Whole and One

In this episode Stephen Moore, a young journalist from Stirling in Scotland, talks about life as a direction, rather than a destination. Stephen is a firm believer in process flow and is reinventing his life, at a speed of trust. Not every day will be a creative day, not every day will go according to plan. Those are the exact days for which the plan needs to be in place. Stephen shares his tips and techniques for optimum productivity as a writer, as well as highlighting the value of human skills learned in the school of life, to compliment college course-content, as preparation for a wholesome, healthy, gainful living. This is a fun-filled chat about how straddling the morning and the afternoon of one’s life, can be quite tentative at times. The delineation of these chapters in one’s life is becoming more and more subjective, fluid and personal to individual circumstance than age specific in this era of disruption, digital and otherwise, than it used be in an older paradigm. As editor and chief of The Post Graduate Student Guide, as well as expert by experience, Stephen shares with wisdom and insight about the dearth of soft, not to mention professional skills that need to be addressed by young adults in preparation for employability on exit from college. As long as you keep improving on your own personal best, being true to the blueprint of your authentic self and celebrating the small wins, Stephen’s story is a fine example of how enjoyable the journey can BE! What if I fail? Oh, but my darling what if you fly?

Positive social interactions and healthy exchanges of attention are basic human needs, analogous to other basic needs like food consumption or sleep. It is fair therefore to assume, that the absence of positive social interaction, at whatever age, may create a want, or ‘craving’, that motivates behaviour to repair what is lacking. Cues associated with positive social interaction, for example smiling faces, playtime, credible conversation, activate neural reward systems. In this episode Anne Dobson, an experienced teacher and behaviour management therapist and coach, from New South Wales in Australia, introduces us to her evidence based effective behaviour management programmes, which support parents, carers and educators in understanding children’s behaviour to this end. Effective Behaviour Management is all about communication. We often have unspoken or unwritten expectations about behaviour that we don’t always communicate clearly. Clear communication, ongoing support and regular feedback make all the difference when it comes to finding effective solutions for managing behaviours of concern. In this interview Anne Dobson articulately and eloquently explains how we can Feed that Need for attention in our children, even from the prospective of a busy parent or within a busy classroom. Anne’s Covid-inspired courses aswell as her well-established Great Expectations and other courses are supported by online webinars and post-attendance groups and meetings. Anne’s courses help parents, carers and educators to engage with the children in their care with a greater sense of certainty and confidence. Support through understanding!

Have you seen the movie ‘Caravan of Love’? A semi-autobiographical film about an Italian man, who leaves his home town of Rome in Italy, to come to Ireland at the tender age of twenty-two, to find himself. After a very successful period of time spent in India, in a job he sourced from his then presumed to be, temporary home on the Emerald Isle, he returned to Ireland, this time to settle there. The rest is, as they say…the ‘social fabric’ of this fun loving, but very soulful man’s quest for meaning and purpose, in a world where many of the peeps around him seem to wear busy as a badge of honour. An emotional coach, he believes strongly in the importance of friendship and has a propensity for connecting authentically with people, casually and professionally in his chosen career combo of broadcasting and coaching. The movie chronicles the health, growth and restoration potential that he and his pals derive from their daily ‘hour long holiday’. The ‘inner sanctum’ are a core group of devoted and loyal pals who swim, run and have morning coffee together daily. New initiates can be admitted to the group by request and the only qualifying requirement is that you have a mind to join, turn up and involve! Conversation, connection and a sense of community are the core values within this movement-like crusade and the shared events of these infectiously inclusive and well-intended pack animals, provide the story lines within this feature length blockbuster. Everything from the circus like pace and frivolity of The Pogues ‘Fiesta’, against which the opening scene of the movie is played out, at which point the main character has a minor car crash at The Colosseum, in Rome, Italy, to ‘The Caravan of Love’ trip across Ireland that he laterally organises annually, for one charity or another, is a metaphorical and a literal life lesson for accessing and living out of one’s higher self. With no English, the equivalent of seven hundred euro and a pocket full of dreams, the main character made his way to Ireland on what appears like a whim within days of that ‘car crash’ moment all those years ago in Rome and has managed to carve out a life of abun ‘dance’ in Ireland ever since, where the less you attach to money, the more you can make. Do less to achieve more, in every sense of the word. In the interest of full disclosure, the main character, referenced above, is Andrea Splendori, my guest in this interview. In the interest of further divulgence, I’ve not seen the movie myself. In the interest of due diligence, it is important to reveal that the movie hasn’t yet been made. But it should be. This guy is the real deal. You may know the price of everything, tune in to learn the value of more. Some people are so poor, all they have is money!

