Hello and welcome to episode 12 of the Life Well Lived podcast with Shane Breslin. 

The guest on this week’s episode is, I think it’s fair to say, a slight departure from the previous guests on this show, many whom brought several decades of experience in their chosen sector to bear on our conversation; Shinjini Das is the self-styled Go Getter Girl, the founder of Das media group, she is an entrepreneur, a speaker and author. 

She is in her mid-twenties, and we engaged in a wide-ranging conversation where we spoke about many things including: mentorship, and why mentorship hasn’t worked in her career so far, why she sees herself as an introvert despite her very public persona, why she sees social media a necessary evil for her business, being aware of the many upsides as well as many potential downsides of it, also her status as a female entrepreneur from an ethnic minority background and the part that that has played in her development and the opportunities it has given her to fix problems in the world and inspire other female and ethnic minority entrepreneurs to take bold action. 

I hope you’ll enjoy this episode, and you can always check out the other episodes on my website. 

Without further ado, on with the show. 

Hello and welcome to episode 11, of Life Well Lived, with Shane Breslin. 

This episode is a slight break from the norm. In previous weeks the podcast has been a series of interviews with various people from fields such as education, business, religion, nutrition, mental health support and much more besides. 

This week is a little different: a solo episode, where Shane talks about the power of honest conversation and some of his own challenges over the last couple of months.

Please enjoy the episode, do share it with your friends or anybody you’d think will be interested, and the podcast will be back to our normal rhythm of interviews with episode 12 next week.

All previous episodes of The Life Well Lived podcast are on Shane's website here, or on your favourite podcast player or app. 

Bibi Baskin is someone who will be familiar to a significant cohort of Irish people, who will recall watching and listening to her shows on the Irish television screens during the 1980s and 1990s. Thereafter she left for the UK and spent time with the BBC and ITV, but after just a few years there, she decided that the broadcasting life was no longer for her. She gave up her career, sold her house and went for a three-week holiday to India. That three-week holiday turned into a 15-year stay, during which time she set up a heritage hotel and practised a traditional Indian style of health and wellness known as Ayurveda.

Bibi has returned to Ireland in recent years and now spends at least some of her time giving speaking to groups about her experiences, particularly in the fields of health and wellness.

We talk about her memories of growing up in a small town in the north-west of Ireland, her time in the public eye as one of the country’s best known and best loved TV personalities, and why she decided to call time on that career. We also chat about the Ayurvedic way of life, why she decided to leave India, learning to love the rain and the art of doing nothing.

Thank you once again for listening to the show. As always, the aim of the Life Well Lived Podcast is to present conversations on navigating all the challenges that life presents us with, becoming our best selves in the world and ultimately living whatever it is that adds up to a life well lived, one of happiness and joy and fulfilment.

All previous episodes of the Life Well Lived Podcast are available on my website here or on your favourite podcast player or app.

Masami Sato is one of the most impressive people I've ever met.

Her humility and integrity are plain to see, and through her B1G1 organisation she is on a journey that is impacting at a massive level all over the world.

In this conversation we talked about self-sustainability, the power of small, how a realigned interpretation of business as a whole can make small businesses all over the globe a perfect vehicle to solve many of the world's problems, the concept behind the B1G1 initiative, how close she came to giving it all up during the early years of struggle, and a sense of where B1G1 can go in 2019 and beyond.

Time stamps

02:00: Masami's back story
07:00: Her travels around the world in her youth, including North and Central America, and her experiences
10:00: Her attempts at self-sustainability and what that taught her about the interconnectedness of everything
14:00: Business, nonprofits and the challenge of sustainability
19:00: Masami's very first business, producing healthy food in New Zealand and Australia
23:00: The idea and birth of B1G1
29:00: The power of small, and how small and medium businesses can aspire to having an even bigger impact than massive corporate CSR departments
31:00: The tech opportunity, and joining the dots between businesses around the world and the projects that need assistance
33:00: The process of vetting and adding projects to the B1G1 ecosystem
38:00: The early years of B1G1, and how close Masami came to quitting
49:00: Why a common language is a key part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
53:00: The exponential graph of B1G1's giving impacts
60:00: How businesses can become part of B1G1, and why Masami welcomes applications even from companies that might often be seen as negative to the world
65:00: B1G1's three focus words for 2019

Welcome to Episode 8 of the Life Well Lived podcast, the show that's all about navigating the challenges of life, being our best selves in the world and ultimately living what might add up to a life well lived - of fulfilment, health and happiness. 

This week’s conversation is all about food.

Orla McLaughlin is an Irish nutritionist, and she is a deep well of wisdom when it comes to food

Full disclosure: I worked with Orla a couple of years ago after I met her at an event and heard her speak about the relationship between gut health and mental health. At that time I was in the early stages of my journey towards taking every step I possibly could to better understand and better overcome my own depression. Working with Orla was an eye-opener, and it helped to transform my understanding of food and body weight and health, and has without a doubt had far-reaching benefits for me ever since then.

So given all that, it made sense for me to sit down and have a chat with Orla about food and nutrition.

In this conversation we hear how Orla’s own health challenges stirred her interest in nutrition in the first place, and we go through the mass confusion around diets (from paleo to ketones, from plant-based to carnivore and everything in between), about the importance of nutrition in relation to sleep and about the way the gut works. 

We also discuss calorie counts, macro-nutrients, intermittent fasting and food as medicine and Orla talks about her work with families with autistic children. 

I hope you enjoy this episode, and if you do, please do share it out with someone who might get something out of it.