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ben fogel ben relentlessly pursues adventure risk and challenge but this doesn't come
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from a place of strength and courage it comes from the opposite this if you
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think you're gonna fail you're gonna fail you just have to have this positive attitude and it was only actually working with
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olympians that i've done now when i climbed everest i realized you need this confidence verging on arrogance that i
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will get to the top of this mountain three weeks before he was due to be born naturally and we lost our third child
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and it was an awful awful experience that affected us profoundly i became really
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introverted i'd go to events and i'd find myself going to the loo and just sitting sitting in the little cubicle for the
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duration of the whole event big mistake we got death threats and worse
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i i shouldn't have shared this idea in a social um media platform
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but i was amazed at the vile vitriolic abuse
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[Music]
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ben fogel he's a tv presenter broadcaster and author he's climbed mount everest he's trekked
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across antarctica and he's rode across the atlantic ocean ben relentlessly pursues adventure risk
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and challenge but this doesn't come from a place of strength and courage it comes from the opposite
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from a place that you would probably never expect this was such a diverse conversation we covered
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so much and so many things ben has been on the most incredible journey tearing up the script and
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ignoring the standard society sets for all of us on this never-ending continuous journey of rebuilding himself
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as he says in his own words and that journey has been inspired by one simple idea
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his desire to take back control of his own personal narrative something he believes
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we've all lost control of and this podcast is going to take you on a journey from the need to a positive
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attitude to resisting your labels to taking leaps to rediscovering the importance of simplicity in your life that ben has learned from
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living in the wilderness and to answering the question that we all seek to answer pretty much every day of
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our lives which is how to be happier and how to be more fulfilled so without
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further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening
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but if you are then please keep this to yourself [Music]
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ben uh as i read through your story your books your interviews and i i
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remember remember watching uh a youtube documentary of you sailing across the atlantic many years ago
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um obviously the most sort of striking distinctive standout thing about the way that you've
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chosen to live your life over the last couple of decades is your seemingly
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insatiable appetite for adventure risk challenge uh extreme adventure
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as it relates to everest and things like that where did that come from i think it's do you know it's not
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necessarily an absolute thirst for adventure i think it's about kind of
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finding the real me see if i go if i go right back as a child i was
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so shy i had no confidence i failed all my exams i was hopeless at sport and actually i think
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it i think all of the things that i've done since have been about like rebuilding
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and it sounds it sounds a weird way to describe it but it's not just i'm not an adrenaline junkie
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there's there's this assumption that maybe you know that that would be how to
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describe myself but it's not that at all actually those are the things i do are really really slow
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you know like rowing across the atlantic took best part of two months walking across antarctica took many many
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months climbing everest took many months so actually if if it was jumping off a mountain base jumping or
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going uh on a motorbike or even a mountain bike down a steep slope
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i hate all that it's too fast i quite like this slow movement but i'm quite good at
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long endurance events and all of those have been about rebuilding my confidence and what took
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your confidence or why didn't you have confidence i think i think it's the fact that i was
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i was hopeless academically for many different reasons undiagnosed dyslexia um a kind of
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a slight mistake maybe not on my parents part but they my father's canadian he wanted me to be
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bilingual so i was sent to a french school and i just i just i just didn't
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i couldn't do the french school the french system and with all apologies to any french watching or listening to this it's just
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quite a hard system the french one and and and it was quite it was quite um strict
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and i'm just i as a child i just i was surrounded by dogs dad was a vet mum was an actress it was all quite a
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liberal my actual childhood at home was quite liberal full of actors um lots of drink
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lots of animals around it was i suppose crazy but normal for me but then in this french system it was
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very rigid and and it meant that i didn't learn any french and my english went backwards
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so when i went back into the system i was way behind and it and the result was the combination of
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that and dyslexia just meant i was hopeless i could barely write and i and i failed all my exams and i was
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surrounded by people who were better than me at everything everyone everyone seemed to be more handsome when it c
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if it was the boys they had more luck with the girls they were better at playing um sports because they could actually
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kick football unlike me that have i have two left legs and and they were good at um academics
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and when it came to the exams they just they didn't even you know they could be up all night watching stuff and then the
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next day turn up for the exam whereas i was just i was almost making myself vomit i was so nervous about the exams because i
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knew i was gonna fail and this is this is the first thing i convinced myself i'd fail
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and of course i ended up failing because what i've discovered since is that so much of what we do and
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what we endure and how we intest ourselves is here in the mind and if you go in with a negative attitude which
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i had then it's self-fulfilling and and the result was hopeless is
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everything and it just stripped me of my confidence i i had you know i just i didn't
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believe in myself and that that went right through you know probably into my 30s if i'm to
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be really honest i think that was always lingering over me this little voice just telling me that i was uh that i wasn't good enough
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at what i did and did that voice come from your own assessment of yourself or was
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was there external forces bullying or your parents or no my parents were amazing you know
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my parents have i don't think they could have done more for me than they did i think it was
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no i think it was all internal if i'm to be honest i think there's a pres i think there was
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an external pressure to conform because if you think about how
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if you take the schooling model in the education model it is kind of about conforming because exams
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are all about getting the the correct grades we're we're learning to
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a specific model that has been um set by the government and and it's it's sort
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of painting by numbers when it when you think about education and if you don't hit those targets then then you've
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effectively failed the system and for me you can hear from my accent you know i'm i'm posh i went to a
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private school mum and dad worked really hard to send me to a private school and actually there was a great guilt
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that the fact that they had worked so hard to be able to afford to send me there and yet i still failed
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so i think actually a lot of that voice was internal and actually i wish if i could go back
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in time i wish i could kind of shake my shoulder shake a young me on the shoulders and go
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just don't don't overthink things just chill out a little bit
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and we were you a chronic overthinker i was and i still am absolutely i still overthink things if i'm to be honest i
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i i to work in the medium that i work in is a little bit strange because i don't
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really belong in this medium when i say this medium you know front of house as a presenter because
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i've got a really thin skin and i overthink everything so when i read something negative whether that's on
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social media whether that's a newspaper review whether that's a journalist that has written something um which i don't like
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um or which doesn't seem true i take it really personally which is
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kind of really strange because i should have i should have been able to overcome that after 20 years and i'm almost there
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stephen i'm almost there but one of the reasons i'm happy to talk about it is because i know so i'm i know i'm not
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alone i know there are many many people out there who are high achievers who've done brilliant things in life
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but are still burdened with their own voice of doubt and through all of these challenges i've
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done i've been able to really build that confidence and i'm i'd say i'm a few hundred meters from the summit
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now of peak confidence and i can't wait until i'm there i hope i do i i hope i reach that point
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what is it about those challenges and this sort of slow monotonous nature of those challenges or just the challenges themselves or challenge
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as a you know as a as a construct itself that helped you to build confidence because i'm
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one of the most frequent questions i'm asked in the comments section of this podcast or on instagram or anywhere else
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is um how do i build my confidence and i think we live in a culture especially on instagram where it
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seems like everyone else is super confident and chasing their dreams and we we never get to hear the whispers
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of their self-doubt so it might feel like we're the only ones so i guess my question is
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how how did those challenges build your confidence
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it happened by accident so that's the first thing to say i didn't chase it thinking this is going to help