In this episode Maria Dolores of Scandinavia introduces us to the whole concept of The Human Contract. The Human contract is a movement that Maria has spent 20,000 hours researching and distilling into what she calls The Seven principles of Human Dignity. The seven principles are based on the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Human Contract is an opportunity for all of us, to become and to remain accountable to self and therefore to society. The Human Contract is about deepening governance and improving civil courage at a personal, an interpersonal and a global or universal level. We all have rights, but along with our rights we have responsibilities. The Human Contract draws our attention to these rights and responsibilities in a clear, accessible and succinct way. Our personal rights and responsibilities pertain to body, thoughts and emotions. We have interpersonal rights and responsibilities around freedom of expression, movement and life. We can for example live with whomever we wish, wherever we wish, but not at a cost to another. The clarity and balance in Maria’s choice of language is a pen picture, like no other. The seventh principle speaks of our collective rights and responsibilities. We need a united and raised collective consciousness to address major environmental, societal and global issues. Maria has learned her greatest lessons in the school of life and shares with us the wisdom she has gained from the three most significant emotional growth spurts in her life so far, namely the passing of her mum, the birth of her daughter and the trauma of living in an abusive marriage. As expert by experience, Maria has valuable advice for others that find themselves bullied, belittled, alienated, stonewalled and criticised. Gas lighting can break your spirit and strip you of your dignity. It can be difficult to evidence the extent of the controlling behaviour, given its insidious nature. Thresholds of the severity and effect of the alleged abuse can be difficult to establish also, with the result that, without that one person that believes in you and is willing to advocate for you, it can seem easier to suffer on in silence. Just when Maria felt that she couldn’t endure it anymore, a civilly conscious individual, was willing to get into Maria’s model of reality, to hear and decipher fact from narrative. Having validated Maria, contextual argument was harvested and was considered sufficiently reasonable to begin building Maria’s case and resultantly, Maria’s strength. At that point Maria could begin to take her power back, rediscover herself, her values, her desires and plan to realise her dreams in healthy ways, within healthy relationships going forward. Coercive control remains a complex offense to police. The Human Contract deepens governance and civil courage and aims to emancipate victims of all kinds of abuse even where laws have not yet changed to protect sufferers of same. The time is NOW!

Inclusion and inclusive leadership are merely philosophical and aspirational concepts and constructs until their very intricacies are acknowledged, embraced and accepted as such. Differences don’t need to be superseded, in order to initiate inclusion within an establishment or organization. There will be differences. Increasing our window of tolerance for difference, managing micro aggressions when differences are apparent and working through those differences to achieve the desired outcome inclusively, is where it’s at. Inclusion doesn’t require us to adopt or even agree with the values or beliefs of others, it does however require us to respect each other as individuals, cognoscente of differing worldviews, faith practices and value systems. A culture built on trust is key to building the cohesive climate within establishments, in which sustainable working relationships are nurtured and where balanced decisions can be made in a participatory, integrative and inclusive way. The measurable return within private and public sectors alike from healthy, communicative relationships, is ever more evident in these circuit breaker times. As remote work requires digital collaboration, written word, and brief periods of online connection, inclusion needs to be a conscious and constant practice of ongoing self-reflection and acceptance at an individual level, so that company and establishment decisions can be made to advance the vision of organisations without dehumanising, devaluing or bringing the personal ideologies or creeds of others to bear. Inclusivity in its purest form, needs to be a practice as aforementioned, rather than a directive. To this end, trust is key, more specifically relationships that are built on trust, which of course comes down to communication styles, competencies and capacities. Trusting communication styles and practices beget inclusivity at its best and foster sustainable processes that increase staff efficacy, with productivity and profitability as a commensurate and quantifiable outcome. In this interview, Simon Haigh, The Growth Strategist, talks about building a culture of psychological safety within establishments, that aims to reverse avoidance tactics and tendencies, teaches and encourages resilience and thereby improves personal, business, leadership and brand growth by going beneath stereotype, to the person within the role. This emergent approach which focuses on matching confidence with capabilities to improve self-esteem by improving self and situational awareness, is a pivotal growth strategy that together with a healthy culture allows optimum teaching and learning, business expansion and even effective deal closing. Perfection erases humanity. Simon Haigh’s inclusive, cohesive and ethical ideology, on the other hand, embraces humanity and grows people and businesses in a healthy, happy and wholesome way, with measurable gains for all concerned as an inevitable consequence.

