『The Gentle Rebel Podcast』のカバーアート

The Gentle Rebel Podcast

The Gentle Rebel Podcast

著者： Andy Mort
無料で聴く

概要

 The Gentle Rebel Podcast explores the intersection of high sensitivity, creativity, and the influence of culture within, between, and around us. Through a mix of conversational and monologue episodes, I invite you to question the assumptions, pressures, and expectations we have accepted, and to experiment with ways to redefine the possibilities for our individual and collective lives when we view high sensitivity as both a personal trait and a vital part of our collective survival (and potential).Andy Mort アート 個人的成功 社会科学 自己啓発
エピソード
  • Responding to the Contagion of Burnout Energy

    Responding to the Contagion of Burnout Energy
    2026/01/22
    I saw a reel earlier that made me notice how burnout spreads. An entrepreneurial self-help influencer told followers to demand more power, money, and visibility for themselves. You may be familiar with this flavour of message… “How dare you keep your impact hidden?” they said, “given the state of things right now.” They criticised viewers, demanding that they stop letting fear of what others think rule them. “Start the business, write the book, and share it with a world that needs to encounter it.” There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the underlying sentiment. But I felt troubled by the burnout energy evident in the speaker. I watched with the sound off at first, which intensified the impact of their eyes and hand gestures on my nervous system. There was a sense of panic and hype, which felt completely at odds with what is required for deep courage to meet the very real need being spoken about. I didn’t feel inspired or grounded in creative motivation. Instead, I was overcome by frenetic urgency and the indiscriminate demand to do more, driven by competition and fear. Things we already have in abundance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWf-FGZqIyE What Burnout Energy Pushes Us Toward There are enough people waving their arms and shouting demands about what we should be doing, using, and spending our finite resources on. What we need is space to slow down, take a breath, and listen deeply to that still, quiet voice within. This inner voice shows us what matters and why. Then we can choose how we bring it all to life. We need leaders who lead from that place, so we might be infused with and infected by the gentleness required to move out of that evident stuckness. That stuckness causes wheels to spin in the cycle of hurry, rush, and reactive firefighting mode. What Does Safety Make Possible? The word “safe” is used a lot today. To some degree, it has become diluted, making it difficult to define. But it’s worth exploring because it sits at the heart of this issue. Maybe we have a desire to change something about ourselves, our lives, or the world. Or perhaps we’ve created, or are creating, something that could make a meaningful difference to other people. We now consider another buzzword of our times: vulnerability. It can feel vulnerable to be honest about what we want in life and to share what matters to us with those who matter to us. It can be scary to admit what we care about and what burns within us. That’s because it can disrupt the status quo and challenge the image people have of us. It’s vulnerable because we cannot be certain how people will react. Vulnerability Is More Than a Mindset Likewise, it may leave us genuinely physically vulnerable if we choose to stand up for what we believe is right, for example, through art or activism. This vulnerability isn’t imagined. It’s not simply an issue of mindset, limiting beliefs to overcome, or a conditioned cultural message we just need to override with reframe hacks. We know there are real-world threats out there. What struck me about the reel was that it failed to provide the support needed to underpin its demands. In fact, it undermined the courage, conviction, and energy required to speak up in a world that might be unreceptive or even hostile to what we have to say. The finger-wagging shame that comes from an influencer demanding we do more because it’s cruel to hide from people who need to see us, however well-intentioned, will ultimately crumble and fold under its own weight. As a result, it creates the very passivity and inaction it warns against. Safety isn’t about comfort or avoidance. It’s the internal condition that enables honest reflection, creative movement, and sustained courage. This isn’t about mindset or thinking. It starts with the context of the stories we swim in, the supportive structures beneath us, and the material conditions that sustain life. Safety is Also Contagious One of the things I have consistently heard from people over the years who have connected with what I do, especially in The Haven and through the Serenity Island course, is the word safety. I’m always curious about what it means to those who use it, because it’s not something I think about explicitly. When I started sharing The Return to Serenity Island at the start of 2021, I received messages from people that put words to the experience: “Oh my word, it is incredible! A really unique mixture of sound and sensory experience, coaching, imaginative play and informal, companionable talks. I’m absolutely hooked. I just did a module and cried like a baby because I felt so safe and seen. It is really special. That kind of cry you do when you’re a kid, not because you’re afraid anymore, but because you’ve been PICKED UP, and the relief just comes flooding out.” – Josie This spoke of safety not as the opposite of courage, but as the cornerstone around which courageous action can be sustained. A ...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    27 分
  • David Bowie’s Search for Life, Death and God (with Peter Ormerod)

