Claim OwnershipThe Tom’s Life Lab Podcast
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Tom’s Life Lab is a podcast exploring practical and innovative ways to navigate life’s challenges, boost happiness, and embrace uncertainty. Each episode is an experiment in mindset shifts, personal growth, and life hacks, helping you live with clarity, confidence, and curiosity.
We invite interesting and insightful guests who share their expertise to help you be happier and more effective in life and work.
You can find out more about Tom’s work and that of his company, HEX, at www.hex-development.com or on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-emery-b8809818/.
We invite interesting and insightful guests who share their expertise to help you be happier and more effective in life and work.
You can find out more about Tom’s work and that of his company, HEX, at www.hex-development.com or on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-emery-b8809818/.
45 Episodes
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Resilience isn’t just about pushing through, it’s about changing how you relate to difficulty.
In this episode of Tom's Life Lab, Tom continues on the mindset series, sharing a personal story from the early days of HEX, when repeated rejection started to take its toll. Instead of quitting, he turned rejection into a game, assigning points to every “no” and tracking them like a scoreboard.
What started as a coping mechanism became a mindset shift. By gamifying setbacks, Tom reframed failure as progress, reduced fear, and built the persistence needed to keep going until the yeses came.
This episode explores why making hard things playful doesn’t trivialise them, it transforms them and challenges you to run your own experiment this week.
In this episode of Tom's Life Lab, Tom explores how narrowing your focus to what’s actually in your hands can calm overwhelm, restore clarity, and build resilience especially when the world feels noisy or uncertain.
He shares the story of his book launch and how quickly he spiralled into worrying about reviews, sales, and opinions he couldn’t influence. The turning point came when he shifted his attention back to what was in his control: how he showed up, how he rested, and what he created next.
This episode is a reminder that reclaiming your energy starts with one small, intentional action and that momentum is built through tiny wins, not perfect outcomes.
Listen now and try this week’s Life Lab experiment: write down one thing each morning that you can control today. At the end of the day, reflect on how that focus made you feel.
In this episode of Tom's Life Lab, Tom explores how the mind creates stories, sometimes helpful, often unhelpful and how easily we can spiral into beliefs that simply aren’t true.
He shares a moment from leading a major change project when one tough meeting sent him into self-doubt… until he paused, questioned the story, and remembered his strengths.
This week’s episode is a reminder that you get to choose which stories receive airtime and that courage often begins with gently challenging the narratives your mind invents.
Listen now and try this week’s Life Lab experiment: Notice one unhelpful story your mind tells you. Write it down, then write down a time it wasn’t true.
In this episode, Tom explores the mindset that anything is possible not by pretending things are easy, but by choosing challenges that stretch us, scare us, and grow us.
He shares the story behind writing his book 'People People', the self-doubt he had to work through, and how taking imperfect steps strengthens your ability to adapt, learn and lead.
This is an episode about resilience built on purpose, leaning into discomfort, and discovering what you’re truly capable of.
🎧 Listen now and try this week’s Life Lab experiment:
Choose one small challenge that feels just out of reach, commit, tell someone, and take the first step.
Starting again can feel heavy, even shameful, as if beginning anew means something has failed.
But as Tom shares in this episode of Tom's Life Lab, reinvention isn’t weakness; it’s courage in its purest form.
Whether it’s a plan that’s fallen apart, a dream that’s shifted, or a life change you didn’t choose, starting again is part of being human.
Tom explores what it means to rebuild, to release the version of yourself that no longer fits, and to find strength in small beginnings.
Listen now and try this week’s Life Lab experiment: Take one small step, not the whole staircase, toward your next beginning.
Life has a way of surprising us.
Sometimes it’s a new opportunity, other times it’s the kind of change that knocks the wind out of you.
In this episode of Tom's Life Lab, Tom shares what he’s learned about dealing with life’s curveballs, the moments when plans fall apart and certainty disappears.
He explores why our first instinct to control or fix isn’t always the right one, and how peace comes not from pretending we’re fine, but from feeling what’s real and asking a better question: not “why me?” but “what now?”
