Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #224 How To Live Your Best Life with Jake Humphrey

Episode Date: December 8, 2021

CAUTION: This episode contains swearing and themes of an adult nature. Are you looking for high performance in your life – whether that be your work life, your personal life or perhaps in a weekend hobby? Or, does the term high performance not really resonate with you? Well, irrespective of your answer, I think you are going to really enjoy today's conversation with my guest, Jake Humphrey. Jake is one of the UK’s best known TV presenters, and he is currently the lead Premier League football presenter on BT sport, having previously spent over a decade at the BBC covering Formula One and before that children's television. Jake also hosts the High Performance podcast along with psychologist, Professor Damien Hughes. Together, they have conversations with a variety of different people that allow all of us to access the lessons and habits of high performance. They have recently brought all of that wisdom together into one place with the publication of their brand-new book, High Performance: Lessons from the best on becoming your best. But what does high performance really mean? Is it something that we should be focusing on? Or, is the desire for high performance leading us to do too much in an endless quest for perfection? This is something that Jake and I talk about at length in this conversation. Jake shares his own fascinating personal story about how he went from failing his A levels to becoming one of the UK’s most well-known TV presenters. We cover a wide range of topics including reframing failure, the importance of taking responsibility for every aspect of your life, and why mindset is the first thing that we should work on, even before we get to our behaviours. We also discuss how to build resilience and the importance of what Jake calls ‘world class habits’. I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Jake - it was authentic, honest, and at times raw. I hope you enjoy listening. Thanks to our sponsors:   https://leafyard.com/livemore   https://calm.com/livemore   http://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore   Show notes available at https://drchatterjee.com/224   Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/3oAKmxi. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

That was my first chance to ask people the question, what is the secret to your success? Billionaire team owners, CEOs of huge corporations that were sponsoring teams, team managers, and they all sort of gave me a similar answer. Don't wait to feel fully motivated or don't wait for the perfect time to do that thing. Right, start the action now. Take the action and it will snowball. The motivation will come. action and it will snowball, the motivation will come. Hi, my name is Rangan Chatterjee. Welcome to Feel Better, Live More. I want to start by asking you a question. Are you looking for high performance in your life,

in your work life, your personal life, or perhaps in a weekend hobby? Or does the term high performance not really resonate with you? Well, irrespective of your answer, I think you are going to really enjoy today's conversation with my guest, Jake Humphrey. Jake is one of the UK's best known TV presenters and he is currently the lead Premier League football presenter on BT Sports, having previously spent over a decade at the BBC covering Formula One and before that, children's television. Over the past couple of years, Jake, along with the psychologist Professor Damon Hughes, have hosted the High Performance Podcast, where they have rich, rewarding, and revealing conversations with a variety of different people that allow all of us to access the lessons and habits of high performance. They have recently brought all of that wisdom together into one place with the publication

of their brand new book, High Performance, Lessons from the Best on Becoming Your Best. Now, for me, the concept of high performance is an interesting one. What does high performance really mean? Is it something that we should be focusing on? Or in many ways, is this desire for high performance leading us to do too much in an endless quest for perfection and better. Well, this is something that Jake and I talk about at length in our conversation. Jake's own personal story is fascinating. He had what he calls a distinctly average childhood. He wasn't on any of the school sports teams. He didn't perform at music or drama. He failed most of his A-levels, and he was fired from McDonald's at the age of 16 for a lack of communication skills. Yet, from these apparent failures, he has gone on to become one of the UK's most well-known TV presenters.

And I think Jake's personal story underpins much of what we talk about on the podcast. pins much of what we talk about on the podcast. We talk about reframing failure, the importance of taking responsibility for every aspect of your life, and why mindset is the first thing that we should work on even before we get to our behaviors. We also discuss the importance of being able to reframe any negative situation, how to build resilience, and the importance of what Jake calls world-class habits. I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Jake. It was authentic, honest, and at times raw. I hope you enjoyed listening. And now my conversation with Mr. Jake Humphrey. Welcome to the podcast, Jake. Thank you very much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

We've been looking forward to this. How are you doing? Yeah, really, really looking forward to this. You know, I'm a long-term listener of yours and unlike you, I'm a relative beginner in the podcast space and it was podcasts like yours that I listened to and really felt impacted by that inspired me to do my own podcast so can I just actually start by saying thanks oh mate I really appreciate you sharing that that's uh you know super nice to hear because I also heard you know other podcasts around the world which inspired me to take this up and I I think like you completely love this medium yeah well I just find that it it's totally different to me because I've spent my life and we'll talk about how maybe how it all happened really as a TV presenter.

And that is great. And I love it. And I love the thrill and the sort of the challenge of making television programs, but actually creating high performance for the first time has given me a life where I feel genuine purpose. Like I actually feel for the first time useful. And I was so close to not doing it because I knew I had this message I wanted to share with people about how you can change your life just by very simple world-class basics, not hard stuff, simple everyday stuff.

But I thought there's so many podcasts and they're so good. I'm not going to be able to have an impact in that world. And it was two things listening to yours and i remember sharing them with my wife in the car saying you've got to listen to this man this is like a doctor from manchester talking to these amazing people and i was like taking on board all of the things you were talking about and the other thing was a phone call to fern cotton who obviously has created the behemoth that is happy place and it was her that said to me it's

the greatest thing you will ever do just give it a go and see and here we are now my performance is almost two years old and it's everything I hoped for and an awful lot more so thanks for having me on it's so nice to meet you for the first time yeah for sure um high performance yeah right it's an interesting concept yeah so i thought you know before we get into the nitty-gritty of how we can get that in our lives i thought it'd be worth really trying to understand what do you mean when you say high performance i think when i talk about high performance and if i'm really you know thinking about it on the hoof right now the word that comes in my head is is control but then I struggle with that word as well because the whole conversation we have on high performance is not about control

it's about growth and it's about exploration and it's about seeing what is out there but I so when I say control what I really mean is an understanding that you must get a feeling of being in control of your life. So I think that in life, 95, possibly more, 95, 96% of what happens in your life is down to how you react to the things that happen to you. And the other four or 5% are those things that happen. So if we can control the way that we react to the things that are going to come our way, because illness is going to come our way, either to ourselves or to our family, you are going to have difficult relationships. You are going to have hard years. There will be people right now listening to this in the car or on their commute or sitting at home thinking life

is hard at the moment. That is going to happen for all of us. And it's a difficult concept to understand. But if we can get our heads into a place where we know that it might not be our fault, but it is still our responsibility. I think that's where the growth is. So it's the control is I need to take control of my mindset. The growth comes from taking that control. Loads of things will happen to us. If you can distinguish fault from responsibility, then you take control. Then you can grow but if you can distinguish fault from responsibility then you take control then you can grow then you can find happiness yeah that word control i think it's fascinating and it's a it's a word that i've wrestled with myself over the past six or nine

months um i've been writing for my netbook about happiness and i've come up with this new concept called core happiness there's three components of it one of them is control yeah I've been chatting with mates about say who says mate you know control inherently is you know we can't control the world I said yeah but it's not about us being able to control the world it's about recognizing that the world is inherently uncontrollable but as you say it's about giving us that feeling, that sense of control over our lives, even though actually we can't. For me, it's about that sense of control. And it's such a hard thing to say to someone who's unhappy that happiness is a choice. It's so hard to say to someone who feels unsuccessful, success is a choice. But even if I'm wrong,

right? Even if me believing that doing all the right things will take me to a place of happiness, I might be wrong. I might still be unhappy in a few years time, for example, right? But what is the point at this stage thinking, well, happiness is out of my reach. I can't possibly go. So 100% responsibility. Open up the curtains tomorrow morning and say, I'm going to take 100% responsibility for every facet of my life, whether it's my fault or not, whether I think it's within my control or not.

Because if you don't say, I can be happy, I can be successful, I can grow, I can learn, I can explore, you've given up control. And if you give up control, then I don't think you're going to get yourself to a happier place. It's a challenging concept, but through all the conversations we've had for the past two years on high performance, I am the happiest I've ever been. Well, why am I the happiest I've ever been? Because I honestly feel like the door has been opened to me. I've seen the light that bad stuff has happened. Plenty of bad stuff has happened over the last couple of years. Me and my wife have had some real,

like a really good example. I won't go into too much detail because it's personal, but my wife had a sort of health scare that led to loads of scans, loads of nasty questions from the doctor about what this potentially could be, right? Now I used to catastrophize.

When I was a young kid, my mum would take the dog for a walk and I'd be, if she was more than half an hour, I wouldn't think, oh, mum's a bit late. I would think, what if my mum would take the dog for a walk and I'd be, if she was more than half an hour, I wouldn't think, oh, mum's a bit late. I would think, what if my mum's had a heart attack? What if she's been attacked?

What if she's lying there? I need to go out and find her. And I used to have to try and control my brain and say, listen, that's probably not happened, right? And I've taken that through my life. So one of my kids says I've got a stomachache. In my head, oh, it's not a stomachache. It's the beginnings of some horrendous childhood illness. And I see 20 steps ahead and I'm catastrophizing.

So then through doing this podcast, Harriet gets this news from the doctor, we're going to have to do a few little tests and things. I was able for the first time to control that catastrophizing and say to myself, right, I'm going to give this a score. If we give all the elements of our life a score of likelihood, we'll soon realize that actually the likelihood score I gave that this was going to be really bad, devastating news for her and our family was a one out of 10 because she's young and she's fit and she's healthy. And

thankfully it was okay. If I go, what are the chances that, you know, I'm going to have a great week or I'm going to have a lovely meal with my kids, or that I'm going to cuddle my wife at the end of the day, or that me and you are going to get together here and have a really fun conversation and I'm going to make a new friend. Well, I can give most of those a 10. Yeah. So if we can go through our lives, giving these things a score, I think it ends that catastrophizing and it ends that negative spiral of bad things are going to come my way. Why think bad things are going to come your way? think bad things are going to come your way let's be positive and just see where that takes us let's explore a positive mindset and i think it becomes a habit

it thinking positively will eventually become a habit when you talk about high performance on the podcast you have spoken to people who society regard as very successful generally you know people successful footballers athletes olympians right so of course we we look at them and go they are high performing individuals they're high performing athletes but for someone who's listening to this right now and struggling maybe with the concepts of high performance say well i get that but i don't want to be an olympian i don't want to win uh the fa cup right and they might say to you you know i hear you jay saying you're the happiest you've ever been but you're a successful football presenter formula Formula One presenter, sports presenter, you know, you are super well known. They might say, your definition of high performance is not relevant for me.