    David Bowie’s Search for Life, Death and God (with Peter Ormerod)
    2026/01/16
    Peter Ormerod is a journalist and writer who has written extensively about culture and faith for The Guardian, and he is also an arts editor for NationalWorld. He’s a very close friend of mine, so it was a real pleasure to speak with him in this capacity for The Gentle Rebel Podcast. Peter has just published a wonderful book, David Bowie and the Search for Life, Death and God. It resonates deeply with many of the themes we explore in The Haven and on the podcast, particularly the idea of what sits below an experimental approach to life. Speaking of which, Peter also makes beautiful music. You can listen here. https://youtu.be/f7jsoUB5jCY Beneath the Changes, a Consistent Question What really interested me was this path Bowie embodied so visibly through his art. The shifting characters, styles, and phases across his career can look like constant reinvention on the surface. But Peter invites us to see something else at play. What if these changes weren’t signs of restlessness, but expressions of something deep and consistent underneath? A spiritual thread running through Bowie’s life and work. That question sits at the heart of Peter’s book. What if the spiritual wasn’t incidental to Bowie’s creativity, but an essential driving force beneath it? Peter shows how this dimension was present from the very beginning, and he takes us on a compelling journey through Bowie’s searching. Writing the Book He Wanted to Read Peter says that after first hearing Hunky Dory at seventeen, his growing obsession with Bowie left him fascinated by the spiritual dimension of Bowie’s creative drive. Other writers had touched on this in passing, but no one had really followed it through in depth. So Peter ended up writing the book he wanted to read. Bowie as Mirror Ball, Not Chameleon In our conversation, we talk about Bowie’s legacy as something like a mirror ball. Shine a light on him and you get countless reflections. Everyone seems to have their own version of who Bowie was, something that became especially visible after his death. He’s often framed through the lens of “ch-ch-ch-changes”, the chameleon of rock. But Peter challenges this reading. The more he researched, read, and listened, the more those changes appeared to be a natural outpouring of a deeper spiritual quest. For experimental people, this can feel familiar. The outer paths shift, but the underlying question remains. Spirituality Without a Vocabulary A “spiritual interest” is often dismissed as a celebrity hobby, something that pops up and disappears. Peter makes a strong case that this wasn’t the case for Bowie. Part of the difficulty is that we don’t really have a shared vocabulary for this territory, which is why we fall back on words like spirituality. Bowie himself was fond of the saying, “Religion is for people who believe in Hell. Spirituality is for people who have been there.” He was sharply critical of religious institutions when he felt they corrupted the message of love at the heart of Christianity. For Bowie, spirituality wasn’t ornamental. It was essential to how he related to his life, his work, and his place in the universe. Seeking Without Arrival Through the seeking you will find. Not seeking to reach a destination, but seeking as a way of being. Why didn’t Bowie give up? What was he seeking? What was he finding? There were clearly things he encountered that made atheism feel insufficient, even when he was tempted by it. If Bowie arrives anywhere, Peter suggests it’s something like this: life is a gift, and love is the point. This can sound oblique, but Peter traces it clearly in Bowie’s later work. What we’re left with is the result of that searching, a remarkable body of work that we can return to, live with, and explore. Creativity, Humanness, and Collaboration There’s a danger in how Bowie is remembered. He can be lifted out of humanness, made to seem like an exception rather than a person. Bowie wrote bad songs. He made misfires. All of it belonged to the same quest. He’s sometimes misread as an unrooted artist, endlessly reinventing himself, but he was deeply sensitive to place and time. He always worked with others. He needed bands, collaborators, and creative relationships. His best work emerged through collaboration, not isolation. Smuggling Meaning Rather Than Preaching It Bowie was political, but he didn’t see political expression as his strongest artistic voice. He admired bands like The Clash for carrying that role more directly. This raises an interesting question about what we expect from celebrated figures, and how easily we project our demands onto them. Bowie was more of a smuggler. At Live Aid, he played a song and showed a video instead. Let’s Dance sounds like it’s about one thing, but it’s really about something else. Much of his music did a similar thing. This was the mark of his artistry. He invited a conversation rather than delivering a message. He trusted...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1 時間
  • Why You Can’t Articulate a Five-Year Plan For Your Life