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it was like a slow series of blocks that were built so it started when i failed my a-levels and
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i went off traveling i went to costa rica a place that i know you love and i went to university out there
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and i think it was spending time in a different culture in a different culture country with a
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different culture different language different religion away from home away from mum and dad
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and and first of all i had to kind of think on my own i couldn't defer to other people
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up until that point i'd always kind of dad what do you what do you think mum what do you should i do you know i i i didn't trust
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my own judgment so first of all that was gone so i had to stand or fall on my own decisions and
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then secondly just the immersion in this exciting new place was just i mean it just
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it it was the most exciting year i've ever had if i'm to be really honest and i decided then that that that's what
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i wanted from life i didn't want to conform by getting you know i i didn't want the degree
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the the um the job the mortgage the sitting in an office i didn't want to go down that
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conventional route that that is why because i didn't
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i didn't feel like a conformist i did i didn't want to be a sheep i wanted to be the shepherd i didn't want
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to just conform to the expectations of what society deems is successful why because i'm just making sure you're
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not playing you're not you're not doing it just for the sake of devil's advocate just to go against no not at all i'm not i'm actually not a
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contrarian i'm not someone who says left just because the other person has said right i'm really not a concern if
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anything for someone who doesn't like criticism i should probably stand back and therefore i should sit on the fence and
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become the sheep but i i'm i'm you're gonna discover as we chat i'm a
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ball of contradictions yeah so so nothing kind of makes sense um i just know
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what i have learnt over the years but for me conformity maybe i was stripped of that
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just by the fact that i couldn't conform when it came to exams so i couldn't conform to what the
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what the system wanted me to conform to and therefore i wasn't going to conform when it came to other things i wear
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shorts all year round i'm not you know i stopped wearing a suit ages ago i kind of
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slowly as my confidence has build has built i've found myself straying even further
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from conformity i think i'm going to end up one of those ridiculous kind of english eccentrics wearing a bow tie
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you know you know the one like walking around with a cat stroking it because i kind of that that's how there
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is this kind of there's an enemy that i have never i still haven't really fully found but i
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knew i wouldn't find that person sitting in an office on a computer
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in a job that society expected me to take just so that i could follow the
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narrative and the narrative being as i've kind of explained you know getting a good job that you can
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then um get a promotion you get the the good wage you might get a bonus
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you can buy your house you can get your car you marry you get the dog you have the children and then you
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end up retiring and then you do all the things you want to do and here's the key because is it the journey or the
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destination so for me it's 100 the journey yeah yeah so many people don't see that but you
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should but this is where you and i have quite a lot in common okay we're maybe what we're doing now in life is
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very very different but the fact that you will suddenly just wake up one day and go
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yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna resign from yeah honestly it sounds everything you're saying like i want to make this about
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you but i feel like i've been on the same journey as you're saying with the you know one day you might have the dog and whatever which is just trying to get
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closer and closer to who i actually am and um trying to find the courage the strength to
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um not allow society to write to tell me what my how my story has to
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be yeah so who's and this is the thing isn't it whose story is it yes is it yours or someone else's of
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course it's someone else's story and it was written at another time in another age if we're talking about marriage and these
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constructs in our society for someone else in the circumstances they lived in and they probably weren't happy anyway
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so to think that that same narrative and storyline would be would equal happiness in stephen bartlett's life in 2021
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is uh you know probably patently false like but don't you find this strange i'm not
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going to don't i'm not going to tell the whole thing although i'd be quite happy to because i think you're a fascinating person but it is strange isn't it that archer i
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don't think you have you know yet okay so so i've got two young children aged 10 and 11. so
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obviously i'm really aware of the system that they're now in that failed me and i'm really nervous about
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that fortunately i married someone who's really intelligent and has the thickest skin you'll ever meet on anyone in the world so actually
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my children are pretty resilient much more than i was and i owe all that to my wife but
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i digress if you think about it it's still a strange thing that children are expected from the age of i
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don't know four or five to go off to nursery and then to school where they're in a classroom with four
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walls it might have a window if you're lucky you've got some teachers that may or may not be really invested in their job i
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don't want that to sound disparaging to all teachers because i know a lot of teachers put a lot of hard work in
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but it's still a gamble as to whether you're going to get those that are just doing it for the job or those that are really passionate and driven and then
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it's just about ticking those boxes isn't it get the exam grades that the government have set so that
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they can then go look hurrah we're doing a great system yeah gcse grades are all up
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a level grades are all up it's all looking great look at the number of people going to university and i'm like hang on
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what is this expectation that everyone should go to second to further education to university it's
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not i get people calling me or emailing me getting in touch with me on social media saying how could do you
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think i should do a degree in filmmaking and in broadcast at
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university i'm like no get an apprenticeship job if i could do that i'd take on apprenticeships
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no work your way get experience and uh and and it just i find it really
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odd that in 2021 we haven't changed this is a model yeah i
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i i did a tv show called um called secret secret teacher with channel 4. and i was i had the same bewilderment
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about the education system and what how it was incentivized for grades and league tables and not based on the child's like intrinsic
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passions and who they want to become because obviously for me i was running multiple businesses in the school all the school trips had
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done all the vending machine deals so our school made money from the vending machines and yet i was kicked out because i wouldn't go to health and social care
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and push a plastic baby around the school like i wasn't interested in that so like the school viewed me as lazy but
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really if you think about it the school was lazy for not taking the time to understand who i was at that age but in filming that show i
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learned something very valuable about how the whole system works so i went inside the school got to sit down with the head teacher and i was like
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how does this system work and he said um the better the grades we get the more students come to the school and
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we get paid per student so he gets uh let's say four thousand pounds from the government per
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student that they have so his whole incentive is grades grades grades grades and it's just like
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a business they have customers and the more customers they get the more money they make and then as it as you got the
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you know the the institutional lad or whatever universities are the same the more they send to university the better their
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their rankings if their rankings are good more parents will choose that school it's a business and it's incentivized by
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money at the heart of it and if at some point you could take the money out of the system um then you'd be able to fix it but that poor head
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teacher he was the ceo and he said i won't be able to buy pencils if we have a hundred less students come next year
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so we better be on that league table um and then i realized what was what was wrong with it you know these are good
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meaning people incentivized badly yeah um and it's ha and it's how we change the system though
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you know because that's this is where i could turn the tables on you and go listen you've done these incredible um startups you've been incredibly
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successful and i i know there have been a couple of entrepreneurs who have attempted dabbled
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in the school uh model and how do you do it it's kind of obvious to me one of the problems is
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that there's so many children how do you make it financially viable to give everyone
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access to um you know a a a fair education for them
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and to to have bespoke systems for every single pupil cost a lot of money but i in the same
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way as i'm talking about apprenticeships you know i'm a keen advocate of like a national service not a military one
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but i think everyone aged 18 should go off and spend a month with the nhs with the fire
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service with the police service um just volunteering to see what maybe working in the school system
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and and if you imagine now that if if all parents got invested in the school
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and volunteered to go in and help with the classes and help paying for different things i
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just think our education our education system could be in a different place i completely agree yeah i think it's um
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i've i i did say when i left social chain that the challenge i'd take on would be the education system so who knows let's see but uh i i came
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to learn that it's like anchored in place from all angles by parents who believe that success for them as a
