31 episodes

Conversations with My Mind is here to create a space for curious, inclusive and sometimes anxious minds where we can think critically, learn together and grow our empathy towards each other. Together with local and international guests the podcast host Ance Vanaga explores various topics linked to mental health, inclusion & diversity and personal growth.

Conversations with My Mind: The Learning Podcast Ance Vanaga

    • Health & Fitness

Conversations with My Mind is here to create a space for curious, inclusive and sometimes anxious minds where we can think critically, learn together and grow our empathy towards each other. Together with local and international guests the podcast host Ance Vanaga explores various topics linked to mental health, inclusion & diversity and personal growth.

    How Worried Should We Be about Our Safety Online? with Gareth Thomas | S2 Ep13

    How Worried Should We Be about Our Safety Online? with Gareth Thomas | S2 Ep13

    The more time we spend online, the more thoughtful I become about how we approach connecting to this wonderful, virtual world. In the next two episodes, with the help of my guests, I will be exploring what impact an unsafe use of the internet can bring, what we should be aware of and how we could better navigate online to feel safer, more protected and more in control.

    Today, I start by tackling the challenge of online safety. To help me with this, I am joined by a brilliant speaker and cyber security expert, Gareth Thomas. A big part of his job is keeping up-to-date with the latest cyber security threats, making sure the risks are considered, mitigation plans are in place and everyone across the organisation is educated and knows what to do.

    We all have heard that prevention is better than any fix. It also remains true when it comes to the online world that many of us are connected to 24/7. Gareth shares a number of fascinating examples of what can happen when things go wrong, and shares key tips we all should be aware of to keep ourselves and our businesses safe, and our minds less anxious.

    Find Gareth Thomas on:
    LinkedIn: Gareth Thomas
    Twitter: @CyberThomas

    Find more Online Security tips:
    Google Safety Centre: https://safety.google/security/security-tips/
    UK Safer Internet Centre: https://saferinternet.org.uk/
    National Cyber Security Centre: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/
    National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children: https://www.nspcc.org.uk/

    To learn more about me go to:
    Instagram: @conversations.with.my.mind
    LinkedIn: Ance Vanaga
    Website: www.conversationswithmymind.com

    Lovely music created by: Harlowe King

    • 52 min
    On a Mindful Ride Managing Living with Cancer with Steve Ryder | S2 Ep12

    On a Mindful Ride Managing Living with Cancer with Steve Ryder | S2 Ep12

    Just a week ago, on the 4th of February, we marked an International World Cancer Day, a global initiative created to raise awareness of cancer and to encourage its prevention, detection, and treatment. NHS in the UK currently states - 1 in 2 people will develop some form of cancer during their lifetime. But what does it really mean? Why is it becoming even more important to pay attention to your own body? And what could future cancer treatment potentially look like?

    My guest Steve Ryder is an IT specialist, a husband, and a dad of three. He is also someone who, while leading a healthy lifestyle and focusing on doing his health checks on time, unfortunately received an unexpected stage 4 cancer diagnosis in 2020. His cancer journey has been full of extreme lows and inspiring highs, reminding us how important our mindset can be in situations like these. Steve is also one of the cancer patients who has been able to receive a new form of cancer treatment called immunotherapy that only started to be trialled in 2016.

    In this episode, Steve walks us through the timeline of events that have led him to today, including when the symptoms first appeared, what treatment he received, and how immunotherapy works. He also shares how this journey has been for him and his family and how they chose to approach it mindfully focusing on actions over despair.

    Content warning: throughout this episode we discuss cancer, its symptoms, treatment and its impact on those on the receiving end. At times you might find the content upsetting. Please do take a break if you need to or skip over certain parts to protect your own mental health.

    Find Steve Ryder on:
    Twitter: @QPRSteve

    Read Steve’s story and support Brain Tumour Research:
    https://www.braintumourresearch.org/stories/in-hope/in-hope-stories/steve-ryder

    To learn more about me go to:
    Instagram: @conversations.with.my.mind
    LinkedIn: Ance Vanaga
    Website: www.conversationswithmymind.com

    Lovely music created by: Harlowe King

    • 1 hr 12 min
    ‘New Year, Same Me’ and Other Goals with Nick Elston | S2 Ep11

    ‘New Year, Same Me’ and Other Goals with Nick Elston | S2 Ep11

    Nick Elston is one of the leading inspirational speakers on the lived experience of mental health. He is described as a big man with a big heart and a big story, who is incredibly honest. Nick strives to encourage individuals as well as businesses to engage and open up talking about mental health by showing how to harness the same energy that could bring us down into a catalyst that can help us achieve our success.
    As I return from a longer podcasting break, I am right on time for us to reflect on our New Year’s resolutions and our struggles to keep up with them. In this episode I team up with Nick Elston to explore how we could set healthier, more sustainable goals. As he is someone, who lives with obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety, he knows especially well the ups and downs that setting way too challenging goals can bring, but he is also someone, who has learnt better ways to tackle that and is happy to share his learnings with us. Throughout the conversation we get to know Nick a bit better, discuss the vicious cycle of overindulging in December followed by tight restrictions in January, look at the tradition of setting New Year’s goals, reflect if Blue Monday should be ‘a thing’ and check-in on how it all actually impacts our mental health.

