What happens when the tension of living a life in someone's shadow pulls you too far away from being your true self?

David Oates (Dave) has lived a lifelong career of high-flying success in the tech sales industry. And yet 'chasing the numbers' has always felt like a lie – a tension created from someone else's version of success.

This is one of the deepest and most emotional episodes of "Mind Monkeys Welcome..." (and it is all the better for it).

In this episode we explore:

• A lifetime of imposter syndrome traced back to Dave's relationship with his extraordinary father: a big man born in the back streets of Salford, and Dave's hero in every sense
• How his father's success led Dave to measure his own journey by the wrong numbers

• Dave also shares his journey to sobriety and the serenity he has since found from that incredibly brave decision

Find Dave:
Website: https://www.yavica.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpoates/

Bananas optional. Bravery essential.

What if the thing that makes you most nervous is also the thing you were most born to do?

Hannah Knowles is a keynote speaker, author and positive psychologist working with the Art of Brilliance.

Described as the 'Queen of Positivity', she helps schools, businesses, councils, the NHS and sports teams navigate change, uncertainty and adversity through simple, practical tools that bridge the gap between knowing and doing.

She is also a self-described reluctant keynote speaker. Which, as it turns out, is exactly what makes her extraordinary at it.

In this episode:

• The 16-year-old Hannah who nearly didn't go back into the English classroom, and what that moment set in motion
• Why passion is the only reliable cure for performance nerves, and what happens when you speak about something that genuinely matters
• 'Be the most interested person in the room': the story of two Prime Ministers and how they made a special someone feel
• The Batman effect: what Beyoncé, Kobe Bryant and Margaret Atwood all understood about self-distancing and why it works
• Why the wobble in a speaker's voice is often the most powerful thing in the room
• Sharing books such as "Love Notes" and "The Art of Focus", and why one simple takeaway from a page (or a speech), properly applied, is worth a thousand that aren't

Find Hannah:
Website: https://substack.com/@hknowles LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-knowles2988/Bookshop: https://www.artofbrilliance.co.uk/products/books/

Bananas optional. Bravery essential.

What happens when the thing you've trained your whole life to do stops being enough?

And the next step forward requires a completely different set of skills that nobody ever taught you?

John Blackburn is a coach working with people who make live entertainment happen.

A professional drummer and musical director for more than twenty years, he helps entertainment professionals think more clearly about their work and become deliberate about the opportunities they build.

He is also the host of Entertainment Matters, a podcast exploring how people across the entertainment industry think about their work and put that thinking into practice.

In this episode:

• The gap between technical brilliance and knowing how to lead, and why entertainment professionals fall into it more than most
• The 'practitioner to producer' shift: what it really means to move from 'being picked' to 'doing the picking'
• Why the familiar discomfort of staying put so often feels safer than the unknown discomfort of change
• Identity and craft: when your work is who you are, what happens when the work doesn't go to plan?
• The five resources of a producer, and how your proximity to each one predicts your success
• Why the employee-to-business-owner shift and the practitioner-to-producer shift are essentially the same thing

Find John:


Website: www.john-blackburn.com


Instagram: www.instagram.com/coachjohnblackburn

Bananas optional. Bravery essential.

What if the problem isn't that you can't speak? What if you've just been speaking with someone else's voice?

Alex Beeching is a public speaking coach, copywriter, author and professional "idea-volcano".

A former top ad-land creative with 17 years' experience, he helps founders, experts and leaders strip away the corporate noise, find the fire underneath, and start speaking with story, energy, humour and commercial clarity.

He's a TEDx speaker, shortlisted for Speaker of the Year, and a man who will never, under any circumstances, use the word synergy unironically.

If that changes, send help (the code word is monkey badger).

In this episode:

• Why most people aren't speaking with their own voice, and what it actually takes to find it
• How Alex is driven to help others find the light (based on his own journey through darkness)
• How creativity, properly understood and applied, is THE tool for escaping the prisons of the mind
• The hyphen as a metaphor: Alex is Anglo-Iranian. His upbringing was a prime example of 'connecting the unconnected': a route through which he now explores both storytelling and the art of attraction
• Weaponise your weird: why being different isn't just expressive, it's a business strategy
• AI as complement not substitute, and why outsourcing your creative thinking to tech is where madness lies
• Why being generous is not a weakness, even if your bank manager disagrees

Find Alex:
Website: www.clubspeak.co.uk

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/alex-beeching/

Bananas optional. Bravery essential.

What if the thing standing between you and your voice isn't a lack of technique, but a lack of safety?

Dave James is a speaker coach, two-times TEDx speaker (one Editor's Pick), and founder of the Brain-Page-Stage™ approach.

