A Thought I Kept

Can a poem really change how you feel? My guest this week is Deborah Alma, poet, editor and founder of The Poetry Pharmacy, where poems are prescribed for the emotional ailments of everyday life. Deborah’s thought kept is: “A poem can fundamentally change someone’s mood.” It’s an idea that began while Deborah was working with people living with dementia, where she saw how a poem could take someone beyond the room they were sitting in — to the sea, a picnic or flying a kite — and how the feeli...

How do you deal with criticism without letting it change how you see yourself? And what happens when becoming more visible means becoming more open to other people’s opinions of you? This week on A Thought I Kept, I’m talking to leadership development coach, trainer and author Hannah Wilson about a piece of advice she was given early in her leadership career: when you put your head above the parapet, people will have something to say about you. The important part is learning to choose which b...

What if fun wasn’t something we earned after we’d done the difficult, serious or important things but part of how we found our way through them? My guest this week is Anne Ditmeyer, an American writer, creative coach and workshop facilitator living in Paris, whose work asks one wonderfully disruptive question: What if there was another way? In this episode, we talk about Creativity, play and why they matter beyond childhood · getting lost and learning to trust yourself · Anne’s grandfather Ch...

What if the problem isn’t that you haven’t found the right way to live, work or be but that there isn’t one? My guest this week is Alice Thompson-Boyd, therapeutic coach, podcaster, psychotherapist-in-training and co-founder of the social enterprise Social Bite. Alice spent her twenties helping build an organisation that went on to have an extraordinary impact on homelessness in Scotland. But alongside the success, awards and recognition, she was struggling with anxiety, burnout, panic attack...

What happens when you spend so much of your life helping, caring for and making a difference to other people that you forget to include yourself? My guest this week is Nicky Marshall — speaker, mentor, publisher, wellbeing facilitator and author of No One Is Coming to Save You. Nicky’s thought kept is: “To make a difference in this life, I had to put myself in the queue first.” It’s a thought she came to through experience. After surviving a coercive relationship in her twenties, Nicky had a ...