The 3 Good Podcast

The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 11 Self-care and how I look after my wellbeing

In this episode, Sukh takes personally about what he's learned about self-care and how it's helped him improve his wellbeing and maintain better resilience. He explains that his main driver for this was in recognising that when at home he wasn't always his best self, and this was in part because there were many other aspects of his life that were not in a good place. He talks through how he paid attention to:

• everyday routines
• friendships
• digital life
• physical health
• family life
• seeking counselling and therapy

The Emotion at Work podcast he made reference to is episode 17 on Burnout http://emotionatwork.podbean.com/e/emotion-at-work-stories-burnout/.

You can connect with Sukh on Twitter @sukhpabial.

The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 10 Wellbeing is more than physical and mental health

On this episode, Sukh spends time exploring wellbeing beyond the normal confines of physical and mental health. He encourages listeners to consider factors around emotional health, financial health, work health, community health and spiritual health and how these impact on wellbeing too.

You can connect with Sukh on Twitter @sukhpabial.

This is an NHS article about being 'fat and healthy' - https://www.nhs.uk/news/lifestyle-and-exercise/regular-activity-may-help-some-people-stay-fat-and-fit/.

The Emotion At Work podcast by Phil Willcox https://www.emotionatwork.co.uk/podcast/.

 

The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 9 Positive psychology in practice

In this episode, Sukh has guest Sarah Boyd on the show, and they talk about a range of things for how positive psychology is put into practice. Sarah's main area of work focuses on healthcare in the UK and enabling better change within the NHS.

They talk about appreciate inquiry as an approach for organisational change, and how it utilises positive psychology principles to enable generative dialogue and focusing on strengths and achievements. They talk about the use or language and how the language we use determines what we think and believe. They explore all manners of topics related to positive psychology with some quality thinking about approaches to change management, the importance of taking small steps, the interplay of positive psychology and life events that are challenging, and how we can think about parenting in different ways too.

As it's still early day's in Sukh's world of podcasting, the audio edit isn't as well balanced as it could be. Please do forgive Sukh's tinny and sharp speech, he promises not to do it again!

You can connect with Sukh and Sarah on Twitter - @sukhpabial and @sarahboydh

In the podcast, the following pieces are referenced:

Sarah wrote a blog post about the bits of appreciative inquiry that she loves. That's here http://www.dotconnection.co.uk/blog/2017/11/17/appreciative-inquiry-the-bits-i-love

The Grief Cast by Cariad Lloyd https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/griefcast/id1178572854?mt=2

The Emotion At Work podcast by Phil Willcox https://www.emotionatwork.co.uk/podcast/

They talk about Miriam Akhtar who is a positive psychology practitioner in the UK. You can find her here https://positivepsychologytraining.co.uk/about/miriam/

They also talk about and get all fanboi over Sarah Lewis and her work in positive psychology and as an appreciative inquiry practitioner. You can find out about her here https://www.acukltd.com/about-us/

Sarah mentioned Sarah Lewis' book - Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management which you can get here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Appreciative-Inquiry-Change-Management-Organizational/dp/0749463554/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1524923033&sr=8-12&keywords=sarah+lewis+books

The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 8 On Kindness and Gratitude Visits

In this episode, Sukh talks about what kindness means, about how it makes us feel, what it enables in us as people, and how we naturally seek to be kind to others. He talks about how kindness is love, and is one of the most true forms of human virtue and humanity. 

Sukh also shares in this episode a practical activity called a gratitude visit. He explains what it is, and how it can happen. 

Sukh made reference to this tweet from Lindsay Toub https://twitter.com/cblitoub/status/982340474752176129

 

 

The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 7 Talking about emotional health

In this episode, Sukh talks about emotional health. He talks about how its commonplace to talk about physical health and mental health, and we don't often talk about emotional health. He explores ways in which we can think about our emotions, how we can understand what our emotions might be telling us, and different ways we can resolve or deal with our emotions. Sukh also discusses emotional health for men and how men are socialised to suppress and express emotions in different ways.

You can connect with Sukh on Twitter @sukhpabial.

