Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - Gareth Southgate on The Football Skills That Transfer to Life #140

Episode Date: December 16, 2020

Today’s guest joins me fresh from a run of autumn camps with the England football team. He’s their manager, Gareth Southgate OBE, and I speak to him about his new book, Anything Is Possible. It’s not really a football memoir, but more a guide to life and there are brilliant lessons for all of us in there – non-football fans included! Gareth had an illustrious career as a professional football player in the 1990s and as England manager, took the England team to the semi-finals of the 2018 FIFA World Cup for the first time in 28 years. We discuss how Gareth achieved this by employing psychologists (such as my former guest Pippa Grange), modelling emotional intelligence and communicating with each player as an individual. He promotes a mindset of positive drivers not negative drivers: focusing on what players might achieve, rather than what might go wrong. Most importantly, he reinstated a sense of fun. I love his humble, warm, inclusive approach. Under his watch, footballers have started to look more like role models again. Gareth explains how he used to be a shy teenage player and with his book, he aims to help youngsters get over self-limiting beliefs, nerves and anxieties and learn to be brave – and he shares some great dressing-room stories with me as examples. It may be written for children and young people, with Gareth’s role as ambassador for The Prince’s Trust in mind, but it contains universal wisdom for all ages. I had so much to ask him, and we managed to cover topics from how players cope without a crowd, to how he breaks the news when someone’s not made the team and the real meaning of bravery. We talk about the pressures on players from social media but also how it can be a force for good, helping Raheem Stirling and Marcus Rashford change attitudes and lives through their respective campaigns against racism and childhood hunger. I can’t emphasise enough that you don’t need to be into football to appreciate this conversation. It’s about having confidence, working hard, taking responsibility and being authentic. It was such an honour to speak with Gareth and he’s certainly reignited my love of the beautiful game. I can’t help but agree with him that when we come together in a positive way over sport, it has the potential to change the world. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Show notes available at https://drchatterjee.com/140 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk 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.

Sometimes those moments where you're not in good form or you're not at your very best but you still put yourself forward and you still accept the challenge, I think they're moments of really extreme bravery and it's you stepping out of your comfort zone and I think to achieve anything worthwhile in life there are moments we have to step out of what's comfortable for us. Hi, my name is Rangan Chatterjee. Welcome to Feel Better Live More. Hello and welcome to another episode of my podcast. Now today's guest is someone you may not expect to find on my podcast, but I am of the strong belief that all of us can learn something from every single person we meet. And I believe that some of the best lessons can be learned in some very unlikely places.

In this week's show, I speak to the current England football team manager, Gareth Southgate, who's written a brand new book called Anything Is Possible. Now, it's not really a football memoir. It's more a guide to life, and there are some brilliant lessons in there for all of us, non-football fans included. Now, I want to be super clear right at the start of this podcast. This conversation is just as relevant to people who are not interested in football as to those who are big fans. Now Gareth had an illustrious career as a professional football player in the 1990s and as England manager, took the England football team to the semi-finals of

the 2018 FIFA World Cup for the very first time in 28 years. By discussing how Gareth did this, I think we can all learn lessons about our own lives, whether that's our work, our relationships, the way we are with our kids, whatever it is in life you want better performance in, I think this conversation is going to help you. Now, Gareth has always employed psychologists, such as my former guest, Pippa Grange. He's always wanted to model emotional intelligence and communicate with each player as an individual. He promotes a mindset of positive drivers, not negative drivers, focusing on what players might achieve rather than what might go wrong. Most importantly, he reinstated a sense of fun,

and I'm a big fan of his humble, warm, inclusive approach. Gareth also explains today how he used to be a shy teenage player. And with his book, he aims to help youngsters get over their self-limiting beliefs, nerves, and anxieties, and learn to be brave. He shares some great dressing room stories with me as examples of how we can all do this. Now it may well be written for children and young people with Gareth's role as ambassador for the Prince's Trust in mind, but it does contain universal wisdom for all ages. I had so much to ask him. We managed to cover all kinds of topics, including how players cope without a crowd, to how he breaks the news when someone's not made the team, and the real meaning of bravery.

We talk about the pressures on players from social media, but also how social media can be a force for good, helping Raheem Sterling and Marcus Rashford change attitudes and lives through their respective campaigns against racism and childhood hunger. I can't emphasise enough that you do not need to be a football fan to appreciate this conversation. What it's really about is having confidence, working hard, taking responsibility and being yourself. It was a real honour for me to get some time with Gareth. I really think you're going to enjoy this conversation. And now onto my conversation

with the warm, caring, compassionate Gareth Southgate. Gareth, for me, what's really interesting is I've been flicking through your book for a few weeks, and I'm aware that many people listening to my podcast or watching it probably are not going to be interested in football. Some will, of course, some won't be. But I feel that the lessons that you're sharing, the wisdom that you're sharing, I feel has relevance for all of us, whether football fans or non-football fans. And that's because these are some quite core lessons for life. Yeah, that was the purpose of taking on the project, really. Initially, I obviously work a lot with young people in my role and I also work do a lot of work with the

Prince's Trust in particular and that age range of sort of 11 to 30 and I just felt that in the role I have mine is a voice that can be heard and that for young people especially, but as we've gone through the process, I think it's applicable to probably all ages, there are lots of anxieties, lots of concerns, lack of confidence, lessons that you learn as you go through life, which definitely transfer across professions. And so the initial hope was to produce something that for young people in a time of great uncertainty provides some comfort,

perhaps some inspiration and the recognition that they're not the only person feeling the way they do about certain situations in their life. Yeah, that's something, Gareth, that I learned very early on in my career as a doctor is the simple acts of listening to a patient and sometimes just simply saying, hey, you know what, that must be really hard. I've already seen five people today who are sharing the same things as you are. The feeling people get when they know they're not the only ones, I think is very, very powerful and very much undervalued, I think, within my profession, but actually within the public as well.

I remember being in the dressing room after a big match with England, and I always got a little bit apprehensive before games. But as I got older, I recognised I could control that. But we had an outstanding goalkeeper, David Seaman, who you'll know from previous big matches with Arsenal in England. And he was an unflappable character in everybody else's mind. And he came in after the game and said oh god I was so nervous before the game and and I remember thinking oh my goodness that

Dave Seaman even gets nervous and and it was a real um potent message and moment in that I then started to look around the dressing room a lot more carefully and saw how people behaved and how actually everybody was experiencing the same things. Am I going to be able to perform today? Am I in a good place mentally? Am I physically right? But everybody hid those feelings in a different way and it was almost an unspoken in the dressing room. And I've found that it's been very helpful as a coach to be able to recognize that that's a process that all players go through, but undoubtedly all people go through. Yeah. And my 10-year-old son has been

reading your book for the last couple of weeks. I see him in bed at night, flicking through. And I don't know what age, in fact, what age group is it targeted for, would you say? Well, I would say 10 to, our initial thought was 18, 19. But I'm recognising that there are messages in there that definitely work for people that are older. And even if it's not directly for them, maybe how they feed back to their children or how they recognize signs in their children where they might need support or help or the right sort of feedback. Yeah, it's really interesting how different age groups are taking something from it. Gareth, I would say there's universal life wisdom in there. So I have learned things