Listen now and try this week’s Life Lab experiment: If life has thrown you a curveball, stop resisting, feel what’s there, then choose your next move.
In this episode of Tom's Life Lab, Tom shares the lessons he’d pass on to his younger self, an honest exploration of comparison, courage, shame, and what it really means to feel “enough".
It’s about letting go of the pressure to have it all figured out, learning to trust your path, and finding joy in progress rather than perfection.
Tom opens up about the importance of caring for your body, investing in real relationships, and not letting fear dictate your choices.
Listen now and for this week’s Life Lab experiment, do one thing your younger self would thank you for.
Overwhelm isn’t always about doing too much, sometimes it’s about being too much.
In this episode of Tom’s Life Lab, Tom explores how the real weight of overwhelm often comes from the pressure to play too many roles. The strong one. The calm one. The one who keeps it all together.
When we try to be everything for everyone, we lose sight of who we are for ourselves. But overwhelm isn’t a flaw, it’s feedback. A gentle nudge from life that says it’s time to pause the performance, drop the mask, and return to what’s real.
Listen now to explore how letting go of the need to perform can help you rediscover calm, clarity, and your truest self.
This episode of Tom's Life Lab is all about those conversations we avoid. The ones that sit at the back of our minds like unfinished business.
Whether it's to tell a hard truth, ask for help, or to say sorry, we often tell ourselves that avoiding the conversation means avoiding conflict, but the truth is, avoidance doesn't make the problem go away. Instead, we sit with it, feel the weight of it and allow it to impact our energy and relationships.
Speaking up is rarely easy, but honesty often brings people together where avoidance erodes trust and pushes us apart.
Where is your silence shaping your friendships more than your words? Listen now to find how difficult conversations can be a way to build bridges to clarity, connection and growth.
In this episode of The Life Lab, Tom explores the courage it takes to make new friends. Most people fear rejection but research shows others are more open than we think. Be the one who follows up, sends the message, and takes the step.
Your Life Lab challenge: Reach out to someone you like but don’t know well and invite them for a coffee, walk, or chat. One small act of courage can lead to real connection.
#LifeLab #ConnectionMatters #Friendship #CourageOverComfort #Podcast
In this reflective episode of the Life Lab, Tom explores the tension between authenticity and performance in modern leadership and life. In a culture that constantly tells us to pitch, polish, and promote ourselves, he asks: What happens when we stop selling ourselves and start being ourselves?
Through personal insight and coaching experience, Tom shares why overperforming can disconnect us from who we are, and why the most powerful leaders are those who show up grounded, honest, present and real.
He challenges listeners to experiment with presence over performance: to trust that the right people, opportunities, and moments respond not to our packaging, but to our truth.
In this Tom's Life Lab episode, Tom explains why you don't need to fit in to make an impact.
The feeling of not fitting in can creep in anywhere. Whether it's the boardroom, family dinner table or group chat, it's a feeling that can appear quietly, but powerfully, and it can shape how you show up.
Many of us grow up believing that belonging is about fitting in, but real belonging isn't about sameness; it's about being seen and accepted for who you are.
If you don't feel like you fit in, instead of camouflaging your interests behind other peoples', be honest about your likes and beliefs. Show up with integrity, and people will respect you for being your true, authentic self.
Listen to the episode to learn three things you can do the next time you feel like you don't fit in.
This episode of Tom's Life Lab explores how growth comes from pursuing the cringe.
Cringe is the emotional signal that we're brushing up against our edges. It's something most of us instinctively avoid, but if you're never cringing, you're probably not growing.
When we cringe, it's often because we feel exposed, at risk, or a bit awkward; however, the leaders that learn to embrace this feeling, evolve the fastest. They ask questions in a room full of experts, admit when they don't know, and try new formats, even if they don't succeed.
In the episode, Tom reveals his own cringe moment, and how the thing that he thought would make him feel foolish, actually made him feel alive. Listen now for some examples of ways you can pursue the cringe.
Powerful partnerships are often at the heart of breakthroughs in leadership, business and life. Big leaps forward rarely come from acting alone; they come from leaning into partnerships.
