TED Talks Daily - Is someone you love suffering in silence? Here's what to do | Gus Worland

Episode Date: October 12, 2024

Lots of people talk about the need to be physically fit, but mentally fit? Not as much. In a powerful talk, mental health advocate Gus Worland shares how an experience of deep grief from his own life sparked his mission to advocate for suicide prevention -- and shows why "looking after your own village" can be as simple as sending a text message, right now, to the person you cannot imagine living without.

TED Audio Collective. You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hume. I have met today's speaker, Gus Warland. He is tremendously charismatic and an energetic guy, but that joy is hard won. In his archive talk from 2023, he shares what feeling deep and profound grief led him to learn about all of us

and our need to show up for one another, even when our loved ones tell you everything is fine. His moving talk is coming up after the break. Support for this show comes from Airbnb. If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel. They make my family feel most at home when we're away from home. As we settled down at our Airbnb during a recent vacation to Palm Springs, I pictured my own home sitting empty. Wouldn't it be smart and better put to use welcoming a family like mine by hosting it on Airbnb?

It feels like the practical thing to do, and with the extra income, I could save up for renovations to make the space even more inviting for ourselves and for future guests. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. And now, our TED Talk of the day.

I want to talk about my mentor. I want to talk about the day that I got a phone call saying that he had died. And I want to talk about the moments later in the same phone call that I'd heard that he'd actually taken his own life. And I'm saying this because I want you to listen and also think about all the people that you love and adore and you cannot imagine living without in your life as you're listening to me talk. My friend, my mentor, my father figure, Angus, I truly loved him. My father left the family home when I was quite young, and he took on the mantle to look after me. I'd known him from a very young age. He taught me

how to swim. He was my cousin's boyfriend, then my cousin's husband, and he was just my go-to guy. When I was starting to date girls and I wasn't sure what to do, I'd ring him up and I'd ask him, what do you think? What's going on? How should I perhaps do this? When I ended up working for him years and years later in a big multi-corporate, I'd always go to him for workarounds. How can I get this deal done? He always seemed to be that guy that I could turn to and he'd always give me the right answer. Not only me, I remember walking around the corner at work one day and there's always someone in his office. There was always someone waiting for him. If you rang him up, he was always on the phone. He'd ring you back. He always seemed to be that guy that had people

going to him, asking for help, asking for favours, asking for support. He was good looking, beautiful wife, my cousin, three beautiful children. Why would someone like that take their own life? Why would they? Makes no sense to me. And at the funeral, and talking to people after the funeral, just the frustration. Did you know? Did you know? Did you know? Did you know? Did you know? Did anyone know? Did you get a clue? And of course, everyone's saying, no, I didn't have a

clue. In fact, he was just like you're saying. He was my go-to guy. He seemed to tick all the boxes. He seemed to just know what to say at the right time. And he seemed to be able to work his way, both personally and with work, to get life done, and he was successful. I told that story on a breakfast show that I was on called The Grill Team in Sydney, Australia. I was on there for 11 years, and one morning I decided to be vulnerable. One morning I said, you know what, I'm going to talk about my friend because we were six years into that 11-year stint and I'd never really spoken much about myself. We spoke about sport, we spoke about telling jokes, we did things like ticket giveaways and concert giveaways and fun stuff. We wanted to get people driving to

work or listening to us having fun. We didn't want to sort of drag them down with personal stuff or being vulnerable. But one morning, 4.30 in the morning, sitting around the production table with the producers and my co-hosts, I said, I'm going to be vulnerable today. I'm going to talk about something that I haven't spoken about before and it's been eating away at me and I want to do it. And they supported me. We've been on for a long time. We were like brothers. We said, you know what, mate, whatever you want to do, let's go for it. So 8.05, just after the eight o'clock news, a Hollywood hour in radio land, we flicked on the mics and I told the story that I just told you guys. It was hard. I was getting support from my co-hosts. I got the words out eventually, a bit like I am today, emotional stuff, certain things trigger you. But what was truly happening behind me

was all the phone lines into the radio station were flashing, which means people were phoning in. Normally those lines would be for you to ring up to be part of the show, to tell a joke, to win a concert ticket, to win a movie ticket. All of a sudden, all those lines were flashing. Didn't quite realise why. The producer comes in and says, we've got all these people that want to thank you for telling your story. I thought, that's nice. I put myself out there. It is nice to get a little bit of love like that. So we started putting a few calls through. Not only were they telling me, thank you for telling that story. More importantly, it was like we'd given them a green light. We'd given them permission

to talk about the stuff that they wanted to talk about. All of a sudden, in a safe place, like a radio station where they'd normally laugh their way to work, we'd given them a little opportunity to talk about the stuff that's truly important to them. The stuff that they had in their bellies, the stuff banging around in their heads, that they never thought they would get a chance to talk about. So what we did for the next 90 minutes was just the most beautiful radio that I've ever been involved in. We took no traffic reports, no news reports.