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parent means their kid going to university so my mum was disowned me because it made her look bad that i left the
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system then you haven't but culturally for lots of people it is still really really really important my mother
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is african so yeah she left school at seven years old and all of my friends who live
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in various countries in africa or or in latin america it is or india it's still to to have
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further education and by the way obviously to have further education for vocational work like being a doctor or an engineer
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you know we we really rely on on all of that but i think we have to change our attitudes
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because can you imagine stephen this is what i find really shocking i i work with people now
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who are um working on production who've left university with 40 grand of death and they're now and
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they're scrabbling to pay that back and get a job in the world that they want to work in in this
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post-pandemic or middle of pandemic um world that we're in right now i mean that cannot be a good way to
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start your life kind of in debt is that not part of the system and it's so unnecessary i mean you what you spoke to everyone
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about internships for me is is the answer getting experience right however that might be
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and at my company we employed 700 people at the time that i left and i couldn't tell you who had a
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university education or not it just it was such a low down on the list of things that actually mattered number one
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is obviously what are they capable of in terms of experience um and then the piece of paper i did i didn't have a
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[ __ ] clue who had gone where or what they'd studied because it just doesn't matter in reality
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um but anyway i wanted to ask you get back to one of the points you said earlier you said um you don't think you'll ever you're not
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sure if you'll ever find out who you really are could you expand on that what do you mean well i think we're all
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the the product i suppose of our experiences and who we are
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and and i think if you look at if you look at life as this journey and not just a
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destination then we're constantly evolving and changing and and growing and i think however much you
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try to be yourself you you become a bit chameleon-like and and
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you end up you end up kind of the lines between who you are and
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what everything else is does begin to blur a little bit so the way i look at it you know i
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started off as this deeply unconfident shy child that then kind of
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morphed into you know how i started when i was on one of the first reality shows which was
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called castaway i was sent to live on an island for a year and then i kind of became this posh real reality show
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contestant and then i started working in daytime tv and i became a daytime tv presenter and
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then i kind of became a broadcaster and and you're i see it all the time you
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become stereotyped so you whenever when whenever your name is is written it will say
00:23:00
you know it will have either an amount that you made or it will have the company that you
00:23:05
started but is that really is that really you so so if you or i went on strictly come dancing now by the
00:23:11
way that would be changed instantly and it would then be stephen from strictly come dancing or ben because you're only
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you're as you're remembered for the last big thing and that constantly changes but it then
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means it's quite hard to leap away from that so if you're suddenly going to decide actually i'm going to become a
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an mp now people be like well hang on no no that's not the narrative and what
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happens i i think what happens is you you become blinded by people going i'm just not
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really sure this is right because that's not that's not really who you are that's not part of the narrative that
00:23:48
i think you were going down for the book that you're writing of your life and i don't mean the physical book but just the
00:23:54
metaphorical one so speaking of books yes in my book i have a chapter called resisting your labels
00:24:00
and it's exactly this exactly what you said so i refer to it as your label and i say that your your label comes
00:24:06
with a set of instructions implicit instructions about how you have to behave going forward so my labels would be
00:24:12
i don't know black social media ceo and with that comes a set of instructions as to how i'm expected to
00:24:18
pave in the future and that can be imprisoning right so one the reason i wrote that in the chapter is because leaving social change i have
00:24:24
that same like existential moment where you're like okay so who the [ __ ] am i you know and society's going
00:24:30
you'll be safest if you just [ __ ] carry on with the social media ceo thing yeah but at my heart i'm like no i'm i
00:24:36
no one was born with a passion for something that didn't exist when i was born social media i'm a guy with a bunch of interests
00:24:42
music and creating stuff and curiosity and how do i go back to those fundamentals for my life and not the
00:24:48
label yeah well i'm i'm slightly obsessed with the label because society loves to label us and uh and and
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it's and you'll never get away from that but you i say you would never get away from it
00:25:00
it will always be there in the context of social media and the the print press and and
00:25:07
um broadcast journalism but you can i have tried to challenge the status quo
00:25:14
a number of times with different things that i have done in terms of challenges um and other things the the
00:25:21
problem is that i did so many of those challenges to get away from just the daytime tv presenter
00:25:27
or just the reality show person that then i became the adventurer who does those things and the expectations
00:25:33
you know whenever when i climbed everest two years ago part part of the disappointment was
00:25:38
people going oh yeah of course you'll do it of course you'll get up but that's what you do yeah of course you'll get up the
00:25:43
mountain i'm like it's not quite as simple as that that's you know i'm not a natural mountaineer
00:25:49
you know this is the boy who was hopeless at sport it's still a tremendous challenge but i i love
00:25:55
i love just testing failure because i'm deeply fearful of failure
00:26:00
because of having so much of it in in my early childhood you know just to to back up
00:26:07
some of the data i've already given you about how hopeless i was as a child you know i ended up going to about five different schools i actually went to
00:26:12
three different universities in the end um uh took my driving test eight times
00:26:18
so it kind of it failure became a really a word that i was really
00:26:23
fearful of and and as i get older i find myself actually
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kind of um i find myself confronting failure on purpose as much
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as i can to to try and become less fearful of it
00:26:40
i think you have to confront your demons believers or not and and failure so if we go back
00:26:47
to the challenges for example um because they're one of the things that kind of have really defined me you know
00:26:54
i somehow managed to row across the atlantic ocean i should have i should have quit there
00:26:59
really you know 49 days in a little boat you know for for those who never saw it it was a 20-foot rowing boat you know a
00:27:06
couple of oars me and an olympic rower and it's pretty dangerous out there it's the middle of
00:27:11
the atlantic ocean you've got waves that are 30 feet tall where our boat got capsized we nearly drowned we hit you know
00:27:18
it was the most amazing adventure but also pretty scary and quite dangerous and i did that and reaching the other
00:27:24
end of that is still probably the biggest achievement of my life and you know a lot of my wife sometimes says why do you
00:27:31
not just quit there because quit while you're ahead same i could say to you come on you've you did this amazing tech
00:27:37
startup uh and i think a lot of people would think that you've made all this money just sit and enjoy it but but that's not
00:27:46
but then you're just taking life like the destination and you're thinking that well there you are so money is everything and
00:27:52
and money i think money is a really fascinating thing for me because i am not money motivated i know people
00:27:58
may go well you can only say that when you've made enough money to not be motivated by money and they have a point money buys
00:28:05
security money gives you the opportunity to do some of these big challenges i'm a i told you there's lots of
00:28:10
contradictions here um and i'm aware of all of those things but we also live in a world by where success
00:28:17
is defined by your monetary value so when i you know if i google you
00:28:24
and i look you up every single one has a sum of money of various values right next to you so it's
00:28:30
next to your buyer so listen by the way i think it's something you should be really proud of if you have if you have managed to make that
00:28:36
that much money i think that is that is your everest that is testament to
00:28:42
dreams that lots of people have but i think we need to change this notion that being wealthy is a sign of success in
00:28:50
life if you if you look at the model that jacinda adam was trying to do in in new zealand it was to change gross
00:28:56
national um product to to change what the country's values are by including the happiness
00:29:03
index and the kindness index and how what what a good nation you are and how healthy you are
00:29:09
and your obesity levels you bring into all of those things because for me as a parent
00:29:15
i want my children to have the security of having enough money to put food on their plate and a roof over their heads but
00:29:22
whether they make huge amounts of money is kind of irrelevant as long as
00:29:27
they are good rounded kind happy individuals yeah i think you've
00:29:33
never known that this is actually why my book is called happy sexy millionaire because when i was 18 all i wanted in life was
00:29:40
to be as it says in the front page of my diary range rover sport a million pounds before i was 25
00:29:45
because i was it's the same similar to what you've described the thing that had invalidated me as a child was being the only poor family
00:29:53
in a middle class area and never having anything no birthdays no christmases and everyone on holiday so obviously that was my insecurity and
00:29:59
i chased it as an adult and then i got it and then it you know but by the way just
00:30:04
to reiterate i i think to have a goal like that is so important whatever your goal
00:30:10
is i'm just saying i think to to have the the pure monetary goal
00:30:16
maybe isn't necessarily for for everyone now for children shouldn't necessarily be the priority it
00:30:21
can be a it can be a byproduct of being successful you know when i'm sure you get the same thing when when i go and give talks in
00:30:28
schools and i go say what does everyone want to be when they're older you know i get a large number who just want to be
00:30:34
famous and and i always say to them that's it's all very well i i get why you want to be famous but there needs to be
00:30:41
substance to that fame so you need to be famous because you have succeeded in business because you're a great footballer because you're
00:30:48
a great actor or actress and uh and and then as a byproduct of all of that you can
00:30:54
become a great millionaire and and um and and sort of
00:30:59
reach those dreams as well yeah so again exactly what you've just said there i think there's a the distinction for me
00:31:05
is like whether the goal was intrinsically or extrinsically motivated and the kid there that says he wants to
00:31:11
be famous is pure is actually saying i would like people to like me i want admiration my goals as when i was younger were
00:31:18
clearly i want to fit in i wrote millionaire but what i meant was i'm insecure and i want to fit in
00:31:24
and obviously upon reaching that goal because it wasn't ever intrinsic it wasn't ever something that i wanted inside of me
00:31:30
it was just to try and satisfy the approval of others it felt like nothing one of the things that's integral to
00:31:35
performing at the highest level is nutrition it's something that i i i guess i took a a long time to
00:31:41
finally believe but that is why having hewlett's response for this podcast is such a privilege
00:31:46
because there was a time in my life especially when i was early in my business career where i wasn't getting the vitamins the minerals and i wasn't having a sort of
00:31:52
nutritionally complete diet i was if you look at some of my old photos i was definitely lacking protein as well
00:31:58
and a lot of that maybe it was an excuse was because i was um i was busy and
00:32:04
when i discovered huel when a guy called mike walt passed me in the office wearing a heel t-shirt and shaking a little bottle and
00:32:10
