Life Beyond The Numbers

“Imagine putting on [social media], ‘I wanted an extra piece of toast this morning, so here it is.’” James Kilgarriff

James Kilgarriff and I talk about what it means to live your life your way, including the difference between wanting something cleanly and wanting it with a whole story of shoulds and justifications attached. We also discuss uncertainty as the water we swim in, the thing that seems to bug us most even though we live with it all the time, and the power of noticing when we’re caught up in our thinking. And James shares the list he wrote one January of things that seemed impossible, including moving to Spain within three months. Four months later he was living in Valencia.

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameskilgarriff/ 

Resources Mentioned

The Inside-Out Revolution by Michael Neill

Creating the Impossible and Your Life, Your Way - Michael Neill courses https://www.michaelneill.org/ 

Sydney Banks

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Tony Robbins

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

Groundhog Day (movie)

"What is the writing that is mine to do? What is mine to say?" Susan Ní Chríodáin

Lisa Moldau and I explore what it means to navigate turbulent times not just in the world, but in ourselves. I was a guest a podcast, where she has been collaborating with Martin Farrell on his Substack, Live Well in Turbulent Times. Lisa invited me to share what had struck me in their writing.

We talk about the future of work, emotions as data, and the question that stayed with me most from Martin's writing: what am I for? We get into numbers as a tool of exclusion, why human connection is as old as civilisation, and what a poem, a book or a conversation can do that nothing else quite can.

Leading Beyond the Numbers by Susan Ní Chríodáin 

Making Numbers Count by Chip Heath and Karla Starr

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert 

David Whyte 

Martin Farrell is co-author of the Live Well in Turbulent Times on Substack

"Whatever happens, I am whole, I am complete. I do not need fixing. I am not broken. So whatever happens, I've got me."  Gitanjali Trevorrow-Seymour

Gitanjali Trevorrow-Seymour and I talk about trust in yourself. She's a Possiblist: her word for how we're designed. The glass isn't half empty or half full, she says - it is full. The invisible part is where possibility lives. We talk about what gets in the way: BMW thinking (bitching, moaning, whinging and the optional extras: blaming, making up reasons and worrying), holding a plan like a promise and why changing your mind might be a superpower rather than a character flaw. Courage and curiosity come in as the things that move you forward. She tells me she is out to ban the word confident. And a story about trapeze artists prompted one of her clients to say: "I've just realised I'm my own safety net."

An Australian native, Gitanjali Trevorrow-Seymour studied psychology and worked as a professional actress before ‘accidentally’ becoming a leader in the banking industry where she ran a 50Million Pound account, weathered the Global Financial Crisis and led highly engaged teams. Recognised as one of the Top 100 Female Entrepreneurs in the UK, she holds certifications in Neuroscience accredited with the British Psychological Society and has parlayed her eclectic background and fascination with ‘What makes humans special’ into an award-winning consulting and coaching business. As CEO of people development company High Definition You, she and her team have had the privilege of working across the globe with organisations such as AIG, Wise and HSBC, transforming the way their leaders and teams perform and drive change -not with positive thinking, with Possiblist™ Thinking.

Connect with Gitanjali

Website: https://highdefinitionyou.com/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linkinwithgitanjali/  

Instagram: gitanjali.possiblist  

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/

Resources Mentioned:

Gitanjali's TEDx Talk -The Confidence Con: What if nothing's missing?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai2Y-7i9AT0&t=5s 

The Art of Possibility, Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander

Benjamin Zander TED talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9LCwI5iErE&t=3s

"And what I've noticed is by using the words, 'My assumption is that,' leading with that, what I find is a lot more openness and a lot more dialogue amongst teammates about what they disagree with, or indeed what they agree with."  Archana Mohan

Archana Mohan and I talk about some of what is intangible or invisible in a room with a team like the assumptions we make about others and the ones we make about ourselves. Archana is an experienced leader and author of The Through Line, and someone who has spent a long time thinking about identity, character and what it actually means to lead. We talk about labels and boxes, about the difference between fitting in and belonging, about character as the imprint we leave on the world. And she tells a lovely story about her daughter who pointed out to her the difference between a compliment and a comparison. We touch on what that reveals about how we've all been trained to measure ourselves.

