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 cyber security expert, Gareth Thomas. A big part of his job is keeping up-to-date with the latest cyber security threats, making sure the risks are considered, mitigation plans are in place and everyone across the organisation is educated and knows what to do.

We all have heard that prevention is better than any fix. It also remains true when it comes to the online world that many of us are connected to 24/7. Gareth shares a number of fascinating examples of what can happen when things go wrong, and shares key tips we all should be aware of to keep ourselves and our businesses safe, and our minds less anxious.

Find Gareth Thomas on:
LinkedIn: Gareth Thomas
Twitter: @CyberThomas

Find more Online Security tips:
Google Safety Centre: https://safety.google/security/security-tips/
UK Safer Internet Centre: https://saferinternet.org.uk/
National Cyber Security Centre: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/
National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children: https://www.nspcc.org.uk/

To learn more about me go to:
Instagram: @conversations.with.my.mind
LinkedIn: Ance Vanaga
Website: www.conversationswithmymind.com

Lovely music created by: Harlowe King

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 an IT specialist, a husband, and a dad of three. He is also someone who, while leading a healthy lifestyle and focusing on doing his health checks on time, unfortunately received an unexpected stage 4 cancer diagnosis in 2020. His cancer journey has been full of extreme lows and inspiring highs, reminding us how important our mindset can be in situations like these. Steve is also one of the cancer patients who has been able to receive a new form of cancer treatment called immunotherapy that only started to be trialled in 2016.

In this episode, Steve walks us through the timeline of events that have led him to today, including when the symptoms first appeared, what treatment he received, and how immunotherapy works. He also shares how this journey has been for him and his family and how they chose to approach it mindfully focusing on actions over despair.

Content warning: throughout this episode we discuss cancer, its symptoms, treatment and its impact on those on the receiving end. At times you might find the content upsetting. Please do take a break if you need to or skip over certain parts to protect your own mental health.

Find Steve Ryder on:
Twitter: @QPRSteve

Read Steve’s story and support Brain Tumour Research:
https://www.braintumourresearch.org/stories/in-hope/in-hope-stories/steve-ryder

To learn more about me go to:
Instagram: @conversations.with.my.mind
LinkedIn: Ance Vanaga
Website: www.conversationswithmymind.com

Lovely music created by: Harlowe King

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 reflect on our New Year’s resolutions and our struggles to keep up with them. In this episode I team up with Nick Elston to explore how we could set healthier, more sustainable goals. As he is someone, who lives with obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety, he knows especially well the ups and downs that setting way too challenging goals can bring, but he is also someone, who has learnt better ways to tackle that and is happy to share his learnings with us. Throughout the conversation we get to know Nick a bit better, discuss the vicious cycle of overindulging in December followed by tight restrictions in January, look at the tradition of setting New Year’s goals, reflect if Blue Monday should be ‘a thing’ and check-in on how it all actually impacts our mental health.

Find Nick Elston on:
His website: https://nickelston.com/
LinkedIn: Nick Elston
YouTube: Nick Elston

To learn more about me go to:
Instagram: @conversations.with.my.mind
LinkedIn: Ance Vanaga
Website: www.conversationswithmymind.com

Lovely music created by: Harlowe King

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 explore the challenge of understanding where our time goes. Paul is a strong believer we all need to make time for our personal life, health and wellbeing in order to protect our work productivity. He explains about the five key categories where our time could be potentially going and how we can start distributing it in a healthier way. We speak about how to move away from working long hours in spite of there always being more work and how to have the sometimes uncomfortable conversations with our colleagues, teams and managers, when we have decided to work differently. We also discuss the ‘Great Resignation’ and the new ‘Hybrid Ways of Working’ to understand the impact they might bring.