myself, you know, in my early 40s, I can learn from some of these tools that are in the book. And I think that's the beauty of some of these truths that exist. Yes, we want to teach our young people these truths, but they're just as relevant for us as adults. And in some ways, because it's communicated for young people, actually, I learned this when I was doing some BBC One shows, is that the producer said to me, if you want to communicate with the public at large on BBC One in the evening, communicate with the public at large on BBC One in the evening, you have to say it in a way that an eight-year-old can understand it. I remember Gareth thinking at the time, oh, I don't want to dilute my message. I've got complex things to get across. But then I realised,

no, no, you're absolutely right. If you can communicate it to an eight-year-old, you can communicate the same idea to an 80-year-old or a 40-year-old. And I think there's something very powerful about trying to communicate with that particular audience because I think you speak to so many people beyond that as well. That's fascinating because when we're working with the team,

one of our challenges is that we would have a lot of information that we would like to give them but we're always having to think how do we make complex situations simple and how much information do we give them so that they're not clouded and they're not confused and yeah to to as to work as you have and communicate to a mass audience, as we're seeing now with government messaging, it really does need to be as simple as possible. And the clarity is really crucial. Yeah. I mean, I imagine communication is something that will always have been important to you in your role. Certainly, I don't know every stage of your career, but I know from reading that you've often been a captain. You're now the

manager of the England football team, which is the national sport. So therefore the pressure and the intensity that may come with that. But ultimately, your ability to do your job, I'm guessing, in a large part comes down to your ability to communicate with your players, with your team, but also with the media. So in terms of communication, that also feels as though it's one of those transferable skills. You have this beautiful thing at the end of the book, the transfer list. And I really like it because I think it's a lovely thing for children to look at and go, well, this skill is going to stand me in good stead in a whole variety of different roles in my life. And I wonder, you know, were you always a good communicator? Is that something you've worked on

yourself? And do you now consider yourself to be a better communicator than you were, let's say, compared to the start of your career? Well, no question. I was quite an introvert in terms of personality. My natural tendency is to be slightly withdrawn. That's where I get my energy that's where I'm probably more comfortable um and it's only through experience of having to step up and maybe initially I don't know read things in assembly at school or um read things in something in front of a class and slowly because I in the football sense was probably a bit more sensible than some of the others I ended up as the captain and so you're in a leadership position partly by default at first really but you're given more opportunities to develop and each time you're confronted by those

new situations you learn you you get things wrong you learn you adapt you reflect on how it might have been better and so there's no question that I then started to study other people and how they interacted and I think the biggest lesson I've learned across that period of time from going from playing to managing was that I probably at the start would communicate with all of the team in the same way treat everybody the same that was fair but actually that doesn't work because we're all individual we all respond in different ways we all have different interests we all have different strengths and so the ability to communicate across different levels i think is really important from a coaching perspective

especially now that's very very fascinating for me gareth because i thinking i'm thinking about the audience who are listening right now and there'll be people who run companies the audience who are listening right now. And there'll be people who run companies or are managers of employees, but there'll also be parents who've got various members of the family, right? So I always think we can learn something from every single person we meet. And I feel we can also learn from the so-called elite in society. And I say that in inverted commas because, you know, it's something we can explore later on, but we do put people like yourself and footballers on a pedestal. And I think there are some potential negatives across society of doing that. But I feel we all want high performance in our own life. You know, I want high performance in our own life. I want high performance as a doctor, as a husband,

and as a father. You want to help your players perform well as footballers. And so if you're saying that the way to get the best out of an elite football team is that you've learned to communicate differently, I'm feeling that there's a huge take home there for all of us. And that maybe the message that we give to one of our employees or our colleagues has to be altered when we're talking to other people. So I wonder if you could just sort of explain to us, how do you do that? If you're trying to communicate with everyone, is it something you pick up with intuition? Do you have to do this separately? I'm basically trying to see what are the kind of take home tools for us non-elite footballers and how can we apply that on our own lives well i think family is fascinating example of that because anybody that has more than one child will know that they are totally different so the nature nurture argument is is a fascinating one my two have grown up in the

same household they're four years apart in terms of their age but completely different characters and um so i would have to deal with them differently and it's no different with the team i'm old enough to be dad to most of the team um so having an understanding of their background their interests their motivations um they're all their stories are so different and the way their the way their brains are wired is slightly different some have far greater individual motivation some are um on the personality profiles they'd be they'd want more structure they'd want more order some want brief communication some want to sit and chat and um i think the more you can understand your staff or your players because it I think this is transferable our staff are just as important in our team we've got more staff than we have players

so also getting them aligned and making their work purposeful and making them feel valued then the team can really fly because they've got the best support around them that they could have do you think being the manager and learning how to deal with that role pressure intensity expectation and your ability to handle that do you think that's made you a better parent well being being a parent has probably made me a better England manager. I think that if I'm reading a book, I'm always looking at what might this mean for work? What might this mean for home? And sometimes it would be nice just to sit and read a book and enjoy it and go with it.

But I'm always kind of attributing these little lines and phrases and observations. I definitely think that I've got better at dividing my time and switching off at home. time and switching off at home you know I recognize that when I was a younger manager and and also the club game is relentlessly week after week day after day with the international team we get some breaks but I have to make sure that I give my family time and give myself time to recharge and re-energize and I think that separation of work from home for me is really important. How do you do that, Gareth? Because I think that that time to switch off and recharge and relax is something that has slowly been eroded out of society.

I think technology is a huge part of that. I don't want to blame technology because I don't necessarily think it's the tool. It's what gap does that fill? It's how do we use it? And I have talked about that on the podcast before, but I'm interested as to how do you, when frankly, it's one of the highest profile roles in British society. You know, I mean, people can argue that, but I certainly think it's certainly right up there. So how do you manage to switch off? Because many people who are not in such elite role say they struggle. It's too hard for them to do that. So I wonder if there's anything that we can learn from you in terms of the sort of routines and strategies you put in place to allow yourself to do that.

Yeah, I think a fascinating area. Firstly, so important to delegate and to show trust in your staff that work with you. Again, when I was a younger coach, I thought I had to do everything. I thought I had to be the bearer of all knowledge and the expert in every area. And that's A, impossible and B, definitely impossible for me. So I've got brilliant people that work with me, which means I share the load, firstly. Secondly, then I have to find the right times to switch off. There are times during the year where I need to be aware of what's being written and what's being said

because I need to have an understanding of what's going on in the world and there are certain topics I might be asked about in a press conference. But then there are other times when to read the media or read social media would just fill my head with negativity and indecision and would actually distract me. And I know that there are times when I've read things and it's changed my mood and how I feel. And I think that's a massive concern for me with everybody, but especially

young people who can be so affected and influenced by social media. And I know from experience, I very rarely read everything and feel better about life. Whereas actually, if I switch off from the media for a few days when we're in camp everything could be breaking out around me and there could be all sorts of criticism of the team but I don't feel any of that pressure that you're talking about because I'm just looking at how we performed logically talking to the staff around me and working strategically to improve. So I think there's a real challenge. As you said, things like email originally was brilliant. You know, we've got this tool now that we don't have to walk to the post box, post a letter and wait three days for a reply.

We can get an instant reply. But now we get this little noise on our phone that pings that that sends the brain into an area that's not relaxing and not switching off and even the idea of working from home during lockdown which originally everybody thought how great for work-life balance now we're sat in the office from seven till seven and the danger is we never come out of the office and we never have that switch off point. So I think it's a fascinating area. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I reframe working from home for people as you're now living at work.

