The Mind Takeaway Podcast

If you are interested in creativity and music then this episode may be of interest to you.

We speak to a two-piece band from Australia and France formed on the streets of Berlin, creating a mix of classical piano, melodic vocals and heavy drums. Beranger Gras (vocals/piano) and Todd James (drums) formed as a duo in 2015, developing a very loyal fan base in Mauerpark, Berlin. It didn't take long for the band to start selling out shows and taking on the festival scene, playing festivals such as Lollapalooza and MELT Festival. That led to the duo signing to Sony Music, Germany last year, time spent recording a load of new material and an upcoming tour later this year.

We recorded this episode on location outside in our neighbourhood at Café Gut Gezogen, Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin.

You can connect with them both and find out more about them here:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/berangerofficial/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/berangerofficial/

Website: https://www.berangerofficial.com/

Time Stamps:

02:31 What did musicians' lives look like before COVID -19?

04:29 How did the lockdown and uncertainty help them to learn to live in a present moment

12:00 Their big tour got cancelled after just after few concerts and they started live streaming

14:30 The challenge of keeping momentum when you don’t receive immediate feedback from the crowd

15:38 Dealing with the challenges of criticism and the opinions of others

16:50 The impact of the lockdown on their mental health and how they dealt with it

18:30 How to deal with the different roles of being a musician and entrepreneur

23:18 Why is it important not to take yourself seriously

27:12 They share an interesting story about how they met and started performing together

29:25 How change and uncertainty sparked their creativity and what they do to be more creative.

41:50 They share the experience of their last big concert in Berlin and explain how they connect with their audience

58:49 What may happen to the music industry after COVID

If you are interested in Workplace Wellbeing then this episode may be of interest to you.

We speak to Lee Chambers, an Environmental Psychologist, Wellbeing Consultant and Founder of Essentialise Workplace Wellbeing. Having spent the last 10 years working in a variety of fields, including local government, a corporate organisation, and in elite sports, he has now brought his experience and qualifications with the aim to impact the wellbeing of thousands of individuals and businesses through organisational wellbeing advancement while looking to promote conscious and purpose lead leadership internally.

Lee has qualifications in Performance Nutrition, Environmental Psychology and Advanced Sleep Consultancy, and he delivers multi-disciplinary workshops focused on improving performance and productivity through increasing employee wellbeing. This is an issue very close to his heart, as after losing the ability to walk in 2014 due to chronic illness, he has battled back to achieve a positive health outcome, and is now on the pathway to become medication free.

He also presents the Health and Wellbeing show on Ribble FM Radio, and speaks in Educational establishments about his varied career path, health challenges and having a resilient mindset.

Based in Preston in the North of the UK, Lee is currently working with business owners and employee teams to create culture change, wellbeing strategies and champions. He is a father of 2, coaches a disability football team, and enjoys eating good food with good friends. He is currently writing his first book, “How To Conquer Anything”, which will be released in November 2020.

You can connect with Lee and find out more about him here:

Listeners can download Lee’s Authentic Purpose Book: https://www.essentialise.co.uk/ebook

Lee’s Consultancy: https://leechambers.org

Twitter: @essentialise

Facebook/Instagram: @essentialisecoach

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lee-chambers-278a6518a/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leechambersessentialise

TimeStamps:

03:57 Why do so many organisations struggle with workplace wellbeing and improving the working environment?

06:57 What will the workplace look like in the future?

13:56 Employee wellbeing comes down to two simple things: the autonomy of choice and the appreciation for what they do

14:40 Why is uncertainty important for growth and positive change

17:47 Lee shares a personal experience of losing his ability to walk and how that suffering sparked a passion in him to use that as a challenge for growth.

22:45 How to learn from our challenges and failures?

31:50 How it takes a real crisis such as COVID -19 to amplify how we really can't see that far ahead and yet it does bring clarity by bringing communities together and helping people form deeper human connections.

43:80 How we need to be nudged by difficulties and crisis in order to grow, as they highlight areas we have sometimes been neglecting.

If you hold a leadership position or aspire to be in one then this episode may be of interest to you.

