The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Dr Alex George: My Hardest Day In A&E, Family Suicide & Finding TRUE Purpose

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

Alex George is a pure inspiration. That's one of the best ways I can describe him. He’s selfless, self aware and just an all round great guy. He grew up in Nantgaredig, a village near Carmarthen, Wales. He is the oldest of three children. George studied Medicine at the University of Exeter and went on to work in Emergency Medicine at University Hospital Lewisham in London. In 2018, George appeared in the fourth series of the ITV2 reality dating series Love Island. Following the show, he returned to working part-time at Lewisham whilst also making regular media appearances speaking about mental health on ITV morning shows including Good Morning Britain, Lorraine and Loose Women. In 2019, George launched his podcast The Waiting Room with Dr Alex in which he interviews other healthcare professionals about topical health and wellbeing issues. In July 2020, George's youngest brother Llyr died by suicide. In January 2021, George launched a campaign requesting the UK Government prioritise mental health amongst children and adolescents. During Children's Mental Health Week in February 2021, George met with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who appointed George to the newly created position of Youth Mental Health Ambassador. In addition, George also became a member of the Mental Health in Education Action Group. This conversation has it all, its gripping, its open, it’s honest and it had me nearly in tears almost 3 or 4 times. I can’t express to you how selfless and down to earth this guy is but you’ll find that out from our conversation today.  Follow Alex: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/dralexgeorge Twitter - https://twitter.com/dralexgeorge  Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. I've gone from 200 followers on Instagram to 1 million in nine weeks. I just had tasted the failure so much that I wanted that success. One of the biggest things was going back to work. I went back to A&E. I am working in a position where I'm the recess department of a very busy hospital in A&E in London. The mortality rate with COVID is around 1%. I am seeing that percentage of people who are the sickest

who are in the hospital. I could hear in his voice instantly that something really bad happened. I just said straight away, like, who's dying? It was weird. The whole world, like, closed in. And I can't explain it. It sounds very dramatic. But it was like almost a spotlight came onto me in that moment. And I was like, no, it can't be. I just couldn't believe it. That's the thing about suicide or, you know, when these things happen.

It can happen out of nowhere. And for everyone around that person is that guilt that you carry i think forever ask yourself honestly when is the last time you genuinely sat down and thought about what you want to do in life what actually is your purpose what makes you happy and if you haven't done it in the last year or so do it we had a phone call again and she said it's back i mean I'm like, what do you mean? The cancer's back. What do you say to someone who is dying in the next couple of weeks? What can you say? A lot of it's non-verbal.

You have a hug and you just share that moment, don't you? But when you walk out of that room, it's like, wow, I'm not seeing her again. Dr Alex George, you may know him from Love Island. You may know him as one of the most well-known A&E doctors in our country, or you may know him as a government advisor to youth mental health, appointed by Boris Johnson last year. Alex knows a whole lot about happiness, about the things that make us unhappy, and about how we should be living if you want to live a truly fulfilling life. In this conversation, you'll come to realize that we are so far away from how we should be living, and that in order to get there, we might have to redesign the entirety of the society we live in. That's a belief that I have. This conversation

energized me. It inspired me. It brought tears to my eyes. It gave me absolutely everything. And again, if there's a reason why I started this podcast, it's this conversation. Without further ado, I'm Stephen Butler, and this is The Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. Alex, I read a ton about you over the last couple of weeks, months, since you've sort of risen into the public eye. And one of the things that I really wanted to understand before, and I tend to start here with most of my guests, is I want to understand what it was from your childhood that made you the man you are today and what those significant moments were in your view. Wow, that's a deep question to dive straight into. Let's get in there. Well, I mean, I was brought up and born and brought up in in west wales um i lived on a

little small holding my parents not farmers actually uh often people assume they'd be a farming background my dad um a policeman my mum worked in the bank um and i had quite a i think a quiet upbringing you know in the countryside two brothers two younger brothers um school life for me i think was up and down you know I was bullied quite a lot at school a little bit in primary school more so in secondary school and I think as I grew up I was naturally I think it probably innately is probably as well as my environment that I was in I was introverted or became an introvert um and there's a lot of conversation about are you born that way is it

you molded that way I think probably a bit of both for me and I think you know when I was at school and as I was growing up I think my parents were a big influence on my life I think they instilled a lot of the values that I have and mum was a big believer in that you should you know go out there and try and add value to people around you in the world and their focus is around what you achieve in terms of that rather than necessarily being trying to like be really successful make loads of money or whatever and i think that instilled in me that sense of i want to do good or try you know i'm not sitting here thinking you know i have the same you know i love cars i love all these different things as well i'm not saying i'm you know just trying to be some kind of save the world person but i had that kind of general thing

that i'd like to go out and do something good if i could um and i think when i was about 13 14 i had a bit of an interest in science i liked you know i like the idea of uh working in a career or going to a career that had um you know a sense of teamwork a purpose uh which might sound a bit odd as an introvert but you know i still wanted to be as part of a movement if you like and that's where medicine kind of appealed to me so um i started kind of watching early shows of like this equivalent to 24 hours an a.m back in the day and really really kind of thought i'll be amazing to be an a.m doctor the excitement the adrenaline that'd be so awesome I love that idea of you know using science and medicine to save people and I just started working towards that goal really um and uh I'd say that again school wasn't that

easy for me for various reasons um I know now that I'm dyslexic I didn't know that then I didn't know it at school didn't know at university I really struggled with my written work and stuff. And I was very frustrated actually at school a lot of the time. I also had a very short attention span. When I was in primary school, I was put into a special needs class for a long time because, well, I don't know, I think I had a short attention span. Maybe they were concerned about me. I don't really know why that was a concern.

My mum actually went into school and said, actually, Alex is quite bright. I think you'll be fine. I went back into the normal classroom, and we kind of continued from there. In secondary school, again, struggled a bit with the written work. And actually, when I applied to med school

the first time around, I did all the interviews got my place I actually missed out on my um grades of a grade a and my chemistry by two marks um which cost my place at med school which is actually one of the most painful moments of my life and I think really really a defining moment um because at the school I was in I wasn't in a great yeah it was a perfectly fine school but I wouldn't say it was like a really really high achieving school it was a state school um no one I think had done medicine for a couple of years a good few years but potentially everyone's excited about this idea we've got a student going um and there was a kind of everyone waiting for me to kind of open the results and I

was like yeah I've got two a's and a b three a's and a b brilliant I'm really glad about that but sadly my two marks means that I can't go to med school. And I think that was a really defining moment for me. I was kind of my first feeling of failure in a way. And I think all of that, all of that has come together kind of mold my attitude, I think, to life and to kind of working hard, to wanting to achieve, to kind of appreciating success when you have it. You said you were bullied in school what for uh i grew very tall very quickly i was very skinny um i always had quite a bit of acne and stuff when i was younger um and i think but mainly actually the main reason i think i was bullied was because i was sensitive i am sensitive as a person um and i think things would get to me probably more so than i noticed

my friends or other people around me and I think that sadly sensitivity attracts some you know bullies at times you know and we're at the moment doing a massive campaign with the number 10 and down reward around bullying and tackling that and a lot of the young people I speak to have experienced the same you know sensitivity sadly attracts that but it's odd because I now I look back and think you know the time I thought that was a real weakness but now I see it as a real strength and I think my sensitivity has allowed me to be a better doctor I think my ability to have empathy on my patients I read people very well I understand when I'm in a team you know even now whether it's not in the hospital or the team that I'm working with all kind of from a management perspective or whether it's people working you know working with people at number 10 I read people very well I

understand people and that allows me to get the best out of people but back then it was a real target for bullies I think and obviously as you've you know you've spoken about at length that sensitivity I guess is incredibly conducive with having positive mental health yeah i i i think so i think it's it's about you know when you're talking about um being an introvert and things and being being sensitive they're not necessarily mutually exclusive or necessarily come together but i i i do think that it's about learning to learning what you have and how to use that to your use your strengths you know turn them into your strengths i saw that as a big weakness weakness whereas now i see it as a great strength and i think sometimes as you're growing up you're unaware of what's good or bad about you

physically or you know in terms of your personality types and sometimes the things that you kind of very harden yourself about when you're younger like being sensitive i'm now quite glad of even though now of course it still leaves me open I mean you know how it is being you know known in the public eye whatever I hate that phrase but you know I think it's an understood one um it obviously opens you up because you're open to criticism a lot and especially now the work I'm doing the mental health space it's it's tough and there's a lot of people in the political space people watching what's happening who will criticize you um you know and and that is not easy but you learn to deal with it and you you build a bit of a thicker

skin as well i think have you learned to deal with it because as you say one point something million followers on instagram 1.9 million followers on instagram whatever it is um that's a lot of people probabilistically there's going to be a bunch of them in there that you know they just want to ruin your day you know it's funny because have all the things i've had i've had the the full works of death threats and all this kind of stuff particularly you know anti-vax and and things like that with in recent months and stuff that doesn't bother me at all funny enough i don't mind that people can call me ugly and say look a certain way or you know they can call me what they want um in that sense and it doesn't bother me too much to be

honest i've really been able to kind of even though that was the kind of stuff that bothered me i was younger i'm very resilient to that now what i think i'm more sensitive to now is when people kind of criticize the things that i'm working on that really matters to me particularly the stuff around the mental health space you know when i've been actually working in the space for a good few years before i even moved to the world before 2018 when i was on love island even before all that i was really you know actively working with the charities i was also um you know passionate advocate in my space in a and e we see a huge amount of mental health i mean one of the big misconceptions about a and e is we just see you know injuries cuts and bruises and heart attacks and things at least 30 of our workload relates to mental health and I think it's probably higher

than that in reality and I've really worked in that space but obviously you know since I was appointed Youth Mental Health Ambassador since sadly my brother passed away last year which kind of led to me focusing even more and I guess the attention on it which led to the appointment it's tough sometimes when people go well oh you you know you got 80 million for mental health support teams at school why didn't you get 200 you know you've let us down you didn't get 200 million it's very hard you know and it's when you especially when I go I'm very and actually very optimistic and positive person you know when I came with the role I was in the role and I was in it for about two or three weeks and we got 80 million quid that's a lot of money you know at a time in a pandemic where the government's pretty strapped we spent a load of money i'm not just saying just me we

worked as there's other people within the with the group and the number 10 and outside that worked on this but i would i think it's fair to say i was a big steer on that happening and then someone goes oh you didn't get enough you've let us down what you've done is terrible you know you shouldn't be there why are you in this role? Not easy. But I always go back to, and I think at the time when I came out, there's a huge, and I should say this, I've 95% amount of support. It's been unbelievable.

It's always the 5% or 1% or whatever that they get to you a little bit. But, you know, now I've gone back to the idea of, well, actually, what are my values? What matters to me? And I go, well, actually, I believe that I am making, you know, at least if even if it's a millimeter difference, I'm doing something. I'm doing something positive. And that keeps me going. And that's what stops me becoming down, I guess,

from the kind of hate, if you like. Are you a confident person? No, I don't think so. I am confident. That's a good question. No, I'm not. I don't think so. I am confident. That's a good question. No, I'm not. I don't think so. Not inherently confident. I think I would always, if you put me in a party, if we were at a swanky party in New York that you might attend before the pandemic, I'd probably be the guy in the corner quietly chatting to one or two people, you know, and just, I wouldn't, I would certainly avoid center of attention classic kind

of introvert in that sense but i even though i'm not confident i do think i'm very resilient and i think i'm very determined and i think that helps me a lot where confidence lacks sometimes my determination i think pushes through i mean it kind of begs the question and i'm sure you know you're probably sick of people inquiring about this apparent contradiction which is not a confident person in your own definition of confidence um and yet when that love island researcher comes knocking on your instagram when you have 200 followers and says do you want to be on one of the biggest shows in the world topless yeah one of the biggest shows in the country topless you were like sure well i mean this the reason that happened was look when i was at university and i loved my time at university as mostly i will come and talk about a little bit about a

time that wasn't so good maybe in a little bit but on the whole pretty pretty good time um but in my second year at uni one of my very very good friends freya barlow who was and it's it's annoying because sometimes you hear and i don't mean this in a disrespectful you hear people talking about someone that's passed and everyone goes they're amazing they do this and they did this and that but honestly like freya was the most amazing person she started like two charities even by a second year in med school she spent a summer vaccinating kids and and abroad and go to Africa and just doing like a really amazing work and very sadly you know well I actually remember one week it was towards the winter time I'm trying to remember towards winter time I said Freya you've got some bruises

on your arm I mean are you all right at all yeah a bit odd I've got a few bruises I'm actually going to see the doctor i think was the next day or the day after anyway a couple of days later we had a text in the group saying we need to go for dinner tonight to talk to you guys so we went to went to dinner and she sat us down and said look you know these bruises that i've had i went to the doctor had blood tests taken next day rushed into hospital i've got leukemia you know she had acute myeloid leukemia which is a very very serious serious've got leukemia you know she had acute myeloid leukemia which is a very very serious serious form of leukemia and to put into context it differs

between people but it can be a matter of short weeks from being diagnosed to passing away if you don't have treatment really quickly so it's one of the most aggressive and nasty cancers that you can have and there's a huge shock to all of us and she quite literally went to dinner and the next morning straight into isolation in the hospital to have nuclear chemotherapy basically a really really strong chemotherapy she was in there for a huge length of time many many months um and you know it was really hard to watch her you know hair for hair falling out you know losing weight you know swelling in her arms and feet and things like that from from the chemo and she was always so positive throughout the whole thing her positivity

was unbelievable and how relentless she was um and even to the point where she's actually you know the university said look take time out clearly you know we want you to recover and have time out she said no i want to do my tests i want to do my exam she sat her exams in isolation in an isolation cubicle in the hospital which is just unbelievable and shows her resilience um anyway after a long bit of time i think it was six months or more um she actually had a bone marrow transplant uh from i think it was someone in germany um that gave her the bone marrow and she came out of the hospital and we were like yes you know she's getting through this, and she even ran a marathon, something silly, like a month or so, a couple of months afterwards

to raise money for leukemia research, you know, straight, we're like, just chill out a bit, and she's like, no, I'm straight back to charity work, fine, so then running into the next winter, we had a phone call again, and she said, it's back, and we're like, what do you mean, the cancer's back, and she was told she had a matter of weeks to live because she'd had the bone marrow transplant. It was now at the point where there was basically nothing she could do. So we threw a big ball and a party to kind of celebrate her life to that point. And we all kind of said our goodbyes.

I went to her house actually to say goodbye to her. And one of the things she said to me before she passed away, well, she passed away like a week or so later it wasn't very long uh she said alex you're an introvert you're sometimes you're i think you've got a lot of talent in terms of what you do and i'm very proud of the things you do and i think you you're you know you've got a lot of potential in your life but you sometimes shy away and i want you to go out there and say yes to things put yourself in come out of your comfort zone something's fair to say often in life i just keep myself in that conversation and I want you to go out there and say yes to things put yourself in come out of your comfort

zone something's fair to say often in life I just keep myself in that conversation put yourself out that comfort zone you know say yes things live your life you know I'm in a position now I have to stop my life here I want you to live yours and that I think is a very long-winded explanation but that is why I went on that show because I actually was very resistant to it the whole time and even to now the the execs will say I'm the one person that didn't want I went on that show. Because I actually was very resistant to it the whole time. And even to now, the execs will say, I'm the one person that didn't want to go on the show. You know, but I was like, I almost felt like I don't know what I believe

and what you don't believe. But I was like, what would Freya say? She said, get on that show and do it. And that's why I did it. I can't imagine what it's like having to go and say goodbye to a friend like that. And, you know, it's so difficult and and at that at that age you know only 22 or 23 or something whatever it was it's very odd it's very odd to have a

conversation with someone and like we've experienced everyone's experienced grief at some point and but this was the only and still is the only time i've been sat with someone knowing it was the last conversation it's a very odd situation because what do you say to someone who is dying in the next couple of weeks and they're so young and you had all this hope about them getting better um but and i remember it's almost like i could go back to that moment so intensely because in that moment i was like this is the last chance i'm going to speak to this person i need to capture every second of this so it's almost like hardwired into my brain um but i really appreciated what she said and i to this day even now you know i was on sky news this morning and stuff which is again miles out my comfort zone never you know i'm becoming more used to these things now but miles out my comfort zone none of that stuff would happen if it wasn't for what she said to me I don't think um I'd have just continued staying within that comfort zone not pushing myself um and

protecting myself in a way I guess what did you say to her on that day I told her that I loved her um and that I was so glad that I knew her um and how grateful I was really that uh that she was my friend um and you know what I didn't tell her which I said to that she was my friend. And, you know, what I didn't tell her, which I said to other people, was how cruel the world can be sometimes. You know, you've got someone who's going to be a doctor and be an amazing doctor as well. You know, not just a doctor, but an amazing one.

And such a kind, genuine person. Like, how cruel can it be to happen to that person? But obviously in that moment, you don't want to say that. You know, you just want to instill that feeling of love and appreciation for them um but it was hard what can you say a lot of it's non-verbal you have a hug and you just share that moment don't you but when you walk out that room it's like wow like i'm not seeing her again very odd very difficult very very difficult but you know i'm very grateful and i'm not positive and i've taken straight into a darker place there but in a real positive you know i feel that

the people around us do have can have such an impact on our lives and like so much light has come from her life because of that i continue to talk about as much as possible you know and and we all celebrate her and her life and I hope that I have taken a bit of her with me to do some of the things I'm doing now and I hope that she'd be proud of some of it and you were you were working in sort of emergency medicine before the Love Island experience began so begs the question how did you get into that if you weren't able to go to medical school well so so basically I'd applied the time if we go back to when I missed my grades um and this is where i think i learned about failure which i think is very important i'm

talking about success but failure is incredibly important um i failed by two marks obviously absolutely gutted didn't have my grades what made it worse was me and my friend were going to liverpool together he was going to go to dental school i was in med school best buddies all the way through like can't wait and obviously like oh mate sorry yeah gutted um so i had to apply again i did well i had to actually remember sat down my mom and um she was very upset as you can imagine and i said look mom it's fine and i apply again i get the grades i do the interviews do the tests you've got to do with the application it's fine i'll get in um and i believe that i would i was like I'm not going to give up. I corrected a few sentences on my course that I needed to correct to get the marks back up.

I reapplied again, did the interviews, and I got my place. Does that sound like a guy that lacks confidence? I don't know. I think that resilience and confidence are probably separate things. I think that was one of the first times I really faced properly in my life

where i'd really failed and i had to kind of ask myself a question do i give up and i was like i am not giving up i'm going and i think it was like and but i think that did give me confidence i think if we're talking about that it's like that resilience of going i was like wow when i got the place again i went to med school i did feel more confident about that i might not be confident to walk topless in front of people like when my knees were shaking and walking out on Love Island but I was more confident myself that I was resilient and when I went to med school the great thing was and I think this is why failure is so important a I knew how painful it is to miss nearly miss out on something that means a lot to you

the second I really appreciate it when I've actually succeeded so when I was at med school I just appreciate it so much I loved every moment of it you know I worked hard you know and I even though I nearly missed out on going I came out with a distinction the top kind of two or three in the year you know a few people each year get distinctions so I ended up in doing well but I don't think that's because I'm particularly better than anyone at exams or whatever I just had tasted the failure so much that I wanted that success. And I think that has been a really good life lesson. You know, I still fail today.

We all fail, right, all the time. But I know that I can pick myself up and I will always get there. Do you want to come in and watch this podcast live from behind the scenes? If you do, all you have to do is hit the subscribe button.

And now that the world has opened up, you'll be behind the scenes as many of our subscribers have been. I can't to meet you that's part of what inspires you to try things outside of your this sort of circumference of your comfort zone is knowing that even if you know the worst possible outcome occurs you you've been here before you survived this storm and and it worked out in the end and i think even for me now in my life when you know because we're all our comfort zones are all subjective to our experiences in life so i have a comfort zone too you know what i mean people people think i've achieved a lot in like

my business career whatever i still have a comfort zone there's still this thing in my head that says steve this is what you're capable of right and so even when i step outside of mine the thing that i'm always relying on in the hardest moments of my life is that hindsight of you know we've we've been here before we've got through this yeah and and you've got to have faith even if it doesn't feel like it even if your emotions are telling you otherwise but have faith and trust yourself well you learn every time you extend that boundary of the comfort zone you've got a step further i mean what what are the what you're doing at the moments outside of your kind of comfort zone what are you what are you doing that's kind of pushing you because we're all i think it's important to share

because people will look at you and think oh he's guy's so successful everything but we all are pushing that boundary right yeah so a couple of things the first thing is obviously dragon's den which i've you know i've done podcasting before but i control this yeah and there's you know there's not four point something million people watching i mean we've got close to your time but um i control this. So, and I know how this works. This is my domain. Dragon's Den, when you're sat with five panelists,

the one on your left has been there 20 years, the one on your right has been there 15. And there's massive cameras swinging. There's this lift door, swings open and all of this. And then you're, you know, all of the dynamics to consider, trying to learn, trying to learn how to play my role in this show

while also trying to analyze the business and decide whether I want to give my money to this business within a short period of time. It's a lot. That's how I come to DJing, as you can see over there. I'm learning to DJ and I'm going to do a show this year. Outside my comfort zone. We're doing it.

I'll come through. I love that. I'll stand in the corner, the back corner, the way so they'll notice me but i'll appreciate it um this show we're doing and i think it's 12 12 days away there's you know a thousand people coming to the albert hall it's musical it's i've written the whole thing she chose the music 20 person choir etc etc big show and then my i'll just i don't want to rattle on but my last thing would be my business so i started a company when i was 20 grew it's worth 300 million you know very interesting journey now i'm going like 10 times bigger and to play at a 10 times bigger level where you're trying

to raise 200 million from the start and grow a multi-billion dollar company, it requires a completely different set of skills. And again, you feel in some areas like an imposter, but I don't give a fuck because I've always felt this way. I've always felt like this. Like I've always felt like this sounds crazy to say. That's how I felt. Everything I've said my whole life

sounded kind of crazy to me until it wasn't. So when i say crazy things these days again it's that hindsight of me going well everything else i said said something crazy and it worked out so it's just you just learn don't you from your experiences that you even though it's a different uncomfortable zone that you're in you got through your last uncomfortable zone and you came out stronger from and even if and that's important even if you failed at that time you still survived you're still here you're still breathing you still get you got up and you're going again and that's important that's the important point from it and it's interesting hearing that because i'm starting my business prescribed which is a very much smaller business the bath bombs that we're doing self-care

um which is very exciting but that's that's a that's a very uncomfortable zone for me i mean you know i have surrounded myself with a team that have experience in different areas and i recognize that it is an area that is new to me but even with the right people around you it's it's quite scary so um you know but it's exciting as well i i've i think that's a big thing i've learned i've learned to enjoy that feeling of being uncomfortable my mom has a great saying actually and she she said this for many many years i love it get comfortable being uncomfortable i think that's a really great point i mean you never are quite i mean it doesn't it's an imperfect statement but it does i i kind of get that it's like it's like in the hospital for example right it's like in the hospital okay

you start as a first year medical student right and you've never taken blood in your life i don't know you know to get the needle into the vein taking the blood test right honestly my hands shaking when i had to do the first blood test in real person i thought now i'm out i can't do this i'm not made for i'm an imposter what am i doing here get me out of here and then you know you do it 10 times like oh that's that's fine and then you build up and then the first time you know when you're say a fifth year med student you're doing your first cpr and a cardiac arrest patient helping out in recess and then in the a and e department like oh my god this is too much what am i doing here you do a few times it's fine and you just you just it just every margin you gain you get better at something and but it always happens i mean even consultants say have been doing it been studying for between study and working for 15 20 years and they say

the first day of the consultant they feel like their first day at med school again i i think there's something really interesting there so i want to ask you a question on that that taking the blood from the veins as a junior doctor how would you feel in terms of fulfillment and i'm this is i'm totally leaving you to a place that i want to ask another question but how would you feel in terms of fulfillment? And I'm totally leading you to a place that I want to ask another question. But how would you feel in terms of fulfillment if you're a junior doctor, they said, okay, today, Alex, we're going to take blood from a vein. And then you had to do that exact same thing for 20 years. So first day, you're shitting it.

Oh my God. No, no, no. Shaking hands. Take the blood. Second day, a little bit more comfortable. Third day, a little bit more comfortable with it. How would you feel in 20 years time? Yeah the same thing every day yeah i think you you need to i think self-development is very important and feeling that you're adding layers to your skill set or whatever we're talking about medicine here but

it can be anything in life i think that variation and variety is very important and feeling that you're pushing basically you're feeling you're pushing yourself yeah and i think that's the idea of because at the end of the day um the struggle of life and the challenges in life getting over them is what gives you that sense of reward if you don't have a struggle if there isn't any struggle if life was completely easy if you woke up with 50 million quid in the bank and there are no challenges at all you'd be very bored actually i think you know and i enjoy there's always a balance you got a balance it's all about balance you don't want too much struggle because that's or too much hardship and if i if a and e was making me cry every day clearly i wouldn't want

to be there but yeah i think that it's good to have that increasing mounting challenge you know and that's exactly what i was alluding to which is that that worthwhile struggle is achieved by stepping out being uncomfortable as your mother said so we know that worthwhile struggle is so critically important to being fulfilled in life as you've said and that worthwhile struggle like showing up that first day or then advancing is achieved by being uncomfortable so if we reason from there we can say being uncomfortable is the reason why you achieve worthwhile struggle which is the reason why you achieve fulfillment and this is part of what i was i was alluding to which is people that avoid the uncomfortable piece which is at the very start of that chain

then don't get the worthwhile fulfillment which comes from the the challenge but also they stay in situations which are no longer serving them relationships jobs and that again because they're like oh my god i got uncertainty of jumping off this cliff and going into uncertainty is just and then they and then they have midlife crises and mental health challenges and so that's why i'm just so passionate it's the whole idea around fearing less i think people are often it's i and i i love um psychology i read a lot of i've read power of now you know the secret all the kind of classic ones but I've you know I'm really into that kind of mindset theory and a lot of people are very afraid the next situation they might find themselves in will be more painful or difficult in their current situation but in reality often you find that the change you're going to experience isn't

as bad as you think it is it's the idea of like you know the the analogy of having a ferrari on your drive right and you get your ferrari and the first day you're so excited about it you think oh my god i'm gonna be like so happy about this car and this is gonna be so every day we're so excited about it's gonna be incredible i've got this massive house but every day that kind of that you return to the baseline level of happiness what you're experiencing is pleasure isn't it not so you feel it's a pleasure and that will come down obviously the ferrari after a certain amount of time you might love it and I love my cars but I'm not gonna be jumping up and down every morning every time I see the car it's eventually gonna come back

to the baseline and equally you know people worry on the opposite end say you're really really worried about I don't know um changing your job and you're really worried that you might you know you might start this new job but you can be really bad at it and it's gonna be so difficult every day you know I'm just not gonna be prepared or whatever and you start the job and the first few days can be really scary you might feel really uncomfortable and it's really challenging but you will come back to that baseline of it being okay and if you look at relationships people worry oh i'm in this relationship what if i break up in this relationship and the next one isn't as good or i'm not as happy or regret it i think i've really or really messed this up what have i done but actually your

fear when they actually do it they go actually it was fine i wasn't meant to stay in a relationship you know i was actually staying in a place of fear and fearing too much rather than going well actually if you stand to reason you know my current situation is far from perfect i don't want to be in it why should the next situation be any worse i i completely agree with everything you're saying in fact i sent one of my best friends a quote last night that I'd written because of the situation he was in. And I think it kind of exemplifies what we're saying. I said, if you want to avoid making the same mistakes twice, make more decisions based on your past memories and less decisions based on your current emotions. And what I was trying to say there is that in the moment

when you're in that relationship or you're in that toxic job situation you'll you'll be um like suffocated and um imprisoned by your own fear um of uncertainty or failure or i'll never meet someone as good as this or whatever it is but you've always got through it you've been in love like with me i was convinced from the age of 12 that i was going to marry jasmine and then at 14 i was convinced it was helen and then at 16 i was like you know i've always thought that this person was the one in the moment i've always thought this is it and look at me moving on to number seven and thinking this is it you kind of hold on to your current situation because ultimately we always go well actually my current situation i'm in i'm not in pain i've got food and water i feel okay it's not that terrible what if the next situation whatever that

might be work or otherwise life or others what if that is worse than my current one we always fear the fear the unknown but it's the it's like this and i hope i'm quoting the right the right genius i think it was einstein that said that um you know the the it's the the definition of insanity is repeating the same action or it's roughly along the lines of being the same action expecting a different outcome you know if you you know one plus one is always going to be two so you know if you're not if you're having that same outcome and frustrated with it you have to change something in your equation to bring something different amen we were talking about failure there and you and you know that led us

on to talk about university and you you um subtly said that there was a part of university which you didn't enjoy yeah i i think um i don't think anyone in life lives an entire life of having just being happy all the time everything's great and having periods of being flat or sad or losing yourself and i think my time for that up to date i I think was probably at university. I was at my fourth year, everything going great, studies going great. I was on for doing really well. And I actually was based, so I went to university in Peninsular, which is extra in Plymouth, but we do placements all the way around that kind of peninsula. And I loved my time there, but I got sent down to Truro to a hospital there and i loved the

hospital people everyone was fantastic but i was kind of away from friends i was in a place that i just i just felt quite isolated and i actually suspect i'm probably just putting it on that as a place of reason but for whatever reason i just become quite flat and i lost interest in my exercise stopped exercising my studies even like i wasn't really working as much as i should have been sleep went out the window i was staying up late getting up you know getting up late eating bad i just lost myself in time i became quite unhappy and i kept really quiet about it didn't tell anyone so this is terrible i was going to be a doctor i need to be like really really strong how can you be a caring professional if you can't take care of yourself so i left it a long time probably like six seven months of feeling pretty damn miserable um to the point where eventually i was like i need to do something but i was like i

can't speak to the med school because they might think this guy we've got to hold him back or something you can't be a doctor that's not true and actually look back and think that was you know sadly that's a big part of the stigma around mental health but that isn't true but at the time i felt that way so i called who a lot of a lot of people relate to this what do you do in a situation of trouble called my mum and i said you know it's big outpouring emotion i was like this is you know this was happening i feel dreadful and she said well look there's a few things we're going to do we're going to talk every single day and start speaking about the thoughts and things you're having i've beaten myself up a lot and about insensitive and weak and all this

stuff so let's talk about this stuff and secondly let's start getting you doing the things that you know that are good for you you know she's like you've stopped doing all the anchors in your life that keep you feeling good it's pretty wise for you're not a doctor you know she's a works in the bank but very wise woman clearly um i'd like to think so and she said look start doing those things again so i thought you're right you know she'd make sense i'll go for a walk every day so i get natural light and the benefits of being outside in nature let's start exercising again so I create an exercise routine as I'm eating crappy rubbish food let's start cooking again I make my own food rather than just getting ready meals and I was like let's I'm not really connecting with people so let's plan stuff to start making plans with my friends and I also had an idea I was like well actually you know to help me feel less isolated

let's call a different friend every day some people I haven't spoke to for years, and just chat to them, and all these little things, all these micro changes added up within literally weeks to, like, transforming how I felt, I got my Zastaviv back, I had my energy back, I was like, I'm back to that kind of type A, you know, happy, forceful person to kind of go out and really make the most of each day. And I think I've learned so much from that. I've learned from that throughout my time post-university. But also I've learned about that in terms of what I think people kind of don't understand about health. And, you know, when I was working at Lewisham Hospital, I still work there now in A&E,

so many people that I see so many patients come in and I realize that they've not been given the tools through education and school but understanding how to actually look after themselves you know we taught so much at school about maths and English and history and whatever but no one tells you about why sleep is actually so important to your productivity your self-worth your happiness that sleep is not actually a state of just being sedated sedated you're actually in a creative space the idea that you know nutrition can actually help you feel better not just like just for having a diet or whatever that people kind of see it as you know the role of exercise all these different things i'm like but these things actually do matter because these things are not only keep your keep you physically, keep you mentally healthy as well.

And that's where, you know, the book Live Well came from. I wrote that book because I felt those are the things that no one taught me in school. And even at med school, you know, we focus on anatomy, physiology and pathology, looking at diseases and treatments. But we didn't do enough, in my opinion, about these fundamental things around sexual health physical health in terms of you know sleep exercise passion and purpose you know a big reason we go to school surely is to find what our purpose and what we want to do in life and no one kind of gives you any tools i don't think to figure out what that is you know i was lucky to find my kind of sense

of purpose i was kind of stumbled upon it you know based on some of my interests and i was kind of sense of purpose i was kind of stumbled upon it you know based on some of my interests and i was kind of lucky um and i really felt that that that those kind of bits you know that's why i wrote that book i thought that is the stuff that i wish people had told me when i was younger you know so i've got a couple of points here when you went through that phase in university would you class classify yourself as being depressed at that point i would look back and i was depressed at low energy um my mood was poor my sleep was disturbed uh lack of interest in my hobbies and stuff there's plenty of kind of tick boxes for for being in that category i said i had mild depression at the time mild to moderate depression and you said there that and this is because i mean it speaks volumes to me what you said after which was that people

what i heard was that people don't understand the full range of the causes of depression yeah and i've sat here twice now with yohanahari do you know yohanahari yeah yeah lost connections yeah and um i went through the years and i've said this before but i went through the years not not believing this idea that we were just being born broken and understanding that the only thing that's really changed in humans over the last let's say 20 years is the world we live in yeah um and the way we live right the way that society has conditioned us to live more lonely as you've written about in this book and i read about um uh you know less meaningful connections less purpose in our lives

less exercise we're getting more stagnant over the last 50 years than ever before yeah um and so my one of the questions i was planning on asking you today but you kind of answered it there but i'm gonna ask it again anyway is what are the biggest misconceptions about maintaining good mental health and or what's causing bad mental health that you have um in your opinion well i think if you look at what human is designed to do we're designed to uh be out well we should be outside mostly you know we we will create shelters and things but most of our day should be in natural light uh we should be uh you know going out and searching and foraging and finding our food food as part of a team so

we're using a family or a group a clan to kind of to tribe it's about then get your to get your food we're supposed to feel that sense of purpose within our tribe. So someone is generally a leader, the people that help, it's people with different skills, but you feel a sense of belonging to that tribe. We should be eating food that comes from the earth, that's not processed food, that we certainly wouldn't do as part of nature. We get plenty of exercise as part of our day, you know, foraging, hunting, doing whatever doing whatever building you look at modern life and flip that around and go a lot of us spend our times in boxes inside without any natural light glued to phones not connected with people often feeling that we don't have our sense of purpose and not

really understanding you know why we feel that that way you know a lot of things in modern life are pulling us away from good quality sleep giving us bad sleep they're pulling us towards fast foods and processed foods away from natural sources of you know good quality food that fuels our body and if you look at all that and you think about it that way it makes a lot of sense why people feel quite lost they don't know why they feel a certain way and i think we just need to kind of step back and go let's educate and this is why you know what the work i'm doing the youth mental health role i'm focusing education so much that you know and we've made five uh well-being videos for this summer as part of the summer school program which are going to go out to all the schools in uk and we're looking at we're looking at sleep we're looking at exercise we're looking

at nutrition we're looking at managing social media and what to do when you're not feeling good in yourself and within those videos and within the toolkits we're giving i'm hoping there's a lot of stuff in there people go wow like i i didn't realize that about sleep and why that's important or you know why i need to get natural light why i need to get outside so i think so much of that stuff comes together i'm not saying that the cause of mental illness is always related to lifestyle that is obviously not true. There's a huge amount out there that's to do with genetics and diseases. You can't blame lifestyle for all disease,

but I do think it's a big part of it. And if you look at what happens when you go to your doctor and say, I'm depressed, I need help, the first thing we look at is lifestyle. And we combine that with other treatments if needed, regardless of that disease. And actually, even when you're looking at severe forms of mental illness the lifestyle factor will always remain really really important because without that i don't think the treatments can can can do it alone it has to be a combination thing but this is what you know there's so many people out there not necessarily depressed but

they're just low mood of just anhedonia they just don't feel themselves they're just a bit lost and i think a lot of it comes back to the things i talk about in that book i couldn't agree more and when i because i agree so much i've tried to figure out how one would from their you know from their apartment here in shoreditch do something to help and because it's such a fundamental issue about the way we've chosen to live our lives you know illuminated glass screens to dates to order food to move around as you said isolated four white walls these like you can't tear that down surely so i think we i reflect and go we would literally have to rethink the way we live our entire lives the foundations in which our lives are built in order to solve this problem that's genuinely what

i think to to truly solve this problem we'd have to redesign our society i think so i think we and even i think as a whole i think that's a big part of the solution but as an individual if you're sitting within this space you know in you're living in the world we're in now right you can't get out of social media it's part of our work it's literally part of the mouthpiece of a lot of the stuff that we do for example you can't get rid of that so what is the answer it's about adapting and making sure that you are aware in your life of these principles and thinking about how you can actually adapt your life to make sure you encapsulate you know you're incorporating that for example stuff like i know if i don't go for

each day and get natural light and just feel that i'm about around in nature i get anxious i feel a sense of just like being not at ease so i about around in nature i get anxious i feel a sense of just like being not at ease so i make sure every morning i get up in the morning first thing i do every day is go for a walk out for a walk in nature i move it's great for productivity i get great ideas sometimes when i'm thinking walking some bad ones as well but generally there's being out and about it's brilliant for that you know i make sure that the end of each day i again get outside i move but also i do my exercise the end of each day i again get outside i move but also i do my exercise the end of the day it signifies the end of my like working day you

know i plan things meaningful connections with my friends and family now more than ever like it's so easy just to chat on the phone or facetime i'm like now that we can more safely the pandemic you know make time for the people around you see them in person do things with them in in meaningful ways talking about sleep you know the whole like sleep when you're dead idea and a lot of i think you know you talk you'd like to talk to obviously a lot of very successful business people and sometimes the slightly negative side of the work that life is not finding that balance of sleep and i know the things i'm juggling as well that can be difficult but i i really really value and understand that

if i don't have my eight-hour sleep and good quality sleep, I'm not going to be as productive. I won't actually be as creative and I probably won't be as successful at the things I'm doing. So it's just making those changes, you know, and just being aware. Once you're aware of a problem,

you talked in an episode before, but we talked about exercising between, for the summer, summer shape, right? Being a summer body, right? I won't call body right not calling out but you but part of it for me same for me as well i went well why is that why are we doing that as soon as you're aware of the why and why we're doing something we then through that awareness modify and we realize all of a sudden we modify our behavior it's kind of

