How do we learn, grow and fulfil our potential today and into the future? My guest for today's conversation arrived in the United States from Kenya at the age of 18 with $273 to his name and a mission to survive. As he tells it, he is LGBTQ and grew up in a world in which his identity either did not exist or was punishable by death or a lifetime in prison. Upon his arrival in the US he was granted a diversity scholarship to attend college which led to both a Bachelor and Masters Degree from Stan...
Feb 25, 2020•51 min
I was introduced to Tess Walton at an event late in 2019 and we clicked straight away. We got talking about her specialist topic - the future of work - and I quickly realised that this was a podcast episode in the making. It took us a little while to co-ordinate schedules but we connected last week for this amazing conversation which weaves and wends its way through a whole lot of topics all focused on the future. •How do we create the future? •What could it look like? •What skills and what kind...
Feb 18, 2020•1 hr 1 min
Today on the show we're talking a bit about exercise, a bit about spirituality, a bit about indigenous cultures and quite a bit about a very select group of people who choose to run around and around an extended city block in New York City for not just days but weeks at a time! My guest is Sanjay Rawal, an award winning documentary maker based in New York City. We're talking about his film 3100: Run and Become, a beautiful and intriguing documentary about the Self Transcendence 3100 Mile Race an...
Feb 11, 2020•52 min
The one in which I share my family's brush with bushfires on New Years Eve 2019 and then explore the effects of calamity and catastrophe on children with psychologist and author Karen Young. Welcome back to the Potential Psychology Podcast and our eighth season of the show. It's great to be back. We've had a turbulent start to 2020 in Australia. We're no strangers to bushfire but as of as of 14 January 2020, fires this season have burnt an estimated 186,000 square kilometres (72,000 square miles...
Feb 04, 2020•1 hr 8 min
This episode of the Potential Psychology Podcast is brought to you by PAFOW and their upcoming Sydney event, PAFOW20 Sydney: Honoring the Human Experience in the Age of AI & Perpetual Change Welcome back. Our Summer Series - in which we are revisiting favourite past episodes - is drawing to a close. We will be back next week with new interviews and new guests and another big year. Today we revisit my conversation with Dr Adrian Medhurst. Adrian is a psychologist, a speaker, an author and the...
Jan 31, 2020•59 min
It's week three of our Summer Series of the Potential Psychology Podcast. While the team and I are busy behind the scenes prepping Season 8 of the show, we're taking a look back at some of our favourite episodes. And this quote encapsulates the essence of today's show.... 'Don't waste a lot of time and money pushing kids in directions they don't want to go. Instead, find out what weirdness they excel at and encourage them to do that. Then get out of the way' - Seth Godin My guest is Professor Le...
Jan 21, 2020•1 hr
It's week two of our Summer Series of the Potential Psychology Podcast. Over the next few weeks while the team and I have a short break and get started behind the scenes on the next super cool series of the show, we're revisiting some of our favourite past episodes. Today we are talking about one of my favourite topics - Sleep! My guest is Dr Kate Sprecher and she is speaking to me from Colorado, in the United States, where she a is post-doctoral researcher in the Sleep and Chronobiology Lab at ...
Jan 15, 2020•50 min
Our Summer Series We're back after a slight delay due to the Australian bushfires. My family and I were caught up in the bushfire drama on the NSW South Coast where we were holidaying with family (15 adults, 7 kids and a dog) on New Year's Eve 2019. We're all safe and home now but it was a tense and difficult day as we prepared to defend my sister-in-law's home and our lives. Thankfully the worst we experienced was heat, smoke, anxiety and exhaustion as our little pocket of the coast, whilst sur...
Jan 05, 2020•51 min
Today we meet Emma and Carla Papas, The Merrymaker Sisters. These real-life sisters are Yoga, Pilates and Meditation teachers, entrepreneurs, podcasters, authors, social media stars and, as I discover in this interview, flourishing personified. They quit their full time government desk jobs in July 2014 to pursue their passion of bringing health and happiness to the lives of others. Since then they've created the #1 mobile recipe App Get Merry, published the best selling healthy cookbooks Make I...
Dec 17, 2019•1 hr
Hands up if you procrastinate. Okay, hands down. Of course you procrastinate. You're human aren't you? The question is, are you one of the 80 per cent who procrastinate over some tasks, some of the time? Or the 20 per cent who procrastinate over most tasks, most of the time? And why do you procrastinate? What is procrastination from a psychological point of view? (It might not be what you think it is) How are feelings involved? And how do you stop? I'm exploring all this and more in this SOLO ep...