And it totally changes everything. It's like, oh, yeah, no wonder I'm stressed out all the time. No wonder I've got no time to switch off. But, you know, Gareth, this area is something I'm so passionate about. And it's this idea that you're in camp, you've got to have high performance from yourself and from your team and your staff, right? So at what point does external opinion become helpful? And at what point does it detract from what you're doing and i think that's a really fascinating area that we can all think about

because it's never been easier than to get an opinion on what you're doing right you just post about it and then you know there's no no shortage of people willing to share their opinion, particularly if you're England manager, because everyone kind of thinks they could do a better job. You know, it's one of those things. Why did he pick him? You know, I would have done that. I would have put this guy on the left wing. You know, it's one of those, we all think we can do the job, right? But only one of us is doing it. And it was interesting for me that you said there are various times when you do think it's important to hear what the world is saying. And there's times when it isn't. And I'm wondering how you

determine what that thing is, because I find the more I switch off to opinions, whether it's on this podcast or when I'm writing a book, like I feel I can start to come you know I can start to feel what I really think I'm not as influenced as much by what the world thinks because if you hear enough opinions if you hear the same opinion 20 times you start to think that's what you think but I've been questioning is it what I think or is it just what everyone around me is saying and therefore I believe it and I don't know if you have any, like, how do you decide when you do need to know rather than when you can switch off? Yeah, I think that's, that is a really good challenge to ask because there's no question if you keep reading the same things, then in the end it affects your ability to make a decision without any bias.

And trying to make decisions without bias when we're dealing with a talent program and we're dealing with selection is very, very difficult because you form opinions of players, you form opinions of people. You form opinions of players, you form opinions of people. And we've really got to have an open mind to people, young people especially can improve so quickly. They can turn around behaviours, they can rehabilitate things. They can maybe move to a different environment, a different club and receive an injection of energy and motivation so

it's very important to keep an open mind and I have to make sure that within the group of staff we work with we've got people who have different views of the world and who are prepared to challenge and I think for any leader that's one of the biggest challenges you face. Are people really prepared to give you an honest opinion and go against what the leader might think? And very often that means I'll withhold my own opinion until a lot of other people have spoken so that I'm not affecting their freedom to speak and their feeling that, well, am I safe if I go against what the boss is thinking? Now, that word safe, I think, is huge because I think ultimately what we're all craving is that feeling of safety, whether it's in our relationship with our partner, with our boss, with our colleagues,

with our friends, you know, that whole idea of, are we okay to really express how we feel without getting a lambasting or being criticized or feeling stupid or shameful? And, you know, I know we share a mutual friend in Pippa Grange. And when Pippa came on the podcast, it was a huge hit with the listeners and the viewers. I love what she talks about how fear ultimately is at the root of many of our behaviours and our actions and our emotion. You know, that's often the root emotion that drives a lot of the way that we are. But is this something you had to learn? You've always been a leader, you're a captain, you're a manager. Was it hard initially when somebody would say, hey, I completely disagree, I actually would do it this

way? Did you have to learn to not take that personally? Was that a process you have to go through? Because I think many of us were scared. Actually, we feel as though it is personal, but actually it's not personal. It's just someone's got a different opinion and that's okay. Yeah. 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.

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If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. forward slash live more. I think generally I've always been open to suggestions of how to improve because as a player, I was a sponge really. I wasn't the most talented player, so I knew I had to maximize my ability and whether there was some advice that could improve my diet or improve me physically or improve me tactically, I always was searching for the next book, the next person that could deliver something that I might take to improve. could deliver something that I might take to improve. I think what I found took me a while as a manager was to recognize that some staff have a reluctance to speak out. They maybe fear

losing their job or they maybe fear losing that relationship. And until you have real trust as a group that you can speak as openly as we're talking about then I think people are reticent to give a really strong opinion it worried that you might think oh well that opinion's no good so they as a person are not up to the not up to the task and that's just simply not the case and if you've got a group of staff who are holding back, how much are we missing out on? How much improvement as a group are we missing out on if people aren't offering new ideas? Yeah, absolutely. What's interesting to me, Gareth, is that I remember when the World Cup started in 2018, my kids' school asked me to give a talk for their speech

day. And I thought to myself, how am I going to connect with these kids? And I thought, well, everyone's watching the World Cup at the moment. Everyone's kind of sunshining and everyone's happy with how the team are doing, which you obviously know that what the sort of feeling and the national feeling of pride and buzz that happens when England advance in a tournament. I thought, well, this is a way to connect with them. This is a way to get them to connect with me and listen to what I have to say. And I use various examples, but you came up because one thing that I think impressed everyone was the way you interacted, the respect you had, the kindness, there was just such a warmth from you that I certainly saw, that much of the country saw, that made us feel good. And I really

focus on that with the kids, you know, and they really got it. And I really thought it was a powerful message to teach them, but many of them still stop me at the school gate and talk to me about that. So that's a really nice thing. But, you know, where did you get this from? Is this something that, you know, has always been there in you? You seem like a decent human being who thinks it's the right thing to treat everyone the way you'd like to be treated yourself. But that's not always the impression the public gets of football and footballers. Yeah, yeah. I think the line you used there,

I was always brought up in that way, treat people as you would like to be treated. I think a lot of that came from my parents. And then a couple of youth coaches I had when I was mid to late teens, they were very big on developing us as a group of men, as well as as footballers. And they would drum it into us that, look, we actually, when I was in the reserves at Crystal Palace,

we couldn't field a full team. We had half the team who were apprentices, half were young professionals. We would bring guys in who played in the local non-league. They'd play on a Saturday for some beer money, but they had a job. We had a guy who used to work at Covent Garden Flower Market so he would go to work at three in the morning do his shift and come and play for us in the reserves

we were full time and he was our best player so it really gave us a balance of hang on a minute we're not so special here and there's another world out there that sometimes as young professionals, you're not conscious of. I think some of the guys that come into the game a bit later, we've got a couple now, Tyrone Mings has had a journey where he was working for a living, playing non-league football,

has gone on a long journey and is now in england international of course he has different life experiences that have made him more rounded and a different appreciation for the position he's in perhaps um and i think that's key we are ordinary people doing an extraordinary job simple as that We're not any better or worse. We still have the same issues that everybody has at home. We've all got kids who are worried about exams and what the future is going to hold. But we just happen to be in a high profile role at this moment in time. Yeah. It's a lovely way to look at it. You mentioned before, Gareth, that you always knew that maybe you weren't the best player, but you always looked for these little things that,

you know, I guess you could upskill, let's say your weaknesses. You know, what can I learn? How can I improve my diet a little bit? How can I improve that? And that's, it made me think of the book because there's one line that I wrote down. You said it's really important to be able to identify your strengths. And I really liked that. And, you know, having awareness is such an important skill for kids, teenagers, adults, you know, Without awareness, we can't really change. We can't progress. We need that awareness. So it's interesting for me that you talk about that in the book. You talk about kindness. You talk about bravery. You talk about perception of things and how we can change that perception. There's a theme of controlling the controllables. And I've just

spent the last couple of days really diving deep into Stoic philosophy. And they're very much into, I don't know. Okay, let me give you an example. They're very much into controlling the controllables. So from what I've read, there's a story that is often referred to about, if you're an archer, okay, so you shouldn't be worried about whether you hit the target or not. You should be worried about, or not worried, you should focus on practicing, cleaning your bow, cleaning your arrow. You can, you know, all the things within your control, how you take the bow back, everything until the arrow has left the bow. Because at that point,

what happens to it is out of your control, whether it hits the target, whether the wind blows, all those things, there's nothing you can do about that. It's about controlling on the, it's controlling the controllables in your life. And I'm interested as how the archery story plays in

for you as a football manager, in terms of what, I imagine there may be some themes there that that uh that sort of resonate in terms of what you say to footballers absolutely and I think when we're if I reflect on being a player I was so focused on we have to win uh and I have to perform well and I wasn't good at breaking that down. Indirectly, I was doing it because we were training well all week. And what I know now is that you transfer the way you train through the week into the game on a Saturday.

