Resilience Unravelled

This week we thought we'd give you another opportunity to listen to Dr Thackeray's take on Psychological Safety, something he has long been fascinated by. He is particularly interested in how it aligns with Burnout and Resilience and in this podcast he discusses: What psychological safety isWhat it’s all aboutWhat it has to offer usSome of the different theoretical ideas around psychological safety.

Ryan Larson has been a firefighter in Phoenix, Arizona for twenty-one years. In the emergency services sector people often talk about the physical requirements, the structure, the sense of clarity and knowing your role and what you have to do. But being a firefighter is a lot more than this - it isn’t just about running into a burning building, it’s about knowing your environment, knowing the structure and what you’re going into and then using all your senses - if you go up to a door and its really hot your senses tell you not to go through it, rather you need to change tactics. It helps you develop into someone who is able to use their skills to see the dangers - you’re planning, plotting, analysing and doing major risk management in your head as you walk through a building.Ryan is also the founder and CEO of FirstLine Financial, LLC where he credits his empathetic leadership approach, sense of purpose and lifelong passion for helping others mitigate risk to the experiences he gained as a firefighter,   In this podcast:Ryan talks about the different skills being a firefighter providesWhy you can’t just ‘tuck everything under the bed’Transitioning from your first career to your second.

Sam LaCrosse hasn't done anything amazing. He's not extraordinary or impressive. He’s just an ordinary guy from Cleveland, Ohio, who now lives an ordinary life in Austin, Texas. Sam’s approach to living a rich and fulfilling life doesn't involve slogans or self-esteem dogma. He feels the path to a good life lies in discovering and honoring your own core values. Sam grew up as part of a tight-knit family where a constant was the ethos of values - he didn't understand what they were but he realised they were important. As he got older the idea of values became more interesting and something he investigated further, initially looking at the relationship between value and sacrifice. He then developed this into the relationship between value and identity which then became the basis for his book. In this podcast:Sam explains why he decided to write his bookHow he defines valueWhat he thinks truly forms personal identity.

Estelle Giraud is passionate about creating a better healthcare system. She believes that we all have the fundamental right to have agency over our own body, our own health journey and, the privacy that goes with it. The idea that we own and cleanse our own health data means we can show our own data to the people providing our healthcare needs on a global scale. Different countries have different systems so it makes sense for all our health information to come with us as we move through life. Nowadays health is not just about going to the doctor and having some blood tests, it’s about mental health, diet, stress, sleep and community. These things all impact our health and we no longer have a single family doctor who knows all about us! Today’s medical systems have fragmented with different people and systems. People are now starting to realise that these things need to come together. In this podcast:Why we need to own our own health journeyHow our health data can empower and serve usWhy our health journey needs to be holistic. 

David Richman is an author, public speaker, philanthropist, and endurance athlete whose mission is to form more meaningful human connections through storytelling.As a former sedentary, over-weight, smoker, David knew that he needed to focus not on what others wanted out of him, but on what he wanted out of life. Through lessons learned in business and sport, he introduced the concept of the “middle of the pack” and how we can get more out of ourselves than we ever imagined. He applies this concept to life and business and adds value to the people he works with coming from the perspective of the “middle of the pack.”In this podcast:David talks about the importance of living on purposeHow making one change can provide focus and purpose in other areas of lifeWhy sometimes its enough just to be ourselves.

When artists describe their creative process, they inevitably talk about being in an open mind state where the download of core creativity can happen, that creativity isn’t a rational, calculated activity, its about allowing oneself to become receptive.  Pure originality is core creativity, something that comes from ones pure core collective unconscious. Mindfulness meditation can take us out of overthinking and into the mind state of receptivity. The stillness and focus involved in meditation alters our brainwaves, and therefore, our mind state. Distraction-free time leads us to an open mind. Both core creativity and intuitive wisdom and knowledge can be accessed in an open mind state, not because we have an open mind, or are trying to be open minded, but because we’re in a state of pure receptivity after giving ourselves over to emptiness.