Find Paul Holbrook on:
His website: https://diarydetox.com/
Personal LinkedIn: Paul Holbrook
Diary Detox LinkedIn: Diary Detox

To learn more about me go to:
Instagram: @conversations.with.my.mind
LinkedIn: Ance Vanaga
Website: https://conversationswithmymind.buzzsprout.com

Lovely music created by: Harlowe King

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 the influence of sports. Coincidentally, I’m publishing this episode on the 18th of July, the Nelson Mandela day. Nelson Mandela is someone Dean mentions in his talks with utmost respect and admiration.

However, this conversation is much bigger than Dean’s studies and lectures. He approached me as he also wanted to share his own mental health journey to remind us to not take everything at its face value. While on the outside looking like he was having the time of his life, Dean had to go through a number of darker periods to get to where he is today.

This episode has two equally important parts. We start by exploring Dean’s personal mental health journey and his experience with support available in the academic space and then we chat more about his research on how sports are not only a great entertainment, but also a power that can influence social, cultural and even political direction.

Find Dean Allen on:
His website: https://www.deanallen.co.za/
Instagram:  @dr.deanallen
Facebook: Dr Dean Allen 
LinkedIn: Dr Dean Allen

To learn more about me go to:
Instagram: @conversations.with.my.mind
LinkedIn: Ance Vanaga
Website: https://conversationswithmymind.buzzsprout.com

Lovely music created by: Harlowe King

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 stylist and an anti-MLM activist, who is not afraid to speak up for herself and other victims of this not-so-fair business model. She is a tiktoker, a youtuber, a podcaster, an instagrammer - you name it - and all of these communities are welcoming her with open arms.

When Roberta and I started recording, I quickly realised it would not be a short episode. Although, why would it be? While on the same wavelength, we spoke about Roberta herself as well as her experience with joining and then leaving LuLaRoe, a previously heavily overrated clothing MLM company. We also chat about ways to get out of these cult-like organisations and why it might not always be as easy as some of us might think. As a fantastic bonus, Roberta gives us an insight into how Amazon Prime created the famous LuLaRich documentary and how they managed to get the owners on camera as well.

Find Roberta Blevins on:
Her website: https://robertablevins.com/ 
Instagram: @therealrobertablevins
TikTok: @bertalikewhoa
Twitter: @bertalikewhoa
Life After MLM - The Podcast
Life After MLM - The Show
Life After MLM - The Group 
Email Roberta: [email protected]

Watch LuLaRich on Amazon Prime

To learn more about me go to:
Instagram: @conversations.with.my.mind
LinkedIn: Ance Vanaga
Website: https://conversationswithmymind.buzzsprout.com

Lovely music created by: Harlowe King

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 the Latvian National Television and the very first Baltic Pride. His personal story is equally fascinating as both of his parents are children of Latvian refugees, who had to flee our country in WW2 to save themselves from being killed.

It finally felt right to approach Karlis as he is a brilliant person to provide an insight into very important historic and also current events and through his experience he is able to share some powerful advice.

In this episode we cover how it was to grow up as a Latvian in the United States, how the Latvian community has kept our traditions and language alive throughout the decades, how Karlis decided to follow his roots that led him to Latvia and what made him stay. We also speak about the most memorable moments of his career, his support to the LGBTQ+ community and we finish with an advice to all of us out there supporting refugees fleeing from war zones across the world.

Find Karlis Streips on:
Facebook: Karlis Streips

To learn more about me go to:
Instagram: @conversations.with.my.mind
LinkedIn: Ance Vanaga
Website: https://conversationswithmymind.buzzsprout.com

Lovely music created by: Harlowe King

A few mentions that might need clarification:

Čikāgas Piecīši Band - ‘The Chicago Five’ is a well-known Latvian refugee band that has been performing since the 60’s. They have participated in numerous events in Latvia leading up to the restoration of the independence and have been continuously returning to perform after.

Garezers in Michigan - Garezers is a Latvian summer camp and culture centre that aims to preserve Latvian language and culture by bringing together youth from around the United States and Canada since 1965.

Children’s Magazine Mazputniņš - ‘The Little Bird’, a historically well known monthly magazine for the Latvian children living outside Latvia that was published in the United States. 

