Two and a half years ago, this podcast began as a simple experiment. Two friends, a microphone, and a shared curiosity about what it really means to be human.

In this episode, Al and Bilos pause to reflect on that journey. The conversations that changed them. The guests who challenged them. The insights that quietly reshaped how they live, work, and listen.

But this is not a retrospective. It is a moment of renewal.

As the year turns, so does the direction of the podcast. What has emerged is a deeper invitation. To slow down. To go beyond broad conversations and into richer, more focused explorations. To approach each guest and each topic with beginner’s mind and deeper listening.

This conversation is about letting go of what has worked in order to discover what is waiting to emerge. About recognising that growth often comes with discomfort. And about trusting that the more you see, the more there is left to discover.

If you have ever felt the quiet nudge that it is time for a new chapter, this episode will meet you right there.

1. What two and a half years of deep conversation really changes
2. Why renewal often comes from letting go rather than adding more
3. The guests and moments that left a lasting mark
4. How curiosity deepens when certainty fades
5. Why not knowing is the doorway to wisdom
6. The responsibility of deep listening
7. What it means to grow the craft of conversation
8. Why staying awake matters more than having answers

Stay tuned for chapter 2...

Produced in partnership with http://www.podlad.com

Inner work is not a retreat.

It is not a breakthrough moment.

And it is definitely not about fixing yourself.

Al and Bilos are joined by Chris and Magan Hutchins, a married couple and parents to a young daughter, for an honest conversation about what inner work actually looks like in daily life. Not in theory, but in the middle of work deadlines, parenting stress, relationship tension, and the constant pull of responsibility.

They explore how inner work shows up in the smallest moments. Choosing grace instead of perfection. Letting go of guilt. Slowing down enough to be curious about each other. Finding joy in ordinary evenings, simple routines, and being present rather than productive.

This is a conversation about practice, not ideals. About learning to listen to yourself and each other. About how inner work is less about changing your life and more about meeting the life you already have with clarity, compassion, and honesty.

If you have ever wondered what all this work actually looks like once you have kids, a partner, a career, and very little spare time, this episode will feel like a deep exhale.

1. Why you cannot be perfect in every role at once
2. Letting go of guilt around time, energy, and choice
3. How inner work shows up inside marriage and parenting
4. The shift from pressure to grace in daily life
5. Choosing curiosity over assumptions in relationships
6. Why self care is not selfish but stabilising
7. How simple practices prevent emotional overload
8. Finding joy without needing something new or different

Produced in partnership with http://www.podlad.com

High performance culture promises results. Better systems. Better habits. Better output. Yet so many people and organisations hit their goals and still feel exhausted, disconnected, or quietly unfulfilled.

In this episode, Al and Bilos explore the invisible bottleneck most high performance thinking never addresses. It is not a lack of discipline. It is not poor strategy. It is not effort.

The bottleneck is awareness.

They unpack how performance cultures often focus on mechanics while ignoring the inner state people are operating from. When leaders and teams take their thinking too seriously, react to results, and live in constant fear of falling short, performance actually slows down. The harder people push, the more constrained they become.

Through examples from business, leadership, sport, and lived experience, this conversation reveals why being awake to how we are wired is not a luxury. It is the foundation that allows systems, skills, and effort to actually work.

If you have ever wondered why high performers burn out, why great strategies collapse under pressure, or why success can still feel empty, this episode will help you see what has been missing all along.

🔥 Topics We Explore

• Why high performance cultures often hit an unseen ceiling

• The difference between effort driven performance and awareness led performance

• How fear and reactivity quietly sabotage results

• Why discipline without presence creates suffering

• The role of connection, purpose, and human wiring in sustainable success

• What elite teams get right that most organisations miss

• Why true performance accelerates when people slow down internally

• The space between stimulus and response as the real performance advantage

💭 Reflective Prompt

Where in your work or life are you trying to push harder when what is really needed is clarity, presence, or a pause?

🧠 Quote to Remember

“You already possess the performance elixir you have been searching for.”

