A New Way of Being

Simply refusing to give up - even after crushing disappointments. Dame Katherine Grainger is Britain’s most decorated female Olympian and its greatest ever female rower. She won gold at London 2012 and silver at four other Games, and her ability to persist and keep going through setbacks helped set her apart. In this episode, Katherine relives her unforgettable Olympic journey, and unpicks the les...

Sometimes a drive for achievement and 'success' can come from disquiet, as Caitlyn Jenner - the 1976 Olympic Decathlon Champion - explained when I visited her house in Malibu My debut book - Champion Thinking: How to find success without losing yourself - is available for pre-order now. Drawing on some of my favourite interviews from this podcast over the last five years, I want to challenge our i...

Staying committed to your path, even when you feel you are missing out. Josh Warrington is a two-time boxing World Champion, who made history in 2018 when he became the first male boxer from Leeds to win a major world title. Early in Josh's career, he was juggling boxing with working as a dental technician and studying at Leeds University, which didn't leave much time to spend with his friends. He...

My debut book - Champion Thinking: How To Find Success Without Losing Yourself - is available for pre-order now. Drawing on some of my favourite interviews from this podcast over the last five years, I want to challenge our ideas about 'success', and where peace, joy and fulfilment are truly to be found. Flow is a fundamental theme. Pre-order here : https://www.simonmundie.com/book Website : simon...

Your values are the things that you believe are important in the way you live and work. They (should) determine your priorities, and, deep down, they may be the measures you use to tell if your life is turning out the way you want it to. When the things that you do and the way you behave match your values, life often flows. But when these don't align with your personal values, that's when things f...

What can reflecting on history teach us about living well now? In this episode we are talking about learning lessons from history, particularly perspective and empathy. We also question what impact the suppression of the 'feminine principle', as has happened over the last two thousand years, has had. In the first half we talk about getting in flow, digital minimalism, tapping into creativity, the...

The huge cognitive cost of constantly checking your phone - and what you can do about it. My guest is Johann Hari - author of Stolen Focus - who explains the 'switch cost effect', and outlines some simple steps to rediscover the joys of focus, which is fundamental if you are going to get into flow. Speaking of flow, my debut book - Champion Thinking: How to find success without losing yourself - i...

Life Lessons from a top CEO. David Shelley is Group CEO of Hachette UK, the second largest British book publishing group. He's held that position since 2018, and will soon also add the CEO role for the company’s United States’ division, Hachette Book Group, to his roster. He will move to New York to take up the role in January. This conversation is all about what it takes to become and remain a to...

We crave connection for a good reason. Research shows us that loneliness is on the rise, and that a lack of human connection can be more harmful to your health than obesity, smoking and high blood pressure. Dr Rangan Chatterjee - physician and host of the 'Feel Better, live More' podcast - explains how the boom in podcasts reflects this need for connection. He also explains what other life-changin...

We spend a third of our lives asleep - so why not use some of that time to learn, heal from past traumas and grow psychologically and even physically? Charlie Morley is a teacher of lucid dreaming, which is where you are asleep and in a dream, but you know that you are dreaming and can start to consciously direct your dream at will. It's a practice that has been used for thousands of years by Budd...

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” People often talk about the importance of marginal gains, and improving by 1% in as many areas as possible. However, most of the top performers I have spoken to say by far the most important thing is consistent effort over a long period of time. But finding the fuel to ma...

How to make sure you are in the right place at the right time - with the former intelligence officer turned entrepreneur, author and Farnham Street founder Shane Parrish. In this episode, Shane explains the art of 'positioning', and how to play life in 'easy mode' rather than 'hard mode', a skill used by the world's most consistent top performers. He identifies the barriers to clear thinking - Emo...

Success is not synonymous with happiness. So many high performers reach the top of the proverbial Everest only to discover that it did not provide the lasting satisfaction that it seemed to promise. One such person is Caitlyn Jenner, who won gold in the Olympic decathlon in 1976. However, the issues that were bubbling away under the surface were free to reassert themselves once the Games were over...

