by Lukas on 17 Jan 2024

Podcast Episode 30 is out: Amy Polly from Mindfulness Rebel

mental health for firefighters and myth-busting mindfulness…

Amy Polly is the self-styled ‘Mindfulness Rebel’. In a world of very serious, very blue, mental health information, she is a welcome shot of pink. She’s the former Strategic Lead for Mental Health & Wellbeing for the Fire Service, and has since worked with organisations like Heineken, Bupa, Sweaty Betty, National Grid and many others. She’s on a mission to make mindfulness more accessible and inclusive and joins us for this conversation where we discuss:

• Her grandfather’s addiction to alcohol and how it informed her behaviour to always try and make people smile
• The importance of her supportive parents and having a support network
• How she’s embraced thinking differently as an adult
• How she left a solid, 19 year career in accountancy to start working for herself in mindfulness and wellbeing
• The shift she felt working for the Fire Service, contributing to a bigger picture 
• The extreme challenges of creating wellbeing programmes in the Fire Service
• The measures she brought in to support fire fighters
• The basics of creating a mentally healthy workforce and how it’s not the things you might think
• Her connection to mindfulness and how it became a passion of hers as a proactive measure for wellbeing
• Personal days and bringing the human elements to business
• How Mindfulness isn’t ‘hippy dippy stuff’, it’s brain training
• Some myth busting around Mindfulness
• Amy leads Rob through a mindfulness exercise 
• Rob’s reflections after the exercise
• Her advice to leaders for embedding wellbeing in their businesses
• How motherhood is the hardest thing she’s ever done and her ‘Mindfulness for Mums’ programme
• The loneliness of being a mum and the taboo of talking about birth trauma
• Rob shares a rather unfortunate parenting story and how it informed his perspective on parents in business
• The ‘return to the office’ push and the potential negative impacts for some of the workforce

Want to appear? Email podcast@standingongiants.com

You can listen to the podcast here: