to be only human. And it makes those whose values, politics or ways of life are different to our own, easy enemies. How much more powerful, valuable would it be – before we judge or go to war – to ask ourselves, what must it be like to be this person? Could this give us a way to understand where their pain, their anger and their hatred comes from? Could this gives us a way to find a constructive resolution instead of further conflict and pain? And what if we were to ask ourselves that same question, only this time pointing it in our direction? What must it be like to be us? Could we nurture a sense of awareness with enough objectivity that we might nurture some kind of compassion towards ourselves? To find a constructive solution to our own hurt – even if that is just to learn to let it be – so that we might live a more enriched life, with less suffering, and more acceptance for who we are, where we’ve been, and where we have the potential to go. This was just one of the topics that we got into when I chatted with Jason Garner, the author of "… And I Breathed: My Journey from a Life of Matter, to a Life that Matters." Jason was formerly the CEO of Global Music and Live Nation, and became one of America’s top paid executives. But after seeking therapy following the death of this mother, he realised that his whole life had been fuelled by fear. And this led him to a journey of introspection to find peace and balance in his life. I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation as much as I did. www.jasongarner.com

People like us don’t do things like that. People like us, with our low self-esteem, our lack of confidence, our imposter syndrome, our insecurities about what other people think, about how we’re not good enough, talented enough, clever enough, lucky enough, don’t realise grand vision. We don’t start companies. We don’t take on massive projects. We don’t change the world.

We leave that sort of thing to the others. The successful. The charismatic. The gifted. Those other people, who are not like us.

But what if they were exactly like us. What if those people over there, doing the big thing, taking on the big challenges, realising the visions and changing the world, were exactly like us. Filled with insecurities, struggling to keep the faith, wrestling with how to face the day. Yet facing it nonetheless.

Today I’m talking with Richard Hardiman, who is the founder of CEO of RanMarine. His company makes aquatic robots – automated drones that go into the sea in ports and harbours, and clear the plastic and other waste that’s polluting the water.

You’d imagine that someone like Richard, who has started a company that is tackling one of the biggest issue of the moment, would have bulletproof confidence and certainty about what he’s doing.

But as Richard reveals in this brutally honest and open conversation, is that just like me – and maybe just like you too – facing the day, getting out of bed, keeping the wheels turning and keeping the vision alive, can take a Herculean effort. And for me, knowing that, and hearing that, from someone who is doing such big things is hugely empowering.

Yes, for some of us, getting out and bed and turning up takes a huge amount of strength. Yes, for some of us, the self doubt can be crippling. But yes, we can still do immense and incredibly impactful things.

If you want find out more about what RanMarine are doing, check out their website at www.ranmarine.io.

www.conversationsonliving.com

Every day we are blessed with an opportunity to begin again. We are born anew, with the freedom to decide how the next moment will be, and the one after that, and the one after that. Today is New Year’s Eve, on what has been an incredibly difficult and unusual year for almost everyone around the globe. I wanted to share some thoughts about how we can take ownership of the next twelve month, of ourselves and our situation, so that we can be reborn – better, stronger, to live a deeper, more beautiful life.

So here I am, just me, talking about setting our intentions for the next twelve months, and for a future of growth and fulfilment.

Happy New Year, and hello 2021. A new day beckons.

www.chrisbrock.uk

Does your life ever feel like a suit that doesn’t quite fit properly? Do you ever wonder why, no matter how hard you work, how closely you follow the advice and the tried and trusted steps that convention says you should follow, you never seem to get where you want to be?

Chances are the life you are living is out of alignment with who you really are.

Today's guest is Sam Thiara. Sam teaches at the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, and the author of Lost and Found, his personal story about retracing his grandfather’s life and discovering himself along the way. His message is that once you dig down and find ut who you really are, you can start to live a fulfilling and rewarding life that is in alignment with your values.

Like the stoics, he believes that the route to success is signposted with obstacles, and that this will lead us where we need to go for a happy life, and if keep asking ourselves why, then we’ll get to the truth of who we came here to be.

You can find out more about Sam, his ideas, his writings and his book, at his website, which is sam-thiara.com.

In this week’s episode I speak with author, speaker and transformational leader Sue Stone, to talk about how we can tap into the near limitless power that we all have within ourselves, in order to take charge of our reality and shape it so that we don’t simply survive, but instead thrive in the best ways possible.

Of course some of us are more privileged than others, some of us have better foundations for building a better life, some of us come from a more generous heritage than others. But for those of us who don’t have that step up to greatness ready and waiting for us, we don’t need to be stuck where we find ourselves. We can change our situation, and a large part of the work in doing this is changing ourselves, and our mindset.

It was Plato who said “reality is created by the mind, and we can change our reality by changing our mind.”

But is it really as simple as that? Is aligning ourselves mentally and emotionally with who we want to be, with where we want to be, and with the energy of the life we wish to live, really the answer to living an existence of abundance. And what happens when we do that? Is it really a case of – if you go smiling into the world sometimes the world smiles back? Do all the pieces suddenly come together, as if they’ve been for us just to get our heads and hearts straight the entire time?

These are some of the questions we cover in today’s conversation. Sue is the author the books, Love Life, Live Life, and The Power Within You Now. She is a television presenter, the star of TV’s Secret Millionaire, and also the founder of the Sue Stone Foundation.

If you want to find out more about Sue and her work, check out her website at suestone.com, and suestonefoundation.com.

“The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper."

These are the words of Eden Philpots. And since he wrote them in 1918 our senses have certainly got sharper. The Hubble telescope introduced us to the idea of dark energy and billions upon billions of galaxies far beyond our own that we didn’t even know existed.  

Today, thanks to the work of Thomas Dalton, we regularly look at atoms through powerful microscopes, even though their existence had been subject to scepticism since they were first suggested by the Ancient Greek scholars Democritus and Leucippus about two and a half thousand years ago.  

And if you’ve ever seen an olive grove shimmer in the breeze, but didn’t know how to explain it, you’d know that magic is real.  

It makes you think, what else is out there that we don’t yet fully understand. What else are our wits not quite sharp enough to comprehend. And, just like Democritus and Leucippus, what is it that we may just already know, but are not quite ready to face just yet?  This week I’m talking about Psi, which is the collective scientific monika for the parapsychological functions of the mind. That is, those things that we think might exist, but which come with so much baggage that most people are afraid to even touch them. I’m talking about extrasensory perception, clairvoyance, telepathy, and other things surrounded by so much cultural woo-woo that it must surely be nonsense, right?  

Well, science’s wits are beginning to grow sharper, and there is an increasing amount of rigorous research happening in this area. And who among us wouldn’t admit that there are things out there that we just can’t explain? Who hasn’t had a weird experience, deja vu, a gut feeling that came true, who knew who was calling before answering the phone, seen things, heard things… well there may be more to it than we think.  

To explore this with me I am joined by friend of the podcast Kim Forrester. She’s a holistic therapist, the host of the eudaemonia podcast, and the author of Infinite Mind – a book all about psi in its many expressions – and she believes that if we get quiet and pay attention to those phenomena that we might otherwise dismiss out of hand, we might discover that they may actually be trying to tell us something.  

