My favourite wellbeing podcasts

Are you addicted to podcasts? I am 💯 and I’ll tell you why. It’s because they’re perfect for filling my brain with the best career, business and life advice during those all those ‘in between times ‘. You know the ones I mean. Whilst you’re driving to do school pick up. Whilst you’re waiting for a bus. Whilst you’re cooking dinner or doing something around the house. Whilst you go for a lunchtime walk or during a run. I find it much harder these days to carve out time for reading (though I love it) but there’s usually a few gaps in the week where I can catch up on a podcast whilst getting something else done.

So what are my current faves? Well they ebb and flow depending on what is going on at my life at the time and what I need most help with, but they roughly fall into two categories:

• Careers podcasts (surprise surprise)

• Wellbeing and mental health podcasts

Now any of my clients reading this will be familiar with the ‘oxygen mask’ analogy I often like to share. When you’re watching a safety demonstration on a plane, they always tell you to put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others, otherwise you will pass out and be no use to anyone. The same principle applies to wellbeing and self care. How can you make a difference or help someone else, if you’re completely burned out yourself?

So in celebration of Mental Health Awareness Week 2023, here are some podcast recommendations which have made a big difference to me and I hope they do the same for you:

How to fail

Elizabeth Day is a journalist and author who’s podcast ‘How to Fail’ celebrates all the things that haven’t gone right in someone’s life and how to learn from failure. She is a natural interviewer, very warm, curious and compassionate, and somehow manages to draw out and connect with her interviewees on a very human level no matter how famous they are. I always learn something from her interviews and find it extremely comforting to hear that lots of outwardly ‘successful’ people have struggled with life’s curveballs just as much as I have! Some recent favourites are Rylan Clarke talking about heartbreak and divorce, Spencer Matthews on alcoholism and the death of his brother, and Alex Jones on fertility and mental health.

Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee

You might be familiar with Dr Rangan Chatterjee from the BBC series, Doctor in the house. He launched his own podcast in January 2018 and it quickly rose to become the no.1 health podcast in the UK. What I love about Dr Chatterjee is that he is a big believer in ‘lifestyle medicine’ and getting the foundations right e.g food, movement, sleep and relaxation. His advice is always very down to earth and do-able, and he places as much importance on mental health as physical health. His podcast guests are always fascinating, and some of my favourites have been Johan Hari on the causes of depression, Cal Newport on digital minimalism, and Gabor Mate on addiction.

Oprah’s Super Soul

Oprah describes her podcast as being designed to ‘light you up and answer life’s big questions’. I love any excuse for a deep and meaningful conversation, and here Oprah interviews some BIG names (Tina Turner, Michelle Obama, Maya Angelou… the list goes on and on) about the turning points in their lives, the hard lessons and the advice they want to pass on. Think of it as a crash course in how to live your best life.

Good Inside

This last one is a parenting one. I love Dr Becky. She the friendly, wise, reassuring child psychologist that every parent basically wants to have on speed dial. Each episode addresses real life scenarios that listeners have sent in, and she not only helps you understand what’s really going on inside your child’s brain but also gives real, practical advice on how to talk to them and how to look after yourself too. Parenting can be so challenging, stressful and hard sometimes, but Dr Becky always normalises those situations for me. Some recent favourites are ‘When only one parent will do’ about preferring one parent, ‘Clean Plate Club’ about fussy eaters, and ‘Essential Labour’ about mothering as social change.

So I hope you’ve found a recommendation or two there that has piqued your interest, and I’d love to hear yours! Been listening to something great recently that really helped you? Please comment below and let us all know about it xx

Why we've got the happiness equation all wrong

I’m a real sucker for a good personal development or business book. I have stacks of them by my bedside, and it’s taken me a while to get to the one I’m currently devouring, but wow what a game changer this is.

Author Shawn Achor wrote ’The Happiness Advantage’ after spending over a decade researching and teaching at Harvard University, and conducting one of the largest ever studies into happiness and human potential.

He discovered that most of us have been taught from a young age that if we work hard, then we will be successful, and then we will be happy. 

We hear this message at home, at school, at work and from society in general. Which explains why we chase those high grades, and promotions, and pay rises, and the bigger house or the bigger car, thinking this will eventually lead to happiness.

And yet in the course of his research, he was finding amongst his own students at Harvard that many of them were distinctly unhappy.

Achievement in itself didn’t seem to hold the key.

During his decade long hunt for the keys to happiness, he came across new research from the growing areas of positive psychology and neuroscience which showed that we have had this backwards all along:

In fact, happiness leads to success.

Happiness and optimism actually fuel performance and achievement, and a more positive brain is more motivated, more resilient, more creative and more productive.

So where do you begin if you want to feel happier? Well a great place to start is to understand our capacity for change. Many of think we are just born a certain way:

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”
“I’m just not a very positive person”
“I’m good at certain things but not others, it’s the way I am”

But in fact, new research into ‘neuroplasticity’ shows that our brains can adapt and grow throughout our lives. We aren’t stuck with a certain skill set and personality that we thought we were born with. We can in fact continually learn new skills through practice. 
 
So it’s perfectly possible to learn to be happier!

I’ll be sharing one of my favourite happiness tips later this week which you can apply in your daily life, and I’d love to hear how you get on! Feel free to comment and let me know.

So here’s to all of us turning that happiness equation on its head, and seeing how more happiness = more success!

Why failure could be the key to your career success

We are often told from a young age that failure should be avoided. At school, top grades are rewarded and low grades are penalised.

When we fail at something, it can feel embarrassing, painful, and can even damage our sense of self-confidence.

But what if I were to tell you that in fact, you can re-frame how you see failure and use it to make you more resilient and propel you towards success?

If you start to look around you, you can find many examples of well known figures who have embraced failure and pushed on through to achieve great things:

• JK Rowling's first Harry Potter book was rejected by 12 different publishers before Bloomsbury accepted it

• Michael Jordan was actually cut from his basketball team in high school

• Thomas Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the lightbulb before eventually finding a model which worked

• Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first job as a news anchor and told she "wasn't fit for television"

What we can learn from these examples is that you can change the way you see failure. Or even what you call it. Why not call it an opportunity? An opportunity to refresh, to refocus and become more resilient.

This alternative way of seeing failure is also called having a 'growth mindset'.

When you operate with a growth mindset, you don't allow yourself to be held back by your perceived limitations and abilities (also called having a 'fixed mindset'). Instead, you allow yourself to see failure as an opportunity for growth and development.

It's a much more empowering and confidence-building perspective to go through life with.

So if you do one new thing this week, allow yourself to do it badly! Be brave and have a go at something you've never tried before, and be ready to fail, learn and grow your resilience muscles. You'll soon start to see that this process is all part of your path to career success.