Amy Polly (Mindfulness Rebel) - mental health for firefighters, myth-busting mindfulness and workplace wellbeing

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 smileThe importance of her supportive parents and having a support networkHow she’s embraced thinking differently as an adultHow she left a solid, 19 year career in accountancy to start working for herself in mindfulness and wellbeingThe shift she felt working for the Fire Service, contributing to a bigger picture The extreme challenges of creating wellbeing programmes in the Fire ServiceThe measures she brought in to support fire fightersThe basics of creating a mentally healthy workforce and how it’s not the things you might thinkHer connection to mindfulness and how it became a passion of hers as a proactive measure for wellbeingPersonal days and bringing the human elements to businessHow Mindfulness isn’t ‘hippy dippy stuff’, it’s brain trainingSome myth busting around MindfulnessAmy leads Rob through a mindfulness exercise Rob’s reflections after the exerciseHer advice to leaders for embedding wellbeing in their businessesHow motherhood is the hardest thing she’s ever done and her ‘Mindfulness for Mums’ programmeThe loneliness of being a mum and the taboo of talking about birth traumaRob shares a rather unfortunate parenting story and how it informed his perspective on parents in businessThe ‘return to the office’ push and the potential negative impacts for some of the workforceFollow Amy on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amypolly/Visit: amypolly.comFollow Rob on linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-warren/Sign up the the 'A Little Bit Radical' Newsletter here: https://share.hsforms.com/1wJzfsT5RR7melJbfDfpsLw4sranVisit: ⁠standingongiants.com⁠