Dec 10, 2019•41 min
Tales from the Valley of Death: Reflections from psychotherapy on the fear of death. It sounds morbid but it's not. It's fascinating. Tales introduces us to the complex lives of 10 individuals who have been crippled by death-related fears and related existential issues. Their stories are told through interviews with their psychotherapist, internationally renowned clinical psychologist Professor Ross Menzies. It's a captivating read. In this episode Rachel and I explore these stories and discuss ...
Dec 03, 2019•1 hr
What is it like to thrive and flourish at work? Not just survive, but really have the opportunity to be your best self? My guest for this episode is Dr Peggy Kern. Peggy is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Positive Psychology in the University of Melbourne's Graduate School of Education. (She's also a speaker at the Wellbeing Evidence and Horizons Conference, our fabulous podcast partner, in Melbourne on 28 & 29 April 2020.) Peggy is an expert in workplace thriving and in this conver...
Nov 27, 2019•1 hr 5 min
This episode of the Potential Psychology Podcast is brought to you by the Wellbeing Evidence and Horizons Conference, Australia's leading multi-disciplinary, evidence-based wellbeing and resilience conference. April 28 & 29, 2020. See you there! What do you do when life gets tough? Do you retreat? Avoid? Get angry? Self medicate? Exercise your need for control? Life throws us all a curve ball eventually and in this episode of the podcast my guest suggests that the remedy for life's difficult...
Nov 19, 2019•59 min
If we have the same 24 hours as Beyonce, how should we use them if we want to be happy and well? Do we pour our time into work? Do we sacrifice sleep for exercise? What trade-offs do we make? Because I don't care who you are, you can't fit 30 hours into 24! My guest for this episode is Professor Tim Olds from the University of South Australia. Tim is a time-use epidemiologist and the first of our guests who will be speaking at the upcoming Wellbeing Evidence and Horizons Conference - a 2 day sci...
Nov 13, 2019•45 min
This episode of the Potential Psychology Podcast is brought to you by the Wellbeing Evidence and Horizons Conference, Australia's leading multi-disciplinary, evidence-based wellbeing and resilience conference. April 28 & 29, 2020. See you there! What can we, as humans, learn from horses to boost our wellbeing and overcome struggle? My guest for this episode is Naomi Rossthorn. Naomi is a psychologist and the Clinical Director of Harnessing Wellness, a psychological counselling service locate...
Nov 05, 2019•44 min
This episode of the Potential Psychology Podcast is brought to you by the Wellbeing Evidence and Horizons Conference, Australia's leading multi-disciplinary, evidence-based wellbeing and resilience conference. April 28 & 29, 2020. See you there! Do you think in one dimension? Or two dimensions? Or maybe even three? I kick off this episode of the podcast with some reflection on Tim Urban's article, The Thinking Ladder from Wait But Why and his insight into multidimensional thinking - the what...
Oct 29, 2019•1 hr
This episode of the Potential Psychology Podcast is brought to you by the Wellbeing Evidence and Horizons Conference, Australia's leading multi-disciplinary, evidence-based wellbeing and resilience conference. April 28 & 29, 2020. See you there! Welcome back to the Potential Psychology Podcast and our seventh season of the show. Seven seasons! And it's only getting better from here. Today my guest is Dr Gordon Spence. Gordon and I studied together at The University of Sydney in the early 200...
Oct 22, 2019•52 min
My guest today is passionate about reducing stress and chaos in people's lives. Tom Cronin knows first-hand the power of meditation in overcoming mental health issues and the potential this ancient practice has for personal healing and human transformation. Tom is a meditation teacher, a film maker, an international speaker and founder of The Stillness Project - a global movement to inspire one billion people to sit in stillness daily. He is also the author of six books for adults and one childr...
Sep 24, 2019•47 min
My guests on the podcast today are the living embodiment of 'testing and learning', particularly when it comes to life admin - everything from getting your mobile phone plan and contract sorted out to planning family holidays to filing your tax return. Mia Northrop and Dinah Rowe-Roberts are the co-hosts of the Life Admin Life Hacks Podcast. Their mission is to help you save time, money and achieve a little more peace of mind and household harmony. Mia gets a thrill when they unearth processes a...
Sep 17, 2019•54 min
"Australian men over 85 have the highest rate of suicide in the country" Wellbeing in older adults. It's a conversation we don't often have, but we need to. My guest today is Dr Julie Bajic-Smith, an aged care psychology consultant and mentor, and she is passionate about the need to shape a better future for everyone in aged care. For five years Julie travelled to aged care homes and facilities to provide treatment and face-to-face intervention for the elderly. Her career took a turn when she ke...
