Hello and welcome to Episode number 17 of the Life Well Lived Podcast with me, Shane Breslin. 

If this is your first time here, I’m thrilled to have you. The Life Well Lived podcast is a series of interviews about navigating and overcoming the challenges life, discovering our genuine true self and bringing that self to the world, and ultimately living a life of fulfilment, contribution and happiness. My guest on this episode is someone who has crossed my radar in Ireland so many times over the past couple of years that I just had to have her on.

Amanda Delaney is a conduit and trailblazer. She has a reputation for her ability to connect people, using her strong core values of love, sharing and serving. One of her mottos is 'Together everyone achieves more' and she creates tribes of people who genuinely want others to succeed. She is the founder of We Can and We Will, a series of events that helps to bring people together and grow a tribe of people who share similar values and a will to succeed in business by contributing to the world.

In this conversation we talk about 

• the devastating impact of alcohol from an early age
• the day she hit rock bottom and made a quiet but firm decision to quit drinking
• how that decision gave her back the seven days in every week and what she’s working on now that she has this extra time on her hands
• the We Can and We Will movement, both where it started from and where it’s going
• what Amanda sees as the biggest obstacle to success for so many people at the start of their business journey, and practical steps to overcome that obstacle
• her relationship with God and religion
• how she uses fear
• the merits of making a yearly success plan

Thank you once more for coming to the Life Well Lived podcast for this episode, so with that, onto the show, and my conversation with Amanda Delaney.

• [4:10] Three things Amanda is grateful for right now
• [6:10] Where Amanda came from — three years in secondary school and never fitting in — leaving school at the age of 14 — factory apprenticeship — whirlwind of a noisy life (parties, entertainment, drinking, smoking and the black hole of depression) — 9 month fitness course — started to learn communication, teaching and work ethic
• [10:30] The devastation of alcohol — drinking at night-clubs at 14 — the norm became 3-4 nights a week — getting consistent love but sometimes tough love from her husband helped to change her mindset — the rock-bottom moment that changed her relationship with alcohol forever
• [21:10] How she marked the occasion of being one year off alcohol — going live on Facebook — 8am, crying uncontrollably through tears of happiness that I had been able to put it behind me, but also sadness that I had let my kids down — when I gave it up, I now had seven days in the week. 
• [23:30] What she’s working on now that she has 7 days in every week — beauty salon, schools, network marketing — having businesses but zero business skills — overcoming intimidation and the fear of judgment to embrace networking
• [25:40] The “We Can and We Will” movement — sharing ideas — public speaking — networking, inspiration and transformation — allowing people to share a story and step into their light — the prevalence of bullshit in the world and the general appetite for authenticity — why stories resonate — how people can get involved (Facebook page and Eventbrite) — It’s for business owners and people on a journey of discovery through life — the grand plan and vision for WCAWW — next event in Lucan on September 12th
• [31:40] Why fear of judgment is the biggest blocker to business success — Some practical tips to overcome

Hey everyone. I've had a few interruptions, distractions and setbacks in the past few weeks so please forgive the lag time before this overdue Episode 16 of the Life Well Lived podcast.

My guest this week is Dr Olivia Hurley, who has in recent years quickly forged a reputation as one of Ireland’s brightest young academics.

Dr Olivia Hurley is Assistant Professor/Lecturer in Psychology and Sport (& Health) Psychology at the IADT, the Institute of Art, Design and Technology, in Dun Laoghaire in Dublin, where she runs a Certificate in Sport Psychology Level 8 part-time program at IADT, a course which has attracted some of Ireland’s top elite sports stars, coaches and business people, including Leinster and Ireland rugby international Jordan Larmour, world amateur boxing champion Kellie Harrington and Niall Breslin, the musician, mental health campaigner and co-founder of the mental health organisation, A Lust for Life.

In this wide-ranging conversation we chatted about:

• Why she has mixed feelings about the term “motivation”
• The difference between confidence and self-belief
• How elite athletes get the best out of themselves, and what all of us can learn from that
• Why she has a disdain for the quest for happiness
• The key factors that distinguish between the highest achievers and those who don’t quite get there
• The concepts of green and blue exercise
• The intersection between performance, psychology and technology in the 21st century
• And why she’s not afraid of artificial intelligence

If anything in here resonates with you, as always I’d be delighted if you were able to share it out on social media, email or even with old-school actual word of mouth (!) with your friends, family or colleagues. 

The Life Well Lived podcast is all about navigating the challenges of life, being our best selves in the world and ultimately living whatever it is that amounts to your very own life well lived, one of fulfilment, contribution and happiness (a different type of happiness to that which Olivia confronts in this podcast!)

All previous episodes of the show are available in your podcast app, or by visiting the podcast page on my website shanebreslin.com here.

Welcome to Episode 15 of the Life Well Lived podcast with Shane Breslin.

If this is your first time visiting this page or listening to the podcast, thank you so much! We live in a world of infinite choice in every direction, and I’m so grateful that you’ve chosen to spend some time here. 

I will never take that for granted, and I really hope you get a lot out of this episode, and any other episodes you get to listen to.

The Life Well Lived podcast is all about navigating the challenges of life, becoming our best selves in the world and ultimately living every day in a way that amounts to whatever is our own individual life well lived, one of fulfilment and contribution and ultimately happiness.

