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 ...
Jun 23, 2022•1 hr 1 min
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...
May 27, 2022•1 hr 23 min
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 u...
May 15, 2022•58 min
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’...
May 09, 2022•59 min
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...
May 01, 2022•1 hr 6 min
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, c...
Apr 25, 2022•1 hr 26 min
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 ...
Apr 17, 2022•52 min
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 R...
Apr 11, 2022•54 min
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 creatin...
Apr 04, 2022•56 min
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: ---- 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 wi...
Mar 29, 2022•1 hr 5 min
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, wh...
Mar 20, 2022•48 min
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 worrie...
Mar 14, 2022•57 min
“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 s...
Mar 07, 2022•48 min
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 ...
Feb 28, 2022•1 hr 2 min
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 l...
Feb 22, 2022•57 min
“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...
Feb 13, 2022•1 hr 1 min
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...
Feb 06, 2022•1 hr 3 min
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 w...
Jan 30, 2022•1 hr 11 min
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 r...
Jan 23, 2022•46 min
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 be...
Jan 16, 2022•1 hr 6 min
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...
Jan 09, 2022•1 hr 10 min
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 ...
Jan 02, 2022•59 min
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
Dec 31, 2021•33 min
“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 s...
Dec 26, 2021•1 hr 10 min
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...
Dec 20, 2021•1 hr 15 min
“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...
Dec 12, 2021•1 hr 18 min
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...
Dec 05, 2021•1 hr 6 min
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 ...
Nov 28, 2021•1 hr 3 min
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 ord...
Nov 23, 2021•54 min
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 ...
Nov 15, 2021•1 hr
