S2 · E1
August 20 · 7 min
HW
Health & FitnessMental Health
Hope Works with Sue Langley & Alex Cooley
Sue Langley and Alex Couley
Join Sue Langley and Alex Couley for honest, insightful conversations about what it really means to care for your mind. Each episode dives into the science and stories behind mental health, wellbeing, and resilience exploring how our emotions, thoughts, and habits shape the way we live and work.
Drawing on Sue’s deep background in psychology and emotional intelligence, and Alex’s personal passion for mental wellness and connection, Hope Works brings together evidence-based tools, real experiences, and practical conversations to help you navigate life’s ups and downs.
Music - justinbreame.com
- 18 episodes
- Avg 24 min
- English
- HWS1 · E16April 30 · 24 min
Your environment beats your willpower | Hope Works with Sue Langley & Alex Couley
We ask people to summon willpower, drink less and move more, and we leave out the room they are standing in. Sue Langley brings a study by Albarracin and colleagues that found access, plain access to things, among the strongest determinants of individual wellbeing. She and Alex Couley then extend the idea of environment past the physical one and into the mental one. Where your attention spends its day, and whether that place adds pressure or takes it off. The question they leave you with is the one the series keeps returning to. What could you do for two minutes, or for five, that might make a difference over time? Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes. Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.
- HWS1 · E15April 23 · 33 min
Kindness is a strength | Hope Works with Sue Langley & Alex Couley
Alex Couley becomes emotional early in this one, and says so, because of where the conversation about strength and masculinity has gone and what has been left out of it. He and Sue Langley put the research next to the practice. What kindness does for the person receiving it, for the person offering it, and for the community around both, and why it works as an antidote to loneliness. Sue gives groups 15 minutes to fit in as many acts of kindness as they can. What comes back from that exercise is the part of the episode most people remember. Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes. Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.
- HWS1 · E14April 16 · 22 min
Your body knows before you do | Hope Works with Sue Langley & Alex Couley
Conversations about the body and wellbeing usually mean exercise, nutrition, or a number on a scale. Sue Langley wanted a wider one. This episode goes into interoception, the sense of what is happening inside you, and into what those sensations are actually reporting. Once you can read them, they become a way to identify how you feel and then to shift it. That is a good deal more useful than being told to breathe, and it is available to you in any meeting, on any day. Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes. Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.
- HWS1 · E13April 9 · 25 min
Four kinds of rest your brain needs | Hope Works with Sue Langley & Alex Couley
We treat productivity as constant motion, and we admire the people who work the longest hours. The brain has other requirements. Sue Langley and Alex Couley go through four different kinds of rest a brain needs, and the small things that make room for each one. There is a study here about silence, where people lasted around 35 seconds with the radio switched off before they reached for something else. There is also a practical note on naps, where under 30 minutes leaves you sharper and anything longer leaves you groggy. Two minutes to look at a flower, gaze at the clouds or wander outside counts as one of the four. Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes. Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.
- HWS1 · E12March 19 · 25 min
The voice in your head is shaping you | Hope Works with Sue Langley & Alex Couley
Language here means all three versions of it. What you say, what you write, and the running commentary in your head that only you hear. Sue Langley is interested in how words build and remove psychological barriers. Alex Couley is interested in how skilful use of language changes what happens between people. Two words come out of the conversation that may be new to you, meliorism and absquatulate. The exercise is small. Spend five minutes listening to the voice in your head, and notice which way it tends to go. Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes. Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.
- HWS1 · E11March 12 · 23 min
The visualisation that actually works | Hope Works with Sue Langley & Alex Couley
Imagine it and you will become it. Alex Couley's view is that the popular version of this takes people down a road the science supports poorly, and leaves them struggling more than if they had left it alone. He and Sue Langley separate the version that works from the version that backfires. What survives is closer to rehearsal than to wishing. Five minutes in the morning picturing what a good day would look like, hurdles included, then five minutes in the evening savouring the parts that went well. Rehearsing the hurdles is the step most people skip, and it is the step that does the work. Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes. Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.
- HWS1 · E10March 5 · 31 min
A strength is what gives you energy | Hope Works with Sue Langley & Alex Couley
Most people define a strength as something they are good at. Sue Langley adds the second half that changes everything. A strength is something you are good at that also gives you energy. That second half separates a strength from a talent, and it explains how capable people end up excellent at work that drains them. Sue and Alex Couley draw on Chris Peterson's 25 years of research in this area, then get practical about spotting your own strengths and building a week around them. Sue's suggestion in the episode: if curiosity is one of your top strengths, spend five minutes asking questions. If hope and optimism are up there, spend five minutes looking for things to be hopeful about. Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes. Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.
- HWS1 · E9February 26 · 30 min
The 15 minute walk that changes your day | Hope Works with Sue Langley & Alex Couley
Awe is the emotion Alex Couley thinks stands apart from the usual sorting into positive and negative. You feel it in the body first, before you have named it, which makes it unusual and useful. He and Sue Langley go into the biofeedback, the appreciation and the sense of expansion that comes with it. Then they get practical: 10 to 15 minutes of walking with the deliberate intention of finding something to be awed by. The intention is the active ingredient. The walk is the easy part. Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes. Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.