Communicating what we want to say for maximum impact is far from easy. It’s also not something many people work on. But Ros Atkins, creator of the hugely successful viral BBC videos 'Ros Atkins on...' is truly a master of the craft, and in this episode he shares some of the key techniques and outlooks that make him stand out. Ros has identified the ten elements of what makes a good explanation as...

How you do anything is how you do EVERYTHING. What matters is what you do today. That’s the message Stoic author Ryan Holiday emphasises in this bitesize episode. Ryan has written a number of best-selling books on stoicism, including The Obstacle is the Way . He described stoicism as 'the most practical of all philosophies', and he explains that - in his view - it is important to understand that i...

The power of skillful conversation - from the personal to the global level. This week's conversation is with professor Shane O'Mara, a neuroscientist of the top order who is professor of Experimental Brain Research at Trinity College Dublin. He is also the author of Talking Heads: The New Science of How Conversations Shapes Our World. Shane explains the role that conversation and memory has in our...

The power of letting go of the need for a specific outcome to go your way. We are halfways through the Strictly Come Dancing season 2023, so what better time than now to revisit my conversation with glitterball favourite and former Strictly champion Kevin Clifton. Kevin was runner up on four occasions while on the show, which triggered some of his old competitive wounds, before finally lifting the...

Embracing the right type of failure with the groundbreaking pioneer of psychological safety, who was voted the most influential international thinker in 2019. Professor Amy Edmonson's work has transformed the culture of leading companies, universities and organisations around the world - and her thinking can change your life too. Amy argues that we need to embrace failure - as long as it is the ri...

Treating people as you want to be treated with boxing legend Carl Frampton, Northern Ireland’s first two weight World Champion. Carl grew up in Belfast, in the loyalist area of Tigers Bay. The next housing estate across was the New Lodge which was Republican. As a child, he witnessed tension and traumatising scenes. Carl is a very humble and level headed guy, and he takes pride in uniting people,...

Just how accurate is the reality we experience through our sense perceptions? That's a big question - and we're about to explain why it is important. We tend to be convinced that that world we experience through our senses is the world as it really is. We also believe we are billions of separate beings - which fosters a sense of tribalism and a distrust of "the other". But, professor Donald Hoffma...

Flow is a peak state when we perform at our best, and feel great too. While success is not synonymous with happiness, flow is. So, how do you get in flow? Here is a tried and tested four-step formula from the Flow Research Collective YouTube : https://tinyurl.com/YouTubeSimonMundie Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simonmundie/ For the ' Mundie on Monday ' newsletter - head to simonmundie.com H...

The Life Lessons podcast has a simple mission: to have discussions that reveal something important about life and how best to live it. My guests range from the biggest sporting names on the planet, as well as neuroscientists, world-renowned philosophers, and psychologists – right through to Buddhist monks. With the World Cup nearly finishing, we are revisiting of my favorite conversations with Wor...

"If anyone tells you that such a person speaks ill of you of you, don't make excuses about what is said of you, but answer: He does not know my other faults; else, he would not have mentioned only these." - Epictetus Don't hide your flaws and show off your strengths - the wiser option is to do the opposite. YouTube : https://tinyurl.com/YouTubeSimonMundie Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simon...

The Life Lessons podcast has a simple mission: to have discussions that reveal something important about life and how best to live it. My guests range from the biggest sporting names on the planet, as well as neuroscientists, world-renowned philosophers, and psychologists – right through to Buddhist monks. With the World Cup in full flow, I am using the opportunity to revisit some of my favorite c...

Our early social connections, with parents and caregivers in particular, are the most profound shapers of how we experience the world and our place in it. Dr Bessel van der Kolk - one of the world's leading trauma researchers and author of the best-selling book The Body keeps The Score - reveals that how secure we feel in our early relationships even has a bigger impact on our development than par...