But I hadn't broken those targets down. And so if I talked to our team about being world champions, well, that's exciting, but it's also and so if I talked to our team about being world champions well that's exciting but it's also a bit scary because when we took over the team we were 14th in the world so although we might think we can be first that's a big leap and that the bigger the leap the bigger the pressure if if you feel that actually there isn't so much evidence of results that you can get there. So to get to first in the world, we've got to start to regularly beat the best teams. But that's also a little bit too far away. Well, how are we going to beat the best teams? What are we going to do each day in our preparation? And how are we going to prepare

individually for training so that we're ready to train well every day and very slowly you you break these things down into small chunks I talked about the time I ran a marathon where I'd never run further than five kilometers but if you can run five you can probably run six and slowly you build it up and it doesn't seem so unmanageable. And I think that's something as young people, especially we can, we can break those things down and they're not worrying too far ahead. No, no, no. Can you get the right amount of sleep? Can you eat the right things? Can you get exercise? And then, then you'll be able to be focused in your lessons and you'll be able to concentrate better and you'll be open to listening a bit more and slowly you're working towards the ultimate goal. And I think that's one of the powerful things about you writing this book is so many young kids and teenagers love football. They look up to footballers. So as you shared before, a footballer

who also feels nervous before a game. Oh, wow. I didn't, oh man, I didn't know he felt nervous. He scores goals every week. He feels nervous. Oh, maybe it's okay for me to feel nervous in my life before my exam. That's very powerful because, you know, I've always, you know, it's clear to me that we connect over stories. It's not logical facts that changes human beings' minds. It's a connection through our hearts, through storytelling. and I think that's where these stories that you put in the book is so valuable for people um I mean Gareth you there's a big thing on bravery in the book and actually it's in the subtitle I think yeah anything is possible is the name of the book be brave be kind and follow your dreams I want to break down those

three things in the subtitle starting with bravery I want to break down those three things in the subtitle, starting with bravery. I want to know what exactly you mean by bravery. And the quote from your book that I wrote down was bravery doesn't always come naturally, but it exists in all of us. But we have to understand ourselves first. That was really powerful for me. and I wonder if you'd mind expanding yeah with the um with the football team as an example bravery when I was playing was considered a physical thing and um you you went in for the big tackles and you put your body on the line and and yeah actually what about the little skinny kid who was playing on the wing? He was actually always available for the ball where some of the bigger guys were hiding because they were frightened of losing the ball. And so he might actually have been the bravest person on the pitch because not only was he the smallest,

so he was getting kicked by everybody and had to find a way to survive. So lots of skillful players are skillful because they had to survive amongst the big kids and they found a way of developing their skills. But he also had the mental toughness and resilience to take the ball, even if the team were losing and he was giving the ball away, he'd come back for it again. And sometimes those moments where you're not in good form or you're not at your very best, but you still put yourself forward and you still accept the challenge, I think they're moments of really extreme bravery. And I talk in the book about that moment we've all been in where we're in a crowded room and

somebody says any questions and most of us have got one and none of us put our hand up and that happens in the football dressing room it happens in the classroom and I really admire the kids who do put their hands up because that as I've tried to explain to them is that is the first sign of bravery you know you've been bold enough to put your hand up um and your contribution might be right might not be right but it it's valid and it's you stepping out of your comfort zone and I think to achieve anything worthwhile in life there are moments we have to step out of what's comfortable for us yeah yeah i love that as you say that i i think gareth about that word bravery and how much

of it has been influenced by masculineness and potentially i mean i don't love the term but potentially that whole concept of toxic masculinity and what does it mean to be brave or what does it mean to be a man? Because ultimately, the bravest thing, as you say, is in many ways, it's about vulnerability, isn't it? Authenticity. Can you really be yourself? I actually believe that the bravest thing we can do, self? I actually believe that the bravest thing we can do, and it's what I guess I'm on a personal quest to do for myself, but I see it all around me is, are you brave enough to be you? Like really you? Or do you want to keep all these masks on and hide? Bravery, as you say, it's not about necessarily that big, hard tackle. it's about being able to take off

those masks and say this is who I am warts and all well I think I would never have written this book 15 years ago um because I would have been worried that a people would have would have had a strong strong view of, you know, why are you talking about these things? I wouldn't have wanted to open up about some of the failures that I had in the same way. I would have felt that was a weakness. And I would have been worried that people would be saying,

well, he's not focusing on the job. Why isn't he just getting on with his job? And yet, actually, I know that I've got a few days holiday, I'm not going to be flying off anywhere. So to spend some time actually working on this book and a project that I hope will help other people things that I would have kept to myself in the past. And that's probably because I'm older. I've made so many mistakes. I'm less worried about them. I know I'm going to make more. I accept my fallibilities, but also I know I'm in a role where my voice might land with some people and help them and that's why I took this project on really and it links with the Prince's Trust as well and their work around you know helping young people to develop. It's interesting as you talk about that transition from 15 years ago 10 years ago you wouldn't have released a book like this. You wouldn't have written it. You wouldn't have put it out there because of a fear of what would people

say about me, right? What you do when you can be brave in that context, and I really love the way you talk about bravery, which is why I asked about it, is it's a freer way to live. Because if you show the world who you are, warts and all, then there's nothing to hide from anymore. Because this is what you see is what you get. There's nothing there that I've hidden that you can expose me for. No, I put it all out on the table. And I wonder how that plays into elite footballers because there is such a microscope on the England players. There is such judgment on footballers when they may take one foot wrong. And it's really interesting because how do you sort of, how do you help your footballers be more themselves yeah really really good question um the intensity and the um the immediate reaction has never been stronger and more difficult for

them so of course there's the obvious that they're they're rewarded financially better than any previous generation of players but the restrictions on them because of that and the expectations of them because of that have grown exponentially and I don't think it's as much fun and and I'm a bit old-fashioned but I do think work's got to be fun as well there's got to be you know the joy in enjoyment is is a big big part of that word and um when when you start playing a sport or you start doing something that you love maybe playing an instrument or or cooking or artists um you you you generally do it because you love doing it and one of the biggest challenges is when it then becomes your job it becomes too serious and you lose the essence of why you started and i think that's one of the challenges

we have with the players all the time how can we make them feel as free as when they were playing as young kids when there's all this expectation and noise and judgment and restrictions on how they live um you know for everybody at the moment we're all experiencing that, that we can't go and do the things we'd like to do. We can't meet friends. We lose that social aspect. And quite often we put teams in that situation to prepare for big matches as a course of habit. And actually, is that the best way of getting the maximum performance out of people? I would say no, but that's probably the fear of us as coaches, because we think, well, if we give them too much freedom and then they go and let us down,

then the media will come for us and said, we've got no discipline and we're not preparing properly. And so you're in this constant flex of what's the right thing to do, I think. Yeah. And again, it comes down to, yeah, yeah if we do that what will people say which again takes us away from who we are and actually what we actually think is the right way to go because we always want that external validation we all like you know it's oh you know they've done a really good job you know i'm sure it's nice to read for everyone but it's when that becomes our our primary reason for doing things i think it we can start to walk a very, very problematic line. You mentioned fun. And again, I love the fact that there's a section on fun

