What is a Good Life?

On the 154th episode of What Is a Good Life?, I’m joined by Katie Elliott.

Katie is a facilitator, writer, and programme designer working across community and organisational settings. With a background in jazz and a long-standing fascination with human change and habits, she creates tools, conversations, and projects that explore how people make sense of themselves and one another. Her work includes Amiko® Cards, the Adventures in Behaviour Change podcast, a series of children’s books, and an album of original piano music.

In this conversation, we explore curiosity, bewilderment, and the value of staying with experience rather than rushing to explain or resolve it. We talk about patterns, presence, and how meaning slowly reveals itself in relationships and in life — showing how deeper listening and meaningful conversation can genuinely shift how you see yourself and others.

For more of Katie's work:
Website: https://www.littlechallenges.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katieelliott/

For more of my work:
Contact me at mark@whatisagood.life if you'd like to explore your own good life through:
- 1-on-1 coaching and online group courses: https://www.whatisagood.life/p/individual-coaching
- The podcast's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@whatisagoodlife/videos
- My newsletter: https://www.whatisagood.life/p/individual-coaching

00:00 — Patterns and Play
04:31 — Bewildered by Humans
07:48 — Not Being Believed
10:21 — Staying Open
13:01 — Kindness Inside
17:17 — Being Human Together
20:56 — Dropping the Mask
23:31 — Jazz and Freedom
31:26 — Creating Human Spaces
40:44 — Making Meaning Together
52:31 — What is a Good Life for Katie?

What is What is a Good Life??

This isn’t a podcast about fixing you. It’s about living life more fully.
What Is a Good Life? is a long-form conversation project exploring how people actually live, feel, and make meaning of their lives.
Over the past four years, I’ve sat with more than 300 people — artists, parents, executives, wanderers, therapists, and strangers — and invited them into a simple but profound inquiry: What is a good life for you?
These conversations aren’t about advice, formulas, or self-improvement. They explore presence, paradox, uncertainty, and the moments that quietly shape a life — love and loss, trust and fear, clarity and not knowing. It’s an invitations to slow down, to listen deeply, and to bring you into conversation with your own life.
New episodes weekly.