Where Work Meets Life™ with Dr. Laura

Soul Health: Why it Matters More Than Ever for a Thriving Workplace

Dr. Laura welcomes Pamela Buchanan, the Founder of Quantum Sense, to the podcast to discuss the innovation of Soul Health and why it’s a missing component in today’s workplaces. Pam worked in corporate America, including at Nasdaq, for over forty years before investing over a decade of research into the concepts and framework for Soul Health. Pam defines what the soul is and how nourishing it is connected to workplace environments and individual well-being.  A three-step program called Ground, Elevate, Evolve is one of the main focuses of Pam’s business, Quantum Sense. Pam asserts that people are not grounded in themselves and don’t know themselves at a deep level, a soul level. Part of reaching the soul is rooted in aesthetics - smell, touch, sound - and how these variables affect each individual differently. Pam’s research into how the sensory information in our environments calibrates with our nervous systems highlights aspects of neuroaesthetics and sound engineering, showcasing a system rooted in neuroscience more than religion. Pam and Dr. Laura explore the key trio of soul, mind, and body in their conversation and why neglecting the soul contributes to unhealthy workplaces.  “You know, it has been more difficult than I thought to get business because I speak directly about the soul, and it's just not a common term that you see in business every day. And that's why I try to say no, it's a part of a person that they bring into work every day. You've tackled the physical; you wouldn't want an unhealthy workplace, so you give them tools to keep their physical presence healthy. Why wouldn't you give them tools to keep their soul presence healthy?” - Pamela BuchananAbout Pamela Buchanan:Pam Buchanan, the founder of Quantum Sense, stands at the intersection of corporate prowess and soulful innovation. With over 40 years of experience in corporate America, including pivotal roles at Nasdaq where she worked closely with tech titans like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, Pam brings extensive experience to the table.    Her journey to Quantum Sense began with a profound assertion: that the modern world is missing a focus on a very vital contributor to success, Soul Health. This insight spurred over a decade of research culminating in her innovative concepts and frameworks. Pam's background uniquely positions her to understand the evolving corporate landscape and the benefit of putting an emphasis on a connection to the senses to drive Soul Health and holistic wellbeing at work.  Pam has developed programs tailored for companies that are proven to enhance employee well-being, reduce anxiety, and boost creativity, ultimately fostering a more satisfying work-life balance. Covering topics from neuro-aesthetics to sound engineering, Pam explores how these can be used to benefit the soul from the outside in, through the gateway of the senses.  As a podcast guest, Pam offers a unique perspective rooted in her corporate experience, deep understanding of Soul Health, and her commitment to ushering in a future where individuals thrive both personally and professionally with Soul Health valued as widely as physical health and mental health.Resources:Website: TheQuantumSense.comLinkedIn: Pam-Buchanan“Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us” by Susan Magsamen and Ivy RossLearn more about Dr. Laura on her website: https://drlaura.liveFor more resources, look into Dr. Laura’s organizations: Canada Career CounsellingSynthesis Psychology Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From Employee to Entrepreneur: Listening to Your Inner Voice

Dr. Laura welcomes Jana Boyko, business coach and author of Bedside Business Plan and the upcoming Employee to Entrepreneur, to the podcast for a conversation on entrepreneurship and self confidence. Jana describes her journey from doing a BCom and working for a marketing firm to striking out on her own as an entrepreneur and the failures and successes she experienced on that path. Dr. Laura learns how Jana’s guided journals are designed to guide entrepreneurs through the steps of starting a business with a focus on understanding ourselves and our ideas.  Jana chose the guided journal format for both Bedside Business Plan and Employee to Entrepreneur because of the enlightening experience she had when she put pen to paper and removed the barrier of the screen from her journaling. Dr. Laura and Jana discuss that what holds entrepreneurs, especially woman, back from business success isn’t necessarily a lack of business skills but a prevailing sense of self-doubt and fear of judgment. Businesses aren’t built in isolation but in connection, support, and learning from those who went before, and this episode highlights how Jana is laying a foundation for true understanding of the journey ahead, based on her own insights, for future entrepreneurs.