🌐 Produced in partnership with http://www.podlad.com

We all carry our own internal weather: sunshine, storms, calm, tension, joy, fear. And the people around us do too. Most of the conflict we experience doesn’t come from the weather itself. It comes from the moment we believe someone else’s mood has something to do with us.

Alan and Bilos explore the freedom that comes from recognising that other people’s emotional storms are theirs, not ours.

When you stop taking things personally, something opens. You stop reacting. You start listening. And what was once conflict becomes connection.

This episode is a simple, powerful reminder that emotional clarity isn’t about fixing anyone — it’s about seeing clearly. Because once you realise “this isn’t about me,” your whole body softens. Curiosity returns. Love becomes possible again.

This is an entry point into real empathy — not the kind that drains you, but the kind that frees you.

In This Episode:

• The “internal weather” metaphor and why it matters

• Why we react to other people’s moods

• The moment you stop taking things personally

• How empathy works when you’re not in the storm

• The freedom that comes from detaching kindly

• How to stay grounded when someone else is struggling

• The simple practice that quiets your reactions

Produced in partnership with http://www.podlad.com

Most of us spend our lives trying to plan, predict, and control everything around us. We want to know what’s coming, how things will unfold, and how to avoid getting it wrong. But what if life works better when we stop trying so hard and simply say yes to what shows up?

Alan and Bilos explore the quiet power of letting go — the shift from forcing life to allowing it. They talk about the difference between resistance and surrender, how our need to “know” creates unnecessary suffering, and why peace arrives the moment we stop fighting what is.

Through simple stories, everyday examples, and a walk across the golf course, the episode reveals a practical truth:

when you stop trying to control life, you start to see it more clearly.

This is a gentle, grounded introduction to the practice of saying yes — even when you don’t know what’s coming next.

In this episode:

• Why we resist the unknown

• The difference between acceptance and passivity

• How surrender brings clarity, not chaos

• What “letting life lead” actually looks like

• Why you don’t need to know to move forward

• How small daily moments become spiritual practice

If you’ve felt stuck, overthinking, or trying too hard to make life work, this conversation might give you the space to breathe again.

Produced by http://www.podlad.com

Most people chase success from one side or the other. They either build systems, processes, and goals and hope the structure will carry them. Or they focus entirely on awakening, intuition, and inner peace and hope the universe will sort the rest out.

But real success asks for both.

In this conversation, Al and Bilos explore the quiet truth behind sustainable success in work and in life. You cannot build a thriving business without systems, discipline and clarity. And you also cannot create freedom without the inner awakening that lets you see through your own noise.

• Why so many people hit financial goals but still feel lost
• How discipline and inner stillness feed each other
• Why systems without soul become suffering
• Why spirituality without structure becomes avoidance
• The cost leaders pay when they ignore human wiring
• How great companies are built on clarity and consciousness
• The intersection of performance, presence and practice
• Why the best leaders learn to slip into silliness and take themselves less seriously

Where in your life are you relying only on structure, or only on intuition? What opens when you allow both to guide you?

www.podlad.com

Most of us spend our lives trying to keep things together. We plan, we push, we grip tightly to the idea that if we can just control enough of life, things will turn out the way we want. But the truth is the opposite. The more we try to control, the more resistance we create. The moment we let go is the moment life starts to move.

In this conversation, Penny Finnie returns to share how releasing control has opened doors in her life that she could never have planned. From unexpected meetings to perfectly timed encounters and the quiet winks that show up when you are willing to trust the unfolding, Penny brings a rare blend of insight, warmth and lived experience.

This episode is a reminder that letting go is not passive. It is choosing to stop wrestling with life and allowing something deeper, wiser and far more beautiful to lead.

🔥 Topics We Explore

• Why the need for control shuts down connection and possibility

• How fear, busyness and distraction keep us from hearing our own guidance

• The surprising synchronicities that show up when you say yes instead of resisting

• Why surrender is the gateway to peace, creativity and clarity

• How to recognise the moments life is nudging you

• What Mary Magdalene and the mystics can teach us about letting go

• Why peace and love only appear when we stop gripping the wheel

📚 Books Mentioned

Mary Magdalene Revealed by Meggan Watterson

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

The Universal Christ and Falling Upward by Richard Rohr

The Seven Storey Mountain and writings of Thomas Merton

🌐 Connect with Penny and Egal

Penny’s mission driven company Egal is creating period products that are as accessible as toilet paper.

