Kevin Roth began to play the dulcimer in 1972 at the old age of thirteen, and at sixteen recorded his first album which immediately launched him into international fame. His career took him to a concert and symphony stages around the world, to festivals, radio, television shows, and two appearances at the White House. Then came a sudden diagnosis of Melanoma which changed his life. He was given around two years to live and had the choice to accept the diagnosis or live. He chose life. Through adapting and combining techniques from his music and performance practice with others that he researched, he found a simple and powerful method to change how he lived and discovered how to not just survive but to become truly happy and thrive. Kevin feels we create stories every day. When we wake up it can be a good day or a bad day. For example, if you’re in a really bad mood and the phone rings and it's a friend you haven’t heard from a while then suddenly you’re in a whole other dimension. All the drama that was ruining your life is gone. When you look at mindful awareness and take the time to contemplate it you realise that you really shouldn't get upset about very much. The story is the story. We also need to recreate our life on a daily basis and retune ourselves through the day. Many people don't know how to sit in silence or be comfortable with themselves any more. We have an inner voice that will talk to us if we are quiet enough to listen so we can replace what doesn't work with what does.

Lara Sabanosh and her husband had been marrried for twenty years and had been based at Guantanamo Bay in a civilian capacity for four years. On January 9th 2015 after an evening event he went missing and his body was found later in the bay. In telling the story of his disappearance, the media portrayed him as a war hero and a wonderful husband and father but this did not tell the full story of their relationship. The evening her husband went missing he had assaulted her three times verbally and physically. The attack had been reported but the people who were questioning her about his disappearance were the same people he socialised with. Nobody was listening to her and the reports she had made against him ignored. Since then Lara has often been asked why people stay abusers. Lara feels that she became a military wife at a very young age. She was nineteen years old when she met her husband and was a college student with big plans for the future. She came from a close-knit family unit with no background in violence but she now realises that the stronger the ties between them came the more she lost herself. At the start of the relationship it was not abusive but she now realises that there were some red flags before they got married. There were incidents that happened which she now feels should have given her an indication about how he handled situations and that he was lying to her. After they got married these things became her problem.

Pre-pandemic in the US there was a notion that if you did all the right things, happiness would just happen to you. That's not actually the way happiness works. In the pandemic there was a paradigm shift where millions of people started asking themselves were they happy in their life or was their life ending up how they imagined it. Lots of people said no its not and resigned in mass numbers. A second paradigm shift happened when people asked themselves questions about their dissatisfaction at work. The HR department had always known the answer was more money and better benefits but now that people were asking if they were happy in life, the HR departments were at a loss. In the old world we knew that more money would make us happy. In the new world no one knows the answer because few people know how to make themselves happy.

Paola Knecht is a certified leadership, transformational, and self-development coach with fifteen years of experience working in leading-edge global corporations, including Viatris and Syngenta. In her recently published book https://www.amazon.com/Success-Mindset-Take-back-leadership/dp/3033087728/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8andqid=andsr= (The Success Mindset: Take Back the Leadership of Your Mind) she challenges the mainstream view of success and asks her readers to redefine success so it is truly meaningful to them. Paola looks at the difference between people who are extraordinary and reach things no one thinks are possible and people who don't achieve the things they want to. She feels that many people are living against an externalised idea of what success looks like rather than what matters to them and that they are following a definition of success that was not really defined by them but comes from external sources.

Clint Davis is an entrepreneur with a passion for storytelling and preserving the past. A cancer survivor who lost two siblings at a young age, Clint has always had a keen awareness of the importance of remembering the past, while also making the most of the present moment. He now empowers others to save their histories and pass on their legacies. In this podcast: Clint talks about how moving gives you the opportunity to reinvent yourself Why failure needs to be factored in Why holding on to your past is important.

Rosie Mankes is a life coach, motivational speaker, and author of Find Your Joy and Run With It, a memoir about overcoming her second battle with cancer, the transitioning of her mother into an assisted living facility, and the unexpected loss of her brother, all within one year. Rosie talks to Dr Russell Thackeray about how her identity as a secret comedian helped her come out of adversity happier and stronger and how humour was one of the healthiest coping mechanisms for her. In this podcast: Rosie explains how she managed to find joy in everyday living again How making a number a small changes can work better than ‘big picture’ thinking Why you need to define what makes you happy

Karen Liebenguth is an accredited mindfulness teacher, certified coach, mentor and facilitator. She is also the founder of Green Space Coaching and a life and executive coach, eco-therapist and mindfulness trainer. She was one of the first people in the UK to start coaching while walking in nature after finding that both she and her clients get far better results outside rather than sitting indoors. In this podcast: Karen explains why she became interested in coaching in nature The benefits of being in nature Why we need to experience mindfulness for ourselves

Dr Alex Hershaft was just 5 years old when the Nazis invaded his homeland of Poland. He and his family were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto but he survived and after escaping Nazi persecution and immigrating to the USA, he worked as an environmental consultant. In 1972, a routine inventory of a Midwest slaughterhouse changed the course of his life. He is now the President and founder of Farm Animals Right Movement (FARM), an international nonprofit working to end the use of animals for food.

Lisa Broderick has worked with entrepreneurs and established companies to create lives of presence and purpose for four decades. Her approach of integrating science with metaphysics and her own personal experiences to help others with little or no scientific or spiritual training master their innate abilities with practices designed to improve their lives, their relationships, and how the world sees them. In this podcast: Lisa talks about how it’s possible to slow down time The science behind ‘All the time in the world’ Controlling the perception of time

This week on the Resilience Unravelled podcast, Dr Russell Thackeray talks to Arman Vestad who spent a lot of his life on the run! Through a series of poor life choices and unfortunate circumstances, he found himself dealing drugs and engaging in other criminal activity. After leaving prison for the 10th time, it wasn’t long until Arman found himself under arrest once again. This time, however, a policeman on the case sat down with him and asked what he could do to help. He showed that he cared, and those few moments changed the course of Arman’s life forever. In this podcast: Arman talks about the importance of young people having boundaries and limits The power of community How one person can turn someones life around