You can find more information about her book at infinitemindbook.com, and Kim’s home on the internet is kimforrester.net.

www.conversationsonliving.com

Sometimes being human feels a bit like being a Katamari ball. Katamari is a video game where you basically move a big ball around, and everything it touches gets stuck to it, like it’s a big magnet, with the ball getting bigger and bigger and heavier and heavier, with all this junk attached to it as it trundles along.

In much the same way, as we roll through life we pick up things that stick to us too. In the form of experiences, trauma, life lessons, cultural expectations, notions of right and wrong. All the things that rub off on us as we bump along, trying to figure out which way to turn next.

Some of these things that attach themselves to us are useful are beneficial. Skills and learnings that make us better routefinders through the maze of life. Other things start to weigh us down like a big suit of armour made out of trash. Things like anger and resentment, bitterness, unhelpful biases and beliefs that hinder us, that get in the way of our contentment and happiness, distorting our world view, and harming our relationship with ourselves, with others, and the world around us. And ultimately, we being to lose the sense of where we end, and the suit of armour begins.

But what’s funny about this these things that attach themselves to us, to our egos, our identities, our self-worth, our neuroses, and our neural pathways, is that much of the time, we’re the ones who are attached, and not the other way around. We are the ones clinging on for dear life, almost as if we’re lost at sea, grasping on to a lead weight, believing it’s a life jacket.

The Buddhists among us will tell us that attachment is suffering. Attachment to being right. Attachment to our sense of identity. Attachment to our pride, to our dreams and aspirations, to those things that we believe will make us happy when they arrive. The big house, the career success, the status and the respect. Yet, paradoxically, it’s when we stop clinging and let all of those things go, that we will ultimately find the happiness we were looking for all along, and we will understand that it was with us the whole time.

But if attachment can cause us suffering, what then of detachment and ‘non attachment’. Are these the antidote that we’re looking for? Can we still have nice things if we stop striving for them? Or is that still a form of striving? Do we have to live like monks in order to be happy?

To help me understand this, I reached out to Andy Mort, who has written in detail about the difference between attachment, detachment and non-attachment. Andy is a coach and mentor for creatives, as well as being a musician and artist himself. He shared some of his ideas about how we can be less attached to the things that don’t serve us, and how, if we really want to get a grip, the best way might actually be to let go.

Useful Links:

www.andymort.com

Sometime in the 1600’s the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote the word’s “all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Indeed, you could argue that if we could collectively and objectively face the impact of our runaway egos – that is things like greed, division, inequality, war, climate change, destruction and exploitation of the natural world and so on – we might have avoided many of the global crises we now face.

But as Pascal observed, we are just too distracted by the allure of all the things outside ourselves, to be able to spend any time looking within ourselves. And this is something that Tom Cronin wants to change.

Tom is a world-renowned meditation teacher, a transformational coach, and the founder of the Stillness Project, which aims to inspire a billion people to meditate. And he’s also the producer of a new documentary film and an accompanying book, called The Portal, which posits that all of man’s problems could be solved if we could learn to meditate, to look inside ourselves, become objectively and intentionally present, and detach from our egos, and if this practice could be adopted globally.

www.tomcronin.com

www.stilnessproject.com

www.entertheportal.com

Fear is a powerful thing. It can hobble us, preventing us from taking action and putting ourselves ‘out there’ when it manifests as “but what if I fail?” or “what will people think” or “what if I’m not good enough.” And it can cripple us in the form of phobias, anxiety or even fear of the unknown. And fear can also be used against us, as it has for many hundreds and hundreds of years. We are sold products on the promise that they will keep us safe from the bacteria on our kitchen surfaces. That they will stop us failing at life. That they will make us whole and happy, and prevent us from becoming nobodies with crappy lives instead of somebodies with all the shiny things we could ever dream of. But fear can be used for much more sinister purposes than just selling us stuff. It is regularly used to sell toxic ideologies. It is used this way by politicians throughout the political spectrum, and it has become a staple of modern campaigning – and more. Whole demographics of society can be demonized, and fear can be used to drive a wedge between us, to deny our humanity, and to keep us separated. That fear we feel when we think of people who are different to us as being the ‘enemy’ – people of different races, people on the other side of the border, people who need our help, who we are told might be a threat to our way of life – has been engineered intentionally over generations. And on the whole, this fear is false. When we encounter it in our personal lives, preventing us from getting on that plane, from asking for that pay rise, from asking that person out on a date, we are worrying about something that hasn’t happened yet, and we’re letting it hold us back from be better and having better lives. But worse, when we feel that fear when we encounter people who are somehow different to us – often manifesting in other forms such as anger, or disgust, or resentment – often it is a fictitious concept that has been planted in us by those who benefit from keeping us divided. In this episode of my podcast I speak to Fear Guru, Patrick Sweeney, author of the bestselling book “Fear is Fuel”. We talk about where fear comes from, how it holds us back, how we can overcome it and how we can use it to make ourselves stronger and our lives better. And we touch briefly on the role it has played in hundreds of years of oppression around the world, that is currently manifesting in the protests against injustice that we are seeing in cities across the globe. Patrick’s website: www.pjsweeney.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/pjsweeney Instagram: www.instagram.com/thefearguru Buy the book: Fear is Fuel

The phrase ‘mind, body, spirit’ is very much of the moment, and it is well-recognised that looking after ourselves physically can have a beneficial impact on our mental health, and vice versa. Stress, for example, can manifest itself as physical ailments.

The mind, the body and the spirit are not separate things but are interwoven. Conventional approaches to health and wellbeing, however, tend to treat them separately. If you have a mental health issue, you go to a specialist in mental health. If you have physical problems, you go to a doctor who specialises in physical health. But what if your physical problems are a manifestation of a mental or emotional problem – who do you go to then?

In eastern medicine, the connection between the body and the mind has long been recognised. The chakras are energy centres in our bodies that are connected to our spirit. In reflexology one part of the body is manipulated to treat another.

So can we heal physical problems by treating our emotional and spiritual selves? And what about the reverse of this? Can we heal emotional, mental and spiritual problems by treating our physical selves?

In this episode of the podcast I spoke with Gabi Krueger, a holistic therapist who does just that. She is a co-founder of The Bridge Retreat, and helps people resolve physical blockages that are connected to emotional trauma.

Useful links:

www.thebridgeretreat.com

Burnout: Solve Your Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagosky https://www.amazon.co.uk/Burnout-Solve-Your-Stress-Cycle/dp/1785042092/

Us humans have a great tendency to attach our identities to our circumstances, our past, our jobs or obligations, to the extent that it’s easy to lose sight of who we really are. We become victims of misfortune, defined by our careers, or unable to see where we end and the struggles we have to endure begin.

It’s so easy to forget that behind all of these things, all of these ideas that we cling on to, is a unique individual, with as much right to be here as anyone else. Each of us is as valid and significant as anyone else – whether that might be The Queen, Donald Trump, Robert De Niro or Mother Theresa. We all have just as much right to exist, to be, and to take up space as anyone else.

I chatted about ideas like this with the actor Kerry Howard. She generously gave up her time to share her own experiences dealing with imposter syndrome, letting go of negative identities that don’t serve us, and making the difficult decisions that are sometimes necessary to find happiness and peace in our lives.

Useful links:

Following Kerry on Instagram: www.instagram.com/thekerryhoward

And on Twitter: www.twitter.com/thekerryhoward

What does it mean to be “always on”. To have the entirety of human knowledge in your pocket, and to know what’s happening right this minute on the other side of the world… all the time?

