Mindset By Dave Podcast

It's a big question, but I want to tackle it... are we programmed to be unhappy?

The research in this one spans almost 300 years, staring with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the hedonic treadmill, then heading to modern research by the likes of Anna Lembke and Andrew Huberman; all via the Tocqueville Paradox.

Each of these pices of research presents a stacked deck, where genuine lasting happiness is a fleeting thing. But is the data the truth? And more importantly... are we bound by it?

Link to the Huberman Lab article mentioned at the end: https://hubermanlab.com/tools-to-manage-dopamine-and-improve-motivation-and-drive/

Vennie Kocsis spent her life from 3 until 14 living in a compound as a member of a cult. Struggling with segregation from the rest of the world on the outside, but also separation from her family on the inside; she lived a life that was always filtered through fear.

You wouldn't think so listening to her today but she didn't learn about normal relationships, normal friendships and normal boundaries until she got out. In fact she didn't have any degree of a normal education either and was thrust into this in her mid teens needing to adapt very quickly.

Nowadays she is an author, a speaker, a poet, a mother and a grandmother. She works with people to help them heal their trauma through art, poetry and expression and shares her experiences so that others may be able to escape or avoid in the first place the entrapments of a cult.

Josh Connolly is a powerful man, but not in the way that you may instantly think of that phrase. Yesh he plays rugby, he has also overocome addiction, so we can say that objectively he is strong, both physically and mentally, but there's much more to Josh than that.

The power that Josh has - and teaches to others - is to actually embrace our emotions, to be vulnerable with them, to be sensitive to them. Sensitivty and vulnerability are not words you often associate with power, but as Josh shows those who attend his resilience workshops or breathwork sessions, there is so much power that comes from a foundation of vulnerability.

Having been diagnosed with anxiety and depression as a teenager, Kyra Houghton has been no stranger to the world of mental health. Anxiety and depression were the manifestations of her childhood trauma, but as life progressed these labels didn't quite fit.

She was later diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) and at this point began a journey of healing.

This journey started with Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT). DBT is one of the more recommended forms of treatment for BPD so this was where Kyra decided to start. Through working with DBT Kyra also discovered Somatic Healing.

Somatice Healing is a "bottom up" therapy. Traditional therapies are "top down" where the mind is treated in order to heal the body. But Bottom Up therapy is where the holding of trauma within the body is addressed and as such by treating the body you treat the mind.

These therapies have tranformed Kyra's life, so much so that she is now on the path to qualification so that she can help and guide others in their mental health journeys.

Rachael Camp is a powerflifter and a graphic designer, two things that require a lot of fine motor control. She is also a dyspraxic, which is something that hinders the motor control of those who live with it.

From humble beginings and a childhood with confusion, shame and regularly being labeled as "clumsy". Rachael only started digging deeper into why some of this may be as an adult.

Along the way she receieved a late diagnosis of ADHD, and through the neurodivergent community started to learn about dyspraxia.

Through this combination of diagnosis and self-diagnosis Rachael has learned to give herself some much needed compassion and become a powerful adovcate for the neurodivergent community in the process.

You can find out more about Rachael at http://instagram.com/rachaelelizabethlifts

Before becoming Mindset By Dave I was a personal trainer, the kind who wanted to learn EVERYTHING!

Along the way I noticed many things that working out can teach us about mental health. Lots of the principals involved in training can become powerful analogies for our mental health.

This podcast episode is some of my favourites.

Vancouver is currently facing a fentanyl epidemic. The new wave of opiod addiction is a core part of daily life in Vancouver's downtown east side. When seeing this with his own two eyes director Dominic Streeter of Hied and Seek Films knew he had to shed some light on this and ask some very important questions.

In his Netflix documentary "Ten Dollar Death Trip" Dom and the team spend time with the people who live in Vancouver's "drug ghetto by design". He speaks with current addicts, former addicts, the people doing the work to keep people safe in this environment that is rife with overdoses and even a very candid interview with one of the dealers.

It is a hard hitting documentary but I believe more than anything else it shows the humanity, the care, the compassion and the community of those affected. In fact Dom even goes as far as to say there is a greater sense of community there, than anywhere back home.

In this interview we get into his motives for being a director, for choosing this topic and much more.

Above all things I would call Lady Cleo a communicator. Whether she does this with words, with music of with visual performances one thing is for sure, she does it in a meticulous and often mesmerizing way.

I knew I wanted to talk with her when I invited her on the podcast and we decided to focus on kink and cabaret and the concept of discovering your identity. But the tangenets on this one lead to some amazing links being formed and the live audience were just on point at adding to this conversation.

If I had to really narrow down the them of this episode it would be boundaries, communication and consent. Which are skills that can benefit ALL of us!

Hannah is a fellow mindset coach and podcast coach, who I had the pleasure of meeting via the Mental Health Blog Awards.

In this episode we get into Hannah's "why" for getting into this line of work, along with discussing the most common issues she sees and what resolutions are available for these. We also look to the future and get Hannah's ideas on where coaching plays a role and her personal plans for being a part of that movement.

You can check Hannah out at beautifulmind.coach on Instagram or on her podcast Plus Size vs Reality.

The phrase victims mindset gets thrown around far too readily these days. Usually by people who are just tired of confronting others who just don't seem to want to change. But what if I told you that there's something behind all of that and that? Something that keeps the person stuck in this cycle that if we were to learn a different approach to then we may all be better off for? That something is learned helplessness, a term first coined in 1967 by Psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven F Maier. Their initial research pointed to the idea that once a person has experienced helplessness (or even perceived helplessness) in enough situations they go on to believe that they are in fact helpless in other, if not all situations. Thus creating a cycle of believing you are helpless, not trying and therefore confirming that you are helpless. Thankfully Seligman and Maier's research did not stop there, Seligman in particular shifting his own mindset from "what is the cause" to "what can be done". In doing so he discovered that optimism is the minds natural defence against learned helplessness. Which to anyone who identifies as a pessimist this is a disheartening discovery, however he further went on to discover that optimism in itself is something that isn't inherent, but can be learned. Which he discusses in his book Learned Optimism. In this episode we look at the different factors that could be keeping you (or your loved ones) in learned helplessness and explore ideas on how you can escape from it.