The 3 Good Podcast

How does play impact on wellbeing? What about game playing? Moreso in the modern age, what about games consoles and games on apps? Are we all gamers how that we play games on our smartphones? Can games be helpful to mental health recovery? Games can be healthy for people to play, and what happens when they become addictive?

Regular podcast guest, Mark Gilroy, returns to the podcast discussing all these questions with Sukh.

Tetris and cravings article https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666314000828.

Tetris and PTSD article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28348380.

Benefits of action video games http://www.journalofplay.org/sites/www.journalofplay.org/files/pdf-articles/7-1-article-video-games.pdf.

Connectivity and multiplayer games https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0078795.

Supernormal stimuli https://www.the-scientist.com/daily-news/supernormal-stimuli-43491.

You can connect with Sukh on Twitter @sukhpabial.

You can connect with Mark on Twitter @themarkgilroy.

Sukh talks to Ryan Tahmassebi in this episode about wellbeing and mental health. It's a really open discussion and Ryan shares his own struggles with depression, the impact it had on his life and family, and what he had to do to learn how to live with it, and be in a much stronger position years later.

It's a really good discussion and Sukh and Ryan explore how to talk about wellbeing in organisations, and the role of managers to support team members when they may be experiencing hard times, and the positive impact on organisations when you have open conversations about wellbeing and mental health. They also talk about how schools can do more to positively influence emotional and mental health amongst students.

Ryan talked about this blog post from Neil Morrison - Your sickness policy is killing the world https://change-effect.com/2018/11/05/your-sickness-policy-is-killing-the-world/.

You can learn more about the good work the Movember Foundation do here - https://uk.movember.com/.

You can see the work done by Robertson Cooper here https://www.robertsoncooper.com/.

If you want to know more about the mental health resources available to help you, check out Mind https://www.mind.org.uk/.

If you want someone to talk to about your mental health, call Mind on 0300 123 3393 or Samaritans on 116 123.

You can connect with Sukh on Twitter @sukhpabial.

You can connect with Ryan on Twitter @ryantahmassebi and on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryantahmassebi1986/.

In this episode, Sukh talks about the importance of appreciation for living more fulfilled and positive lives. He discusses in particular insights on appreciation from Martin Seligman in his book 'Flourish. One of the approaches he shares is Seligman's thinking on appreciative conversations with partners.

Sukh also discusses how to cultivate an attitude for appreciation by carrying out activities like regular reflection on #3GoodThings and carrying our gratitude visits. He also discusses his own thinking on how expressing appreciation to your partner is about showing vulnerability by sharing what's important to you, what you value about your partner and being able to express that in healthy and safe ways which cultivates love and shared appreciation.

The focus of the episode is about relationships and couples and talking about friends and loved ones.

The episode with Jo Wainwright is here https://threegood.podbean.com/e/the-3-good-podcast-episode-19-positive-psychology-in-life/.

The episode with more of an explanation about gratitude visits is here https://threegood.podbean.com/e/the-3-good-podcast-episode-8-on-kindness-and-gratitude-visits/.

You can get Martin Seligman's book Flourish on Amazon here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flourish-Understanding-Happiness-Wellbeing-psychology/dp/1857885694/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1541365018&sr=8-1&keywords=flourish+martin+seligman.

The book by Tal Ben-Shahar is here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Happier-Can-learn-Happy-Paperback/dp/0077123247/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1541365090&sr=8-1&keywords=tal+ben+shahar.

You can connect with Sukh on Twitter @sukhpabial.

This is a brilliant episode. Sukh talks to Jo Wainwright about how she believes in positive psychology as a way of everyday being and how it shows up for her in her day to day work. It's a really great exploration of the topic of positive psychology with two practitioners who have studied the subject, understand how to apply psychology in day to day living, and share personal stories of how they've developed their practise along the way. Also, Sukh and Jo are friends, and the episode highlights what it can feel like when friends have a mutually enjoyable conversation about a topic close to both their hearts.

They talk about many practical ways you can change how you have daily conversations, including using the word 'and' in place of but' and noticing how this generates a different direction for your conversation.