What does it mean to be “always available”. To be contactable, ready to respond at a moment’s notice. Never nowhere, always somewhere.

Of course this all has its benefits, right? But is it necessarily healthy?

This week I’m speaking with Christina Crook, author of the book The Joy of Missing Out: Finding Balance in a Wired World. She believes that being constantly connected to the 24-hour news cycle, having our relationships moderated by social media algorithms, being addicted to a constant flow of information that is curated by others who might not have our best interests at heart – and let’s not forget the dopamine hit that comes from getting another ‘like’ or another ‘follow’ – is not only bad for us, but is sapping the life out of our days, and replacing it with stress.

In this conversation we talk about why the need to be intentionally conscious about how we use technology, lest it use us, is vital if we are to build healthy lives and healthy relationships. And that getting offline is, in itself, a wellness practice.

If you want to find out more about Christina, her books, her speaking and her other work, head over to www.experiencejomo.com, and you should also check out her online store, where she has a range of non-digital products to help you get offline. That’s at www.jomogoods.com.

Of all the things we can do to nourish ourselves, sleep is perhaps the most vital. Alongside food and hydration, sleep is the thing that helps us to function at our best, with clarity and confidence. So vital is it, that lack of sleep can slow us down and make life harder. And severe tiredness can also begin to affect our decision-making abilities, our self-esteem, our courage, our grip on reality and our mental health.

Getting enough rest, and good quality sleep, then, should be a crucial part of our toolkit if we are to live and act effectively, with conviction, and integrity. At our best, moving joyfully towards our potential.

At its most fundamental, Yoga Nidra is the practice of sleep. As Tracee Stanley, the world-renowned practitioner of Yoga Nidra, states in her book, Radiant Rest: “rest is vital to thriving.”

But there is more to Yoga Nidra than simply catching some good quality zees. Through deep relaxation we gain access to a deeper part of ourselves that is beyond the cognitive mind, beyond language and all its cultural trappings, and beyond all the baggage that we carry with us. Normally we only experience this part of ourselves while we sleep, and so we don’t remember it when we awake. At best there is, perhaps, a vague sense of it when we rise from our slumber, or maybe we glimpse something profound during a particularly deep meditation.

But with Yoga Nidra we are presented with both a process and a state of consciousness that allows us to remain aware while we are in this state. Known as hypnogogia, it not only allows us to come face-to-face with the void that lies deep inside ourselves, transcending duality and connecting us with the infinite universe of which we are so profoundly a part, but it also offers access to our deep intrinsic and ancient wisdom, returning with insights and clarity otherwise impossible to access.

The practical, spiritual and valuable benefits of a practice like this are nothing new. It is an ancient knowledge that has even influenced the greatest modern thinkers. Thomas Edison, the inventor of the lightbulb, was said to take regular naps throughout the day, clutching a large metal ball in each hand. As he feel asleep the balls would fall from his hands waking him up, and he would immediately note down any ideas or visions that he had seen in the semi-conscious dreamscape that lies between sleep and awakeness, before they evaporated from memory.

Perhaps this is where the idea for the lightbulb came from.

Practices such as this can offer us rich, nourishing rest. And they can also offer us guidance from the deepest part of ourselves, something Tracee Stanley refers to as “a connection to our inner knowing.”

Surely, getting to know ourselves so intimately, gaining access to our own profound knowledge – the light of our souls – that evades us during thinking hours, can only serve to heal our relationships with both ourselves and our day-to-day reality. And more than this, to move us towards our ultimate state of being. That is, a sense of meaning and purpose to why we are here at all.

As Tracee puts it: “Yoga Nidra is a healing salve for the world” and in this conversation she gives me a beginners guide to this powerful and useful practice, which can help us to show up as the best of ourselves, into a reality that is aligned with who we really are.

Useful links:

www.traceeyoga.com
www.radiantrest.com

Attachment is suffering, and often the more attached we get to things, the smaller and difficult it can be to find peace in our lives. There’s so much we want that we can’t have, so much we have that we don’t want, and so much we are that we don’t want to be.

We become attached to these ideas of how we are supposed to live, what life is supposed to be like, and what our values are supposed to be, that when things don’t fall into alignment with these ideas, we become uncomfortable. And guess what – that is most of the time.

We are supposed to be slimmer, taller, wealthier, happier. The news fills us with angst and anger. We can’t have the fast cars and the big houses. There’s no justice in the world, and our governments are corrupt. How on Earth are we supposed to find peace with all of this going on?

The problem is, we are addicted to certainty and absolutes. Absolutes of what is good, bad, fair and worthy. But there are no absolutes. And it is our attachment to these imaginary, impossible notions that causes us to suffer.

But what if we could break that attachment. What if we could recognise that there are no absolutes, no certainties, no answers, and simply get comfortable with that? And how do we do that?

Could it be a matter of finding the courage to let go of what is not, and accept what is?

Gregg Eisenberg calls himself a ‘stand-up philosopher.’ He has written a book filled with what he describes as mind-altering, one-line jokes. Exploring philosophy, science, mathematics and many different avenues of thinking, he is trying to make the reader think differently.

The jokes are like zen koans, often non-sensical or pulling in two different logical directions at the same time, he wants to create a new way of thinking by pulling apart the old notions of how the world – and its language – works.

The book is titled “Letting Go Is All We Have To Hold Onto” and features more than 700 different jokes. Each of them challenges us to examine our thinking and our view of the world.

Gregg joined me on my podcast to chat about how we can break our attachment to ideas and ways of thinking that are holding us back and, at times, causing us suffering, and explored how much bigger our world might get if we could just let go.

Useful links:

Buy Letting Go Is All We Have To Hold Onto

Amazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Letting-Go-All-Have-Hold/dp/1732296901
Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/Letting-Go-All-Have-Hold/dp/1732296901

Gregg’s Website: www.curvedspacecomedy.com

Yoga. Not really a sport, not really a form of exercise, more just a series of contortions and stretches, some of which look easy and some of which look really quite painful.

It’s fair to say, I’ve never really got it.

But for many it’s essential. And testament to this is the number of people who regularly practice it. According to the Economic Times of India there are more than 300 million yogis who have adopted it as part of their lifestyle, 50 percent of whom live in India, and 37 million in the United States alone.

Not bad for a bit of stretching.

So why? What is it that makes it so alluring?

Patanjali, who compiled the definitive text on Yoga – The Yoga Sutras – sometime between 500 BCE and 400 AD (experts can’t seem to agree when exactly the great book was written) is quoted as saying:

“Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence. When the mind has settled, we are established in our essential nature, which is unbounded consciousness. Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the mind.”

No mention here of stretches or contortions. But this sounds very much like meditation, like a Jungian exploration of who we are when we strip ourselves – the version of us that we identify with – away. And if you’ve read any of my books or listened to many episodes of this podcast, you’ll know that is partly what I’m exploring in my efforts to discover the secret sauce to living a full, content and peaceful life.

