Conversations with My Mind: The Learning Podcast

The more time we spend online, the more thoughtful I become about how we approach connecting to this wonderful, virtual world. In the next two episodes, with the help of my guests, I will be exploring what impact an unsafe use of the internet can bring, what we should be aware of and how we could better navigate online to feel safer, more protected and more in control. Today, I start by tackling the challenge of online safety. To help me with this, I am joined by a brilliant speaker and...

Just a week ago, on the 4th of February, we marked an International World Cancer Day, a global initiative created to raise awareness of cancer and to encourage its prevention, detection, and treatment. NHS in the UK currently states - 1 in 2 people will develop some form of cancer during their lifetime. But what does it really mean? Why is it becoming even more important to pay attention to your own body? And what could future cancer treatment potentially look like? My guest Steve Ryder is...

Nick Elston is one of the leading inspirational speakers on the lived experience of mental health. He is described as a big man with a big heart and a big story, who is incredibly honest. Nick strives to encourage individuals as well as businesses to engage and open up talking about mental health by showing how to harness the same energy that could bring us down into a catalyst that can help us achieve our success. As I return from a longer podcasting break, I am right on time for us to...

Paul Holbrook left his corporate career to become a leadership coach and in the process realised that almost everyone he talks to struggles with time. He decided to tackle this challenge by creating a self-leadership programme Diary Detox focusing on healthier distribution of time and published a book ‘What Are You Doing? The uncomfortable truth about how you waste time at work’. Instead of being a CEO, Paul chooses to call himself a Chief Management Rebel. In this episode Paul and I...

Dean Allen is the kind of lecturer you’d like to have in your university - friendly, down to earth, all for encouraging everyone to use their critical thinking and a genuinely good person. He’s been building his career between the UK and South Africa, but in the past few years his heart and opportunities have grounded him and his family in the Eastern Cape. As a historian and an author of the bestselling book “Empire, War & Cricket” Dean has been giving lectures and speaking extensively on...

Brace yourself for laughter, disbelief, behind the scenes of making an Amazon Prime documentary and learning why someone most likely is a victim of cult tactics rather than a boss babe, if they have joined a multi-level marketing company. My guest on this episode is the one and only Roberta Blevins! If you are a documentary binge-watcher like myself, you might recognise her from the series of LuLaRich. However, Roberta is much more than that. She is also a mother, a great friend, a hair...

A conversation with Karlis Streips has been on my mind since I decided to launch my own podcast. What held me back was finding the right moment and the right topic to speak about. Where does one start with such a living legend as Karlis? He is a journalist, who has influenced many political conversations in Latvia, has been a voice of The Eurovision Song Contest and The Oscars and has participated in many historic events in Latvia, including the restoration of its independence, setting up...

On the day this episode is released it has been 91 days since Russia launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine. For three months Ukraine has been fighting with all it has to remain independent and democratic. The ongoing support it is receiving from all over the world, even from the previously neutral countries, says a lot about the importance of how this ends. As a Latvian, I struggle to stay impartial. This war is too close to home and it has shaken up my own values as well. Along with the...

Mental health is no laughing matter. However, many of us who live with a mental illness, experience some mental health struggles or maybe have a neurodivergent brain will know that sometimes we just want to have a bit of a laugh about what our minds have come up with again. This is exactly what Frank King does. On his journey from a professional comedian to motivational speaker Frank also found out that there’s a reason why suicide runs in his family and that he is living with something...

We know that the way we have been raised will impact the way we are as adults. A less known fact is that, if a mother does not heal her own emotional wounds, there is a high likelihood that her trauma can then be transferred onto her children, especially her daughters. I have invited a maternal narcissistic abuse recovery coach Michaila Tyson to help me explore this sensitive subject. Michaila herself has spent a significant amount of time healing her own mother wound and exploring...

Hypnotherapy and NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programming, both have mixed reviews. Scientists say there is no scientific proof to back them up, however, practitioners focus on positive effects and bring forward a challenge that many aspects linked to our mind and will are yet to be proven. Psychology as a science is fairly new and still keeps developing. Additionally, even respectable businesses successfully use NLP practices in their coaching and training. I decided to explore why people find...

If you live in the UK, you probably have come across Tareena Shakil on the news or maybe on her ITV documentary. She was amongst the women groomed by ISIS and she made a decision to take her one-year-old son and travel to Syria to join the Islamic State. What she also did was quickly change her mind and risk her life to return to the UK. She got arrested here, did her time in prison and went through the deradicalisation programme. ISIS and its recruits has been a scary topic for me,...

I am back with the Season 2 of Conversations with My Mind and starting it in a similar manner as I did the first time around - with a very personal topic. When I was a student, I spent two summers in the United States selling books door to door and at the time I did not even realise my “summer internship” was actually me being a salesperson for a multi level marketing company. I have invited a passionate journalist and an anti-mlm activist Nicole Ziege to speak about how multi level...

Conversations with My Mind is returning with a new season from the 23rd of February! This podcast is here to create a space for curious, inclusive and sometimes anxious minds where we can think critically, learn together and grow our empathy towards each other. I, your podcast host Ance Vanaga, am back ready to go even bigger. I want to challenge us to feel a bit uncomfortable and keep our minds open as that’s where we learn and grow the most. I am here to challenge my own boundaries of...

Conversations with My Mind is returning with a new season from the 23rd of February! This podcast is here to create a space for curious, inclusive and sometimes anxious minds where we can think critically, learn together and grow our empathy towards each other. I, your podcast host Ance Vanaga, am back ready to go even bigger. I want to challenge us to feel a bit uncomfortable and keep our minds open as that’s where we learn and grow the most. I am here to challenge my own boundaries of...

This is it - my final episode of Conversations with My Mind Season 1! I want to start by saying the biggest thank you to all of you for your listens, your support, your kind words, encouragement and lovely feedback you have shared with me. I cannot wait to see what the future will bring for this podcast! To make a full circle and finish where the encouragement to start this podcast was born, with my final conversation I chose to go back to my roots and speak about anxiety. What better way...

My today's guest is Leah Chikamba, founder and CEO of the charity Angels of Hope for Women. Leah’s story is a wonderful example of how something that starts as one small act of kindness can grow into a community joining forces to make the world we live in a better and, most importantly, a more empathetic place. Angels of Hope for Women is providing an outreach service and working with women and girls who have experienced domestic abuse and other harmful practices. Most of these women are...

My today’s guest is Jennifer Merritt, a Life Coach and a Business Mentor with vast experience in the finance industry. Jennifer strongly believes that a healthy body and calm mind can always act and react better than an unrested one. As part of her coaching, she helps people find a way to take responsibility for their minds, bodies, actions, reactions, goals and achievements in the face of adversity. On this episode we speak about the mental and physical health challenges that have shaped...

In the spirit of Black History Month my guests for this episode are Enoch Adeyemi and Joshua Adeyemi, leaders of the organisation Black Professionals Scotland. Besides leading a fast growing non-profit, Enoch and Joshua have both built successful careers in Scotland, founded a travel company Visit Nigeria Now and launched an Afro-Carribean online platform Bagafa selling products exclusively by creators from Africa and Caribbean region. In our conversation we talk about what it means to make...

Joey Weber is the perfect next guest to explore the topic of mindfulness and meditation with. This time we dig a bit deeper to understand what mindfulness is on its own and answer the question Joey asked in his research: “is mindfulness enough?” Joey is someone who has spent his early years in a Tibetan monastic community and, as he says himself, to some extent he has practiced meditation for all his life. Joey also holds a PhD in Psychology and in his 6 year research he explored the...