Research and science shows that meditation actually enhances creativity so you can come at a problem with several different angles and be more creative about solving it. It decreases anxiety and in a more relaxed state you are open to getting more insights and having more breakthroughs. Meditation can also enhance emotional intelligence which makes you more empathetic, less likely to act impulsively and get frustrated in an emotionally charged situation as well as making interactions easier.Gratitude is another powerful way to reprogramme your brain because you are strengthening your neural pathways. The more your can find gratitude for what’s happening in your world the stronger the neural pathways will become. Feelgood chemicals like dopamine increase and cortisol the stress hormone reduces so you can get a reduction in physical pain and an increase in the effectiveness of your immune system. Forgiveness is releasing gratitude within yourself. By allowing forgiveness, nothing changes for the other person but everything changes within you. It doesn’t absolve the other person from their guilt rather its actually forgiving yourself. You have to be able to learn the lesson – if you can find gratitude for that situation then again you’re giving yourself piece of mind and a sense of calm.

Jennifer had dissociated with the person she was as a teenager who was physically, emotionally and sexually abused by three teachers. She had put this away in a box and not integrated it so it started to operate as a mind bully. She was a high achiever in the academic world but when she came home behind closed doors she bullied herself through cutting and eating disorders. She was hurting her own body because she had no idea she had to take teenage girl and her trauma and work through it. She was seeing psychiatrists and psychologists and never told them anything about it. She could have worked as a teacher and repeated what had happened to her with her students. Her personality type, introverted, academic and full of self-expectation meant instead she turned it against herself. That is the mind bully. Many people are holding themselves back from happiness, health and fulfilling their potential because of their mind bully.It takes work on separate it out. You need to become aware that its not you, that its something you created that helps you avoid looking at the trauma. If it’s your own problem and the mind bully is your own issue you don't have to take a hard look at what happened to you. You don't have to be the victim, to be vulnerable, to feel what it was like to be a teenager and be treated that way. It’s easier to keep the mind bully beating you up because you don't have to be a victim again. If you find the courage, a good mental health practioner, and a safe network and space to do it, you can go back into the arena again and choose to replace the mind bully.

When we tell ourselves about not being defined by something we generally mean not talking about it. The traumas that happen and that we don't want to be defined by we don't talk about and so we don't deal with them. They then become ‘the monster under the bed’. They end up controlling us because we haven’t dealt with them. We have to face these things head on. Feel the emotion then go back to what happened to us and incorporate it as part of our life experience.

Although everyone dreams, most people don’t know that their dreams can be used for personal development. They key is to ask the right question and keep your mind open so your dream can provide the answer.  With direction it is possible to learn the reality of how your dream is constructed, how your own mind creates part of the dream and your emotions, expectations and intent. This gives us an enriched sense of experiences and makes us more elastic and better able to carry out the broad range of emotions feelings and experiences in this world and be more resilient and effective with a more enriched balance of the experiences of life.In this podcast:Machiel explains what a dream isHow dreams can offer creative solutionsWhy we need to engage with recurring dreams.

As the founder and CEO of of dance company in India and now CEO of a multinational organisation in the US, Rani Puranik has realised there are 4 stages to leadership. Initially its to listen so you can gather information and then reflect it back out then to act as a bridge to bring stability to organisations, teams and individuals. This means thT slowly and steadily you can gear your team towards who they can became and what they have the potential to be. Leaders also have to have the ability to inspire and to be visionaries who go beyond the limitations other people see or think. Every person has what is needed to succeed and find that confidence for themselves. Finally, leaders need to let go. Your team will have gone through the different stages and now have the inspiration and confidence to lead!

There is an intersection in business which makes people feel their lives have to be compartmentalised making it impossible to combine their spiritual and work lives - the idea that work just has to be work and `I can't bring some of what I believe in terms of my own spirituality’. Some of the things we do at work however are in alignment with the things that exist in our spiritual life such as compassion, empathy and deeply listening to others. It is possible to bring a spiritual approach to our work and posture of service in what we are doing and how we are doing it by developing an approach that brings the same spiritual posture in your most comfortable setting to the office in how your treat people, how you approach your work and how you endeavour to inspire others.We don't necessarily need to share the reasons and motivations that inspire us with everyone but we don't need to exclude them from the workplace.  Looking at the workplace and finding the 'why' then gives context to the meaning of the work you’re doing.

The term midlife crisis has a really bad reputation but it can be a time for positive change and far more exciting and interesting than we think. The pandemic has caused many people to have a mid life crisis simply because they had time to think about their life choices. That’s really what a mid life crisis is. A time to reevaluate what’s going on in your life whether it’s your career, relationships, who you are as a person, whether this is who you want to be or whether this is what you want to be doing in the next chapter of your life and then introducing changes to ensure the next chapter is better than the last and that we benefit from the changes that we make.