What would you say to them? I would say that I struggle with exactly the same question. And I sit here now and I hear you say that that and i think maybe my podcast shouldn't be called high performance maybe my podcast should be called high happiness because actually all that our podcast is looking to do is to unlock the secrets that other people have found yeah for achieving happiness now here's here's the twist right we get high performance individuals with us who are not high happiness individuals. Now they can give us amazing information about how to live our lives. And I would describe a lot of what they do as world class basics. And that's the great thing. You tune into the actor, Matthew McConaughey, who joined us or Gareth Southgate, the England boss. And like one of my highlights was when he came on and said,

your podcast got me through lockdown. And I'm thinking, hold on, you're the England boss. How is that possible? And a whole myriad of other people that have joined us, entrepreneurs and artists, they are not doing things that none of us can do. Of course, if you're a top level footballer or you're an amazing actor and you've got an innate skill set, but their happiness doesn't come from those things. Their happiness comes from the learned behavior of having a positive outlook. Because I think the reason why they are where they are is because they do think positively. They do believe that great things are going to happen. They do have this belief that they're going to win the next role or win the next match. So all I'm really saying is focus on world-class basics. Focus on trying to find the good stuff

in every single day. Focus on waking up in the morning and making sure that you make your bed. Making sure the first thing that you say to your kids is something positive. That that boss that you've had a long-term issue with for ages and you haven't dared to broach the subject, go and have that conversation with them. Go and communicate with people. Say good stuff and see if good stuff comes back to you. Chuck a smile the way of everybody you meet. Ask a question of everybody you meet because everyone knows something that you don't know. Have these really simple ways of trying to bring

happiness and positivity into your life. And I do believe that you will live a happier life, but please don't think that the end destination is where the happiness lies. And that's why I love talking to high achieving people. Because when you say, were you happier for winning a Champions League? Were you happier for winning a Premier League? Were you happier for winning an Oscar? Every single time the answer is no. And what's that sort of trite phrase that gets thrown around in life somehow, the journey, not the destination. But the very fact that you and I are sitting here and having this conversation and that someone is listening to this, right, is basically a miracle. I mean, you're far more educated and brighter than me.

I don't know what the chances are that that particular sperm makes it to that egg. Yeah. Millions to one. And then you go through all of the challenges of growing as a fetus. And you go through all that difficult stuff when you're young and you could get some illness. And how many times have you crossed the road and you haven't been hit by a car? And you get to this point where we're all here that is a miracle every single one of us it's a miracle to be here right now so i think it's really important we realize that you can't suspend happiness until

you get that job or until you've got no stresses or no worries or until you and your long-term partner get on better or until you and your best friend who haven't spoken for five years finally make up you just need to find the happiness now and i'm not saying it's easy and i'm not saying it's simple i'm not saying life isn't full of challenges but please don't think successful people are happier than everybody else they're not quite often it's actually the opposite and And they need to, in my experience, often get the success to realise, oh, this is what I've been chasing my entire life.

I got it. And I still feel... Live your life. Live your life and try your very best to see the good stuff. Now, I wasn't at all suggesting you should change the name of your podcast. I was playing devil's advocate because I think high performance actually, I think it is something we're all looking for,

but it depends on our definition or where we want to bring in high performance, right? So I would argue that a mother or a father wants high performance as a mother and as a father. They want to be able to be present and non-reactive and good parents, right? They want that. That is high performance, right? You've touched on a really good point. You've spoken to these incredibly successful individuals who often know how to be successful, but potentially don't know how to be happy. Yeah. And when I think of that, I think of Tiger Woods, right? Tiger Woods is someone who, you know, I've always, as a kid, you know, put on a pedestal, you know, I probably never would have been interested in golf had someone like Tiger not existed. That's the truth. It's not

something that my family did. It's not something that my sort of network did growing up. But because of Tiger, it's like, oh my God, you know, I'm interested now in playing golf. And I find his story so incredibly fascinating because he's someone who's had all the success in the world. Of course, there have been problems in his personal life over the last 10 years or so, been very public. And I think when you understand his whole life story and his childhood you think of course it was only a matter of time he was going to blow up at some point i spoke about that a little bit with ryan holiday on the on on this podcast about a year ago for ryan holiday oh he's great and you know i have that every morning on the way to school for the kids the daily stoic i see them go oh dad not

again i'm kids sounds like my kids it's minutes, and we just need to listen to this and understand that there's a lot you can think about. And what I find interesting about Tiger is that he had all the success, but arguably, and I'm not Tiger, and I'm not inside his brain, so I don't know how he feels, but it doesn't appear as though

he was happy. Whereas when he won the Masters about two or three years ago, the interviews he gave then were so incredible for me because it wasn't this sheen of, I'm not letting you in. I'm just focused on the win. I'm just focused on being number one. It was softer. He was more embracing of his frailty and his problems. And so I think this clash between success and happiness is super interesting. So from your experience then of talking to so many high performing individuals, do you get a sense that a lot of them weren't happy or they needed the success to teach them what happiness really is? The ones that are really happy have separated the public image we see from the person. So I'll give you two great examples.

We were joined by Hector Bellerin, who's an Arsenal defender. And he's on loan now back in Spain. But he was one of the most talented and gifted young footballers that this country has ever seen playing in the Premier League for Arsenal. And he came on the podcast and he spoke to us. And this resonated so strongly with me. He said, you need to live your life like a candle. He said, for too many years, I would be a candle. And if I played well and the manager picked me and my teammates embraced me for scoring a goal.

And my social media was full of people telling me that I'm brilliant and I walk down the street and people are shouting, hey Hector, great goal you scored on the weekend, brilliant. My flame grows and I feel great and I feel brilliant. Well, if the flame grows and I feel brilliant and I feel wonderful because of outside influences into my brain and into my own mindset, how do I feel when I get dropped and the manager is focusing on the 11 players that are playing and he doesn't speak to me and my teammates are talking about how they're going to approach the game on Saturday and I'm not part of that conversation and I go on my Instagram and I've got people chucking me messages telling me that I'm useless. How do I then feel? Well, if I allow

the flame to grow and if I get high on my own supply, I call it, when life is good, by default, I have to go the other way when things are bad and the flame has to dim. And I know there'll be people listening to this going, I feel so great when the kids are in good form and my job is going well and the house is clean and tidy and I've bought and wrapped my Christmas presents. That's great. But none of those things should determine your sense of self-worth. You should be, as Hector Bar Baron told us, like a candle. Your flame has to be steady. You have to believe in yourself, know yourself, understand that all these things can happen around you, but not being impacted by them is key.

And Johnny Wilkinson, who won the Rugby World Cup, he came on and he dropped one of the most remarkable things I've ever heard. And I was so confused when he said it. He said, the thing is, obviously you won the Rugby World Cup. And for me, winning the Rugby World Cup was as important as doing the washing up. Yeah, I want to talk about this. I'd actually circled that because I think that is a beautiful example

that illustrates this. I just want to explain for people who are listening, who are not in the UK or watching, who may not know Johnny, Johnny Wilkinson, and you'll know more than me, I'm not a huge rugby fan, but I do remember in 2003, you know, he kicked the winning try in the World Cup final. So for a young kid dreaming of being a rugby player, probably doesn't get any better in the final minute was it yeah it was right at the very end of the 2003 world cup it was a drop goal the ball got past him from matt dawson dropped it over the posts and they won the world cup yeah and so that's

that's something which if you were a kid or there's a child listening now with your parents you would think if you're into rugby man if that ever happened to me that's the moment there's the moment and you say to your kids come on you can play for England

and then but then also we get tricked into thinking if you're a young sports person or a young whatever listen to this when I get there

I'll be happy I guarantee you Johnny thought that score that drop goal in the rugby World Cup final and I will be happy so why is scoring that World Cup winning goal the same thing?

As doing the washing up? As washing dishes at home. Right. So obviously the follow-up question has to be, sorry, Johnny, you need to explain that to us. And the answer was fascinating. So he said, okay, first of all, I'm no longer a rugby player. So Johnny's now retired, right?

He said, I'm no longer a rugby player. So if doing that thing in a rugby World Cup final, or even playing rugby makes me more of a man, more important, more of a high achiever, more successful. So what am I now that I'm retired? Less of a man, less successful, less high achieving, less important. In his mind, he has to say that doing the washing up is the same as winning the rugby world cup because it doesn't, why should it diminish his importance? Why do we decide? Who decides that kicking that ball over those posts is more important than doing the washing up?

And obviously my background is as a sports presenter. So I'm like, I can't get that right now. And he said, okay, I'll give you another example. What am I doing when I play rugby? Using my body to achieve a goal. What am I doing when I do the washing up? Using my body to achieve a goal. So when you break it down to that,

well, there is no difference. So what determines that one is held in higher regard than the other? Society. If he can ignore what society labels those two things as, then he's reached a place of pure happiness. And that conversation rang and I've had to listen to it four or five times myself.

And there are some things that I still struggle to get to where he is, hugely spiritual, really deep, but how lovely that someone can go on that journey as a very very obsessed young man who thought that life and i think maybe there's a time when i thought the same he thought that life was about the struggle it was about the sacrifice it was about getting knocked down it was about the punches in the guts because you took all those things happiness is at the end of it guess what struggling leads to more struggling tripping leads to more tripping getting punched in the guts leads to getting punched in the guts

more often and i would really say to your listeners don't chase that thinking at the end of it it's happiness try and find something else yeah i mean as you describe that uh and again i i think 10 years ago i don't think i would have got that now I totally get it I totally get what he's talking about it's about presence being fully in the moment if you can be present to score that goal

he would have had to be shut out the external noise I am in my body I am in the moment I am focused on kicking this ball where it needs to go but the skill is can you bring that to washing up yeah how this translates to i think my life or someone listening or watching is well what if we could bring that sort of presence and

mindfulness i guess to every aspect of our our life, then we are a high performing individual at whatever we choose to do. Have you ever read the book Fear Less by Pippa Grange? No. You will love it, right? And Pippa was the psychologist who Gareth Southgate brought in about two or three years ago for the England football team. Pippa's been on the show before and she talks about this concept of winning deep versus winning shallow. And it really speaks to this idea, Jacob, you can win the FA Cup, but still feel nothing underneath, right? You're winning shallow. Yes, you've got that external metric of success,

but inside it hasn't done anything for you. Or you can win deep, which is when we probably adopt these world-class habits, when we separate the external achievement from our sense of who we are. But also we don't have to go to the point of success to be deep, right? Yeah.