in the book. And I talk about this a bit because I came across some research a few years ago that showed that regularly doing things that you enjoy makes you more resilient to stress. But at the same time, being chronically stressed makes it harder for you to experience pleasure in day-to-day things. So it's kind of, it was really, it's always been fascinating to me. And as someone who's very passionate about health and wellbeing and how actually it can be accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy. I think everyone in society can have access to it if we can simplify the messaging and make it relevant. But I think we forget about fun sometimes, like fitness and well-being can be fun. And it's interesting to you as an England manager that you've figured out

that actually, because I imagine for these players, they probably started off as kids just loving kicking a ball around and they just happen to be very good at it. So they progress and it's like, oh, you know, I quite fancy being a footballer. And then you know what, for a few of them, they end up being that footballer, but all they probably wanted to do when they were kids is just kick a ball around. So how do you inject that fun into their lives and what benefits have you seen from doing so I think when we started we recognized that um and I experienced this as a player playing for England as soon as you put the shirt on it was very heavy um the weight of expectation and frankly for decades we haven't been very good really and i'm including the teams i played in in that we reached two semi-finals in 50 years

so where actually is this expectation coming from and what i wanted this generation of players to recognize is that they shouldn't be burdened by the failures of the previous teams. It's almost as if the levels of criticism grew because, you know, the team five years ago let us down and here we go again. And, well, this group deserve the right to be treated uniquely. This is the first time they've been together as a team. They can write their own story. right to be treated uniquely this is the first time they've been together as a team they can write their own story we talked a lot about writing their own stories writing their own history we're privileged to wear the shirt for a period of time and there were people before us and there'll be people after us but we can be the first to do lots of things. And to think about what's possible rather than what might go wrong

was a bit of the mindset shift that we felt needed to happen. So we set out with our junior teams in particular. The aim was that they wanted to come back and that they didn't find a way to pull out of a squad because they were injured or when a lot of the time maybe they just didn't want to be there because it was too much pressure and therefore not enjoyable. So I think our guys now look forward to coming back together

as an England team. It's a unique environment for them at their clubs. They love playing for their clubs but there are also lots of players from other countries so it is a different environment they actually quite enjoy coming together as an England group because I also noticed when I played with lads from Australia or France or Brazil they loved going home to play for their national team and just getting back with their people from their own country and seeing their families and those things and it was almost like we didn't have that with England and a lot of these guys that play in our

team now have played together since they were well we've got a couple who were in the same team at eight years old but lots of them have played together at 15, 16, 17. So they're just coming back with their mates, a bit like going back to your university mates or your school mates. And we're all back together and we're sharing the stories and they just sit around and enjoy each other's company as much as anything else. When you reflect on that, it's such an obvious thing with hindsight, like most things are in hindsight. It's like, well, if you want to perform well, of course, there should be an environment where people want to come, where they're like, I can't wait to get back with the gang. As you say, you draw some beautiful analogies there. And it's the same analogy for a workplace you know or a culture at work or a culture in a family

environment this has to be a place where your kids want to come and hang because actually it's fun and they get something out of it or the same for for workplaces I really I love seeing the parallels between what you're doing with the England team and football team culture, but also work culture, home culture, family culture. Because frankly, there's a few things that make human beings tick. Whatever sport you play, whatever arena you're in, it's the kind of same basic principle. We want to be heard. We want to be loved. We want to have fun. We want to enjoy ourselves. We want to be able to be brave, i.e. be ourselves and not be criticized for being who we are. Actually, when you think about it,

it's quite simple, isn't it? But it just isn't. Well, we're not as complicated as we might think we are, really, are we? So I think we've also noticed we've had to operate slightly differently through the pandemic because we've had to take extra precautions around COVID. And so within our camps, had to wear masks more. We've had to distance more. We've had to be sat further apart in meetings that's not been enjoyable you know that that hasn't been enjoyable because we're immediately walking into an environment where we're restricted we're not able to be free and then we're asking the players to go and play with freedom on the pitch and it's counterintuitive really and of course they miss having the supporters in the stadium because there's no immediate reaction to the skills they produce or the good pieces of play or or the effort that they're making so it's a very strange environment

for all sports people at the moment and I'm guessing the same for music artists or, you know, there's lots of people are performing in front of no live audience. And that is a very strange environment for everybody. Have you seen certain personalities cope better with that? Because I think that's a fascinating thing for us to ponder. You know, You're a sportsman, you're used to playing in front of Pat's arenas, and then you do something good. I've spent a lot of my life in football stadiums. The cheer, the roar, the energy, that must give you an extra gear. that must give you an extra gear, right? So without that, you're stripping away all the external noise and you're kind of left with, who are you without all that, right? It's quite an existential question for many of us. But it's interesting for me, have you, of course, I don't

want you to be specific at all, but could you have predicted which personalities have coped better and which ones actually needed the crowds? And without it, they just can't get themselves going. Good question. I don't necessarily think it's been quite as clear cut as that. But I think what we are seeing are that it's impossible to reach quite the same level of performance because there's this additional 5-10% that adrenaline can only give you. And if there's nobody there and there's nobody to watch there's an energy that's missing so I think the players across the board are doing remarkably well to perform as well as they are but I do think most people watching their team would say they're not quite as consistent or they're not quite reaching the levels that they that they maybe have done at

their very best i think it's really hard to find that discretional performance without without that additional um energy but then there are some younger players perhaps or some players who can be inhibited by the crowd who are flourishing. Because, of course, there are two parts to the reaction of the crowd. There's the approval and then there's the other side. And for a youngster coming in to make his debut, there are some players we don't know. We're missing some evidence of how they're going to be in the future because we're only seeing them perform with no pressure of fans in the stadium.

So when the team aren't playing so well and the pass is mislaid or the goalkeeper drops a ball or whatever it might be, that negative reaction and the negative energy can inhibit players. And so in that aspect, they're not suffering in that way. And some of them are a little bit freer, perhaps. Yeah, I wonder if there might be a learning opportunity there. Like if we really, you know, I'm not trying to pretend I know how to be England manager, just to be super clear. I'm just wondering that because I'm thinking about how many people in their workplaces, some people may have thrived without, I don't know, office politics and pressure on how you're dressed in the workplace or whatever it might be that makes them not feel free compared to at home where they can maybe just be in their

jogger bottoms and not have to worry about what they look like. They can just crack on with their job. Some people probably have thrived, other people have probably missed the human concept. But I wonder if there is a learning opportunity for all of us, but even for some of those footballers to go. So assuming everything does return one day to being packed stadiums, and people watching, like, I'd be interested, you know, if we ever have a conversation again, it would be interesting to know, you know, are there some learning points that, hey, you're great when there's no crowd, but actually with the crowd, your performance has gone down. That's interesting. Okay, let's really look at that 5% performance and when with another player it's like oh the crowd helps you do you know what I mean I still believe and we have had different psychologists working with our team for the last four or five years but I still think that psychology is the biggest untapped advantage in in our sport most you know we we've

covered most other areas of development um but there's still a reticence and of course the manager the head coach has to be a psychologist as well and most would view themselves as the chief psychologist on the team but i think actually there's even more that we can achieve with individual work with players. And when I was playing, there was a fear of that. People didn't want to expose themselves. They thought it might affect selection. Whereas in other sports, definitely the individual sports like tennis and golf,

it's just considered common practice to work with a psychologist. You've got a putt to win the them and then go and serve immediately those sorts of mental skills I still think in football we're scratching the surface some players are really open to it but I think we could still make the the crowd observation is a classic example of somebody actually unpicking that and working with an individual player and helping them improve yeah I mean I think the mind is untapped potential for all of us. I really feel that understanding our mind, being able to work on our minds, getting that mental fitness better,

just like we work on physical fitness. Frankly, it's what I spend a lot of my free time doing these days is how can I have a calmer mind? How can I make the space between stress and response bigger? What can I do where I can actually have that detachment and actually not just react, but appropriately respond? I think that's the gold for all of us. I think it improves our relationships, you know, but of course, as a footballer as well. I mean, Gareth, you strike me as someone who, as I've said before, is just a genuinely nice guy. So how do you tell somebody that they're no longer being selected for the England squad when it's possibly been their

life's ambition and they've worked hard and they've got in. But I'm sure at some point you have to tell someone that bad news. You know, what's your approach to it? Yeah. 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. 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

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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.