Energy touches every area of your life - how you’re feeling or sleeping, how your relationships are working, how quickly you heal, whether you have an optimistic or pessimistic outlook or whether you take action of pull back. All are affected by how coherent all of your energy systems are. The need is to find out which area is out of balance energetically and bring it back so that the body does what its meant to do – to heal - in a more holistic, integrated and less challenging way. In this podcast:Lauren explains what Energy Medicine and Energy Medicine Yoga isHow Energy Medicine Yoga helps with stress and traumaWhy our energy needs to be in balance. 

This week on the Resilience Unravelled podcast, Dr Russell Thackeray talks to Craig Archibald who is an acting coach in California who works with actors at all levels in their careers. He became involved in the theatre when he was 11 years old and progressed to a professional actor when he was 15. He worked at the Royal National Theatre in London and New York’s Neighbourhood Playhouse studying the Stanislavski method of acting and then had a twenty-year acting career before realising he also had another set of skills, those of writing, producing and coaching. In his mid 40s he moved from Manhattan to Malibu and set up a west coast version of his New York coaching operation where over the last 12 -15 years he has worked with young artists to get their careers on the road as well as working with people higher in the industry. In this podcast:Craig explains why perfection is not needed - 95% is good enoughHow actors create roles and ‘live truthfully under imaginary circumstances’Why actors need resilience, integrity and authenticity.

Growth and resilience go hand in hand. We can think about our growth in two ways - by accident or on purpose. If we want to be resilient we need to take life by the horns and maximise our wellbeing by embracing both. Most people focus on growth on purpose because that's what’s wanted – its the things we planned for, were hoping for and were willing to get uncomfortable for but it's the growth by accident that we need. This type of growth is often related to shame, disappointment or embarrassment - the stuff of failures, mistakes and setbacks - but if we have tools to harness both categories then we can live on purpose. When we can choose to be on purpose, we choose to harness our choice and respond rather than react to life.  Doing things with a sense of purpose knowing where you are growing and doing it purposefully.

Robert Vershelst or 'Fireman Rob" was 23 years old with only a year in the fire service when he was part of the search and rescue operation after 9/11. Rob found the situation very surreal and didn't understand how to process it. He had these feelings for many years and used alcohol to quell the darkness. There were a lot of things going on in his life during those years that dragged him down before he started going forward. To get out of the hole was hard and it was not until he was older that he started to look at his mental health.Rob tried to find all the positives he could find from what had happened. One of the biggest was that for that time after 9/11 everyone was working together regardless of religion, gender, colour or political beliefs – they were working together for a common purpose. He now looks at that as one of the most impactful things in his life, that its possible for us to work together and have a bigger purpose than just having our point heard and being right.

Jennifer Fraser is a best-selling author and award-winning educator on bullying and the impact neuroscience has on personal development and culture change. Our culture is so seeped in bullying and abuse - from children’s playgrounds to the upper echelons of leadership - that we’ve come to normalise the behavior. The bullying paradigm has parents, teachers and coaches believing they must be tough to the point of emotional abuse in order for children to acquire the grit and resilience needed to attain excellence in a competitive world. Setting high expectations in an atmosphere of safety, trust and empathy is light years away from using threats, humiliation and cruelty if the goal is high achievement. Neuroscientists have found visual evidence in brain scans of the damage that occurs when subjected to bullying and abuse. The bullied brain correlates with failure to perform, substance abuse, aggressive behavior, chronic disease and mental illness.

Sam Syed is co-founder, CFO and COO at Capsll, an app that enables users to gather their once-scattered memories into digital time capsules. Sam was born in London and is one of six brothers with a Portuguese and Pakistani heritage. He became aware of racism at a young age but feels this helped him build his resilience. His working class background meant he grew up not always getting everything he wanted and he quickly realised he would have to 'break the mould' so he could get things for himself. Sam says he had a fantastic childhood and upbringing but is also thankful that it wasn't ‘silver spooned’ so that what he accomplished from his finance career in London, Dubai and New York he gained himself. He thinks his biggest success is that he never settles and that he’s always looked for the ‘what if’ and that has led him to being part of the team setting up Capsll.