idea if i say to you right focus on your breathing it's like or like think about your breath all of a sudden you start controlling your breathing you're aware of it you're making a conscious um conscious decision around that that subject so i think just having that knowledge have that understanding and be aware of what it's doing to your life some of it might you might incorporate some of you think actually i'm fine in that sense but think about it you're such a good point and you know like up until so the example you gave just for reference sake is um i always the reason why i was always unsuccessful in the gym is because i was my goal was to get to look good for summer so when i looked good or summer ended my why was gone and i and i was and it was a cycle that just repeated every single year i think most of us

feel that i mean most of us have been there and done that haven't we but your point there was the thing that cured it was the self-awareness of my own cycle and without the self-awareness and the education which i think you've you've you've done a tremendous job in this book of put like of educating people on um we as it relates to the point we're making about the society we live in and how it's broken you will literally be a puppet to the society and the society will be your puppet master it will tell you the notifications on your phone will tell you when you can sleep and it will tell you um when uh how to communicate and form meaningful connections use tinder it will it will orchestrate your life for you and i think what you're saying there is which i completely agree with is self-awareness

allows you to take back control and be intentional about these critically important areas of your health. And then if you want any more kind of evidence of how much it controls it, think about, you know, if I said to someone now, right, don't have your phone in the bedroom tonight. I mean, for most people, I don't speak for everyone, but a lot of people, I'm not doing that, anxiety around the thought of not having your phone in the bedroom. It's like, why is that such a big thing? It's not a problem to have the phone out of the room why do you really need it but it shows our attachment to tech and to the modern life you know we don't need that phone actually when i was on love island the best thing about going on love island so i didn't have a phone

for nearly nine weeks that was the best thing about it i literally say that it was great being at the sunshine but that actually was amazing it was like a real like wow and now i've come back we're so attached to it again um and it's something i'm working on i'm conscious i need to start putting my phone out my bedroom i've done it a few times but it just creeps back in but i'm aware of it now and then i think that's a big starting point for fixing a problem just knowing it's there speaking of love island when you came out of um love island i i heard that you went and did some therapy yeah tell me about your thinking there and and what inspired that i when you look at um risks for deterioration in mental health or mental illness one of the biggest things we talk about is change and big life change changes and people sometimes think that means bad things it means

good and bad like for example you could have been given your dream job in London and you're from Leeds now that's the goal and what's happening is your dream you've had that dream job but it means a big up life upheaval getting a new flat being away from family friends so even good things can bring problems right so when I came out of the show I was like wow I've been through I was quite aware I've been through quite a big thing I've gone from you know 200 followers on Instagram to 1 million in in nine weeks you know i'm not someone from social media i don't understand it at all it was all completely new the life had changed and now being stopped you know by everyone in the street which is something so different for me and i was like i need to process this so that's why i went to therapy i think it was one of the best things i've done i kind of had to kind of

like unpick what I was going through. And it was almost like a, such a big shock to the system. And it really, really helped me. And I'd say to anyone, you know, everyone should have a therapist. I actually think, you know, everyone needs a therapist in life. And it's one of the things I think the Americans have really got right. The thing that we could learn from is that it's so much more open to talk about things and and what you're going through and people are very happy to say i'm getting therapy you know and it wasn't because i was particularly going through a difficult time i just was aware i've had quite a

big change very um self-aware of you to even to even want to do that because you as you say you weren't struggling tremendously in that moment but you were it was almost preemptive i guess yeah yeah i just kind of was like this is just you know kind of i sorry these were crazy it's like this is a crazy thing to go for i need to kind of kind of process this and it really it really helped me because i went back to unpicking about like who am i what do i want in life what i want to achieve in my life and it allowed me to kind of consider those things as well as dealing with like okay what's it like you know to for? And it allowed me to kind of consider those things as well as dealing with like, okay, what's it like, you know, for people to recognize and all this kind of stuff.

And it really helped me. And going back to that kind of purpose point, I kind of had this kind of big life shift of like, what is my purpose now? Because I've trained or I wanted to be a doctor since the age of about 13. I've tried and all that training and all past all those exams,

I've actually pretty happy at 27 years old, being a doctor, you know, I've got a good life and what I'm those exams I'm actually pretty happy at 27 years old being a doctor you know I've got a good life and what I'm doing I enjoy it now I've got this whole new thing what is my purpose and it really helped me kind of figure that out and one of the biggest things and the most important things I did was going back to to work you know I went back to A&E after a couple of months um to kind of to kind of just get back into that kind of what the sense of me was and from doing that actually it gave me the purpose for everything else and all the things that i do and all the

things of the books the podcast the the you know the other bits and pieces that i'm doing my life it all stems off that that purpose and i think i was very lucky to have that therapy and i'm glad that i had it to help me figure out what i was going to do. Christ, because in that moment coming out of Love Island, you have more options than ever. But more options also brings the possibilities of making a lot of mistakes. For example, and again, I'm not saying it's any kind of slight at all. We're all different. Everyone's different. But for me, I was not going to come out and do club appearances

or do those kind of things because it's a i'm an introvert i'd have hated it as you probably realized by now but secondly it would have drawn away from what i actually what my purpose was and what i really wanted to achieve so you know and and i'm very wise advice i received um coming out the show sorry god it's a wise advice i received when i came out of the show was you know say no to most things you know if you're saying yes to more things you're saying no you're probably doing something wrong um and i had to kind of channel that and it was a risk in it and sometimes i could have made a ton of money going to club peers the most i was offered

was like 10 grand to go to a club right just for half an hour 40 minutes or something and i said no to every single one of them and just i've never ever done one but by doing that and channing my energy into things that i care about and putting my time into the projects that kind of matter and give me that longevity and the direction i want to be in that was very important and uh yeah as i say i think a big part of figuring that all out was therapy that really helped me i think it's really interesting as well as when you take you when you drift away from yourself you almost don't notice it happening because you just take one of those club pas and then you know someone oh they go we'll get him back next week and then they tell the club down the road and they they get you down

there and then they go oh i've got a friend now maybe you can do some you know this or that the other and it's just this slow sort of swaying from from yourself from who you are and this happens with a lot of people and they and you know sometimes it happens i mean yours was huge temptation in terms of like financial temptation some people it's you know their mom telling them that they should be a lawyer and they go well you know i'll do that and then they get 10 years down the line and they've swayed so far from who they are that they've lost that sense of their purpose they don't even know the way back it's almost but their their new identity their false identity has become so much part of them that they don't know how to they built this group of friends that's the other thing because then it's reinforced by the people you then associate with you get the

wrong type of people around you and then and it's hard to get back right i believe in that kind of um uh you know uh not law of attraction but you know if you if you move in a certain direction you take a step in a certain direction you will you will move in that direction and the further steps you take you move further into a direction and you'll attract people that are moving in that same direction and that's fine if it's going in the direction you want to but if it's not you're gonna end up in a place you don't want to be and that's why the number one first chapter that i do talk about is that passion and purpose the purpose idea how do you find your purpose you know and a lot of people ask that question and i think it's that idea you've got to look at your like values your experiences your beliefs your your interests and and find that intersection between those you know

what are your actual talents you know where where does that all kind of lie i think you've you've always got time to change that direction i think when you're if you're in your in life and you're doing law but you wanted to do i don't know you want to be an artist or whatever well you know why first of all you know what do you need to what what do you need to do to get to that position i do believe that modern life unfortunately does create a lot of boundaries i think you can't do this or that you can't change your direction if you're in this direction you can't go in the opposite and i think that's that's that's such a shame and we we should change that look at medicine for example i mean imagine the eyebrows raised when i moved in the complete opposite direction you know i don't mean this i hope it doesn't come across in this way but a lot of things i've done

haven't been done before by someone that's you know a junior doctor that's going through those ranks it's a first and certainly in this country dr mike has done something similar in america but in this country it's quite different and but i hope that people what they'll take from that is that actually you can change you don't have to go down a certain path and if you're not happy with the path you're going down what are you going to do to change it you know what are your goals write it all down i still do it now every now and then when i'm feeling a bit oh i need to you know think about where i go with things or i just need to have a moment i write down all my thoughts my goals my ideas sometimes i just word vomit onto paper whatever i'm just thinking in the moment and then i leave that piece of paper

for a day or so and i come back and look at it and sometimes you think what is written down here i start circling stuff i start thinking about what how does that connect why did i write that what what am i thinking about when i'm looking at that and and then then from that you draw take away that word vomit and make a new list of like you know what is my purpose number one you can you know what is my number one purpose that i want that what is my purpose and then you know under that put your goals you know how am i going to achieve that what are your goals, you know, how am I going to achieve that, what are my goals, what are my aims, how am I going to put into practice, and it's just a simple thing, actually, it's so easy, you just need a pen and a blank piece of paper, but I think everyone should do that so often, I mean, in business, they talk about the five-year plan, and all this kind of stuff, but I think just

as an individual, just get out of your head sometimes, you know, get out on paper, know what you're doing, am I happy, do I want to change it change it am i following when i write down my purpose am i actually doing that am i doing my purpose but also if i'm not what am i doing to achieve it because if you're not doing anything that will get you to that purpose then what are you doing there's something what you're describing there is you're like interrogating yourself you're interrogating your thoughts your your underlying reasons why you're thinking things maybe thinking of pursuing things and in a world where there is this constant whispering this external whispering which is saying you should be an influencer you should be a youtuber that's the people will love you more if

you're a millionaire and that is we're exposed to that every hour of every day no matter where we look this external thing telling you what your purpose is yeah what the best purpose is yeah and we know that as you're saying purpose is subjective mine's different from yours but the world has a very clear idea of what the best point purpose is very interesting it's a very interesting thought and this is why i'm such a big advocate of this like interrogation in fact that's what's it's cured it's it saved me in my life because 18 years old i want my diary it said range rover hot girlfriend million pounds before i'm literally said a million pounds before i'm 25 range rover sport yeah that's those are my goals in life came from a place of insecurity obviously i was therefore i was susceptible to that whispering

telling me what the best purpose and the way to millionaire is the way to happiness is um and but without that interrogation you've described you will go with that voice because it's fucking loud yeah right so there has to be a counter voice and by putting it on paper you're really attacking that external narrative which is which threatens to lead you astray right yeah and i i think it's it's that idea like you said every, life is kind of, you've got influences within your life, like friends and family, they have common beliefs, what your mum wanted you to do or whatever, and that directs you.

Then, as you say, you've got this massive, it's loud and quiet, and that's the problem. It's an undertone and a loud kind of bar that's saying, do this, this is what should make you happy. I think that interrogation is very important. I think anyone listening to this, ask yourself honestly, when is the last time you genuinely sat down and thought about what you want to do in life what actually is your purpose what makes you happy what is peace what what what does peace mean to you

you know and and if you haven't done it in the last year or so do it take out a piece of paper pen and a paper is very easy task it's not a complex one right write it down it's amazing it's such a it's a really enriching and motivating process and and again the key thing is it's not a complex one right write it down it's amazing it's such a it's a really enriching and motivating process and and again the key thing is not like it's not like yes i'm achieving it it's not about that and it's about going well you know where what direction am i going in if it's not the direction i want what am i going to do to change it basically i can't yes so and to do it often as well because again you're going to log in often to instagram and to you're going to be exposed to that external voice often so i think the practice has to the counter practice has to be done often as well which is that re-centering to self right

and i think yeah absolutely and i think when you're talking about the instagram that the the the voice is the noise that you're seeing online particularly on that note and i try and tell everyone this go through your feed if you haven't done it recently go through your um followers and unfollow anyone that doesn't serve your hobbies your interests your beliefs your passions it's amazing how much we collect people that we're following that actually make us feel bad they're giving us the wrong noises they're making us kind of judge us house half harshly or that's your body type or what they're achieving or they just annoy you unfollow it your feet if you're going to have this noise have it as a noise that reflect reflects your purpose your passion

your hobbies your beliefs and i think that will for a lot of people make a big difference you're going to have the noise have the good noise oh my god i i don't um i can't explain how important that advice is just thinking logically if you go into your phone at the moment you probably see that i probably spend several hours a day on social media that is several hours potentially polluting my my brain with junk values yeah making myself feel like shit there that is mental self-harm and and i so once quite literally quite literally i once upon the time i made that decision and so what you know because people listening to this they'll say well you know Alex I can't unfollow this person because they are my friend or my work colleague but you can hit the mute you can mute

them yeah I'm 95% of people in my timeline genuine on my Instagram about 95% of people muted and I'm exposed now I was looking and going hang on i thought am i one in the ten am i one in ten i'm not what's your stories there's your answer if i'm not in your stories then you're unfortunately you're muted and it just is what it is we've all got to protect ourselves i agree no honestly that that 100 if you can't unfollow mute them just curate your feed have it to be what you want it's not just about the business or influence it's about just general life let's be honest most people spend a couple of hours on your phones and make that couple of hours either enjoyable or useful or funny you know and the same with like tiktok and stuff i use tiktok most of it just for a bit of fun so i follow mostly like cats doing stupid stuff or

whatever i think it makes me laugh so just it goes back to the kind of interrogating why are you using that platform why are you using that social media is it serving your purpose And genuinely, it's not easy, but try and create those boundaries. If I was going to say to anyone about boundaries around using your phone, try and protect the last and first hour of each day. The first hour is very hard because people get up in the morning, you're up and I'm sure, you know, looking at you like, and even if you can do it to protect the first 20, 30 minutes, because the first thing people do, when you wake up in the morning,