That's the other key thing here. I think I really want people to understand that I don't want them to go to the point of success to be deep, right? Yeah. That's the other key thing here. I think I've really want people to understand that I don't want them to listen to this conversation and think, right, next time I'm really successful, I'm going to really feel the positivity. I'm really going to embrace it. Like just sit there right now and look at all the things that you should be grateful for. Tiny little things, the relationships, the family, you should be grateful for tiny little things the relationships the family the health and everyone will have something and it's so important that we focus on those good bits it's not about waiting for the big moment and going i was really successful and i really enjoyed it it's about really enjoying this conversation with you you know i'm really i've tried to work really hard

on being present so i know that in the past I'm thinking, right, I've got this thing I'm doing tonight. So when I finished talking to Rangan, or I didn't call my wife back and she left me a voice note, and I hope the kids are getting on okay because they're having their flu jabs at school, all these little things, right? But all those are just stories. And if I can control that and just be here with you,

talking to you right now, fully engaged in this conversation, and then when I go to that next thing, that's when I i'm fully engaged in that it's so rewarding because you go so much like life just feels so much richer yeah and it gives you that conversation about control that we spoke about at the beginning it gives you back that control because i don't believe there's a single person listening to this that hasn't at one time in their life suffered with anxiety when i had a real issue at one point in my life and the thing that really helped me was the lady i spoke to said you do realize that your issue at the moment is like you're writing a story in your brain and then choosing to believe the story how about you rewrite that story to be a positive one and then believe that

one. Why shouldn't we write positive stories for ourselves and believe those stories? Why shouldn't we think something great is around the corner? Why does our brain trick us all the time? Like life's hard enough. Don't punch yourself in the gut all the time. Don't kick yourself in the balls every opportunity. There's enough of that going to go on anyway if we can just try and get ourselves into a space of really believing that there's good stuff around the corner again if you're wrong it doesn't matter because the power is in believing the good stuff's there because even when it even when you have that bad day you're still thinking well the next day is the good day yeah and for you what this what i've learned is that for your happiness actually the truth doesn't matter it's the story you put on it yeah that determines how happy you are yeah and i i think some people might think that's controversial but i genuinely believe

that to be true. Choose the story that makes you feel happier, calmer, and more content. It's hard when you say happiness is a choice. Of course it is. And even when I hear people say that, I suddenly think, yeah, but there's loads of things out there to make me unhappy. You don't understand the challenges that I've got. But life is about how you react to those things. It's about your reaction to those negative things that are going to happen again, not your fault.

Your responsibility. I remember a film I think I saw on Netflix a few years ago. It was called Happy. I think it was called Happy. And it starts off with this really powerful moment. Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, if you're looking for something at this time of year to kickstart your health, I'd highly recommend that you consider AG1. AG1 has been in my own life for over five years now. It's a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It contains vitamin C and

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all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. It's in Calcutta in India, which is where my family from so I was very, very drawn to it. And it was a rickshaw, I guess rickshaw driver. He was he lived in a little shack that was barely a roof on. Yeah. So his wife and his two kids in a slum in India. And he'd wave to his kids and his wife and he'd go off at like 5.30 in the morning, pulling his Rickshaw barefoot. He'd go to the city and taxi people around all day. And then he'd come back and they filmed him coming back. And he said something like, this is the best moment of the day.

I come back. I see my son smiling at me. I see my family. And I realized I am the luckiest man on the planet. And it just hit me. And I thought, okay, wow, this guy doesn't have anything compared to what most of us, clearly not everyone, but most of us have in the West. Yet he was able to put a story on his life that actually that's happiness. And I think we have to be super conscious that some people,

you know, are going through a really tough time, right? They may not have much money. It may be hard to buy food or put a roof over their heads. And of course, that plays a difference. I don't think any of us are trying to downplay that. But what I get from your book and, you know, the podcast, Jake, is that whatever happens, even in those difficult situations, you've still got a choice, haven't you you in terms of what story you put on it it just reminds me of a phrase which i've often thought about which is that just because something's hard for me doesn't mean it's bad for me and if i sort of look back on my route to sitting here with you in this room now i had some i was badly bullied when i started

at high school we moved house just at the long time and all the friendship groups had been formed and I just did not it just didn't work for me at that school and it was it was really crap right so my parents moved schools for me and then life was life was great I enjoyed my new school but I was not I was not cut out for school it wasn't the thing for me and I failed my A levels I got an E and N and a U for my A levels that was really embarrassing because my mum was a teacher at the school and she had to hold her chin up in the staff room the following day with everyone knowing that the son of one of the teachers was an abject failure and in between those two points

I got fired from McDonald's for a lack of communication skills. And you take things on the chin when you're 18 or whatever, but that is also embarrassing to come home and say to your parents, yeah, I've just been told I'm fired. Like your parents are obviously now you don't see it really at the time, but now as a parent, I'm looking and thinking, what must my mom and dad have thought?

Actually, they wouldn't have said it, but they would have thought our son's been fired from a fast food restaurant for not being able to communicate properly. What's happening here? And then the toughest thing of all was during the A-levels, my grandma committed suicide. That was really hard because your grandparents don't do that, right?

They're just like, you imagine that your grandparents are stable and solid and they've lived their lives and that's great. So all of those things happened. And I know there are far worse things that can happen to someone but I I now now know that those things were horrible and they were hard but they actually weren't necessarily bad because the resilience that that creates means that you know like my grandma Ina 20 years later when I look at social media and someone's calling me a bellend for the way I've presented a football match, tragically, the act that she committed with the resilience that gave me, I can look at that and think, it's far more important things

in this life than whether you think I'm good at presenting football matches or not. And all of our lives are full of those things. So I totally understand what you say when people are going through hard times times but it is about trying to find the good stuff and trying to find a light and realizing that you know being bullied being sacked a family trauma a school disaster no there is there is a positive route out of those things and i think you know i hadn't really considered this before i sat down talking to you actually but you and i spoke before we came out and we were big smiles in our face talking about the joy of podcasting right and we both used the same word purpose that real sense of purpose and i think actually now that now i now i consider it my grandma killed herself because my

granddad was in a wheelchair and she was his care and he died she lost her purpose basically yeah and um i think finding purpose is probably the key for happiness for everyone actually sorry to hear about what happened to you that must have been incredibly yeah it was a long time ago i was just a teenager but it doesn't leave you man um doesn't leave you no yeah it's a powerful story thank you i didn't expect to go there actually well it's interesting isn't it that you know all these years later you try and chase purpose in your life and you try and just desperately have conversations like this or write books like that or have a podcast because you just

are desperate for people to realize that yeah happiness and purpose and fulfillment is something that they should be looking for and then you kind of manage to trace it back a long way when we start going down that journey because ultimately a lot of what we're talking about is that high performance happiness success ultimately it's internal not external but as you go down that route you do start to become more introspective and you start to unpick various parts of your life and as you you know so uh you know vulnerably just shared what happened with your grandparents that must have been and clearly still is you know something that is tricky to deal with yeah i just you know how you just you assume your grandparents have got things sorted yeah yeah but i know that my kids will look at they've they're lucky to have all four grandparents still and they

will look at them and think well they're always at home they put a pound in our hand when we leave their house they cook great food they have time for us so that's a difficult difficult one to get your head around when it's yeah no for sure now you have described your childhood before as distinctly average yeah and i'm fascinated with you have this real passion for high performance and for me there's this real interesting clash there which is distinctly average childhood desire to find out the secrets to high performance what's going on there i apologize if i'm sniffing all over your podcast suddenly by the way um do you know what i think i think that the reason for that is because like do you want to stop no i'm fine honestly yeah thank you thanks i think like so many people i probably grew up

thinking that success and so-called high performance or high happiness let's call it that was for other people i was a kid growing up in a village in norfolk. My dad was a charity worker, my mum was a teacher. We lived a house like full of love, absolutely full of love. Our parents talk about the two things they tried to give their kids was roots and wings and understanding that no matter where you go in the world, the roots are here, you can come back here,

non-judgmental, anytime, come back here. But by the way, here's your wings, go fly, go a long way, do some amazing things. So it was full of love, but it was average. I was an average kid at school. We lived in an average house. I saw amazing people doing amazing things on the TV and in the newspapers. And I remember I was the newspaper delivery boy for my village. I'd be putting the papers through the doors. I was obsessed with Norwich City thinking, must be amazing to be a high achiever like them. I wonder what secrets they know and I wonder what world they've been born into. And I honestly believed, and I think a lot of people do, that this was what I was given. Almost like being in a box or you just see a map of your life.

My life was mapped out to be fine, but not unbelievable because I wasn't one of the other people. And then when I failed my A-levels, the greatest thing that ever happened to me was failing my A-levels, by the way, in retrospect, because the day that I went back to school to redo my A-levels, a local TV channel were looking for students to go and do work experience. Well, obviously, if I'd have passed, I would have gone off to university, right? But I didn't. So I went along and I said,

listen, all my mates have passed their A-levels. They've all gone on to go to gap years and have go to their university studies. I'm like the A-level failure guy who's embarrassed his mom who works in the school by failing his exams. I'm doing a whole nother year at the school I was at. Like maybe I could just come and do some work experience in my spare time. So they said, do you know what? We're a startup. It was called Rapture TV. It was a little startup channel. And they said, brilliant, come along. We'll pay you five pounds cash to work at the weekends. Fantastic. I was like struggling in life. And suddenly there i was making cups of tea answering the phones operating the auto cue helping the sound man showing guests into the

studio this was like a whole world that by the way rang and i'd never even considered kids from stoke holy cross don't work in television they just don't there's no route right and then they ran a competition for viewers to send in a home video and the best home video got the chance to go to paris and host a show and my parents were dead against this because obviously this was now like save your future please by passing your a-levels and going to university that's that was the route that was the answer that was where you've currently in their eyes you failed your a-levels you've been fired from McDonald's oh things weren't great what are you playing at exactly and and I said look let's let me do the video see what happens so I did the video and the reason why I did the video was because it was a competition

for viewers but they had no viewers so me and the other work experience kids were asked can you just go and make a video and we'll put it on the on this show so I'm sitting there a few weeks later and I remember the video I still remember it was my dearly beloved dog at the time, Dillis, and I was playing football with her in the garden talking about my love of Natalie Imbruglia, who was big. This is like the late nineties. My mate Steven was on the video and I wrote like written by, directed by and held up these bits of paper at the end. It was like as budget as you can get. It was with my mate Steven's parents camcorder. And they chose me as the winner.