Matthew Fox is a spiritual theologian, an Episcopal priest and an activist for gender, racial and eco-justice. He has written more than 39 books that have been translated into over 60 languages. In 1993 he was expelled from the Dominican order of the Catholic church after 34 years, by Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI). His mistake was reviving Creation Spirituality which blends teachings from the Christian mystics with science, the arts, social justice, environmentalism, and ideas from other spiritual traditions worldwide (including those of indigenous cultures). Matthew feels the difference between spirituality and religion is that religion has evolved to become mostly about social structures. Religion comes and goes in different eras or moments in time and at certain points, particularly in the west, has become linked to empire building and politics wheras spirituality is the essence.  

Belonging is an archetypal experience that we all seek. In the workplace, a sense of belonging will only happen if you have both diversity and inclusion. When you facilitate diversity in hiring practices and instill inclusive policies, procedures and behaviors, your organisation has its best chance of creating a culture that supports a sense of belonging for everyone. Diversity is a fact. Inclusion is a behavior. Belonging is an experience. Diversity is a fact in that you can look around you and note that there are people like yourself alongside people who aren’t like you. Inclusion, meanwhile, is a set of behaviors, frameworks or approaches that promote psychological safety and connectedness among team members.

There are a lot of things that happen to us in life, events, injuries, trauma or divorce. With any type of life event happens we try to protect ourselves so we cover ourselves to survive and continue living. A life event such as the pandemic makes people withdraw and disassociate to protect themselves and others from things they used to care for. When people do that they go into a victim mindset - things always happen to me and only bad things will happen to me. What we are saying to ourselves, our inner voice or the way we speak to ourselves means the way we create stories in our mind leads to a lot of resistance and fighting that we have to go through. Whether it's a relationship with another or ourselves, the story we are living in and telling ourselves matters. Part of the challenge is to recreate your own narrative.

Dr Stephen Sideroff is an internationally recognised psychologist, executive and medical consultant and expert in resilience, optimal performance, addiction, neurofeedback, and leadership. He has published pioneering research in these fields. He is a professor at UCLA in the Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences and the Department of Rheumatology, and director of the Wallenberg Institute of Ethics. He was the founder & former Clinical Director of the Stress Strategies program of UCLA/Santa Monica Hospital and former Clinical Director of Moonview Treatment and Optimal Performance Center.Dr Sideroff started his career as a researcher looking at a learning and memory. He then moved into clinical work where he quickly realised stress was a major modulator of how people felt. They could be feeling really good but as soon as the amount off stress in their life increased their coping abilities become strained and they began to develop different kinds of symptoms. His most recently published book is The Path: Mastering the Nine Pillars of Resilience and Success. Amazon.com – takes model of resilience and lays it out path is a construct that is designed to help people who can get very overwhelmed when they think of all the things they need to do to become resilient – they feel they have to be resilient to work on being resilient.

Sallie Wagner feels resilience is incredibly important and crucial to our life and wellbeing in four major areas – physical, emotional, mental and social - and that there are some very simple ways we can build our resilience. Resilience can also help us to move out of all the regrets we have in life – the ‘what ifs’ and the ‘if only’.  As we build resilience we can move on from those regrets. She also believes that to create success we need to make a process for everyday. Mindset is not taught and we need the mindset to view the success we have in the future and also what it looks like afterwards. We need to have the right skills to have the right mindset for our careers, businesses and lives and then take action to make it happen. Without action it’s just a philosophy. Without action it’s just hoping and dreaming.

The First Africa Family Business Summit (AFBS) will be held at the Kempinski Hotel in Accra on June 24th 2022.The aim of the AFBS is to bring together family business practioners and help them to build a network that will allow them to share information and insights amongst themselves. The audience will be made up of family business owners and senior management, the next generations of their families and other key stakeholders in family businesses.The AFBS is a hybrid conference with virtual and face to face attendance. Dr Russell Thackeray will be leading a workshop on building personal resilience and the toolkits needed to facilitate this in the afternoon session. The evening Session will allow wider networking and focus more on organisational resilience with key speakers on the theme of  “Building Resilience in Family Businesses for Continuity”.

Like most people, successful executive, life strategist, and author Rob Swymer has gone through his share of adversity. Rob married his first wife Bonnie at the age of 21 during the summer of his college junior year and together, they had 3 children. In 2013, Rob lost Bonnie to a massive brain aneurysm and he learned that all the adversity in his life prior had given him the strength to endure the loss of a loved one. Rob believes our internal voice influences our every thought, belief, and action. He used this model to move forward. In reality our internal voice is louder than any external voice we can hear. Rob thinks you need to start with mindset. If you get your mindset right on a daily basis and with the inner voice in check there is nothing you can't achieve.