and there's a lot of um scientific thoughts around this we are a blank canvas a blank piece of paper we are so vulnerable actually in the morning to our day being dictated based on what we see and what influences our days if you pick up your phone you see your ex-girlfriend or you see something or you know trump has said something or it is a new news piece that's really triggering you you are neg you're allowing external factors to dictate the start of your day when you're talking about being productive creative and hitting the day and winning at the day that's not a good start so if you can get up in the morning leave the phone for the first 15 minutes if there's a mood if it's an urgent message fine but get up have your coffee have your shower do your exercise have your walk or whatever then open your phone even if you do it for 15 minutes to start with it makes a huge difference and i find that benefit

protect that morning and the evening protect you know give that time because what people don't realize often is that what we see in the last kind of hour at night dictates a lot of what goes on our brains if you are watching triggering stuff on tiktok even if it's funny stuff that is going to influence what your brain is doing from then on so think about what you're putting in front of your eyes before bed i need to stop watching all these bloody murder documentaries before sleep that's all i fall asleep watching a murder documentary i'd say 90 of the time and that's no exaggeration what do they say about ceos something you said that is really interesting and this this could be a tough question so um you talked about the you know instagram giving um false unhealthy false comparisons

love island is the same how do you kind of like um having been on the show how do i find peace with it yeah um it's interesting because i i it there's two sides to it i think that people watch love island for escapism and a lot of people watch it and don't kind of it doesn't go past that level of just like just easy watching fun stuff that you're seeing but then for some people they're seeing these bodies and it is affecting their belief and their value within themselves and that is what worries me in a big now i've set on the itv board for mental health so one of the things we're really looking at now is that we should be reflecting on particularly reality tv society as a whole both in kind of diversity you know in terms of backgrounds you know but also

body image as well you know and i think that's the direction we should be moving in very importantly and something that i've really said before this series of love island we've got to see uh that it reflects society as a whole you know whether they follow that advice that's that's down to them kind of thing but you know my real worry is that you know for some people it does send out that that wrong message but you know it's difficult i went on the show as myself pretty much the one regret i had is going on the show is i think i probably trained very much for the show if i did it now i'd still train but i'd probably do it less worrying about being like ripped or whatever but it is interesting because you know most people would say if they went on tv in that way they

want to feel comfortable i think there's a balance of feeling comfortable in your own skin but why but not to the extent extreme that extreme that I went to, you know, I was training so hard and stuff and I was worrying about it too much. Now I'd be a bit much more like, you know. They'd want to feel comfortable is an interesting thing because the reason they wouldn't feel uncomfortable is again, because of what society's told us what you should look like. And I think Love Island's success is kind of,

is somewhat linked to the Instagram culture we live in. It feels like if Instagram was a show, it would be Love Island. Yeah. And it's kind of what I mean by the comfort, I guess. It's about what you, where you feel that you want to be within yourself.

Like at the moment, I'm probably carrying a few more pounds than I'm happy with. I like, I know that I move better in that way. I feel more comfortable in that way. And it's just being happier than yourself, but being influenced that I like for example I don't I'm not bothered though I have a six-pack you know I'm not I don't I wouldn't feel that now

something me being comfortable means me having a six-pack I actually very happy just to be lean to move to you know feel energized and stuff and that is what comfortable would mean to me now but at the time because I felt like oh I needed to look with the abs and everything like that i was like very much actually out of my comfort you know i was restricting my diet huge i was over training i wasn't spending time with friends saying before the show i didn't see anyone for like 20 weeks i found out on the february i basically went to this interview uh and i had no intention to kind of go on the show it just kind of happened and from there, I was offered the place and actually my consultant said, do it.

And I had this obviously noise afraid in my head being like, take opportunities. I was like, all right, I'm gonna go for this. You know, I had 20 weeks between knowing I was going on and going on the show. Most people apply the show, applying the September before, almost a year before.

And in that year before, they're already in, you know, this certain shape and look this certain way. So I felt a lot of pressure from it. And I say, if I went back, I i'd do it differently i would do it differently but it's easy to say with hindsight of course very easy to say with hindsight do you think do you think do you think love island is good for one's mental health is it good i wouldn't say that it adds to people's mental health no but in a way you know if it's escapism that people enjoy

and they watch it i think the important thing is how people are perceiving what they're seeing what you're seeing as a show ultimately it is just tv isn't it it's how you're perceiving it but if you're finding that it's triggering you don't watch it's the same with instagram and i'm following accounts that not make you feel good or that are not serving your purpose if you are if you find that it's triggering you and how you feel, don't watch it. I haven't watched this series. I mean, I have a lot of stuff going on. I just don't have time to watch the show.

And I'm not missing out. I don't feel that I'm missing out. My issue there is that people don't know the impact it's having. I remember this study by Professor Tim Kessa, who studied how people's values changed from what they see on the tv and he talks he does a study with these kids and when kids watch um the example is they watch um

some people uh another kid with not so good values playing with a really nice toy yeah and they've and they've shown that the kid watching the show um the advert for the toy they've made the kid really want the toy and then they've and then they've given it to someone with really bad values just because they watch the advert of um the toy the kid will then from that point onwards choose to associate with bad values yeah just because so the kid didn't know what was going on right it's a bait it's a kid it doesn't yeah doesn't understand that its values are being swayed just by what it's seeing on the tv but then in its life in the study the kid will then go and choose bad values over good values and it's that obviously you know and to be fair like most people aren't as like psychologically introspective as maybe me and you

are so they are just the thing is and i guess the point and i completely see that side of it i see that my opinion is good and bad to love iron is what i'm like there's most and most things like like for example social media my point is if you got rid of love iron tomorrow when you cancelled it it'll be replaced by something else it's like social media you can't it's out now like reality tv these kind of shows are out there so what can we do about it first of all let's think about what we're putting on and what we're representing on there and second is educate and i think that's why for example one of the well-being videos are on social media and a big part of that is like dealing with what you see online, body image stuff, which actually links and extends, like you said, from Love Island.

It says education is a very important point within that. If you're being aware, I think that is the part that we can control. Same with social media. We can't get rid of Twitter. Twitter, you know, there's some good stuff about Twitter. I think there's a lot of bad stuff about Twitter. I find it quite triggering a lot of the time. Can we get rid of it?

No, it's not going anywhere so is it about learning how to manage what's going on in there and working with the social media companies to improve that space which is what we want to try and do yes is it also educating people about how to use that tool as well and that's the difficult thing you know and ideally if we get rid of all the bad things in life or things or the elements that are bad that would be amazing but it's some stuff out there we have to just learn to manage and learn you know how to deal with no i think you're right i think that i think love island's definitely a consequence of um a culture that is demanding that that type of show i think you're right that if you are to help um erode the demand then you have to kind of go to the root cause of of we have to change what people want and then that will that the stuff on tv is like exactly said it just reflects what people

are wanting in that moment because that's what they believe the one it's like what what papers write and what the headlines are they're just reflecting what they believe people want to see or what they believe that people will be interested in and reinforcing and reinforce yeah exactly and reinforcing that cycle so by changing and going and into into schools and going well actually why does the why do you need to look like that to be happy does that actually make you happy looking like that is that something to aim for changing that i think that is how we'll change what we see on screen and um you worked as a as a doctor throughout covid that is yeah it was it was it was it's odd because it was good and bad

all at once and i clearly have to justify why i'm saying is the element of good to it the bad part was obviously everything we saw and i think lewisham hospital one of the hardest hit hospitals i mean the amount of death that we saw was huge and i saw so much death every day, young people as well as old and I think it was a real, I don't know, it was a real kind of wow this is happening, you know, feeling as we saw everything getting so busy, the resus department being full of patients having to make very difficult decisions about situations and patients individually and also how to manage the hospital in terms of capacity and ventilators. What do you mean by difficult decisions? Well, you know, when we see a really unwell patient, and resus is the place we see the sickest patients in hospital.

Generally, most departments will have minors, majors, and resus. Resus is the place that you are, that if you're really unwell, and if we don't do something, there's a higher chance that you're going to die and have serious outcomes, right? So if you're in there, generally, you're pretty's a higher chance that you're going to to die have serious outcomes right so if you're in there generally you're pretty unwell and when we see a patient even pre-covid times we have to make a decision about what we're going to do and how we're the best places for their treatment and what the ceiling of treatment is as well you know for and what i mean by that is for example so we're seeing a patient in recess um you know for example if we're seeing a patient in recess, you know, for example, if we're seeing a patient that has loads of comorbidities, lots of high burden of illness, it could be, you know, they have diabetes, heart disease, they might have end stage kind of dementia, they might not be aware of where they are, might be and with an illness we have to make a decision about whether actually

it is kind and correct to put them in intensive care with all the invasive wires the lines we put into central arteries putting the tube down down the airway you know what is what are we doing that for is that going to likely benefit that patient and lead to a good outcome and what we want is to treat people in a way that's kind and that we can we know that what we're doing is justifying for that patient because that patient is the center of that approach so we have to always make decisions about that you know if it's a young person and it's not an a very important to say age is not it's not it's not the factor that we make that decision based on upon being fragile and frail physically which might be associated with age is something we think about

but not age in itself but if you are a in your physical health young fit and healthy and we think that taking intensive care and do all this stuff is likely to lead to a good outcome for you then obviously that's that's what we do but there's certain decisions where for example in the covid the pandemic we had someone with dementia and he wasn't aware where they were that at the kind of end of their life they've got this this horrible illness should we be putting them in intensive care and we have to make those very difficult decisions now important to say that going to intensive or not going to intensive care doesn't mean that you're not going to get treatment we still oxygen you know the the lines for antibiotics all these things we still do that but is it kind to put tubes down down

people's airways it's very difficult though to make all those those kind of decisions and it's made between intensive care department the they need department but these are really tough decisions to make and um and even people younger people in these situations we had to make those difficult decisions with and um you know i think that was very very hard i think we were at a point particularly at the start of the pandemic and also at Christmas, where we were pretty much nearing being overwhelmed. I remember this Christmas, just after, I think it was January, I worked Christmas Day and then it was a few days after that,

I think it was just after New Year's in January, we had no ventilators left in the hospital. We'd found we managed to get hold of some, literally, at the point where we were like, oh my God, we don't have any more. So thank God that no one went without. But it was really at that point where we're like wow we're like resource wise running out here because i don't know if you remember they declared a major incident in london and what that really means is that for health care professionals for doctors for heads of departments for heads of hospitals they are then in a position where they might have to make decisions about

resources i.e do we give a ventilator to you or you that is ultimately what we're saying is that the pressure and the the weight on the nhs is at the point where we might have to decide you're having this ventilator you're not and very fortunately like i certainly when i was in there we didn't have that situation i wasn't that situation, but it was one that we were anticipating of things and get better. So that's that, you know, it was pretty tough in that sense. The good side of being in A&E throughout the pandemic was that I wasn't on my own. You know, I was living my own in London. I would have otherwise been at home the whole time.

I felt a sense of purpose going there. I felt that I was able to do something in that time. And I was surrounded by my friends. So it's an odd catch-22 of like the worst, but also kind of helps. Do you have a worst day throughout that period? A day where you think that was the hardest? Worst day?