    Why You Can’t Articulate a Five-Year Plan For Your Life
    2026/01/13
    Where do you see yourself in five years? Does that question fill you with excitement, or a quiet sense of dread? We are wired differently. For many people, myself included, the question is not difficult to answer because we lack imagination. It is difficult because it speaks a different language from our natural way of being. We are not compelled by any outcome-oriented approach to planning, conceiving, or measuring success. And yet this orientation is often treated as a default mode we should all operate within. When the Five-Year Plan Feels Constricting Rather Than Motivating “But everyone has a dream,” we might be told, as if struggling to articulate a five-year vision means we are hiding something from ourselves. I have never been able to articulate a grand plan in the way this question assumes. I struggle to picture the future concretely, because it unfolds piece by piece. It always has. And I genuinely love watching how things emerge across different areas of life in ways I could not have foreseen. What drives me is something quieter and steadier. A creative impulse. A desire to make things, to explore what might happen, to respond to what is in front of me, and to integrate what has come before. My life does not move in straight lines. It has grown around and within my values, with seemingly unrelated dots connecting in unexpected ways. Maybe you relate to this? https://youtu.be/qFqIvsBB9HA “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” This quote, inspired by Alice in Wonderland, reminds me of the five-year question. For some, it sounds like a warning. A demand to define the destination so the “correct” road can be chosen. For others, it feels like permission. A reminder that movement itself shapes direction, and that choosing a road does not require certainty about where it leads. Two Approaches to Growing Life There is research that can help us better understand this difference. In an episode about Late Blooming, Kendra Patterson pointed to a study by David Galenson and Bruce Weinberg, who observed patterns in the careers of Nobel Prize winners in economics. They identified two broad orientations to creative innovation. Some people are conceptual innovators. They work deductively. They begin with a clear idea and organise themselves towards it. In the study, these individuals often made their most significant contributions early in life, sometimes in their twenties. Others are experimental innovators. They work inductively. Their contribution emerges step by step through trial, discovery, accumulation, and integration. Their most meaningful work often did not appear until their fifties. Sometimes later. That is a thirty-year difference. Experimental Thinkers and Emergent Direction Experimental lives unfold differently. They need time, space, and patience. Decisions cannot be judged too early, and meaning emerges through lived experience rather than advance planning. These lives are not oriented towards a clearly imagined endpoint, but towards allowing something to take shape over time. Our dominant culture tends to favour the conceptual orientation for obvious reasons. Goals are easier to measure than processes, and outcomes are more reassuring than slow inquiry. So when more experimental people are asked to account for themselves in conceptual language, we can experience a disconnect. The five-year plan. Starting with the end in mind. Being asked to justify movement only if the destination can be named in advance. We might learn to force an answer anyway, for fear of sounding vague and sketchy. Perhaps we adapt our path to fit the question, sometimes tethering ourselves to targets that outlive their purpose. If You Can’t Articulate The Plan, You May Be Asking Different Questions Experimental people tend to better orient around different questions. Not “where do I want to get to?” but “does this path feel worth exploring?”Not “how will I know I have succeeded?” but “what tells me I’m on the right path for now?” This does not mean anything goes. Our values provide an inner compass. A filter through which decisions pass. Experimental consistency grows in relationship with deeper principles, even when they are not fully formed or easy to articulate. We sense them in how something feels. Whether it feels solid, expansive, and quietly right, even in the face of uncertainty. That is very different from hit-and-hope searching. An Unfinished Map The problem begins when we are pressured to live by a map that does not match the territory of our own experience. The Return To Serenity Island grew directly out of this recognition. It was never designed to answer the question of direction. It emerged from understanding the difference between conceptual and experimental ways of moving through life, and from a desire to honour growth and change without forcing myself into a shape that did not fit. The image of mapping an island felt natural. A ...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    22 分
まだレビューはありません