We speak to Sabina Nawaz, a global CEO coach, leadership keynote speaker, and writer working in over 26 countries. She advises C-level executives in Fortune 500 corporations, government agencies, nonprofits and academic institutions. Sabina started her career in software development at Microsoft and then led the company’s executive development and succession planning efforts for over 11,000 managers and 700 executives. She spoke at hundreds of seminars, events, and conferences including TEDx. Currently, She sits on the board of Power and Systems, a leadership development institute.

Sabina believes the greatest privilege of working with executives is bearing witness to their acts of courage. You can read her articles on Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and Inc.

Before we start our conversation with Sabina, Peter and I would like to invite you to join the Authentic Leaders Community where we explore our innate capacity to lead, be creative, draw on our own resilience and build human connection in an age of technology, digitisation and information overload.

You can also find the link in the show notes: www.themindtakeaway.com/authenticleaderscommunity

Enjoy listening!

You can connect with Sabina and find out more about her here:

Website: http://www.sabinanawaz.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sabinacoaching/

TimeStamps:

01:05  Sabina recalls her life-changing story of holding a knife to her own throat in India, Calcutta.

08:44 How taking leaps of faith can be beneficial when everything in your brain is screaming “Don’t go there!”

10:19 Why it takes an imbalance of positivity to have a balanced hearing, as we humans tend to pivot on the negative. The ratio of 5 positive voices: 1 critical voice creates balance.

11:20 The more senior you are, the less truth you receive in your role and the challenges of receiving the truth.

13:48 How we love to have heroes and villains, and this is part of the human condition.

16:06 How to get people to listen to feedback and act on it.

19:13 You have to come back to your own why first, and by wanting to be better your business results will improve.

20:19 How can leaders set up a system to withstand pressure so you are not putting everything on your shoulders?

23:00 Why is it leaders comfortable in their own skin are able to handle challenges during a crisis?

25:07 One of the relationships that get ignored the most during this crisis is the one with ourselves.

29:35 All bets are off, everything has changed, so let's challenge these assumptions that we have.

31:44 Sabina talks about some of the ways we get in the way of ourselves and our immunity to change.

38:07 How the practice of gratitude has been a game-changer for Sabina and how it can benefit you too.

If you are an entrepreneur, thinking of starting a business or interested in podcasting, then this episode may be of interest to you.

In this episode, we speak to James Mulvany, a successful entrepreneur who over the past 10 years, has built multiple internet companies plus a property portfolio and has made a range of angel investments in startups! Having actually never had a job in his life, he started his first business when leaving school. James is the founder of Podcast.co and Radio.co, two companies doing pioneering things in the online audio space.

You can connect with James and find out more about him here:

Social Media: https://jamesm.com/connect

Radio.co: https://radio.co

The main takeaways from this episode:

Timestamps:

5:22 How James turned two of his interests with passion and creativity into the seeds of what became his success businesses

8:18 For his many successes, James had more failures which he sees as being a crucial part of being an entrepreneur.

9:16 James shares his learnings from his first big setback when a deal with AOL and his first business didn’t go as planned.

15:11 Why it is important to think about what is working and focus on that one thing vs constantly trying to come up with new ideas because you only have so much mental bandwidth to give it your all.

16:25 Why is it really valuable to identify your strengths and weaknesses plus hire people who are way better than you in doing certain things?

18:47 How it’s really important to trust your people, give them autonomy, delegate and let them get on with things.

21:01 The big, fancy, expensive machine in his tech company is his people.

22:57 Our creative ideas from the past are never wasted, they just transform into something more relevant to where you are at any given moment.

28:25 Why is it more important to look at what people's capabilities, their experience and if they would be a good culture fit for your team rather than the qualification when you are hiring talent.

31:22 What are the first steps to start your business or create a new product?

35:15 What are the basic requirements for starting your own podcast and why it's never been a better time to start one?

In this episode, we speak to John Murphy,  a results-oriented business coach and mentor to senior executives and CEOs. He's a great communicator with broad experience and is skilled at discussing issues that make businesses and individuals grow and thrive. John lives and works in the south of France, originally from Ireland. Before starting his own business, John enjoyed a highly successful career in the corporate world. He began as a door-to-door life assurance salesman and culminated as the CEO of a Pan European Life Assurance Company in Ireland. John started his business, John Murphy International, in 2004 and has worked worldwide across a broad range of industries. His clients include major corporates such as Pfizer, Circle K, Merck, State Street Bank, Vodafone and others. 