“Make a list of 20 reasons why you are going to be a successful entrepreneur. Include your past, you know, achievements, personality traits, things people love about you, great feedback you've gotten in the past, and then reference that list every single day. Because I think especially when you're entering new territory as an entrepreneur, you feel so wobbly. I felt so wobbly when I when I became an entrepreneur, even though I had the business background. But it's really important to fortify yourself and to remember who you are in this experience, and to remember everything that you are bringing to entrepreneurship, so that when self-doubt does come up, when the fear does come up, you can really have this list that sort of replaces that fear, right?” - Jana BoykoAbout Jana Boyko:In the last decade, Jana has worked with over 100 brands and businesses from the very small to the very big. She’s the author of Bedside Business Plan, a guided journal for aspiring entrepreneurs, which has climbed to national success since launching with Indigo in 2022 and being named a Staff Pick in January 2023. Jana’s body of work is dedicated to helping people expand into their highest potential while building businesses in ways that are both sustainable and life-giving. She has been featured as an expert on CBC, Breakfast Television, and The Eyeopener in addition to delivering a number of important talks at organizations and institutions like Elate Cosmetics, the University of Calgary, and Royal Roads University.Jana’s second guided journal, Employee to Entrepreneur, is available for pre-order now.Resources:Website: BedsideBusinessPlan.comLinkedIn: JanaBoykoLinkedIn: Bedside-Business-PlanInstagram: @bedsidebusinessplanTiktok: @bedsidebusinessplanFacebook: BedsideBusinessPlanConfessions of a Female Founder with Meghan podcastLearn more about Dr. Laura on her website: https://drlaura.liveFor more resources, look into Dr. Laura’s organizations: Canada Career CounsellingSynthesis Psychology Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Season 6: A Sneak Peek at Upcoming Powerful Episodes and My Why Behind Where Work Meets Life™

Dr. Laura welcomes everyone to Season 6 of Where Work Meets Life™ in this introductory episode, which lets us in on what to expect from the podcast’s sixth season, why Dr. Laura does what she does, and what she plans to bring to the world going forward. Season 6 dovetails with the upcoming January 2026 release of her new book, “I Wish I’d Quit Sooner: Practical Strategies for Navigating and Escaping a Toxic Boss”, and conversations with other experts in the realm of narcissism, bullying, and toxic workplaces will help underscore the importance of the subject.Where Work Meets Life™ is a labor of love for Dr. Laura, a place where she can share her knowledge and experience as a workplace culture expert, and address how workplaces and the humans who power them can thrive. Episodes featuring guests such as Michael Hingson, Laura Munson, Jeffrey Deskovic, Jia Rizvi,  Pam Buchanan, and others will shine a light on such topics as the need for soul in the workplace, tips for career fulfillment, advocacy for the wrongfully convicted, and what makes great leadership. Dr. Laura continues to share important messages, explore how we can find wellness in work and in life, and shine a light on people who are changing the world. “I'm talking about being compassionate. We're all on this human adventure together, and we are in a world full of curveballs, and we need to be compassionate to what one another is dealing with. So I will continue to bridge the research with the real world and the challenges facing humans and organizations. And I'll bring a diversity of guests globally.” Dr. LauraAbout Dr. Laura:Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett is a work and career psychologist and thought leader on the evolution of work. She has always been fascinated by how work intersects with life and loves to use her expertise to improve organizations and help people thrive. Her passion for taking creative ideas and launching them into successful business strategies led her to start three counselling psychology practices (Calgary Career Counselling, Canada Career Counselling, and Synthesis Psychology), as well as six different business brands offering organizational assessment and consulting services.Dr. Laura is honoured to have been selected as a Woman of Distinction in Canada in 2014 and received a Canadian Woman of Inspiration Award as a Global Influencer in 2018. Her new book, I Wish I’d Quit Sooner: Practical Strategies for Navigating and Escaping a Toxic Boss, releases in January 2026 and is available for pre-order on Amazon.Resources:“I Wish I’d Quit Sooner: Practical Strategies for Navigating and Escaping a Toxic Boss” by Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett - pre-order available nowDr. Laura on LinkedInWhere Work Meets Life™ on YouTubeLearn more about Dr. Laura on her website: https://drlaura.liveFor more resources, look into Dr. Laura’s organizations: Canada Career CounsellingSynthesis Psychology Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Workplace Wellness Redefined: How Your Environment Impacts Your Health

