Summary

 

Our guest in this episode is Sinead Duffy, a graduate of the European Master in Human Rights and Democratisation, who founded Yogandha, a range of multi-awarded meditative oils.

 

For her primary degree, she chose to study philosophy out of interest for ethics and morality, modalities of thoughts, concepts of existence and all aspects of the human condition. She then took a meandering route from philosophy to human rights. After having been taught western philosophy, which is ‘rationalistic’, I discovered Daoism and Eastern philosophy, which in turn led me to study meditation. Through meditation, I experienced interconnectedness and universality and that in turn led me to human rights.

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She wished that we learned that human rights the way it is taught comes from a particular philosophical perspective and wished that the students would learn as well about the existence of other philosophical perspectives. In her opinion, this radical shift is necessary as the human rights tradition seems to be currently failing, especially regarding environmental issues. We need to move away from this anthropocentric vision of human rights.

 

Her decision to start her business was mission-and passion-driven. The biggest reward of owning her company is the creative side of it as well as the feedback from the users of her oils. She feels that she helps people out of their thinking minds. 

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Her advice to young graduates who want to follow their passion:

 

• If you want to create your own business, you must be very self-reliant and be willing to learn a lot of things that you might not be interested in but are necessary for your business. Be ready to be thrown out of your comfort zone every day. The reward is that you get a chance to be creative every day.

• Do not be afraid to wear all your hats at the same time! There is always a coherency to peoples’ paths.

 

Sinead loves poetry because it is non cerebral. The poem she keeps going back to is Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie from Bob Dylan. She simply loves the way it makes her feel. 

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This quote from Einstein seems to fit well within this conversation:

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“The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking

we were at when we created them.”

Einstein