Where We Place Ourselves | Identity, Life Stories & Personal Growth

Archana Mohan
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Where We Place Ourselves is a reflective podcast about identity, personal growth, and how we understand our lives over time. Through slow, thoughtful conversations, each episode revisits a moment, a feeling, or a shift in perspective. We explore memory, relationships, and self-awareness. If you're interested in psychology, life stories, and personal reflection, this podcast creates space to think more deeply about who you are and how you’ve changed.

  1. 4d ago

    Wait a minute - Helen Hannan Evans on Listening Beyond Assumptions

    What changes when we pause long enough to question what we think we know? In this episode of Where We Place Ourselves, Archana Mohan speaks with Helen Hannan Evans, founder of Brand, Marketing and Communications consultancy The Listening People, about the experiences and assumptions that shape how we listen. From growing up in 1970s Ireland to an unexpected moment of recognition sparked by Annie Lennox, Helen explores how we learn to see the world, and how we can learn to see it differently. Together, we discuss the instinct to fix before someone has finished speaking, the judgement we bring to AI, and why fresh ideas often come from people outside our field. Helen also shares how she has shaped a working life that brings together what she values about corporate life and running her own business. And when a closing question leaves her momentarily without an answer, she gives the conversation something fitting: space to think. A conversation about curiosity, questioning assumptions, and making room for what we haven’t heard yet. Work that has inspired Helen The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Ben Zander The work of Oscar Trimboli focused on Deep Listening

  2. Sep 21

    Don't Abandon Yourself: Remi Olajoyegbe on Belonging, Wisdom and Success

    What if success isn't about what we achieve, but what we refuse to abandon along the way? Remi Olajoyegbe has spent much of her life between worlds. Born to a Nigerian father and an Assamese mother and raised in Britain, she describes herself as a bridge between cultures, ideas and people. In this conversation, we explore what it means to find our place without making ourselves smaller to belong. We talk about the line between service and self-sacrifice, why wisdom may become more valuable as intelligence becomes abundant, and what community and lived experience give us that technology cannot. But our conversation keeps returning to one question: what does it mean to live a successful life? After a career that included investment banking, long nights and burnout, Remi has arrived at a strikingly simple definition. Success is living a life in which you are not abandoning yourself. Perhaps finding our place isn't about fitting into the world at all. Perhaps it's about becoming more fully ourselves within it. Connect and find out more about Remi and her work here: https://www.isumataqcollective.com https://uk.linkedin.com/in/remi-olajoyegbe https://iamremi.co.uk

  3. Sep 4

    Start Close In: Susan Ní Chriodáin on Listening to What You Already Know

    What if the answer isn't somewhere out there, but something you already know? Susan Ní Chríodáin began her career in finance, where she was often labelled “the numbers person”. But numbers were something she did. They were never all of who she was. In this conversation, we talk about the labels work gives us, why senior people still need to feel seen, and what Susan discovered when she stopped looking for the “right” way and began trusting her own. We explore creativity, friction, AI, writing, the strange freedom of getting things wrong and why, sometimes, the most useful thing another person can do is simply listen. Susan's journey has taken her from numbers to coaching, from certainty to experimentation and, unexpectedly, to poetry. Underneath it all is a deceptively simple idea: perhaps we don't always need another answer. Perhaps we need enough stillness to hear what we already know. A conversation about work, creativity, humanity and learning to start close in. Links to Susan's work are below: Website: https://www.beyond-thenumbers.com/   Life Beyond the Numbers: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/life-beyond-the-numbers/id1530212404    Why Name? [poetry podcast] https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/why-name/id1863221435   LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/susannichriodain    Substack: https://thewholeequation.substack.com/

  4. Jun 26

    Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze

    In this episode of Where We Place Ourselves, Archana sits down with coach and therapist-in-training Alice Thompson-Boyd to explore what happens when external success no longer feels like home. Together they unpack Alice's journey from co-founding one of Scotland's most celebrated social enterprises to stepping away from a life that looked successful on paper but felt increasingly disconnected from who she was becoming. Their conversation explores purpose, burnout, identity, leadership, internal versus external validation, and the question that sits beneath so many of our decisions. Is the juice worth the squeeze? Along the way they discuss why transformation happens in the fire rather than after it, why placement may matter as much as purpose, and how learning to become the CEO of our own lives changes everything. This is a conversation about letting go, finding alignment, and discovering that the place we belong may have been waiting for us all along. Links to Alice's work: Alice Thompson Coaching

