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We ask people to summon willpower, drink less and move more, and we leave out the room they are standing in.

Sue Langley brings a study by Albarracin and colleagues that found access, plain access to things, among the strongest determinants of individual wellbeing. She and Alex Couley then extend the idea of environment past the physical one and into the mental one. Where your attention spends its day, and whether that place adds pressure or takes it off.

The question they leave you with is the one the series keeps returning to. What could you do for two minutes, or for five, that might make a difference over time?

Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes.

Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.

Alex Couley becomes emotional early in this one, and says so, because of where the conversation about strength and masculinity has gone and what has been left out of it.

He and Sue Langley put the research next to the practice. What kindness does for the person receiving it, for the person offering it, and for the community around both, and why it works as an antidote to loneliness.

Sue gives groups 15 minutes to fit in as many acts of kindness as they can. What comes back from that exercise is the part of the episode most people remember.

Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes.

Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.

Conversations about the body and wellbeing usually mean exercise, nutrition, or a number on a scale. Sue Langley wanted a wider one.

This episode goes into interoception, the sense of what is happening inside you, and into what those sensations are actually reporting. Once you can read them, they become a way to identify how you feel and then to shift it.

That is a good deal more useful than being told to breathe, and it is available to you in any meeting, on any day.

Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes.

Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.

We treat productivity as constant motion, and we admire the people who work the longest hours. The brain has other requirements.

Sue Langley and Alex Couley go through four different kinds of rest a brain needs, and the small things that make room for each one. There is a study here about silence, where people lasted around 35 seconds with the radio switched off before they reached for something else. There is also a practical note on naps, where under 30 minutes leaves you sharper and anything longer leaves you groggy.

Two minutes to look at a flower, gaze at the clouds or wander outside counts as one of the four.

Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes.

Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.

Language here means all three versions of it. What you say, what you write, and the running commentary in your head that only you hear.

Sue Langley is interested in how words build and remove psychological barriers. Alex Couley is interested in how skilful use of language changes what happens between people. Two words come out of the conversation that may be new to you, meliorism and absquatulate.

The exercise is small. Spend five minutes listening to the voice in your head, and notice which way it tends to go.

Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes.

Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.

Imagine it and you will become it. Alex Couley's view is that the popular version of this takes people down a road the science supports poorly, and leaves them struggling more than if they had left it alone.

He and Sue Langley separate the version that works from the version that backfires. What survives is closer to rehearsal than to wishing. Five minutes in the morning picturing what a good day would look like, hurdles included, then five minutes in the evening savouring the parts that went well.

Rehearsing the hurdles is the step most people skip, and it is the step that does the work.

Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes.

Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.

Most people define a strength as something they are good at. Sue Langley adds the second half that changes everything. A strength is something you are good at that also gives you energy.

That second half separates a strength from a talent, and it explains how capable people end up excellent at work that drains them. Sue and Alex Couley draw on Chris Peterson's 25 years of research in this area, then get practical about spotting your own strengths and building a week around them.

Sue's suggestion in the episode: if curiosity is one of your top strengths, spend five minutes asking questions. If hope and optimism are up there, spend five minutes looking for things to be hopeful about.

Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes.

Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.

Awe is the emotion Alex Couley thinks stands apart from the usual sorting into positive and negative. You feel it in the body first, before you have named it, which makes it unusual and useful.

He and Sue Langley go into the biofeedback, the appreciation and the sense of expansion that comes with it. Then they get practical: 10 to 15 minutes of walking with the deliberate intention of finding something to be awed by.

The intention is the active ingredient. The walk is the easy part.

Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes.

Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.

The courage equation is willingness to act divided by fear. Fear stays inside the formula, which means courage arrives with the fear still present rather than once it has gone.

Sue Langley and Alex Couley work both sides of the equation, how to raise the willingness and how to lower the fear. The conversation covers a pattern in confidence and job applications, where men tend to apply at 30 to 40% confidence while women wait until they reach 70 to 80%.

Both of them talk about achievements they are proud of that frightened them first, including going to university as mature age students.

Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes.

Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.