    Find Nick Elston on:
    His website: https://nickelston.com/
    LinkedIn: Nick Elston
    YouTube: Nick Elston

    To learn more about me go to:
    Instagram: @conversations.with.my.mind
    LinkedIn: Ance Vanaga
    Website: www.conversationswithmymind.com

    Lovely music created by: Harlowe King

    • 52 min
    The Uncomfortable Truth About How We Waste Our Time with Paul Holbrook | S2 Ep10

    The Uncomfortable Truth About How We Waste Our Time with Paul Holbrook | S2 Ep10

    Paul Holbrook left his corporate career to become a leadership coach and in the process realised that almost everyone he talks to struggles with time. He decided to tackle this challenge by creating a self-leadership programme Diary Detox focusing on healthier distribution of time and published a book ‘What Are You Doing? The uncomfortable truth about how you waste time at work’. Instead of being a CEO, Paul chooses to call himself a Chief Management Rebel. 
    In this episode Paul and I explore the challenge of understanding where our time goes. Paul is a strong believer we all need to make time for our personal life, health and wellbeing in order to protect our work productivity. He explains about the five key categories where our time could be potentially going and how we can start distributing it in a healthier way. We speak about how to move away from working long hours in spite of there always being more work and how to have the sometimes uncomfortable conversations with our colleagues, teams and managers, when we have decided to work differently. We also discuss the ‘Great Resignation’ and the new ‘Hybrid Ways of Working’ to understand the impact they might bring.

    Find Paul Holbrook on:
    His website: https://diarydetox.com/
    Personal LinkedIn: Paul Holbrook
    Diary Detox LinkedIn: Diary Detox

    To learn more about me go to:
    Instagram: @conversations.with.my.mind
    LinkedIn: Ance Vanaga
    Website: https://conversationswithmymind.buzzsprout.com

    Lovely music created by: Harlowe King

    • 1 hr 6 min
    What Sports and Success can Teach us about Mental Health with Dean Allen | S2 Ep9

    What Sports and Success can Teach us about Mental Health with Dean Allen | S2 Ep9

    Dean Allen is the kind of lecturer you’d like to have in your university - friendly, down to earth, all for encouraging everyone to use their critical thinking and a genuinely good person. He’s been building his career between the UK and South Africa, but in the past few years his heart and opportunities have grounded him and his family in the Eastern Cape.

    As a historian and an author of the bestselling book “Empire, War & Cricket” Dean has been giving lectures and speaking extensively on the influence of sports. Coincidentally, I’m publishing this episode on the 18th of July, the Nelson Mandela day. Nelson Mandela is someone Dean mentions in his talks with utmost respect and admiration.

    However, this conversation is much bigger than Dean’s studies and lectures. He approached me as he also wanted to share his own mental health journey to remind us to not take everything at its face value. While on the outside looking like he was having the time of his life, Dean had to go through a number of darker periods to get to where he is today.

    This episode has two equally important parts. We start by exploring Dean’s personal mental health journey and his experience with support available in the academic space and then we chat more about his research on how sports are not only a great entertainment, but also a power that can influence social, cultural and even political direction.

    Find Dean Allen on:
    His website: https://www.deanallen.co.za/
    Instagram:  @dr.deanallen
    Facebook: Dr Dean Allen 
    LinkedIn: Dr Dean Allen

    To learn more about me go to:
    Instagram: @conversations.with.my.mind
    LinkedIn: Ance Vanaga
    Website: https://conversationswithmymind.buzzsprout.com

    Lovely music created by: Harlowe King

    • 1 hr 14 min
    Am I a Boss Babe or a Cult Member? with Roberta Blevins | S2 Ep8

    Am I a Boss Babe or a Cult Member? with Roberta Blevins | S2 Ep8

    Brace yourself for laughter, disbelief, behind the scenes of making an Amazon Prime documentary and learning why someone most likely is a victim of cult tactics rather than a boss babe, if they have joined a multi-level marketing company.

    My guest on this episode is the one and only Roberta Blevins! If you are a documentary binge-watcher like myself, you might recognise her from the series of LuLaRich. However, Roberta is much more than that. She is also a mother, a great friend, a hair stylist and an anti-MLM activist, who is not afraid to speak up for herself and other victims of this not-so-fair business model. She is a tiktoker, a youtuber, a podcaster, an instagrammer - you name it - and all of these communities are welcoming her with open arms.

    When Roberta and I started recording, I quickly realised it would not be a short episode. Although, why would it be? While on the same wavelength, we spoke about Roberta herself as well as her experience with joining and then leaving LuLaRoe, a previously heavily overrated clothing MLM company. We also chat about ways to get out of these cult-like organisations and why it might not always be as easy as some of us might think. As a fantastic bonus, Roberta gives us an insight into how Amazon Prime created the famous LuLaRich documentary and how they managed to get the owners on camera as well.

    Find Roberta Blevins on:
    Her website: https://robertablevins.com/ 
    Instagram: @therealrobertablevins
    TikTok: @bertalikewhoa
    Twitter: @bertalikewhoa
    Life After MLM - The Podcast
    Life After MLM - The Show
    Life After MLM - The Group 
    Email Roberta: therealrobertablevins@gmail.com

    Watch LuLaRich on Amazon Prime

    To learn more about me go to:
    Instagram: @conversations.with.my.mind
    LinkedIn: Ance Vanaga
    Website: https://conversationswithmymind.buzzsprout.com

    Lovely music created by: Harlowe King

    • 1 hr 41 min

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