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Between the Ears Podcast
Between the Ears Podcast episodes
- #12 Emotions as Forces
In this episode of Between the Ears, Arnold Beekes makes a case that most of us have been taught to ignore our most powerful operating system — our emotions. From suppressed feelings showing up as back pain, to fear being weaponised by media and governments, to the Nobel Prize-winning insight that we are feeling machines that think — this is a conversation that reframes everything.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
- Why most of us have been conditioned since childhood to suppress our emotions — and what that costs us
- How suppressed emotions manifest as physical pain — and why most back pain has nothing to do with your back
- Why fear is the most common emotion in modern society — and how it attracts exactly what you don't want
- How to use emotions positively by attaching feeling to your aspirations and goals
- Why Nobel Prize winners say we are feeling machines that think — not thinking machines that feel
Key Takeaways
- Emotions are generative forces — they shape how you feel, how you perform and how you connect with others
- A society flooded with fear-based media, marketing and politics is doing it deliberately — awareness is your first defence
- Aspiration without feeling attached to it is just a thought — add the emotion and it becomes a force
- Your emotional system is your operating system — trying to live without it is like running a computer with no software
- Everyday beauty matters — consciously noticing kindness, courage and compassion improves your inner state every single day
Everyday Beauty
A team at the University of Rochester has developed solar panels that turn ocean water into clean drinking water — with no toxic brine, no chemical additives and self-cleaning capability. The leftover salt even produces lithium. A genuinely remarkable example of human ingenuity solving two problems at once.
About Arnold Beekes
🧠 Arnold Beekes enables you to have a better life between the ears.
✦ Links: https://bio.link/beekes✦ Brain Fitness: https://braingym.fitness✦ Brain Athletes Community: https://brainathletes.club✦ Innovation Athletes: https://innovationathletes.club🎙️ Edited and Produced by The PodFather Network LLC
🌐 https://roycoughlan.com/#BetweenTheEars #ArnoldBeekes #BrainFitness #EmotionsAsForces #Mindset #PersonalGrowth #InnerWork #Consciousness #FeelingMachines #UnleashYourUniqueness #EverydayBeauty
11 min - #11 Question & Quote
In this Q&Q episode of Between the Ears, Arnold Beekes cuts straight to the point with one powerful question and one memorable quote. No fluff, no filler — just the kind of thinking that makes you stop, look in the mirror and ask yourself what you've been holding back.
The Question
What would you like to do, but you don't do because you are afraid of other people's opinions?
- We are wired to fit in — but fitting in often means shrinking down
- Family, friends, colleagues and social media all shape what we allow ourselves to pursue
- Arnold persisted with brain fitness when the industry had a bad reputation — and was proven right
- A lawyer who made extraordinary cakes refused to turn it into a business because of what people might think — and stayed stuck as a result
- The opinions of others are limitations you choose to accept — you can also choose not to
The Quote
"People only want to retire if they don't like their work."
- If you love what you do, retirement is not the goal — it's not even appealing
- Governments are already pushing retirement age toward 70 — the old model is breaking down
- Stopping work has a measurable negative impact on your brain
- The answer isn't to keep doing work you hate — it's to start doing something you don't want to stop
About Arnold Beekes
🧠 Arnold Beekes enables you to have a better life between the ears.
✦ Links: https://bio.link/beekes✦ Brain Fitness: https://braingym.fitness✦ Brain Athletes Community: https://brainathletes.club✦ Innovation Athletes: https://innovationathletes.club🎙️ Edited and Produced by The PodFather Network LLC
🌐 https://roycoughlan.com/#BetweenTheEars #ArnoldBeekes #BrainFitness #UnleashYourUniqueness #QuestionAndQuote #Mindset #PersonalGrowth #Retirement #DoWhatYouLove #Consciousness #InnerWork
7 min - #10 Principles for Brain Fitness – Part 2
In this episode of Between the Ears, Arnold Beekes continues his series on the principles of brain fitness, adding three powerful new ones to the framework. From practicing integrally to nurturing your right hemisphere and unleashing your uniqueness — this is a practical, no-nonsense guide to doing the real inner work. Plus, a beautifully grounding example of everyday beauty from Uganda.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
- Why fixing just one thing in your life rarely works — and what practicing integrally really means
- How your mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, social and environmental states are all connected and influencing each other
- Why your right hemisphere is being deliberately neglected — and how nurturing it changes everything
- The invisible straitjackets that are blocking your full potential — and how to start removing them
- How Ugandan coffee farmers in the Masaka region used regenerative agriculture to shrug off a drought — and what that teaches us about resilience
Key Takeaways
- You are not a mechanistic car with replaceable parts — everything inside you is connected
- Going to the gym and then drinking beer to celebrate is the perfect example of not practicing integrally
- Logic and rationality are overrated — your right hemisphere holds your intuition, big picture thinking and higher senses
- Your uniqueness is already there — it just needs to be unleashed from the limiting beliefs placed on you by the outside world
- Your inner state creates your outer reality — which is why working on it every single day matters
About Arnold Beekes
🧠 Arnold Beekes enables you to have a better life between the ears.