Pamela Seelig is this week's guest, and she is a yogi with a great pedigree. Pamela first discovered yoga 25 years ago, when working on Wall Street. She was afflicted with Bell’s Palsy, and her doctor encouraged her to try meditation. This eventually led her to yoga, and she went on to practice at the high regarded Integral Yoga Institute in New York. Eventually, in 2009, she set up her own studio, Lotus Mind and Body, and recently published a book with ideas for experienced and novice yogis alike, Threads of Yoga: Themes, Reflections, and Meditation To Weave Into Your Practice.

You can find out about Pamela and her book at her website - www.pamelaseelig.com.

www.conversationsonliving.com

To celebrate the release of Martha Beck's recent book, The Way of Integrity, we're replaying our episode from 2020. Here are the original show notes:

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I have a favourite quote by the Swiss psychoanalyst, Carl Jung: “Beneath the threshold of consciousness, everything was seething with life.”

This notion – that there is life beyond what we know in the physical world of systems and money and society and iPhones – is reflected in a drawing called Three Worlds by M.C. Escher. It depicts a lake with fallen leaves floating on it. Beneath the water you can see a beautiful carp swimming, and reflected on the surface of the water are the now leafless trees.

What these two works, from Jung and Escher, toy with is the idea that at any one time, we are not simply inhabiting one world, but there are others that exist right alongside it. Indeed, with practice we can even tune in to other ways realities, by seeing past the superficial distractions up here on the surface of the water, and adjusting our own perspectives to recognise what lies above it or beneath it.

In Polynesia there are fisherman who know the ocean so well they can navigate their canoes for thousand of miles across open sea just by watching the behaviour of the water - even if they are far, far from land. This is not something that they doing knowingly, logically, but instead they tap into their intuition, their skill and their experience – their innate knowledge – and let it guide them to their destination.

Author and life coach Martha Beck calls this “wayfinding”, and it is something that all of us can do, if we can open our minds and our hearts, get quiet and listen to what our intuition is telling us. It might simply be about noticing what we notice, the things that our non-conscious minds pick out of the constant cacophony of noise that we are bombarded with from dawn until dusk. Or it might a deeper exploration beyond the limitations of words that connects us to worlds that exist outside of space and time – the sorts of places that indigenous Australians might have called the ‘Everywhen’ – a state of eternal presence that takes us past the physical boundaries of what we know, into a unified space where we can connect to everything that was, is or will be.

Wayfinders find their way by listening to their inner compass. They find their own true north by stepping out of the confines of this man-made world of language and rules and processes, and by connecting to a wordless relationship with themselves, their environment, and the universe.

I spoke with Martha about some of the ideas in her book “Finding Your Way in a Wild New World” and explored the notion that maybe, just maybe, there is a spiritual revolution quietly taking place right now.

I hope you enjoy this conversation.

Useful links:

Martha’s website: www.marthabeck.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/themarthabeck

Should we try to fix the world? Make it better tomorrow than it was yesterday? Should we try to fight what we perceive to be immoral actions and systems, injustices, to create a fairer, more compassionate world?

And what does that fight look like? Is it a tick in the box of democracy? Is it taking to the streets to make our voices heard? Is it smashing those institutions that we perceive to be facilitating inequality, shouting in the faces of those who disagree? Is it to rage against this system that seems to serve some so well, while failing others so obviously?

Or is it about choose to be the change we want to see in the world? Is it about raising our own standards and finding our own peace, so that the world itself, as corrupt and broken as it might seem, doesn’t corrupt and break us?

How do we even know that our values – our politics, our beliefs, our own understanding of right and wrong, of fair and unfair – are even correct? How can we assume that we’re not the bad guys? The road to hell is, as they say, paved with good intentions.

Perhaps, then, the way we heal the world is to first heal ourselves, and our relationship with the world. To shed all those things that aren’t us, and which serve to prevent us accessing all dimensions of the multifaceted nature of being, so that we can become beacons to others, encouraging – but not expecting – them to heal themselves too.

Perhaps a world of healed individuals will become a world healed.

These are some of the themes I touched on in my conversation with Chris Manning, aka Mindfulness Man, and the founder of the rapidly growing Facebook group Mindfulness in Daily Life (www.facebook.com/groups/mindfulnessindailylife).

We explored how to find peace, how to let others feel seen, and how to change the world one soul at a time – starting with our own.

It's the last day of the year. This episode is just me rambling randomly, as I look back over themes from the last year's episodes, and some of the things we can take into the year ahead.

Happy New Year

www.conversationsonliving.com

It was Primal Scream who told us “don’t fight it, feel it”. And if ever there are key messages that resonate in the world of mindfulness and personal development, this could be one of the big ones. After all, what you resist persists.

Yet resist we do, and most of the time we don’t even know we’re doing it. But every time we feel discomfort or disatisfaction in our lives, it’s our resistance to “what is” that we’re feeling. This anxiety about the future, the worry about the past, never really being present to do the real work that we need to do in order to make our lives better – or even just be happy.

Indeed, in the pursuit of happiness, we often focus too much on the thing we’re trying to escape from, rather than the thing that we should be running to. We don’t want to be in debt any more. We don’t want to work in the office any more. We don’t want to be overweight, single, tired…. Whatever anymore.

And all these things that we resist, persist.

This week’s guest is Dr Travis Fox, who says that the key to getting what we want, is not simply to stop fighting against what we don’t want, and not even to think about what we DO want instead, but to feel that we are already where we want to be. That feeling aligns ourselves with the future we desire, and makes it much more likely to happen.

Travis holds doctorates in psychology and clinical hypnotherapy, and is a highly regarded public speaker. He also appeared in the sequel to the controversial but hugely popular film The Secret, called “Beyond The Secret: The Awakening”.

Working generally with organisations, he has put together what he calls the Ultimate Business Quest, a kind of gamified approach to getting us to dive beneath who we think we are to discover four different architypes that align with our values, and encourage us to feel our way to success.

To find out more about Travis’ Ultimate Business Quest, head over to ultimatebusinessquest.com

www.conversationsonliving.com

If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention. That’s the oft quoted phrase intended to snap us out of our happy – yet ignorant – bubbles and make us take action. And right now it feels appropriate. The world is facing a health crisis in the form of COVID-19, we are being told by our leaders to stay indoors, yet people are taking to the streets to protest hundreds of years of wholesale oppression, injustice and racism, that has manifested in the killing of yet another unarmed black man by police officers. On the one hand, we have our own lives, and the seemingly unsurmountable challenges of getting by, making something of ourselves, and finding a sense of peace amongst the antagonism of commercialism, capitalism and success-porn. And on the other hand, we see a world on fire, the collapse of modern politics, and the voiceless taking to the streets and demanding to be heard. How can we balance our own inner peace and quest for happiness, with the anger that an unjust world demands of us now, in the quest to balance itself? This conversation with Nataly Kogan, the founder of Happier, touches on that juggling act. We talk about why its important not to sacrifice ourselves, but instead to nurture ourselves in order that we can be more effective in our actions. We talk about how, when hard work leads to personal sacrifice, the energy we bring to what we do is often accompanied by a side order of stress, resentment, and fatigue. I hope you enjoy this conversation, and find a way to bring your best energy to whatever it is that you do. And if you feel that it’s time to be better in yourself and your actions, and to demand better from the powers of be, that you will nurture your best energy by nurturing yourself. Right now the world needs the best you that you have to offer. For more information visit www.happier.com Check out Nataly’s TED talk: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKaCN0-kpVE Find her on Instagram at: www.instagram.com/natalykogan Find her on Twitter at: www.instagram.com/natalykogan

It’s said that if you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention. And indeed, all you have to do is turn on the news or take a look at social media, and you’ll find plenty to be angry about. Or sad about. Or worried, anxious, or fearful.