We played no music. We just had 90 minutes of people bumbling and fumbling and getting their way through a conversation of gravity with us in the radio studio. There was moments. Thank you. It was impressive. So many people went, you know what, I'm diving in here. I'm talking about my stuff now because he spoke about that. All strangers listening to each other on the radio all gave each other permission to have a chat. There was moments of true silence, and silence in radio is not a good thing. However, when you have silence, when you can sort of hear the tears, you can try to just hear them gathering

the guts and determination to say the next word, or you can basically hear the snot running out of the nose and the tears running out of the eyes, that's when you know people are being fed ink, and that's when you know that they're being real. So, fantastic. And it made me think, I wonder how many other people are worrying alone. If we just open it up on this radio show, on this morning, and I tell my story, then we have 90 minutes of people going, me too, me too, me too. I wonder how many people are out there feeling exactly the same way. So that day changed my life. I decided to commit myself to being more honest, to being more vulnerable, but even more importantly, let's get

suicide prevention down to zero. A huge call, I know, and I said it in the Australian press and everyone gave it to me, but I don't care. I'm going to focus on making sure that no one goes through the type of stuff that my mate went through. And how do we do that? How do we do that? That's the trick. And now back to the episode. So for the last six years, I've been running a foundation called Gotcha for Life. I want everyone in the world to find someone who is gotcha for life. Someone you can talk to warts and all, without any fear of judgment,

about the truly important stuff. Why do we keep celebrating with lots of people in parties, but we don't celebrate the stuff that's a little bit harder, the stuff that's not so good? Why is that the case? So that's been the focus. I don't know if you know the stats around suicide. In Australia, seven men every day, two women, nine Australians that woke up this morning won't wake up tomorrow morning. 65,000 people in Australia try to take their own life

every single year. The number one way to die if you're a young Australian male is suicide. Now, according to the World Health Organization, WHO, they tell me that over 1,900 people that woke up this morning won't wake up tomorrow morning. They would have taken their own life. On top of that, 38,000, nearly 40,000 people will try to take their own life today. 1,900 people today. 38,000 will attempt today around the world. So this is not what we're going to accept. This is line in the sand time to go, no, no more.

But what can you do? If you look at the world as this huge, big place, it might be too big a task for you to deal with. It might be too big in your own country. It might be too big in your own city. But what if we just started looking after your own village? What if we just say, I'm just going to look after my own people, the people that I love and adore and I cannot imagine living without? Just imagine that. In the last few years, I've been so lucky to talk to people that have tried to take their life, but they're still with us. Now, those conversations are hard.

I feel extremely blessed to be able to be in those one-on-one conversations. You know what comes out of those conversations? Three things. One, they didn't want to die. They tried to take their own life, but they didn't want to die. That gave me great hope. The other thing was that they were tired and they were in pain. So if you combine tired and pain together, you make a shit decision. We all know this. If you are not rested and you're in pain, you make bad calls. So if we know that they don't want to die, but they've tried to take their life,

that's the hope that we need to hold on to. That means if we can get to people before they get to an eight, nine out of 10 in terms of how they feel, we can actually stop them making that permanent decision based on a temporary situation. And that's what it's all about. And that's what I want to do with you guys now if I possibly can. I want you to think of someone that you love and adore and you cannot imagine living without. Have you got that person's face in your head? Do you know what that person's name is, and have you got them locked in?

After three, I want you to shout that person's name out. One, two, three. One, two, three. Okay, this is the bit. You need to do something for me to that person that you just shouted out. I need you to send them a text message. Simple as that. Having these face-to-face conversations, I understand, is hard. But when we're building our mental fitness, we have to start slowly. So I want you to walk up to the mental fitness gym for me and just open up those doors and I want you to send a text. But the words to the text are this, I love you, I miss you, see you soon, kiss hug, kiss hug. What I want you to do is send that test message and let's

just see what responses we get. It's all about connection. It's all about making sure that you look after the people that are most important to you. Work and wait. It'll always be there. They'll always replace you, but not these people. I would give anything to have a cup of tea, a beer, go to a footy match with my man who took his own life. I'll never be able to do that. Let's make sure that we look after our village. Make sure we look after the people that are most important to you. That is absolutely key. The worst thing, the text message gets sent out, someone goes, what the? Or, are you drunk? Or if a man sends it to a man, there'll be a phone call within 30 seconds, guaranteed.

Or, or the worst case scenario, what's this all about? Well, you can then say to them, well, I was asked to think of someone that I love and adore and can't imagine living without. I thought of you. That's a pretty cool way to connect yourself up with the people that are most important to you. Thanks so much for listening, guys.

I appreciate it. Support for this show comes from Airbnb. If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel. They make my family feel most at home when we're away from home. As we settled down at our Airbnb during a recent vacation to Palm Springs, I pictured my own home sitting empty. Wouldn't it be smart and better put to use welcoming a family like mine by hosting it on Airbnb? It feels like the practical thing to do, and with the extra income, I could save up for renovations to make the space even more inviting

for ourselves and for future guests. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. That was Gus Worland speaking at TED 2023. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Autumn Thompson, and Alejandra Salazar.

It was mixed by Christopher Fazi-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. Looking for a fun challenge to share with your friends and family? TED now has games designed to keep your mind sharp while having fun. Visit TED.com slash games to explore the joy and wonder of TED Games.