The Better Being Podcast: Recent Episodes
Greg Stark and Ally Orr
This is a podcast that dives into the 4 pillars of performance; movement, mindset, nutrition and mental health.
Jen Brown is an ex-lawyer turned endurance runner. She has tackled some pretty amazing things in her career and battled Imposter Syndrome throughout (or the Imposter Complex, as she puts it). She's an expert at dealing with self-talk to help navigate times when you think you shouldn't be there, were just lucky or when you think you're just not good enough. Jen talks about the research behind the Imposter Complex and how men and women experience this differently. We hope you enjoy this chat with Jen Brown.
Mark Butler is a burnout expert. He is a mental-health strategist and clinical specialist in the areas of anxiety, depression, burnout, trauma, substance use and related issues. With 12 years’ clinical psychotherapy experience and as a treatment facility Clinical Director, underpinned by 25 years’ commercial experience, he really knows burnout. He helps individuals, teams and organisations to get in front of potential mindset and mental health issues, deal effectively with stress and burnout to optimise resilience, promote growth mindset and fulfil their potential.
We loved talking to Mark about all things burnout; how you can improve your mindset from an individual level up to a team level.
In the first podcast episode of 2021, we had a chat with Chris Lamb. Chris is the Deputy Commissioner of the NSW Public Service Commission.
The NSW public service is the largest employer in Australia, with more than 400k employees. The Public Service Commission has the lead role in designing and implementing workforce management strategies and reform to ensure the capability of the NSW public sector workforce to deliver high-quality public services to the people of NSW.
From 2010-2019 Chris served as a Non-Executive Director of Diversity Council Australia, and during that time was also a member of the Pride in Diversity (PiD) Advisory Board.
Chris spent 12 years at Lendlease and served at different times as the HR Director - Australia, Global Head of HR - Construction, Global Head of Organisational Development and Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer. Chris is an Advisory Committee member of The University of New South Wales’ Australian Human Rights Institute and a member of the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI) Diversity & Inclusion Reference Panel. In 2015 Chris received AHRI’s Diversity Champion Award.
Chris is passionate about diversity and inclusion and looking after the well-being of his teams.
In this episode, Sharon Gray, Head of People and Culture at OzHarvest goes into detail about cultivating a well-being culture at OzHarvest.
OzHarvest is Australia’s leading food rescue organisation, a non for profit that collects quality excess food from commercial outlets. The organisation operates Australia-wide, rescuing over 180 tonnes of food each week from over 3,500 donors and delivers it to people in need.
"At OzHarvest, we like to think we are a big yellow family made up of passionate people with huge hearts, who believe good food should not go to waste, while so many are still hungry."
OzHarvest hires based on values and attitude. The importance of their organisations values rings true throughout the entire company: from their first interview with the company into high-level board meetings, they practice what they preach. They are boldly courageous and strive to practice gratitude daily.
We talk about what OzHarvest did for their people during COVID-19, what they are doing in an ongoing capacity, and why leading from the top with integrity and authenticity is so important.
Benson Saulo is a Wemba Wemba, Jardwadjali, Weregia and Gunditjmara man who grew up in Tamworth NSW.
This year, Benson has become Australia's first Indigenous consul-general appointed to the United States.
Benson was the first Indigenous Australian to be appointed the Australian Youth Representative to the United Nations, and was the lead negotiator on the Rights of the Child Resolution in 2011.
Benson is a young man and new father with lots of fresh insight. In this chat, we talked all things diversity and inclusion in the workplace; what are you currently doing and what can you do to do better?
He talks about asking the right questions; who's perspective, voice and physical presence is missing from important decisions?
Are you being vulnerable and opening yourself up to critique and differing perspectives and advice?
Bensons insights are profound and timely. He also thinks everyone should learn how to skateboard.
I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and hope you do too.
Helen D'Silva is a performance psychologist based in Brisbane, Australia.
Her work focuses on helping individuals improve their mental performance, increasing personal and professional life satisfaction. Her clients range from professional athletes, general managers, entrepreneurs, and people in high-stress medical fields.
