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The Gentle Rebel Podcast

The Gentle Rebel Podcast

Written by: Andy Mort
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The Gentle Rebel Podcast explores the intersection of high sensitivity, creativity, and the influence of culture within, between, and around us. Through a mix of conversational and monologue episodes, I invite you to question the assumptions, pressures, and expectations we have accepted, and to experiment with ways to redefine the possibilities for our individual and collective lives when we view high sensitivity as both a personal trait and a vital part of our collective survival (and potential).Andy Mort Art Self-Help Social Sciences Success
Episodes
  • Feeling Stuck? Wondering What You Should Do Next?

    Feeling Stuck? Wondering What You Should Do Next?
    Jul 1 2026

    I sometimes notice that I’m feeling stuck.

    When I’m frustrated, trying to figure something out. Stuck for inspiration when I’m attempting to create something or solve a problem. Stuck in thought patterns and loops.

    It’s tempting to give up or seek shortcuts when this feeling kicks in, as if it’s something to avoid or overcome. But stuckness can encompass a wide range of experiences and open the door to all sorts of interesting discoveries about ourselves and the things we care about.

    https://youtu.be/0pIjNB-ZoA4 Feeling Stuck Because You Don’t Know What You Want

    Sometimes we feel stuck when we don’t know what to do. Not just in the existential sense of “What should I do with my life?”, but in smaller, everyday ways too.

    We might struggle to choose between two options. We might know what we don’t want, but not be able to identify what we do want. Or the idea of settling on one thing brings a flood of everything we need to sacrifice to do so.

    Feeling Stuck Because There Are Too Many Possibilities

    Sometimes stuckness comes from having too many possibilities. Too many interests, projects, and lives we want to live. We need to reconcile and navigate life with our finite time, energy, and capacity without becoming overwhelmed by the abundance of options.

    Feeling Stuck Because None of the Options Feel Right

    We might feel stuck when none of the available or obvious options feel right. The choices on offer don’t reflect who we are, or we’re trying to force ourselves into a life designed by someone else for someone else.

    Perhaps things flowed freely for a while, but they no longer seem to fit.

    Feeling Stuck Even Though You Know What You Want

    Sometimes, stuckness comes because we know exactly what we want. But we’re afraid of what choosing it might mean. We might fear what others will think and worry about regretting the sacrifices it asks of us.

    Feeling Stuck as a Doorway

    Feeling stuck can be a doorway to self-awareness, curiosity, and discovery. It’s a territory that lends itself perfectly to map-making. Rather than creating a list of things to do, fixes, solutions, missing pieces, and the correct answers, we can treat feeling stuck as a territory to explore.

    Before deciding what to do, we might ask ourselves where we are and how we got here.

    The Map of Stuckness and Possibility

    I didn’t anticipate the map I created over the weekend becoming anything specific. But as I explored these questions, I could feel it coming to life as a mini-zine journal companion workbook centred on a simple question…

    What do I care about?

    As simple as that question may seem, it can be difficult for many people to answer, especially those whose decisions, choices, and priorities have been shaped by concern for how their actions will affect others.

    Maybe something has changed in your life, and you suddenly have more time and space to think about what you want to do.

    Or perhaps you’ve reached a point where you feel yourself fading away, and you recognise that it’s time to come home to yourself.

    To figure out what you care about, what’s important, and the shape you want your life to take.

    A Mini-Zine Journal Workbook

    The workbook isn’t designed to tell you what to do. That’s never been my approach.

    Instead, it’s designed to help you slow down long enough to hear yourself, notice where you are and what you care about, and perhaps make surprising discoveries along the way.

    Learn more and download it here.
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    7 mins
  • When People ASSUME They Know You – Variety & Neurodiversity

    When People ASSUME They Know You – Variety & Neurodiversity
    Jul 5 2026
    In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, we explore the variety of neurodiversity. I’ve been staying with friends over the past few weeks, including Lucas, who is nearly 12. He is autistic, and after spending time trawling through the Gentle Rebel Podcast episode archive, we had a chat about topics he thought would be good to explore. One of those topics was what he described as “the variety of neurodiversity”. When I asked what that meant to him, and why he felt that was an important thing to discuss, he said that it’s important to realise that not all neurodivergent people have the same needs or preferences. It can be frustrating for him when people make assumptions because of his autism, confusing one person’s experience as being true and applicable to everyone. It reminded me of the story I’ve told a few times on the podcast, when I shared that I love horror films and someone responded by saying it meant I wasn’t a highly sensitive person (HSP). Fortunately, I met a bunch of fellow HSP horror fans who were very grateful to discover they were not alone in that love and passion. It was a really nice reminder that we are all different. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to our natural variations, and while brains share characteristics across neurotypes, our needs, preferences, and tastes are a more complex mix of genetics, environment, and psychology. https://youtu.be/4xJmXtRoIlM 13 Questions I created a mini-zine for Lucas to answer some questions about this topic, which I share in the episode. He has given me permission to talk about his responses because we hope this can help people feel a bit safer and more confident being themselves, even if it makes them different. And for those listening who spend time with neurodivergent people, we hope this encourages them to see everyone as an individual rather than making assumptions that they would be the same as others they’ve met, or as themselves. I would also love to invite you to share your own responses to these questions. I’ve created a survey because I’d be really interested in gathering a variety of responses and getting a sense of the variety of neurodiversity. Can you remember a time when someone assumed something about you because you were autistic? What did they get wrong? Before moving to be educated at home, Lucas had noticed adults assuming that he was like the other autistic children at the school. The teachers assumed he found it difficult to learn, but in Lucas’s case, he found it difficult to be at school. Having spent a lot of time with the family over the past five years, I’ve seen this radical shift as he has transitioned from that institutional school setting to home-based education and is absolutely blossoming. In a way, it feels frustrating that the teachers who had all but written him off through those assumptions will likely never see it. He loves learning, is a sponge for knowledge, and embraces the joy of connecting the dots across a vast range of subjects. What do people tend to misunderstand most about neurodivergent people? “Sometimes people think we’re all the same”, Lucas replied to this one. “They assume that ADHD people are naughty, but actually our brains have so much to focus on so it’s hard to listen.” “Naughty” is a judgement based on the person making it (and the context they are in). In many situations not designed for different types of brains, when people are unable to focus, respond as expected, or do so at the correct speed, authority figures may ascribe intent to those actions. This underpins the disadvantage faced by those expected to play by rules that impose a heavy cognitive load. This can prevent them from functioning and flourishing in their natural way. Have people ever tried to help you in a way that actually made things harder? What did they do? I didn’t ask this question to make people with good hearts feel bad. But because it sits at the heart of much of this stuff, and I’ve heard countless stories of kids being ignored by those who think they know what’s best for them. Lucas described how his needs were ignored by the adults at school. We know about the role of differential susceptibility from the ever-growing body of research around environmental sensitivity. Vantage Sensitivity indicates that the more sensitive someone is, the more positively they are affected by a safe and supportive environment. Diathesis Stress shows that the more sensitive a person is, the more they’re negatively affected by stressful conditions. The school setting can be stressful for neurotypes with diverse sensitivities whose nervous systems don’t naturally fit the normalised environment. Do you know autistic people who are very different from you? How are they different? Lucas said yes to this because, for example, some autistic people he knows are more confident when speaking. Those whose brains function in similar ways still have different personalities, ...
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    23 mins
  • The Strangest Secret

