CA100: The Changeability Podcast past and future

We celebrate 100 episodes as we take a look at the Changeability Podcast past and future.

Here's some of the top 3s from the past 99 episodes followed by a look at the next episode in the Changeability Podcast story.

The 3 favourite episodes of our audience to date. These are the shows with the highest number of downloads so far. The longer the episode's been on iTunes or our BrilliantLivingHQ.com website or Stitcher or TuneIn the longer people have had to listen to it, so we would expect the older shows to have more downloads than newer ones and that's reflected in these results.

Third most popular episode - 'What is Mind Management' Episode 6

In episode 6 of the Changeability Podcast we were thinking about our strap line phrase – 'Mind Management'. What is mind management and what's in it for you?

In episode 6 you found out about:

• Kathryn and Julian's acting skills (you've been warned)
• How many thoughts you have in a day
• Why sports people love mind management
• How thoughts have energy
• How you are not thoughts
• How mind management needs training
• Mind management can improve your personal and professional life

Second most popular episode - 'The Brilliant You' Episode 2

Do you know how truly amazing you are? Well that's what episode 2 is all about.

You might not always feel like a magnificent being, but by the end of this second episode you be agreeing with us that you're pretty smart.

Because in this show we talk about just how brilliant you and your marvellous mind and what it means.

• What you're doing as you listen to the episode (really?)
• How you're like an iceberg and why that's a good thing.
• How many things we can focus on at a time
• What Julian learnt from a Memory World Champion (or rather - didn't learn!)
• The role of the conscious and unconscious brain and how they manage our minds.

Understanding a few basics about how your mind works, will help you understand what's getting in the way of doing what you want and what to do about it.

Most popular episode - 'Changeability – The Start' Episode 1

The first episode saw us introducing ourselves and the Changeability show.

The Changeability podcast is for you if you're interested in changing or improving something in your life or business, big or small. It's for people like us who're interested in finding ways to make our lives the best they can be – so we can be more successful (whatever that means to you), happy and fulfilled.

Through discussion and interviews we look at practical mind management and change techniques, tactics & tools - taken from the worlds of personal development, psychology, neuroscience, business, sport, entertainment and spirituality – to empower and inspire a happier, successful life or business.

In the first episode you find out:

• What is Changeability?
• And why should you care about it?
• Why is change hard?
• How we can self-sabotage our best intentions
• Why it's not your fault - and why it's good.
• Our story and what we've learnt

We love you being here wherever you're from – so this isn't our favourite countries – but rather the top 3 countries with the highest number of listeners out of the 167 countries we currently have listeners in.

• Third – UAE 6%
• Second – USA 19%
• First – UK 48%

(And just in cast you're interested the fourth is Australia with India in fifth place.)

This was so hard to choose, especially as we decided not to include any interviews in our top 3s (maybe they're deserving of a separate post) – but here's three each with a couple of extras thrown in for good measure.

Kathryn's favourites

• Episode 3 – The Library in your brain
• Episode 19 - Why use affirmations to manage your mind?
• Episode 31 – 5 mind management techniques for changing your life.

Julian's favourites

• Episode 43 – What is mindfulness and why you need it?
• Episode 46 - 21 simple tips for mindfulness meditation.
• Episode 56 What is happiness and the neuroscience behind it

Couple of extras

• Episode 85 How to recognise toxic people and relationships
• Episode 89 What does success mean to you

Very hard to pick 3 out of the 78 we have so far across the different iTunes countries as we obviously love them all. So we can't really call these our favourites but they are reviews we've especially like.

Excellent - iimmmii from United Kingdom

One of the best 'change your life' resources I've come across. If you like to understand the theory and evidence (be it scientific or anecdotal) behind advice on how to change your life, this material is presented in an engaging way in this podcast. Of course they also make recommendations for how best to go about taking action. A few episodes in and you will feel like you've made two new friends who are supporting you on your journey of change. Well done Kathryn and Julian, listening to you makes me proud to be from the same Sceptred Isle!

A Homely Serving Up of Sound Advice/Wisdom - Ola-B. from United Kingdom

Where has this amazing couple been all my life?! :) Love Kathryn, love Julian, and let's not forget Dude!!! Love this podcast - the topics, the delivery of it all...it's simply unique, uplifting and inspiring! Thank you guys!

Kathryn and Julian's chemistry rocks! - LornaLi from United States

I love the concept of this show! It's so unique and refreshing! I absolutely LOVE the hosts' chemistry - their exchanges are such a joy to listen to. Thank you for all the useful tips you provide to your listeners on how to plan and achieve their goals, I'm sure many are reaping so many benefits from this show!

Thank you to you for taking the effort and making our day. By the way – we'd love more reviews. We don't always ask for them in every episode as it gets tedious for you to listen to – and we want to provide you with a good listening experience. However, reviews are important to us not only because it's great to find out what you think but it means iTunes makes our show more visible to people looking for podcasts. You know yourself the power of reviews on sites like Tripadvisor and Amazon – so if you feel like helping us out that's one way to do it.

Who's been with us all through every single episode and every phase of the podcasting process – in fact he's always with us – Dude the Dog, our faithful hound and black labradoodle.

We've joked we have a contractual obligation to mention him in every show – not that we've quite done that but he's had more than his fair share of mentions and even made it onto the show on a few occasions.

So here's Dude's top 3 favourite Changeability Podcast moments as chosen by him (woof).