But is this any way to live? Scores of studies have shown that the stress caused by being permanently in these sorts of emotional states can lead to a wide range of health issues – both mental and physical. So surely it’s better not to be angry, or sad, or worried, anxious or fearful.

But does that mean we’re not taking our world, and our place in it, seriously enough?

This week week I’m speaking to Diane Dreher about the Tao te Ching and her 1990 book the Tao of Inner Peace, which has just been re-released to bring it up to date with a world that seems more turbulent, more ill at ease, and more divided than ever. And the message is this, the more we can cultivate inner peace, the healthier we can become in mind, body and spirit, the more effective we can be when we step into the world to make a difference.

This is a wonderful, inspiring and reassuring conversation. Sometimes I feel very lucky to be able to have such great conversations on this podcast, as they really enrich my experience of life, and this is one such conversation. If you want to find out more about Diane and her work, you can visit her website at www.dianedreher.com – and I really urge you to do that and take a look at what she is offering the world.

www.conversationsonliving.com

Of all our relationships, sometimes the most difficult one we have is with ourselves. After all, no one experiences our mistakes, traumas, struggles and challenges more deeply and more vividly than we do. In a society that is fuelled by our dissatisfaction, that needs us to conform to near-impossible standards, it can be difficult to like ourselves enough to fan our own flames – or at the very least to be at peace with who we are.

And after twelve months of a near-global lockdown in response to the global pandemic, we have never been face-to-face with ourselves more than we are now. How do we find the courage to face all that we need to face, to let go of all that we need to let go of, and to nurture all that we need to nurture, so that we can step into who we came here to be?

Tanya Markul is the author of the hugely successful The She Book. Her beautiful poetry and prose gives the reader the permission they need to turn and face that which is most daunting – themselves. And in doing so it frees them to recognise all that they are, all that they are not, and all that they can be.

As she writes:

“The wall between me feeling stuck and my dream life is thinner than I think. And it doesn’t take a giant leap to get there, but a gentle adjustment of perspective, a small step in the other direction.”

And as we discuss, sometimes that small step can be as simple as taking a breath.

Useful links:

www.instagram.com/tanyamarkul 

www.tanyamarkul.com

A conversation with master craftsman Charlie Palmer, about doing your own thing, following your dream, and reaching your goals.

I photographed John Doig, who founded Moons Green Charcuterie, and found out how he went from making television commercials in New York to making amazing cured meats in Kent, UK. And we chatted about the meat industry and following your dreams afterwards.

I photographed Mark Freeth of the Freestyle Yoga Project (https://www.freestyleyogaproject.com), and we chatted about what Yoga means to him.

I photographed the founders of Gun Brewery in Sussex, and spoke to one of the founders, Toby Smallpiece, about how he went from Internet Search Marketing to Craft Ale Brewing, and how everything came together as if by magic!

Laura Bingham is braver than me. She's eaten out of bins, swam in shark infested waters, been alone in the desert and worse. Much worse. But there's been better, too. Much better. When she travelled across South America by bike, without any money, she was forced to beg for stale bread and scavenge for scraps to keep her going. But there were times where she was overwhelmed by human kindness when she was offered more food than she could possibly eat. ​She's an adventurer and explorer, and she's driven to find out her limits, and then push beyond them. And there's a lesson for us all here. When you live a comfortable life you'll never know where your limits are. But if you can find them, and then push them just a little bit, you can grow. You can get stronger, cleverer, better, and you world gets bigger. It doesn't take huge leaps of faith to become extraordinary like Laura. It just takes little extra steps to go beyond the ordinary. That's all it takes to be extra-ordinary. And we can all do that. If we just do one thing each day that challenges what we're prepared to do, how far we're prepared to go, that tests the boundaries of our comfort zones, we can achieve more, do more, and be more. Maybe I can be brave like Laura. Maybe we can all push the boundaries of our worlds. We need to challenge ourselves to be uncomfortable. Just a little bit. Every day. I spent the day with Laura making pictures, and chatting about goals, dreams, adventures and having faith in yourself. You can see the rest of the pictures at www.chrisbrock.co.uk

I must have photographed Everton Bell-Chambers six or seven times – from the very beginning of my photographic career to where I am today, he’s always been lurking somewhere in the background, ready to get in front of my lens and help me out whenever I’ve had a creative itch to scratch and needed someone interesting to photograph. And Everton is certainly interesting. Born in Canada, bred in London, he’s dancing his way round the world. He’s got a batman tattoo and runs events for people of all ages who need somewhere safe and friendly to go and dance. And if you look closely you’ve probably seen him on TV, stealing the scenes in BBC television shows like Eastenders and the sitcom, Enterprice. He loves to perform – to dance, to DJ, to act – even modelling for photographers like Nick Knight, he’s a creative fireball and he’s setting the planet on fire. Lately he’s started working behind the lens, so I’d better watch my back. Having grown up with a diet of Batman cartoons and Michael Jackson videos, he taught himself to dance at an early age, mimicking what he saw on TV. Later in life he became a dance teacher and shared his love of movement with others. Now he’s taking his moves Stateside with a stint in America as he attempts to take a bite out of the Big Apple. Everton’s great in front of the camera. You know it’s never going to be a dull shoot when he’s posing for you. Maybe that’s why I keep working with him. And that’s why I wanted him to be on my podcast (is it safe to call it a podcast yet?). I wanted to find out what drives him, where he’s going and why he didn’t just get a job in an office. I’m always fascinated by anyone who opts for a life less ordinary, if there is such a thing. We talked about meditation (Everton meditates three times a day), we talked about how normal is an illusion – what’s normal now won’t be normal in ten years’ time, so why bother conforming at all? We talked about getting kicked out of Canada, and we talked about why he’ll never stop dancing. I hope this isn’t the last time I work with Everton, but it’s been a pleasure. And now the World awaits.

People like Yewande Akinola inspire me. She’s well aware of the voices in her head that try to stop her doing things, but she refuses to let them hold her back. Instead of allowing them to undermine her dreams of becoming an engineer, she overcame them and left Nigeria to study at Warwick University in the UK. Instead of letting the voices that asked, “but what will people think?” hold her back when she was invited by Channel 4 and National Geographic to present the television show Titanic: The Mission, instead she brushed them to one side and grasped the opportunity with both hands. Like all of us, she has those voices in her head telling her the task is too big, that she’s not good enough, that she’ll fail if she tries. But her excitement for what could go right is much more powerful than her fear of what might go wrong. As a child she would lie on her back and stare at the stars overwhelmed by the potential of what she could achieve. And she’s achieved so much. A specialist in water management, while her job is based in the UK, in her spare time she travels to Africa, the Middle East and East Asia to work on water and sanitation projects in underdeveloped countries. She is the founder of the Global Emit Project, mentoring young people who have an interest in engineering. And she works with campaigns to encourage young girls to consider a career in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). She’s won numerous awards, designed numerous engineering projects, been a figurehead for numerous campaigns. And behind it all is a desire to build a better world – fuelled by her spirituality. Dreams, imagination, creativity, spirituality, science and engineering. Rather than a collection of things that don’t mix, they instead blend the vision and the skills that make the impossible possible. Science and engineering helped man realise the dream of visiting the moon. Engineers build the schools that empower children to dream about their future – and realise it And Yewande Akinola is proof that you should dream. Because you can achieve anything as long as you’re not frightened to take that first step.