Drawing on a background in A&E nursing, mindfulness and stand-up comedy, he helps leaders, teams and professionals move from knowing they have something to say, to actually saying it.

In this episode:

• Why public speaking ranks above death in fear surveys, and why that research is actually flawed
• The difference between speaking 'technique' and knowing who you are, and why the former is useless without the latter
• Loaning people your belief: the idea of holding someone's confidence for them until they're ready to keep it
• Speaking from the scar, not the wound, and what happens on stage when the two get confused
• How stand-up comedy and A&E nursing all teach the same core skill: being present with another person
• Why what your audience remembers is rarely the thing you thought was the best bit

Find Dave:

Website: www.davethecoach.co.uk
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/iamdavejames

Bananas optional. Bravery essential.

What if the thing stopping you from changing your life isn't knowing what to do. It's not knowing where to start?

Sara Southey is a "sort your shit out" coach, author of the bestselling SOS Your Life, and co-founder of The Southey Way — a health and life skills company she runs with her daughter Jenny. This conversation goes to some real places.

This is one of those conversations that starts somewhere and ends up somewhere completely different. In the best possible way.

After choosing to pause her career in HR, Sara spent five years in the US to come back home with two kids and (by her own admission) a feeling that she was failing at life.

Depressed. Struggling. And convinced (by the stories she had grew up with) she just had to get on with it.

What followed was eight years of hard, lonely work. And then a single conversation that led to The Southey Way being set up within 24 hours.

She's been helping people sort their lives out ever since. Physically, mentally and emotionally. All three at once. Because none of them exist without the other two.

In this episode:

• Why fear of the unknown stops people seeking change before they've even started
• The A to Z of life. You don't choose A (birth) and you don't choose Z (death). But you do get to choose everything in between
• Guilt is a reaction to a story someone else is trying to create for you... what is your real story?
• Zero judgement, tiny sustainable steps and creating a journey in your own words – the secret to actually sorting your sh*t out

Find Sara: thesoutheyway.com
Book: SOS Your Life — available from all reputable booksellers

Bananas optional. Bravery essential.

What if the secret to silencing your inner critic isn't telling it to shut up. It's inviting it in for a chat?

(Please note: this episode contains open discussion of suicide and mental health. Please be kind to yourself while listening.)

Gilly Mulford is a resilience guide, new author of Where Dandelions Grow, and someone who has faced more than most. This is one of the most honest conversations Mind Monkeys has had yet.

In this episode:

• Meet Dave. The inner critic who loses all his power the moment you stop running from him.
• Why thoughts are not facts. And the one question that proves it.
• "If you don't know what you want, start with what you don't want." The simple filter that changes everything.
• The power of the pause. And why recognising the spiral is already half the battle.
• Asking for help isn't failure. Sometimes it's the bravest thing you can do.

Bananas optional. Bravery essential.

What does 40 years in mental health teach you about your own mind monkeys? Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Liz Maughn is a mental health trainer with four decades of frontline experience and a refreshingly honest relationship with her own "I'm not good enough" story. This one goes to some powerful and important places.

In this episode:

• Why even the most experienced mental health professionals still battle imposter syndrome
• Guilt as proof of concept. You feel it because you care.
• The solopreneur's dilemma: if you fall apart, so does the business
• Why taking a week off now beats being paralysed for months later
• The one thing to do when everything feels like too much and you've run out of techniques

Bananas optional. Bravery essential.

What if your future self already has the answers? And what if your past self has the evidence you need to get there?

Samir Malak is an imagineer, poet and community builder on a mission to help people imagine a new version of themselves and then engineer it into reality. This conversation goes exactly where you'd hope it would.

In this episode:

• Why the fear monster shrinks the moment you pat it on the head and do it anyway
• The time travel coaching tool that maps your past, visits your future and drops you back in the present ready to move
• Your phone's camera roll as a rucksack full of evidence
• "Enrol people in positive possibilities." Only a poet says it like that.
• AI, the tail wagging the dog, and why love might be the missing ingredient

Bananas optional. Bravery essential.

What if fear isn't something to fix? What if it's just badly calibrated?

Ian Farrington has spent 30 years coaching senior executives through the stuff they don't talk about in the boardroom. This conversation goes straight there.

In this episode:

• Why the thing clients bring to coaching is rarely the actual problem
• Fear of the light, fear of the dark, and the difference between the two
• The 'Painted Zebra': what happens the moment you step into leadership
• "Should" is a bad habit. So is letting your inner chimp run the meeting.
• Why changing yourself creates ripples. And why you need to manage them too.

Bananas optional. Bravery essential.