Through her website: www.archanamohan.net

Read her book: The Through Line

Listen to her Podcast: Where We Place Ourselves 

Resources Mentioned:

Alison Jones, Practical Inspiration Publishing

David Whyte and Consolations

Michael Neill

Tasha Eurich

Stanislavski (origin of the through line concept)

"When our best selves show up, we create magic in ourselves, for ourselves, for others, with others." Susan Ní Chríodáin

Dr Susanne Evans, David Lee and I explore what it really takes to show up as our best selves. David opens with a story from the morning of 9/11 that reframed what "making a difference" actually means. Susanne shares her participation in a resilience panel where her story felt too small - but it turned out to be exactly what many people needed. And I talk about walking the Camino and how that trip is often a metaphor for other things in life. We talk about things we've had to unlearn: the need to scale, the drive to prove, the habit of being available when what we need is to rest. And we talk about what we've learned to protect like curiosity, hope and the small daily moments where genuine connection actually happens. We talk about impact not being linear, that feeling of aloneness when in crisis being universal. 

Dr Susanne Evans is an organisation change consultant, trainer, coach and researcher on a mission to change the way that transformations are managed in organisations. She founded Feldspar Consulting in 2007 to help her clients lead change in a more human, effective way. As well as writing and speaking about organisation change, Susanne hosts open storytelling workshops, supporting organisations and individuals in writing a compelling story for themselves. She is the author of ChangeStories and the host of the popular ChangeStories podcast.

David Lee is a coach, consultant, workshop facilitator, keynote speaker, and author, who loves creating a win/win/win relationship between people and the organizations they work for. He helps leaders and leadership teams learn how to become "people whisperers", and by doing so, increase their ability to make their organization THE choice for "A List Talent" and inspire the best in their people.

Connect with Susanne

On LinkedIn

Through her website: Feldspar Consulting

Listen to Change Stories podcast

Connect with David

On LinkedIn 

Through his website Human Nature at Work

Resources Mentioned:

Super Better by Jane McGonigal

David Whyte

Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer

When by Dan Pink

Julia Cameron

Chris Williamson's Modern Wisdom podcast

Dig Ventures (UK)

"The data really is about giving you an insight that allows a conversation to take place. That conversation can be with yourself. You can journal and you can reflect. You can have a really good chat with your mate who's keen on the data as well. But I would definitely encourage it; it's the conversation that matters about your habits, your environment, your lifestyle. That conversation matters much more than any number can tell you." Janine van Someren

Dr Janine van Someren is a wellbeing consultant, speaker, and bestselling author of The Wellbeing Advantage. She helps busy professionals make sense of their energy, stress, and health in a way that feels practical, supportive, and achievable. With over 25 years’ experience across high-performance sport and corporate environments, Janine is known for translating complex science into simple habits that work in real life.

On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_wellbeing_advantage/  

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewellbeingadvantage 

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janine-van-someren/ 

Resources Mentioned:

The Wellbeing Advantage online launch event on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/events/thewellbeingadvantageonlinelaun7440822437468049410/ 

"There's always energy all around us. We live in an ocean of energy, whether we can see it or not." Bianca Riemer

Bianca Riemer and I explore what happens when an accountant turned Morgan Stanley analyst follows her curiosity into energy medicine and why the two might not be as different as they sound. Bianca speaks about pranic healing in an accessible and practical way: protocol-based, science-informed and increasingly being studied in clinical settings. She talks us through what she's witnessed including her niece's recovery from leukaemia that the doctors couldn't explain to it becoming a practice she now brings directly into her leadership coaching work. We speak about stress, how it builds in the body and what shifts when it's cleared. We get into the everyday ways most of us are already sensing energy without being fully aware like in the room that doesn't feel right, the person too close in a queue, the moment you turn around and catch someone staring. And Bianca gives us her view on why the idea that nobody will ever fully understand you is so liberating. 

Connect with Bianca:

Through her website: www.biancariemer.com  

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/biancariemer/

Resources Mentioned: 

Miracles Through Pranic Healing and Advanced Pranic Healing by Master Choa Kok Sui 

Theosophy: https://www.theosophy.world/ 

Twin Hearts meditation: https://www.thepranichealers.com/meditation-on-twin-hearts 

"There's a lot more that hasn't been said. A lot of the book is about voice and not leaving things unsaid. And I sometimes realise that I don't use my voice as much as I could. I can retreat from things. In a way, that's what writing the book does. It brings things to the surface that wouldn't otherwise come through. I don't think that's done. I just think there's a lot of creativity still waiting to emerge." Susan

This is a solo episode to mark 2 years since the publication of Leading Beyond the Numbers. It begins with a poem written on a the side of the street in London and moves through what it has been like to live alongside a book in the world.

