Are you a people pleaser? Maybe you’ve seen its impact on leadership or experienced first-hand how people pleasers can be drawn to toxic relationships. Are people pleasers really happy anyway?

Pleasing others isn’t always a bad thing, but when it becomes such a significant part of your personality, it can trigger anxiety and bring its associated trauma. So what happens when you stop that people-pleasing behaviour?

In this episode, we meet comedian, author, educator and broadcaster, Nelly Thomas, who helps us realise the value of reaching the zero ducks stage. And you know we’re not talking about ducks, autocorrect!

Nelly’s story is one of backing ourselves as she tells us, up front, about her mental health journey and how she has learned to value herself in the face of the outside world’s demands. Because once we take responsibility for looking after ourselves, those unreasonable demands just become white noise.

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We think they’re worth their weight in gold, but as we always say, don’t just take our word for it! Mentoring is on the minds of lots of Google searchers with questions like “who mentored Gordon Ramsay, “who mentored Justin Bieber,” and even “who mentored Jesus?” 

We don’t have the answers to any of those questions by as your trusty guides in this mental health story called Reframe Of Mind we (Louise and Andy) were really keen to find out how mentors can make a difference and how a mentorship can help you. As we push ahead building our own little empire with Welcome Change Media, we were especially interested to find out how mentors help to create success with startup businesses like our own. 

This episode’s guests include Indiginerd founder, Cienan Muir, female economy expert, Jacinta Carboon and 2021 NSW Young Australian of the Year, Nathan Parker, amongst others. Each guest has their own relationship to mentoring and being mentored and perfectly illustrate why mentoring is important not only in leadership, but in the workplace in general.  

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Of all the types of storytelling surrounding us, Indigenous storytelling, through its oral storytelling origins, has endured on this continent for over sixty thousand years. As traditional stories and knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation, Indigenous peoples have increasingly adapted as new formats become available.  

Yorta Yorta/Ngarrindjeri man, Cienan Muir is on the leading edge of Indigenous storytelling, using gaming and pop culture as methods to tell traditional stories and engage young Indigenous people. As founder of Indiginerd, a space to celebrate Indigenous creativity, he launched Indigicon as a platform for Indigenous people to come together and share their stories. 

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Change can be triggering in a lot of ways. Whether you’ve made a commitment to change or it came out of the blue, there are things along the way that can jump up to surprise us, or we’ve been happily avoiding. Sometimes we adapt, knowing what was can never be again.

Louise and Andy tread through the minefield of grief and major change in this episode and both have a little cry along the way, because adapting to change can be just as difficult as deciding to step into something new.

If you’ve ever told yourself the tarot reader wasn’t that good because they told you something you didn’t want to hear, or had that unsteady “what now?” feeling when your world was turned upside down it might be time to unlearn a few things and draw on your strengths to adapt and settle into the, dare we say it, “new normal”.

Wisdom in this episode, exploring the psychology of adapting to change, comes courtesy of Associate Professor Kimberley Norris Associate Head of Learning and Teaching in Psychology at the University of Tasmania; Australia’s Dr Happy Tim Sharp, founder of The Happiness Institute; Diversity trans re-lator, speaker, educator and coach, Sally Goldner AM; bestselling small business author, entrepreneur and global presenter, Andrew Griffiths; Professor Alex Maritz from La Trobe Business School, New Zealand Endurance Athlete and Longevity Coach Lisa Tamati and behavioural consultant and Director of Positive Minds Australia Madhavi Nawana-Parker.

With so many strong voices around them, Andy and Louise invite you to join them as they work through the tears and continue their healing journey.

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How’s your support network?

Surrounding ourselves with the right people could mean the difference between feeling affirmed and inspired or feeling like you can’t do anything right.

Imagine if a sports coach told their team they were trash when they needed to get more goals out of them instead of building them up with positive reinforcement. They probably wouldn’t be winning any comps any time soon.

A good team brings out the best in everyone and it doesn’t only apply to sport. A good team uses everyone’s strengths for the common good, and a good leader will recognise this and nurture those strengths.

Someone who made this happen in a big way is Lisa Alexander, former Diamonds head coach for Netball Australia.

If you’re looking for an example of a healthy, supportive, high performance culture, look no further than the era in Australian netball that saw a Commonwealth Games victory, world championship wins and a stack of other victories over Lisa’s nine-year coaching stint. The Australian Diamonds were ranked number one in the world at the time she departed as head coach.

There’s a reason why Lisa was named 2015 coach of the year, and in this episode, Andy and Louise chat with Lisa not only about why it’s so important to have good people around you, but what that looks like in the real world.

Lisa Alexander is currently head of high performance and assistant coach for the London Pulse.

For more resources and show notes please visit www.reframeofmind.com.au

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Nobody is immune from big emotions, and if we’re feeling depressed or anxious, it can feel like those big feelings are only feeding our low mood.

But what about grief? That’s a whole other beast that not only exposes us to big, raw feelings, but can also lead to significant changes in behaviour as anger and stress leads to conflict and, in some cases, for relationships to break down altogether.

So how do we deal with these big emotions as we’re coping with loss. Even if these big emotions aren’t related to bereavement, is there a better way to manage or control our emotions, and is controlling our emotions actually what we need?

What if there was a way to embrace our big emotions and give ourselves the chance to understand what they are and why we feel them so we can process them way before their bottled-up energy explodes?

