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Edgy Ideas

Edgy Ideas

著者： Simon Western
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 Welcome to Edgy Ideas, where we explore what it means to live a ‘good life’ and build the ‘good society’ in our disruptive age.

This podcast explores our human dynamics in today's networked society. Addressing topical themes, we explore how social change, technology and environmental issues impact on how we live, and who we are - personally and collectively. Edgy Ideas podcast aims to re-insert the human spirit, good faith, ethics and beauty back into the picture, offering new perspectives and psycho-social insights. We pay particular attention to how the ‘unconscious that speaks through us’, entrapping us in repetitive patterns and shaping our desires. Each podcast concludes by contemplating what it means to live a ‘good life’ and create the ‘good society’. Enjoy!

Edgy Ideas is sponsored by the Eco-Leadership Institute

A radical think tank and developmental hub for leaders, coaches and change agents.

Join our community of practice and work live with many of our podcast guests

Discover more here: https://ecoleadershipinstitute.org
Contact simon@ecoleadershipinstitute.org

Simon Western マネジメント マネジメント・リーダーシップ 社会科学 経済学 衛生・健康的な生活
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  • 98: Freedom and Meaning: Existential Coaching Approach

    98: Freedom and Meaning: Existential Coaching Approach
    2025/08/19
    Show Notes
    In this episode, Simon is joined by Natalie to open up the existential questions that lie at the heart of coaching: What does it mean to live well? How do we find meaning in a finite life? How do we coach for authenticity, freedom and responsibility?
    Far from being bleak, existentialism is revealed here as a liberating practice. Death is not avoided but faced - giving urgency and clarity to our choices, reminding us that life is finite and must be lived meaningfully. This conversation shows how reinvention is possible at any stage of life, and how helping others can deepen our own sense of happiness and fulfillment.
    Together, Simon and Natalie highlight the value of micro meanings - the everyday rituals, relationships and joys that ground us in significance. They reflect on the importance of structure in supporting growth, while also recognising the liberation that comes when we accept life’s pointlessness and take responsibility for creating meaning ourselves. To live authentically, we must face uncomfortable truths, resist “bad faith,” and embrace freedom with courage.
    Existential coaching, then, is less about problem-solving and more about opening a space where clients can explore their choices, discover what matters, and move towards a life without regrets. It speaks to the universal human pursuit of meaning, and to the possibility of finding spirituality and depth even in the midst of uncertainty.

    Key Reflections
    • Coaching at its best creates space for clients to face the uncomfortable truths of freedom, choice, and responsibility.
    • Awareness of death can deepen our sense of aliveness and urgency to live meaningfully.
    • Micro meanings - rituals, relationships, and small daily joys - are vital in shaping a good life.
    • Bad faith often creeps into coaching conversations, and part of the coach’s role is to gently challenge it.
    • Balancing structure and freedom is essential, both for personal growth and for effective coaching practice.
    Keywords
    existential coaching, good life, meaning, spirituality, death, personal growth, coaching psychology, self-discovery, relationships, happiness

    Brief Bio
    Dr Natalie Lancer CPsychol is a Chartered Coaching Psychologist, experienced supervisor and Former Chair of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Coaching Psychology (DoCP). She coaches a range of people from doctoral students keeping up their motivation and self-belief to get their thesis over the line, to young people applying for their first job, as well as female executives and retired professionals, often using The Eight Tensions framework. She runs professional development and training for coaches and coaching psychologists including Eight Tensions Coach Training (based on existential psychology), Coach Development Club and The School of Supervision. Natalie is a Master’s and PhD supervisor at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling. In 2016, she co-authored ‘Techniques for Coaching and Mentoring’ with David Clutterbuck. She also is a stand-up comic and performed most recently at the BPS DoCP 2025 Conference.
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    37 分
  • 97: Ikigai in Coaching Practice

    97: Ikigai in Coaching Practice
    2025/08/07
    Show Notes:
    Simon Western is joined by Yoko Kunii Aldous - lecturer, coach, hypnotherapist and cultural translator - to explore the deeper roots of this Japanese concept, revealing it to be less a “life purpose formula” and more a way of being-in-the-world.
    Yoko reflects on her journey from Japan to the UK and how living between languages and cultures opens up inner landscapes. She shares the real history of Ikigai - not as a productivity hack, but a pre-capitalist way of locating oneself in community and cosmos - and interrogates why the popular Western Venn diagram (“what you love, what you’re good at…”) oversimplifies and erases its cultural nuance. Drawing on Japanese concepts, Yoko frames language as a worldview where nature, spirit, and objects are integral to self-understanding. She speaks of spirituality in everyday life - from cherry blossoms to chopsticks - and explains why Ikigai should be seen as fluid, shifting across life stages and relationships, rather than as a fixed endpoint. The conversation explores the tension between individualism and collective responsibility, asking whether one can truly have Ikigai without caring for the village. From embracing imperfection through wabi-sabi, to recognising sacrifice and service as pathways to fulfilment, the episode challenges Western coaching to move beyond self-improvement toward a more relational, ecological, and culturally entangled way of living.