So there I was just maybe, it was January because we went and filmed like a Valentine's special in Paris. There I was probably six, seven months after these A-level results in Paris one weekend doing some hosting. And I found it, I just loved it. I just, I found this thing that made sense to me. I loved being on the telly and I think we have to remember sometimes we think education is the perfect starting point in life for our kids it was not for me I didn't see the reason for 99% of the stuff that I did I didn't really relate to the teachers and school was just not not my thing I get I go into the real world as I call it and everything made sense and then

the male presenter of the show quit and went to London to work on like a proper tv channel and the boss came to me and offered me the most unbelievable financial deal I've never signed a better financial deal to this day he said to me if you want to be the host of the show we will double your money overnight 10 pounds cash so i was then doing a levels monday to friday and on a saturday and a sunday i was taking myself off to rapture television and i was doing all the bits and pieces and doing a bit of hosting and at the end of it we'd all line up and they'd all be given five pounds cash and i'd be given 10 pounds yeah it was unbelievable to me. And then they offered me a job.

So when I did pass my A-levels, I never went to uni. I never did that. And I took a job on five and a half, six grand a year, working at Rapture TV. But I still had this sense that this great stuff had happened to me. And we talk about making a good thing out of a bad situation i didn't really realize that's what i was doing at the time i was kind of following my gut i had no grand plan i had no idea i was just making day-to-day decisions and hoping for the best yeah but i still believed that real

success was for other people and then i went to children's bbc in london and eventually i did eight years on kids telly and got a job in Formula One and then when I first walked into the pit lane in the Formula One world that was my first chance to ask people the question what is the secret to your success? Billionaire team owners, CEOs of huge corporations that were sponsoring teams, team managers, Formula One drivers, circuit promoters and they all sort of gave me a similar answer. Action leads to motivation. I just decided this is what I wanted to do. So I chased it down. I was relentless in chasing it down and I was consistent. So therefore I suddenly had this answer. None of these people were saying, oh, I was born in this place. So I got natural success. And I know for some people,

that is the case. But for the vast majority of people i spoke to it was about taking opportunity it was about not believing that they were hemmed in somehow it was about absolute belief that good things can happen yeah and trying to aim as hard as possible and all these years later i wanted to create this podcast because i got that bit of information so that's a long-winded way of saying I grew up in a house where we were expected to be lovely, well-behaved, nice kids, but pretty normal. And a new world was opened up to me and I realized that actually high performance is for anyone. That is so powerful. Action leads to motivation and consistency. I mean, those two things are incredibly powerful.

The action leads to motivation, right? It's because there'll be people listening to this now that have a dream and they just need to go for it because it really is the only life you get. And I know there's loads of other barriers that can stop that from happening, but even in a small way, don't wait to feel fully motivated

or don't wait for the perfect time to do that thing right start the action now in a tiny way you you know you don't we're not talking about people operating world-class scale here we're talking about people just doing little things that gets them a bit closer to their own happiness yeah but please don't wait for the motivation to do that take the action and it will snowball the motivation will come i love that image jake if you growing up in norfolk as you as you say uh a pretty average life and then through the journey through your life journey you end up presenting for me the one so one of the i guess richest prestigious sports in the world so you're there there's money the imposter syndrome was real by the way well we can talk about that because that must be really interesting but

but you know there's there's you know very expensive to that's a that's an understatement cars yeah uh there must be a lot of flash and bling going around and you're there from norfolk presenting yeah i can imagine the imposter syndrome was probably about as big as it could There must be a lot of flash and bling going around. And you're there from Norfolk presenting. I can imagine the imposter syndrome was probably about as big as it could be at that moment. But then you're also hearing from these people, motivation leads to action. Sorry, action leads to motivation, consistency. And you must be thinking, well, wait a minute, that's kind of,

that's successful for all of us. That's just because you guys have got x million and have just bought this formula one team well those principles actually we can all apply so i find i find that incredibly interesting um and in terms of you know high performance talking to these people has clearly changed you yes without question yeah right and i'm interested in as to the many ways in which you have changed but a couple things that come to mind i have read that you know you worked in children's television you were told hey listen children's television this is a different gig to

sports presenting you know no one jumps from that to sports presenting right so i've read you talk about that and i think at one point when you made a transition your wife i think maybe you can tell the story phoned you to say that people are all on this forum online saying that actually you're going to be rubbish what's this kids presenter doing? So I'm interested in that moment where the public are judging you. Big career move for you, but the public are, you can't control this, right? In terms of that sense of control, you're out of control here because people are talking about you saying, this is rubbish, he's going to be rubbish. That's one scenario that i'd love

you to talk us through what happened in reality and if that was happening to you today with all the new knowledge that you have you know and skills that you've gleaned from talking to people on your podcast how would you deal with it differently today it's so interesting when i think back to that period right because i wasn't given this like amazing skill set to deal with all these things to deal with the judgment to deal with what was high pressure at the time working on kids tv because the thing you have to remember about children's bbc is that everybody wants to be the next big thing. Everybody wants to escape kids telly. Oh, really? So it's actually almost the most kind of competitive and aggressive environment

that I've ever worked in. Every single day, there's hundreds of new showreels coming in from 15, 16, 17, 18 year olds that dream of being kids presenters. It's like, if you want to be a TV presenter when you're young, what do you want to be? I want to be a kids presenter. So there was that real sense that I had hold of something that loads of people wanted, but I definitely wasn't equipped with the ability to work out how to keep hold of it. Right. I just was, I think I was a late developer, right. And I still think even at this point, I was a late developer and that perhaps that helped me because I almost, I almost was so relaxed with the whole thing

I was like well what will be will be and I wish I had like some amazing answer for how you can traverse this period of growth and understanding a new industry you're working in I think where I was really good right was personal relationships I remember actually going back to the bullying issues at school one of the teachers said to my parents he's just too emotionally intelligent he's kind of like he most of the lads who he hangs around with just want to kick footballs about and say ridiculous things and he wants you know he's more interested in how's the teacher feeling how are the other kids feeling it I was a bit different I suppose in that way so I think I soon realized the importance of personal connections to people and having that having that ability to speak to people and spend time with them so that was

certainly one of the reasons why I say I use the word survived so long on kids telly because it the churn was high but somehow I made it through I don't know where it came from but I absolutely was so determined to be successful at this. And I wasn't really like that as a kid. I was not a driven young man at all. I was in no sports teams. I was never on the stage at school. I was a run of the mill in class.

And again, I really don't know where this drive and desire came from to be the guy that was successful. desire came from for to be the guy that was successful it is but the theme i keep getting drawn back to as i hear you talk jake is that we could say you weren't driven at school but maybe it was because school didn't stimulate you it didn't have the thing yeah that you would be driven at because i just think how many kids out there are struggling in school they just don't like the maybe the conformist nature of it the the rigid rules that are there in many schools and they start to believe well i'm not very good like i'm not very good in life you call yourself average well maybe you didn't have an average childhood maybe you had a world-class childhood that prepared you to be a world-class sports presenter right

it's it's the framing a nice way of looking at it actually yeah i've never even considered that though i because again even with all the things i've done and the people i've spoken to i still put things in a box don't i i still see we all do i still see the world in the way i saw the world at that time yeah i've never even considered that my that my youth was was world-class in any respect never even thought about it and maybe there is absolutely is something in that but when you know something something had changed and i don't know what it was but something had changed and when i was on kids telly i wanted to be successful but i i hope that gives people that a lot of parents listen and watch this show

and i imagine a lot of them may be getting frustrated at times that my my son or my daughter isn't applying themselves. You know, why can't they be motivated? Why can't they focus more? And again, you know, I'm not trying to tell people how to parent, right? Everyone's got the right to do that the way they choose, but it's more about just offering a possibility that maybe the right thing hasn't come across them yet. Maybe the right thing hasn't come across them yet. And then speaking about your podcast then, I don't know how far you have got into this with your guests, but how many or how common is it that you have a high-performing individual on

who's achieved great societal success, but they didn't fit in at school? And it's actually school wasn't for me because i bet you there's quite a lot there i'll tell you what we do find an awful lot of is almost every single one of our real high performing guests have had some kind of a trauma so whether it's dame kelly holmes who was self-harming in the run-up to being a double olympic champion whether it's tom daly who lost his dad to a brain tumour when he was young, whether it's Ant Middleton whose father died out of the blue when he was a young guy. There is a well-known phrase in the psychology world, and you've probably heard it as well,

which is that trauma leads to triumph. So why does trauma lead to triumph? What was the thing that happened in my upbringing that meant when I got the chance, I was going to grab hold of it, and I was absolutely going to make it a success where did that self-belief come from where did where did that originate I think it originated from the fails I think it originated from the struggles and I think it's so hard like we're both parents it is the hardest job in the world by the way but the only thing that I want my kids to do is struggle. I want my kids to fail. I want them to realize that life isn't just a bed of roses. So I get frustrated with what I call helicopter parenting, hovering around your kids all the time. Oh, there's a problem with a child at school. I'll

speak to their parents. Oh, the teacher made me feel like this. I'll speak to the teacher. Oh, we've got this coming up next week. Right. I'll sit with you for hours every night and get get make sure you do your homework i don't know the answer to this oh i'll do that one for you don't worry right what is all that equipping your child to do it's equipping them to have a mindset of zero resilience so when you do that and then they live a great life and they get their exam results because you've helped them all the way and life's been lovely and you've been walking basically two feet in front of them smoothing the path every step of the way moment comes where you have to step away as a parent and go right off you go now but where's their skills to deal with how harsh the real world is you have to let your kids fail because that is where your children will

build their resilience otherwise they'll get to 2021 they'll go for their first job interview they'll be told no and they won't have the tools to deal with it and i think that i was probably given the tools to deal with the challenges of the outside world from the things that we've spoken about from those from those hard and difficult moments the world-class childhood that you had exactly well i'm never going to talk about it as an average childhood ever again and i apologize to my parents right now for even considering that it was average i thank you but again you write in this book about reframing, right? So it's about reframing your childhood. Now it's like, well, that did equip you. And I've got to say, I don't know what it is for you. As a parent myself, one of the hardest things I find certainly is i know that my biggest learnings in life have come from failures or things that

went wrong or things where i felt really bad afterwards right that is ultimately what has made me resilient and taught me all these important life skills but it's the hardest thing in the world but as a parent i know exactly what I want to protect my kids from that. I do all the time. I have to check myself all the time. It's very difficult. It's very hard because you don't want them to go through what you went through. You want to soften it for them. But I lie in bed sometimes thinking about this, thinking, what's the sweet spot here where I can, you know, and of course that's overthinking

because you have to just trust sometimes and allow them to fail. But I think what you're speaking to is a big problem. It's difficult, so difficult, because I have the same thing with, you know, I speak to Harriet a lot about Florence and Sebastian and letting them fail and letting them struggle.