Often people attend time management courses and come back very enthusiastic about what they've learned. They start of with good intentions but after a short period slip back. Perhaps time management is bigger and broader and the question we should be asking ourselves is how are we managing ourselves. In the bigger context it's apparent that more people are asking themselves this question now than three years ago. Post pandemic people are perhaps struggling to reset the boundaries of what’s acceptable, how they work, what productivity looks like and how it gets measured, how they compare themselves to others and their productivity and how they can still establish credibility with their bosses when there has been less presence around.

A clinical depression in her 20s, and later, a bipolar I diagnosis, caused Michele Capots to lose all self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-worth. She felt defined by her illness and was unsure what it meant for the rest of her life. She no longer believed in herself, and lost the confidence to achieve her goals.Michelle knew nothing about bipolar and was in and out of psychiatric wards for three years. The self-stigma she felt was difficult to overcome and made her fight against. her diagnosis. Someone told Michele that she should to run towards the sound of the cannon and she took this as meaning she should run towards the problem rather than away from it. When she accepted that the disorder was only a part of her not all of her she found freedom and achieved mental wellness.

Kevin Roth began to play the dulcimer in 1972 at the old age of thirteen, and at sixteen recorded his first album which immediately launched him into international fame. His career took him to a concert and symphony stages around the world, to festivals, radio, television shows, and two appearances at the White House. Then came a sudden diagnosis of Melanoma which changed his life.He was given around two years to live and had the choice to accept the diagnosis or live. He chose life. Through adapting and combining techniques from his music and performance practice with others that he researched, he found a simple and powerful method to change how he lived and discovered how to not just survive but to become truly happy and thrive. Kevin feels we create stories every day. When we wake up it can be a good day or a bad day. For example, if you’re in a really bad mood and the phone rings and it's a friend you haven’t heard from a while then suddenly you’re in a whole other dimension. All the drama that was ruining your life is gone. When you look at mindful awareness and take the time to contemplate it you realise that you really shouldn't get upset about very much. The story is the story. We also need to recreate our life on a daily basis and retune ourselves through the day. Many people don't know how to sit in silence or be comfortable with themselves any more. We have an inner voice that will talk to us if we are quiet enough to listen so we can replace what doesn't work with what does.

Lara Sabanosh and her husband had been marrried for twenty years and had been based at Guantanamo Bay in a civilian capacity for four years. On January 9th 2015 after an evening event he went missing and his body was found later in the bay. In telling the story of his disappearance, the media portrayed him as a war hero and a wonderful husband and father but this did not tell the full story of their relationship. The evening her husband went missing he had assaulted her three times verbally and physically. The attack had been reported but the people who were questioning her about his disappearance were the same people he socialised with. Nobody was listening to her and the reports she had made against him ignored. Since then Lara has often been asked why people stay abusers. Lara feels that she became a military wife at a very young age. She was nineteen years old when she met her husband and was a college student with big plans for the future. She came from a close-knit family unit with no background in violence but she now realises that the stronger the ties between them came the more she lost herself. At the start of the relationship it was not abusive but she now realises that there were some red flags before they got married. There were incidents that happened which she now feels should have given her an indication about how he handled situations and that he was lying to her. After they got married these things became her problem.

Pre-pandemic in the US there was a notion that if you did all the right things, happiness would just happen to you. That's not actually the way happiness works. In the pandemic there was a paradigm shift where millions of people started asking themselves were they happy in their life or was their life ending up how they imagined it. Lots of people said no its not and resigned in mass numbers. A second paradigm shift happened when people asked themselves questions about their dissatisfaction at work. The HR department had always known the answer was more money and better benefits but now that people were asking if they were happy in life, the HR departments were at a loss. In the old world we knew that more money would make us happy. In the new world no one knows the answer because few people know how to make themselves happy.

 Paola Knecht is a certified leadership, transformational, and self-development coach with fifteen years of experience working in leading-edge global corporations, including Viatris and Syngenta. In her recently published book The Success Mindset: Take Back the Leadership of Your Mind she challenges the mainstream view of success and asks her readers to redefine success so it is truly meaningful to them. Paola looks at the difference between people who are extraordinary and reach things no one thinks are possible and people who don't achieve the things they want to. She feels that many people are living against an externalised idea of what success looks like rather than what matters to them and that they are following a definition of success that was not really defined by them but comes from external sources.