    Key Reflections:
    • True Ikigai cannot be pinned down or defined - it must be lived
    • Culture shapes not only what we think, but how we feel our way into meaning
    • Japanese aesthetics embrace imperfection (wabi-sabi) as essential to beauty and purpose
    • Spirituality in Japan is woven into the everyday - from teacups to trees
    • Personal meaning and collective wellbeing are not separate projects
    • Every item has a spirit
    Keywords:
    Ikigai, cultural insights, coaching, psychology, Japan, Western perspectives, personal development, spirituality, Venn diagram

    Brief Bio:
    Yoko Kunii Aldous is an award-winning university lecturer, coach, and language and culture trainer for the Ministry of Defence. She holds an MA in Applied Linguistics and an MSc in Coaching Psychology, and is a certified coach, hypnotherapist, and yoga instructor. Her background in language and communication informs her work in higher education, cross-cultural training, and personal development coaching.
    Her latest research explores how the Japanese concept of Ikigai is understood and applied by non-Japanese coaches. Her study critically examines how Ikigai is interpreted and integrated into coaching practices outside Japan, revealing common misconceptions and promoting a more culturally authentic understanding. This work was recognised with the Best Early Career Research Paper award by BPS Division of Coaching Psychology.
    By integrating Eastern philosophy with Western psychological theory, Yoko offers a coaching approach that is reflective, holistic, and grounded in cultural nuance. She supports individuals and professionals in aligning their core values with purposeful action, towards meaningful and sustainable change.
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    34 分
  • 96: Place: Identity and Belonging

    96: Place: Identity and Belonging
    2025/07/25
    Show Notes
    In this episode, Simon Western is joined by Daniel B. Frank and Caro Bainbridge to explore how our connection to place shapes who we are, how we relate to others, and how we make sense of the world. They share stories of growing up in Chicago and Liverpool, revealing how personal and collective histories are held within the places we call home.
    The conversation moves between the intimate and the systemic. Dan and Caro reflect on how certain streets evoke safety or sorrow, how schools have taken on roles far beyond education, and how cultural roots are both grounding and restrictive. They examine the emotional weight of returning to one’s childhood city, and the strangeness that can accompany that return.
    With digital life pulling people away from physical presence and history, the episode raises timely questions about what it means to belong - and how identity is shaped in an era of mobility, forgetting, and cultural fragmentation.

    Key Reflections
    • A sense of place gives structure to identity and meaning to memory.
    • Emotional ties to place can be nurturing or suffocating—or both at once.
    • The same place is experienced differently depending on one’s history, role, and identity.
    • The legacy of slavery and colonialism shapes how some communities relate to home. Being physically present in a place doesn't always mean belonging to it.
    • Schools are now expected to hold emotional, moral, and community roles once carried by families.
    • Digital technology creates new forms of disconnection, despite increased connectivity.
    • Living well includes being present - to place, to people, and to time.

    Keywords
    sense of place, identity, displacement, cultural connections, history, emotional well-being, modernity, community, education, technology

    Brief Bios
    Daniel B. Frank, Ph.D. is a graduate of Francis W. Parker School in Chicago where he has been has been its Principal for over 20 years and has been a senior administrator there since 1988. He is the founding Executive Editor of the international education journal Schools: Studies in Education, which is published by the University of Chicago Press, and has served as Executive Director of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations.

    Caro Bainbridge works at the intersection of psychoanalysis, culture and organisational life. She is an organisational consultant, leadership development expert and executive coach, known for bringing depth insight to complex systems and supporting individuals and teams as they navigate change, uncertainty and transformation. Her practice is grounded in a long academic career: she is Emeritus Professor of Psychoanalysis & Culture, a former editor of Free Associations and of the film section of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, and co-editor of Routledge’s Psychoanalysis and Popular Culture book series. Caro is a Fellow of the RSA and a Founding Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council. She is widely published in the academic context, and has recently launched The Culture Fix on Substack, where she explores the emotional and symbolic currents shaping contemporary life. Her work is animated by a belief in the generative potential of thresholds and transitions - a perspective shaped, in part, by her daily walks near Antony Gormley’s Another Place, where art, nature and thought meet at the water’s edge.
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    53 分
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