The Self-Leadership Podcast

Can you pursue ambitious goals without making your self-worth depend on whether you achieve them? Marketer and entrepreneur Yana Lapitskaya joins Josh and Anna on The Self Leadership Podcast to explore that question through five practices that help her build a fulfilling, balanced life. For Yana, tennis is a place to practice focus, meet people and learn how to move on from a bad point. Writing gi...

In this episode of The Self Leadership Podcast, Anna and Josh speak with Manjot Bhatia, a father and entrepreneur based in Berlin, about five practices that help him live more intentionally. Manjot shares how work pressure began affecting the way he showed up for his family, and how meditation and yoga became important to him. He explains how he makes room for rest during the working day, chooses...

Across Episodes 9 to 16, our guests shared 40 self-leadership practices drawn from their own lives. For this highlight reel, Anna-Maria Tsyupko and Josh Winterson picked one practice from each episode that had the biggest impact on them. New to the podcast? Start here. If you've been following along, you might find a practice you'd like to revisit. Practices selected: Ep9, 13:17: Breaking away fro...

Florestano Compagno became very good at showing up for other people, often before asking what he needed himself. In this episode of The Self Leadership Podcast, he joins Anna and Josh to discuss what he calls selective presence : choosing where your attention and energy belong. He explains how perfectionism and assumed expectations pushed him to overdeliver, and why being present requires clear bo...

Stress is a familiar state for Saliha Van Nuland. Growing up in a chaotic environment left her accustomed to hypervigilance, and she still notices how easily her nervous system can move into fight or flight. Childhood chronic bronchitis meant repeated hospital stays and having to relearn how to breathe. Years later, Saliha trained as a breathing teacher and began using the breath to notice stress,...

The first month in Angola was awful. Beth had quit her job as a petroleum engineer, sold the house in Aberdeen and moved with her husband to a country where she knew nobody, didn’t speak the language and couldn’t safely go out on her own. He left for work every morning and was the only person she saw all day. What got her through was a line she found while looking up motivational quotes: everythin...

Creative burnout pushed Diego Scarsella to leave his London life behind and rethink what meaningful work could feel like. After returning to Italy, the product designer set out on a seven month overland journey from near Milan to Bali, travelling one bus ride at a time to find his spark again. Diego joins Anna and Josh to share what the journey revealed about courage, intentional living and the sp...

Anna-Maria and Josh speak with Minna Schmidt, a financial wellbeing coach and co founder of Flourish Financially, a money and wealth academy for women. Minna shares how her relationship with finance changed over time, why so many people avoid looking at their money, and how financial confidence can create more freedom, security and choice. The conversation also moves far beyond money. Minna talks...

At 33, Ricardo was lying on a couch, recently divorced and freshly out of his second business, when he saw his future with uncomfortable clarity. If he kept going, he'd be a 60 year old salesman in the wine trade, living a life he never chose. He got up and changed direction. Ricardo is a serial entrepreneur and father of three who built his own businesses for most of his adult life. In this episo...

Self leadership does not always begin with another goal. Sometimes it begins with a pause. Anna and Josh are joined by Carmen Balacianu, a former Senior Vice President of Marketing, who now works as an Executive and Awakened Leadership Coach. Carmen shares how a life that looked successful from the outside became a “golden cage”, and how burnout helped her reconnect with her body, purp...

Anna and Josh sit down with technologist Aditya Bhardwaj , whose approach to self leadership is built around one idea that keeps resurfacing throughout the conversation: curiosity. Addy shares how the same thinking he uses to solve complex technology problems has shaped the way he approaches life, decisions, relationships and difficult situations. Rather than trying to predict every outcome, he ta...

What does self-leadership mean to you? Across eight episodes of Season 1, we asked every guest the same question. No two answers were the same. This is a 15-minute highlight reel featuring every guest from Season 1 of The Self-Leadership Podcast in conversation with hosts Anna-Maria and Josh . Whether you have been with us since Episode 1 or this is your first time here, this is the best place to...

Victor is the CEO of SerenityGPT with a PhD in AI and a decade in capital markets behind him. This conversation is about the moments that actually changed how he lives. Turning 40 and realising time is not infinite, watching his son arrive and seeing every other priority shrink overnight, leaving a silent meditation retreat after five days because he discovered that stillness was not where he foun...

Self leadership for founders often gets buried under investor expectations, startup chaos and sleepless nights. Alissa Rohrbach, a clinical psychologist turned repeat founder, discovered this the hard way when she launched her healthcare startup Recovery Cat while raising a newborn on five hours of broken sleep. In this episode, Alissa shares the five practices that helped her reclaim her wellbein...

Most of us wait for a good day before we give ourselves permission to do the things that actually help. We tell ourselves we'll meditate when things calm down, run when we have more energy, read when we have more time. But what if the practices you keep postponing are the very things that make the hard days bearable? In this episode of the Self-Leadership Podcast, AI co-founder and product leader...

Most of us know how to perform. We show up, deliver, push through, even when there is nothing left in the tank. But what happens when you finally stop running on empty and start leading yourself with the same intention you give everything else? In this episode of the Self-Leadership Podcast, product leader Valeria De Grazia gets honest about the gap between outward achievement and inner depletion,...

You know you should move your body. You know you should tackle the hard stuff first. You know you should stop scrolling and start building. So why is it so hard to actually do it? Nick Heller is a serial entrepreneur and technologist, who thinks the answer isn't more information. It's self-mastery. In this episode, Nick joins hosts Anna Tsyupko and Josh Winterson to share the five practice...

What happens when a startup founder learns that ruthless prioritisation isn't about doing more? Jessy Conflon, co-founder of an AI content quality platform, shares the mindset shift that transformed her from box-ticking employee to intentional leader. Jessy shares her framework for managing competing priorities across business, family, and personal wellbeing. She reveals how calendar blocking beca...

Most people live on autopilot, chasing external markers of success without asking if they actually want what they're chasing. Anna Tsyupko's wake-up call came as a severe panic attack that her body used to force what her mind refused to accept. As a fintech startup founder and COO, Anna ignored her coach's burnout warning for eight months. Then the panic attack hit. Even after that, she pushed thr...

Most people treat life like a series of reactions to whatever happens next. In this debut episode of the Self-Leadership Podcast, co-host Josh Winterson reveals the five transformative practices that helped him shift from reactive living to intentional life design. As a startup founder, father, and personal development enthusiast, Josh breaks down practical self-leadership habits anyone can implem...