The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 6 The Importance of Community

In this episode, Sukh talks about the importance of community. He takes a look into how community differs from other groups such as cults, or groups where people are willingly causing harm to themselves or to others. He highlights what community enables for people to thrive, and the role of community leaders. He gives examples of different communities he's part of and shares insights into why Sikhs see community as a blessed group of people. 

You can connect with Sukh on Twitter @sukhpabial.

The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 5 Talking about optimism

In this episode, Sukh has a guest on the show - Mark Gilroy. Together, they discuss the topic of optimism. It's a longer episode than normal, coming in at just shy of 1hr and 15 mins, so tuck in, it's a deep exploration!

 

Sukh and Mark discuss a range of related topics to optimism:

- They explore how optimism is a psychological construct, and what it helps with for a healthy mind.

- They discuss pessimism, how it's the opposite of optimism, can offer a healthy balance to being too optimistic, and how it can be a healthy way of thinking.

- They make a clear distinction that optimism and pessimism are not related to mental health disorders, and how they are useful for healthy human functioning.

- Mark shares a really useful model to identify overly pessimistic attitudes where someone may use language where the following is evident:

• Permanence - describing things in ways that indicate there's never a positive outcome and there is no hope for their to be a positive outcome
• Personal - describing things in ways that are detrimental to the individual e.g. "why does it always happen to me"
• Perseverance - describing things and extrapolating things to pervade across a group unfairly

- They discuss how optimism can be overused and may impair quality of judgements that need to be made.

- They discuss the role of data, evidence and examples and how they either support optimism or pessismism.

 

This was a really good deep exploration of the topic of optimism, and Mark was really generous with his insights and sharing of research that is related to the topic.

Links that Mark has shared which are useful for people to explore further:

The book by Tali Sharot - The Optimism Bias: Why we're wired to look on the bright side - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Optimism-Bias-were-wired-bright/dp/1780332637/ref=la_B004ANWOX4_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1519468999&sr=1-2

Tali Sharot's TED Talk - The Optimism Bias - https://www.ted.com/talks/tali_sharot_the_optimism_bias

The book by Dan Ariely - Predictably Irrational - The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Predictably-Irrational-Hidden-Forces-Decisions/dp/0007256531

Dan Ariely's YouTube video on Loss Aversion and The Endowment Effect - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpiGVWO-C64

 

Finally, you may have noticed there's no intro music to the podcast! Big thanks and love to Mark himself for producing the piece for the podcast.

You can connect with Sukh on Twitter @sukhpabial.

You can connect with Mark on Twitter @thatmarkgilroy and find out more about the work that TMSDI do at www.tmsdi.com.

The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 4 Bad Things Happen, Death and Willful Violence

In this episode Sukh discusses the importance of accepting that bad things happen in life. He talks about how we can understand bad things happening through three different lenses. One is about bad things happening which after a passage of time, we can recover from and continue with normal living. The other is about wilful violence and / or manipulation of others. He explores here how often these actions are designed to completely disrupt everything about normal life and until justice is reached or the situation resolved it's often too hard to continue with normal life. The third is how we talk about death and not because people may be facing terminal illnesses but because it enables us to be better prepared for the loss of loved ones and to be better resolved about their wishes after they've passed. Sukh acknowledges this is a heavy topic to discuss and actively encourages people to discuss and / or comment as appropriate.

You can connect with Sukh on Twitter @sukhpabial.

The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 3 Talking about Strengths

What are your strengths? How do you understand them about yourself? In knowing your strengths how are you a better person for them? Sukh explores what he believes is a distinction between being good at something and having strength in it. You can learn more about strengths and your own by completing the VIA survey here http://www.viacharacter.org/www/Character-Strengths-Survey. You can also check out more resources on the University of Pennsylvania website https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/testcenter. Towards the end, Sukh talks about understanding your signature strength. You can connect with Sukh on Twitter @sukhpabial.

The 3 Good Podcast: Episode 2 Positive Thinking and Why You Should Have a Third Place

In this episode, Sukh discusses what positive psychology is and isn't. He does this by exploring positive thinking, what it can help with and its limitations. Sukh also discusses how positive psychology helps with and is focused on thinking about reality and what's not working well as well as being about building on people's strengths and helping people be their best self. The later part of the podcast is where Sukh discusses the importance of having a third place and how this is supportive for individuals. You can connect with Sukh on Twitter @sukhpabial.