Enjoy listening as we talk about the future of leadership, relationships, vulnerability, authenticity and workspace culture.

You can connect with John and find out more about him here:

Email: [email protected]

Website: johnmurphyinternational.com  

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmurphyinternational

10 Key Traits of Top Business Leaders: //www.johnmurphyinternational.com/10-key-traits-free-download

Timestamps:

00:08:00 What is the difference between success and winning and how a misunderstanding do the two create dysfunction?

00:16:00 How can we create psychological safety?

00:20:00 Why do you need to be real/authentic/yourself, warts and all, to be a leader?

00:24:00 Old-style managers need to transform into leaders because what worked in the past doesn’t work any more

00:30:00  For the growth of the organisation, culture is more important than any strategy.

00:36:00 What should we look for when recruiting new members into our team?

In this episode Mira speaks to Sue Everatt, a volunteer for The Venus Project for twelve years. Originally from the UK, she has been living in Spain for 41 years and is the point of contact for that country. Her duties include being the coordinator for the Spanish language translation team and she also collaborates in an advisory capacity for the international support admin team for The Venus Project.

Sue is also known for her engaging talks, two of them for Tedx where she introduces people to the ideas of The Venus Project. Sue has travelled to countries including Italy, Latvia, Sweden, the US as well as various cities around Spain.

You can connect with Sue and find out more about The Venus Project here:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010376447845

The Venus Project website: www.thevenusproject.com

Documentary “The Choice is Ours”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb5ivvcTvRQ

We talk about:

➡ How The Venus Project proposes a total redesign of society based on a resource-based economy.

➡ Can technology in the right hands help us create a better world?

➡ What has to happen for a society to change and move beyond politics, poverty and war?

➡ The lessons learned during the global pandemic that can help us build a more sustainable future.

➡ Functional selfishness, a term coined by Jacque Fresco, founder of the Venus Project.

➡ If a basic universal income would really help or is it a patchwork for a much bigger problem?

➡ What would society look like if it was designed for the wellbeing of everyone?

Timestamps:

00:03:40 How The Venus Project proposes a total redesign of society based on a resource-based economy.

00:08:44 Can technology in the right hands help us create a better world?

00:11:00 What has to happen for a society to change and move beyond politics, poverty and war?

00:16:00 The lessons learned during the global pandemic that can help us build a more sustainable future.

00:23:00 Functional selfishness, a term coined by Jacque Fresco, founder of the Venus Project.

00:24:00 If a basic universal income would really help or is it a patchwork for a much bigger problem?

00:26:00 What would society look like if it was designed for the wellbeing of everyone?

In this episode, we speak to Dr Giles P Croft, a psychology graduate and former NHS surgeon who stepped aside from clinical practice for a decade to explore a number of career paths, including health informatics, cycling journalism, public speaking and high street retail with his wife. He is now back in the healing profession, tackling the root cause of stress and its many harmful effects by leading clients to a better understanding of the human experience.

You can connect and find out more about Giles’s work here:

Website: https://gilespcroft.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drgilespcroft/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/gilespcroft

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drgilespcroft

We talk about:

➡ Why and how did Giles change his career from being surgeon to coaching people?

➡ How can we  can all build our resilience for the future?

➡ Can we plan and predict our lives? What happens when we let go of plans and start living our lives?

➡ What we really want is on the other side of fear. Giles had a fear of public speaking and after overcoming his fear he realised he really enjoyed it.

➡ How can we establish a deep connection with our authentic selves and other people?

➡ What is intuition and what happens when we start following it?

➡ For the end, Giles reminded us that all we have is here and now. All those fears, worries and predictions about the future or resentments and hurts from the past are here to remind us to return back into the present moment.

