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 som...
Nov 07, 2021•1 hr 15 min
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...
Oct 31, 2021•1 hr 1 min
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 ...
Oct 25, 2021•1 hr 8 min
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 de...
Oct 17, 2021•1 hr 9 min
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 infinit...
Oct 10, 2021•1 hr 4 min
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” ...
Oct 03, 2021•1 hr 4 min
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 ...
Sep 26, 2021•1 hr 6 min
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...
Sep 19, 2021•59 min
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...
Sep 13, 2021•1 hr 16 min
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 22, 2021•1 hr
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 y...
May 05, 2021•1 hr 8 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...
Apr 16, 2021•1 hr 25 min
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 ...
Apr 06, 2021•50 min
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 ma...
Mar 24, 2021•56 min
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 comfor...
Mar 14, 2021•1 hr
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....
Mar 01, 2021•54 min
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...
Feb 15, 2021•1 hr 15 min
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...
Feb 06, 2021•57 min
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, ...
Jan 31, 2021•1 hr 14 min
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. I...
Jan 23, 2021•1 hr 22 min
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...
Jan 03, 2021•1 hr 13 min
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 beauti...
Dec 31, 2020•1 hr 15 min
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...
Dec 12, 2020•1 hr 18 min
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 wea...
Dec 02, 2020•1 hr 14 min
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 an...
Nov 15, 2020•1 hr 14 min
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...
Oct 22, 2020•1 hr 5 min
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 succes...
Oct 15, 2020•1 hr 13 min
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 t...
Oct 08, 2020•1 hr 10 min
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 happe...
Sep 14, 2020•48 min
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 ...
Sep 07, 2020•53 min