you know upon my curiosity of asking what was in that and why he was drinking it it really really did change my life it's
00:32:16
almost religious my love for your but for good reason and if you haven't checked it out i would um i would employ to check it out
00:32:22
because it's only going to do good in your life when you asked asked me earlier about whether i believe the journey or the
00:32:28
destination i just don't think the destination exists every time you get there it moves off into the distance like a mirage
00:32:33
yeah because as soon as you've got that car you'll want the better car as soon as you've got the house you'll want the house in the south of france
00:32:41
so we're constantly changing our goal posts because we we i think it's human nature you know the
00:32:47
grass is always greener i think of all the sayings i really do think that is the one we
00:32:52
all look at other people and and social media is a fascinating medium now isn't it because effectively
00:32:58
social media one of the reasons i think it's having such a negative impact and when i say social media you know the the
00:33:04
kind of twitter instagram why i think it can have a lot of negative impacts on people is because
00:33:10
it's it's almost it makes people feel jealous because people are projecting uh it's i don't want to use the word
00:33:17
fakery but it's it is an edited world isn't it however whatever photo you do it's a
00:33:22
it's a tiny second of your life that you've thought about how you're going to compose that photograph or the image that you want to project
00:33:30
how you're living and uh and i think that is all built on
00:33:35
this notion of of wanting what other people have but it's even worse because then you get ranked on it yeah likes comments yeah
00:33:42
and then and then you know you post you post a certain photo and then the likes are down half and you think oh my god i'm [ __ ] ugly
00:33:48
yeah you think the world can i put my hand up
00:33:55
and honesty i i feel the same i i i'm you know someone who's 47 you know i
00:34:00
should i should know better now but i still look at uh my instagram accounts and and if
00:34:06
there aren't so many likes or if there's one negative comment amongst hundreds of really positive ones
00:34:11
i just look at at the either the low figure or the the negative comment because i think it's human nature that we're kind of
00:34:18
we're drawn to this this sort of um this notion of competition
00:34:25
and is life a competition i i i kind of wrote about this at length and um i've realized that
00:34:30
value is um obviously just relative so the analogy i get i gave was that
00:34:36
i was really happy with my nokia 3310 but in a world of iphones i'm devastated to own a nokia 3310 it's
00:34:43
the same [ __ ] phone and they have these um really remarkable studies that show
00:34:48
how we attribute value value to things including ourselves where they'll put like three stakes on a menu
00:34:54
and um if there's a really expensive stake in a really cheap one everyone picks the middle one
00:34:59
three tvs on a shelf people pick the middle tv because they think that one's too expensive that one's a piece of [ __ ]
00:35:04
and they're just using the context are you in my head now because this is exactly what i would this is yeah yeah yeah exactly so and
00:35:10
i might but it's just we a trip we attain value by the context we see something in
00:35:15
if you remove the other two tvs this now becomes the best tv in the world and it's the same with us i said you know in a world where there's no other
00:35:21
humans i am the prettiest richest most successful person on earth but you put a couple
00:35:26
and this is the crazy thing about social media you're comparing yourself to fake like a fake context and
00:35:33
and you you can never win right because you get to see your bts you're behind the scenes you look at them you think i got spots
00:35:38
and i'm fat what's that pouch down there and no one else has got that so it's a losing game and and so i
00:35:44
implore people but you know because i work for 10 years in this [ __ ] game so i implore people just to make their context way healthier and real
00:35:51
um and for me that means that i meet 95 percent of the people i follow i have like if i go on my instagram now
00:35:57
there'll be 15 people and five of them are in this room do you know what i mean because i just want to play this game
00:36:03
and even though i'm aware of it my lazy ceo brain has been wired
00:36:09
from the for 10 000 years to make snap judgments snap judgments to keep me alive i can't
00:36:16
stop it you know so i just have to be conscious about the way i use these tools
00:36:22
yeah i mean i think it's a it's a fascinating world and again as a father with young kids who are terrifying
00:36:28
embarking into that world i i i'm struggling to find the tools
00:36:33
to arm them for the battle ahead yeah and i'm aware that they can be fantastically
00:36:39
useful that you know that it's amazing the the interactions that you can get you know is it's it's how i'm here
00:36:46
today i wouldn't be here if it wasn't for uh social media chatting to you now so i i'm aware of
00:36:51
the beauty of being able to share things it's just how we get away from
00:36:57
kind of the the fakery if if that is the term to use and and the abuse you were talking about
00:37:03
a second ago negative comment one negative comment can throw you off mm-hmm the kind of the the whole world of
00:37:09
trolling fascinates me because deep down i just know that those people that write
00:37:15
the nasty comments sometimes aren't even real sometimes they're just disgruntled and
00:37:21
it's probably no different to how life would be in a pub there would be some person in there that would go
00:37:27
muttering under their breath the problem is on social media it get it gets kind of brought to the surface
00:37:33
and for whatever reason i think we probably know newspapers love to then regurgitate what that
00:37:41
single individual spotty teenager in their bedroom has written uh as a as
00:37:49
validation they sort of validate it so i i had a funnily enough during the first lockdown
00:37:55
my daughter thought it would be nice to get the nation to sing happy birthday to the queen and
00:38:00
i realize there's lots of people who aren't monarchists i understand that we're in a country where not everyone agrees
00:38:06
on the same thing but i thought it was quite a nice sentiment and foolishly i decided to let her use
00:38:12
my twitter account to kind of ask people to do it big mistake we got death threats and
00:38:17
worse uh i mean the vile abuse to my nine-year-old daughter partly my fa
00:38:23
you know i shouldn't have allowed her to i shouldn't have shared this idea in a social
00:38:30
um media platform with a g with with my daughter i realized but i was amazed at the vile vitriolic
00:38:38
abuse and that was partly kind of enhanced by the press who jumped
00:38:44
on a few negative comments wrote about it and as soon as they had written about it
00:38:49
uh it went i mean it i had to give up twitter i actually um abandoned it and haven't i haven't
00:38:56
gone back to really crazy there's a lot of talk at the
00:39:01
moment about what social platforms can do for this type of behavior and i just
00:39:07
i always come back to the point of like i'm gonna tell a little bit of a story here so when i worked in silicon valley for a
00:39:12
little while for about a year when i was 20 after i left my first company and i got to see behind one of the big
00:39:18
social platforms that was emerging at the time and it taught me something about humans because someone in the daytime who was a
00:39:24
very civilized school teacher just being completely honest would get his [ __ ] out at night
00:39:30
because of anonymity and what it taught me was that people good people are capable of pretty
00:39:36
alarming things if you allow them to cover their face and there's a piece of jealousy and
00:39:42
evilness and darkness in all of us um and anonymity allows you to be both yeah and so
00:39:49
until platforms don't allow people until we verify people who people are when they sign up
00:39:54
and there's no and there's no real and there's real world consequences of the behavior it's never going to stop yeah and i agree i agree it's the anonymity thing
00:40:01
so you know the number of people that say just get up just just ignore it and i do largely so i still
00:40:08
use instagram and occasionally you know the odd troll flares up and i do ignore it now
00:40:14
um occasionally you know i get a bit more stung than than other times but i think you know
00:40:20
it's symbolic of the world that we're we're living in right now and i think anonymity can be quite a dangerous thing
00:40:26
wokeness wokeness woke wokeness is fascinating
00:40:32
wokeness is it's fascinating and it's really complex now especially as a
00:40:38
documentary maker i go off to to countries all around the world and and
00:40:44
i've been accused of of um gross xenophobia just because i go to these countries now
00:40:52
and maybe make a documentary about a local group of people who live there
00:40:58
it's seen by the extreme woke brigade as being as other ring people this is
00:41:05
the this is the woke term right now don't other people so by by taking a document i know it i mean
00:41:11
it is laughable but they're quite but they have quite a strong voice and and i've you know i've had to talk
00:41:16
about this on other people to other people is to make them feel like they aren't a part of
00:41:24
normal i mean this comes we've come full circle right now so other ringers to make people um kind of
00:41:31
feel like they don't like the specimens or something yes specimens basically so to
00:41:36
other so effectively going if you imagine you know going to a group
00:41:42
of indigenous native um uh people who live in the brazilian
00:41:48
amazon where once that was seen as you know anthropological study of how people
00:41:56
live and what they do now it's seen as sneering and laughing at people because
00:42:02
you're othering them and you're showing look look at them still hunting with spears and bows and arrows now this is the wokery brigade who
00:42:09
interpret it like that i interpret it as a great celebration because more often than not i kind of
00:42:15
been seeing how we should be living and how we should be um treating nature and the flora and
00:42:22
fauna around us rather than living in big cities where we're fantastically wasteful and we're
00:42:27
destroying the planet actually the the this kind of nomadic way of life or this very simple hand to
00:42:33
mouth way of life i i go and i i feel i feel huge admiration and i'm not laughing or
00:42:40
sneering but there are lots of people that interpret that form of television as that now i've just given you one form of
00:42:46
vocary right now and there's is so we all have to we have to think about everything we say
00:42:51
and everything we do and is that cultural i've just got a kilt i've been sent a kilt because
00:42:58
it's the big global climate conference in glasgow later this year i'm going to
00:43:04
be up there in scotland obviously the kilt is is the national dress and i was asked if i could wear a kilt
00:43:11
with a special environmental fabric so i've agreed to do that but i can already see when it comes to
00:43:17
that culturally that by the way i'm a quarter scottish as well but i'm not even going to try
00:43:22
that because it wouldn't it wouldn't get past the woke police because it's cultural appropriation i was going to say if you
00:43:27
went to the amazon jungle and you saw that tribe and you showed up with a spear and a skirt but you know if
00:43:35
so if you look at what bruce parry used to do where he would immerse himself and he would live there i don't know if you
00:43:40
remember bruce perry he would go and live there for there being with a a group of with a tribe somewhere
00:43:47
and he would adopt their native dress whether it was just a little you know whether it was a very simple
00:43:54
skirt whatever it was and he would live as they do i don't know if you could get away with that now
00:43:59
because it would be seen as a mix of cultural appropriation othering people um and it should be
00:44:08
we we should leave people to live as they do without trying to mimic it that's that
00:44:13
that's how it is interpreted by some people where is all of this wokeness going because i feel like it's gaining momentum
00:44:20
and i i worry about the trajectory i'm like it's not is it going to come back this way because it's been i feel like
00:44:26
society has swung in a work direction maybe because of social media it's kind of like reinforcing reinforcing all of
00:44:32
us on our echo chamber yeah that's perfect you're perfect that was good good you're bad bad that's bad he's bad get him but surely
00:44:39
you know this probably more than than i do that you have extreme wokery on one side
00:44:44
but then we have the extreme we've got kind of fascism and the complete opposite yeah on the
00:44:51
other side and that 4chan and yeah and that whole world is is equally
00:44:59
more obnoxious yeah the racism the xenophobia and then you've got walkery here and
00:45:04
it's just like everything else in life it's everything has gone like this so you're either in or you're
00:45:10
out you're up or you're down it's black or it's white it's there's no middle and for
00:45:15
everything i've just said to you about not wanting to be the sheep and wanting to be the shepherd i i'd quite like to just be a sheep amongst
00:45:21
quite a few others in a field kind of having a reasonable conversation it's very very hard to have
00:45:27
a sensible conversation now because people have gone to these extreme sides
00:45:34
it's probably easier for the newspapers to write stories and to highlight the workery than it is to do the fascism because
00:45:41
that's really ugly and and it's deeply offensive to so many people but we see it you know
00:45:47
we know it's on social media you see what's happening to footballers the racist abuse that they get and we do read about it but the wokery
00:45:55
for some reason is something we hear about even more and maybe it's used to try and counterbalance the really
00:46:01
ugly side of racism and xenophobia and and anti-semitism all these things that are equally
00:46:07
rising um and i don't know how we get back to this middle just being a sheep in a field
00:46:14
because i i you know i long for a good solid conversation i
00:46:19
i can't sit at a table now with people i don't know really really well and have a conversation about covert
00:46:25
because that's politicized i can't have a conversation about politics because that's that that went ages ago i
00:46:30
