Sue Stockdale previews some of the guests in Series 11 which will focus on various aspects of health and wellbeing, including physical, mental, and social connectedness. Upcoming guests include:

• Abigail Griebelbauer, a dyslexic children’s book author who includes characters with dyslexia and ADHD
• Sebastian Rohr, a tech entrepreneur working in the field of Identity and Access Management and Information Security
• Myrtle Simpson, trailblazer, explorer, and mother who in 1965 was the first woman to ski across the Greenland Ice Cap.
• Liz Benditt, a senior marketing executive who endured four different cancers over the course of 8 years
• Brian Sachetta, a software developer, and author of a book series to help folks overcome anxiety and depression
• Alex van den Heever, animal tracker, and co-founder of the Tracker Academy, that trains indigenous wildlife trackers.

Sue also talks to Elliot Rushton, a new member of the Access to Inspiration team, about his favourite episodes to date.

This series is kindly supported by Squadcast –the remote recording platform which empowers podcasters by capturing high-quality audio and video conversations.

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Series 11 Preview Transcription

[00:00:00] Sue: Hi, I’m Sue Stockdale, your host of Access to Inspiration the podcast with the social mission to help you be inspired by people who may be unlike you. We bring you guests from around the world from different backgrounds, different ages, genders, and ethnicities, whom you may not have otherwise get to hear because they are not celebrities or big names necessarily in their industries.

In fact, since we began almost 50% of our guests have been first time podcast guests, and we are really proud of that. What we do aim to show you is that most of the guests have a guiding purpose that drives them, and their focus is on creating an impact on something that is bigger than themselves. They’ve all made mistakes, they’ve overcome challenges, and they show up in the conversations as human beings, authentic and real, whether it’s a software developer in his thirties who overcame mental health challenges and wants to help others or a grandmother in her nineties, who was the first woman to ski across the Greenland ice cap on an unsupported expedition.

We hope their stories inspire you to transcend your day to day challenges and reflect on how you show up in the world. Think of this podcast, like a box of chocolates. You will find a mix in here and some subjects and guests maybe more appeal to you than others. Well, we encourage you to dive in regardless to try something new and to listen with curiosity and interest, put yourself into the shoes of the guest, what must be like for. Or think about what questions you would want to ask that person, if you had the opportunity. That’s where inspiration can come from. When you gain a new perspective on the world.

Turning attention to news about our team. We’re delighted that our collaboration with Squadcast continues. Squad cast is a remote recording platform, which empowers podcasters by capturing high quality audio and video conversations that listeners love. You can find out more about them at squadcast.fm. We’ve also got a new member of our team, Elliot Rushton who’s doing a wonderful job on the social media. I asked Elliot about what he enjoys about working on the podcast.

[00:02:29] Elliot: For me, it comes down to two things. The first is sharing those inspirational stories that each guest has, and while they have those similar messages, sometimes the experiences and the stories behind each one really makes each message different. And the second is the opportunity to stretch myself creatively by creating the graphics, the videos that everyone sees on social media. And

[00:02:53] Sue: have you been inspired by any of the guests in particular?

[00:02:56] Elliot: Yeah. Two episodes stand out for me, really. So the [00:03:00] first would be episode 65, which is the one with Jamie Ramsey as the guest. And the second would be number 75 with Adeyanju Olomola and both of them are kind of different reasons as well. So Jamie’s episode was the first episode that I worked on with access to inspiration. And I thought it was just quite amazing how passionate he was to keep exploring and pushing himself. Whereas I think a lot of people will be able to associate with the message that Adeyanju put across in her episode, just because I know a lot of people who have had some form of imposter syndrome or have struggled with being heard in their own lives. So it was quite an interesting episode for me to listen to as well, because sometimes I can struggle with that. Getting heard through a lot of noise as well.

[00:03:52] Sue: And on to series 11, our theme for this series is health and wellbeing. And over the next few weeks, we’ll bring you a variety of guests whose stories relate to this theme with dyslexia awareness week happening in October, one of our guests will be Abigail Griebelbauer who started writing books for children that include characters with dyslexia and ADHD.

