This week’s episode of The Executive Edge welcomes Anita Chaudhuri.

Anita is a Guardian journalist who previously wrote for Psychologies magazine. Her main area of interest, which is close to my heart, is that of handling stress and finding creative ways to feel good. Anita is also a talented photographer, having completed an MA in documentary photography from University of the Arts, London, in 2022.

Anita talks about how lockdown gave her time and space to explore the world through a camera lens. Creative practice became an everyday part of her daily walks.

Anita discusses how the meditative quality of photography, the concentration, focus and single-minded determination needed, gives her a complete break from her thoughts and the inevitable ‘busyness’ of life. Many of us do this to the point where we get quite ‘stuck’ at times.

Photography, for Anita, also relieves stress because you must pay mindful attention to what you’re looking at. So, it’s very calming as by default you are not rushing about. You’re forced to be patient, monitoring the right time to take the picture.

In many ways, the story Anita outlines here is transferable to all of us. We spend so much time being creative and playing as children, learning as we go, but much of it gets forgotten as we age. For executives, the focus tends to be on success and business gains. “Hobbies” are encouraged, but while golf, sailing and travel are all excellent ways of taking us out of the work place, do they help us grow?

Having embraced photography, Anita has developed new skills, learned to see things differently and nurtured a side of her self that she had not thought of before. As she confesses on the show, she’d never felt good about taking pictures, but during lockdown she had the time and space to explore what she could do.

What else did we talk about?

Anita argues that we’ve all turned in to dopamine addicts whether by accident or design. This is because we love our phones and we check them regularly to see who has been in touch. But we might not be getting the same dopamine hit as we did because many of us are working from home at least some of the time now. So, what she’s found is that she also becomes incredibly social when she’s out with her camera. People often stop to chat to her!

So, if this all sounds of interest do listen to this episode.  Anita does a great job of inspiring us all to take up something new!