I explore what it means to uncover or recover our dreams, and what stands between us and acknowledging them. Tim Gallwey's formula: Performance = Potential – Interference surfaces alongside a mishearing that reframed interfere as inner fear: the way our most protective thoughts can be the most cleverly disguised.

I cover the shortlisting party I nearly talked myself out of attending and a moment afterwards, a hug from a fellow author who hadn't made the shortlist, that turned out to matter most.

And underneath all of it: outsourcing worth to outcomes, mistaking thinking for reality and what changes when we start listening to what's actually here. Are you Listening?

Connect with Susan:

Through her website: Beyond the Numbers

Read Leading Beyond the Numbers: How accounting for emotions tips the balance at work

Follow her writing on Substack: The Whole Equation

Practical Inspiration Publishing

Business Book Awards

David Whyte

Rob Lawrence

Season of Blood by Fergal Keane

"I'm going to get rid of the day job because it's getting in the way of doing more interesting stuff." Ben Legg

Ben Legg and I talk about what it actually takes to build a portfolio career and why the people drawn to it tend to share a particular kind of independent bloody mindedness. Ben brings his own journey from the Royal Engineers to McKinsey to Google to founding the Portfolio Collective, a 16,000-strong global community for portfolio professionals. He's a pragmatic optimist about the trade-offs: the freedom, the loneliness, the accountability and the discipline of thinking of yourself as a business of one. We get into what makes work fun, what the army taught him about staying calm when no one's actually dying and why he thinks the biggest shift ahead isn't AI itself but the move from doing to orchestrating. We close with one eye on the future of work, of education, of what a good life might look like when the drudgery falls away and human ingenuity gets to do what it does best.

Ben Legg is the former COO of Google Europe. As a board member and advisor across multiple industries, he is heavily involved in building disruptive businesses, as well as advising Wall Street investors and governments on AI strategy, realities and digital disruption. Ben’s career has been defined by high-stakes leadership, turnarounds and hypergrowth. From serving as a British Army Officer during the Siege of Sarajevo to running the turnaround of Coca-Cola India to defining and leading hypergrowth at Google, he brings a unique "warrior-to-boardroom" perspective.

The Portfolio Collective: https://portfolio-collective.com/profile/ben-legg/

On LinkedIn

"Everything is up for grabs. The good thing is the world doesn't care." Faris Aranki

Faris Aranki and I talk about what it really takes for teams to perform and why the thing standing in the way is rarely strategy or intelligence. Faris talks us through his equation (Success = IQ × EQ × FQ) based on 20 years of watching some brilliant organisations fail to execute on perfectly good ideas. We get into resistance and how it shows up in the kids who walked into his maths classroom certain they couldn't learn and in the boardrooms where groupthink is found. We talk about fixed belief systems and biases. There's a lot of practical wisdom here about listening for what people leak, sharpening language and how his formula for success comes to life in an organisation. And we end on the two-metre radius around each of us and what becomes possible when we simply look after that well.

Faris Aranki is the CEO of Shiageto Consulting, an innovative consulting firm blending strategy and emotional intelligence; we will discuss how Faris went from high school teacher to CEO and all the skills he picked up along the way. Having spent over 20 years delivering strategic change for businesses around the world, Faris has experienced first-hand the fine differences between success and failure. He came to realise what hinders institutions from achieving their goals isn’t the quality of their ideas; it’s their ability to get engagement and focus around those ideas; aspects he is an expert in. To build on this passion he set up Shiageto Consulting in 2019 to help businesses and individuals improve their strategic effectiveness and they now work with some of the top organisations in the world. On top of leading Shiageto, Faris is now an accomplished speaker, writer and contributor for a variety of outlets.

Connect with Faris

Through his website www.shiageto.com

On LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/farisaranki

Resources Mentioned

John Amaechi https://linktr.ee/itsnotmagic 

Shiageto: the Japanese word for a sharpening stone.