And she naturally goes to you, but that really affects their confidence. I don't want a child that thinks they can't do stuff. I want them to believe they can do anything. But then it comes back to, you know, hopefully there's no, especially young people listen to this. If there are, feel free to pause it or close their ears off for a second.

It comes back to this Father Christmas syndrome, right? That Sir Chris Hoy spoke about on our podcast. And it's like, if you absolutely believe in Father Christmas, you're totally derailed when you realize it isn't true and it's like that in life if you absolutely believe that that right in front of you are going to be no issues when there are those issues you're not able to deal with them you need to understand your children need to understand that life can be tough at times yeah and that there's a lovely phrase that my parents used when i was younger that i didn't understand but i've learned to understand that as the years have gone by which

is hold your beliefs lightly i was the total opposite thinker of that i was like no no no no if you want to be successful no if you hold your beliefs firm you have your set of values and your opinions and your beliefs and you live your life with them as rigidly as possible and you defend them at all costs. I am absolutely now an advocate of hold your beliefs lightly. Hold your beliefs lightly. Don't think that you have the answers. We think that it's going to be difficult for our kids if we allow them to struggle and fail. Find out, let them fail, see what it does for them. Talk to them about it. It's not just failure, right? It's the way that we fail. So I often say to people, I really want you to fail. Like you, Rangan, I want you to fail with your podcast all the time, constantly.

Because the only way that you know if you're really pushing the envelope of how far you can take your unbelievable product, right, is by failing. Because failure is right at the envelope of what you can achieve so every time when you trip over and you think oh we shouldn't quite have done that you are exploring yeah and the only way for you to grow is to explore it's a really really important thing so let your kids fail let your kids struggle but educate them about it let them fail often but let them fail forwards so when things go wrong you sit down with them right do you really think you applied yourself to that situation right and then probably the most important question of all you know you've failed does it matter does it really matter that you got five out of ten for your spelling test really do you think it matters now that's not

like i'm not going to try hard at school but it's an understanding of trying to put things into context and i guess your kids can only really understand this at a slightly older age but florence came home from school the other day she was fed up she got 15 out of 50 for a spelling test how old is she she's eight so she's a 15 out of 50 in a spelling test so they've done all the spellings for the for the term for the half term then at the end they'd done the whole lot she was she was fed up said, why are you fed up? She said, because everyone else was getting like 30 and 35 and things. And I sort of listened to her for a minute and I said,

imagine if everyone got one or two out of 50. She had a massive grin on her face. I said, what would you think then? She's like, oh, I'd have been so happy. I said, right. So you still got 15 out of 50 and you'd have been happy. Everyone else got one or two. So you can't base your opinion, Florence, of how well you did on how everyone else did. It doesn't matter that those other kids got 35 out of 30. Look at what you did. You got 15 out of 15. And guess what? There's 35 amazing spellings that we can learn together. So that was the conversation we had. She thought she'd failed. And I'd like to think at the end of it, she realized that she would have liked to have done better, but the two big learnings for her, it doesn't matter what everyone else did,

their achievements don't determine whether she was successful or not. There's a massive bit of learning there, by the way, for all of us. Other people's success doesn't detract from yours. Other people's happiness shouldn't take away from yours. I want her to understand that and Sebastian as well. But the other thing is that failure is okay because you can grow, you can go somewhere. Yeah. That is a really powerful story. And I think those learnings are incredible.

Just the idea that I can get the same mark. Yeah. But how I feel about that mark is purely determined by things completely outside my control. Even with this podcast, right? Yeah. You can very easily

look at someone in America getting 190 million downloads a week like Joe Rogan and go, long way to go for my podcast. Of course there's not because all you can do is have the best conversations you can have

and say to people, you know what? If this helps you, have a listen to this. It isn't about other people's success. There's always someone who's struggling. And so you have to realize there's someone always struggling and those people have to realize there's someone always struggling. So that's kind of, I don't want that to sound like a good thing that other people are struggling, but it's kind of like, we've all got somewhere to go.

We've always got somewhere to grow. It's really, competing is probably the wrong word. I guess it's been accountable to yourself. Yeah. I think it's innate though, by the way. I think that's one of the challenges with this particular thought process. I think it's totally natural. Yeah.

For us as human beings, we were, human beings, we were put on this earth and we were scrapping against other people to get the food. Well, you're still scrapping against other people to get the downloads. Yeah. It's kind of different, but it's the same. But I think we're- Well, I think we can evolve through it though.

Correct. I think we're bright enough and educated enough now to realize, like, I want your podcast, Rangan, to be the best podcast in the world. What's the point in me projecting anything other than that on you? What difference does it make to me whether you have the most amazing podcast with 100 times the listeners that mine has? I just want you to do really well. I want everyone to be successful.

I hate this. We're very good at it in this country, in England, constantly wanting others to do worse to make ourselves feel better. in England, constantly wanting others to do worse to make ourselves feel better. You make yourself a prisoner when you feel like that, because your happiness and your self-worth is dependent on things outside your control. The candle. There it is. That is a dangerous place to be. In terms of this about self-evaluating and being the best you can, certainly I've always done that, but I think I've done it from a place of inadequacy in the past.

So where I feel now my self-analysis comes is more that I can separate the success of something from my self-worth in a way that I couldn't in the past. So in the past, it would be, man, you botched that conversation. You forgot to ask those three key questions didn't you you know and you'd feel bad afterwards you think god i'm just no good as a podcast host right but now it's like no no you're doing the best that you can in that moment with the prep time that you have you're juggling a lot of other stuff you can only bring yourself in that moment. And now I use analysis. Now, I use it to help me become a more skilled podcast host. I want to get better at anything I do. Yes, I am very driven. But it's actually not driven by the external metrics. It's driven by, am I doing as good a job as I can do? And

that then speaks to John Wilkinson, right? Go on. That speaks to what you said about Wilkinson. Is he doing the best job that he's capable of when he's washing off the olive oil off the dish, right? As he is when he's hitting that kick. For me, that is what high performance is about. You're totally right.

Absolutely. And that's where it's again, it's about 95% of what happens in our life is our response and 5% is what happens. So what's happening is that someone else's podcast is getting more downloads or more listens, right? You are 95% responsible for how you deal with that. Now, the sensible way to deal with that isn't to go to bed frustrated thinking that person's doing really well in the same way that I look at TV presenters that are having some unbelievable career and are definitely sort of ahead of me in the pecking order and everyone listening to this if i say think right now

of a person who you consider to be doing better better in inverted commas than you right you've got the person okay it's about how you now deal with that so we can all see it but you shouldn't ignore the people that are doing really well you should look at them and go what have they done that's brilliant ah i can learn this i can learn that because i do believe that almost all of the success that we have in life unless it's based on some natural ability that we're born with almost all the success that we have in life is about learn. It's like an algorithm. It's the learned behaviors. So when you're at school and you do,

you know, a bit of homework or something, I don't think it's about knowing exactly what happened in that book, Jane Eyre. I think it's much more about how do you learn the algorithm for delivering an essay about Jane Eyre that the people who are teaching you the class want to see? Putting the right paragraphs in, putting the right information in, putting a conclusion at the end. That's how school teaches us to be. And I think that life is like that as well. I think success is learned small behaviors that we are in control of. So you are in total control of going, I really want to be the best I can be. Of course you should be driven. Of course you should be ambitious. Of course you should be ambitious. Of course you should want to be the best. Of course you should look at other people.

But it's the way you do it. Yeah. It's the way you look at it. Use them as inspiration. And learning. Not as competition. Yeah. I mean, I'm a real firm believer in a phrase I use a lot, which is tell everyone everything

you know, because then you have to search elsewhere for some information. Yeah. And I see all the time, particularly in my industry and tv people coming through and i've had it myself when i was coming through people who are far more successful much further on the ladder will tell you nothing they will reveal nothing and they will say things like well you gotta learn that for yourself oh why should people learn it for themselves if you've learned that lesson bloody well tell someone equip them educate them leave them in a better place i think it's really important it's it's not it's interesting that

because everyone listening will know either they've done that themselves at one point in their life or they have had it done to them and here's the thing the way i see is in the short term sure that person who's withholding that information from you might feel as though I'm keeping Jake down a little bit so I can keep my share at the table here. But what that's doing to them internally, it's starting to corrode them like acid on the inside. It's not who we are as humans. I believe we are cooperative we like to lift people up around us i really feel that that stuff you think it's helping you but on the inside it is just crushing where's your growth i'm a real firm believer now that life's about growth where's your growth if

you're not sharing everything like i will happily tell you everything and anything that i've ever learned and then i'll go off and learn some more stuff and i want other people to tell you everything and anything that I've ever learned. And then I'll go off and learn some more stuff. And I want other people to tell me everything they've learned. I see everywhere that people are doing the same things that people have been doing for thousands and thousands of years. And that's why a podcast like yours or like mine, what I often say to people is, I say, look, let all of these people's lived experiences be your lesson. They've gone through a 20-year career and they're happy to sit down. Tell me everything that happened in those 20 years and I'm then going to share it with you.

So distill that 20 years into one hour, learn from them and be a better person for it. That's all that these conversations are. It feels great. You know, I'm super lucky that this podcast has proven to be as popular as it has and have all kinds of people, including, you know i'm you know i'm super lucky that this podcast has proven to be as popular as it has and have all kinds of people including you know asking you know advice on you know the mechanics of a podcast how do you make it work when we spoke on the first time you probably remember me peppering you with ridiculous questions about how you've done it all but

it comes back to i know you know loads of stuff i don't know i mean you're a doctor for a start right and that's why i have a professor with me on my podcast. Because I'll tell you, actually, the truth is when I first came up with the idea for high performance, I did have a real fear. And even now when I talk about it, it was probably a stupid fear because I now realize that through my conversations, other people's opinions should count for nothing. But my worry was that I would have this podcast. Hi, welcome to high performance. Let's delve into the minds of some high performing individuals I just had this fear that people would look at it and go mate you hosted Banzuki on children's BBC why the f do you think you are qualified to talk

to me about high performance and then I met Damien Hughes my co-host who was talking to the Norwich City First team and I thought wow this guy's. He's got so much knowledge and he is an amazing co-host. But amazingly, the whole premise of having two of us hosting that podcast was born out of my self-doubt, my insecurity, me putting myself in my own box of former kids TV presenter, and therefore writing a story in my head that was a negative one, that it was going to be a failure. Well, I should have written a positive story. We've all had that at times, haven't we? Yeah, and we still do. This journey, by the way, is never ending. Yeah, for sure. You know the right things, you've written about them, but it's not as if knowing it

means you can apply it every single day. It's a constant reminder, isn't it, that I am happier when I apply these principles. So what I love about the framework that you've given for high performance is you've gone from mindset to behaviors to teams. And we won't be able to talk about it all. we won't be able to talk about it all. But one of the first things that stood out to me, and it's probably because I'm in complete agreements, is you put something that high performance starts with a high performance mindset. So mindset comes before behaviors in the framework that you and Damien have created. in the framework that you and Damien have created. Yeah, yeah.