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As my son says, Dad, sometimes you're a dream wrecker, aren't you? And it's the most, for me, the most uncomfortable part of the job. We all enjoy giving people good news. And you can imagine every player that's in our squad is a very good player. To get to that point, they've overcome so many hurdles and so many disappointments. But at their club, they're all in the team and they're used to playing every week. And we have 23 usually in the squad. So as soon as I name a team, I've got 12 who are unhappy and 11 who are happy.

That balance isn't really a very good one. But what I find is that I'm always honest. I think people need honest feedback for several reasons. I think if you try to soft soap or sweeten the message, generally you've got to give them something to go away and work at that can help them to get back in the team. So if there's information about their game that needs improving,

I think that honest feedback is important because it's something that you can then refer back to and that as a coach you can help them to improve. So our job should be to help them all to be good enough to come back into the team or in a better space to come back into the team. But also, I think if we're not delivering that message with clarity, but also with empathy, then you lose the respect of the players. And I remember a couple of times I was left out of the team and I didn't really get clear feedback from the manager. And I lost a bit of respect for him because of that and there were other managers that left me out of the team who gave me very clear feedback and I didn't particularly like it at the time but when I went away and reflected on it I had to say he's right there that's he's right and I know now what I need to go away and work at so I don't find those conversations comfortable um and I know on my personality profile now that those conversations

cost me more energy than um than other parts of my job but if those conversations don't happen then and I just put a team on the board without telling somebody they were being left out and why, well, that creates even more problems in the group. I think players respect the fact that you speak to them and they respect the fact they might not agree with the decision, but I think they appreciate the fact that you've taken the time to explain it to them. but I think they appreciate the fact that you've taken the time to explain it to them. And then it's part of their responsibility then to go away and work at the things that you're suggesting to improve and make themselves selectable. Yeah, I really appreciate you sharing that because I think there's a lot of lessons for all of us in that. I think, you know, I call myself a people pleaser in recovery. You know, I'm a lot less of a people pleaser than I used to be. And I've unpacked before where that comes from, a desire to be

loved, desire to be liked. But it comes from a place of not feeling enough. It certainly has in me. And as I become more secure in who I am, I feel I've changed the way I deliver messages like that, because I feel the old me would very much have tried to sugarcoat a message, right? And I actually spoke to Arianna Huffington recently on the show, and she has a way off. They've got a term in her organization called compassionate directness. And it's really great. If you just Google it, I think you would actually really enjoy it from what I can tell from reading your book, Gareth. It's kind of what you're saying.

It's sort of, you say it's how you deliver it. It's honest, it's direct, but it's delivered with empathy. And I think all of us can learn from that with colleagues, with our partners, you know, not trying to just sugarcoat what, you know, not really saying what we really feel. It's kind of, I guess in some ways it goes back to our conversation on bravery before Gareth, about real vulnerability and honesty. You know, as you said, you may not have liked it in the moment, but you absolutely appreciated it afterwards on reflection. I mean, have you changed that?

Do you feel early on in your career, you sugarcoated that sort of delivery and you've learned hey you know what i can improve here definitely yeah definitely um i i think i went on some development courses um we we're quite good in our organization we we do uh 360 feedback from different members of staff. And sometimes in the past, people might have said, oh, I'm not quite sure whether Gareth agrees with this or whether he doesn't agree with it. And I was thinking, well, I'm sure where I am. So therefore, my communication isn't right. And yeah, in the short term it I suppose it's a bit like

sending your children to bed you know there's there's been uh a disagreement or they've done something wrong and you send them to bed and then I would when they were younger I would sit there and think how long can I leave it before I go up and see them and give them a cuddle and make it all feel better you know and that's kind ofdle and make it all feel better, you know? And that's kind of how it is with the players. They come, you know, I call them into a room or we'll go and have a cup of coffee and I explain the decision. And I know they're going to leave there. You know, certainly for a period, they hate me, for sure.

They're not happy with the decision. They don't like me and that's not somewhere I want to be really because we all want to be liked really but I recognize now okay I've got to work through that I've got to let them have that moment I've got to let them get their emotions out of the way and then we've got to find a way forward of working together hopefully I think I'm very clear that it's not a personal thing it's just a decision for that game or it's a decision on how I view them in compared to some other players and they're all good players so I've got to make sure that they understand that it's not that they're not a good player

I don't want them to lose confidence in what they're doing but I'm making it's one person's decision based on this moment in time and there's a route back into the team and and those doors are always open so I think that's an important process and it's very important for the harmony of the group as well because you need the guys that aren't starting the game to be ready to come into the game and also supportive of the rest of the team. moment or parents whose children are keen sports advocates or, I don't know, martial arts advocates or whatever it is that they like doing, do you feel that sort of message of compassionate directness, honesty, kindness, empathy? I mean, how important is it that people around the country, around the world who are in charge of young people in some way, how important is it that they apply principles and messages like that in their own

lives? I think crucial. If we're a teacher or a coach, our job is to help other people improve and be the best version of themselves so I don't think our job is just to be critical our job is to find people doing something well is to recognize when they're doing things well our job is to we can't always give them all the answers, but we can show them where the answers might lie or we can make suggestions as to where they can improve. But then there has to be ownership from the pupil or the player of their own. They've also got to take personal responsibility. So if they start to say, it's just because the coach doesn't like me

or doesn't deal with me in the right way. Well, also, when I was a player, it was my responsibility to make myself as selectable as possible. So what does this coach look for? And it's important that I think as an athlete, you're able to ask questions of the coach to see how do I make myself selectable if I'm not in the team, if you're not getting the right level of feedback. So I do think sometimes we think that being the manager or the coach is all about finding the errors and finding the mistakes and nitpicking. And sometimes that can just be, you know, if you said to somebody, why did you do that? You say, yeah, I know I was wrong.

Actually, I was looking to pass there and I just, they know the error. Usually they know the errors that they've made. It's more when there's a trend of behaviors or a consistent technical problem that maybe we can start to resolve or look at or improve. Individual errors, you know, they're going to to happen I think they're going to happen it's when there are consistent things that are wrong you're looking for patterns that that's when you can coach and that's when you can help people to improve I've read and heard that you're very passionate about mental health and you know is that something that's. And, you know, is that something

that's always been there? Or, you know, is it something that has evolved throughout your career? Because mental health is something that is getting more and more prominence these days. And having someone in a position of prominence like yourself, talking about it and being passionate about it, I think is very, very very powerful but i'm interested on a personal level where has that interest come from in you i think a greater understanding really that um this is an area that is far more common um for people to find difficult and i think the world is becoming more complex and lives um the lives of young people especially but but all people really we talked about there being no switch off we talked about the impact of social media you, young people in the old days might have been bullied at school.

