Dot to Dot

I first came across George Bonanno’s work when I was struggling with the death of my Dad 10 years ago. His first book, the Other Side of Sadness helped me to reframe what I was experiencing in an incredibly helpful way and I have since bought it numerous times to comfort other people. One of the things I found most intriguing was how concepts such as the Kubler Ross model of the stages of grief ar...

We also discuss the subtlety of understanding our mental health and emotions. Giving in too much can actually lead to a dangerous negative spiral, but how it’s equally damaging to ignore our distress or negative feeling feelings or not have any support in processing them. Psychology, the brain and behaviour are incredibly nuanced. Anna explains how being able to name our emotions and have a broad...

Founder of KnowThyBrand, Giulia is a social entrepreneur dedicated to helping women in business to build sustainable ventures and career paths. She is mother of three boys who she is bringing up to respect women and bring their attention to what women can achieve “It’s as important for boys to see women can do anything as it is to see men doing anything.” She role-models this approach in all she d...

We discuss the importance of this type of longitudinal research (i.e. research that involves repeated observations of the same variables over periods of time) in understanding how the brain develops in children who have autism and other neurodevelopmental disabilities. As well as exploring Dr. Wu Nordahl’s findings we also explore why there is less research carried out on girls and non-binary chil...

Todd Kashdan is leading expert on the psychology of well-being, curiosity, psychological strengths, mental agility, and social relationships. His research has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, New York Times, and Forbes amongst many other publications. In 2010, he received the Distinguished Faculty Member of the Year Award at George Mason University and in 2013, he received the Disting...

Tim has been presenting on live weekend TV for over 16 years and with over 1500 hours under his belt. He first became well known for hosting and producing Sky Sports football show Soccer AM over the course of eleven years. The show steadily grew in popularity and enjoyed cult viewing status - much is said to be much down to Tim's “dry wit and sense of humour”. After this he joined BBC Radio 5 Live...

Ahead of his new book on trauma coming out it's the main theme of our discussion with an explanation of how Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) can reach aspects that are otherwise so hard to treat. Russ explains how when people have experienced trauma and it is deeply held it’s far more difficult to reach and heal through words. Although it’s not impossible, it takes a lot longer and a match...

In October 2020 the total world population was 7.81 billion people, and a whopping 4.14 billion of those people were using social media. And the amount of time spent on social media is increasing, with the typical user now spending roughly 4 hours of their day (that’s a quarter of our waking life) on social platforms.  Social media has been described as more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol. ...

We look at the different aspects relating to heroism talking about how for example psychologist Frank Farley distinguishes two types of hero - "big H" heroism and "small h heroism." How being a hero doesn’t mean being perfect in the same way that being a role-model relates to all of us in some way or another. We even consider whether you can become more heroic and if so what you need to do. Curiou...

Maddy has appeared in sitcoms for BBC Three, BBC One, ITV and Channel 4. She’s had four sell-out solo comedies at Underbelly, Gilded Balloon, Latitude Festival Main Stage, and the Soho Theatre. Maddy also wrote and starred in her own comedy for BBC Radio 4. Maddy has also been a speaker for over a decade, she was a panellist for The Guardian for International Women’s Day, for Facebook and AllBrigh...

Well does reframing work? The answer which is so often the way with psychology (and perhaps shouldn't be surprising given how complex we are) is complicated. It can be incredibly helpful but differs from positive thinking. While we all know we can't just think differently at the drop of hat, we often led to believe that we can. In fact, this can be hugely damaging to your mental health. We discuss...

Perhaps unsurprisingly we discuss all things psychology and relationships. Well not all because there’s soooo much to cover but I try. Rosie talks about spending five years with a girlfriend who was not out to her parents and the invisibility and hurt that entailed, to taking part in an experiment at Essex University’s ‘Sex Lab’ using what she has hilariously described as a ‘techno tampon’ in orde...