Learn more here: https://www.padsonaroll.com

💭 Reflective Prompt

Where in your life are you gripping tightly because you think you have to? What might open up if you loosened your hold and allowed life to take the next step for you?

🧠 Quote to Remember

“We are the hands of the universe. Let go of control and let yourself be guided.” — Penny Finnie

🌐 Produced in partnership with

http://www.podlad.com

Most of us eat on autopilot. Reaching for food or drink to soothe, distract, or fill a gap. But what if every meal was an opportunity to practice awareness.

Alan and Bilos explore how food becomes a mirror that reveals our habits, emotions, and relationship with presence. They share personal stories about using food and drink to escape discomfort, and how slowing down enough to actually taste what’s in front of you becomes a quiet spiritual practice.

Because the opportunity in mindful eating isn’t better health, it’s better awareness. When you practice noticing in the small moments, you start to carry that awareness into everything else — your work, your relationships, your choices, and the way you meet life when it gets hard.

• Why we reach for food or drink when we’re in pain
• Awareness as daily training, not something to save for hard times
• The difference between feeding the noise and feeding the soul
• The body as the vessel for your spiritual journey
• How slowing down to eat can slow down your mind
• Finding joy without using food to escape

When you sit down to eat today, can you notice the first impulse that pulls you to rush, numb, or fill space — and choose instead to pause.

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Every working parent knows the tension: the pull between providing for your family and being present with them.

You tell yourself you’ll slow down later, that you’re doing it for them, but time doesn’t wait. One day, your child grows up and you wonder how many small moments you traded away without even noticing.

Our friend Peter Campbell shares the painful honesty of seeing those trade-offs in hindsight. From his rise to CFO of a global company to walking away from a high-paying role after his son asked, “Dad, do I only get to see you on weekends?”, Peter speaks with rare vulnerability about success, identity, and what really matters when life forces you to choose.

This episode isn’t about guilt. It’s about awareness. It’s about waking up before it’s too late to realize that presence is the greatest gift you’ll ever give your family — and yourself.

🔥 Topics We Explore:

• The quiet pain behind career success and family absence

• How identity gets tied to work without us noticing

• The hidden cost of constantly choosing productivity over presence

• Why regret only disappears when we stop judging ourselves

• The truth about slowing down before life forces you to

• How to see “trade-offs” differently — not as mistakes, but as moments to learn from

• Why compassion for yourself might be the first step to healing

💭 Reflective Prompt:

What story are you telling yourself about why you have to keep working so hard? What would happen if you challenged it — just once — and chose presence instead?

🧠 Quote to Remember:

“They’re not going to put on your tombstone, ‘I should have spent more time at work’” — Al Kenny

🌐 Produced in partnership with:

http://www.podlad.com

For many of us, the body doesn’t always feel like a safe place to live. We push through tension, numb out pain, and try to think our way out of emotions we don’t want to feel. But what if the key to healing isn’t found in the mind, it’s in the body itself?

Sienna Richardson, somatic therapist and educator, helps us understand what it truly means to come home to the body. She shares how trauma, stress, and unprocessed emotion can stay stored in the nervous system, quietly shaping how we feel, think, and connect with others.

If you’ve ever felt disconnected from your emotions, anxious for no clear reason, or overwhelmed by life’s demands, this episode will help you reconnect to the wisdom that’s already within you.

• Why your body holds on to unprocessed emotions
• The connection between trauma, anxiety and physical symptoms
• What it really means to feel “held” and why that matters for healing
• How somatic therapy differs from traditional talk therapy
• The power of presence and compassion in releasing fear
• What happens when we stop resisting difficult feelings
• The role of nature, acceptance and connection in recovery

What would it feel like to stop fighting your body — and start listening to it instead?

Website: www.imsienna.com

Produced in partnership with http://www.podlad.com