His latest TV Show ‘Vēlais ar Streipu’ - ‘The Late Night with Streips’ is an entertaining and satirical nightly news show

Kurzeme - one of the 4 regions of Latvia

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 physical war there is also an informational war in full swing. Although it is hard to believe the more outlandish propaganda, there’s plenty of subtle, intelligently built misinformation still circulating on this side of the newly laid ‘iron curtain’.

To better understand Ukraine’s story, learn more about its people and break down some of the more prevalent false statements I have invited a Ukrainian political and social activist Maria Kuchapski to join me on this conversation.

Maria shares her own and her family’s story, talks about Ukraine’s history and helps us better understand Ukraine’s relationship with Russia throughout the centuries, including why Russia should be called an imperialist nation. We also explore if there are any Nazis in Ukraine, who are the Azov Battalion members and why Ukraine and its culture is actually closer to other Eastern European countries than it is to Russia.

Content Warning: Throughout this episode we discuss war in Ukraine, genocide and other linked topics. At times you might find the content upsetting. Please do take a break if you need to or skip over certain parts to protect your own mental health.

Find Maria Kuchapski on:
Instagram: @vinokcollective
LinkedIn: Maria Kuchapski
Twitter: @VinokCollective

To learn more about me go to:
Instagram: @conversations.with.my.mind
LinkedIn: Ance Vanaga
Website: https://conversationswithmymind.buzzsprout.com
Lovely music created by: Harlowe King

Slava Ukraini!

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 called chronic suicidal ideation. In order to support people like himself and open up a conversation about suicide prevention and postvention Frank chose what he knows best - using comedy. Now Frank is a popular motivational speaker who has done multiple TEDx talks and participates in corporate and public events.

In our conversation Frank shares his own story, we discuss how we as bystanders could notice changes in people around us, what could we do to support someone with suicidal thoughts, why is it so important to talk and we also look at the abilities a mental health condition can bring along and how to best utilise them. All of this comes with a dash of healthy laughter.

TW: We cover multiple aspects of suicide throughout the conversation. Please do take a break if you need to or skip over certain parts to protect your own mental health.

Find Frank King on:
His website: https://www.thementalhealthcomedian.com/
Instagram: @mentalhealthcomedian
LinkedIn: Frank King
Twitter: @theMHcomedian
Call him: +1 858 405 5653

Suicide Crisis Support:
Extensive Worldwide list on Wikipedia
UK Helpline: https://www.samaritans.org/
US Helpline: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
LV Helpline: Skalbes.lv
For more or any specific mental health support in your location - ask Google, help is there

To learn more about me go to:
Instagram: @conversations.with.my.mind
LinkedIn: Ance Vanaga
Website: https://conversationswithmymind.buzzsprout.com
Lovely music created by: Harlowe King

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 generational trauma. It has allowed her to arrive at a place where she is now able to help so many other women by offering group sessions as well as one-to-one coaching.

While we are recording, Michaila is somewhere in the Costa Rican jungle. This adds an extra special background vibe with mild bird sounds, passing by cars and the buzz of the fan to our episode.

In the conversation Michaila explains how to identify covert narcissists, who do not display the grandiose sense of self-importance usually associated with the condition, we discuss potential signs indicating that we might have grown up with a narcissistic mother, we cover the feeling of guilt and sense that we might be disrespecting our mothers by exploring our mother wounds, and Michaila explains why it is so important not to ignore this potential trauma and allow ourselves to become the ones breaking the generational cycle.

Find Michaila Tyson on:
Instagram: @mother_herselfandme
TikTok: @motherherselfandme

The book Michaila Recommended:
Karly McBride ‘Will I Ever Be Good Enough’

To learn more about me go to:
Instagram: @conversations.with.my.mind
LinkedIn: Ance Vanaga
Website: https://conversationswithmymind.buzzsprout.com

Lovely music created by: Harlowe King