Why? Before we get back to this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing my very first national UK theatre tour. I am planning a really special evening where I share how you can break free from the habits that are holding you back and make meaningful changes in your life that truly last. It is called the Thrive Tour. Be the

architect of your health and happiness. So many people tell me that health feels really complicated, but it really doesn't need to be. In my live event, I'm going to simplify health and together we're going to learn the skill of happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you back in your life. And I'm going to teach you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good? All you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour.

And I can't wait to see you there. This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change. Now, journaling is something that I've been recommending to my patients for years. It can help improve sleep, lead to better decision making and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress, make it easier to turn new behaviours into long-term habits and improve our relationships. There are of course many different ways to journal and as with most things it's important that you find the method that works best for you. One method that you may want to consider is the one that I outline in the three question journal.

In it, you will find a really simple and structured way of answering the three most impactful questions I believe that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every evening. Answering these questions will take you less than five minutes, but the practice of answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was published in January, I have received hundreds of messages from people telling me how much it has helped them and how much more in control of their lives they now feel. Now, if you already have a journal or you don't actually want to buy a journal, that is completely fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three-question

journal completely free on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen to check it out, all you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash journal or click on the link in your podcast app. Because I don't believe that you can get the behaviours until you have the mindset. I think that everything comes down to mindset. And I think that you obviously learn when you're in a team and when you're in a big group of people, you can learn and you can adapt and you can change. But I think one of the big issues with creating the team is that unless your mindset is right, creating the team is really difficult. And that's why one of the most common questions that we ask people on high performance is, how do you distinguish the people that you should have

around you? How do you work out who should be in your team? And one of the really interesting common answers we get is tripwires. So we spoke to a director of rugby that said, well, when we recruit, we make mistakes and we see what people do with those mistakes. So they were looking for a physiotherapist and they sent out the letters and they made sure they put the wrong address on the letter for where to come for your interview because they wanted to see the reaction. So the first person goes to the wrong place despite being told at the time on the phone

somewhere else. Well, no attention to detail, no job. The other two ring up and they come to the right place. One of them comes and says, guys, you really need to sort things out because you gave me the wrong address on the letter and you told me one place, then the other. Thankfully, I managed to solve the problem by ringing you and I got it sorted. So, you know, just so you know for next time. So that person's immediately apportioning blame for what happened in that situation. Whereas the person that got the job

is the one that turns up and says, hey, no worries about the wrong address. These things happen. I understand that. So you need to work out your beliefs, your values, your mindset before you can start to build a team around you. Because I think it's the people you spend your time with is so important. So trying to work out those tripwires, work out what you really believe and work out what your values are. And then you start to attack the team side of high performance. And I believe that life is a team sport. I don't believe that you can do this on your own. I believe that the people around you

are so, so vital and so important and that's why we talk a lot about teams. Yeah. We get that when we think about an Olympic athlete, don't we? That yes, they're the one running through the finishing line, smile on the face.

They're the one on the top of the podium getting the gold medal. But we also understand that they've got a team around them. They've got their physio. They've got their trainer, their coach, their manager. We sort of get that. How do we apply that to family life, for example? Let's just say it's a parent who is struggling.

Work commitments commitments family commitments child commitments like never get any time right yeah can they apply these principles of teamwork do you think for them to get high performance in their lives 100 because the single biggest thing that comes through when you talk about teamwork is communication and I think the biggest issue in all of our lives is communication and it's quite often that we have people on the podcast and we talk to them like tell us about the power of communication and the answer I love is when they say well communication is telling everyone everything and I'm a real firm believer as I've already explained to you that I tell everyone everything and I think we need to live our lives like that. Because if you don't tell everyone everything, what happens?

Whether it's in a Premier League dressing room, whether it's on a stage with a load of actors all looking to perform well, or whether it's around the dinner table, people fill in the gaps, people fill in the blanks. And they try and fill in the story that you're not telling them and trying to work out exactly what is going on here. And I think that then impacts home life. how often you had a conversation with your wife and they say well I thought this or well you didn't tell me that so I thought this and I expected that and I and I doubted this and I was worried about that so communication in the home is no different to communication in the sporting world it's absolutely vital that we try and share everything we can and tell everyone exactly how we feel because there is no difference Rangan in your team at home or your team that are looking to compete in another place it's very important and it's it's hugely misunderstood I think the power

and the art of communication a term that repeatedly comes up in the book, which I really like, is high self-efficacy. Yeah. What is it and why is it important? High self-efficacy is understanding yourself, believing that you're great, believing that brilliant things are around the corner. What if you don't think you're great? around the corner. What if you don't think you're great? If you don't think you're great, you need to work at it. Because for me, that is the start of everything. The very beginnings of anything high performance come from believing that you're great. And I'm not saying, you know, there are things that I know that I'm not very good at, but even the things that I know I'm not

very good at, I believe I'm doing my best at. So it isn't actually about being brilliant at something. It's about doing the best that you can do. I mean, there's a lovely phrase, which is do the best you can to place you're in with the tools you've got. That's all we're asking people to do. I'm not asking anyone to just become an Olympic hurdler after they've gone and done the weekly shop, having worked a 65 hour week. No one's

expecting that but really it's about looking in the mirror and just remembering to say to yourself shit you've done a good job you've done a good job this week you've tried your best and i think the self-efficacy comes from the importance of remembering that failure is okay yeah because i think the one thing that knocks us down the most, when you say to people, believe you're successful, believe you're good, believe you can achieve loads, their brain naturally switches to the stuff they're poor at, the stuff they struggle at, the stuff that's difficult for them, the areas where they failed. So it's also about embracing your relationship with failure that makes it okay. You know, in my job, when I'm live on the television

and I make a mistake or I say something wrong, I get peppered with criticism on Twitter and other places. But I've managed to get myself into a place where I know that I'm always doing the best I can in the place I'm at with the tools that I've got. So that's all I can do. I can't do anymore. And we all need to understand that. The key words there for me, Jake, were I've managed to get myself to a place. I think that says everything. This is a process. This

is something we need to work on. We don't just read the book or hear the podcast and then boom we start applying it all no no we try we do it and we fail yeah and i've got to say one of my favorite bits in the book i think it was early on i think it's in the mindset section yeah when you present these three um you know world-class individuals chris hoy, Kelly Holmes, Ant Middleton, and you posed some questions. So I won't go through what they were. People can read that to see. But what I really took from that whole area, and it's something I've been thinking about a lot recently, particularly because of my experience in the London Marathon a couple of months ago. particularly because of my experience in the london marathon a couple of months ago but even these people we look up to and potentially put on pedestals they've all

failed at some point like even these olympic gold medalists there's a there's a bit in the book where you talk about kelly holmes crying in a hotel room in fr France about her abilities when she's one of the fastest women on the planet. You know, really powerful stuff that everybody fails. Even the people you're looking up to, they have also failed. More than anybody else. Successful people fail more than anybody else because they are the ones that are pushing the envelope all the time. They're the ones that have to get really comfortable with failure. And I think the people that we speak to have managed to reframe their opinion of failure. That's what it is.

It's about reframing. So if we talk about it in a sporting context, right? Instead of saying that, oh, my football club are training at the moment. They're not training at the moment. They're failing at the moment. They're not training at the moment. They're failing at the moment. Why are they failing at the moment? Well, because they're on the training pitch and they're taking loads of free kicks and loads of penalties and they're working on different shapes and they're trying to perfect their passing and they're getting it wrong.

So they're failing. And then when the match happens in front of 50,000 people on a Saturday in a football stadium, guess what? The pass, the free kick, the penalty, the corner, the shape, the plan, it all works. Why? Because of the days of failure on the training ground. But we don't see it as failure. We see it as training. You know, you go in the gym, I can see by your guns, you obviously use the gym, right? I don't, but I look after myself. So what does a personal trainer often say to people? All right, pick up those dumbbells and I just want you to lift them to failure. But you don't go, oh, that was a bad day in the gym. I bloody well lifted to failure. I can't believe it. I'm going to beat myself up. I'm going to tell myself I'm crap. I'm going to go home and

drink a bottle of wine because I failed. No, you understand it. You think of failure as a positive thing in the concept of growing your muscles. You can lift longer you can lift harder because you failed the growth is where the failure is and i think it's a really you know if i was to leave you with one lesson from today it is the reframing of failure that it isn't failure it absolutely isn't failure and these successful people have failed time and time and time again they keep on failing and i think one of the really important things you can do, right? When you get your head around failure and you realize that it's going to be there, whatever, that's when you feel the freedom to do things that you wouldn't normally do because the

failure is telling you it's not going to happen. That brain is saying it's not going to happen. So why are these successful people successful, right? But once you've discovered the situation regarding failure and you realize that it's not actually a negative thing, it's a positive thing, why are these successful people successful right but once you've discovered the situation rate regarding failure and you realize that it's not actually a negative thing it's a positive thing you seek it out you go and see someone and you say we've always spoken for years about doing this sod it i've got 500 quid in the bank and so have you it's enough to get us started let's see where it takes us you go to your boss and you say look for years i've worried i might fail at this but you know what i'm gonna take a crack at that job that you've been advertising. I'd love

to do it. I know it's a promotion. And what happens is people that we now consider to be successful, basically what they're doing, they're kind of, I heard it described as like buying lottery tickets. They're buying lottery tickets all the time. And one of them's coming off. And then we go, whoa, they were successful. Well, listen, for a start, they bought a lot of lottery tickets that led to nothing, but they kept on gambling. They kept on betting they were going to be successful. Why did they feel the freedom to keep on betting and keep on gambling and keep on pushing and keep on trying and keep on getting these lottery tickets? Because they got it through their heads that the failure that's

around the corner is not a full stop it's a comma yeah and you have to expect to fail start anything expecting to fail because then when the failure comes you're not derailed and you think shit man this isn't for me you go yeah yeah i was expecting this moment because quite often on the other side of that really difficult day or period of failure that's where the really good stuff is i love that i mean reframing failure so important you can even make a case that actually we need a new word correct we almost need to get rid of failure put it in the the memory bags just get rid of it when um when channel four got the paralympics and they they reframed all the advertising around the paralympics as superhumans watch the super

humans in action much nicer word than disabled yeah isn't it because they are super human individuals and it's it's all about reframing your so my granddad you know my grandma we've spoken about she spent her life or her late years looking after my granddad who um went to the farm one day wearing top hat and tails to go to a wedding he was a farmer and he got pulled into the potato picker on the farm taken into the machine and his back broken so he was then in a wheelchair and that's why she was his full-time carer for for the last sort of 30 years of his life well no one had told me as a young guy that being disabled had any negative connotations there were things that you couldn't do he was just my granddad and he was wonderful and him being in

a wheelchair was wonderful because everywhere we went i could ride on his lap i could push him i remember still now i can feel holding on the plastic handles, getting up loads of speed, and then standing on the two little bits of metal underneath and I'm flying down the pavement with my granddad. Or when he wasn't in his wheelchair, I perfected doing wheelies on it and I was fantastic. That was because no one had told me at that point.