I had an amazing opportunity the other day, when I bumped into senior Buddhist monastic Chan Phap Vu. And when I say “bumped into” what I really mean is “followed around until he agreed to speak to me for twenty minutes.” Brother Phap Vu studied under Master Thich Nhat Hanh, and is an American monk of the Cinammon Tree Family in San Diego. He was ordained in 2003 at Plum Village monastery in France.  During our conversation I learned something that seems obvious in retrospect – that many of the problems facing the world, in particular those caused by mankind – are the manifestation of a fear mindset. Fear drives right-wing politics. Fear fuels greed. Fear drives the destruction of the natural world. Fear drives racism, sexism, poverty, and inequality, and these things are all harmful. To us, those around us, and the world we inhabit. So how do we change things, I asked?  The answer is through a state of mindfulness. By promoting compassion, empathy, kindness, and understanding. By promoting love, and letting go so that our egos don’t get in the way of all the hard work. And we do this one mind at a time, one person at a time, and one soul at a time. When we let go, it doesn’t matter if takes a hundred years or a thousand years. Because, just like meditation, it’s the process that matter, not the end result. It’s the practice of all these things that matter, and not the end result. Practice makes perfect, and I’m committed to practicing these things. What about you? If you’d like to find out more, visit http://www.plumvillage.org. And if you'd like to see the pictures, head over to my blog at http://www.chrisbrock.uk

If you were to look at anything under an electron microscope – your lunch, yourself, your t-shirt, space dust, moon rocks, the bricks in your house, a slice of cheese – anything at all – you would see it’s made up of atoms. And those atoms are vibrating. It’s one of the first things we learn in physics at school – everything is vibrating. All the time. And everything vibrates at a particular frequency. If you heat something up or give it energy in some other way (think microwave ovens) it vibrates faster. If you cool something down it vibrates less. Everything vibrates at a frequency and everything has its own frequency. When you agitate something at the correct frequency, you can break it. Have you even seen the footage of the Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge that began to twist and turn in high winds before breaking apart? Or an opera singer breaking wine glasses by matching the frequency of her voice to the natural frequency of the glass? Did you see the "wobbly bridge" in London give visitors an unexpected ride on its opening day? Look closely and you'll see that slowly, people on the bridge started to walk in step with each other, matching the natural frequency of the bridge. This is the reason marching troops of soldiers break step when they cross a bridge. Because because frequencies interact with each other, and they harmonise. If you cause something to vibrate, that vibration can be passed to something else. If you put two tuning forks next to each other they will harmonise and find a common frequency. It’s how the coils in the transformers that charge our laptops work. It's how radios work. It's how signals are transmitted. It's how the planets in the solar system revolve around the sun. It's how the universe holds itself together. Everything vibrates and everything has a frequency. The neurons in your brain are vibrating and transferring electrochemical energy along their pathways to send signals from one place to another,  and this energy – this resonance – can be detected by brain scanning machines. Even thoughts have a frequency. Have you ever heard someone say something that you can completely relate to, and thought “that really resonates with me”? That’s because even ideas have a frequency. And when you’re thinking about, or discussing ideas with someone who’s “on your wavelength” (it’s no coincidence that has become a common phrase) you are harmonised with them. You are aligning your thoughts and ideas with theirs. Not all frequencies are beneficial though. Microwave ovens use radio waves that are at just the right frequency to agitate water molecules. This is good when you want to heat up food, but considering that your brain is made mostly of water, you wouldn’t want to stick your head into a microwave oven. And what about mobile phones? What happens when the molecules in our body harmonise with the frequencies emitted by that electronic box that we hold next to our head every day? It’s something that is still being debated, but experiments have produced a wide range of varying and conflicting answers to that question. It’s a question that Lucy Blyth, the MD of Global EMF Solutions takes very seriously. That’s why she runs a company that makes and sells Energy Dots. These are little magnetic stickers that attach to mobile phones, computers and other electrical devices and are tuned to harmonise the potentially harmful frequencies they emit and make them much less harmful. I was lucky enough to have a short chat with Lucy about how vibrations work, how they can affect our health, and what it means to raise your vibration. Take a listen, and let me know your thoughts at chris@chrisbrock.co.uk​​​​​​​

Life is so unfair. That’s what I thought, anyway. I’d kept my head down, worked so hard, and did exactly what I was supposed to do. And while everyone around me seemed to be enjoying there rewards, I was still waiting for mine. It felt like an all-time low. I was getting up before dawn to deliver groceries to people, and feeling pretty sorry for myself. I never saw my wife, I could barely make ends meet. I was bitter and angry. But every day, as I drove my van from town to town, I got a glimpse behind closed doors into the lives of others. With every delivery I made I learned something. And I realised that while I was waiting for life, life was waiting for me. I learned a lot driving that van. Now my life is very different, overflowing with happiness and joy. And I wrote it all in my book. I talk about it more on my blog - https://www.chrisbrock.uk/blog/2018/7/10/do-the-thing-have-the-power - and on this latest episode of my podcast, which is just me rambling on for fifteen minutes about the journey I've been on. Instead of waiting for the world “out there” to give you what you’re looking for, look inside yourself and you’ll find everything you need. This isn’t spiritual mumbo jumbo, it’s about getting out of the chaos in your head, getting your confidence back and crafting a life you love.

Kerrin Black is driven. An entrepreneur in the true sense of the word, she's here to help. She travels the world as a publicist, trying to get the best coverage possible for her clients. And she runs two charities which aim to help those who can't the high costs of pharmaceuticals get the medicine they need. As if that wasn't enough, she is also the founder of Talent Finders – a resource for artists looking for clients and vice versa. But her biggest skill is network building. She is ferocious at reaching out to people, connecting people, and giving back with no expectation of getting anything in return. And it is this letting go of the desire for success where true success lies. I was lucky enough to spend some time talking with Kerrin about how we should give shamelessly, be unafraid of making fools of ourselves, and how anyone who throws their hat in the arena should be celebrated, even if they fail. This episode of the podcast goes in a lot of different directions, but it's well worth a listen. Kerrin is all over the web. Find her on her own site at www.kerrinblack.com, or you can find out about her and her various different charities and businesses at: www.talentfinders.com www.facesofhope.co.za Social Media https://twitter.com/KerrinBlackLive   https://twitter.com/FacesofInspire https://www.facebook.com/Kerrin-Black-1935949160000257/ https://www.facebook.com/kerrin.black.3 https://www.facebook.com/talentfinderslive/ https://www.facebook.com/FacesOfHopeFoundation/

