This conversation with Tom Dear explores creativity not as artistry, but as a fundamental human capacity for problem solving. Drawing on his journey from amateur rugby into the creative and brand world, Tom reflects on the tension many high performers feel between seemingly opposing identities. Rather than choosing one side, he shares how learning to sit in the middle where structure meets play became a turning point in both his work and his sense of self.

A central theme is the distinction between pressure-driven action and genuinely creative states. Tom introduces the idea of NEA (Negative Emotional Attractor) and PEA (Positive Emotional Attractor) states, showing how urgency, stress, and constant stimulation can shut creativity down. In contrast, practices like play, nature, mindfulness, aspiration, and compassion open the space where insight and flow emerge often when we stop trying to force outcomes.

The conversation also gets practical. From simple doodling exercises to rethinking how leaders, founders, and creators approach content, branding, and idea generation, Tom offers grounded tools that help people access creativity without performance pressure. His approach reframes creativity as something already present, waiting to be unlocked rather than imported from outside.

At its core, this episode is about permission. Permission to loosen the tie, rethink how we work, and stop outsourcing creativity to “experts.” For high performers navigating transition, it’s a reminder that flow isn’t found through more force—but through creating the conditions where thinking, energy, and authenticity can reconnect.

Connect with Tom on LinkedIn, Instagram or via his website East and West Studio.

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Charlie Radclyffe's story is a hard pivot: British Army officer, injured on duty at 24, and an overnight shift from fully fit to paralysis. He speaks about the strange clarity he felt early on almost skipping the “expected” stages and how the fighter response took over: rehab, grind, “get better.” Alongside that, a quieter thread ran in the background: the sense that this was also a “quest,” a forcing function for deeper learning, identity change, and meaning.

A core theme is the tension between fight and quest. Charlie explores how fight can become a refusal to accept the present, and how quest can create a strange attachment to the “after,” as if recovery might mean losing the growth. Over the last year, his relationship with “loss” shifted less partitioning life into before/after, more acceptance, and less charge when old triggers show up.

That charge mattered because Charlie’s injury didn’t end at the injury. The legal and administrative reality pensions, tribunals, repeated errors, “brown envelope” letters kept pulling him back into the story. He describes how that system can freeze people in the lived harm, and how the process itself can become corrosive, especially for those with fewer resources, less support, or active mental health strain.

Out of that experience, Charlie has built work to bridge the gap between legal complexity and the lived reality of veterans navigating claims. He speaks with a new tone: compassion without denial, accountability without bitterness. And he lands on a practical vision convening major charities, then decision-makers, then law firms not to “wrong” anyone, but to shine a clear spotlight on what’s failing, what’s working, and how to make the path less damaging for the people already carrying enough.

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A single report cracked the silence. When Laura stumbled across research on child sexual exploitation in gang settings, she suddenly saw her teenage years reflected back in detail language for what had been unnamed, proof she wasn’t alone, and a doorway to tell her mother at last.

From that moment, a decade-long journey gathered momentum: specialist services, nights of journaling, breath that softened panic, movement that thawed freeze, and a gradual return to a body that once felt unsafe to live in.

In this conversation with Laura Coveney, we talk openly about sexual abuse, exploitation and their long-term impact. Laura shares her story of losing her dad at 14, her family collapsing around her, and being drawn into a world of gang members and drug dealers who sexually exploited her at a time when she was looking for somewhere to belong. If you’ve experienced sexual abuse or trauma yourself, or you’re close to someone who has, please know this episode may be activating. Look after yourself and listen in a way that feels safe.

That moment shattered her isolation, helped her find language for what happened, and led to a clear decision: “I will do whatever it takes to reconnect to myself.”

Laura talks about “keep going no matter what” in a way that includes rest, collapse, trial and error, misdiagnosis, and slowly rebuilding safety in her body through movement, journaling, breath work, somatics and, more recently, cycle syncing which she now calls “an entire navigation system.”

Reach out to Luarua through her Instagram or LinkedIn accounts.

If this moved you, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review, what part of Laura’s story stayed with you?

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