    The Strangest Secret
    Jun 26 2026
    The Strangest Secret was released in 1956. Earl Nightingale’s 35-minute, six-and-a-half-thousand-word recording was one of the earliest motivational tapes. It sold more than a million copies and became the first spoken-word recording to achieve Gold Record status. The recording was released during a period of post-war economic expansion in the United States. Consumer culture was booming, and suburban home ownership was rising. The promise of upward mobility felt tangible for a growing American middle class encouraged to live a story about abundance, opportunity, and individual advancement. In this episode of The Gentle Rebel Podcast, I look at some of the ideas and assumptions running through The Strangest Secret, and how they echo themes that have become deeply embedded in self-help culture over the past century. https://youtu.be/-t_aynxdw9E What interests me is less whether Nightingale’s advice works than the story he tells about success, failure, responsibility, and human potential. It’s a format followed by generations of motivational speakers, coaches, entrepreneurs, and personal development enthusiasts. It continues to influence how many of us think about ourselves and the world today. I heard about The Strangest Secret through a video by Sean Munger titled The Tools Cult: History of the Amway Motivational Tape Scam. My attention was caught by a reference to Napoleon Hill, who inspired Nightingale when he read Think and Grow Rich in 1948. That book, as well as Nightingale’s tape, became important resources on the Amway reading list. Nightingale’s Definition of Success “When we say about 5% achieve success, we have to define success, and here’s the definition. Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.” This is a reasonable concept. To act in the service of bringing a worthy ideal into being provides a flexible definition that can be applied in many ways. Nightingale says he believes that success is a life lived with a specific sense of purpose and direction. So it’s confusing when he seems to undermine this by viewing success through a financial lens. He suggests that if you follow 100 men between the ages of 25 and 65, you would witness a desire for success at the start of life, but by the time they’re 65, one will be rich, four will be financially independent, five will still be working, and 54 will be broke. This underpins his position that only 5% of people are successful. So which is it? Being financially independent by age 65 or progressively realising a worthy ideal? Those things are not necessarily linked. An artist, a teacher, a carer, or a community organiser, and anyone who does something despite the lack of guaranteed financial reward. By Nightingale’s own definition, these people may well be successful. They are realising a worthy ideal. Yet his framework shifts from an existential definition of success to an economic one, where in reality, a person can only be deemed successful if they make lots of money. Self-Help Tropes Nightingale’s talk conforms with many of the self-help tropes we are becoming familiar with on this journey. The Secret “If you understand completely what I’m going to tell you from this moment on, your life will never be the same again. You will suddenly find that good luck just seems to be attracted to you. The things you want just seem to fall in line and from now on you won’t have the problems, the worries, the knowing lump of anxiety that, perhaps, you have experienced before. Doubt, fear, well they’ll be things of the past.” The idea of a secret runs through the history of self-help. There is always some missing piece, some hidden principle that, once understood and applied, will change everything. The details vary slightly from book to book, but the structure remains remarkably similar. The reader is invited to believe that happiness, peace, prosperity, confidence, healing, or fulfilment are all waiting on the other side of a single insight. It’s a compelling promise. Nice if true. Metaphor As Evidence Self-help authors often lean on metaphors in ways that make them seem like evidence for a position. Nightingale says, “People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going,” and compares successful people to ships sailing towards a predetermined destination. He then imagines a ship without a captain, crew, or destination and concludes that it will drift aimlessly. The comparison sounds persuasive until you stop and think about it. A ship is designed for a destination. Human beings are not. Some of the richest experiences in life emerge through experimentation, curiosity, accident, and changing direction. A ship without a crew and a destination isn’t fulfilling its literal purpose and reason for existing (built by humans as a logistical tool). A human is not the same. There are many reasons people choose not to structure their lives around the pursuit of goals. “The man who has no ...
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    30 mins
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