Serendipity Soup

Welcome to Serendipity Soup! The antidote to celebrity success podcasts.This month's guest is Andrew Finlay, the owner of Wildview Retreat (https://wildviewretreat.com/), an amazing wellness centre set in the middle of the hills of southern Portugal. He’s a nutritional therapist and has, at various times also been a dive master, environmental consultant and head of environmental protection for the Marshall Islands. Andrew readily admits that he has a strong need to feel that he’s doing something worthwhile with his life but that following this desire, often without thinking about the consequences, has given him both extreme highs and worrying lows. He’s a very forward-looking person. Someone who feels that life’s too short to put up with situations that don’t make you happy and that if you want to feel good about yourself you should always be ready to move onto the next chapter in your life. As you’d expect I challenge him – hopefully fairly gently! – on that. At one level it makes sense, but when is enough enough? When does making a fresh start tip into giving up because things have got a bit tricky? I think it’s fair to say that Andrew isn’t into giving up when things get tricky. You don’t buy an abandoned hilltop village in Portugal and turn it into a fully functioning retreat complete with running water and electricity if you quit at the first sign of trouble. But Andrew’s reflections on the cost of being this driven are fascinating.

Welcome to Serendipity Soup! The antidote to celebrity success podcasts.A lot of my guests define success in work as finding something that makes you happy. But this month’s guest, Camilla Waterman, added a really useful twist. Success is finding something that makes you happy at the time you’re doing it. The thing I envy about Camilla is her positive attitude to change. Just because a job makes her happy when she starts, doesn’t mean it will always make her happy. She seems so comfortable recognising when that point has been reached and then simply acting to improve the situation by moving on. In that respect she’s a lot like my guest in episode 2, Nicole Shamier, who was very comfortable recognising that at some point she wouldn’t be the right person for the dream job she was in at the time. Only two links this month. The first is to the brilliant BBC documentary ‘The Edge’, which is available on BBC Iplayer here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000lhvt/the-edge. The second is a last minute addition as I re-listened to Camilla's episode, which is the Wikipedia entry for the classical Greek legend of Cassandra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra.

Welcome to Serendipity Soup! The antidote to celebrity success podcasts.Who are the champions of your life? The people who are there at just the right time, with just the right support, to supercharge your life and take you to whatever your next level is. This month my guest on Serendipity Soup is Jo Bradshaw: an outdoor instructor, mountain climbing expedition leader, public speaker and leadership coach. I learned a lot from my conversation with Jo, but I was particularly taken by two things she talks about. The first is the importance of every single person to the successful functioning of the teams she leads. The second is this concept of ‘champions of your life’. Jo mentions several of these people as she talks and I hope you’ve been lucky enough to have had some champions of your life too. Here are links to some of the things we talk about:Breaking The Fever S2-04 I Power dynamics in the office - with Laetita Vitaud: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/breaking-the-fever/id1621524371?i=1000565748591Bruce Tuckman’s ‘forming–storming–norming–performing’ model of group development: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_developmentCarol Dweck and the ‘growth’ mindset: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_DweckAsthma UK: https://www.asthma.org.uk/Anthony Nolan: https://www.anthonynolan.org/Place2Be – Improving children’s mental health: https://www.place2be.org.uk/The Duke of Edinburgh’s awards: https://www.dofe.org/360 Expeditions: https://www.360-expeditions.com/Discover Adventure: https://www.discoveradventure.com/