Clint Davis is an entrepreneur with a passion for storytelling and preserving the past. A cancer survivor who lost two siblings at a young age, Clint has always had a keen awareness of the importance of remembering the past, while also making the most of the present moment. He now empowers others to save their histories and pass on their legacies. In this podcast:Clint talks about how moving gives you the opportunity to reinvent yourselfWhy failure needs to be factored in Why holding on to your past is important.

Rosie Mankes is a life coach, motivational speaker, and author of Find Your Joy and Run With It, a memoir about overcoming her second battle with cancer, the transitioning of her mother into an assisted living facility, and the unexpected loss of her brother, all within one year.Rosie talks to Dr Russell Thackeray about how her identity as a secret comedian helped her come out of adversity happier and stronger and how humour was one of the healthiest coping mechanisms for her. In this podcast:Rosie explains how she managed to find joy in everyday living againHow making a number a small changes can work better than ‘big picture’ thinkingWhy you need to define what makes you happy

Karen Liebenguth is an accredited mindfulness teacher, certified coach, mentor and facilitator.  She is also the founder of Green Space Coaching and a life and executive coach, eco-therapist and mindfulness trainer.  She was one of the first people in the UK to start coaching while walking in nature after finding that both she and her clients get far better results outside rather than sitting indoors.  In this podcast:Karen explains why she became interested in coaching in natureThe benefits of being in natureWhy we need to experience mindfulness for ourselves

Dr Alex Hershaft was just 5 years old when the Nazis invaded his homeland of Poland. He and his family were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto but he survived and after escaping Nazi persecution and immigrating to the USA, he worked as an environmental consultant. In 1972, a routine inventory of a Midwest slaughterhouse changed the course of his life. He is now the President and founder of Farm Animals Right Movement (FARM), an international nonprofit working to end the use of animals for food. 

Lisa Broderick has worked with entrepreneurs and established companies to create lives of presence and purpose for four decades. Her approach of integrating science with metaphysics and her own personal experiences to help others with little or no scientific or spiritual training master their innate abilities with practices designed to improve their lives, their relationships, and how the world sees them. In this podcast:Lisa talks about how it’s possible to slow down timeThe science behind ‘All the time in the world’Controlling the perception of time

This week on the Resilience Unravelled podcast, Dr Russell Thackeray talks to Arman Vestad who spent a lot of his life on the run! Through a series of poor life choices and unfortunate circumstances, he found himself dealing drugs and engaging in other criminal activity. After leaving prison for the 10th time, it wasn’t long until Arman found himself under arrest once again. This time, however, a policeman on the case sat down with him and asked what he could do to help. He showed that he cared, and those few moments changed the course of Arman’s life forever. In this podcast:Arman talks about the importance of young people having boundaries and limits The power of communityHow one person can turn someones life around

The Soberful Life with Veronica ValliThis week on the Resilience Unravelled podcast, Dr Russell Thackeray talks to Veronica Valli who struggled with alcoholism through most of her twenties. A binge drinker, she was aware for some time that something was wrong but was unable to define what it was however a chance meeting led to her finally getting help and turning her life around. At the height of her addiction, Veronica was unable to go to work without the aid of a drink and her life and confidence were in tatters. She got sober in 2000 at the age of twenty-seven and now uses this experience to help and inspire others. In this podcast:Veronica talks about the signs that someone might be struggling with alcoholHow alcohol affects the genders differentlyThe importance of connection and community.

Jonathan Joseph saw a lot of toxicity and negativity when he was working in the luxury womans fashion and sportswear industry. This not only affected people working in the industry but also consumers through marketing and advertising. He thought that it would be possible to shortcut some of the issues such as the body dysmorphia created by unrealistic standards by empowering children rather than fixing broken adults. He feels that by using fashion as a lens to talk about and deconstruct complex issues, conversations can be brokered between children and adults because fashion is infinitely relateable. It can then help play a role in how children navigate the world

The type of conversation that many couples have often doesn't help their relationship. Often it boils down to a debate, a checking in about who knows what and whose ideas are better. What’s needed is an enlivened conversation that builds resilience and allows both people to explore and learn together. They can then move out of an adversarial mindset to a place where they can learn and be resilient together.Learning is the most important thing that a couple needs to do. A relationship can be demanding and needs energy and an inspiring vision, something to aim for that learning can be added to. The vision is what you’re going to learn to do together not who you already are when you start the relationship.