While Zal was one of the first employees at DoorDash helping it grow to its value of the $50 billion in 2021, he remains modest, down to earth and incredibly easy company. We talk about life growing up as a child in the San Francisco Bay Area, being there from the beginning of a startup which grew to be a giant, his Zoroastrian heritage, what family means to him and married life in London. There’s...

Cody Royle is currently the head coach of AFL Team Canada, the men's national program for Australian Rules football. Cody is also an author, international keynote speaker, podcast host, football coach. He currently coaches 13 head coaches from seven team sports in five different countries.  Cody is a standout voice on how pro sports teams create sustained success. His widely-acclaimed debut book,...

Aidan is the host and founder of the Innovation Show, broadcast globally and on national radio stations in Ireland and Finland. He is author of the bestselling book "Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations and Life" which includes a Foreword by Visa founder Dee Hock. “Aidan’s presentation is visual, story rich and full of interesting analogies to bring conc...

For example, we discuss how psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky who wrote The How of Happiness, says that about 50% of our baseline happiness level is down to genetics, but income only accounts for 10%.  The remaining 40% is about all about the “intentional activities” we undertake, such as giving back to others. We talk about what constitutes and ‘intentional activity’ including prosocial beha...

We also discuss a whole range of other areas of health and fitness including: What barriers do people face to getting fit and how can they overcome them? What’s the impact of social media on our beliefs about exercise?  While some people are inspired by what they see, many of the exercise influencers create a persona that people are unable to live up to. This can be extremely harmful and demotivat...

The New York Times article referred to can be found here: https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of-living-better/how-to-be-more-empathetic   A full copy of the transcript will be on my website shortly: https://fionamurden.com Part of this episode was taken from my book Mirror Thinking – How Role Models Make Us Human which can be found here.  https://bit.ly/MirrThink https://bit.ly/MirrorUSACan https...

There is no end point or goal, it’s a process which Scott Eberle editor of the American Journal of Play describes as being somewhere in between a start and an end, an “in between [where] you find surprise, pleasure, understanding – as skill and empathy – and strength of mind, body and spirit.”    For more from us follow these links:  If you are curious about who you are, your brain and the influen...

Sarah is a personal trainer, fitness educator, class instructor who guides people on their health and fitness journey. Her career started on stage in physical theatre and dance. When she had her first child she returned to university to study for a second degree, this time in teacher training from where she taught at The Brit School in London for a number of years.  But that’s not all – she had pr...

We discuss the psychology of bias, why we have it and some of the impacts. We chat about the biases you may have, what impact they could have and how to really put yourself in the position of what it’s like to have those preferences toward or prejudices against you. We also discuss ways in which companies could approach conscious bias training in order to provide more lasting outcomes on behaviour...

We’re used to the rituals of athletes such as tennis player Nadal, who places his hair behind his ear, pulls his nose and adjusts his shorts while bouncing the ball before every point.  People have accused him of using this as a way to break the momentum of his opponents. But Nadal says that these routines are for his psychological benefits. And the research would suggest that this is true, for ma...

According to psychologist Dr Jeffrey Arnett (whose work I also refer to in Defining You) these three areas define it: 1. Taking responsibility for yourself which "generally means accepting the consequences of your actions without expecting anyone else...to protect you from those consequences."   2. Making independent decisions - "It's finding out who you are and how you fit into the world, and the...

George caught my attention on twitter with his brilliant tweets (see below for his handle). Every day he posts so many questions – all so thought provoking that I often don’t even answer them - I'm just left pondering. George who lives in Philadelphia USA has a brain that won’t stop whirring which is where all of these fabulous, thought provoking posts come from. He explains how he started off jus...

We discuss the parallels between Olympic preparation and organisational leadership – but how in many ways organisations often know what to do but don’t ‘walk the talk’ in the way the teams who surround athletes do.  Lou explains why it’s never a comfortable experience watching an athlete you’ve trained, why athletes have experienced and understood more things about themselves leading up to a Covid...