- HWS1 · E8Dec 21, 2025 · 30 min
Courage has an equation | Hope Works with Sue Langley & Alex Couley
The courage equation is willingness to act divided by fear. Fear stays inside the formula, which means courage arrives with the fear still present rather than once it has gone. Sue Langley and Alex Couley work both sides of the equation, how to raise the willingness and how to lower the fear. The conversation covers a pattern in confidence and job applications, where men tend to apply at 30 to 40% confidence while women wait until they reach 70 to 80%. Both of them talk about achievements they are proud of that frightened them first, including going to university as mature age students. Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes. Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.
- HWS1 · E7Dec 14, 2025 · 29 min
Compassion goes further than empathy | Hope Works with Sue Langley & Alex Couley
Sympathy, empathy and compassion get used interchangeably. They describe three different things, and the difference decides how useful you are to the person in front of you. Alex Couley draws out the mechanism that compassion shares with hope, which is where his own interest began. Sue Langley keeps the conversation in small examples, the kind available in an ordinary week. The question running through it is what any of us can do to make the world a more compassionate place, starting with the next conversation you have. Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes. Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.
- HWS1 · E5Dec 7, 2025 · 26 min
Why a park beats an office | Hope Works with Sue Langley & Alex Couley
The mappiness studies asked people how they felt, wherever they happened to be at the time. Sitting in a park scored higher than sitting in an office, reliably enough to build a habit on. Sue Langley and Alex Couley go into what the natural world does for physical, mental and emotional recovery. Sue works from a wide definition of nature as anything living, which opens the idea well past a weekend bushwalk and into the plants on a windowsill. The place the episode arrives at is that we are nature, rather than visitors to it. Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes. Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.
- HWS1 · E5Nov 30, 2025 · 27 min
You are more creative than you realise | Hope Works with Sue Langley & Alex Couley
Say the word creativity and most people picture Rembrandt, then decide it belongs to someone else. Meanwhile they are being creative all day and calling it something different. Alex Couley's interest is in how much creativity people already use without naming it. He and Sue Langley separate creativity from curiosity and look at how each one feeds the other. Sue sets people a challenge she describes here: find 30 seconds, one minute or five minutes in a day to be deliberately curious, and see what turns up. Curiosity is the cheaper of the two to start with, and it opens the door to the other one. Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes. Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.
- HWS1 · E4Nov 23, 2025 · 22 min
Your emotions are data | Hope Works with Sue Langley & Alex Couley
Sue Langley's working definition is short. Emotions are data. Information arriving about something that matters to you. She and Alex Couley take that through the chemistry, roughly 90 seconds of it moving through the brain and the body, and through Barbara Fredrickson's broaden and build theory, where leveraging a positive emotion builds the resources you draw on later. The practical half of the conversation is about getting comfortable with the uncomfortable emotions, which is a different skill from trying to feel better. Gratitude comes into it, treated as evidence rather than as a pleasant idea. Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes. Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.
- HWS1 · E3Nov 16, 2025 · 27 min
Meaning is available in 30 seconds a day | Hope Works with Sue Langley & Alex Couley
Meaning and purpose get used as though they were the same word. They behave differently, and the difference changes what you do on an ordinary Tuesday. Alex Couley has a firm view about the advice that finding your purpose guarantees an easy life, and he says so. He and Sue Langley separate the two terms, look at where each one comes from, and arrive at something usable. In most days you can find 30 seconds that were worthwhile. Meaning is built out of those. That is a very different proposition from a life mission, and a good deal more available on a Tuesday. Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes. Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.
- HWS1 · E2Nov 9, 2025 · 20 min
Two minutes is enough to get moving | Hope Works with Sue Langley & Alex Couley
Agency is the sense that your actions matter and that you have a say in what happens next. Sue Langley and Alex Couley look at how agency, choice and autonomy work together, and at what moves a person from waiting to moving. The answer keeps coming back to scale. Choose the action you could finish in the next 20 minutes, then make it smaller again. Sue describes setting a timer for two minutes and asking people to spend that time on whatever they are trying to achieve. Most of them keep going once the timer stops. This episode is about taking responsible action in weeks that feel heavy, and about how much the smallest things do. Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science, art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives in the same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next two minutes. Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings lived experience, and the questions.
- HWS1 · E1Nov 2, 2025 · 21 min
Hope is a skill you can practise | Hope Works with Sue Langley & Alex Couley
Hope behaves more like a skill than a mood. It has three parts: a possible future, a pathwaytowards it, and the belief that you can walk that pathway. In the first episode of Hope Works, Sue Langley and Alex Couley open the series by lookingat what hope actually is, why individual and collective hope both matter, andhow much the size of the first step decides. Sue gives groups two minutes on atimer and asks them to spend that time moving towards the thing they careabout. Two minutes turns out to be enough to begin. The through line of the whole series appears here for the first time. It is the smallactions that make the biggest difference. Hope Works is a conversation series with Sue Langley and Alex Couley about the science,art and practice of wellbeing and positive psychology. Every episode arrives inthe same place: the small things, the ones you could start in the next twominutes. Sue brings a background in psychology and emotional intelligence. Alex brings livedexperience, and the questions.
- HWOct 28, 2025 · 5 min
Hope Works Podcast - Coming Soon
Join Alex Couley and Sue Langley for honest, insightful conversations about what it really means to care for your mind. Each episode dives into the science and stories behind mental health, wellbeing, and resilience exploring how our emotions, thoughts, and habits shape the way we live and work. Drawing on Sue’s deep background in psychology and emotional intelligence, and Alex’s personal passion for mental wellness and connection, Hope Works brings together evidence-based tools, real experiences, and practical conversations to help you navigate life’s ups and downs.