✦ Links: https://bio.link/beekes✦ Brain Fitness: https://braingym.fitness✦ Brain Athletes Community: https://brainathletes.club✦ Innovation Athletes: https://innovationathletes.club🎙️ Edited and Produced by The PodFather Network LLC
🌐 https://roycoughlan.com/#BetweenTheEars #BrainFitness #ArnoldBeekes #PracticeIntegrally #RightHemisphere #UnleashYourUniqueness #Mindset #PersonalGrowth #InnerWork #Consciousness #EverydayBeauty
13 min - #9 Q&Q — What Health Habit Would You Change?
Welcome to Episode 9 of Between The Ears, host Arnold Beekes' Q&Q format designed to help listeners unlock and use their own uniqueness. This episode's question asks listeners to identify one health-related habit, whether it's food, drink, sleep, or even the people they spend time with daily, that they'd like to change, starting small rather than aiming for a big overhaul. Arnold pairs it with a quote on the danger of comparison: "If you care what other people think, you will become the same. You will never raise beyond," unpacking how constant comparison, especially through social media, caps us at merely matching others rather than embracing our own uniqueness.
Topics Covered
- Introducing this episode's question: what health-related habit would you like to change?
- Habits related to food, drink, sleep, and the people around you
- Starting small: identifying one habit and replacing it with a better one
- This episode's quote: "If you care what other people think, you will become the same"
- How comparison, at work, at home, and especially on social media, limits us
- Why caring what others think caps you at sameness rather than uniqueness
- The invitation to treasure and go beyond through your own uniqueness
About Arnold Beekes
Arnold Beekes is the host of Between The Ears, a podcast built around the idea that your inner state creates your outer reality. Having lived in five different countries, Arnold draws on his own experiences to help listeners build a better life between the ears, one episode at a time.
Connect with Arnold Beekes
🧠 Inner Fitness for Modern Life: https://braingym.fitness/🧠 Inner Leadership Training for Ambitious Leaders: https://www.brainathletes.club/🧠 Innovation Mindset for Exponential Change: https://www.innovationathletes.club/🤝 Join our free Brain Health community: https://www.skool.com/brain-fitness-7070🔗 https://bio.link/beekes🎙️ Edited and Produced by The PodFather Network LLC
🌐 https://roycoughlan.com/#BetweenTheEars #QandQ #HealthHabits #Comparison #Uniqueness #InnerState #PersonalDevelopment #PodfatherNetwork
5 min - #8 Principles to Upgrade Your Brain (Part 1)
Welcome to Episode 8 of Between The Ears. In the first half of a two-part series, host Arnold Beekes shares three foundational principles for taking ownership of your brain and improving your brain fitness. Arnold makes the case for genuinely thinking for yourself rather than memorizing and adopting the opinions of teachers, religious leaders, doctors, or bosses; approaching life with a beginner's mind so you notice what familiarity has trained you to overlook; and learning to see beauty in small, everyday moments rather than only in rare, once-in-a-lifetime experiences. The episode closes with the show's signature segment on everyday beauty, featuring how Swiss farmers cut pest damage in half simply by planting wildflowers between their crops.