[00:04:17] Abigail: So my background is actually special education, elementary education. That was the degree I graduated from. And I ended up teaching full time for two years inside the classroom as a fifth grade teacher. And it really was that second year that I realized if I’m telling my students that they need to follow their dreams and really follow whatever aspirations they have in life, that I have to do that as well. The reason behind creating the children’s book was because I didn’t see the representation in the children’s book. And so I thought that that was the perfect way of allowing this conversation to start at a young age, because I think it’s really important for kids who are younger to know what dyslexia is and know what ADHD is because if they see themselves in these characters, they can go home and they can ask. What is dyslexia, like and talk about it with their parents and then potentially even get a diagnosis in the future to something that they relate to in the book.

[00:05:17] Sue: Another guest I’ll be speaking to is Brian Sachetta who is author of a mental health focused book series, and a website titled Get out of your Head. Brian’s not a therapist or a psych but a software developer who applied problem solving approaches that he had learned from work to manage his anxiety and mental health issues

[00:05:40] Brian: I would read a book. I would listen to something on tape. I would read a journal article, something like that. And that piece of content would have some sort of strategy and say like, when you’re anxious, try this specific tactic. And I would then take that tactic to different events in my life, whether it was that job interview or going skydiving, and I would test it out. [00:06:00] And I would try to say to myself, does this work for. If it does, let’s put it in this bucket over here. If it doesn’t, let’s forget about it, let’s move on. So there was definitely that aspect to it, where it was like I was going out and AB testing different strategies.

[00:06:14] Sue: We’ll also focus on healthcare in a slightly different way. Sebastian Rohr works in tech, in the area of identity and access management, as well as information. And Sebastian has put his skills to good use, to improve healthcare and quality of life in some developing countries.

[00:06:33] Sebastian: The last one was a trip to Pakistan. One of the largest communities on earth is like 270 million citizens right now. The projections say that there’s going to be 350 million Pakistani within the decade. So the growth rate is really important. And as Pakistan suffers from one of the lowest child registration rates in the world, it is super duper important for them to have a working scheme so that every child gets registered. Every child gets their birth certifi. So that every child gets school education, that they get healthcare and everything. And that was a project I did with UNICEF, and I’m pretty proud that I was able to contribute my share there. And that is definitely impact. That is for me something where I can put my knowledge and my capabilities to work and actually help millions of people where it is really, really necessary.

[00:07:35] Sue: And to kick off next week. Our first guest will be Liz Benditt who is one of the most positive and upbeat people I’ve met recently, considering she’s survived four different cancer diagnoses over the course of eight years.

[00:07:50] Liz: My kids have had such a unique experience growing up with a mom that is sometimes really sick. And I think it’s taught them to be a lot more compassionate understanding that sometimes people are going through trauma that you can’t see. And I think that that is such an unbelievably valuable lesson. When you experience it yourself, you’re so much more, I think empathetic. As a result. And I see that it empathy in them and it makes me very proud. They also learned to be more responsible. Like sometimes mom can’t make dinner, I’m just too tired and they will make pancakes for dinner or order a pizza or it’s eggs and toast night. We call in our house sometimes is forage night. Like it’s every man for himself. Figure it out. There’s food in the fridge.

And we started that when they were young. I mean, I wanna say maybe when they were eight and 10, like that kind of idea that maybe they need to help pitch in because things were in a weird space right now, and it’s not business as usual now also right. As a mother it has showed me what my kids can do. Hey, eight year olds can make scrambled eggs. It’s okay. They’re a little runny. It’s edible. It’s all fine. So things like that I think have been really helpful to us as a family.

[00:08:59] Sue: [00:09:00] So there’s lots to look forward to in the coming weeks. Remember, you can hop on over to access to inspiration.org, our website to get transcriptions for every episode or listen to our extensive back catalog. You can also keep in touch with us on social media. We on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, or just drop us a message and give us your feedback. We love to hear from you. I look forward to connecting with you.

Sound Editor: Matias de Ezcurra
Producer: Sue Stockdale