Worst day throughout the pandemic? I think there was a day where we were i was in recess that day so we were kind of rotating different parts of department so i was in the recess department and um i was in there with a couple of the doctors and other nurses and we were pretty much at capacity so within the our recess department we have like what five six seven or eight beds seven eight beds in that recess area bearing in mind these patients that require a huge amount of care i mean these are you know trying to be near enough to one-to-one as we can to look after them because they're very

unwell they're very sick and and we're at that day we had two patients per bay so we had to put two beds in each bay because we were absolutely at capacity and in fact we're at the point where we're having to put some almost in the corridor area of the resus so it's within one big room big box room but not in the bay and that is very scary and then we're also having that day i remember we had ambulances lining up so blue light ambulances so they're the ones bringing the sickest patients outside and you're looking in this situation going we're at capacity no actually we're oh we've gone over the capacity we we don't have any more capacity so what do we do that is very frightening not just in terms of space but in terms of right i'm looking after this patient this patient this patient this patient

this patient they're all really sick they all actually need about one-to-one time. How do we manage that situation? And that is very, very difficult. And a lot of people in the NHS face that across the country. You know, in parts of, for example, St Thomas', they had like one nurse for every five patients at some point during the pandemic in intensive care. It should be one-to-one intensive care. How do you deal with with forming a connection with someone

and then losing them in that hospital ward? And that must have happened time and time again throughout the pandemic. Very tough. And I think one of the things that were hardest was people couldn't believe it had happened to them. I've got to be careful, of course, of confidentiality, but I saw a gentleman who came in

who was a professional middle-aged man was otherwise pretty well had a family a few days later he was fine and uh all of a sudden just deteriorated with his cough and breathlessness by the time he came to us his oxygen levels were incredibly low he required a really high level of oxygenation even with the high level of oxygen we give him through a mask it was clear that he actually needed to have a tube passed down to take over his breathing because even with the high level of oxygen we're giving through a mask it was clear that he actually needed to have a tube passed down to take over his breathing because even with a high level of oxygenation and actually the pressurized mask we're using we still weren't achieving adequate levels of blood saturations of oxygen so it's it was not survivable to continue in that way and we had to have conversation with him and i had to say to him look you know we are going to have

to intubate you're gonna have to put you in induced coma and put you doing a throat we're gonna take over your breathing you need to ring your family we're gonna get the ipad because we had this you know it's kind of sad we had ipad there for people to talk to their family before we did these things because we knew that roughly if you're getting intubated it's about 50 50 ish something like that of survival it depends on the patient there's a lot of different things but the general rough kind of thing is that um and we said look you're gonna have to say potentially say goodbye because we don't know we don't know what's gonna happen and he was very unwell but he couldn't you know he's still in his suit at the time when he came in and he just couldn't believe it was happening

and it was that disbelief he was like am i really that sick you know we just explained everything as to why and it was really really hard watching someone going how has this happened to me you have this moment of like is this real you know is this some kind of you know dream nightmare i guess um and we had to intubate him he did survive and but he was very sick and i think he was the he survived by like a like a hair's hair strands kind of width of from being from um from death, I would say. He was very, very unwell. He was in intensive care for a long period of time,

but he did make it through. But he could easily have not. And I think witnessing those kind of events, and I've witnessed many other times with even younger people who didn't make it through, that is very tough. That's very difficult. Because when I go home at the end of that shift

i'm like well will he make it will he not it's very very hard and then when you find out they haven't i just the constant the constant bad news associated with that job most of the time a and e the beauty of a and e is the vast majority of the time we get it right most majority of time people survive people um we make people better and that's we're very fortunate about actually most of the time we get it right, the vast majority of the time people survive, people, we make people better and that's what we're very fortunate about. Actually most of the time we spend our time making people better and it works but the pandemic's very hard. But even within that of course there's death. I mean you know I don't know the actual exact figures but every day or so, every day someone will die in the A&E, multiple times a day people will die across the hospital. That is unfortunately the reality of the job that we do.

So we do get used to that. But I think in the pandemic, it's the volume of that. The amount of death we saw was just exponential. So you kind of, you balance in your head because you think, well, 95% of the time, this is a good outcome. We do good and we help people and people get better. But in the pandemic, there was a swinging of that balance to being like oh my gosh i'm trying my best for all these

patients but a lot of people aren't making it a very very important thing to say is obviously talk i am working in a position where i'm the recess department of a very busy hospital in a and e in london we know that the mortality rate with covid around one percent so i'm not don't want to send like sensationalize that element but i am seeing that percentage of people who are the sickest who are in the hospital so it's obviously important to say that there are very many that 30 don't even have any symptoms but i think it's very important for people to realize that there is very much two ends of that spectrum and then the very sharp end if you're a very sharp end of that spectrum and then they can be very serious so my last question on this covid topic is you know

because of that perspective that you do have in the spectrum the side of the spectrum that you sit on when you come on online and you see people going oh covid's not true conspiracy oh vaccines don't work covid's not real it's some government blah blah blah it's the 5g masks blah blah blah what do you think well i mean forget almost for a second the the disrespect that it shows to all the doctors and nurses that have worked in that situation had to deal with the things we've dealt with and actually the professionals that have died of covid don't forget we have lost quite a lot of nhs staff i actually really lost one of my good friends who was a nurse at lewisham she's an intensive care for three months she nearly

died of covid treating patients in recess but also the the respect to all the people that have lost their lives you know from this and the families that now have to live have been one of the you know the the groups of people that that have lost it's it's it's very upsetting i mean people are going around i mean people going around to hospitals going to waiting rooms of like boots or outpatient reception they're going look the hospital's empty it's like yeah it's empty because we've closed all that because all the doctors and nurses are pooled into the acute settings in the hospital to look after the rammed wards of patients that we need to care for but the public see this picture of an empty reception room the hospitals aren't busy um you know so it's but i think the vast majority of people out there are

good most people have been incredibly supportive. The amount of support we've had for the NHS has been unbelievable. The fact that at the 73rd birthday, the NHS has awarded the George Cross, I think it's for bravery, isn't it? But anyway, it's the highest recognition, isn't it, that it can achieve is a really good thing. And I hope that actually people have realised now how much we need the NHS, how lucky we are. I mean, you've been to America.

You know, the beauty is if you're here in this country, if you've, God forbid, you're cycling home from work one day and you get knocked over, you get hit on the head and you have a bleed in your brain, you will go to a hospital, you'll be operated on by a neurosurgeon who will look after you, you'll be in a hospital bed,

you'll have all the rehabilitation that you need and support, even if it's for many months, and you will, at the point of that service, at at the point of care you won't pay a penny that is incredible if you compare that to the god knows how many hundreds of thousands of millions that would cost in other countries we're very lucky oh my god anyone that's against nhs only needs to go spend a week in a new york and just go you know speak to people about um their relationship with their health yeah for us we don't we don't think about it in the same way people in the us have to choose their job based on health yeah options and they have to and when they get you know when they lose their job they're

losing their health care yeah and it's just and we don't even consider it and i tell you what from living in new york for three years i'd much rather have it this way i fit and it's given me this huge sense of gratitude for the nhs because we just totally take it for granted especially people that haven't experienced the alternative i mean i i i am a few years ago i got sepsis i was actually working in a and e and i'll tell you in a shift in lewisham and about i started fever in the afternoon and by by late afternoon i didn't really didn't feel well i actually cycled home about six miles from work really struggling i was really fit the time where i'm struggling to get home got home i was like pulse i'm having a fever oh gosh i'm actually quite sick as a bit of a realization got on the tube to go to uh saint thomas's at westminster pretty much collapsed in the door of saint

thomas's end up in recess and had the most incredible care was in hospital for a week with sepsis but they saved my lives and i was like wow and i saw it was really interesting i saw the nhs from not as a worker but as a patient and i was like god we are so lucky i literally had everyone looking after me the care i had and let's be frank i wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the treatment i had and at the end of the week or whatever thankfully i had a quick recovery i just walked out the hospital and and with and i was like that's it you know i've had this amazing care i don't have to pay anything and I'm still here to tell the tale.

So I really hope people will support the NHS more than ever now, coming out of it and protect it and make sure we don't strip it of any more of its money. I want to talk about 2019, which was the year 2020, the year you lost your brother. I saw your interview with lad bible and i saw the um i can't i can't quite you know i can't quite shake that that image of you sat at dinner you said about your your dad's phone phone call can you take me back to that that moment yeah it's almost a year to the day now i think 23rd of july will be it's uh the anniversary of his death which you know the year's gone very quickly or

it's very odd it feels like yesterday but yeah very odd with the time but um yeah i was sat um at dinner uh in london with some friends and we actually just ordered a few drinks um about to order kind of uh start i was maine i was busy looking at my menu thinking we're and whatever I think oh it's a great place this is you know enjoying myself and the phone went everything and my dad would say look if you because I do a lot of stuff with filming or whatever you know if you ring once just if you just want to chat ring once and I know you're ringing for chat and I'll call you back but if you ring twice or more I know it's something important and I'll always answer doesn't matter what situation I'm in so he rung twice in fact i think it was going to the third call all right okay i need to answer this and i could hear in his voice instantly that something really bad happened it's weird when you

when you hear that rattle or that kind of tone in someone's voice there's only one thing that has happened and i just said straight away like who's who's died like who's passed away like what's happened and he said uh clear has passed away clear is dead and i was like what and it was weird the whole world like closed in and i can't explain it sounds very dramatic but it was like almost a spotlight came onto me in that moment and i was like no it can't be i just couldn't believe it um and it was the disbelief and he said yeah he's passed away and then we had to drive by middle brother elliot who's in the RAF he drove up to London he works out just outside him on the bases and he came in to fetch me and we drove back together

and it was kind of five hour drive back to West Wales and it felt like 10 eternities like we every mile was at the longest mile and I went into every like corner of my mind but you just couldn't fathom it really you know and I think that's the thing about suicide or you know when these things happen you know it can happen out of nowhere and you just haven't seen it and you've been hit by this train and it was kind of a weird we were talking earlier on about freya and having the opportunity to say goodbye like having that closure i didn't get that with him you know he was supposed to come to london the week after and then we were going to go back to wales together and it's the first time i'd have seen him in a long time because the pandemic and all of a sudden i was like wow i don't get any closure that's it then you know and i think

that has been very and continues to be very difficult the lack of you know what why you know why didn't you talk to me about it you know as someone who knew the work i was doing around mental health particularly during the pandemic um you know why didn't you ask me for help you know um that's very very hard i saw you said that one of your biggest sort of regrets as a family was not seeing the signs and in hindsight you can start to think well you know yeah it's one of those things isn't it i mean it's the you know he was very worried about his exam results uh coming up but you know understandably so he's placed at med school that he's very excited what happened to me he's very excited about that he's future planning about it and very looking forward um and you know i think probably in the weeks before he probably

was a bit more anxious about the pandemic and i thought well you know he's been locked up quite a bit with all the restrictions that we're going to see him next week but nothing out of what i would say is what you'd expect as a you know 19 year old kid that's been kind of stuck in the whole time um but now it's easy it is easy when you look back and you think in hindsight oh that was a sign of that that and that but you're going to have that regret aren't you you know you always go into his human nature something my mom is always has that sense of guilt around it you know and she can't control what happened it's it's his action it's his choice that he made but for everyone around that person is that guilt that you carry i think forever and there was no lasting indication of how he was feeling he didn't he hadn't said anything

to anybody no i mean he was he was really fed up with being kind of the pandemic again and he was like worried about his exam results we talked about that a lot and i'd asked him how he's feeling he's like yeah once you got there he's got through this bit you know i'm kind of all right kind of thing and nothing that would make you think that you know and go down to that that route but it's one of those things that people often when people are going to you know take their own life or you know not all the time but quite often people will sometimes well at least in his case you know they don't give the warning signs because they've made their decision of what they wanted to do um and the shame is i think the biggest shame i think is that he just obviously couldn't feel

the sense within him that he could ask and say this is how i feel can i have help and when i talk about a lot of the work i want to do around stigma and people go oh yeah we're talking about loads of stigmas done so i wouldn't know because you know he felt to the point where he'd rather take a fight you know a decision that had a binary decision if you like with his life he felt so much like this with it that he couldn't talk about it that he took that decision so i think there's so much cultural stuff there's so much stuff around stigma that there's still still got to do to change that because you know if you'd have said something you've talked about it we could have you know i big believe that we can get through anything we can change you can we can we can work through most things but you've got to have the

opportunity for help but i think that's where there's an interesting um conversation around yes mental health services clearly need real funding i'm gonna there's no counter argument against that and we need to do more but we actually have to work on education around mental health and the the stigma element too because in his scenario even if you have the best mental health system in this country ever he if you didn't ask for help how is he going to access that service and i think we lose too many particularly young men each year who are not actually accessing any help or reaching out at all before they take that decision, we're losing the chance to save those people.

And I think there's that balance. We need to work on the stigma, we need to work on the funding in combination to kind of change this. But for him, it's too late. But I hope that through my work I'm doing now, I can't take the pain or whatever way of what's happened, but I can hopefully prevent other families going through it because it's an

awful burden to carry, you know, and I've got to carry it for whatever, you know, hopefully a long time, but you know, whatever length of my life is, I have to carry that.

You know, if that doesn't go away, it's always there. This is a tough question, but you just said that you, you have to carry that burden. And people often think that, especially people that haven't aren't naive to grief. They think that it's you go through the process like great like a

breakup and then you're you know your business as usual but you've got to carry that grief for a long time yeah is there a mixture of emotions in terms of feelings towards the decision he made um that you also contend with yeah i think you go through i think you go through every emotion of like anger upset frustration sadness feeling of guilt every spectrum of negative emotion i think and you cycle through that and i think the process of i've had with grief is kind of going through the kind of shock phase you know anger shock upset um you know the kind of sadness through it and trying to come to a place of acceptance i guess is where you've got to try and get to and i i don't know i'm guess somewhere on the way i guess on the way to that you kind of go backwards and forth that sometimes you know i think your grief is not a linear

process i think it's very much that zigzag of kind of you get better get worse get a bit bit better get a bit worse um and you know you carry what i think is like a black box in your head with it you know when it first happens you're just staring into this abyss of this black box of sadness and everything. And then eventually you learn to close the box. Eventually it shrinks a little bit. And hopefully eventually you can put it on your shelf and you can sometimes go and sit and ruminate with it. But then you can put it back when you need to. And I think that is what happens.

And I think that's why you will always carry it. You can't get rid of it. You never stop loving that person you know you just have to learn to live with that black box in your head basically and i imagine that's quite i mean losing i've got two brothers so i'm i imagine that's quite an informative life in tragic informative life incident that then changes the way you view your own life and choices and decisions i think it puts into perspective thing i think puts things in perspective but interestingly not as well i still get annoyed and upset about the same things i got

annoyed about before but i have to go alex like in reality some things you've had to kind of deal with is probably fine i think it's funny in that way but it also does it does mean that you know i try it's kind of given me another purpose that you know in life i guess that i want to kind of work on and i think it's it does does make me think much more about like i want to do i want to make sure that in life i can impact positively on people and if i can influence people in a positive sense in this space then i think that would be success to me i think that if it was to ask, like, what was the meaning, what is the definition of success to me?