Topics Covered
- Introducing a three-part (six-principle) series on upgrading your brain
- Principle 1: think for yourself, rather than copying the opinions of authority figures
- How school trains memorization rather than independent thought
- Principle 2: be a beginner, even in areas of life you feel experienced in
- Why a beginner's mindset helps you notice what you've stopped seeing
- Principle 3: see beauty in daily life, not just rare or memorable moments
- The show's closing theme of everyday beauty: Swiss farmers reducing pest damage by planting wildflower strips between crops, now being trialed across 15 UK farms
About Arnold Beekes
Arnold Beekes is the host of Between The Ears, a podcast built around the idea that your inner state creates your outer reality. Having lived in five different countries, Arnold draws on his own experiences to help listeners build a better life between the ears, one episode at a time.
Connect with Arnold Beekes
🧠 Inner Fitness for Modern Life: https://braingym.fitness/🧠 Inner Leadership Training for Ambitious Leaders: https://www.brainathletes.club/🧠 Innovation Mindset for Exponential Change: https://www.innovationathletes.club/🤝 Join our free Brain Health community: https://www.skool.com/brain-fitness-7070🔗 https://bio.link/beekes🎙️ Edited and Produced by The PodFather Network LLC
🌐 https://roycoughlan.com/#BetweenTheEars #BrainFitness #ThinkForYourself #BeginnersMind #EverydayBeauty #InnerState #PersonalDevelopment #PodfatherNetwork #MoralBeauty
12 min - #7 Q&Q — What Do You Need to Feel Safe?
Welcome to Episode 7 of Between The Ears, the first in host Arnold Beekes' new Q&Q format: a question and a quote designed to help listeners unlock and use their own uniqueness. This episode's question invites listeners to sit with what they truly need to feel safe, whether mentally, emotionally, physically, socially, or otherwise, and to take real time (a few days, or the weekend) to reflect rather than answer immediately. Arnold pairs it with his own quote: "Your life starts when you stop copying others," challenging the habit, reinforced by school and social media alike, of measuring ourselves against other people instead of discovering what's genuinely our own.
Topics Covered
- Introducing the Q&Q format: a question to ponder and a quote to inspire
- This episode's question: what do you need to feel safe?
- The many dimensions of safety: mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, environmental, social
- Why school conditions us to copy and memorize rather than think originally
- How social media reinforces constant comparison with others
- This episode's quote: "Your life starts when you stop copying others"
- The invitation to discover and use your own uniqueness
About Arnold Beekes
Arnold Beekes is the host of Between The Ears, a podcast built around the idea that your inner state creates your outer reality. Having lived in five different countries, Arnold draws on his own experiences to help listeners build a better life between the ears, one episode at a time.
Connect with Arnold Beekes
🧠 Inner Fitness for Modern Life: https://braingym.fitness/🧠 Inner Leadership Training for Ambitious Leaders: https://www.brainathletes.club/🧠 Innovation Mindset for Exponential Change: https://www.innovationathletes.club/🤝 Join our free Brain Health community: https://www.skool.com/brain-fitness-7070🔗 https://bio.link/beekes🎙️ Edited and Produced by The PodFather Network LLC
🌐 https://roycoughlan.com/#BetweenTheEars #QandQ #InnerState #PersonalDevelopment #SelfDiscovery #Uniqueness #Reflection #PodfatherNetwork #BrainFitness
4 min - #6 Causes of Mental Dis-ease
Welcome to Episode 6 of Between The Ears. Host Arnold Beekes explores what he calls "mental dis-ease" rather than mental illness, rejecting the idea that most people struggling with anxiety, depression, or stress have something medically wrong with them. Instead, Arnold walks through four factors he sees as the root causes: the stress of living two lives (meeting others' expectations versus living authentically), a fear-based societal environment amplified by media and corruption, heavy smartphone and social media use, and reduced sunlight exposure. The episode closes with the show's signature segment on everyday beauty, featuring a Canadian woman's story of rescuing a crow and being unofficially adopted into its flock.
Topics Covered
- Why Arnold uses "dis-ease" instead of "illness" or "disorder"
- Challenging the chemical imbalance explanation for depression and anxiety
- The difference between the healthcare industry and genuine health
- Cause 1: stress from living two lives — meeting others' expectations vs. living authentically
- Cause 2: a fear-based societal environment amplified by media, movies, and corruption
- Cause 3: smartphone and social media use, comparison culture, and "digital dementia"
- Cause 4: Arnold's views on reduced sunlight exposure and its effect on mood and wellbeing
- Reframing struggle as a response to environment, not personal failure
- The show's closing theme of everyday beauty: a woman in British Columbia rescued a crow and was later "adopted" by its flock
About Arnold Beekes
Arnold Beekes is the host of Between The Ears, a podcast built around the idea that your inner state creates your outer reality. Having lived in five different countries, Arnold draws on his own experiences to help listeners build a better life between the ears, one episode at a time.