Among my earlier interviews are Masami Sato, the inspirational Japanese businesswoman who started B1G1, a fantastic organisation which aims to join the dots between small businesses all over the world and high-impact projects on the ground; Frank Diamond, former missionary priest from Derry in Ireland who tells his own unique story of empowerment and leadership and the three L’s of love; and Bibi Baskin, who rose to fame in Ireland and the UK as a familiar and ever-present face on the national TV screens in the 1980s and 1990s before she left it all behind to live in India for 15 years. She shared so much wisdom about life and living in her chat with me. All the episodes are available here, or in your podcast app (whichever podcast app you use).

The guest on this week’s episode of the show is Sarah Breslin of Sarah Breslin Wellness.

Now the first thing to note is that Sarah and I, while sharing the same last name, are not related. Breslin is not a massively common name in Ireland so there’s a good chance if we go back a few generations we might find a common lineage, but we first crossed each other’s paths just a few months ago.

Sarah’s story will, I think, be engaging on a lot of levels. She worked for many years in the financial services industry but in the end became disengaged with her daily grind there and felt that she needed to do something that actually mattered at a tangible level in the lives of others.

Having started building her skills and qualification in health and wellbeing alongside her work, she eventually started her own wellness company, Sarah Breslin Wellness, based in Maynooth in County Kildare in Ireland. Among other things, Sarah specialises in colonic hydrotherapy, which fascinates me. I’ve spoken on several occasions about the links between gut health and mental health from the perspective of nutrition (check out Episode 8 of this podcast with Orla McLaughlin for lots more on that) and Sarah approaches gut health this from the opposite end of the spectrum, so to speak!

I’m fascinated by what is often called functional or holistic or even alternative treatment, and we get into a discussion of alternative vs mainstream treatment during this episode.

As ever, if you get something out of this, or you hear something that someone else might benefit from hearing, I would LOVE if you could share this out just by taking a screenshot and posting to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or whatever is your preferred social network. Your help helps me to get this podcast to more listeners, and I’m very grateful for every share or like or link.

Find Sarah Breslin Wellness on Facebook, Instagram and the web.

The voice you heard just now is that of Dr Celine Mullins, the guest on this week’s episode of the show.

We spend roughly a third of our lives at work, and I think it’s fair to say that in a lot of cases the workplace is not working. So I was really looking forward to discussing work and the workplace with someone who has plenty of experience of the problems at play and, more importantly, how to go about solving them so that the WORK WE DO can be just as beneficial for us as individuals as it often is for companies, and doesn’t lead to stress, burnout, depression, hypertension  or a host of other physical and mental health conditions.

Dr Celine Mullins is a Psychologist, Coach and Training Consultant. She is the founder and CEO of Adaptas Training and has worked with leading Multinationals, SME’s, Governmental and Educational agencies to help improve learning, development and overall effectiveness in the workplace by making real and lasting change happen, something that often does not happen with traditional approaches to learning and development.

Celine’s work with Adaptas has a focus on narrowing the gap between the training room and the real world, using what we know about the brain and behaviour from psychology and neuroscience. Her specialties include; leadership communication, eradicating behaviours and limiting beliefs that restrict performance and relationships, while improving team communication and collaboration.

Int his episode we talked about 

• How to work in an open-plan, instant-messaging workplace
• How 9 out of 10 managers are not equipped for management
• Why the fact that we're not completely logical, rational beings, and the impact that has on the workplace
• Why problems are always about communication (and what to do about it)
• How individuals can adapt organisational values
• Artificial intelligence and whether we should fear the robots
• And lots more

I hope you enjoy this episode. If you do, I'd be grateful if you could share it wherever you share stuff - LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, email or even at the water-cooler in your open-plan, instant-messaging office!

See you again soon with another episode of the Life Well Lived podcast.

Shane

Hello and you’re very welcome to episode 13 of the Life Well Lived podcast with me, Shane Breslin. 

My guest on this week’s episode of the show is Caroline McMenamin, from Derry in the North of Ireland.

Caroline McMenamin is a really, really fascinating individual and somebody I’ve been paying attention to for quite some time online through her various work on social media like LinkedIn and Instagram amongst others.

Her story is a fascinating one. Caroline has dealt with a mental health disorder from the age of 4. She was diagnosed eventually and treated for OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) at the age of 21, but she has very stark and vivid memories of how OCD had manifested itself in her childhood going all the way back to her early childhood. 

Caroline has taken her experiences forward with Replenish, her venture which aims to create a positive mental health culture in workplaces, schools and communities through consultancy workshops and events.

We talked about a wide range of subject matters in this episode, including Caroline's experiences with OCD, going back to college to study Integrative Counseling and eventually becoming an Integrative Counseling specialist in CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapies).

We also talked about the role trans-generational trauma can play in our lives, we talked about medication and its part in the treatment of mental health conditions, and Caroline spoke bravely and openly about her own suicidal ideation in her earlier years and why she now no longer fears death.

I really hope you’ll get out of this conversation as much as I did, I really enjoyed it – Caroline McMenamin is such an impressive individual and the world is really her oyster, and I have no doubt that we’ll be hearing a lot more about Caroline and Replenish in the months and years to come.