What is a Good Life? #118
Presence To The Moment & Humanity with Sue Heatherington
On the 118th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I’m delighted to welcome Sue Heatherington. Sue is a contemplative writer, poet, and co-founder of Waterside Voices, which is based on the site of a former Victorian reservoir in South West Wales and works with people globally. Her non-linear journey has included rural development research, a decade as a pioneering NHS Chief Executive, board and leadership coaching, and consulting. Now, her role also includes being an alpaca shepherd and carer. Sue’s book Quiet Disruptors: Creating Change Without Shouting was published in 2021, and her podcast, Be More Poet, launched in 2024. Her practice of Pause. See differently. Re-story… is expressed in her short posts published daily since 2018.
In this deeply engaging conversation, we explore our roles in the ongoing creation of life — how we shape one another, and the importance of moving beyond labels to truly connect with our shared humanity. We also reflect on the influence of time and space in shaping these experiences.
This episode offers a delightful invitation to slow down, to notice, and to reconnect with the felt sense of simply being.
The weekly clip from the podcast (5 mins), my weekly reflection (3 mins), the full podcast (61 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
2. My weekly reflection
I’ve noticed this in my own life and in many of our guests—it feels almost heretical in the face of the constant busyness and relentless productivity society urges us to uphold.
If you want to shift your way of being—not just “self-optimise”—you need time and space: to pay attention, to be present.
We’re conditioned to think that taking time and space means doing less—and we resist that idea fiercely.
Our current ways of living make us masters at being productive in things that are ultimately low in value—mass-produced, somewhat meaningless, and disconnected from what matters.
As Sue points out in the clip above, we don’t take the time to really consider what matters—to ask the difficult questions around meaning and what truly is important.
Anyone who’s started something creative from scratch—and most things are, in some way, creative—that felt aligned and valuable knows that constant productivity and clear, linear progress is rarely how it unfolds.
I sense the speed of life and the weight of fixed structures make it hard to simply be—of really noticing and being present in a moment.
We’ve built self-optimising myths and advertising that promise if we just do a mindful practice, take a course, attend a retreat, or download an app, we can keep the same pace—and still have the depth of someone who sits in silence all day.
We’re told we can live frenetic lives and still pay full attention to those around us. But I’ve found that true attention stems from being, not mental effort. The mind alone can only notice so much.
For some, busyness may be ideal. But if you feel unsatisfied or disconnected—even with all the trappings you set out for—something remarkable can happen when you slow down.
In slowing down, there is so much more to notice. The emptiness of life fills with the fullness of your experience and all you can now see. When you slow down enough, you can finally begin to appreciate how this life feels.
When we start to truly feel our lives, we can begin to trust what matters most. If we continue to pay attention to that feeling, rather than the image of life that we are following, we get to develop a life that is meaningful to us.
The people I’ve spoken to who slow down and listen inwards often make choices many of us feel we can’t—even though, in truth, little is stopping us. Things we might now consider brave come to us naturally.
The world becomes a partner and guide in playing with your ever-changing role in the ongoing creation within and without you.
I sense that, perhaps from our schooling days and working lives, we have taken a very dim view of ourselves actually wanting to work if someone isn’t on our backs—that we are somehow lazy if we don’t have a clear goal and a taskmaster.
I suspect we think we have to willpower through every dip in productivity, because we don’t trust our natural drive to work—after so long doing things we didn’t choose or care about.
I have been struck by two things of late.
One is watching my 19-month-old daughter climb things I haven’t shown her how to do. It’s not unusual—I see it on many kids’ faces—but she seems utterly determined to figure it out.
While I live a pretty flowy life, that doesn’t mean I don’t get things done—in bursts or stretches of focused energy.
Last month, I had an incredible compulsion to write. Without an alarm, I found myself waking up around 4 a.m. every day, and the first thing I did was grab my laptop and write down ideas, posts, and chapters that had seemingly visited me overnight. I didn’t force myself and proudly claim I was grinding while you wimps were sleeping. I just wanted to get up with the feeling I had.
For around a month, this flowed through me with no effort to write. And then one morning it didn’t—and a normal cadence returned to my work.
I suspect that with our busyness and structure, our resistance to our natural states, and our ideas of ourselves as productivity robots rather than humans, we have cut ourselves off from our natural sense of being.
And without that connection, we find it very hard to trust the natural energy we have to create, work, and grow.
Creating, working, and growing in ways that nourish rather than drain.
To explore one-on-one coaching with me
3. Full Episode - Presence To The Moment & Humanity with Sue Heatherington - What is a Good Life? #118
4. This week’s Questions
Is there someone in your life that you are not truly seeing due the labels you have fixed upon them?
How much time and space do you allow in your day to notice the natural energies and inclinations that arise within you?
About Me
I am a coach, podcast host, and writer, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed over 250 people. I’m not looking to prescribe universal answers, more that the guests’ lines of inquiry, musings, experiences, and curiosities spark your own inquiry into what the question means to you. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience and more meaningful conversations.
If you’re interested in exploring your own self-inquiry through one-on-one coaching, joining my 5-week Silent Conversations group courses, or fostering greater trust, communication, and connection within your leadership teams, or simply reaching out, feel free to contact me via email or LinkedIn.