In the podcast, Jo mentions the following different works:

Maslow and his hierarchy of needs - explained fully here https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

Stephen Covey's 7th principle "Sharpen the saw" - reproduced on this website https://joe-kelly.com/sharpen-saw-build-inner-reserves/

You can connect with Jo on Twitter @jo_coaches.

You can connect with Sukh on Twitter @sukhpabial.

In this episode, Sukh takes the time to talk about mindfulness. He talks about how the act of mindfulness can sometimes be the wrong thing to focus on, and how being mindful in our daily living can help us identify what is helpful, what is healthy for us, and the impact we may be having on others. He talks about the discomfort we seem to have with sitting with our own thoughts and would much rather play a game of Solitaire than allow our own thoughts to be explored. Sukh shares his own examples of how he practises mindfulness and what this looks like on a daily basis. He also shares thoughts on how being more mindful can allow for better appreciation of what we experience on a daily basis.

You can connect with Sukh on Twitter @sukhpabial

This is a really important subject and Sukh's belief is men struggle to talk about their emotions in a way which is helpful and healthy. His guest on the episode is Gary Cookson, and together they discuss a range of factors which can impact on your emotional wellbeing and as a man how we might respond, and what are better ways to respond. Gary is very open about how certain points in career and life have impacted him, and Sukh shares his stories too. It's a really good exploration, and quite a cathartic one, where the discussion explores men's emotional health.

You can follow Sukh on Twitter @sukhpabial.

You can follow Gary on Twitter @gary_cookson and his company is called Epic HR.

This is a really important subject and Sukh's belief is men struggle to talk about their emotions in a way which is helpful and healthy. His guest on the episode is Gary Cookson, and together they discuss a range of factors which can impact on your emotional wellbeing and as a man how we might respond, and what are better ways to respond. Gary is very open about how certain points in career and life have impacted him, and Sukh shares his stories too. It's a really good exploration, and quite a cathartic one, where the discussion explores men's emotional health.

You can follow Sukh on Twitter @sukhpabial.

You can follow Gary on Twitter @gary_cookson and his company is called Epic HR.

This is a fab episode! Sukh invites Gemma Dale as a guest to the podcast to discuss physical wellbeing. They have a great discussion about why diets are fads, why they don't work, and what can be done about that from an individual perspective. Gemma openly shares about her journey to becoming a personal trainer, losing significant weight and how she got there. They talk about now we can understand nutrition much better and the impact our decisions about food have on our health and wellbeing. Gemma gives really good advice and guidance on how to think about physical activity and exercise, and in particular what different types of exercise do for the body. There's a lot of good exploration about mental health and attitudes to physical health and food in this episode.

You can connect with Sukh on Twitter @sukhpabial.

You can connect with Gemma on Twitter @hr_gem, and she keeps a fitness blog here All About Fitness https://allaboutfitness.org/.

Gemma mentioned the book The Angry Chef, which you can get here http://angry-chef.com/. 

In this episode, Sukh welcomes back Mark Gilroy. They have a full discussion about the impact of modern social technology such as email, social media and apps like WhatsApp have on our wellbeing and resilience. It's a great conversation, with some really nice exploration of how they both grew up with technology and gaming in different ways, what they've learned about how to control their usage of technology, and how they've learned to use apps and notifications differently. They give some great tips such as:

• Manage your WhatsApp groups by 'muting' the notifications

You can connect with Sukh on Twitter @sukhpabial.

Mark is the Managing Director of TMSDI. You can find out more about the company at tmsdi.com and connect with Mark on Twitter @ThatMarkGilroy.

During the episode, Mark talks about the following references:

New York Times article - How modern times are like a zombie onslaught https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/arts/television/05zombies.html?pagewanted=all

Academy of Management paper - what happens when we receive emails out of hours or on annual leave? https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amj.2014.0170

Harvard Business Review article - How to kill creativity https://hbr.org/1998/09/how-to-kill-creativity

New Scientist article - Info-mania https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7298-info-mania-dents-iq-more-than-marijuana/

Apple press release - Reduce interruptions and manage screen time https://www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/2018/06/ios-12-introduces-new-features-to-reduce-interruptions-and-manage-screen-time/

Link to Tim Wu's book - The Attention Merchants http://www.timwu.org/AttentionMerchants.html