can't have a conversation about brexit i can't have a conversation about indie ref 2
00:46:36
i can't have a conversation about what's happening in northern ireland i can't really have a conversation about
00:46:41
international policy and by the way i have more interesting conversations and just says these i am actually quite fun sometimes but i
00:46:48
really like debate and i like hearing what other people have so when i travel to other countries
00:46:53
my favorite thing is chatting about their interpretation of what's going on and and uh and i really thrive on that but
00:47:01
we can't anymore because it's become too emotional people feel it's really personal to them
00:47:08
or they're too afraid to talk about it in the first place you talked at the start of this conversation about not wanting to be
00:47:13
imprisoned by society's conventions this is a form of imprisonment isn't it of course yeah and it and it and it
00:47:19
which is maybe one of the reasons why i still find myself drawn to far away places so the show that i do
00:47:25
new lives in the wild where i go to live with people who've dropped off the grid they've they've woken up one day and they've
00:47:31
decided i i don't want this life anymore sometimes they're millionaires sometimes they're just everyday folk who
00:47:38
have got bored of the nine to five job and they've gone to live in the jungles of bali in a little cabin in alaska
00:47:45
and uh and i really covet their lives i really admire their lives i'm really jealous of their lives because
00:47:52
they've simplified it we're living we make we've made our lives pretty complicated haven't we really if you think about it oh yeah
00:47:58
um and actually if you strip it back what do you really need in life will we you know you need shelter you need food
00:48:03
you need water some good company we've really realized that with the pandemic i think people have realized
00:48:08
that we're social we need to have friends and family around you need a smile on your face and that's
00:48:14
kind of it and everything else it's a distraction or it's an extra bonus
00:48:20
isn't it you know to to you know have a fine wine or whatever it is you like in life
00:48:27
but all these people that i've spent time visiting i've done this series for 10 years now and i've been to 100
00:48:32
places um all around the world that simplicity is is really attractive and they don't
00:48:38
worry themselves about those big topics i was just you know describing there
00:48:45
it's it's kind of unimportant to them what happens with brexit doesn't really matter for the person that's chosen to live on
00:48:51
a tiny little island up in norway who lives hand-to-mouth catching fish each day
00:48:57
and there's i i've i find it really kind of hypnotic and mesmerizing to spend time with people who have
00:49:04
stripped their lives back to the absolute bare essentials and the assumption is
00:49:09
that that they're really enduring and they're suffering and they're surviving but that's not always the case
00:49:15
sometimes it doesn't mean their lives are easy but almost all of them are happy almost all
00:49:21
of them have have abandoned the complexities that many of us are stepping around they don't have to deal
00:49:27
with walkery and trolls you know all these things are very first world problems although they're not actually they're
00:49:32
the the the developing or the lesser developed world i should say um i suffer from all of these um
00:49:40
these things as well i was on a uh to speak to the point you just met i was on a motorbike like a little crappy motorbike
00:49:48
in bali don't know two weeks ago and i'm just bombing down the street in the field
00:49:53
sunshine walk going through the little villages and i had this like real overwhelming sense that i'd lived my
00:50:00
life wrong and i got off the bike and said to my friend and it's so crazy and i don't think me and him will ever
00:50:05
forget this moment before i could say the words to him he went god isn't that what life's about
00:50:10
and it was just being on this bike having no problems no care in the world but also seeing a culture where they
00:50:16
also they live in such a simple manner that made me reflect on the decisions i was i've made
00:50:21
in my life and it's such a remarkable thing as you say those people are typically their lives aren't easy but they seem to be
00:50:27
much more at peace than the successful first world quote-unquote
00:50:33
people well there's there's a great kind of story that's kind of hypocritical but i
00:50:38
suspect it's true a tourist goes to west africa let's say they're in senegal they're on a beautiful beach staying in a hotel
00:50:44
he he's on the beach every day and he sees a fisherman go down and cast his line over the story it catches a few fish and uh and after
00:50:51
the week he goes to him and says listen i think why don't you invest in a second rod so that you can catch twice as many fish
00:50:57
and then you can sell twice as many fish and then eventually get a net and then you can get a boat and then you can start selling dozens
00:51:05
hundreds of fish thousands of fish and earn even more money so that one day you can retire
00:51:11
and do what you want to do and the man who's fishing says what fish and i just i just think there's a
00:51:18
lot to be said in that because it's about chasing these goals and and what your goal is
00:51:24
and and i think if we too many people are kind of blinded by and again coming full circle this notion of life is a
00:51:30
destination and eventually you're going to reach this nirvana this this this glorious place where everything's
00:51:37
perfect where you you just lie around i don't know everyone has different things they dream obviously you know someone just wants to
00:51:42
go and play golf i have no idea why i don't know but someone just might want to play golf all day someone might want to play cards
00:51:48
all day someone just might want to just move to the south of france and sit and drink beer all day someone might want to go surfing all day
00:51:54
whatever it is but there's no reason why you can't be doing that throughout your life you just have to think outside of the box
00:52:00
don't you you just have to have this positive attitude and you know this comes back to what i was saying to you as a child i
00:52:05
realize this if you think you're going to fail you're going to fail so every driving test all of those ones i told you i failed
00:52:11
i would get in the car and this booming deafening voice was saying you are going to fail and sure enough i'd
00:52:18
mount the pavement all right i got stopped by the police once because i wasn't wearing a seat belt yeah on a driving test
00:52:24
but because it was almost like self-fulfillment of my mind's attitude and it was only
00:52:30
actually working with olympians that i've done now when i climbed everest i went with victoria pendleton the cyclist
00:52:36
when i rode the atlantic it was with james cracknell and i've been lucky enough to work with some other olympians that i realize you
00:52:41
need this absolute confidence verging on arrogance that i will get to the top of this mountain i
00:52:48
will reach the south pole because as soon as you go into an event where you're
00:52:53
there's any self-doubt it's it's it it will be self-fulfilling you must know
00:52:59
that you you yes you know that but it's like it's a fake in my view like i i
00:53:04
really i'm i'm quite repelled by this culture of like people looking in the mirror and saying
00:53:09
you are going to be a millionaire you are great but d because i my opinion of how beliefs work
00:53:14
like so i always use this example this millionth time i've said this if i were to hold your loved one at gunpoint now
00:53:19
and say believe i'm jesus where i kill them there's nothing you could do to actually believe i was jesus
00:53:25
you could only lie to me because that's not how belief works but as you've proven beliefs take evidence
00:53:31
and you've built that evidence for your challenges right so like just just telling yourself to believe something doesn't work even if
00:53:36
everything is on the line um but if i suddenly turn this into wine and then start levitating yeah you might think
00:53:42
wait wait a minute but this is but but you're you're taking it slightly too literally when it comes
00:53:48
to what that is so here's the thing i i th there's a man called mark boyle who
00:53:53
who um lives in ireland a fascinating man i think you should get him on here he has lived as the moneyless man and he
00:54:00
gave up everything and tried to live without any money for a year and he ended up with a with a house
00:54:06
is is what he did by trip by charming trading up uh literally just working his his way
00:54:12
through the system but never ever ever using money it was always trade and barter and borrowing and i don't think there was
00:54:18
any stealing not that i know of but i love this notion that he had an absolute confidence that
00:54:23
this would work and that he would be able to do it now with something like everest you're
00:54:30
right you couldn't just take someone off the street and say believe you're going to climb this mountain and you're going to
00:54:35
get to the summit because you need to do with the acclimatization you have to get yourself physically ready you have to understand
00:54:42
about um high altitude and and you have to understand the the the basics of climbing at least uh
00:54:50
so you you're right but if you even with all that if you go into that arena as such
00:54:56
into the mountains with any doubt it it's it it's going to be a
00:55:02
self-fulfilling prophecy that you won't succeed so it's i think this idea of
00:55:08
belief that you can you're right it's much more than just looking in the mirror and going i'm going to be the best musician in the
00:55:14
world this comes back to school kids who aspire for fame you know i think it's a
00:55:20
the kind of the x factor britain's got talent has a lot has a lot to answer for because it's
00:55:25
kind of made this illusion that anyone can be whatever they want in life
00:55:30
now part of my whole i i suppose part of of of the story that
00:55:35
i tell is that that you can follow your dreams but i always give say that with the caveat it has to
00:55:43
be reasonable if you if your dream is to be a top footballer you're
00:55:50
but you have to be but if if you know if if someone comes up to me and a a youngster says i really want to just
00:55:56
be um a top footballer i want to play with a premiership club i don't see why they can't but there has
00:56:01
to be a there has to be a base level of pretty brilliant football from a start you said i mean of course so i
00:56:08
think you have to be realistic with those aspirations if someone wants to be a top
00:56:13
neuro scientist or a top doctor i don't see why they can't but they have to have it was going to be impossible
00:56:20
for me i wanted to be a vet uh and i think i would have been quite a good vet but i just didn't have the academics so i didn't even get
00:56:25
off the start plate i think it's a really important thing to reiterate to people that i do believe in
00:56:32
that mindset believe you can aunt middleton who's been on here he's another keen advocate of that just believe in yourself this positive
00:56:38
mindset but the positive mindset has to has to also um marry up with
00:56:45
ability and skill so i completely agree with the um because i genuinely when i
00:56:51
think there's a butt coming here yeah no so it's it's actually not a but to your point it's a it's a it's a question about how
00:56:57
to achieve this point because i completely agree when i've been asked um what my talent was i was like
00:57:03
can't spell can't do math still probably dyslexic just never gone to check um but i just always
00:57:09
believe that's what i've always said for my whole life i always believed i was gonna bit so think about what i wrote in my diary as a kid that didn't have a driving test
00:57:16
and his parents weren't speaking to him with shoplifting pizzas gonna be a millionaire within four years gonna have a range over sports can be my
00:57:22
first car i didn't even i and i genuinely believed it and for me that was my
00:57:27
mother gift that life gave me was this like low-key delusional belief and that took me out and so when i was
00:57:33
living in moss side stealing pizzas and stuff i started recording it in my diary and doing little videos
00:57:38
and it's crazy in the first page of my diary i lied to my diary i said i'm recording the these um this journey
00:57:45
because a production company has asked me to because like you lied to yourself i
00:57:51
lied in my own because i i couldn't i i almost didn't know how to say to my diary
00:57:57
that this was going to be part of a story i was going to tell one day and i and it's not that i'll share my diary
00:58:03
the first page of it it's like because and and also because i think i'm going to have to tell this story one day that is a guy that saw himself
00:58:09
on an island and knew he was getting off the island and wanted to like wasn't dwelling on so i completely
00:58:15
agree i think the only reason i'm here is not because of smarts my parents were completely broke um obviously i had privileges of being born
00:58:21
in this country well born in africa actually but um it was just that i always believed i'd be here
00:58:27
however when i try and impose that onto people and tell them the importance of self-belief and i see these people who have got
00:58:33
their confidence just absolutely in the bin because of experiences they've had or their dad when they were four years old told them that they're a piece of
00:58:38
[ __ ] and my fluffy words you know when they're 35 aren't stronger than those words that
00:58:44
their dad said to them you know i struggle to try and tell them how to get to that place of genuine self-belief
00:58:50
because as i said you can't fake it if stephen had a shred of doubt in moscow i'd still be there
00:58:55
so like what do i say to that person well it's the building blocks of life isn't it it comes back to that so if you
00:59:01
you know the the series of challenges and things that i've done in my life
00:59:07
have slowly built themselves up so i started on that year on living on an island in the outer
00:59:13
hebrides now if you strip that back it was it was pretty simple it couldn't really fail it was hard work it was hard being
00:59:19
away from people no no contact with the outside world no no phones mobiles
00:59:24
family i didn't see anyone for a whole year just this small group of people well once i did that it was kind of
00:59:31
that was the fir that was like the foundations i was like oh my gosh well i've done this and then and then i