Welcome to 2022!This week Dr Russell Thackeray muses on the recent arrival of 2022 and suggests some ideas to make the most of the year. He focuses some thoughts on the nature of resolutions as opposed to goals and challenges us to think more creatively about where and why we are aiming as people often understate their long term ambitions. There will also some thoughts around choices and the nature of willpower, whether it depletes along the lines of decision fatigue, or whether it’s more of a belief system.Hopefully there will be a few ideas or nuggets that you may find useful.As we enter our next phase of podcasts, we would like to wish you all a tremendous and fulfilling New Year!!

Critical thinking is essential in helping teens work through a problem and realise what is going to move them forward so they get the result they want. Schools can’t be responsible for everything so parents need to be responsible for the provision of a parent model. A parent helping guide their child through making a decision is extremely powerful but Valerie often finds that although great strides have been made on parenting there is still some thinking in society that adults know best. It’s up to the parent to create a connection and allow their child to make mistakes and decisions and to figure out their own path

Another chance to listen to last year's Christmas podcast from Dr. Russell Thackeray. In it he talks about why resilience is so important at this time of year and also explains the need to stop and rejuvanate ourselves and/or invest in ourselves to plan forward. Finally, he discusses how the narrative we use can help our mental state and how confirmation bias can help give us the things we believe in.The only other thing to say is that we hope you have a happy and safe Christmas and we look forward to catching up with you again in 2022!

Whatever the size of a dispute, the issue at hand is usually not the problem. People generally prefer peace so only involve conflict if they feel there is no other way to get resolution. As we are not generally trained in ways to resolve conflict it is difficult to know how to deal with anger or upset without being triggered yourself. One of the key foundational skills of life therefore is learning how to listen to other peoples emotions. This can help in developing an emotional database and provides a way of avoid the trigger that causes getting upset or anger when someone starts yelling at us.

MS is a life limiting illness but people can choose how to look at it, deal with it and live with it. It can be very easy to feel out of control and slip into a depressive zone but manipulating the way you use your brain can help deal not only with MS, but also other illnesses or situations.  As well as mindset, there are many other things that can interfere with how your body functions. What you eat, drink and put into your body is important as is having a support circle and someone to talk about your MS to. Other things such as home cleaning products can also have an effect on your body and how it functions.

There are many types of yoga. Hatha, Vinyasa, Kundalini, Restorative and Laughter for example, and Paul Denniston uses elements from each in his Grief Yoga practice. Paul designed Grief Yoga to help with his challenging emotions of anxiety and grief by releasing pain to fund more empowerment and love. Paul feels that we can have physical pain in the body that is a manifestation of suppressed grief and thatbBecause everyone grieves differently, it appears in different areas of the body such as the back, neck, stomach, pelvis or chest.

Derek Newborn had always had a vision of how his life would be. He achieved everything he thought he wanted but, on the inside, abandonment issues from his past meant he felt extremely empty. The only thing he was concerned about was filling the emptiness he felt. and he used self-sabotaging behaviours to try to find the peaceful feeling he felt he was missing. Derek's fear outweighed any love he had for his family and partner and he was just focused on not being abandoned. The abandonment process though actually pushes people away so through his self sabotaging behaviours, Derek created everything to was trying to avoid.

When Clarke was diagnosed with Polymyositis he was depressed, angry, mad at the world but also helpless. Because the disease had progressed very quickly it was difficult to understand what was happening and as his body was declining, his mind was driving him downward as well. At the time Clarke didn't really know how much mindset can affect physical health but an experience he had when he thought he was going to die changed things and he realised he had something to live for. This change in mindset led to a change in physiology and Clarke now feels that mindset was the key to this and, we can do anything we want if we focus on what we say to ourselves and what we believe.

Nicki feels that we don’t talk about grief and loss and what we go through in the early days enough. There is a lot of information about grief but lots of it is irrelevant. We need to have an idea of hope and a path towards it but we don't need to have someone telling us it'll all be great. Logically, we know we’ll come out the other side and that we’ll get back to what will be a new normality without the person we’ve lost.