• Episode 83 'Self-love Rituals' – The 10th of our self-love rituals is to have Pet Time. Walk, cuddle, play with or groom your dog or cat or talk to your budgerigar. You might not get this if you don't have a pet – but if you do have one you'll know what we mean!
• Episode 63 'How to start and finish anything with Tom Boother' – Dude features in a cameo role when Tom starts talking about Dude and how they met!
• Episode 98 'What are habits and why we need them' – Dude gets his own moment in the spotlight. You'll have to listen to this episode to know what we mean, or just listen to episode 100 to hear the extract.

You wont know what we're talking about here if you've never listened right to the end of our shows – but listen to episode 100 to hear 3 of them for your entertainment – and why they're called Kathryn's bloomers!

Here's just 3 of the many things we've learned from creating 100 episodes of this podcast over the past two years, and they're all relevant to you.

1. You can't always measure your impact

Sometimes it's hard to measure your impact – this goes for measuring the success of a podcast or many things. How do you measure your success or the impact you have?

On the whole people don't tell you and it's not always possible to make a connection e.g. between who's listened to the podcast and who's visited the website or bought an Affirmation or audio mind management tool or a course like our 'Beginner's guide to mindfulness meditation'.

That's not to say there aren't any clues. Ways of gauging if we're having a positive impact include comments in our FB group or page and reviews on Stitcher or iTunes. Plus nomination for national / international podcast awards – being a finalist for the New Media Europe Audience Appreciation Award and winner of the UK Podcaster's Best Self Help Podcast Award. But the truth of it is that for the thousands of our podcast listeners each month, for the most part it's hard know the difference, if any, it makes to them.

Does that matter? Yes and no. Yes because from a resource and business perspective it's helpful to have a handle on the impact but also no because sometimes it's not just possible to know but that doesn't make it any less valuable.

This is an important lesson for us all because you don't always know the impact of what you do in your work, relationships and everyday life – but that in itself doesn't mean you should stop what you do.

1. Stickability and focus

Creating 100 episodes of a podcast, especially one like this, is an achievement. This is an important lesson for us and maybe also you as well. When we do something consistently and with focus it creates results.

We may not know the full impact of those results but there are some clear results for us.

• 100 episodes of a podcast are out there in the world being listened to in 167 countries.
• 100 blog posts which are the show notes on this website.
• Winners of a national podcast award and finalists for another.

All of which is the result of focus and stickability – week by week. And now we have this body of work that is out there in the world whatever happens in the future – no-one can take that away from us.

This goes for you as well – what is it you want to achieve? A new skill, producing something, writing a book, starting your own podcast, setting up a business. Whatever it is clarity, consistency, stickability and focus is the key.

1. Review evaluate and change

The third lesson for us has been learning the importance of reviewing and evaluating what you're doing. We've been doing just that with our podcast as 100 seems a good point to do so.

We've been looking back on the experience of the past two years, learning from it and making changes. This is something we advocate for you too. It's about being deliberate about what you do rather than just carrying on doing the same thing because that's what you do or what people expect of you. It might be a matter of fine-tuning and pivot or of big changes.

For us it's meant reviewing our experience, going right back to why we started Brilliant Living HQ in the first place. In fact going back further than that to why we wanted to make the big change in leaving our previous careers. Sometimes it's good to remind yourself why you're doing what you're doing.

One of the things we always said was that we wanted more control over our time and to spend time doing what we want to do, and more time for ourselves. We know that time is a resource, even our most precious resource.

So to put these two things together we've been looking at how we spend our time and efforts, in effect the resources we put into the podcast – that's the review bit.

Next came the evaluation. Is the balance right? This is a challenging one for us because we love doing the podcast, which means it's always high on our list of priorities, together with the schedule we set ourselves and the way we create our show.

Review, evaluate and make changes in the light of your experience to make sure you're always taking control of your own path.

That's what we've done – and to see what changing we come to the future.

The result of our thinking about what we've done and what we want to do is that we love the podcast and you the listeners, so we're going to continue with it but take a break over the summer for a few weeks.

We're taking this short break for an exciting reason, because when we return at the beginning of September we'll have the Changeability Success Club.

We're taking the next few weeks to get this exciting club ready for you. We're ordering the carpets and curtains, mowing the lawn, changing the beds, only joking, it's an online club to take the things we talk about on the Changeability podcast and make them a reality in your life.

With everything you could want and need to help you make changes in your life alongside a great community of people like you to support each other. More on that very soon, but for now we wanted to let you know it's coming.

We're putting a lot of love and time into creating what we believe will be the best online club for you to become a member of.

We've been working on it behind the scenes for a while now and now we want to put a special effort into the final push to get it ready for opening the doors. We've been making videos and templates and downloadable tools including special audio tools to help you not only get clear about what you want but also give you the tools and support to make it happen – all within our special membership club for those of you who join us.

So we're taking the next few weeks to get it ready for you and when we come back it will be here. We'll have one hundred places ready – it's going to be really special and we can't wait to share it with you.

So exciting!

• Subscribe to the podcast so you're notified when the next episode goes live and you wont miss it.
• Get on our email list if you're not on it already. That way you'll be amongst the first to know when the Changeability Success Club goes live and get a chance to grab one of the first 100 places as soon as they are available.
• And if by any chance you think you might miss us over the next few weeks:
• There's plenty of podcast episodes to catch up on - 99 of them to be precise. Why not start with the ones mentioned in the show today?
• There's lots to read on this site.
• Follow us on Twitter, like our Brilliant Living HQ FB page and ask to be notified of updates, and join the Changeability FB group.

Thanks for being here and listening to the show and we look forward to talking again soon.