In our chat, we dove straight into talking about mental performance; the balance of empathy and problem solving, narcissistic personalities and ego, imposter syndrome as well as goal setting and important skills for not only improving your mindset but also for helping others around you improve theirs.
I thoroughly enjoyed this chat with Helen.
We sat down with Bec Mitchell, a physio-turned-corporate wellness expert to discuss all things wellbeing.
From Bec: "Exercise and eating well isn’t just for athletes, and 6 packs are the least exciting benefit they offer"
We covered a range of topics including challenges that corporates face when looking after their staff, the positive aspects of our new WFH environment, her own wellbeing practice, and lots of talk about meditation and mindfulness.
We really enjoyed this chat with Bec and I hope you do too.
In this conversation, Greg and Ally sat down to talk about Mental Health and Wellbeing.
We particularly wanted to dive into how we can be more proactive in keeping on top of it; exercise and general wellness but also focusing on social connectedness and reaching out to your mates.
Hope you enjoy the podcast, be sure to like, share and leave us a review!
In this conversation, we talked to Danielle Kelly. She is the Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Herbert Smith Freehills. HSF is a world-leading law firm that prides itself on its approach to mental health and wellbeing initiatives for their people.
We spoke about creating a good mental health and wellbeing culture particularly for lawyers. We touched specifically on women and their perspectives, normalizing mental health in the legal world, the HSF Mental Health Champions Program and the importance of diversity in the workplace. We also asked; can lawyers really have it all?
We really enjoyed this conversation with Danielle, and hope you do too.
In this conversation, we spoke to Dr Craig Duncan.
Dr Craig Duncan is a performance scientist who directly contributed to the drought-breaking winning performance of the NSW State of Origin team (2014 & 2018), the history-making performance of the Western Sydney Wanderers FC winning the Asian Champions League (2014) as well as making the grand final of the A-League (2016) and the Socceroos that won the Asian Cup (2015) and qualified for the World Cup (2018).
In this conversation, we spoke about his impressive resume in elite sport and his life-changing experience that changed his entire perspective on life. We go into depth about managing high performance in sports and in corporate settings, focusing on fatigue and managing stress.
We touched on the current social climate, relating to COVID-19, 'The Last Dance' Michael Jordan Documentary as well as Tim Cahill's extraordinary work ethic and champion personality. It was an extremely insightful conversation that covered a lot of ground.
Greg and I really enjoyed this chat, and we hope you do too.
In this episode, we had a chat with Dr. Greg Wells. He has a PhD in Exercise Physiology and is an exercise medicine researcher at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. He's an author, podcaster and public speaker. He is a very interesting guy who is extremely well educated, inspiring and has managed to create a business doing what he loves; pushing people to their full potential.
In this particular conversation, we cover aspects of human performance (in all aspects of our personal lives), his journey through life and lessons he's learned, his work with Sick Children in Toronto Canada, and ways in which we can live better lives through sleep, exercise, nutrition, and recovery.
About Dr. Greg Wells:
For Dr. Greg Wells, health and performance, particularly under extreme conditions, are personal and professional obsessions. As a scientist and physiologist, he has dedicated his career to making the science of human limits understandable and actionable.
A veteran endurance athlete, Dr. Wells has participated in the gruelling Nanisivik Marathon 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle, Ironman Canada and the Tour D’Afrique, an 11,000 km cycling race that is the longest in the world. He is also a travel and expedition adventurer who has journeyed through every imaginable terrain and conditions in over 50 countries around the world.
Dr. Wells is author of three best-selling books – Superbodies, The Ripple Effect, and The Focus Effect – and hosted the award-winning Superbodies series, which aired on Olympic broadcasts worldwide in 2010 and 2012.
He is the CEO and founder of Wells Performance Inc., a global consulting firm committed to achieving the moonshot of helping teams, schools and businesses become places where people get healthy, perform optimally and ultimately.
In the first episode of the Better Being Podcast, Ally and Greg discuss Greg's background, how he got into fitness, and a variety of myths and misconceptions that surround health and wellness.