  5. May 25

    Finding placement: On podcasting, pleasing, rejection, and making something true

    In this reflective solo episode of Where We Place Ourselves, Archana explores the emotional backstory behind making a podcast and the quiet struggle of creating something public. Beginning with Mira Nair’s words, “You cannot be an artist if you strive to please,” this episode asks whether that is as true in life as it is in art. Archana reflects on the desire to be taken seriously, the pull towards polish and credibility, the disappointment of rejection, and the moment when striving becomes visible enough to question. What begins as a reflection on podcasting becomes a wider meditation on creativity, belonging, visibility, and the difference between being well known and being truly known. This episode is about the mess behind the making, the people worth knowing, and the question that sits at the heart of the series. Where do you place yourself when things feel unresolved?

    Finding placement: On podcasting, pleasing, rejection, and making something true

  6. May 3

    The sound that stays: on music, memory and understanding

    In this episode of Where We Place Ourselves, I explore how music, attention, and reflection shape the way we think and communicate. What looks like distraction may actually support deeper thinking. Drawing on a simple moment from everyday life, this episode reflects on listening, focus, and how we show up in conversations at work and beyond. Topics include: listening and communicationfocus and deep thinkingmusic and memoryleadership and presencereflection and self-awareness

    The sound that stays: on music, memory and understanding

  7. Apr 25

    Being Alone: What Solitude Teaches Us About Identity

    A quiet reflection on what happens when we stop filling space. This podcast was previously titled Where We Place Ourselves. It is now continuing as Echoes, from Els. In this first episode of Echoes, from Els, a summer spent mostly alone becomes something unexpected. Not isolation, but recognition. Through small moments, this episode explores solitude, the idea of the “uncarved block,” and the subtle thresholds we cross when we step back from the noise. Not as something to solve. But as something to enter. TakeawaysSolitude doesn’t take you away from yourself; it brings you closerMuch of what we think is “us” is learned, not innateDistance can create clarity in ways activity cannotSmall pauses (thresholds) change how we see

    Being Alone: What Solitude Teaches Us About Identity

  8. Apr 14

    Growing Up Together: How Shared Experiences Shape Who We Become with Robin Wohlstetter

    What does it mean to be known over time? In this episode of Where We Place Ourselves, I speak with one of my closest friends, Robin. Someone who has known me since the mid-90s, when we were both just beginning to understand who we might become. This is a conversation about growing up, friendship, and the quiet beauty of being there for someone not just in the easy moments, but across the many versions of a life. We talk about the feeling of being unstoppable when we were younger, and how that shifts as life unfolds. About the different versions of ourselves we bring to work, to relationships, and to the spaces where we feel most at ease. Robin shares how humour became a way of holding perspective not because life is always light, but because sometimes it’s what makes it livable. And one line from this conversation stayed with me: “The world is tough… but not in here.”  A reminder that while we can’t always control what happens outside of us, we can create spaces in our homes, in our friendships, where something softer, lighter, and more human exists. This is a conversation about being witnessed, about growing alongside someone, and about the rare gift of a friendship that stays. We explore: What it felt like to be “unstoppable” in our early twentiesHow friendship changes as we grow and what allows it to endureThe difference between who we are at work and who we are at easeWhy humour can be a form of perspective, not avoidanceWhat it really means to “not let someone down”How time and distance reshape how we understand our lives It left me thinking about how the most meaningful relationships in our lives aren’t the ones that change us, but the ones that stay with us as we change. If this conversation stayed with you, following the podcast helps it reach the people who need it and lets you know when the next episode is released. And if you’re thinking of someone who has known you across time…maybe send this to them.

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About

Where We Place Ourselves is a reflective podcast about identity, personal growth, and how we understand our lives over time. Through slow, thoughtful conversations, each episode revisits a moment, a feeling, or a shift in perspective. We explore memory, relationships, and self-awareness. If you're interested in psychology, life stories, and personal reflection, this podcast creates space to think more deeply about who you are and how you’ve changed.

Information

  • Creator
    Archana Mohan
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    18
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Archana Mohan