A Thought I Kept

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  "A Poem Can Fundamentally Change Someone’s Mood" — Deborah Alma 14.09.2026 54min

  Can a poem really change how you feel? My guest this week is Deborah Alma, poet, editor and founder of The Poetry Pharmacy, where poems are prescribed for the emotional ailments of everyday life. Deborah’s thought kept is: “A poem can fundamentally change someone’s mood.” It’s an idea that began while Deborah was working with people living with dementia, where she saw how a poem could take someone beyond the room they were sitting in — to the sea, a picnic or flying a kite — and how the feeli...
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  “Choose Which Bits You Hear” — Hannah Wilson 07.09.2026 44min

  How do you deal with criticism without letting it change how you see yourself? And what happens when becoming more visible means becoming more open to other people’s opinions of you? This week on A Thought I Kept, I’m talking to leadership development coach, trainer and author Hannah Wilson about a piece of advice she was given early in her leadership career: when you put your head above the parapet, people will have something to say about you. The important part is learning to choose which b...
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  "This Should Be Fun" — Anne Ditmeyer 31.08.2026 55min

  What if fun wasn’t something we earned after we’d done the difficult, serious or important things but part of how we found our way through them? My guest this week is Anne Ditmeyer, an American writer, creative coach and workshop facilitator living in Paris, whose work asks one wonderfully disruptive question: What if there was another way? In this episode, we talk about Creativity, play and why they matter beyond childhood · getting lost and learning to trust yourself · Anne’s grandfather Ch...
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  "There Is No One Right Way to Be" — Alice Thompson-Boyd 24.08.2026 52min

  What if the problem isn’t that you haven’t found the right way to live, work or be but that there isn’t one? My guest this week is Alice Thompson-Boyd, therapeutic coach, podcaster, psychotherapist-in-training and co-founder of the social enterprise Social Bite. Alice spent her twenties helping build an organisation that went on to have an extraordinary impact on homelessness in Scotland. But alongside the success, awards and recognition, she was struggling with anxiety, burnout, panic attack...
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  “Put Yourself in the Queue First” — Nicky Marshall 17.08.2026 52min

  What happens when you spend so much of your life helping, caring for and making a difference to other people that you forget to include yourself? My guest this week is Nicky Marshall — speaker, mentor, publisher, wellbeing facilitator and author of No One Is Coming to Save You. Nicky’s thought kept is: “To make a difference in this life, I had to put myself in the queue first.” It’s a thought she came to through experience. After surviving a coercive relationship in her twenties, Nicky had a ...
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  "Ask What Makes You Come Alive" — Selina Barker 10.08.2026 56min

  Are you burnt out, exhausted by work, or wondering whether the life you’ve worked so hard to build is actually making you happy? This week on A Thought I Kept, I’m talking to career and life design coach Selina Barker about burnout, energy management, career change and what it really means to create a life that makes you feel alive. Selina and I talk about why burnout and exhaustion have become so normalised, why women in particular can become caught in patterns of over-giving and self-sacrif...
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  "Be Brave Enough to Suck at Something New" — Sadia Ghazanfar 20.07.2026 51min

  What if confidence isn't where we begin? What if courage comes first? This week on A Thought I Kept, I'm joined by women's leadership and career development coach Sadia Ghazanfar, founder of Slay Your Dragons, to explore the thought she has carried with her for years: "Be brave enough to suck at something new." Together we unpack why so many of us wait to feel confident before we start, how perfectionism keeps us stuck, and why learning, making mistakes and asking for help might be the very t...
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  How We Learn to Matter Too with Lois Jackson 13.07.2026 46min

  What happens when you spend so long supporting everyone else that you begin to lose sight of yourself? In this episode of A Thought I Kept, I talk to coach and charity co-founder Lois Jackson about caregiving, identity, emotional wellbeing and learning to matter in your own life too. In 2017, Lois’s fiancé, former professional rugby player Ed Jackson, suffered a life-changing spinal cord injury. Lois threw herself into supporting his recovery, repeatedly telling herself: “It’s not about me.” ...
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  How Mothering Becomes a Radical Act with Elinor Cleghorn 06.07.2026 1godz 7min

  Motherhood is often talked about as something instinctive, natural, or inevitable. But what if the stories we've inherited about mothering tell only part of the story? In this episode of A Thought I Kept, I sit down with feminist cultural historian and bestselling author Elinor Cleghorn to explore the hidden history of motherhood and the women whose experiences have so often been left out of the historical record. Together, we talk about caregiving, identity, freedom, resilience, and what hap...
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  How We Reclaim Movement in Everyday Life with Wendy Welpton 29.06.2026 53min

  What happens when movement stops being something we measure, earn, optimise or squeeze into a busy day, and becomes something much simpler? In this episode, I’m talking to Wendy Welpton about the idea that everyday movement matters just as much as exercise. It’s a conversation that begins with movement, but quickly becomes one about trust, self-compassion, ageing, wellbeing, and our relationship with our bodies. Wendy shares her own experience of living with chronic pain, the fear and frustra...
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  When Being Good Is Exhausting with Alice Bramhill 22.06.2026 1godz 2min