I think it probably would be feeling that I've made a genuine impact in that mental health space and that other young people, other people won't take their life or will seek help and get help before they're at that point or when they're at that point.

I think that would be success for me. And yeah, I think that has, that has changed a lot of that kind of mindset in my hands but i also want to live life a lot more i've also like because it's happened i'm like i want to go on holiday i want to enjoy my love cars i'm going to formal one this weekend i want to go and enjoy my hobbies it's made me want to like live as an enriched life as i can you said that you kind of your life will always kind of be defined as before and after that incident and i was when i was reading about the interviews that you kind of, your life will always kind of be defined as before and after that incident.

And I was, when I was reading about the interviews that you've done in the podcast, you've done following Losing Your Brother, they always gravitate back to this conversation, right? It's almost, and it's become part of one of the things people like me want to talk to you about

and ask you about. So I sat there wondering, how does that feel when you know that if you go and ask you about. So I sat there wondering, how does that feel? When you know that if you go and do an interview, go and do a podcast, that at some point it's going to come back to that topic, a tragic topic of losing your brother. Well, so I think it's true. It's that before and after element, isn't it?

I don't think I am entirely the same person as I was before. I think, in fact, and it makes a lot of sense, if you're going to experience a massive life-changing event it's probably going to change you if it's changed your life it's going to change you I'm still at the core the same person I always was but I think I've probably been slightly molded a bit differently and I think I don't I don't think I'm entirely the same and I don't really know what I mean by that and I can't really give an answer to in what way am I different but I'm just not quite the same person I think and potentially it's because I have to carry this box you know um

but yeah in terms of kind of interviews and things afterwards and talking about it as odd as this might sound in many ways it's therapy I know that might be maybe not the answer you probably expected but in a way it's a way of me talking with different people about an experience that has shaped my life and hearing their thoughts on that as well and i've taken a lot from speaking to people about it and and and i think talking is good um and i think bottling these things up and hiding away wouldn't help and it's interesting because i when he passed away we took the decision to go public and tell people because he passed away i didn't want there

to be any confusion or has he died of covid you know what's happened you know how has he passed away i wanted people to understand though he died of mental suicide he had a mental he desired died of a mental health illness you know that was very important for us to make that kind of statement but i knew in that point that the people then would you know that we would end up talking about this but the way i kind of see it is that even on days it's difficult to talk about if it helps someone else if someone else is listening or watching this podcast and they go you know i'm going to watch out for the signs in other people i'm going to be much more aware of this now or if i'm struggling i'm i'm going to give it this chance i'm going to speak to someone i'm going to go to a professional i'm going to

speak to my family talk to my friends then that to me is worth doing that interview you know the other consequence of speaking about it so often um and being known as someone that has you know part of your um story tragically is that your brother took his own life is you will get and i know i have a fraction of this but you will get thousands of dms of people who are feeling suicidal who are you know in a very very very dark place in fact i imagine if you opened up your phone now and went on your dms it wouldn't take long for us to find a couple of those just at the top of your inbox right that is i mean that must feel like it's heavy it's heavy and i think this role has been i mean i i really enjoy what I do in youth mental health work.

And I think a lot of what we do is very, very positive, very uplifting, actually. And I think the work in particular on well-being is really, really positive. And I want the conversation around mental health to be one about how exciting it is as a space by empowering yourself, giving yourself the tools to live a happy and successful life in whatever definition that is. But of course, there is the other side of it, of having that weight of those who are struggling. And what I try and do is work across, basically in areas and campaigns that can help the majority in these things.

And I realize that sadly, I can't sit and help and fix everyone's, that's DMing me. If I tried, I would fail. I'd probably cripple and cry if I tried to do it. So I try and look at doing the big projects and help people in that way if that makes sense but you know of course when i speak to a lot of people because i go out and speak to young people i speak to people who are struggling in person and it is heavy sometimes but again i go back to

if i feel like i've managed to help them and that's that then that really helps and of course a lot of the content that i make is around you know speaking about out about well-being about mental health i feel that i'm able to influence people in a positive way but of course it is heavy it is hard it's not it's not an easy thing and i'm sure and it's the same anyone you know you talk about a lot of emotive subjects as well particularly around the space actually and your podcast and have them for a long time so you of course get those messages and it's difficult isn't it because you can't help everyone is the truth you can't what if you can't help everyone you can't individually help everyone and you also know logically that the best return on your time would be in in that case making just in the case of instagram i know that the best

return on my time if i want to help people would be to take that one hour that i could have spent going back and forward with someone in my dms and make it into something that could reach a million people by making a video for example yeah it's the same it's the same idea of like a and e in an a and e and a shift in a and e and i still i do it because i really really love it selfishly maybe maybe but if i do a shift in a and e i can help 11 or 12 people which is really and i'm not taking away from that at all because the change you make in that person's life literally saving people's lives okay so i don't see it as it's like oh i can help more it's better but if i'm using my platform in the mental health

space particularly what i'm trying to achieve i can reach so many more people um you know because in a and e we're fixing people with problems that we can fix in that moment it's the idea of a and e you know the work i'm doing is really prevent preventative so i that's what i realized that's why i stepped away more since post-pandemic from the a and e work because i've realized that that is fixing the problems when they've happened i want to work on that preventative side and reach as many people as possible so that's why that's that kind of that value of time of course makes perfect sense i actually watched your video on on this last night where you were announcing that you were making the shift and i'm sat there thinking like i'm just this is what i was thinking i was thinking

obviously i was like there's not a lot of people that have the ability to reach millions a day with a preventative message so i feel like and this is not me trying to tell you how to live your life but i was like that's obviously the best return on your time is to work in the preventative end which you've talked about today um do you think you've got balance in your life um i think i'm finding it so probably no binary answer is a binary answer i think we're all trying to do that and how is your life out of balance i think at the moment particularly coming out of the pandemic i'm still trying to figure out the workspace stuff like as before i worked in any kind of two days a week then i'd work from home and doing stuff but now i'm moved kind of out of the a and

e sphere as much even though i'm going back to do some shifts i'm not going to be in as much as i was i'm just trying to find that balance of switching off and switching on so the working day you know especially because so much of my work is across Instagram and stuff I'm finding that that challenge and people go well hang on this is what you talk about a lot in your book and stuff it's like yeah but being aware the problem doesn't mean you always got it fixed or it doesn't mean you got it down all the time most of the time I'm getting there and I'm pretty good at it things like getting out on the walk in the morning getting my exercise in my sleep stuff i'm doing all right but the thing of switching off the phone and my instagram particularly that is the bit i'm still not quite finding the balance on and as i say finding that balance between being at work

and not being well but the truth is that's okay because most of us in life no one has got life down i don't think there's anyone i've ever met they've got entirely got their lives and they might have their career down they might have problems in their family or they're falling out with a girlfriend or whatever do you want me like me sorry no i mean i mean everyone has a time right like at any time something's going too well you know something's not something's gonna happen so i think it's it's just being honest with yourself and going like right you know at the moment i'm that's what I'm trying to do. So I'm actually looking for an office space now at the moment.

So I'm going to define my space that I work in, you know, so it's being, realising the things that the challenge you have. And actually, like we said earlier, what are the steps you're taking to fix those challenges, to find that balance? One of the things I've done, which has worked really well, is that on the weekends, by and large, and large i stick this very strictly weekends are mine again now you know i worked for almost a whole year throughout the whole pandemic across being on tv public health england stuff be on instagram youtube all this stuff and i was working almost every day and ridiculous hours between full-time and a and e and everything else it was crazy hours right and it was only going to lean to me being burnt out you know and i think you know and that's fine for a short period of time it's not fine for the long term so now i've fought back and dragged back my my weekends mostly mostly got my weekends back to actually do stuff with my family my friends go to

the formal one go to goodwood or go and watch tennis and stuff you know very fortunate to be able to do these things but when i'm old and i look back on my life i want to remember and look back and go actually i did make the most of life it didn't just work all the time you know it's what it is work-life balance is those cliched old thing but it is important to have you mentioned something there um about you you're doing an indirect at me about my poor relationship with my family and my girlfriend it just happened to be an example so i want to throw that back at you um so in terms of your dating situation yeah your relationship situation um you posted a photo not so long ago of your um girlfriend ellie ellie okay you're happy i don't want to say her name but we'll go there um new new girlfriend new relationship yeah yeah

i mean you know i look at the pandemic scenario i mean i was working in the hospital and you know the work i was doing was going well and all that kind of stuff pretty clear i'm losing his life let's just focus on that part of it and but my relationship suffered because i worked so hard in that sphere you know my girlfriend at the time moved back to bournemouth where her family was so i was working ridiculous hours not seeing her at all because the pandemic restrictions being separated and my relationship suffered so i've been i've been in that situation and um it ended for that reason it would be in our relationship for like two or more years and i think it was quite seriously at the time and then you know the pandemic and my focus on

the work probably was resulted in the end of that relationship so that was a big thing i think part of came back that work-life balance now going into this new relationship i think i'm trying to make sure that i'm investing in both and all that in those aspects of my life as well you know the family the friends relationships it's not all about the work or you know the campaigns or the things i'm doing you've got it again it's finding that that balance but i you know i learned i learned from that and i don't regret it my my role in that pandemic was your current relationship I don't regret choosing to be an A&E and to do what I did in that pandemic because that was my purpose at that moment that was the right thing for me to do and sadly sometimes

following your purpose has outcomes and things that it affects and that's the way I see it in the in the in chapter six of your book when you're talking about relationships you you talk a lot about how to how we meet each other in this day and age and you talk about some of the dating apps etc how did you meet her we actually met uh in person and really in the in the traditional way like in when there was a kind of break in the pandemic you could could meet people and just a just at a pub actually just natural normal meeting place but obviously that's changed so much now i mean i'm not on the dating apps for the reasons that you know i think for obvious reasons um but that has become so much too many inquiries i had that you know i love how you have to brush over that uh that is that is the thing isn't it that is where people are meeting each

other now and i think that's why in the book i didn it that is where people are meeting each other now and i think that's why in the book i didn't brush over that topic because we have to accept that people are meeting each other through all these various apps whatever it might be in the technology and things now but it's it's about not forgetting that at the heart of that that connection that in-person and physical connection that you build with someone needs to be there as well it can't just all be online it's like an entry point to meeting people isn't it but i think it's it's an interesting one things have changed so much i mean are you on the dating apps are you i'm not on the dating apps no i couldn't do that no unfortunately no no not that i'd want to but

no but it's changed so much for people i think the the the world of dating i think that one of the things i do worry about i don't know what you think about this but i think the world has become so what's the word like throw away things like you can date someone see you on a date bump gone next time and that that i worry about a little bit about that about people connection yeah not real like even amongst friendships and stuff people just like right in and out it's like a swipe left swipe right kind of idea and i i worry about that a little bit why are you hard to date um i think that over the years that i've been so focused i think on my work and the things that i want to do very driven in that space i mean yeah like there's always an element of selfishness isn't there when you when you focus on something to the extent that you have and and

and i have certainly particularly for example in the pandemic it becomes almost selfish because even if you're doing it for an altruistic means it becomes it's becoming something you are doing so intensively that other people are being maybe not being having the focus that they're expecting or you're not giving attention to other areas it's become selfish doesn't it i think that makes it challenging but i'm getting much better at that i hope ellie would say that as well well we spoke to her and she said yeah she actually said ellie come on out he's on his phone yeah yeah what relationship advice would you give me if you've learned something you know i'm single at the moment trying to fix that situation but what advice

would you give me that you've learned as being a you know a very purpose-driven busy guy um what's the one thing you think you know that's the most important i think the first thing is don't try and fix it um i think it's that acceptance i think i don't think i big believe i don't believe that happiness is is like altered whether you're in a relationship or not your state of happiness is like a it's an internal thing relationships other people are external they do add to that of course i'm not clearly i'm you know be worrying if i didn't think ellie didn't make my life happy but she can add to something that's existing if it's not there in the first place there's nothing to add to so um you know i i always think it's it's focusing focusing on yourself and your passions and interests and try and meet someone that will genuinely i so cliche but it is i think it is

really really true that ad genuinely adds to you as a person um you know if you're rubbing up against someone your your purposes aren't aligned in some way there isn't some kind of crossover in your directions in life i don't know if that's going to work you know so you kind of need someone else that's got uh millions and millions of them massive empire podcasting whatever no i'm joking but it's sharing common ground isn't it it's finding something that adds to you in some way but i mean even with you know with ali now for example you know she recognizes in me when i'm starting to get stressed and working particularly mental health work does cause me a lot of stress sometimes ironically um and she recognizes that and she's really great at helping me step away and saying