What syncs, links. Exploring strategy and culture as a dynamic duo in conversation with Charlie Boyle of CSEI. According to Peter Drucker (1909-2005), management is a perceptible function and to be a manager has unequivocal responsibilities. Drucker maintains that ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’. Strategy accounts for the direction in which an organisation is going and focuses on requisite resourcefulness and skilfulness to that end. Culture, on the other hand, is more holistic. Culture takes account of the human factor within organisations and is ever-changing as a result. People create the culture within any establishment, not the other way around. If you imagine your company as a board game, strategy speaks of the rules of the game and culture determines the way the game will be played; engagement, passion, core-values, behaviour and execution. Strategy and culture need to compliment and nurture each other for maximum productivity and profitability. When company structure and culture, are created in alignment with each other, fostered and advanced in equal measure, incredible organisational transformation is possible, as is outlined in this interview with Charlie Boyle. Charlie is a customer experience consultant, founder and CEO of Customer Service Excellence Ireland (CSEI). Charlie expounds the virtue of appreciating the human talent pool within your business and proffers that when you endear and relate to all of the people within your business as valuable and valued members of the team, that said people self-propel profitability as a direct and inevitable result. Together Everybody Achieves More, for sure, but within TEAM are the individual human assets. Awareness and affirmation of the individuals within the group gives leverage to greater goal setting and trusting that targets will be achieved consistently, because all members of the TEAM are reading off the same hymn sheet and have personal reason to be equally invested in its execution. Strategy and culture therefore, should be considered somewhat inextricably and equally significant, when building vision for sustainable long term success within organisations. The arguments for synchronicity when planning strategy and investing in culture within organisations, are no doubt therefore compelling. What syncs, links. CSEI has been offering innovative retail and sales excellence training in the customer experience space for many years. As the world resets during these unprecedented times, CSEI as a leader in this field, is already preparing to support graduate employability and corporate change management in a post Covid world, focusing on the importance of soft skills for employability and for progressive and lasting profitability. Charlie chats with us in this interview, about looking forward to supporting others through the plethora of post-Covid changes that he envisages will face schools, colleges and companies, in what he sees as a disruptive, yet exciting emerging economy.