Connect with Arnold Beekes
🧠 Inner Fitness for Modern Life: https://braingym.fitness/🧠 Inner Leadership Training for Ambitious Leaders: https://www.brainathletes.club/🧠 Innovation Mindset for Exponential Change: https://www.innovationathletes.club/🤝 Join our free Brain Health community: https://www.skool.com/brain-fitness-7070🔗 https://bio.link/beekes🎙️ Edited and Produced by The PodFather Network LLC
🌐 https://roycoughlan.com/#BetweenTheEars #MentalHealth #InnerState #PersonalDevelopment #Stress #BrainFitness #EverydayBeauty #MoralBeauty #PodfatherNetwork #MindsetShift
17 min - #5 Three Starting Points for Brain Fitness
Welcome to Episode 5 of Between The Ears. Host Arnold Beekes lays out three foundational starting points for making brain fitness a daily habit, just as most people already do with physical fitness. Arnold defines brain fitness as choosing your uniqueness, learning continuously, handling challenges well, and contributing to a better world for all, and walks through why so many people struggle with this given rising rates of anxiety, stress, and burnout. He covers why your current state isn't your fault but is your responsibility, introduces the idea that we function with three brains (head, heart, and gut) rather than one, and explains why shifting from external to internal control is essential for genuine wellbeing. The episode closes with the show's signature segment on everyday beauty, featuring a family of beavers that solved a persistent flooding problem in West London.
Topics Covered
- Defining brain fitness: choosing uniqueness, learning, handling challenges, and contributing
- Why rates of anxiety, depression, and burnout are rising globally
- Starting point 1: it's not your fault, but it is your responsibility
- Debunking the "chemical imbalance" narrative
- Starting point 2: we have three brains — head, heart, and gut
- What coherence means when all three brains work in sync
- Starting point 3: moving from external control to internal control
- How judgment from others (bosses, spouses, children) can quietly run your emotional state
- Taking back your power by focusing on what you actually want
- The show's closing theme of everyday beauty: beavers solving a flooding problem in West London
About Arnold Beekes
Arnold Beekes is the host of Between The Ears, a podcast built around the idea that your inner state creates your outer reality. Having lived in five different countries, Arnold draws on his own experiences to help listeners build a better life between the ears, one episode at a time.
Connect with Arnold Beekes
🧠 Inner Fitness for Modern Life: https://braingym.fitness/🧠 Inner Leadership Training for Ambitious Leaders: https://www.brainathletes.club/🧠 Innovation Mindset for Exponential Change: https://www.innovationathletes.club/🤝 Join our free Brain Health community: https://www.skool.com/brain-fitness-7070🔗 https://bio.link/beekes🎙️ Edited and Produced by The PodFather Network LLC
🌐 https://roycoughlan.com/#BetweenTheEars #BrainFitness #InnerState #PersonalDevelopment #ThreeBrains #InternalControl #MentalHealthMatters #Coherence #MoralBeauty #EverydayBeauty #PodfatherNetwork
12 min - #4 Uniqueness
Welcome to Episode 4 of Between The Ears. Host Arnold Beekes explores why uniqueness matters and why our systems, from education to capitalism, work to suppress it in favor of predictable sameness. Arnold breaks down why copying someone else's "successful" method rarely works, walking through why trying to replicate someone else's results can leave you capped at a fraction of their success, and shares Scott Adams' alternative: rather than chasing being the best at one thing, become very good at two or more things and combine them. The episode closes with the show's signature segment on everyday beauty, featuring the story of Italy's expanding forests and the ecological and social renewal following them.