In this episode, we speak to Glenn Behenna, senior lecturer and programme manager at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. He has more than 20 years experience in Higher Education in a teaching capacity and has lectured for the Open University Business School in the area of leadership and management. His background is in consultancy and facilitation to the UK, and the Welsh Government in the areas of Leadership, Knowledge Management and Project Management. Glen values real-world experiences and the real power of his leadership and teaching methods comes from the variety of his life and work experiences.

You can connect and find out more about Glenn’s work here:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glennbehenna/

Email: [email protected]

MBA Sustainability Leadership: https://www.uwtsd.ac.uk/mba-sustainability-leadership-online/

We talk about:

00:03:50 Glenns biggest realisation in life and how Glenn recognised that he is actually already supporting the community with the work he does, something he always longed for.

00:05:00 Why is it important to have a rich experience of life in order to lead, teach and coach others?

00:15:00 The challenges of giving and receiving feedback in different professional roles and developing the art of doing it sustainably.

00:26:00 What did Glenn learn from his experience of being a policeman and how that prepared him for his future career, becoming a leader and a teacher.

00:31:30 What conditions have to be met in order for an organisation to become truly sustainable and how the COVID-10 crisis could be a stimulus for change in organisations, focusing on sustainability, not profit.

00:40:54 Today simple problem solving isn’t enough anymore we need to think wider, we need to be courageous and try something different. We need to get comfortable getting out of our comfort zone to prepare for tomorrow.

00:42:00 Why are our curiosity and real-life experiences are most important for learning and developing?

00:49:00 Being authentic sometimes means choosing the harder path at the moment but in the long run, it has immense value for yourself and others.

Our guest is Tony Banta, a systems engineer, innovation consultant, and host of the Client Whisperer Show. Beginning his career as a self-taught software developer, Tony quickly realized that the best code could never solve broader leadership issues within organizations.

Today Tony works with other client-businesses to maximize client results, increase client retention, and streamline the client fulfilment experience. Tony’s writing has been featured in Forbes, The Huffington Post, and Recruiter Magazine to name a few.

You can connect with Tony and find out more about his work here:

Podcast: https://clientwhisperer.show

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tonybanta

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonybanta

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theclientwhisperer

00:43 What is a client whisperer?

03:30 How to manage difficult clients?

07:43 The world is changing and how it will look like in a few months, years and decades?

08:43 Why are people buying so much toilet paper these days? How fear affects what we do? Fear creates separation between people and we become individualistic.

09:25 What it takes to innovate? Innovation is inherently unselfish if you innovate you need to have a certain degree of empathy as innovation is not possible if we are in fear and think only about ourselves

09:55 How do we change and truly learn what it takes for us to succeed? What happens when we let go of our ego?

20:00 Why is it important to slow down and show confidence to influence other people

27:10 Why is failure important for success?

31:00 How to avoid big mistakes and expose our blind spots?

38:00 Why do you need to be yourself in order to lead others?

41:00 How to recognise someone’s true beliefs?

43:50 How to connect with people?

45:00 Parting words. What has to happen for you to become a leader?

Our guest is Satyen Raja, founder and CEO of the multi-million-dollar transformational academy WarriorSage. Satyen has impacted over 100,000 students from over 50 countries around the world. After 35 years of rigorous study & practice in both creating enlightened business growth and developing higher consciousness, Satyen works privately with CEOs, high impact individuals, executive teams who have mastered accomplishment in the financial and public world, but now want a deeper balance, illumination and self-realized equilibrium that he calls Peak ExistenceTM. Satyen combines the power of the warrior and wisdom of the sage to lead leaders worldwide into their highest self-knowledge, self-expression and impact.

You can connect and find out more about Satyen’s work here:

https://warriorsage.com/

https://www.undercurrent.com/

We talk about:

➡ The leadership evolution that is happening right now and the importance of shifting to a new leadership model that serves the greater good.

➡ To become a better leader, Satyan explains that you are not required to change your leadership style but look inwards and become more authentic. This leads to building trust, expressing integrity and inner strength, which people will resonate with

➡ What are the results of loosening the grip of excessive control and how it can free us to achieve bigger and better results?

➡The Importance of developing both masculine and feminine qualities in ourselves to become a world-class leader

➡ Satyen also shared a simple exercise to show us the obvious impact on our own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others when we uplift the person next to us

Enjoy Listening!