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The Humble Art of Reading the Room, or It’s Not All About You! – Episode 181

In this episode, Dara shares final thoughts on the US presidential election and speculates that the Democrats still haven’t shaken the patronising habit of belittling those who disagree with them. He argues that if you take this attitude in the world of martial arts, you are setting yourself up to fail – the assumption of superiority is a dangerous flex of ego that can result in complacency and abdicated diligence.

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The Absolute ‘Ick’ Episode – Going Granular on My War with Myself – Episode 140

In this very personal and occasionally difficult episode, Dara decides he can’t not examine his near four-decade-old impulse to destroy himself. A follow-on from last week’s episode in which he spoke more generally and euphemistically about a recent onset of anxiety-fuelled depression, this time he wants more transparency, more openness, more keeping it real. He understands that for some people this type of sharing gives them the ‘ick’, hence the title of the episode.

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The Cartography of a Small World, or It’s Lovely to be Here! – Episode 40

In this deceptively positive episode, Dara is emerging from a fortnight of disruptions and disturbances that have laid him low. Over the course of the show, he examines not only the necessary compromises and recalibrations that must accompany a successful recovery, but also the contradictions that can occur in normally reliable wellness strategies.

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Merely

Merely I’m sorry. I’m just a man. I don’t know what I represent to you or anybody else. I only know who I am and who I’m not, what I’ve done and what I haven’t. I’m not trying to steal air or drink water or take space that was meant for you. I’m not looking

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Every Fallen Tree

Every Fallen Tree The reeds, still weeks off sprouting their shocks of composers’ cotton, were bent almost horizontal by the whistling wind. Moving in unison, they lulled and crescendoed to nature’s insistent baton, demonstrating the lesson I needed to learn: to cede, not to hold. But I had exchanged one storm for another. The battle

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