But when they came home, for most, that was a safe place. Of course, there would have been children who suffered at home. But if they were being bullied at school, home was safe. Now they can be attacked online in their own home. There's almost no escape. there's no safe place um and i feel that's just one area of the world changing and becoming more difficult to handle there's also this really critical i feel as if there's an enhanced negativity with what we're all going through everybody's dissatisfied at the restrictions and we want a way out of what we're living through at the moment

and of course there's not the freedom to live our lives as we should there's not the social interactions there's not the the basic human needs that we thrive on so I think the next few years as well with the economy and everything else that that entails are going to be our biggest challenge around mental health where I'm encouraged is that this this conversation is definitely out there now and it's not being hidden and there's a lot more discussion about it on television and a recognition that... I love the phrase you use, mental fitness. I think we talk about physical fitness, but mental health feels almost like a phrase that brings stigma with it.

Mental fitness is a different way of looking at it. Hang on, this is something that I can work out, I can get better at. I can almost start to take control of. Yeah. I think it's just an interesting way of reframing. I don't know. I certainly can't claim originality with that. I may have heard it myself, but I love it as a concept because we get physical fitness, don't we? We get that. know i'm gonna we all know what physical fitness means and and it's it's kind of an aspiration it's i want to get fitter i can practice and get fitter physically and it's no different you know coming back to what you said about the untapped potential for

footballers and i think all of us is in our minds well why wouldn't we work on our mental fitness and you know why you know it's it's arguably one of the most important things to work on our mental fitness? And, you know, it's arguably one of the most important things to work on because it impacts all of your interactions, not just how fast you can run. But actually, I would argue your mental fitness is absolutely going to have a downstream positive consequence on your physical fitness. Because if you get this right, your physicality is going to come as a consequence of that. So I think it is a nice term for people to reflect on. Social media is something I talk about a lot. I have real concerns. I'm not anti-technology, but I do feel that we don't quite know the impact

of all this stuff. We're seeing really quite worrying documentaries like The Social Dilemma. I don't know if you've seen that or not on Netflix. But I'm interested with the footballers, social media, the pressures that we all feel on social media are frankly ramped up to a completely different degree if you're an England footballer. A, the number of followers. B, the fact that you simply cannot have that larger following. Even if you have 1% of negativity, that is a lot of people, right? When you have that level of following. So is this something you've had to, within the organization, teach footballers how to manage social media, how to manage the pressures with that? Because I'm wondering if we can learn anything from what they learn well unfortunately we haven't cracked it so so of course there have

been really positive examples of some of our players using social media to make a massive difference in society raheem sterling um talking about racism marcus rashford with with his his projects on feeding um feeding the nation's children so so we've seen the very best of what social media can bring um but i don't know how they live with it because i don't know about you but if i get 10 10 lovely comments it's only the one negative one that i that i'm drawn to and i'm thinking and playing it back in my head the 10 positive ones are gone and i think you'll know this better than me but i think the brain is wired to have more negative thoughts we we have a negativity bias. It's what's kept us alive for our evolution. Before we lived relatively safe lives, and I appreciate I'm saying that in a very challenging

year, but relatively safe compared to the way we used to live, we had to be wired to look for that negative. Is that a line that's approaching the camp? That's what would keep us alive. So we've still got that ancient heart wiring and we're trying to, our brains are using that in the modern worlds where Professor Robin Dunbar, this evolutionary biologist, has something called the Dunbar number saying that our brains have only evolved to know, brains have only evolved to know, I think over the course of our entire life, 150 people, right? That's it. And so if you think about how many contacts and followers and friends we have on social media now, it's far beyond what these brains are wide for. So to say you, I think the fact that you guys haven't cracked it probably gives us all a lot of hope to go, okay, those

guys with all the kind of money and resource on the England football team haven't cracked it probably gives us all a lot of hope to go okay those guys with all the kind of money and resource on the england football team haven't cracked it well maybe we could take the pressure off ourselves a little bit in terms of us not cracking it yeah but i do i my suggestion to them is always look i'm not saying don't look at it because i'm not from a bygone era where I'm saying I don't understand social media I see the power of being able to connect with people and that interaction but I also recognize that there are moments where we feel more vulnerable maybe we haven't slept so well maybe in our world we have we've just played poorly or well if we've played poorly we probably know that anyway we don't need the affirmation of that from thousands of messages you know I think

in the old days you'd pick the paper up you were given a mark out of 10 I knew what it was going to be I didn't need to look oh it's a oh it's a five and but by reading it I felt worse the next day and I'd think well why have I done that? Because I knew I was rubbish yesterday. So I didn't need the confirmation I was rubbish to just push me further into the ground. And I think in the world now, that's so instant. And even within a game, we could win a game

having been a goal behind. If the players went through their timeline from the first 30 minutes of the game, they're getting hammered for this and hammered for that. And then by the end, they're the hero because they've scored the winning goal. And we've got to try to ride beyond that instantaneous emotion, I think, to stay a little bit more level. I think that would be better for our mental health and well-being yeah no for sure well you mentioned the good in social media there and there's some obviously some great high profile uh examples recently of footballers using their profile to do real good across society which has

been incredible to see um you mentioned raheem sterling and racism and I wasn't necessarily going to talk to you about this today but given it's come up in that context I shared with Pippa Grange when I spoke to her one of the reasons why I have fallen out of love with football so I'm someone who grew up idolising the game. I would go to Anfield regularly. Under Rafa Benitez, I'd follow Liverpool all around Europe. I went to Champions League finals. Istanbul 2005, 2007, I'm in the stadium in Athens and we're not doing well. The team are 1-0 down and it's a very different atmosphere to what it was in Istanbul. And within the home section, me with my home shirts on, me and my friend who is Caucasian, three, you know, even now it's funny. I thought, you know, it's three lads turned around and were incredibly vitriolic in the language

they used against me. And it was really hard. It was one of those things where I remember that. I remember feeling scared. I remember that because, frankly, the security in the stadium was very lax, we could just leave and walk into a different part of the arena and sit somewhere else, which I think is problematic in itself. But my mate said, hey, listen, let's just get out of here. Let's go to another part of the stadium. And it's funny because I'm someone who used to literally live for football. And I can't say it's just that, but I think there's a side to football, which has nothing to do with the beautiful game that is football, but the surroundings of football where I face that abuse.