My big ambition in life is to make a career doing things that I enjoy and find interesting. For me that includes writing about mindfulness and the art of living, helping others, taking photographs, and talking to interesting people about interesting things. That's why I enjoy my recording my podcast. This latest episode is a perfect example of this, and it was a real honour to chat with Tony Wrighton who, like me, seems to be doing lots of things that interest him. If sport is your thing, you probably know him as a presented on Sky Sports, one of the biggest sport broadcasters in the world. But he's got a lot more going on than that, too. Tony is also an author, and one of the country's leading experts on Neuro Linguistic Programming, which is an amazingly powerful tool that uses language to create new behaviours, habits and ways of thinking. It has been put to use tackling addiction, improving self esteem, and is a fantastic communication tool for boosting engagement. And there are countless other applications for this fascinating skill. Tony also hosts the amazing podcast, Zestoloy, which discusses all sorts of ideas around boosting your energy. He talks to nutritionists, fitness gurus, psychologists and many more people about what it takes to be your best, to have the best life, and to operate at the highest levels of energy possible. Fascinating stuff. Our conversation goes all over the place, and we touch on the meaning of spirituality, how our mental states influence our health, imposter syndrome and a whole lot more. It was a real pleasure speaking with Tony, and I would implore you to subscribe to his podcast and read his books. LINKS: Tony's website: www.tonywrighton.com Zestology Podcast: www.tonywrighton.com/zestology/

It’s always cool to get to chat with someone who calls themselves an encouragement leader. Not only because we all need more encouragement these days instead of criticism, but because it’s great to speak about the human potential, and how we can all do so much more if only we’d get out of our own way. So when Monique Hohnberg said she would be on the podcast, I was over the moon. She’s the person who started Rise Regardless, a movement to encourage people to achieve more, do better, and build a better life, regardless of all the things standing in their way. And she’s been inspiring people all around the world. We chatted for an hour about building a positive relationship with ourselves, how it’s this fundamental self-worthiness that can help us get everything out of life that we are capable of and that we deserve. In this episode of the podcast we go off on a lot of tangents, all of them interesting and inspiring so have a listen, and let me know what you think. A few links: Monique’s website: www.riseregardless.com Monique on Twitter: @moniquehohnberg Joe Dispenza: www.drjoedispenza.com Brene Brown: www.brenebrown.com

When things get desperate, it can either lead you to the depths of despair, or it can lead you to take stock and fall back on something – anything – to keep you going. For some that might mean taking on a second job to pay the rent – for me that was working as a carer and a van driver. For Lorenzo Escobal it meant cleaning cars. He was broke, and when his job applications were met with rejection after rejection, there was nowhere else to go. Refusing to let pride get the better of him, he turned to the thing he’d done for his parents and neighbours growing up. Cleaning cars. But he didn’t just clean cars. He set in motion a chain of events that would lead to him scoring contracts with Google and Tesla. He would go on to be nominated Young Entrepreneur of the Year and his company would win numerous awards. He has since travelled the world building an international network and speaking to students and young business people around the globe. I got a chance to sit down with Lorenzo for this episode of my podcast. We spoke about the difference between having a good idea and putting it into action, overcoming the fear that holds us back, and what kind of belief you need in order to take the risks that lead to growth. There’s a lot of inspiring stuff in our short chat. And there’s also useful things about being yourself, freeing your personal brand from behind the facade of ‘business’, and where to draw the line on vulnerability. For more info, visit http://www.chrisbrock.co.uk

Most of us live our lives according to what we think we are supposed to do. There are conventions and traditions, the well-worn paths of those who’ve gone before – and trying to do the things that will keep others happy – steering us throughout our lives. But the problem with these tried and trusted modes of living, is that they have been created and decided by other people. And what happens when we follow rules of engagement in this entirely made-up system which have been made up by others, is that we end up living a life that isn’t authentically ours. We exist within the parameters and values of others, and like wearing someone else’s shoes, we find that our life just doesn’t fit. Which is why it’s so important to find the empowerment to live our own lives, according to our values, and to speak our truth through the actions we take. Sometimes, though, finding a channel through which to express this truth isn’t always straightforward. That’s why it was such a pleasure to catch up with my friend Chrissa Amuah. She is a motivated and very inspiring person, whose love for textiles and design gave her a medium through which she was able to express her Ghanaian heritage. But breaking from the traditional stereotypes of ‘African’ design – a broad generalisation that, as we discussed, has been used for many decades to simplify and package an entire vast continent – her work is contemporary, innovative, and uniquely hers. And having found her voice through her work, she also went on to become the founder of Africa By Design. A platform to celebrate the work of emerging designers from across the continent, it has exhibited and celebrated the work of many ground-breaking creators in cultural epicentres from New York to Milan and Dubai. Through her own work and through Africa By Design, she is trying to smash the tired, conventional narrative of ‘African’ design. In this podcast we talk about a wide range of topics, from notions of being different to striving to be better, do more, and realise your potential. Take a listen. To find out more about Chrissa and her work, follow these links: AMWA Designs www.amwadesigns.com www.instagram.com/amwa_designs Africa By Design www.africabydesign.org www.instagram.com/africabydesign

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with,” said motivational speaker Jim Rohn, and this is advice that has stood Pip Jamieson in good stead. As the founder of the dots (www.the-dots.com) she’s made it her job to surround herself with good people. Everyone on her team has been carefully chose not just for their skills - she rates her data and tech teams incredibly highly - but also for their attitude. When the shit hits the fan you want people around you who will keep a straight, positive head, and seek to fix things instead of complain or blame. More than this, though, it’s clear that if you want to build something - something bigger than you - and to succeed in that process, you have to work on yourself. On way to do this is to surround yourself with mentors. When you’re taking a leap out of your comfort zone into the unknown it’s good to have people on your side who have already made that leap. We all need mentors, and these days there’s no excuse not to be able to pick the brains of the world’s leading thinkers. And if you can’t sit down with them face-to-face, thanks to the internet we have the next best thing. Books, podcasts, websites, blogs. If we don’t know something we have google in our pocket. No more excuses. I was lucky enough to sit down with Pip for this latest episode of my podcast. I also tried something new - to video it - it was an experiment and a bit of a disaster, but you can watch the outcome on my blog at www.chrisbrock.co.uk. The audio version is better though.

I’ve been trying to get my neighbour Karl Morgan on the podcast for ages, because he has a really interesting story. He spent years as a professional dancer in the West End, appearing in musicals such as Cats, and Guys and Dolls. And then he founded Movement Warriors (https://www.movementwarriors.com) with his partner Janine, a company that teaches youngsters how to dance, instilling them with confidence and helping them keep fit. But he also has an amazing garden. It’s overflowing with greenery and amazing wonderful heritage vegetables. Karl is a permaculturist. He has adopted a low-effort approach to gardening that puts complimentary varieties of plants next to each other, to create an ecosystem that is gentle on the earth and self sufficient. Some plants are there to support others, some are to be eaten, and some are to feed the earth. And the results are astounding. But there are parallels in the garden with Karl’s on philosophies on life. Borrowing from the Buddhist traditions, Karl finds his garden as a place where he can let go, and he can often be found meditating there. Gardening has, after all, been considered a meditation in itself for thousands of years. After shooting some images of Karl among his amazing vegetables, we finally sat down for a short but very enjoyable conversation about gardening, dance, and the meaning of life. I hope you enjoy it as I much as I do, and don't forget to check out the pictures on my blog at http://www.chrisbrock.uk.

