The School of Greatness - 722 Mindset and Persuasion with Derren Brown

Episode Date: November 21, 2018

WHAT STORY ARE YOU TELLING YOURSELF? Whatever it is, you’re creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. You’re projecting your story onto everyone around you without even realizing it. That’s why mentalists are so successful- they suggest a story to you that you accept as true. Whatever your way of thinking, it doesn’t have to stay that way. You can be free of your own story. On today’s episode of The School of Greatness, I talk with someone who changed his own way of thinking to become an incredible illusionist and mentalist: Derren Brown. Derren Brown uses magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship to create series and specials on stage and television. He’s won two Laurence Olivier Awards for Best Entertainment and has also written books for magicians as well as the general public. He doesn’t use his skills to deceive others for his own benefit. Instead, his acts are often designed to expose the methods of faith healers and mediums. So get ready to learn why humans are so easily persuaded on Episode 722. Some Questions I Ask: Do you believe there are mediums who can see into another realm? (25:54) What is your greatest superpower? (27:46) When you meet people, what goes through your mind first? (30:02) Did you used to have a bigger ego? (38:05) Why did you get into magic? (39:27) Do you have any regrets? (47:11) How can we rewire our minds? (1:02:37) In This Episode You Will Learn: The two ways faith healers deceive (19:56) Why it’s important to make peace with the parts of you that aren’t “right” (46:06) The effects of coming out as gay later in life (48:46) The three main fears people have (55:27) The importance of accepting yourself (59:44)

This is episode number 722 with mentalist and illusionist Darren Brown. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Albert Einstein said, Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them. I am so excited about this episode because this is someone I've been wanting to interview since day one.

I became a fan of Darren Brown probably nine, ten years ago when I learned about him through a friend who introduced me to his work. I could of this person and just became fascinated with the way his mind thinks, how he studies human nature and psychology, and how he gets people to do certain things they normally wouldn't do. For those that don't know who Darren Brown is, he is an English mentalist and illusionist. And since his television debut with Darren Brown Mind Control in 2000. His name in the UK is pretty much synonymous with the art of psychological manipulation. He's produced several other shows for stage and television in both series and specials. He'd written several bestselling books. And his 2017 US debut show, Secret, won the New York Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience, and he's planning a Broadway return in 2019, so make sure to get your tickets for that. But right now, guys, he has

a number of specials on Netflix, and when I tell you I've been freaking out about them and telling them to everyone, they are so much fun to watch. They're riveting and they will blow your mind literally. One is called The Push and he conducts a social experiment to see if people will commit murder and you are going to freak out in the last few minutes when you watch this. Go to the Netflix, go to your Netflix and watch The Push. He's also got Miracle, which shows him on stage healing people and not necessarily saying that he has powers to heal, but showing ways that you can through different psychological triggers and things like that. And his newest show is called Sacrifice. Holy cannoli. This is unbelievable. He gets someone to, I don't want to spoil it for you actually, but he'll tell you more

about it in this interview. But sacrifice is going to shape the way you think about everything in your life and how you think and judge other people. And it will inspire you. It brought me to tears at the end. Crazy experience. So the push, miracle, and sacrifice. Watch them on Netflix

after this interview. In this interview, we talk about his belief in stoicism and how it controls his thoughts and actions. Also, how we can become masters of our own minds throughout our lives. The good and bad ego provides for magicians and other performers. Also the three fears that people typically have and how it holds them back and the effects of coming out as gay later in his life, what that did for him in his early childhood and later in his life. We talk about that. We talk about God, religion, so many different things. I'm so excited for you to dive into this. Let me know what you think. Take a screenshot, tag me at Lewis Howes and Darren Brown over on Instagram and Twitter. Let me know what you think. Take a screenshot, tag me at Lewis Howes and Darren Brown over on Instagram and Twitter. Let us know what you enjoyed most about this because I'm super

fired up and pumped about this one. Again, a big thank you to our sponsors. And I'm so fired up. You guys have no idea how pumped up I am about this. Something about understanding human psychology, the way we think, the way we do things, why we do the things we do, why we're influenced, I'm obsessed with, and it's always fascinating me. I'm curious about why I do certain things and why others do it. And Darren Brown is the man to reveal all of this for us today. So without further ado, let me introduce you to the one, the only, Darren Brown. one, the only, Darren Brown. All right, welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast.