00:59:37
put the next block in which was running the marathon day saab six marathons in six days i'd never even run a hundred
00:59:42
meters stephen and suddenly here i was agreeing to run across the sahara desert and i managed to get through that i came
00:59:48
last but i didn't manage to do it and and these building blocks have just gone up so when you
00:59:55
say to people you know when you're trying to encourage as i do as well people to this self belief it has to be a
01:00:01
realistic self belief to of the slow building blocks of life if we come back to kind of
01:00:07
reality shows because i'm slightly obsessed with reality shows and and and this kind of what's happened over the last 20 years
01:00:14
what it's done is it's given people this belief that anyone can become world famous overnight and and i've
01:00:20
already alluded to britain's got talent x factor but big brother love island all of those shows
01:00:25
because it takes everyday folk and it catapults them onto the front pages
01:00:30
of newspapers five million followers overnight on social media and earning
01:00:35
quite a lot of money but how long does that last for now for many people you know it's the famous
01:00:40
andy warhol only 15 minutes it doesn't last very long because what happens is there's no substance to it
01:00:46
there's no roots and what happens is the next show comes along and they're cast aside but what also a
01:00:51
lot of people do is that they the leap from one brick to the next is too high and if you if you go too big
01:01:00
it's doomed to failure i remember funnily enough i think one of the reasons why me a reality show
01:01:06
contestant is still working in tv after 21 years because i should have my 15 minutes was
01:01:12
up a long time ago i think the reason is more because of the things that i turned down than the things that i i agreed to do
01:01:20
so i turned down some pretty big shows big prime time saturday night shows that a lot of people who work in tv would be
01:01:26
like i would do anything for that but the leap was too big and i didn't believe that
01:01:32
i i think i i think the the um even though i like to confront risks i
01:01:37
like to be realistic with those so k2 is a far more dangerous mountain than everest i could have gone straight
01:01:43
to k2 but instead i want i want to do a sensible building block up
01:01:51
to that ultimate challenge and i think right back to television i think if you if you if you take too
01:01:57
big a leap then um the the reality of continued success
01:02:03
um is eroded away when you think about some of those opportunities that you were given that you turned down what was it about them that made you
01:02:09
think it was too big of a leap because i'm trying to answer the question for my viewer which is how do i know if it's too big of a leap i think you just have to be
01:02:16
sensible about what you're capable of i think so it's this really fine line i told you i'm full of contributions so
01:02:22
i'm telling you you know i'm sitting here kind of saying to people follow your dreams don't be told that you can't do it nothing no dream is
01:02:29
too big um you know believe in yourself and and you're halfway there you know i really
01:02:34
do believe in all of that but you also have to be sensible so i think okay so here's the thing i
01:02:40
reckon that i i'm the son of a an actress and i believe that i could be an actor i
01:02:46
always wanted to be an actor i got rejected by all the drama schools by the way because i couldn't remember my lines but that's a whole other thing
01:02:52
um but i still think i could be an actor and and i have quite a confidence that i could
01:02:57
but if i was suddenly offered a steven spielberg film yep i wouldn't take that now because
01:03:03
my ultimate goal is to try the acting thing at some stage in my life when it's appropriate but i don't want to do it
01:03:12
on in such a big extreme explosion
01:03:17
of public ridicule if it goes wrong now
01:03:23
together with that i add this sort of confidence that yes i will be able to do it but i'd prefer to start in a little pub
01:03:30
theater with 20 people just on a smaller stage and build up because there has to be
01:03:35
and i think we all have to agree with this as well as this confidence and this
01:03:42
self-belief you have to have the skills yeah if you don't have the skills there's just no point and we're just being delusional
01:03:48
and it's no different to that instagram fakery of of of showing people this idyllic life when
01:03:54
actually that's just a tiny little one second of actually what was a really miserable weekend because it was the only time the
01:04:00
sun came out and someone you threw on a bikini i didn't throw in a bikini you know you get my point you know to show that instant moment of
01:04:06
of perfection so i think there has to be um an actual skill and you have to earn it
01:04:12
i think you know this this instant gratification just doesn't exist
01:04:17
there is a few examples and you're you're one of those where you were able to write down i'm going to be a millionaire
01:04:24
i'm going to have that range rover sport and you did it and and you are what gives so many people hope
01:04:30
but i failed mm-hmm i failed in my first company but it doesn't matter but but that
01:04:35
doesn't matter surely failure if you haven't failed you haven't been trying hard enough yeah do you think i think the the people who because i i
01:04:44
realized that quite early on if you haven't if you haven't failed at various points through your life then
01:04:50
then you're you're being too measured with the challenge that you take which is a failure yeah which is a failure which is a
01:04:55
failure in itself yeah yeah i i yeah so many of the things you
01:05:00
said there i was i was just you know i was captivated but i was wondering whether you're if you're so you said you were a contradiction at
01:05:07
the start of this conversation but then you've also alluded to the fact that you like to to not be on either
01:05:12
pole and you like to be like the sheep in the field which actually probably makes sense because you can appreciate the need for ambition
01:05:18
but then you also appreciate the need to have self-awareness right so it kind of puts you in the middle of the field well if you think about it
01:05:25
it's a really weird thing because i'm actually again true to the to the contradictions you know the son
01:05:30
of an actress i've kind of got the jazz hands and i quite like talking and i like being on stage as such but i'm also still
01:05:37
quite shy so i kind of like being in the wings i want to be on the stage then i want to be in the wings and i want to be on the stage and and
01:05:44
the same goes for kind of how i project myself so i
01:05:49
want to be part of the conversation but then i don't want to be part of the conversation i don't i don't like the uncomfortableness of it i want to be a
01:05:55
politician but i i couldn't bear the you know the the the focus and the the
01:06:00
um the derision that you're going to get from one side or the other and i actually think once you've
01:06:06
accepted that because i think a lot of people i'm sure a lot of people are like that really and once you've accepted that's
01:06:12
who you are you just work out how to walk those stepping stones and kind of move around
01:06:18
it and i kind of do this i dance my way through it and dip in and dip out and i have moments where
01:06:24
i kind of i wish i hadn't kind of uh i wasn't on the middle of that stage but
01:06:29
i am so i own it and it's it's back to this whole thing i do i do believe
01:06:36
you kind of have to own your narrative it's very easy to let someone else steal it from you i think i think i actually read that in
01:06:42
on the last page of the first chapter of your book it said um the ocean talk the ocean had taught me
01:06:48
to take control of my own narrative and believe in myself when you were talking about um what you learned from the sea in your book
01:06:54
inspire the lessons from the wilderness and that taking control of your narrative point really stuck with me
01:06:59
um because obviously society writes your narrative i had a major announcement this week as you've probably all seen on
01:07:05
social media or in the newspapers relating to a tv show that i'm doing and um it was just a great you know it's
01:07:11
a great example of the power of the platformfiver.com because i wanted to make this announcement using
01:07:17
using visual effects and visual effects are typically staggeringly expensive the quotes that i got back from agencies were like 40
01:07:24
50 grand to make a very short 60 second video in visual effects it was staggering right i wanted to show me turning into a
01:07:30
dragon um and i used fiverr.com who were the sponsor of this podcast and we made this really cool short 45 second video which
01:07:37
shows me transforming into a dragon check out the video go check out fiverr.com if you've never used it just the most
01:07:43
cost-effective way to get creative services done i've used it for the last three and a half years of my life one of the things that i picked up a lot
01:07:51
of from listening to your interviews and your books was your about your relationship with your lovely wife
01:07:56
and you're both very vocal about the dare i say not radical but the sort of
01:08:03
like innovative way that you've built your relationship in various areas one of the really interesting things to me was this idea
01:08:09
that you have preventative marriage counseling
01:08:14
yeah tell me about that and why do i need it so so my so my wife marina we've been
01:08:20
married for this will be our 15th year together wow she's half austrian thank you she's half austrian and she's
01:08:26
she's got skin like a rhino it's unbelievable uh as in can i just say that that
01:08:32
in terms of uh be not ever being offended she's got glowing skin her skin is really it's
01:08:39
really she moisturizes the whole time she doesn't have this big wrinkly grey
01:08:45
skin oh my god i'm blushing i'm going to get in so much trouble for that but she is she she's really tough she's
01:08:50
really resilient she's no nonsense she doesn't beat about the bush and we're very you know i i am by my own
01:08:57
admission a much more sensitive soul now it doesn't mean she isn't sensitive but but she's she kind of calls a spade
01:09:03
a spade whereas i might say well that is a spade but you could probably could use that as a
01:09:09
could you do what i mean i kind of because i want to please all the people and i don't want to offend so i kind of find myself kind of
01:09:15
dancing around a little bit in the middle there you go whereas marina has always just been straight down the line and our
01:09:20
our kind of our relationship is has been built on me being away a lot because
01:09:27
outside of the time of covid i'm probably traveling eight months of the year so there's a lot of time away but that's
01:09:34
how it's always been and we have a really solid relationship and and we we had a terrible tragedy about
01:09:40
um six years ago when we lost our third child a little boy willem who was stillborn so
01:09:46
he is so three weeks before he was due to be born naturally um
01:09:51
unfortunately marina had something called a placental abruption and he died and and it was an awful
01:09:58
awful experience that i've kind of spoken about before but it affected us profoundly much more
01:10:04
than i thought it would that that the feeling that this emotion of
01:10:09
losing someone you'd never had a chance to meet is is something i'd never experienced before
01:10:15
and i couldn't quite understand my own emotions and and added to that when this all happened
01:10:20
i was on the other side of the world i thought marina was going to die so it was a big very
01:10:27
impactful part of our relationship and we sought counselling afterwards to help us through
01:10:33
the complexities of all of those emotions and it was through that that we we kind
01:10:39
of realized that actually our own relationship we we talked about things that we hadn't talked about before
01:10:45
outside of the the awfulness of that situation we talked about are very different characters and how
01:10:51
how we kind of tread around one another and i think a lot of a lot of relationships
01:10:57
have that they don't you you might joke about your very different personalities but there are certain areas that you
01:11:03
know oh no i can't ever say that i couldn't do that well why couldn't you you should be really really honest the best
01:11:09
relationships are ones where you can say anything to one another without fear of offense now i've already said that i've
01:11:14
brought a thin skin so i'm easily offended and marina has offended me many times over the years and i've offended her and
01:11:20
and i think this this marriage counseling prevention
01:11:26
came was born out of that and about a year afterwards marina we were struggling a little bit it was
01:11:31
such a profound thing that it affected us because we had different ways of dealing with with the grief of losing that little boy
01:11:37
marina was was very tearful and then she'd be totally fine she'd have big tears and
01:11:43
was fine and mine i became really introverted and and and uh and i became really anti-social
01:11:50
didn't want to be anywhere i remember going trying to go to big events i had to go to some big red carpet events and
01:11:56
literally just arriving and just saying to the driver just drive on i could i couldn't go
01:12:01
or i'd go to events and i'd find myself going to the loo and just sitting sitting in the little cubicle for the
01:12:06
duration of the whole event parties i would find myself just literally arriving
01:12:12
saying hello hello and then just literally diving out the door because i think it's because i couldn't control
01:12:17
[Music] i couldn't control the the narrative this narrative that i wanted to be in
01:12:23
control of i didn't know who was going to come up were they going to talk about my loss were they going to there were
01:12:28
there were things i couldn't prepare myself for and and those two very different
01:12:34
approaches and two very different um uh kind of emotions that marina my wife and
01:12:40
i had meant that it did create tensions so we saw someone and and she was the one that suggested that
01:12:47
once a year we just go and speak to her as a preventative and you know it kind
01:12:53
of just makes a lot of sense you know marina i've told you already she's very straight laced and she's very straight and she was like well why
01:12:58
wouldn't we why wouldn't we just go and with someone there say tell you what i do find really
01:13:03