In this episode of Reframe of Mind, Director of Positive Minds Australia, Madhavi Nawana-Parker explores emotional intelligence, or EQ, and helps us to heal our inner child, rebuilding our emotional foundations, unlearning the patterns or our generation, and those who went before us. Louise and Andy share their personal stories of dealing with big emotions, too, with their own experiences of grief (spoiler: their experiences are just as messy as anybody else’s!)

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Everything happens for a reason. That’s what toxic positivity will tell you, and it’s the reason we’ve not only been focused on dismantling toxic positivity throughout the series so far, but thought we’d dedicate a whole episode to it! It did, after all, take out the Angsty awards in episode one. 

So, what is considered toxic positivity? At best, it’s misplaced optimism, at worst it’s the dismissive statements that minimise or ignore a person’s experience. Would you be able to pick the signs when you see or hear it, and can you identify what is more useful instead? Because at the other end of the scale, optimism is something that IS useful, if we can wade out of the toxic positivity. 

In this episode, Andy and Louise talk to Australia’s Dr Happy, Dr Tim Sharp, from the Happiness Institute, who explores the concept of positive psychology, without the toxic bits, as well as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) expert, Dr Lisa Saulsman from the University of Western Australia, who unpacks some useful approaches to help us not only sit with our uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, but to find a way out of rumination and into action. 

Other guests include Chronic Illness Wellness Coach and person living with MS, Teisha Rose; author and CEO consultant, Lucy Bloom; and Director of The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, Professor Maree Teesson, who each share their personal experience dealing with Toxic positivity and opting for optimism instead. 

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Change your behaviour, change your brain.

Sometimes it feels like our troubleshooting mind gets out of control and before long, we’re down a rabbit hole of limitation, stuck in a storm of thoughts and feelings, unable to think our way out of the maze. But what if instead of trying to change our thoughts first, we changed the behaviour instead? Supported by the robust principles of neuroscience to kick start our the pathways to change.

We could dare to lean into possibilities, instead of limitations.

Take stroke for example. It’s not that long ago that people believed recovery of lost sensation wasn’t possible, and we were focused on compensation rather than rehabilitation.

But recovery IS possible, and in this episode of Reframe of Mind, Louise and Andy bring together two guests that have personal experiences with stroke rehabilitation and recovery.

New Zealand, ultra marathon runner Lisa Tamati, has first hand experience helping her mum recover from the damaging effects of stroke and a brain aneurysm. She recounts the impact of dealing with life after stroke, a raft of negative prognosis, and how through research on neuroplasticity and stroke recovery exercises, her mum was able to make a full recovery from stroke and regain abilities.

And world leading Australian neuroscientist, Professor Leeanne Carey, has dedicated her career to occupational therapy, stroke rehabilitation and recovery research and helps us to understand how the brain recovers from the trauma of stroke and relearns through interconnected pathways.

Leeanne is the Founding Head of the Neurorehabilitation and Recovery research group, Stroke Division, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health and Discipline Lead of Occupational Therapy in the School of Allied Health, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, and she deep dives into stroke recovery and rehabilitation, neuroplasticity, sensation therapy, and walks us through the process of restoring movement and recalibrating our neural networks.

If we are open to believing there might be another way, and to the discovery of learning, then we can achieve change.

As Leeanne tells us: “Reframe of mind is about adapting and learning. Neuroplasticity is the mechanism that supports that. With a little bit of know-how, how-to, we can achieve that change.”

Show notes, resources and transcript available at  www.reframeofmind.com.au

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Reframe of Mind is a Welcome Change Media production.

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How curious are you?

Do you tend to focus on what can go wrong, or fantasise about what could go right, and if you make a mistake, do you tend to beat yourself up or take it as an opportunity to learn?

Letting go of the need to be in control of every detail can be hard, especially when there’s a lot riding on the outcome, but what if letting go of control brought even more of what you wanted than you could ever have imagined?

Award-winning keynote speaker and author, Lucy Bloom, chats to Louise and Andy about the lessons life has served up for her in business and in dealing with her disability. In a bold realisation, Lucy realised that she has just as much control over what can go right as opposed to what could go wrong, which shifted her perspective on what it means to just get in and have a go.

Show notes, resources and transcript available at www.reframeofmind.com.au

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Reframe of Mind is a Welcome Change Media production.

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‘Music isn’t just entertainment’. As Professor Bill Thompson told us ‘It has a profound effect on virtually everything about us as human beings. How we relate to others, how we see ourselves, our psychological wellbeing and music can have a genuine impact on the brain’.

Music is used in lots of ways to evoke emotions, whether it’s to set the scene in film and TV storytelling, or by advertisers to convince us to buy their product because it will make us feel a certain way.

Maybe you’ve used it to boost your mood or affirm how you feel when something significant has happened in your life. And what about the physical act of participating in music?

In this episode of Reframe of Mind, Louise and Andy explore the importance of music for mental health, how music can improve mood, and how music and emotions are connected. They are joined by guests including Professor Bill Thompson from the Department of Psychology and Director of the Music, Sound and Performance Lab at Macquarie University and Professor Muireann Irish, cognitive neuropsychologist at the Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney who share stories and research on the positive impact music can make.

Louise and Andy have both held professional roles as radio station music directors and they deep dive into their love (and sometimes hate) of music and share the personal impact it has had on their lives. Or more accurately, (hilariously, if we do say so) over-share stories about bonking playlists, Andy’s Abba obsession, Louise’s musical messages from dead pets, milking the dopamine out of radio hits and that time they got in trouble at a Neil Diamond concert.

Check out www.reframeofmind.com.au for show notes and transcript.

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