Caroline Millington and I have been friends for 20 years. We studied for our postgrad in Features Journalism together in London, and since then she gone to write for some of the best known magazines to grace the shelves of the newsagent, before moving behind the scenes in television. Most recently Caroline’s become an author. Her first book, Kindfulness, is about recognising that you’re not a robot but a gloriously imperfect human. Her second book, which was published recently, is The Friendship Formula, and is all about… friendship. We got together for a catchup, to talk about writing books, finding yourself, and lots more besides in this rambling episode of my podcast. We go all over the place with this one, so I hope it’s as much fun to listen to as it was to record. Her books, published by Head of Zeus, are in any decent bookshop or on Amazon.

For most of my life I was waiting to receive the rewards you get for keeping your head down and working hard. But they never came. Life was something that happened to me and not for me, and ultimately I felt powerless to steer it in a direction of my choosing. The result was that I ended up somewhere I hadn’t planned to be. But then I learned that if you change your perspective and your approach to life you can also change your results and the world around you. By engaging with life you can literally design it in a way that works for you. This is why I started writing my books and my blog, and recording my podcast. My latest guest was the photographer Ameena Rojee. She is living the values that I’ve talked about in so much of what I’ve written. She’s going out into the word and finding experiences that are transforming her life, and she’s documenting the process. This approach to life has seen her training at a Kung Fu school in China, walking thousands of kilometres across Europe on the Camino de Santiago, exploring the forest of Latvia, and finding herself in the process. Take a listen to the podcast or watch the video of our conversation. And if you want to find out more here are se handy links: http://www.ameenarojee.co.uk http://www.ofthelandandus.com

When you step up to life, life will step up to meet you. But when you don’t engage with it or put the energy in, then life will happen to you. It will roll over you, drag you along behind it. You either take control of life, or it will take control of you. Life is like water flowing downhill. It will find its way to the sea – it’s essential destiny – one way or another. And you can either harness its energy, or you can be washed away. Admittedly, I was not the target audience, but when I read Leanne Pero’s self-help book, “Take Control” it really resonated with me. So much of what she wrote, inspired by the steps she took to take control of her life, seemed to reflect my own experiences. She talked about gratitude, about fixing yourself because no-one else can, and about being human. Having known her for years as a confident person – a leader – I suddenly saw her in a new light. And my respect for her grew almost instantly. I’ve always known Leanne as a dancer, and the businesswoman behind Movement Factory, which runs dance workshops for young people. But in the last couple of years I saw her as someone else – someone who starts movements, who brings people together, who is fully engaged in life, and who gives without expecting anything in return. But more than this, saw someone who can take the worst that life can throw at them, and turn it into a force for good. From an early age Leanne suffered the worst kind of abuse. As an escape she threw herself into dance, and flourished not just as a dancer, but as an entrepreneur and a community leader. And then she was diagnosed with breast cancer. And again, after going through the horrific ordeal of cancer treatment, she rose up to own her experience. When must people would have simply thrown up their hands in surrender, Leanne used her experiences to take ownership of her life. At first it started as informal coffee mornings that she organised to bring women like her together, to share their experiences, and to find comfort in the company of people who had been through the same challenges as she had been through. Yet from this casual support group, a new movement was born. Black Women Rising, is helping people come to terms with the tragedy of breast cancer. And rather than just surviving the illness, she is inspiring women to thrive. To own it, to master it, to refuse to let it own them, but to wear it as a badge of strength, and of pride. To say, “If I can get knocked down by this, and rise up again stronger, then I am unstoppable.” I feel so lucky that Leanne joined me for a chat on my podcast. I wanted some of her magic to rub off on me. Because if I can harness just 1% of what Leanne has – that drive and talent for owning life, and for making things happen and for inspiring others – then I can’t go wrong. I hope that you’ll enjoy our conversation – but here’s a trigger warning: We get straight to raw stuff almost straight away. But I hope you’ll find her story as inspiring as I do. And I hope it will motivate you to take control of your life, to take ownership, and to build something amazing. To find out more about Leanne and her work, check out these links: Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/leanneperoofficial Black Women Rising Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/blackwomenrisinguk The Movement Factory: http://www.themovementfactory.uk.com Official website and blog: http://www.leannepero.com

There is only this present moment. Our entire life – indeed the entire history of time – is made up of a long series of present moments. But we can only exist, and live, and take action, in one moment at a time.  And then we find ourselves in the next moment. And the one after that. And in each moment, we have a vast array of choices. We can choose action or inaction (though inaction is still an action of sorts). We can choose love or fear. We can choose cowardice or courage. We can choose vanilla or chocolate chip. We can choose to get up when the alarm goes off, or to hit snooze. We can choose a life that happens to us, or for us. Fundamental to all of these choices is our perspective. Do we choose an ‘outside in’ perspective, where we are subject to our circumstances, to the things that happen to us, to all the things that are beyond our control? Or do we choose an ‘inside out’ perspective, where we understand that our situation, our circumstances, and our view of reality, are based largely on how we perceive the world, of how we view both our internal and external stimuli and processes? In this episode of my podcast, I speak with Dr. Maggie Gilewicz, the author of the book “How to Make Sure Your Life Doesn’t Suck.” Her book goes into great detail about how our experience of life is largely made up of the thoughts in our heads, and that we can influence these thoughts, and therefore the life we live. That by developing self-awareness we notice when we are reacting, and choose instead to respond with measure and, ultimately, that the way we feel is not the result of things beyond our control that happen outside us, such as our circumstances or the way other people behave, but a result of our internal processes. And we have a say over these processes. Enjoy this conversation, and hopefully it will encourage you to take ownership over how you feel, how you live, and how life shines on you. For more information: Maggie’s website at: www.maggiegilewicz.com Buy the book: www.amazon.co.uk/Make-Sure-Your-Life-Doesnt/dp/B083XVDZ9T/

When we have a thought or carry out an action, we create a connection between neurons in our brains. If we repeat that action or thought, then the connection gets stronger. And the more we do this, the more we literally wire our brains in favour of that behaviour or action.  If our thoughts are negative or undermining, then we move closer to creating beliefs that don’t serve us. If our actions don’t work in our favour, then we move closer to developing habits that can harm us. And considering that we usually think the same things, and follow the same patterns of behaviour, day in and day out, it’s not surprising that we get stuck into ways of thinking, beliefs and actions that, at best, don’t serve us and, at worst, actually harm us. But, as I discovered during my conversation with mindfulness practitioner Michelle Butler, if we change our routine and our thoughts, and introduce practices that are different to the harmful habits we normally follow, we can undo this mental wiring. We can literally reprogram ourselves to do better, to be better and, most importantly, to love and value ourselves. Michelle, like me, found mindfulness after years of struggling with a negative mental narrative that did her no favours. In her case the anxiety was nearly crippling, yet on the surface she managed to keep it all together. She knew something was wrong, and this led her on a journey of discovery that would ultimately see her welcoming mindfulness into her life in a major way – and sharing its benefits with others, too. I’ve been wanting to have this conversation for a long time – in part because Michelle and I have been friends for years, and in part because mindfulness has played a massive part in making my life worth living. I’m grateful that Michelle was able to spare the time, and I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as I enjoyed having it. If you want to find out more about Michelle’s involvement with mindfulness, you can read her blog or join her closed Facebook group, both called My Little Place Of Calm. Here are the links: Blog: www.mylittleplaceofcalm.com Facebook: My Little Place of Calm