Dr. Laura welcomes Dr. Esther Sternberg, M.D., a Professor, Research Director, Speaker, and Author of the books Well at Work, Healing Spaces, and The Balance Within, to the podcast to talk about wellness at work and how workplace environments impact employees. Dr. Sternberg shares her career journey from her start in medical family practice through to becoming the Research Director at the Andrew Weil Center of Integrative Medicine. She and Dr. Laura talk about what factors impact health and overall wellness at work and how these can be improved.Dr. Sternberg delves into the insights in her book Well at Work and explains the seven domains of integrative health as defined by the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine. Sleep, resilience, environment, movement, relationships, spirituality, and nutrition are the seven domains, and they include things like how quickly we bounce back from stress, how clean our air is, and access to nature. Dr. Laura and Dr. Sternberg examine how office design, environmental location, common spaces that encourage relationships, and even temperature all play a key role in our workplace health. The conversation sheds light on how work isn’t simply a place to invest time into productivity, but can positively or negatively impact our overall lives, and how redefining workplaces is a vital part of future discussions. “... if you're feeling too stressed or too activated, you want to do something that will tone down that stress response so you can perform at peak... If you're too stressed, you freeze, you're unable to focus. You're unable to do the job, the task at hand. So what helps you to move that stress response from the extreme danger zone back to performing at peak is places where you can go offline a little bit, where you can effectively meditate even though you're not sitting there with crossed legs in a lotus position in a yoga studio, although having spaces where some people can do that is is also beneficial. But a space, for example, [like] the gardens. To just walk in the gardens, to just take your brain off the computer for a while and focus on the green, on the plants.” - Dr. Esther SternbergAbout Dr. Esther Sternberg, M.D.:Dr. Esther Sternberg is internationally recognized for her discoveries in the science of the mind-body interaction in illness and healing, and the role of place in wellbeing. She is a pioneer and major force in collaborative initiatives on mind-body-stress-wellness and environment interrelationships. A dynamic speaker, she engages her audience with passion for her subject and compassion as a physician. Through stories, she provides listeners with many take-home tips to help them cope with stress and thrive, and to create wellbeing spaces wherever they work or live. Dr. Sternberg’s three popular, highly readable, informative, and scientifically based books are inspirations for lay persons and professionals alike, seeking answers to the complexities and 21st-century frontiers of stress, place, healing, and wellness. Her award-winning book, WELL at WORK: Creating Wellbeing in Any Workspace (Little, Brown Spark, 2023) was named a Top Ten Lifestyle Book for Fall 2023 by Publishers Weekly and received the OWL (Outstanding Works of Literature) Longlist Award. Her two previous science-for-the-lay public books, Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-Being and The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions, are landmark in its field. Healing Spaces was recognized by the President of the American Institute of Architects as an inspiration for launching the AIA’s Design and Health Initiative and has inspired the implementation of healing spaces in hospitals across the country and around the world. Currently, Research Director, Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine and Founding Director of the University of Arizona Institute on Place, Wellbeing & Performance, she holds the Inaugural Andrew Weil Chair for Research in Integrative Medicine and is a Research Professor of Medicine with joint appointments as Professor in Psychology, Architecture, and Planning & Landscape Architecture, and in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, School of Nutritional Sciences and Wellness. As Senior Scientist and Section Chief, National Institutes of Health (1986-2012), she directed the NIH Integrative Neural Immune Program, Co-Chaired the NIH Intramural Program on Research on Women’s Health, and chaired a subcommittee of the NIH Central Tenure Committee. Dr. Sternberg has advised the World Health Organization; the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine; the International WELL Building Institute; the Royal Society, London; the Vatican, where she was presented to Pope Benedict XVI; and has briefed high-level U.S. Federal Government officials, including the Surgeon General, National Institutes of Health leadership, and the Department of Defence. Her two decades-long research with the U.S. General Services Administration, using wearable devices to track health and wellbeing in the built office environment, is informing healthy design standards and COVID re-entry across the federal government and the private sector.Among other honors, she moderated a panel with the Dalai Lama, was recognized by the National Library of Medicine as one of the women who “Changed the Face of Medicine,” served as a member and Chair of NLM’s Board of Regents, and received an Honorary Doctorate in Medicine from Trinity College, Dublin, on its 300th Anniversary. She has authored over 240 scholarly articles, edited 10 technical books on the topic of brain-immune connections and