The brain has a reward system and a punishment system. Nature has created chemical rewards for engagement with things, that move us in the general direction of adaption and things that serve our wellness. Nature punishes us for involvement in and with things that are not good for us and don’t serve our wellness. Dopamine is a feel good molecule that is essential for Growth Mindset, pursuit of goals and wellbeing of all sorts. Growth Mindset Theory, hinges on the fact that there is a huge connection between the pleasure or reward systems in the brain and action-based pursuit of goals, not just achieving a goal. We have two reward systems in the brain; pleasure from within, like love, peace and happiness which is derived from molecules like serotonin and oxytocin. The other is the dopamine reward system, a driving force in human evolution, which is secreted as much en route to rewards or goals, as it is in the achievement of rewards or goals. When we can subjectively tap into the potential of this dopamine circuit at the friction or action stage of pursuing a goal, it amplifies that pathway of reward in pursuit of goals, in our brain. This is an absolute game changer when it comes to engaging with anything challenging or of long duration. Growth Mindset is the attachment of these reward systems to the effort or friction process and not just to achieving a goal. Reward Prediction Error Theory, proffers that if you can dose the dopamine subjectively as you go through the pursuit of something and consciously appreciate even greater amounts of dopamine when you reach the desired goal, you reinforce that circuit and that tendency to celebrate small wins, which is hugely motivational and can actually be a precursor to engaging neuro plasticity. Over time therefore, these circuits become hardwired and automatic. This is the essence of Growth Mindset. Growth Mindset is about attaching reward to the fact that you’re taking action steps that are generally heading in the right direction. The more you can reward the action process, the better you become at building the neural circuits that help you to lean into anything challenging, over essentially any duration and that is Growth Mindset in a nutshell. Today’s show introduces us to a man, whose life story is real-time example of Growth Mindset. William Gregory Bell RIBA, an architect from Belfast on the Island of Ireland, where he is famous for the design of the multi award winning Belfast Waterfront Concert Hall, Arts and Conference Centre, shares the Boom Bust Boom story of his life, the outcome of which has been as heavily dependent on celebrating small wins and practicing gratitude, as it ever was on achieving desired end goals. Family, love and connection are the most important things to this soulful man, who is a hugely talented team player and a high achiever professionally. But the meaning and purpose behind this man’s drive, is where this interview has the most valuable life lessons to teach us.

Every system in nature has a push and a pull. Just as we have a system for stress, we have a system for calm, called the parasympathetic nervous system. Unfortunately that is a system that we need to learn how to engage, as opposed to the sympathetic nervous system, which is always active. The sympathetic nervous system is like your body's alarm system, you don't want to disable it, but under conditions of stress, whether real or perceived, when the sympathetic nervous system engages the fight, flight, freeze response over a protracted period of time, it is no longer adaptive and begins to downregulate the body's immune system, causing unhealthy levels of anxiety and ultimately sickness and dis-ease. The so called parasympathetic nervous system, otherwise known as rest and digest or feed and breed, relaxes muscles and conserves energy. 7/11 breathing is an ideal way to engage the parasympathetic nervous system. Gentle breaths inward, through your nostrils for a count of 7 and a longer, slower outbreath for a count of 11, also through the nose, quickly restores the body to a sense of calm and eventually helps with the re-establishment of homeostasis. The phrenic nerve connection, between the brain and the diaphragm, carries hugely important messages to the brain about the status of the body's levels of alertness and arousal or calmness, depending on your breathing. The diaphragm is actually just like a limb, although it is inside your body. The diaphragm moves air in and out of the lungs, at a rate that we decide. In so far as it carries messages to the brain about how active we are, respiration sets the state of your brain. The good news is that we can control how we breathe. Messages through this neural circuit from the brain to the diaphragm via the phrenic nerve and back to the brain stem again, control our sense of emotional arousal and need to be managed, sometimes more than others. Today's guest, Justin Caffrey, is a mindfulness master and is going to share his wisdom with us, on the benefits of meditation to avoid a perceived need for medication of any other, less organic kind. Justin is a firm believer in the benefits of flow state, self-care and cold water swimming, amongst a variety of other daily practices to induce and allow wellness and a healthy sense of well-being. Justin expounds the virtues of doing less, on occasions, to achieve more. Having lost his beautiful infant son, Joshua, ten years ago, Justin resigned from his board and reinvented the architecture of both his business and personal life to find the inner peace, reason and meaning that the trauma of that event hijacked and/or highlighted the absence of, in the first place. Justin has since dedicated his life to a variety of humanitarian causes, not least in his online courses on mindfulness. He posts daily, on various media platforms to inspire and mentor healing in and for others, that find themselves lost in the moment, or in life, with a core fracture of any kind.