The world hadn't got to me and said, hey, he's in a wheelchair. There must be things that are really difficult and hard, which of course there were very difficult for him. But again, it comes back to how we frame the world. And if you reframe failure, then you are going to win because you can't fail. You literally can't fail.

You can have bad days, but they're not going to be terminal because you can't fail. It's a hard concept though. How would you go back as the man and father you are now to little Jake who's going through a lot of pain when your grandparents die? when your grandparents die yeah how would you teach little jake now how to reframe that situation from the way he used to look at it and the way potentially he could look at it um i've got a really simple and very quick answer i wouldn't i would not choose to go back and sit myself down at 17 18 years of age and say, listen, mate, the bullying at school has given

you some resilience. The unfair sacking from a fast food restaurant has given you a real understanding of how people can be difficult in the world. Your grandma's suicide has given you a real understanding of the fact that there are struggles that you just don't know about. And therefore you need to be hugely empathetic to people. One of my favorite phrases in life is that opinion is the lowest form of knowledge. Don't walk around with a brain full of opinion, opinion about other people, opinion about the way they live in their lives, opinion of how they should be. Go at it with empathy because you've got no idea the baggage that they're carrying. And I could sit down and say all that to myself when i was a teenager but then what does that do removes all the learning yeah it takes away all the resilience there's a wonderful stoic phrase

which is one of my favorites no man steps in the same river twice because the river has changed and so has the man and you have to allow life i'm afraid to be a learning experience good and bad and there were things in your life that have been hard but not bad and you have to allow yourself to grow and you have to allow yourself to learn and you have to allow yourself to fail yeah i love the answer in ways, you don't want to fast track the learnings. You want to go through the valley. You want to experience the pain and discomfort and come out the other side. How good are the good days

if you haven't experienced those bad days? It's true. When I was in that pit lane, right, in Australia in 2009, and you know the famous, the chain, the theme tune that we use on Formula 1. boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I tell you now, I'm standing in that pit lane in 2009 and I'm looking at a TV camera

and I know we're going live on BBC One in 30 seconds. And I know that the public who, just to recap that story, the day that it got announced as the Formula 1 presenter, my wife rang me in floods of tears half an hour after the press release went out and she said i've just been on the internet and everyone thinks you're gonna be shit her exact words i said where did you read it and she said on the bbc sport website they had a forum at the time and there was loads of criticism about me getting the job so i stood there in the pit lane and i could hear the chain

and i knew my mom and dad because they texted me, got up and made a cup of tea and were spreading some jam on toast and sitting in the front room in the same house that I grew up in about to watch. I mean, how mad is that? About to watch their boy host Formula One on BBC One. And I knew that Niall,

this brilliant growth mindset boss that had given me the opportunity, taking a kid from kids' telly and put them into the world of Formula One was going to make his mind up about me. I knew the public were the same. I knew I was going from a bad place with them because they'd already been critical. I knew that my pundits, Martin Rund, David Coulthard and Eddie Jordan, were immersed

in a seeping knowledge about Formula One that I just didn't have. I knew all of that stuff. But as I heard the chain theme tune going into my earpiece, standing on my own in that pit lane in Australia, I thought back to the moment that I failed my A-levels. And I remember being an absolute bag of nerves, of course I was a bag of nerves. And I'm not saying that all the nerves disappeared at this moment. But when I thought about that A-level failure, I remember a pressure lifting from me and going you know what I am literally standing here because all those years ago I failed my a levels and that was such a grounding and such a

brilliant thought process to have the big or small versions of that happened to us every day and you will think back to moments where you suddenly go i know why this is happening and it was great for me and that's why not for one moment would i ever want to not have gone through difficult times i spoke to um anna lemke on the podcast recently who you know world leading expert in addiction she's written a brilliant book called dopamine nation and we were sharing how we've heard from so many people who have suffered with extreme addiction many of them said wouldn't change a thing they wouldn't change a thing they are so grateful for their addiction because when they did come out the other sides the learnings the life lessons that they had gleaned that they'd put into practice the struggles going back again going up going back that has made them yeah who they are And how often do we read in the newspaper

about someone winning the lottery or coming into a load of money and six months or six years later we read, it ruined them. It changed their lives. Too quick. You've got to go through the process. You look at it and go,

winning the lottery, that's good for me. Really bad mental health problem or a struggle with addiction or something, that's bad for me. And actually, as Anna describes, the winning the lottery can be horrendous for some people the personal issues can be amazing for some people yeah it's it's a fascinating area i mean really is i had my own issues when i first went to london i on reflection it was i just was i'd left norwich i remember my mom and dad driving away leaving me in this flat in central London.

I was a country boy. And I just had this, it overwhelmed me straight away. And then I couldn't move on from this point of being absolutely convinced that I was in some way mentally ill. I was certain of it. I was certain at any moment I was going to do something horrendous. And I know I went to see this brilliant counselor,

and she's the lady that really just said to me, this is your brain playing a trick. This is a really common thing for young men to go through. She called it an existential crisis. And I like to talk about it because, and I will talk to my son Sebastian about it as well, because she said this is so common for young men. But the sad thing is they think it's real and then they do the ultimate act of committing

suicide which is one of the reasons why suicide rates as we know with young men are so high yeah she said the fact you've come to see me is the first step please just totally trust me that there's nothing wrong with you because the people who have got something wrong with them don't worry about there's something being wrong with them they just go and do the things that you're worrying might happen she said just accept that these intrusive thoughts that you're having are really common they can easily be dealt with and you just need to accept they're there but not believe them and you know what over the course of the next few months and weeks after her saying that they just slowly melted away and to the point where you know i feel sort of rock solid mentally but again it's a good reminder that

i had a mental health problem that now i'm very glad i went through that because i want to tell anyone that will listen that nothing lasts forever nothing is permanent you know and it's a good thing to remember when you're having a good time as well as a bad time by the way yeah you know all things pass yeah it reminds you the candle story in some ways that it's just trying to stay level don't let the good times bring you up too much don't let the bad times bring you down too much don't let other people's praise elevate you too much otherwise otherwise the criticism yes it's going to bring you down also um and you know this reframing thing this reframing philosophy you know if you was asked me what is the single biggest high performance change i've made in my life over the past five years, it's reframing. It's turning a perceived difficulty or a perceived inadequacy or a perceived failure into a learning.

Like literally as we sit here today, I can think of two examples in the past 12, 24 hours. I went to London all day yesterday. I spent the day at Penguin talking about the new book and all kinds of things with that. And I thought, I must get back pretty early. I want to get a good night's sleep. Jake's coming tomorrow on the podcast. I want to be fresh. Train's running to time. Then suddenly, unfortunately, there was a fatality on the line. Then suddenly, unfortunately, there was a fatality on the line. Train ends up being, I think, two, two and a half hours late. And I remember I was letting my wife know because the kids were waiting up.

And I said, I'm not going to be home for bedtime. She goes, oh, poor you. You're supposed to be really frustrating. And I wasn't just saying this. I genuinely felt it. I said, hey, babe, it's not frustrating at all. You know, I can't control any of this. I'm totally fine.

I'll see you when I see you. And it's such a small thing, but I know four, five years prior to that, but yeah, you know, God, it's so irritating, isn't it? It would happen. You know, this whole, again, the truth doesn't matter. It's the story you put on it that determines my stress levels, how calm calm i feel and you react to those stories that you write for yourself like how many people do you know who feel unlucky feel it's

always them feel there's bad things around the corner they're listening to this conversation thinking this isn't relevant for me because i know i'm the person where the bad thing happens well that's such an unhealthy mindset to have and And reframe and just see, just explore. Find out what happens if you say, do you know what? For 2022, I'm going to believe that really good things are going to happen. Because you believe that good things are going to happen. Therefore, you act in a way where you believe good things are going to happen. Hey, guess what?

Good things happen. Guess what else happens? Success leaves clues. You realize you're behaving differently. The good things have happened. So you do more of it and more good things happen, guess what else happens? Success leaves clues. You realize you're behaving differently. The good things have happened, so you do more of it, and more good things happen. I know that sounds trite and simplistic, but it actually is that simple. It's true. But even if the good thing doesn't happen- Look at the mindset change. The process, the time you will spend in that process of it not going well, you're going

to feel fantastic. It's like if I say to you now, I don't know, let's think of two crazy things. This year, your podcast is going to become the number one podcast globally, right? Give that a score. Out of? Out of 10. The chances of that happening.