design and health, and writes a monthly blog for Psychology Today, it has garnered tens of thousands of readers on subjects including stress and illness, gratitude and wellness, and place and wellbeing. She co-created and hosted the PBS Television Special, The Science of Healing with Dr. Esther Sternberg, and is frequently interviewed in the lay press and media, including NPR, BBC, CBC radio; PBS, ABC, CBS 60 Minutes, Overtime television, the Washington Post, LA Times, U.S. News and World Report, Reader’s Digest, Prevention Magazine, The Oprah Magazine, and numerous podcasts, among others. She received her M.D. from McGill University, and trained in rheumatology at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal, Canada.Resources:Website: EstherSternberg.comBook: “Well at Work: Creating Wellbeing in any Workspace” by Esther M. Sternberg, MDInstagram: @dresternbergLinkedInLearn more about Dr. Laura on her website: https://drlaura.liveFor more resources, look into Dr. Laura’s organizations: Canada Career CounsellingSynthesis Psychology Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Avoiding Binge or Bust: How to Balance Our Health in Social and Work Situations

Dr. Laura welcomes Kirkland Shave, co-founder of the Mountain Trek health reset retreat, back to Where Work Meets Life™ for an honest and open conversation about mindful health and steering clear of binge or bust thinking in our eating and social situations. Dr. Laura uses her own life after her experience at Mountain Trek to illustrate the kind of “falling off the wagon” thinking that we tend to catastrophize. Kirk showcases how Laura, and by extension, each one of us, can shift our thinking to offer ourselves more grace. Dr. Laura openly shares some of the nutritional and social choices she made that she views as falling off the health wagon and discusses with Kirk why one-off situations should not redirect our entire health focus into one of negativity. Kirk emphasizes self-compassion, a way of accepting the days when we can’t make the health choices we want to and simply allowing them to happen before getting back into our routine. Their conversation includes a vulnerable talk about alcohol and social drinking, the variety of non-alcoholic craft beer/cocktail options available, how to avoid instinctive self-judgment when we make an unhealthy choice, and ways to incorporate mindful health into events and travel. This episode offers a way forward after we’ve made a less-than-nutritious choice without the guilt that society demands we bear.“I think contextualizing our life in what we do the most matters the most, rather than the one-offs that we should be hard on ourselves about. Okay, so, in that week, that one meal and maybe there's another one at the conference that you didn't have much control over. Those two meals are not going to be a deal breaker or a derailment for your whole life, or make you give up [your] conscious focus on eating well. So I think it's really about us having a bit of grace for what comes up day to day in our lives that is unexpected. That was an unexpected occurrence that you didn't really have control over.” - Kirkland ShaveAbout Kirkland Shave:Kirkland Shave, founder and president of the world-renowned Mountain Trek program, now offers off-site interactive and eye-opening workshops — grounded in anthropological health science — to help professionals integrate lasting steps in reaching optimal wellness. With an inspiring, practical, and actionable message, Kirkland helps people see their own health through a fresh and practical lens.With half- and full-day interactive health workshops and keynote presentations — designed specifically for a corporate audience — held at your company’s headquarters, Kirkland’s life-changing interactive presentation can be tailored to meet a number of health issues: Fitness, Nutrition, De-Stressing, Sleep Hygiene, Physical and Digital Detoxification, Habit Formation, Mindfulness.His proven approach increases energy, productivity, and establishes long-lasting health habits. The program incorporates scientific anthropology blended with a distinctly mountain-centric approach to health. With 18 years’ experience as president and founder of Mountain Trek’s holistic health and vitality program, Kirkland brings more than 40 years of health-focused lifestyle expertise, with experience as a fitness instructor, lead hiking guide, wellness coach, Wilderness Park Manager, yoga instructor and meditation practitioner.Kirkland’s off-site workshops for executives and employees have been hosted by leading organizations, such as Google, Young Presidents Organization of Western Canada, Fortis Gas, the CEO Network, European Entrepreneurs Organization, and more. Contact Kirkland Shave and Mountain Trek:Website: MountainTrek.com  Instagram: @mountaintrekFacebook: @mountaintrekInstagram: @mountaintrek  LinkedIn: Mountain-Trek  YouTube: YouTube.com/MountainTrek  Kirkland Shave on LinkedInResources:Website: MountainTrek.comGuinness 0 non-alcoholic draughtPartake Brewing non–alcoholic beerLearn more about Dr. Laura on her website: https://drlaura.liveFor more resources, look into Dr. Laura’s organizations: Canada Career CounsellingSynthesis Psychology Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.