  There are times in life when trying to be a good person can become exhausting. A good daughter. A good mother. A good friend. A good employee. A good partner. A good citizen. So much of our lives can be shaped by trying to meet expectations, keep the peace, and make other people comfortable. But what happens when being good starts pulling us away from ourselves? In this episode, I talk to Alice Bramhill about the thought she has carried with her from Carl Jung for decades: "I'd rather be whol...
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  How We Stay Creatively Conscious with Claire Venus 15.06.2026 51min

  In a world that often feels noisy, fast-moving, and full of other people's expectations, how do we stay connected to ourselves? How do we know what's truly ours, what lifts us up, and what might be shifting us into someone we were never meant to be? This week, I’m joined by Claire Venus, writer, mentor, Substack strategist, and founder of Creatively Conscious. Claire is someone I turn to often for encouragement and guidance on creativity, community, and showing up online in ways that feel mor...
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  How We Find Our Way Back From Burnout with Dr Jillian Bybee 08.06.2026 56min

  Burnout is often described as being too busy, working too hard, or having too much on our plates. But what if it has as much to do with how we relate to ourselves as it does with how much we do? In this episode of A Thought I Kept, I talk to Dr Jillian Bybee, a paediatric intensive care physician, certified coach, writer, and host of the Humans Leading podcast. Having experienced burnout twice herself, Jillian brings a thought that completely changed the way she understands wellbeing: wellnes...
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  When Wanting Something Is Reason Enough with Rachel Hartigan 01.06.2026 51min

  What happens when wanting something is reason enough? In this episode of A Thought I Kept, I’m joined by writer and journalist Rachel Hartigan to explore a thought that has stayed with her for years: “I do it because I want to.” This opens up some surprisingly big questions: How often do we feel the need to justify what we want? How do we separate our own desires from expectations, responsibilities, fear, or the stories we’ve absorbed about who we should be? And what changes when we stop look...
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  How People Pleasing Stops Us Choosing Ourselves with Natalie Lue 26.05.2026 1godz 7min

  My guest this week Natalie Lue is known to many people for her groundbreaking work on people pleasing, boundaries, emotional baggage, and relationships through The Baggage Reclaim Sessions and her book The Joy of Saying No. We talk about the emotional roots of perfectionism and over-responsibility, the pressure to keep proving yourself, and the exhausting belief that you have to “earn” permission to change. We explore what happens when you realise you’ve over-identified with being usefu...
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  When Self-Help Becomes Something We Do Together with Toni Jones 18.05.2026 1godz 6min

  This week, I talk to Toni Jones about all things self-help. Toni is the founder of Shelf Help, the world’s first self-help book club and over the last decade she has read 1,000 self-help books while building a global community around reading, reflection and connection. We explore the difference between trying to optimise yourself and actually learning how to care for yourself. Toni shares why she thinks curiosity, experimentation, and connection can shift our approach to endless self-improvem...
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  How We Live Between Belief and Doubt with Hiroko Yoda 11.05.2026 48min

  In this episode of A Thought I Kept, I talk to Hiroko Yoda about grief, Japanese spirituality, uncertainty, ritual, belonging, and what it means to live somewhere between belief and doubt. We explore the idea of “half belief, half doubt” — the Japanese concept of hanshin hangi and how it can offer a more spacious way of relating to uncertainty, spirituality, and even ourselves. Hiroko shares how the death of her mother became the beginning of a deeper spiritual awakening, not through certaint...
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  Hope, Hulp and Human Tricky Things with Jacky Power 04.05.2026 58min

  In this episode, I talk to Jacky Power about feelings — the ones we hide, the ones we soften, and the ones we’re not always sure we’re allowed to have. We explore what it means to be seen, and why that can feel both deeply wanted and quietly risky. There’s something here about the tension between expression and protection — how we might say things sideways, through poetry or humour or busyness, and hope someone understands anyway. We talk about loneliness, and the difference between being alo...
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  When You’re Here and Not Quite Here with Cathy Rentzenbrink 27.04.2026 1godz 6min

  There are days when you’re here, fully in your life, in your conversations, in the small, ordinary moments, and days when part of you feels somewhere else entirely. That's what I get into with Cathy Rentzenbrink this week. We explore what it means to live a life that feels both grounded and slightly unreal at the same time. We explore the tension between being present and being pulled elsewhere and how easy it is to lose sight of what’s right in front of us. We talk about anxiety and emotiona...
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  How We Learn to Trust Things Will Be OK with Tanya Lynch 20.04.2026 59min

  In this episode, I talk to Tanya Lynch about hope, resilience, and the ways we hold ourselves through change. We explore what it means to believe that things will be OK, not as a forced positive mindset, but as something lived and felt over time. Through stories of heartbreak, midlife, motherhood, and starting again, Tanya shares how this trust has been shaped not just by ease, but by everything she’s had to move through. We talk about the emotional reality of life’s harder seasons—grief, unc...