Master The Mind, Master Anything with Dave Cottrell

Do you know "why" you are doing the things you do? What is the overall aim of your interactions and are the actions you take indicative of that?

I've seen a LOT of online fighting recently and it often seems that the people in these Twitter arguments don't really know what they are trying to achieve outside of having the last Tweet in the fight.

It makes me think of how when an interaction shifts from a discussion to an argument the purpose moves, it may start out as "understand the other side better" then it may move to "make them change their mind" before eventually degrading simply to "win". And once it's at win, our actions will shift to match this new goal.

Think about this principal and ask yourself the following two questions regularly:

1- what am I trying to achieve?

2- does what I am doing reflect that?

Michael Heppell has probably played more of a direct role in my life than anyone with whom I had never met before as his books influenced one of the biggest events of my life... but I'm not going to tell you what that is, you have to listen to find out!

Michael is a world renowned coach, author, public speaker and educator on all things "being brilliant". His books are fantastic and extremely accessible and his speaking style is down to earth and to the point.

It was an honour to have Michael join me for this episode where we talk about the changing face of personal development across the span of his career. Part 2 coming in a month!

A few weeks back I realised I was struggling with social media addiction again. Not that I can't get off it, but that I couldn't stop obsessively checking the statistics on it. I realised that these things that were supposed to be data to help a person understand how their channel was performing had made the switch into me allowing myself to attach a relationship to my own personal worth.

The last time I remember feeling like this was back when I was gripped by body dysmorphia and how the weight on the scales had shifted from being a data point, to an emotional measurement of my value as a person. And just how obsessively weighing myself back then had fed this addiction, obsessively checking my social media recently had done the same.

In this episode of the podcast I open up about each of these situations.

Jake Mills is a man on a mission to change the nature of mental health signposting in the UK. Something he and I have in common is that we both believe there are a wealth of services out there that just aren't getting accessed because people simply don't know about them.

In this episode we discuss how prescribing the Samaritans as an only option can lead people to feel that this is all that is available and if that model doesn't fit the individual's needs then they are stuck. Each of us are individual and whereas some people get a tremendous benefit from the Samaritans, others may be best suited to a text service such as Shout.

There is definitely more to be done in the field of mental health, but there is also more and more being done each day and Hub Of Hope aims to make discovering and accessing these services as simple as finding a take out via Just Eat.

Richard Nicholls is a Psychotherpist who came into helping people from the background of hospital radio.

He now has one of the longest running mental health podcasts out there which is actually one of my favourite go-tos.

On this episode we get into Richard's "why", the way things have changed in mental health since he started this journey and where he plans to go next via his Patreon project.

Rory Brown is one of those peolpe that you only need to spend a few minutes with to realise he is one of the most loveable guys on the planet, yet he spent years unable to love himself.

In this powerful episode Rory shares his story of living with an eating disorder, overcoming body dismorphia and surviving a suicide attempt to go on to become a coach with a difference.

What on earth is a Mental Health Marathon?

Well I got stuck with a thought a little while ago as to why when we do charity events are most of the go-to things centered around PHYSICAL health, PHYSICAL ability, PHYSICAL endurance?

Marathons, triathlons, climbing mountains, circuit training events, dance-athons, 24 hour calorie challenges and so on!

And I decided that I wanted to host an endurance event with a difference. When we are raising money for mental health, why not use a feat of MENTAL endurance?

From this idea the Mental Health Marathon was born! Using the famous 26.2 as a starting point I will be hosting a 26.2 hour mental health conversation, in 2021 on 26/2!

So why am I telling you about this so early? Well to put it simply because this is going to take a LOT of plaaning, a whole host of assistance and frankly because I wanted it out there in the universe so I now have no choice but to do it. (Oh and because the release date of this episode is the day the London Marathon was supposed to be!)

If you think this sounds like a great idea and you would like to be involved in any way then drop me a line through any of my socials. @mindsetbydave everywhere.

It's fantastic to have Paul McGregor back on the podcast. Paul is a mental health activist, campaigner and educator who shifted careers dramatically after losing his dad to suicide.

On this episode we get into Paul's current project including the ambitious "Everymind at Work" a white label mental health support application for the work place.

We also talk about how he is using platforms such as TikTok to reach a younger crowd and encouraging his own son Freddie into following in his footsteps with their mental health instagram lives.

If you haven't heard Paul's previous episode on the podcast I would highly recommend going back for a listen! (It's episode 71)

It was great to catch up with Paul and I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Sanctus is an organisation I have had a keen eye on for many years now. They were one of the first people to have what I saw as an extremely big ambition of how to change mental health.

We often talk about normalising mental health conversations, well the gym is a normalised place in many people's lives and their vision was to create the mental health gym and have these become just as ubiquitous.

The road to that vision is long, but along the way Sanctus are doing great things helping to improve mental health and wellbeing within the workplace.

In this episode I am joined by their head of marketing - George - to discuss the past, present and future of Sanctus.

Social media has become an integral part of our lives, but rather that it being a tool that we use, it is often a tool that uses us.

In this epissode I talk about using social media deliberately and mindfully and ultimately understanding why we are on it at any given time.