Collaboration isn't just nice to have; it's a necessity. We need people around us who challenge us, support us and see possibilities we wouldn't see on our own. Powerful partnerships aren't just about working together, they're about building trust, showing vulnerability and creating something great.
In this episode of Tom's Life Lab, Tom discusses what makes a powerful partnership work, the benefits of his own partnerships, including Beyond Potential and The Sustain Collective, and how you can create more powerful partnerships of your own.
In this week's episode of Tom's Life Lab, Tom explores the feeling of being stuck and how to move through it.
We all know how it feels to be stuck. When we know something needs to change, but we're not sure what to do next.
Feeling stuck isn't a sign of failure; it's a sign something matters to you; however, problems can arise when we stay stuck, and staying stuck is a choice.
We often tell ourselves we lack clarity, when really what we're lacking is courage. We know what to do, but put it off due to feelings of discomfort or a fear of taking a risk.
Are you feeling stuck? It's time to stop sitting in it - join Tom to find out how to move past it.
Complaining feels good. We all get tempted to do it, because it can make us feel seen and validate feelings of frustration, but it rarely gets us anywhere.
Whether it's about traffic, the weather, tech issues or company culture, complaining may feel like taking action, but this act alone won't move us forward, and instead causes us to get stuck in a loop where nothing changes.
The energy you bring to your life and leadership sets the tone with others. Lead with complaint, and you invite more of it, which is draining for you and those around you. Next time you feel like complaining, explore what is beneath it instead. Is a boundary being crossed or a need not being met?
Join Tom in this episode of Tom's Life Lab to find out how to shift a complaint into positive change.
Many of us believe life just happens to us. We react, respond, cope and manage like we are passengers in our own stories. What if we flipped this and, instead, behaved like we happen to our lives?
This isn't about control, it's about agency. The ability to decide how you show up, what you focus on and how you respond in any situation. This shift to 'I happen to my life' doesn't need to be dramatic to be profound, and it may not be easy to start with, but with practice, it will come.
In this episode, I give examples of subtle ways you can change your mindset and behaviour to put you back in the driver's seat of your life. If you've ever felt like you're reacting to other peoples' priorities and losing a sense of who you are, this episode is for you.
We’ve all heard the phrase: You never get a second chance to make a first impression. But how true is it in leadership and life?
In this episode, Tom explores the importance of first impressions. From the subtle, instinctive signals people read in those opening seconds, to the deeper trust that only grows over time, he challenges whether we place too much weight on the moment, and not enough on the relationship.
You’ll discover:
Why presence is the real currency of leadership.
How authenticity creates lasting influence.
Practical tools to ground yourself, shift your energy, and connect more deeply.
Through stories, neuroscience insights, and coaching examples, Tom unpacks what it means to show up with clarity and intention.
So, what impression are you making today?
In this episode of Tom's Life Lab, we welcomed leadership expert and founder of Fenton Place, Lee Rogers.
Lee shared his personal weight loss story, the inspiration behind his 'Fit Over 40' campaign, and how this evolved into the 'Fitter4Forties' Instagram channel he runs today.
He explained how he developed the '5 P Model' (Purpose, Plan, Prepare, Perform and Pursue), a goal setting framework he uses regularly, not just on his fitness journey but in his business too.
Lee discussed real life examples of how he uses purpose to sustain performance, citing how his family are the main motivators behind his drive to take care of his health.
If you need an energy and motivation boost, this is a must listen!
Connect with Lee on LinkedIn.
Follow the Fitter4Forties Instagram channel.
Listen to the Leadership Actually podcast.
Visit the Fenton Place website.
In this Tom's Life Lab episode, Tom explores the myth of finished. This idea that we'll be enough when we're confident, clear and finally 'get there'.
When we cling to the myth of arrival, we increase pressure on ourselves. We chase certificates, titles and clarity as if there is a 'final' version of ourselves, but the reality is there is rarely a finished product.
Growth doesn't stop as you work your way up, and by embracing uncertainty, you open yourself up to learning and evolving.
Listen to the episode to find out how to stop tying your worth to being finished, and welcome a mindset of continued growth.
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