Oh, the chances of that happening? Less than one out of 10. Right, less than one out of 10. If of that happening oh the chances of that happening less than one out of 10 less than one out of 10 if i was going to give it and then the number one globally yeah but then if i come to you with something like um i think this year there's going to be a new podcast come on the scene which is going to be similar to yours also hosted by a doctor um and it's going to be really popular and it's going to really sort of knock your podcast right down the charts give that a mark out then instantly your gut reaction in terms of the possibility of it happening three four so already less than one is the chances of the really crazy good thing three or four

almost 40 is the chances of the also just as unlikely other thing happening but one of them is positive one of them is negative and you are naturally like we all are much more inclined to believe yeah the negative than the positive so there's no way of telling whether either of those things are going to happen this year i mean if i was in charge of the world your podcast would be the number one podcast globally because it's amazing. But the point is, to a greater or lesser extent, we're constantly faced with what-ifs. And we really have to try very hard to focus on the good what-ifs, not the bad what-ifs. It's a great example for the reason you've explained,

but also going back to the start of the conversation around success, happiness, and the sort of interplay between them. Let's say that did happen. Second scenario, right? Let's say another very similar podcast came out with a host who was having more resonance with an audience than me that could happen yeah of course you know i'm not like i just do my thing the way i do it there could always be someone who somehow connects in a in a deeper way what and i genuinely mean this i'm genuinely if i feel into my heart and i say this

Genuinely, if I feel into my heart and I say this, I honestly do not believe any more that would make me any less happy. So how have you got to that point? It's basically since my dad died. Why is that? Because when my dad died, it was the first time where i looked at my life with with the sort of viewpoint whose life are you living are you living your life or someone else's life yeah right it's the first time i'd

ever done that were you living his i don't think I was necessarily living his. But certainly, look, the truth is, you know, for a lot of Asian immigrant families, you know, my mum and dad came in the 1960s to the UK. Mum came in the 1970s. You know, we grow up thinking there are three possibilities in life. Doctor, lawyer, engineer. It's a cliche, but it's true. That is kind of the reality with which we live. So actually, I've shared this before that me becoming a doctor at 18, sorry, going to med school at 18,

it was no big deal. I don't say that to be glib in any way. I say that, that was just my reality. All my parents' friends, at least one of their kids went to med school. So it was like, yeah. Well, that was the box. That was the box. So of course it was going to happen because why? You'd been told all your life, this is what you're going to do. And so you told yourself, this is what I'm going to do. And we live up to what we believe. Exactly. Which speaks to what you're talking about. But essentially, I mean, what has been the change to the point now where I can now detach my perceived success from how happy I feel? I can't give you one small thing. It wasn't. It was consistency of applying myself to changing the way that I think, looking at friction in life, looking at failures,

trying to write a different story around them. Yes, I've done some inner work, a bit of therapy. I've done a sort of therapy called IFS, internal family systems, which has been life-changing for me. I'm going to speak to the guy who invented it in a few weeks on the show, which I can't wait for. But that helps you go back into your childhood, reframe it, but very quickly. It's not like CBT. You don't have to keep repeating something. You reframe it in the moment

and it sticks. It's been so powerful. But it's the little things, like I said to you, what happened on the train last night. Or I'll tell you another thing that happened, which is relevant to this part of the conversation. And I was at these meetings all day at Penguin. I thought, right, I've got to get out. I've got to get on this train. I want to get back on time. And as I'm getting to Euston to come back up to the Northwest,

I can see I've got a few missed calls from Gareth, my videographer. Gareth has shot every podcast for about two years now. I haven't done a single show without gareth and he said he's like mate i can't do tomorrow um you know there was a you know his son was struggling with something and he said um mate i can't do it so in that moment when i'm rushing to get this train i'm thinking well jake's up tomorrow. You've set up all the equipment in the studio. No one has ever utilised this equipment before. I was just calm. It wasn't like the way I could

have gone in the past, which was, oh man, I cannot believe it. We've changed the schedule. Jake's episode's coming out next week. If we don't record tomorrow, we're going to have a whole next Wednesday. None of that. It was just a case of, okay, cool. This is the situation. First of all, speak to Gareth, check his son's okay. Make sure I'm being compassionate first and foremost. But then talking to him about what do I do? Do I phone Jake? Do we cancel? Do we look into something? And then he goes, no, no, I've found a guy called Matt. I think he'd be perfect. And I was like very quickly it's like instead of thinking oh no how's this going to work so oh this is great now we've got an opportunity to have a second reserve videographer in case this ever happens again and you know Matt's sitting there in the

corner so far so good Matt yeah do you press record i have your pressure call yeah so this is great because now instead of it being something that could have taken me down a road i know this seems like a small thing it is very small but you know what it is a world-class basic and that's why it's such an important thing for people to hear because this is the most basic thing and actually very easy to go right i'm going to reframe that bit of thinking. World-class basics, they're tiny things that have huge impacts. I love it. It's a great way of looking at it. And I think these examples, we've all got the opportunity to do that every day. You know, take a moment of friction and go how can i how can i rewrite that story you know

before we finish jake there was so much we didn't get to but i love this idea of um non-negotiables yeah right what is a non-negotiable so a non-negotiable and this in some ways flies in the face of what i said earlier which is hold your beliefs lightly a non-negotiable, and this in some ways flies in the face of what I said earlier, which is hold your beliefs lightly. A non-negotiable are the things that people, either you or the people around you, must buy into. The things that you have to bring to the table that are non-negotiable. The things that you can't do without. For what? Success? Happiness? Well-being? I would say for life.

So it's something that permeates every part of your life. Now, when I first started the High Performance Podcast, my three non-negotiables were hard work, relentlessness, and all in. And I thought, a bit like Johnny Wilkinson did, that if you were relentless and all in, and if you scrapped and fought and pushed and harried, then that led to the success. And it's only through all the conversations that I've had with people that I realized that actually the relentlessness, yes, I'm absolutely relentless. And all in is relentless now for me. I'm relentless, but I'm also consistent. I think it's really important. Consistency for me is like a contract with yourself. You decide at the start of 2022

that you are going to live a life of being kinder to yourself, of looking for the positive outlook, of rewriting those negative thoughts that have impacted you for too long, of improving those personal relationships with the people around you, of starting your day off in the right way, of being kinder to yourself because the person you speak to most in your life is you. It's not your partner, not your child, not your colleagues, it's you. So you need to be consistent with all of that stuff because it's a contract with yourself and you need to know that from one day to the next, that stuff's going to be there and you're going to look after yourself. So I am relentless. I am consistent. But the biggest thing for me now is it has to make me happy. And I never had that before I started the High Performance Podcast. But it's a question I

ask myself all the time now. And that's why I want people to realize that picking up that book is not about getting to a place of high performance or even reading about other people's success, which makes you feel bad, right? It's about realizing that happiness is there for you. It is there for everyone. It is a choice. There are going to be bad moments and bad days really dark horrendous things can happen but just keep that happy element in your life and only decide to hang out with people and do things and take yourself to a place that makes you happy i think it's really important and the reason for doing the book right was that we have all these great lessons on these podcasts and we had a lady called joe malone you know who created the fragrance brand and she was diagnosed

with breast cancer and she said that when she had that diagnosis she suddenly saw the world in a totally different way we've spoken so much about reframing yeah all about reframing she reframed her thinking but then she says she got better and then business started up again and life got busy. And she felt like these amazing learnings, almost this epiphany that she had when she was told that she was ill. All those lessons started, her phrase was slipping through her hands like sand. You know, that feeling of trying to grab hold of sand and whatever you do, you can't grab it. And the reason for the book is I want people to have somewhere that they can go to at any time that brings together all those learnings it has practical takeaways it has

lessons for them to carry out but most of all it's there so that all the things that we've spoken about on this podcast are going to be there for you so it doesn't slip through your hands like sand you can go there at any time and you've got a companion that you can just spend five minutes with and just refocus and reframe i think and i just want to add that we barely scratched the surface there is so much kind of practical wisdom yeah in the book which i think you know the right person is going to get so much out of because as you say thank you you talk to all these incredible people each week so it's trying to how do you condense that and share that information with people um jay this podcast is called feel better live more when we feel better in ourselves we get more

out of life and although you talk and write about high performance, in order to perform well, you have to feel good in who you are. The two things are not different. They're completely aligned. So how I like to finish off, for people who have been inspired, you go, all right, I was a bit skeptical about high performance, but I get now how high performance applies to me i want a bit more of it in my life what are your final words of wisdom i think what i would say finally is that i want to leave you with three really important thoughts. The first one is to understand that the bad days

and the difficult days pass, everything passes. And just because, let me please just remind people that just because something is hard for you, it is not bad for you, even though at the time it feels like it is. I'd love people to look at their lives and really understand the difference between fault and responsibility. Things will happen to us all the time. We've just gone through a global pandemic.

That's no one's fault, but it's still our responsibility to deal with it. The story that you shared about being on the train or your colleague not being able to record this podcast, neither are your fault, still your responsibility. that's basically what you've done you've separated the difference between fault and responsibility I think that is really important and I think the final thing that I would like to say to people is just go easy on yourself I think sometimes you can hear a conversation like this and you can listen to two guys that are loving having a brilliant successful podcast and are writing books and you can listen to it thinking as i did for so many years well that's your story this is mine

you've got no idea what i'm going through and everything's crap i would just say please be good to yourself because being good to yourself is the beginning of opening everything up yeah and the beginning of that period of exploration and if you can live a life of exploring then i think you live a life of growth and if you live a life of growth then you will you will grow to a place of positivity. And it is, I promise you, it is there for you. Whoever you are, whatever's going on, you can find it. You can find it.

I love that, Jay. Thank you. And I think the subtitle of your book really fits in beautifully there. Lessons from the best on becoming your best. And that really says it all. Jay, you're doing incredible work. You're helping so many people i

love that you are following your passion you've got this meaning this purpose uh you've also got a brilliant way of sharing these ideas with people thanks for coming on the show and i can't wait we get together again it's been an honor thanks a lot really hope you enjoyed that conversation as always do think about one thing that you can take away and start applying into your own life and before you go just a couple of things to quickly mention first of all in this podcast and previous ones you may have heard me touch upon some of the concepts in my upcoming book happy Happy Minds, Happy Life, which is all about the relationship between happiness and our health. It contains practical tools on how we can build

resilience, reframe negative events, and ultimately work on our minds to have more peace, calm, and contentment. If that sounds of interest, please do consider pre-ordering the book. All links to pre-order on both sides of the Atlantic are in the episode description in your podcast app. Pre-orders really do make such a big difference to how much visibility a book is given on publication. So any support is really, really appreciated. And secondly, just a quick reminder to sign up for my Friday 5 newsletter. And secondly, just a quick reminder to sign up for my Friday Five newsletter. It is my weekly email containing five quickfire ways to improve your health and well-being.

It contains content that I do not share on social media. And in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. And I think either this week or next, I'm going to be writing about the five books that I've enjoyed reading the most over the past year. If this sounds like something you would like to receive each Friday, you can sign up for free at drchatterjee.com forward slash Friday Five. As always, if you enjoyed today's podcast, it is always appreciated if you take a moment to share it with your friends and family, leave a review on Apple Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. And please do press follow on whichever podcast platform you

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