I know that ultimately football is just a subsection of society. People who come to football matches are just representative of everyone in society. So I'm not blaming football for that. But I think when I became a parent, Gareth, this is the other thing which really affected my love for, again, not the game, because it is a beautiful game, but the noise around the game is the fact, I just thought, you know, I'm trying to bring my son up to be a kind, compassionate, and my daughter, a person who treats everyone the way they'd like to be treated themselves. These are the really values that my wife and I hold dear. These are the main things I try and teach my children. I thought, it's funny, you walk into a football stadium and behavior seems to be

And behavior seems to be almost permissible that would never be permissible outside a football stadium. You can't shout the... And I don't want to put you in a difficult position because I appreciate you're England manager, but I also feel, I'm sure you'd like to hear what a former football fanatic has to say. It's kind of like, I feel, well, why is it okay in a stadium that thousands of people can shout abhorrent abuse at the referee, but you walk outside that football stadium and you're not allowed to do that on the street? That's kind of verbal abuse to someone. But I was never critical of it as a teenager. I thought, oh, that's what's done at football games. Do you know what I mean? I it as a teenager. I thought, oh, you know, that's what's done at football games. Do you know what I mean? I kind of feel now, I think, well,

football is a gorgeous game, but there's a lot around it that I think is putting people who used to love it, putting us off. And I just wonder if you have any thoughts to share on what I just shared. Yes, fascinating observation and it hurts me when I hear people talk about experiences within stadiums like that that take them away from what is a beautiful sport and your passion and that you know, your passion and that you feel you don't want to take your children, that's so sad to hear. One of the most rewarding things for me coming back from Russia in 2018 was that the people who stopped me on the street were from every background, stopped me on the street were from every background every you know different religions different heritage for you know all english our support our fan base is um just from so many

different backgrounds representing modern england and and in some ways we've've, as a game, got to catch up to that because you're absolutely right. Some of the things, even as a manager, that you experience and the ways people speak to you, I suppose it's a bit like the social media. People say things on social media that you think, surely if we were standing together in the pub, you just wouldn't say that or you wouldn't dream of personalizing that by copying me in on it. So I just think across society, I think the game is a reflection of society. And we have, in particularly times like this, we've got to show more tolerance. particularly times like this, we've got to show more tolerance. We're all a product of our education, our upbringing, and to have an understanding of difference and an acceptance of difference, I think is so important as we move forward in life.

And it feels as if we're, during the start of lockdown, everybody was pulling together and everybody was out recognizing the National Health Service. And we were fighting this together. And yet there have been lots of moments over the last couple of years. And I have to say, you know, the vote to leave Europe with Brexit. I felt that there were things that pulled us apart and were where we weren't together on things and not accepting of difference and not not having an understanding. And I think our children don't don't recognize that world. You know, they're born into the world with no prejudice. They're born into my kids felt as European as as they felt english frankly they didn't you know

why why are we leaving europe you know we travel it's two hours to there and it's two hours to manchester or it's two hours to wherever you know what's the what's the big deal here so i just think that general kindness to each other and tolerance and understanding of difference if we work collectively as a as a country can be so powerful and there are some problems in the world that frankly we've all got to work together to cure and that might be at the moment it's the virus um there's obviously the ecology of the planet that if we, you know, we can't have half the countries working towards that and half not. So there are so many things that really we should be working powerfully together. Um, and, and yeah, maybe we're dreamers, but it would be lovely to

think that that would be possible in the future. Yeah. No, I'm an optimist as well. And I think you're dead right. Football is just, it's such a big game. It's just a reflection of society. It's not, you know, it is. And I think football also has the power because of its prominence to change things. We see, you know, wonderful stories in Liverpool that since Mohamed Salah started playing there, it looks as though Islamic racial attacks have gone down significantly. Certainly from some of the media reports I read, which again, it shows, oh wow. And we do have such a luxury in this country of players from all over the world playing that if you're a football fan and you do have, or you were brought up with prejudice,

but your favourite player happens to come from a different country and they're knocking in goals each week. Well, you know, that's a pretty powerful way of starting to chip away at that prejudice and go, oh, well, I kind of love, I love him when he's scoring and putting me at the top of the premiership.

Maybe that should be reflected in other aspects of my life. You know what I mean? So I actually, I'm an optimist. I get the sense you are. And I think football has the power and the potential to really create wonderful change in the world. Gareth, honestly, talking to you has been an absolute joy. Honestly, you know, I really enjoyed this interaction. I think what you've written about is going to be so helpful for so many people. I urge people who've got kids who are really into football, I think they would very much like a copy of this book. But actually, it goes beyond that. I really think this goes far beyond football and will help all

of us acquire skills, acquire insight into how we can live happier, healthier, more content, more fulfilled, calmer lives. And I really want to publicly acknowledge you for doing that. The podcast is called Feel Better Better Live More, Gareth, because when we feel better in ourselves, we get more out of life. I wonder if you'd feel happy sharing some of your kind of top practical tips for people listening right now who want a few gems for them to take and apply in their own life. I wonder what advice does the England manager have for them? Well, goodness me. I mean, I hope people aren't expecting extreme wisdom at this point, but I've found that the most basic things have kept me on track. And

at the root of it, you mentioned how your mental well-being has an impact on everything else and definitely affects the physical when a team are suffering on the pitch um and they're losing on the pitch their brain is the first part that goes um and people say they're not they're not running they're they're not running, they're not trying, they're not trying hard enough. But actually, it's because they're being blocked from here. And so I'm always conscious that to keep my brain alert and alive, the basics of how I eat, how I sleep, exercising, giving myself time to step away from work. They're the most simple things I do. I live in the countryside, so I'm able to go and walk the dogs and get out and switch off. But I know that my physical well-being helps my mental well-being

and vice versa. And I do think those basics are very straightforward. If I've slept well and I feel stronger and I feel healthy and I feel I can take on any challenge, if I haven't slept well for a long period of days or my diet hasn't been right or I've not been able to exercise, I don't feel quite as robust and I don't feel quite as able to take everything on. And I've just found those simple things that I know. It doesn't mean I never drink or I don't go and enjoy myself or I don't pig out on chocolate at certain times, but at the right times and in moderation and generally to get back on track if I'm struggling. I know I need to sleep and recover and give my body the chance because if I've not got the energy,

then I can't help the people I'm working with or my family and I can't affect the things I want to change. Gareth, I think that's wonderful wisdom there. You covered what I call the four pillars, food, movement, sleep, and relaxation. And if that's how the England manager needs to apply wellbeing to get the most out of his job and his family life and his wellbeing, I think that's pretty good advice for the rest of us Gareth thank you so much for your time today it's been an honor for me to speak to you and I wish you all the best with the book tour well thank you for having me it's been fascinating and really thought-provoking so yeah I really

appreciate your time so what did you think as you may have guessed, I loved Garrett's advice there at the end on what I call the four pillars of health in my very first book, The Four Pillar Plan. I'm so interested as to what you thought of that conversation, particularly if you are not a football fan. Did you find some interesting lessons and insights in our conversation? I certainly hope so. And as always, do think about one thing that you can take from that conversation and apply into your everyday life. Now, why don't you take a pause right now and do something kind for someone else? Send them a link to this episode with a short message. It's a wonderful act of kindness that has benefits not only for them, but for you as well. And if you

visit the show notes page on my website, you'll see links to Gareth's new book, his social media channels, and some relevant articles about him and his work. Now, if you're interested in my philosophy on health, you may want to check out that first book, The Four Pillar Plan. It's available all over the world. And if you live in America or Canada, the same book has been released there with the title, How to Make Disease Disappear. And just a quick shout out to let you know that in a few weeks now, my brand new book, Feel Great, Lose Weight is out. So this is a book that is not just relevant to people who want to lose weight. It's a book that will help you get to know yourself better. You'll understand

your behaviors better, particularly around foods. In the book, I'm going to help you make better choices around health and give you a deeper understanding as to what the food choices you make are doing to your brain, your dopamine levels, and why you simply can't resist some of them. You can pre-order a copy right now in paperback, ebook, or as an audiobook, which I have narrated. A big thank you to my wife, Vedanta Chastity, for producing this week's podcast, and to Richard Hughes for audio engineering.

Have a wonderful week. Make sure you have pressed subscribe, and I'll be back in one week's time with a very special conversation. Remember, you are the architects of your own health. Making lifestyle change is always worth it because when you feel better, you live more.