frustrating it's when you always do this or you always say that if you do it in a home environment
01:13:10
the natural reaction usually it's going to be over dinner probably had a drink you're going to be even more emotional
01:13:15
and go i don't you'll become defensive i i defy any relationship to say they
01:13:21
that that doesn't happen but to do it with a third party who is trained to kind of be non-judgmental is a very
01:13:29
good way of speaking to you via that person without fear
01:13:34
of getting really emotional because marina and i are also really we do get really emotional we probably
01:13:39
argue once a year but when we do it's massive people may be surprised because we do
01:13:46
we're we're highly emotional and we get it's really tearful it's not there's there's no uh black eyes or anything but
01:13:52
it's a really but you know we don't argue very well and what we found actually was
01:13:58
that speaking to someone else once a year has has i can't remember the last time we had an argument we really we haven't for
01:14:03
years and years now which is saying something because i you know i'm also all for honesty
01:14:08
you know in this world of of kind of social media fakery i i wear my heart on my sleeve and i've
01:14:14
always been really honest so talking about the loss of willem talking about my dyslexia but i think it's
01:14:20
really important that you're very honest especially if you live in a very public sphere
01:14:25
hearing that you've not had an argument for years is a pretty incredible achievement one would say in
01:14:32
a relationship why how how why well i think it's part
01:14:37
i think the fact that that we speak to the same person every year for only like
01:14:43
an hour or two twelve months apart though yeah i know but it's because it all come because i think we we are
01:14:49
able to just be really really honest right there and then and and by the way i'm
01:14:55
that does i'm not saying our relationship is really you know it's not one of these
01:15:01
um wedding cakes perfectly formed everything is idyllic birds flying around chirping
01:15:08
it's like any relationship it's strained and and and we get snappy at one another but we've learned to resolve i think
01:15:15
conflict resolution is there and i'm what you know i have although i kind of try to be i'm an optimist and
01:15:23
and i try to be smiley and happy as a more often than not
01:15:28
i still wake up some days and i'm feeling a bit under the weather or i do just get out of bed the wrong side and i know when
01:15:35
i'm a bit more snappy and marina now we we have we are armed with ways of saying to the
01:15:42
other person you you're a bit irritable today you seem a bit miserable you're not much fun to be around
01:15:48
we we can say that in a way that doesn't the other person doesn't jump to a defense game i'm not you're the one
01:15:54
that's annoying me just i mean that it turns into that that argument and i think if you
01:16:00
learn how to speak to one another and that's what we have kind of been armed with it it is just a
01:16:07
great way to to kind of avoid those unnecessary arguments listen some people have really fiery relationships and they
01:16:14
thrive on it we've got friends that kind of need that they have big battles and flames
01:16:20
and then and then they make up and it's all fine and i've got some friends i just find that exhausting yeah it's a mental health awareness week
01:16:29
this week and um one of the things you said earlier on about going to going to those events and like you know telling the driver to carry on
01:16:34
going or hiding in the toilet sounded similar to you know shades of um
01:16:40
anxiety maybe even ptsd to some degree um does is that what you think you were
01:16:46
experiencing at that time were you anxious i was super anxious no
01:16:51
without doubt i um anxiety um uh panic attacks you know
01:16:58
all of that happened for about a year i experienced a lot of that really i just just and i think it was
01:17:03
because i had lost control i wasn't able to protect my wife i wasn't able to protect that little boy
01:17:10
and i think my my the the um reaction to that was to try and take
01:17:18
back control of my life and the only way i could take back control of my life was to control my environment and and things were out of my control
01:17:25
when there were lots of people around and i didn't know who i was going to be talking to and about what and where and when i was going to go away
01:17:31
and and all the things that i'd lost control of i wanted to regain control of and yes
01:17:37
anxiety definitely came into us and i'm i've never suffered depression as i'd
01:17:43
call it but i have every so often always coincides with the full moon which is a bit weird but i i
01:17:49
get i get what i just call the dark cloud and even if everything in my life is perfect i just have this kind
01:17:56
of for a couple of days it does kind of happen almost every month just a couple of kind of gloomy days
01:18:03
when it's difficult to feel happy and optimistic i don't think i would define it as depression because i
01:18:09
think that would be demeaning to people who really really suffer from what is known as depression i have
01:18:14
lots of friends who are suffering and have suffered from clinical depression but i think it's human nature you know i
01:18:21
i you know i am an optimist i am happy most of the time but i also feel that little cloud of
01:18:29
of just darkness and it's and it comes and goes and i can't i don't know when
01:18:35
it's there um or why it's i know when it's there sorry i don't know um why it's there and then it it sort of
01:18:43
disappears and for me sport has been my way so active to be active has been my way um for
01:18:51
about 20 years of getting rid of that has that always been there has it always showed up no i think
01:18:57
it i think it probably showed up about i'd say about probably just when i
01:19:04
started in this business and the pressures i think say 20 years or so i think it's it's it started
01:19:11
being there and it was i i came quite late to kind of doing exercise and it's not
01:19:18
bulging but i said that's not my kind of form of exercise but i went for a run just before coming
01:19:23
here oh you know so i most days i will do something and it just sets me up for the day
01:19:28
and it it keeps that cloud away sometimes it's quite even that doesn't work but i've got i've just got
01:19:34
different different ways of of trying to kind of keep the cloud away super interesting really
01:19:41
interesting really interesting so many questions to ask within that i am
01:19:46
i have i've gone through my life i think probably in the same sort of optimism and you know generally
01:19:52
really happy but you know i i do worry that uh as the pressures of my life get more
01:19:58
intense that you know i feel like i feel like when i was growing up i thought mental health was was not a real thing and it was like
01:20:05
crazy people and i was like well i'm happy i'll never be and then i had i remember one day i had anxiety for the first time and i
01:20:12
just couldn't understand it but what it did for me was told me that i'm susceptible to
01:20:17
everything health depression and all of these things um but yeah i mean it's good to hear
01:20:22
that exercise has been a bit of an antidote but the other thing we're coming back to labels so a bit like i don't need
01:20:28
of course you know i've got dyslexia i think you know you might be able to go to a a
01:20:34
doctor and he might say yes i actually did suffer a bit of ptsd um but actually i think if you're strong
01:20:41
in yourself and you're strong in your self-belief and you've got a good kind of family dynamic around you you've got
01:20:48
a strong set of friends i think i think you should be able to navigate quite well if you learn the
01:20:55
tricks of dealing with it and like i say for me it has been um a lot of reading i i love i i
01:21:03
read a lot about happiness um the the there's a great book um about happiness and i've
01:21:10
got a complete mind blank of the author but he hypothesized about happiness is it something that
01:21:16
um we're is it is it something to strive for it's a bit like the destination or
01:21:21
the journey is happiness something we're striving for are we work do we find happiness or is it other things that are
01:21:28
disguising the happiness and and hampering it so if you think his
01:21:33
theory is that if you look at a child children are by and large they might
01:21:39
they're going to be crying if they've got a dirty nappy or they're hungry or whatever but by and large their emotion their default
01:21:45
emotion is it's laughing think of children in a playground yes they have little that you know they their
01:21:51
tears come very easily but the default is happiness and when does that start
01:21:56
eroding away kind of puberty and the anxiety you know those anxious times of when you're just you know when sexuality
01:22:03
is coming into your life all those things probably do start to affect that happiness but then moving on in life and this man
01:22:11
had done fantastically well made millions and exactly like you were saying about the cars as soon as he made his first million
01:22:16
went out and bought his ferrari sat in the ferrari and then was like well yeah i've got it i've done it now
01:22:23
and now what and and it was this constant aspiration so the hypothesis is that actually we're
01:22:29
we're kind of adding apps almost things to us that are making us unhappy rather than striving for this happiness
01:22:37
thing because if we're if if the happiness is the ferrari or the million pounds range rover sorry i got it wrong but if
01:22:44
but but if that is your goal for happiness the human nature of
01:22:49
always wanting more is going to mean you're constantly searching for happiness and you're going to have it fleetingly and then it will
01:22:55
go and then you'll get it again fleetingly and then it will go but actually if we take away the things that are making us
01:23:00
unhappy whatever that is social media get rid of it
01:23:05
living in a big city get rid of it you know you've just got back from bali yeah i i saw a picture of you under a
01:23:12
waterfall i mean how how but but tell like how happy we were you
01:23:18
in a nice warm place out in the jungle in a waterfall listening to nature
01:23:25
all around you i'm gonna do something now one second so i actually wrote a little paragraph i
01:23:32
wrote a paragraph in my book about being sat by the river in bali yeah i described the words of how i feel and it's funny
01:23:40
because the chapter's called and i'm not plugging my book here it just seems like it's the best way um the chapter's called the journey back
01:23:46
to human and the reason why the chapters called that is because i'm hypothesizing that i think we've kind of lost our way
01:23:52
and being sat by this river in bali was it felt like i'd come back to where i was meant to be
01:23:57
here we go as i write this chapter i'm sat at an indonesian jungle in bali by a gloriously glistening river with
01:24:03
the unobstructed glare of the sun overhead bearing down on me there's this perfect light breeze stroke in my warm skin and an earthy floral
01:24:09
smell of the jungle surrounding trees occupies my senses i came here to live in hubble as i sit here and you may have
01:24:15
experienced this if you spent time in nature i feel at peace as hysterics might have described i feel tranquil it's hard to explain
01:24:20
this in any other way than to say that i feel like this is where i innately belong my primitive survival orientated senses
01:24:27
are often used prehistoric devices like pain and discomfort as a usual way to guide me away from danger and towards safety seem to be telling me that this
01:24:33
is where i should be the absence of discomfort and stress and pressure is telling me that this might just be
01:24:38
home and it's what you were saying there about like the removal so when you said did i feel happy
01:24:45
the first thing that came to head was like i didn't feel unhappiness there you go right so i didn't feel like there was no
01:24:50
notification but that is such a fascinating notion this idea that it wasn't you just
01:24:56
felt a default just yeah human you felt just your tranquil the story yes they use the word tranquil right
01:25:02
so all this noise that we get you know we're here in central london right now and when i say noise i don't just mean
01:25:09
the the police cars and the ambulances and the the pneumatic drills
01:25:14
i just mean all the all the things the shops that are saying you should be buying this you should be getting that the
01:25:20
newspapers that are telling you about other whoever your rivals are we all
01:25:25
have rivals the the social media promise of someone who's having a better time in than you there's someone who's someone
01:25:31
else who's still in bali when you're not there it's all these things and i do think they have a habit of making us
01:25:39
unhappy and it's weird isn't it because we think that those are the things that will make us happy you know being on social media fishing
01:25:45
for those likes the the um uh buying into the kind of
01:25:51
commercial world and trying to keep up with the joneses now that's where money gain coming back to
01:25:56
this that's why money is seen by so many people as the cure for everything because with
01:26:02
money you could go to bali you could get the better car but once you've got it as as you know
01:26:08
it's like well actually that was quite fleeting yeah and and this is funny because when
01:26:13
you look at the ways that we're medicating mental health disorders now um we went through this phase of
01:26:19
thinking that it was like a biomedical problem so we would give people like ssris and you know try and correct the serotonin with these chemicals
01:26:25
and the more modern treatments all seem to be trying to return us back to
01:26:30
probably what you go and see when you go to the the tribes that you you see in like the amazon which is
01:26:36
human connection movement like we used to hunt for our food not like [ __ ] uber and delivery um uh so connection with nature which
01:26:43
again you know nature's therapy i mean this is you know there's a lot of people who've realized especially for mental health
01:26:49
you know back to the mental health week there's a lot of people who have seen the the benefits of nature so in japan
01:26:56
and sweden for many many years now they've done something called forest bathing uh and and forest bathing is
01:27:02
like many people do on the beach but instead you just go into a woods and you lie on the floor and you stare at the
01:27:08