Topics Covered
- Why we're all born unique, yet uniqueness gets suppressed
- How education and uniforms train us toward sameness
- The link between suppressed uniqueness and chronic stress and disease
- Why copying a "successful" method rarely produces the same results
- Breaking down the compounding subtractions: context, execution, mindset, and energy
- Scott Adams' framework: be the best at one thing, or very good at two or more
- How combining two or more strengths creates rare, valuable work
- Identifying your own effortless strengths as the starting point for uniqueness
- The show's closing theme of everyday beauty: Italy's expanding forests, their ecological value, and their role in reversing rural depopulation
About Arnold Beekes
Arnold Beekes is the host of Between The Ears, a podcast built around the idea that your inner state creates your outer reality. Having lived in five different countries, Arnold draws on his own experiences to help listeners build a better life between the ears, one episode at a time.
Connect with Arnold Beekes
🧠 Inner Fitness for Modern Life: https://braingym.fitness/🧠 Inner Leadership Training for Ambitious Leaders: https://www.brainathletes.club/🧠 Innovation Mindset for Exponential Change: https://www.innovationathletes.club/🤝 Join our free Brain Health community: https://www.skool.com/brain-fitness-7070🔗 https://bio.link/beekes🎙️ Edited and Produced by The PodFather Network LLC
🌐 https://roycoughlan.com/#BetweenTheEars #Uniqueness #InnerState #PersonalDevelopment #SelfDiscovery #ScottAdams #Individuality #MoralBeauty #EverydayBeauty #PodfatherNetwork #BrainFitness
15 min - #3 Identity
Welcome to Episode 3 of Between The Ears. Host Arnold Beekes tackles the topic of identity, exploring why so many of us mistake our roles, labels, and job titles for who we actually are, and how that mistaken identity quietly limits us. Arnold draws on real examples, from people who lose their sense of self after being laid off, to a group of refugees in Uganda who introduced themselves by that label alone, to show how easily we box ourselves in with words like "I'm a nurse," "I'm a Christian," or "I'm a refugee." The episode closes with the show's signature segment on everyday beauty, featuring the simple practice of talking to strangers and a Paris exhibition reuniting Nazi-looted artworks with their rightful owners.
Topics Covered
- Why we mistake our identity for a fixed, unchangeable thing
- How losing a job can feel like losing your entire identity
- The "box" that job titles and labels put people in
- Roles versus identity: parent, caretaker, believer, nationality
- A story from coaching refugees in Uganda about the danger of self-labeling
- Robert Greene's idea that "etiquette is deception" and the masks we wear
- Reframing identity: you are not your labels, you are awareness having an experience
- The ancient invitation to "know thyself"
- Asking not just "who am I" but "what do I really want"
- The show's closing theme of everyday beauty: talking to strangers, and the Musée d'Orsay's exhibition reuniting Nazi-looted artworks with unidentified rightful owners
About Arnold Beekes
Arnold Beekes is the host of Between The Ears, a podcast built around the idea that your inner state creates your outer reality. Having lived in five different countries, Arnold draws on his own experiences to help listeners build a better life between the ears, one episode at a time.
Connect with Arnold Beekes
🧠 Inner Fitness for Modern Life: https://braingym.fitness/🧠 Inner Leadership Training for Ambitious Leaders: https://www.brainathletes.club/🧠 Innovation Mindset for Exponential Change: https://www.innovationathletes.club/🤝 Join our free Brain Health community: https://www.skool.com/brain-fitness-7070🔗 https://bio.link/beekes🎙️ Edited and Produced by The PodFather Network LLC
🌐 https://roycoughlan.com/#BetweenTheEars #Identity #InnerState #PersonalDevelopment #SelfDiscovery #KnowThyself #LabelsVsIdentity #MoralBeauty #EverydayBeauty #PodfatherNetwork #BrainFitness #SelfAwareness
16 min
About Between the Ears Podcast
From the publisher's feed
Your inner state creates your outer reality. Between The Ears is a show about the mental and emotional world we all carry inside, and how understanding it can transform the life we live outside.…
Hosted by Arnold Beekes, each episode explores a single idea for building a better life between the ears: taking back control from the expectations of parents, teachers, bosses, and everyone else who has quietly been driving your behavior, learning what you actually want instead of what you have been told to want, and lowering the chronic stress that comes from living two lives at once. Every episode closes with a moment of everyday beauty, a small true story of kindness, courage, or compassion, because what you notice and appreciate shapes your inner state just as much as what you think. If you are ready to stop living someone else's life and start living your own, this podcast is for you.