Sep 10, 2019•45 min
Imagine controlling the world directly with your mind. That was my guest's dream - and she and colleagues brought that dream to life. Ariel Garten has a fascinating and eclectic background in psychotherapy, art, fashion design, neuroscience, technology and start ups. She is a co-Founder of Interaxon, the developers of Muse, a brain sensing headband that translates your mental activity into the guiding sounds of weather to help you find focused calm. Busy mind? Stormy weather. Calm mind? Peaceful...
Sep 04, 2019•55 min
How does a psychologist become a psychologist? What does the training involve? How long does it take? And could YOU last the distance? In this episode of the Potential Psychology Podcast I'm joined by Glen Tanner, a recently registered Clinical Psychologist and we're talking about life in the early years of this fascinating career. Glen and I discuss: •The path to become a psychologist in 2019. (Did you know that it takes 8 years?) •What led Glen to psychology as his second career? •Why he chose...
Aug 27, 2019•44 min
If you could upgrade yourself to 'You Version 2.0' what would that look like? Who would you be? What would you do? And how would you get there? Our guest for this episode is pursuing these very questions in a year long adventure in brain hacking. James Garrett, psychologist, former academic, entrepreneur and fellow podcaster has embarked on The Deep Change Project in 2019, exploring neuro technology, neuroplasticity and personal change to uncover the very best of James Garrett Version 2.0 James ...
Aug 19, 2019•58 min
My first ever SOLO episode and we're talking motivation. Where does it come from? How do we create it in ourselves and others? And why is everything you know or think about motivation wrong? Motivation is one of my favourite topics. I have two public workshops coming up in Ballarat exploring Six Simple Steps to an Engaged, Motivated Team, which I've cheekily subtitled 'Why everything you know about motivation is wrong'. Both workshops have now sold out I've had several people ask if I'm planning...
Aug 14, 2019•52 min
I have been talking to several clients recently about productivity, attention, focus, our expectations of ourselves and the feelings that come along with juggling all of the things - work, parenting, health, self-care, friendships, family, goals and plans. Worry, overwhelm, frustration and impatience are recurring themes. So I thought it timely to revisit a conversation that has helped me with all of these things. In Season 2 of the Potential Psychology Podcast I interviewed James Garrett, the f...
Aug 07, 2019•1 hr 10 min
Join me behind the scenes at the IPPA 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology in Melbourne, Australia If you follow Potential Psychology on social media you might have seen me out and about with my portable recorder, Potential shirt and matching red headphones at the International Positive Psychology Association's 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology in July 2019. The World Congress was a four day event at which world's positive psychology, happiness and wellbeing experts descended on Mel...
Jul 31, 2019•51 min
'If the 5 trillion spiders in the Netherlands took to eating humans rather than insects, they'd consume all Dutch people in just three days.' Not a nice thought, especially if you have a spider phobia but that was the Tweet that led me to today's guest and our discussion of phobias. My guest is Dr Celin Gelgec, a clinical psychologist based in Melbourne, who specialises in anxiety and all of the different ways in which it manifests and challenges us, including phobias! Celin is a Senior Clinical...
Jul 23, 2019•50 min
Imagine this. You're 20 years old and a newly minted teacher with sole responsibility for a small rural primary school and the nine students who attend each day. It's your ninth day at work and although it starts in the same way as days one to eight, it will end very differently - with you and your nine students chained and captive in a remote camp site. This is the true (crime) story of my guest, Rob Hunter. We're exploring what happened on that day 42 years ago and the impact that it has had o...
Jul 15, 2019•55 min
'It's 'digital heroin': How screens turn kids into psychotic junkies' That was the NY Post headline that sent the internet into meltdown in 2016. The article went on to state that 'your kid's brain on Minecraft looks like a brain on drugs' and every parent who has ever experienced a pang of guilt watching their child immersed in a screen-based game felt that guilt engulf them. But is it true? Are video and screen-based games as terrifying as the headlines suggest? In this episode of the Potentia...
Jun 19, 2019•1 hr 10 min
We're doing something a little different on the podcast today. For the first time, we are revisiting a past episode. In fact it's episode two of the podcast - my interview with parenting and e-safety expert Martine Oglethorpe from The Modern Parent. Have you noticed a resurgence of interest in the mainstream media lately in video games and their impact on kids? Specifically, the instances and issues surrounding video gaming as an addiction or disorder? In late May of 2019 the World Health Organi...
Jun 11, 2019•50 min