canopy and just imagine now i want you know everyone who's watching this to just imagine all those leaves
01:27:13
rustling in the wind birds you know because once you stop walking in a wood is so many people kind
01:27:19
of go we're going to go for a walk and they just march through often have headphones on
01:27:24
and it's like well you're not connecting with that yeah you're just you're racing through but actually if you just sit there
01:27:31
animals start coming out you start noticing colors you start noticing a flower that wasn't there and don't never underestimate the power
01:27:38
of that to just reconnect us to you know where we're supposed to be really we're not supposed to be in big cities living in
01:27:45
apartments with your own um you know with with running water and things it's it makes it very comfortable
01:27:52
for us but uh i think most of us really kind of belong in a jungle in a woods on a mountain
01:27:57
on the ocean closer to nature do you know you hannah hari do you know who that johann hari he wrote called lost connection yes of
01:28:03
course yeah he's going to be sat there in two hours amazing he's coming and we always talk about this particular topic but yeah it's one of
01:28:09
the biggest revelations i had in my life was that um much of my ambitions were taking me further away from like
01:28:16
being human so you know living in the heart of new york city um i could pretty much go through a
01:28:21
whole day without moving ooh you know the uber picks me up takes me to work takes me back home i use the same glass screen to all of my food i
01:28:28
don't really see anybody because i lived alone uh and then you look at the stats and you know new york is 30 times
01:28:33
30 more likely to be depressed than bali or you know something crazy like that but um yeah i
01:28:39
and as an adventurer and someone that's spent time in nature um i find it so fascinating that you've
01:28:44
you've you've come to the same conclusion about the true nature of happiness what is your goal now though we talked about
01:28:51
there not being a destination when you think about what your goal is what is it i think again true to the
01:28:58
contradictions i think we all need goals i think we have to have something to aspire to something to be working towards
01:29:04
but i don't have contrary to popular belief i don't have a little black book that says right okay we've done that now
01:29:09
i'm going to cycle around the world and now i'm going to climb this mountain
01:29:15
it's not like i just have a list of things but i'm kind of i try to live my life as a
01:29:20
yes man so i like to seize opportunities i think the human nature default of no to think about things uh really
01:29:26
carefully is something i've tried to wean myself away from and i tried to kind of say yes
01:29:32
to things on a whim a little bit more so i think i think my goals are about continuing to test
01:29:39
myself continuing to confront failure risking what i do now given i've kind of got you
01:29:47
know i write books i do tv presenting um and i do adventuring um
01:29:55
i think i'd probably quite like to find something else whether it's acting
01:30:00
whether it's politics whether it's there you go i i'm all for trying also yeah i'd love to
01:30:07
know if i have a voice maybe i'll become a singer i'd love to you know i wonder whether i could compete in the olympics and is there any sport where a
01:30:14
47 year old could like start from scratch and really you know test themselves and and work
01:30:20
their way up to the sport there are a few believe it or not i think that we don't so i kind of i do have i kind
01:30:26
of think big but i don't have absolute goals they're not written there but i think
01:30:31
i think a bit like you were saying you you would like to kind of tackle the education system i would like to make a difference
01:30:38
because i think the older you get you're still way too young stephen but the older you get you start to question
01:30:43
why why have i done all these things because if you think about if you just break down those big challenges that we've been
01:30:49
talking about it's quite egotistical you know you climb on mountains hey look at me you you walk across a pole i get to come
01:30:56
and sit and chat to you all about them and say how brilliant i was but actually what what's the point
01:31:01
there has to be more substance to why i did those things and and more importantly
01:31:07
how i can um how i can translate those into something useful for other people so i i
01:31:13
would love to again work on an education model work with other people to
01:31:19
actually be able to start making a difference because my life up until now has all been about me it's been about self
01:31:25
building about about building my own self-confidence and that's quite selfish and and i would like to
01:31:31
think of myself as a or i'd like to be more selfless and i'd like to do things for other people that
01:31:36
doesn't mean i haven't done stuff and i've done a lot of charitable things and philanthropic things over the last few years but
01:31:42
i kind of feel i'm moving towards a time when i really would like to focus on
01:31:48
um trying to improve the system because if the likes of you and me and
01:31:54
other people don't do it it's never going to happen we can talk about it we can sit here and look all
01:31:59
smug kind of saying this is what needs to be done and kind of nod our heads but if you don't action it it will never
01:32:06
happen because politicians are just busy doing their thing and they'll they'll kind of just do what
01:32:12
they can but they're never going to be able to to to break those glass ceilings that have been set
01:32:19
by previous generations and i guess from what you talked about earlier about you know gradually picking
01:32:25
your battles i guess you know you've done so much in your career as well from everest to the shows you've done to all the other
01:32:31
achievements you've had that you're in search of an even grander battle yeah i like i like a battle
01:32:39
but the battle doesn't have to it's not a it's a battle within it's it's not a you know this term of
01:32:46
of a battle i think some people think it is um it's against another person or against a
01:32:52
system or against a belief or you're battling against the trolls or the wokies or the
01:32:58
fascists but i i think the battles we all have are the battles within
01:33:03
and i think as soon as you start accepting that that's when we will start kind of taking mental health
01:33:11
more seriously than we do because it's really obvious to me that you know that how your brain feels and how what
01:33:19
your brain is telling you is is far more powerful than any kind of broken bones that we have and it's kind
01:33:25
of weird isn't it that we still you look at someone who's been in a road accident oh poor you you broke your leg
01:33:31
you see that injury and we can relate to it and we we winced it but here what goes on
01:33:38
beneath the the skull is is deemed as something kind of still a bit taboo and it's not it's not really
01:33:44
taboo because people talk about it but you still meet a lot of people who are like nah it doesn't care it's no just
01:33:49
get over it come on just just man up uh just uh you know just just believe in yourself
01:33:55
and you'll do it and as much as i'm saying you need this this um self belief it's far more
01:34:01
complex than that it is and that's what makes giving advice so difficult
01:34:06
right because you give it from the basis of your own bias yeah and advice is is bespoke
01:34:12
so i i could you know i get like i say many people asking how can i do x or y it depends on so many things
01:34:20
yeah and and and i can't really give that advice it's a bit like a doctor giving a prescription
01:34:26
i can't really give that unless i genuinely know what your ability is what your aspirations are what your
01:34:33
you know what what your mindset could be all of these things come into it but if
01:34:38
we could start you know helping people within that context
01:34:44
i think we would be in a very different place he's scared of dying no i'm scared of i'm scared
01:34:50
for other people but i'm not scared of dying which sounds really glib i know but i genuinely am not and and i
01:34:56
don't know why i've had many near-death experiences maybe that has i've had to i've had to look very
01:35:04
look at those clouds and think that i'm i'm heading that way quite a few times and maybe that is what
01:35:11
makes you less fearful when you've been so close to it but it's also perhaps that
01:35:17
i kind of i don't think i have many regrets in life i've kind of seized those opportunities
01:35:22
but i'm deeply fearful for those i love um and and
01:35:28
the void that would be left which sounds really kind of egotistical but i know how much i feared about
01:35:33
losing my parents or loved ones when i was a child super interesting that idea that i feel
01:35:40
the same i'm i've after i stopped being religious at the age of 18 i um i was actually scared of dying when i
01:35:45
was religious because i thought it was going to go somewhere right and then beyond that point um gradually as i've achieved more in my
01:35:50
life i've got less scared of the idea of i think well you know i've been true to myself and that that seems to be the
01:35:56
most important thing as it relates to and you you've referred to as regret there have you got any regrets
01:36:02
not really not no because i've tried to it's kind of one of the ways i've tried to live life with no regrets and
01:36:08
you can you're only likely to have a regret let me change i was going to say you're
01:36:15
more likely to regret the things you didn't do than the things you did do but i know that's not true i think plenty of people have made
01:36:22
made the wrong decisions we've all done that but no in all seriousness i don't think i i kind of i am an
01:36:28
optimist and i try to see the positives in everything i've done and all the decisions i've made and all the things
01:36:34
that have happened in life and i i honestly i don't think
01:36:40
i can say that i regret anything because it's the it's the old cliche
01:36:47
what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and i think even those things that i could maybe say well
01:36:53
probably wasn't the best decision something good has come of it there's gonna be so many
01:36:58
ben 18 year old ben ben's listening to this right now who listened to this and thought you know
01:37:04
what i'm really low confidence and i've been knocked and you know i'm not sure if i'm good enough
01:37:09
and i've been called a failure by my job dad whatever it is what do you say to those people having
01:37:16
walked you know live their life what you say to them what's the advice you give them don't don't buy into someone else's
01:37:24
narrative that's what you're doing by listening to the failure whether it's absolute words
01:37:30
coming out of someone's mouth saying well you're no good whether it's whether it's even perceived
01:37:35
narrative that you go into a pub and everyone looks like they're having more fun than you and and the girl or the boy doesn't want
01:37:42
to be with you they want to be with the other person i think i think you just have to
01:37:48
own your narrative you are you in this world of what are we 6.7 billion probably got
01:37:54
that wrong but in this world of many many billions of people there is no there is no other stephen yeah that is
01:38:01
fact yeah there might be someone similar there might be someone with the same abilities the same body type maybe even
01:38:08
looks a bit like you but you are completely unique because your personality
01:38:13
um belongs to you and don't try and change that don't try and be the person that other people want you to be be
01:38:20
the person you are and it's it's it's a really hard thing to buy into because i spent so much of
01:38:26
my life trying to be the person i thought society wanted me to be always embarrassed that i wasn't i was either
01:38:33
too posh or i wasn't posh enough i was either too successful or not successful enough you said i mean it's it it's almost like
01:38:39
you're always just trying to fit in but actually once you own your narrative
01:38:45
once you're confident that you are unique in whatever way it might be it might be a geeky kind of unique it
01:38:52
might be a cool kind of unique it might be a quirky kind of unique but that's if if you can own
01:38:59
your personality your narrative and accept that you're halfway there
01:39:07
to this self-belief and this confidence and and that also means not trying to buy into
01:39:14
someone else's narrative you might think you want to be the if you're the geeky one you might think you want to be the cool kid you might
01:39:21
think that you want to be playing in the first football team you might think that you um want to be
01:39:29
sitting at that top table but that's not necessarily where your personality um
01:39:35
uh wants you to be and i think stop wanting and start being
01:39:44
very powerful i am it took me back to something i read from this swedish philosopher i can't remember his bloody name but
01:39:50
he was talking about how when you try and abandon your true self you'll despair if you fail or
01:39:56
succeed if you succeed in abandoning your true self you'll despair because you've abandoned yourself if you fail you'll despair because you
01:40:03
you've attempted something and failed at fitting in so he took the conclusive point of this flowchart he wrote 200 years ago was
01:40:09
that the only way to fulfillment is to to to be um and i just i mean very very powerful
01:40:16
and your your story is um incredibly inspiring for so many reasons but i think mainly because of your willingness to share it so honestly all
01:40:23
parts of your story and i know that will help a ton of people because the stories that you've told me about yourself especially when you're younger
01:40:28
and the lack of confidence are it's my dm's are full of young men young you know women that are
01:40:35
desperately trying to uh um understand why they um they don't feel adequate and so i
01:40:41
want to thank you for coming here today thank you yeah it's truly fascinating i don't know what i was expecting us to
01:40:46
talk about but i'm glad we talked about all the topics we did um and i just hope that you know
01:40:52
we we could do a lot more people in the world that are willing to be as transparent and honest um um warts and all so thank you so much
01:40:58
because this is exactly why i started this podcast and it's gonna be super valuable to all the people that listen well listen thank
01:41:04
you so much it's been a pleasure being here thank [Music]
01:41:16
you [Music]
