Don't Quit on Me Nick C

Rest and Recovery - the Keys for Long Term Success
 Nick Propper is a sought after expert, keynote speaker and facilitator on the topic of building sustainable human performance.
Nick works extensively within the senior leadership groups of some of the world’s leading organizations, including Yale School of Medicine, Goldman Sachs, Procter & Gamble, Morgan Stanley, DaVita, G100, United States Ski & Snowboard Team, United States Air Force and the United States Federal Intelligence Community.
Prior to co-founding Impact Human Performance, Nick was a leader at the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute. In this role Nick was both a performance Coach, leading clients through high impact programming in the fields of Energy Management and Resilience, and the lead for the Professional Service Business Unit.
Before specializing in the Human Performance industry Nick held several senior leadership positions in a fifteen-year career at Omnicom, the world’s leading holding company of marketing and communications agencies. After running agencies in the UK and Europe, Nick’s last role was Global Chief Operating Officer and Chief Client Officer at Porter Novelli, a Global Communications
Consultancy.
Nick studied at Loughborough University in the UK where he earned a BA in European Business Administration and he remains an avid sportsman, spending his free time on the tennis court, on his road bike or skiing in the mountains with his family.
Nick on LinkedIn
Impact Human Performance – We help people perform at their best, more often.
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Contact Nick at Don't Quit on Me Podcast

Mark McConville is a seasoned comedian and a respected lecturer in Suicidology. With over two decades of experience in the entertainment industry, he has become one of Australia’s most reliable and professional comedians. Mark’s academic journey in mental health is equally impressive; he graduated from Griffith University with a Master’s Degree in Suicidology and received the Griffith Award for Academic Excellence in 2016. His work now bridges the gap between laughter and serious discussions about mental health, emphasizing the power of humor in suicide prevention. As an Adjunct Lecturer at The Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention, Mark continues to enlighten and engage audiences with his unique blend of comedy and compassion.
 
Mental Health Resources
Lifeline 13 11 14
Beyond Blue 1300 22 46 36 - for online chat (3pm-12am AEST) or email responses within 24 hours
MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78
Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800
13 YARN 13 92 76 - 24/7 for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
SANE Australia 1800 18 7263
headspace 1800 650 890
youthbeyondblue 1300 224 636
Veterans Support Service 1800 011 046
PANDA (perinatal anxiety and depression) 1300 726 306
The Eating Disorders Centre (eating disorders) (07) 3844 6055
Butterfly Foundation (eating disorders) 1800 334673
QLife (LGBTI) 1800 184 527
Griefline 1300 845 745
Grow Australia (support through peer groups) 1800 558 268
Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467
24-hour national telephone counselling and online service for people 18 years and over
Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800
Free confidential 24-hour telephone and online counselling for young people aged 5 to 25 years
Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636
24-hour telephone support and online chat service with links to local services
e-headspace
Online counselling for young people 12 to 25 years
Mindhealthconnect
Website aggregates mental health resources and content from the leading health
Blue Knot Helpline and Redress Support Service
Supporting adult survivors of childhood trauma and adult survivors of institutional child sexual abuse around the National Redress Scheme
Call 1300 657 380
helpline@blueknot.org.au
1800 Respect
Support if you, or someone you know, is experiencing sexual assault or domestic and family violence. 1800 737 732
available 24/7 - Online chat - available 24/7 - 1800respect.org.au

 Maggie O'Shea is a relationship therapist and mental health social worker in private practice with over 30 years of experience in the field. 
Maggie lives in Castlemaine in Australia and teaches Masters of Counselling students in Melbourne at Swinburne University and Relationships Australia.
Maggie’s practice MindfulPresence specializes in group-work and retreats for individuals and couples. She is trained and registered to teach the 8-week mindfulness based stress reduction and mindful self-compassion programs, as well as positive neuroplasticity, yoga, and Brene Brown's Daring Way and Rising Strong. She offers the Mindful Self Compassion program and her own Relationship Renew program live and online most school terms as well as transformative residential retreats for both individuals and couples in Australia and Bali.