you know what you've done a lot in that space to step away for a moment and take take a bit of time you don't need you when do you stop you know that quite line you know and then you stop and she adds in that way a huge amount of sense of calm to my life actually which is which is really great so it's i do feel that if you're with someone whether it's a even as a friendship your friend should surely add to your life in some way if they're not adding to your life are they truly your friend very deep thoughts no yeah but what are your thoughts about it and what are you what are you looking for in your next girlfriend this is like i'm taking this is no it's a good question so what am i looking for in my my next girlfriend um i've actually always been pretty clear your

final girlfriend yeah because i do the podcast so i always ask these questions and i ask them to a range of guests and i've got i mean 10 years ago i would have told you about hair colors and nonsense like that right and i've got more fundamental over the last decade and i'm at the point now where one of really three things which is i want them to help me um become a better version of myself purposefully ambiguous so that could be a more kind person it could be more spiritually in touch it could be more successful in my business but help me become a better person and vice versa yeah right um the second thing is um sexual attraction yeah which you write about and you write about the importance of of having those conversations and being open

about that in your book um it's just important i've had everything else and not that and it doesn't work right so and the last one was i i would refer to it as like mental stimulation which is just being able to connect intellectually around topics um and i think if i can those are the three things everything else is kind of you know blah blah and i know there's going to be loads of bullshit you can't as we talked about earlier all things come with a cost yeah so it's really and that's another point is this really important question which i i've come to ask myself which isn't which used to be are they perfect right and i've had it over alas you'd be looking for the whole of your lifetime unicorn i'm fucking yeah but now it's refrained and it's now is it worth it yeah which i know exactly what you're saying

do you know what i mean because i agree with all your three points entirely and all of them are required i think to be in there um for it to kind of work but yeah i mean no one's perfect we're all in the beauty of the world is everyone's imperfect you know we'll all have things that people would say alex that's really annoying trade of yours you know we're gonna have that right it's finding what you it's finding is the good worth the things that you maybe don't think are as perfect about that person and when you found that in someone you've really won you know being like you know i accept their imperfections they accept my imperfections but the good and the combined good parts of each of us makes it

worthwhile and i think that is the ultimate goal isn't it really yeah just to find someone that's worth the bullshit and i mean we all have bullshit and this is what really what this it's a really introspective thing where i realized that i am so imperfect so the pursuit of finding someone that is perfect is such a nonsense thing to do when i'm so clearly imperfect by whatever definition you want to use we're all like we're all like jigsaw shapes in our lives and you kind of got to be able to fit and it's also the practicality of life you need to have like careers and it's so difficult in modern life like people have opposing careers that don't work together it's like there's so many bits of that jigsaw but i think again it

comes to even stuff about careers if the other bits and the sum of the rest it equates to that being worth it then you find a way to make it work you know you find you find a way to you know make that relationship grow and work but you just got to find that right you find that right person i think and i think if you go into it with that mindset with those three kind of key ideals and things that you're looking for then yeah hopefully you won't go too far wrong well i have to ask you one last question which is you know this is a business podcast at the end of the day at least i say it is at least that's the category i put it in um and you've started a business prescribed which is in the well-being wellness space um why um you were

already busy what are you doing and uh tell me how hard it is well funny if it started from a place of um uh i love bath bombs because i right okay so i have to like stop myself from doing things i need to like put myself in a place where i sit down i relax and unwind getting in the bath you know put your phone away from the bath you can't do very much really you're sat in the bath right put some music on listen to your podcast well okay so i have like the bath that's not image you probably want to think anyway i sit in the bath listen to the podcast right so just it helps me chill out i chuck a bath bomb in or whatever and i was doing i was showing on my story i was chucking in the bath bomb and my stories and i chucked the phone away

to get in the bath and people say why didn't you do it yourself i need your lush is great but there's no in that space why don't you create it and i thought i actually do a lot of stuff in my life it's very heavy it's very stressful this would be a really exciting business to do so i kind of started looking into it and a few months later we've you know we've got we're doing a range of bath bombs which i'm very proud of the vegan bath bombs we're trying to i say environment in mind because i think sustainability is a word that's very tricky to say that your journey is truly sustainable um environment in mind and we're growing our product range you know the idea prescribes you're prescribing yourself time investing in yourself

in self-care and i think that's what i was doing getting into the path and that's what the brand to be so it's going to be candles shower products uh you know self creams and moisturizers everything around that self-care space but it's great it's booming quick because i think people are so interested in this space it's what is a three billion uh pound uh space in the market at the moment isn't it's a three billion pound space in the market at the moment, isn't it? It's a huge industry that's growing and people want to genuinely take care of themselves. And it's just, yeah, it's very exciting. Is this your first business?

It's my first business, yeah. Are you CEO? I'm CEO. How are you finding that? It's outside the comfort zone. I mean, it's well outside the comfort zone, but I really enjoy it. I really enjoy it.

I've got a great team around me. We've got like a small team. It's not compared to your businesses, but we've got to start somewhere. I've got a small team around me. And what I think is very important, and I say this, I've got no right to say this in the business space,

but I've learned it in life to be true. Recognize the areas that you are weaker at recognize what you don't know about and bring people in to to sort that so i've got people i got someone a fantastic a person called ella who is uh amazing at product products product design uh finding products within the beauty space she's done an amazing job we're working with an amazing factory that we're working on the bath bombs i've got people that understand marketing properly what people understand the business side of it and how much do things cost how much does that you know what do we price it at so i've just realized but what i'm not good at and get people in to come and help me you know the bit i understand i do

understand the social media side so i kind of lead quite a lot on that because i kind of get it it's just kind of incorporating into my into my life but yeah it's it's pretty scary i mean especially we're running into christmas we're planning the christmas it's a very important thing we think about doing pop-up might we do a pop-up shop and stuff like that i mean it's all a bit scary and you have to invest in your own business clearly but it's exciting right i mean i need you to i need to keep i also keep listening to your podcast but i need you to give me some expert now we're doing dragons doing Dragon's Day, I need some expert advice to help me make it into a massive business.

You know what? It's fascinating and it's amazing that after five months it's been, you've figured out already one of the most important lessons about business, which the best in this country, the best entrepreneurs in this country have also figured out.

If you look at Ben Francis, Julian Hearn, who's the founder of Huel, all of those individuals realized that they weren't either it's one of two things either competent to be the ceo or they didn't want to be and you have to want to do it yeah and you have to also think you're capable at doing it now it's the same for me in my business like there were so many things that i either didn't want to do or didn't feel competent enough in doing and had i not had that self awareness and had i let my ego say no you have to be the ceo and you have to be involved in everything there's zero percent chance i would have succeeded and i'm seeing this tremendous really positive

shift amongst founders yeah who are getting out the way yeah of their own sort of inexperience especially young ones because when you're young again ego comes in yeah and the other thing that happens which i talk about this podcast and the other critical mistake you make is when you're a new entrepreneur or an experienced you don't think you have the right to hire super mega experienced people because you think why would they want to come and work here yeah in our little you know social media company or our bath bomb company in this cupboard that we're working out of why would they want to be here so you make the critical mistake of hiring your mate dave yeah okay yeah who's who you know i don't have any daves in the team well i made that mistake

you know and and you do it because of you know and that again is a critical fatal mistake and i those are probably the two most important thing business is all about you know by definition the word company means a group of people that is literally what ends up mattering the most the group of people that is and it took me probably three to four years to figure that out in my journey so it's the most important for me now to make sure i got the right team 100 moving forward it's the it's the it's what you're you are you aren't every so think about what you've created you've created this idea this bath bomb vegan idea where did that come from what the genius in it where did it come from it came from a person the finance the

way your business is run in terms of its finance the strategy the marketing the investment you raise there were all of these things the decisions they're all going to come from the people a business and the product is all a manifestation of people apple's a great example of that here's a great example of that and if you have and i view it all a manifestation of people. Apple's a great example of that. Huel's a great example of that. And if you have, and I view it as a starting 11. If you're starting 11, and your starting 11 is going to war with another, with Lush, right?

If your starting 11 does not match up, you will fail. And so it took me three years to get to the point where I realized that I am just a recruitment business. I am. Okay. Do you see what I mean? I think you're probably underpaid.

I will win based on my recruitment. We are a recruitment company. And I remember the day I stood in front of Social Chain and said that like, if we know the people are the most important thing, why don't we have an internal recruitment team? That is a really, it's a really interesting,

because I kind of, I realized that having the right people was important, but I quite haven't viewed it in that way. Everything from that yeah everything comes from that it's a very good point as you get the company gets bigger um your role as a founder is somewhat diminished that scares me a little because we are i mean we are very you know we're still small but we are i'd say we're doing very well we're growing very quickly we're expanding quickly our ranges etc that scares me that growth quite a bit yeah because then that's again being uncomfortable so it's like well how do we manage who needs to come in and do

this and it's a bit scary so you just go have to go find really good people and one point in my business maybe year three or four we hired a lady called katie leeson from mediacom who'd been doing this for 15 i don't know 10 years whatever she went and went back to mediacom and hired all of her friends from mediacom who were also like double my age in some cases whatever almost double my age and they ran the business and i had no problems yeah they they they were so experienced and had done this before so you're saying is don't let your ego get in the way let people come and do the thing i flew off to new york i had no problems they solved all the problems in my business that i didn't even know were problems and i can i can say well what if i

hadn't made that decision well before then i hadn't made the decision and my life was hell every day was hell like hell i'd wake up in the morning hell and the thing that cured it was installing a group of people who had done this before and were really, really good. To be fair, when they accepted the job, I thought, why do they want to work here? And they've loved it and they've grown. They've done it. They've grown as well. And the business is...

It's really interesting to hear you say that because I think we talk about work-life balance, right? I'm looking for an office space. The other thing I've realized is that I need to grow my own team. So I'm actually now growing, not just Prescribe is one of their elements, I'm growing my own team that's the kind of Dr. Alex brand team. And I think a big part of, I've come to that point of realizing

I need to let go of certain aspects. People can take over that. They can do this part of it. They can add and allow me to basically free up my time to do the front-facing stuff, which we talked about, I think, before. So it is interesting. I think I'm learning that.

It's taking me time. I think one of the things, funny that i think has helped and obviously i know they're gonna make mistakes this business i think i've heard listen enough to your podcast say that people make mistakes but one of the things that's helped is working as a doctor you know and accept that you are not a specialist in every area of it medicine's huge we have dermatologists cardiologists neurosurgeons surgeons obstetricians so i'm kind of quite happy for people to go like your specialty is that you doetricians. So I'm kind of quite happy for people to go, like, your specialty is that, you do that, you do that.

I'm kind of happy with that idea. That's where you've got it from. But the thing that I do fear a little bit, I still fear, I worry about letting things go a little bit. It's not just the ear, I just worry about not having sight over things. So I think that's what, with kind of building the brand of Dr. Dynast

and having people help me allow us to do more, I'm just scared a little bit of letting go of stuff and it becomes a lot easier when you pass the buck to trusting trusted hands you'll always have the fear if you're passing any part of the responsibility of your business to a hand that you don't fully trust what you want to do and this is exactly what happened in my business is i passed it passed it to hands that were better than me so i was like and i always think this i said this my peer a few times like in the company in like say the video department or the studio whatever the guy is better than me that runs the studio so i never speak to him and then steve jobs said

the same he said your job as a ceo is to hire um great people and they tell you what to do and that and if you're still you've still got trust problems in your business you still aren't you know you're concerned about giving up responsibilities then it's because you don't have the right people and so again it comes back to that point of that being it turns out that that's everything and i didn't know it that's really useful i'm glad i'm not just attracted yeah i'm glad i'm going to take all that away well it took me years and i had to witness the pain of the opposite to realise. And I just pray you don't.

So choose, I need to surround myself with the right people and trust them. Yes, people way beyond the people you think you deserve in your business at this time. And that's what moves it forward. People that you think, why would they go get the global head of marketing of Lush? And your job as CEO is to sell them on the reason why it's better to be in this small exciting agile startup than that big boring conglomerate where you're a cog in a wheel

that's the that's the pitch right i'm gonna write that down yeah saving a pitch but listen alex you know you've given me tons of your time and um reading about yourself your journey you know i don't i don't watch love island i've got to be honest but um so there's always that stigma when you think about love island it comes with a bit of a tainted brush but as i delved further into your journey i was just so inspired by everything by how intelligent you are by your radical empathy for people which is again is quite rare these days by your scent you're being so sort of obsessively purpose-driven which again is super rare especially for someone that's been on love island you know i'm you don't have to say anything i'm the one stereotyping um and it's just so incredibly inspiring and this book that you've

written live well every day um is a perfect it's perfect because it's so inclusive and it's so actionable and it's so it's and that key word there is inclusive when i read it i felt like this isn't going to create a barrier to entry for anybody and you're a doctor so you could have easily just equated and done like word porn but you made it really accessible and um actionable and broken down into key categories and you're you're conveying a critically important message to a society that needs to hear it right now so thank you thank you for all of your work in the nhs very selfless. And I mean, that in and of itself is, you know,

tremendously commendable. And thank you for all of the inspiration because you've certainly inspired me. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's an honour to be on this podcast. And I've learned a lot as well. So thank you. Amazing, Alex.

Thank you.