Brian Pennie, from Dublin in Ireland, was a chronic heroin addict for 15 years. Just 8 years later, he is a lecturer, a keynote speaker, and a radio presenter. His recently released book, Bonus Time, tells the story of his journey back from the dead and outlines the habits and practices that he now uses to stay safe and maximize his wellness in a sustainable, wholesome way. For Brian, balance is key and he has written courses to help others access their drive to survive and live their best life too. Brian uses self-designed techniques, which he discusses in the interview, to give him the structure and stability that he needs to stay happy and healthy. For Brian sobriety is not the opposite of addiction, awareness is. Morning routines, mindfulness, meditation, and self-care are key elements of Brian's principles-based philosophy for better living. Change Is Possible, but you have to turn up every single day and make values-based decisions as opposed to emotionally charged decisions. Use VOICEAMERICA50 the first 10 listeners get 50% off Brian Pennie, Master Your Self-Talk course. https://brian-pennie.teachable.com/

Richard Hogan; psychotherapist, author, columnist, teacher, university lecturer and expert guest on a variety of media platforms in Ireland including TV and radio, joins me in this interview to chat restoratively, about the mental health of teenagers and young adults in particular. In this era of acute digital disruption, accentuated by the conditions and restrictions of Covid 19 the world over, information technology is like our third arm. Notwithstanding the value, import and absolute necessity of screens in all of our lives, particularly of late, Richard’s clinical work with families as well as his experience with tweens and teens as an educator, compelled him to research and document, the pros and cons of screens on a continuum from helpful and adaptive, to harmful and addictive. His book ‘Parenting the Screenager’ is the overall result of the findings of these investigations, together with tips and techniques for managing the transition from adolescence to adulthood in a healthy more effectively communicative way. Tune in to hear how catching lux in the morning, within two hours of the sun rising and again in the evening, within two hours of the sun setting, for between 2 and 10 minutes only, one can reset one’s circadian rhythm. Book-ending your day by getting outside as soon as possible after waking in the morning to get light exposure, even on a cloud covered day, for as little as 2-10 minutes and again in the evening around sunset for just 2-10 minutes, is enough to reset the body’s master clock, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which regulates and positions us for wellness. Anybody getting light exposure during the darkest hours of their circadian rhythm is setting themselves up for a host of issues and a distinct lack of homeostasis. Gaming and social media can be addictive and need to be addressed skilfully as the issues they potentially are for our youngsters in particular, in order to arm them with the reserve they need not only to survive but to thrive in life, not least through getting quality sleep, nightly. The relevance of sleep hygiene, as well as a menagerie of other modifying behaviours are aired in this conversation with the expertise of a professional and the empathy of a parent. This is a show not to be missed. Richard Hogan is a gentleman and a master of his craft. And the Lord said, ‘Let there be Lux’.

In this moving and candid introduction to young John, before he became Dr Demartini, we learn how to find and embrace our inner genius, in order to execute on our dreams and live our best life. Having himself progressed from conformity to enormity at so many levels throughout his life, particularly when he was much younger, Dr John Demartini has dedicated his life to sharing his knowledge and wisdom on how to live life intentionally, for those that hear. Discovering, awakening, and embracing one’s inner genius in order to live life on purpose and disrupt reflexive attraction traction, is just a neurological gear change away. Improved self-efficacy accelerates the manifestation of one’s inner-most dreams and desires. In this episode we learn how to tune into the steer of our inner voice, upregulate our inner vision to sharpen our focus on desired outcomes and thereby access the blueprint of our utmost authentic self. Dr Demartini’s many books, courses, programmes and teachings are a veritable roadmap to living authentically. Learn how to co-create with the universe at the speed of trust. Limitless thinking, limitless potential. All forms of wellness, success and abundance are within our grasp, when we learn how to think and thank, greater than or beyond, the perceived limits of our environment. Cause an Effect. The time is NOW.

In this tell-all interview with Keith Walsh, former Radio DJ with Ireland’s RTE 2FM, podcast host, author, playwright and most recently Creative Director with ThinkHouse, a youth marketing company, our special guest shares how dying a little on the inside has positioned him for rebirth into a stronger and more resilient version of himself. Aware now that his greatness lies in cultivating and maintaining a healthy relationship with his vulnerability, Keith explains how therapy has introduced him to his genius, from which his creativity and productivity are thriving. ‘Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That's how the light gets in’, Leonard Cohen