To find out more about Maggie and MindfulPresence, please go to her website: www.mindfulpresence.com.au 
 
 

Amber Lea Starfire is a writer and writing coach who has published two memoirs and several journaling how-to books. She has also developed a series of online classes and workshops that have helped many people journal and deepen their writing practice. 
Amber says "Bringing truth and creativity into the world — and empowering others to do the same — is the work of my life.
I truly believe that there is power in the story of people’s lives. My work here combines what I’ve learned from a career in teaching and writing, an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of San Francisco and an MA in Education from Stanford University, as well as more than two decades of developing an audience for my own life-writing. I’m fascinated with the unique path each writer takes in finding his or her voice.
You can absolutely do this. 
I’d love to know what project or inspiring idea has led you here! Let me know what you’re working on and how I might support you.

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure. ~Helen Keller
https://writingthroughlife.com/

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a psychologist, Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, and New York Times best-selling author. His seven books have been published in 31 languages and include Making Great Relationship, Neurodharma, Resilient, Hardwiring Happiness, Just One Thing, Buddha's Brain, and Mother Nurture - with over a million copies in English alone.
He's the founder of the Global Compassion Coalition and the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, as well as the co-host of the Being Well podcast - which has been downloaded over 9 million times. His free newsletters have 250,000 subscribers, and his online programs have scholarships available for those with financial needs.
He's lectured at NASA, Google, Oxford, and Harvard. An expert on positive neuroplasticity, his work has been featured on CBS, NPR, the BBC, and other major media. He began meditating in 1974 and has taught in meditation centers worldwide. He and his wife live in northern California and have two adult children. He loves the wilderness and taking a break from emails.
https://www.rickhanson.net/
https://www.globalcompassioncoalition.org/
 

“ … it's really fascinating actually like the human, at the biological level at the psychological level, we are built to tolerate pain, and we're built to grow stronger from enduring difficulty, we're actually made for it. That's like how it works. Joy matters too - don't get me wrong, you know, but the difficult stuff is always there. So, we might as well get good at utilizing that end of the spectrum as well.”
Ralph De La Rosa
 
Music with kind permission from Krishna Das
https://www.krishnadas.com/
Gathering in the light-Om-Narayani. Krishna Das. https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/music/products/gathering-in-the-light
 
What is this and why read or listen? What follows is an exploration of my journey of living with chronic pain and accompanying mental health challenges. I now understand, the experience of mental ill health has contributed to the degree and severity with which I have felt this pain.
 
I started collating my thoughts around the idea of exploring chronic physical pain, and how meditation might help as an intervention to assist people living with these conditions, to experience less suffering. As we will discuss in a bit, pain, whether is physical, emotional, or social, is experienced in similar parts of the brain. So is you know someone who experiences any of these challenges, there may be something in here that might help.
 
So primarily, we will look at how using a meditative practice might help to reduce suffering, reclaim access to moments of joy and openness and foster the ability to be able to pursue a life worth living, in the presence of pain. Someone once sent me a post on social media with a picture and a quote saying “Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.” I was near vomiting with a migraine at the time, so there was no dancing to be done and the message was not received with the love it was sent with.
 
I think it's important to mention that there is no part of my life that living with chronic pain has not affected. I remember sitting in a psychologist’s office on the North Side of Brisbane, and I was quiet for quite a while, trying to curate the thoughts so that I could adequately relay how desperate I felt, but not so much so that I have a short involuntary time in hospital. The words that came out of my mouth spoke to the total sense of loss that I felt as a result of living with chronic pain and the ‘things’ that I was not able to do or participate in as a result – “Am I even lovable?” I choked out, in tears. I am not sure what my psychologist answered.
 
In mental health circles they often talk about the biopsychosocial contributors to understanding mental ill health, and that a clear understanding of these can be the bedrock to solid recovery. It's fair to say and not at all dramatic to say that living with chronic pain for the last 14 years has nearly cost me my life, my marriage, and my grip on sanity. So, the fact that I am writing this, and that this episode is being produced is testament to the fact that recovery is definitely possible.
 
Recovery as I've come to understand it is a concept which is defined by each person as to how they might like to live despite the challenges they face, be they mental health, chronic physical health or other challenge.
 
Having a living experience of chronic and persistent pain, has also come with many gifts. This is one of the reasons for this episode - I would like to be able to pass these gifts forward so that hopefully, wherever you are on your journey, whether it's living with chronic pain, mental health or other challenge, that you may find a point of resonance here and maybe a tool that you can add to your toolkit. The second reason is that this forms part of an assessment for an advanced diploma in meditation. Having skin in the game as it were, I feel like I may have a bit of an advantage, by way of lived experience. H