We have the legendary Darren Brown in the house. My man, I'm going to gently shake your hand. Yeah, I hurt my hand. I've been having a lot of powerful LA handshakes this week. All the power players are just gripping you. They each hurt very much. I appreciate that. I appreciate the gentle, quite British handshake, in fact. How's the British handshake go? Is it like a dead fish? Yeah. Hello. Like you have to maybe guess how much it weighs or something. Okay. I first learned about you, I think in 2010, somewhere around then, when a friend of mine,

I believe James Wedmore, was all into magic. He used to be a magician himself when he was a kid and he just appreciated the art of magicians and mentalists and illusionists. He turned me on to you and I kind of went down the rabbit hole then. Kind of lost track of you for probably four or five years but kind of picked it back up recently

because you've had a number of specials that have come out on Netflix that have blown my mind. Thank you. One called The Push, which literally go watch this tonight on Netflix if you're listening to this or watching this. I'm telling you, it's going to blow you away. If you appreciate anything that I've done in this show, you will love this. Without telling the whole thing, The Push is essentially you get people to kill people on video.

That makes it sound just... You get people to kill people, literally, but no one dies, but they think they're killing someone. Yeah, it's an exercise in social compliance. It was to see whether you could... Yeah, ordinary social compliance in a big sort of hidden camera setup where there's one real guy who doesn't know

he's in this kind of Truman Show environment, everyone else is an actor. Just starting with little things. Little lies. Little lies, whether it could build to the point that he would murder. It's unbelievable. It's just mind blowing. And you watch it at the end, it's like, it just makes it, it's so suspenseful the whole way through. it's kind of

anxiety and you see so much anxiety but really it's like making a murder on steroids and with like a mad scientist behind the curtain you're like muhaha you know it's like yeah it's so funny you're talking about the psychology of the whole thing all the way through it's it's beautiful piece of art and just very entertaining. Go watch the push. Then you have a new show out called, new in the US at least, called The Sacrifice or Sacrifice. Sacrifice, yes, it's brand new. And this is freaking mind-blowing because it's perfect timing with all the elections that have been happening and all the different things in social media where people are against each other. They're trying to build walls everywhere. They're excluding people are against each other. They're trying to build walls everywhere.

They're excluding people or comparing each other against other societies and countries. There's a lot of fear in the world. And I think you eliminate this fear by creating another experiment, a social experiment, where you get someone who is essentially... Well, I'll let you explain it, because I don't want to make sure I say the wrong thing.

Maybe I should first of all explain that. So my background is in magic, but the kind of psychological side of magic. I'm working a lot with, excuse me, with suggestion. And I even began as a hypnotist. That was my kind of first weird way into all of this. But as I grew up, the desire to just kind of like do tricks and go, hey, look, aren't I clever,

which is kind of the subtext, right? I kind of grew out of that. So although I still do stage shows that are kind of a bit more like in that traditional mode, the sort of 20-year, 18, 20-year TV career I've had in the UK, I appreciate no one really knows me here, but in the UK, I've sort of, what I tried to do was take the idea of sort of magic and make it into something that was dramatically more resonant. So now what I do is I'm kind of behind the scenes and the deception is something we're all part of and in on apart from normally one person. So it's quite separate now from any kind of magic. It's not really about that. It's an experiment. Yeah, these really are. Yeah, these are kind of social experiments, but with a view to normally changing and transforming something and doing something

worthwhile. And you're not necessarily in performing the act yourself. No, no. You're like letting other people, you're like orchestrating the trick or the experiment. Yeah, exactly. As opposed to actually like... And persuading. It's persuade it. So I'm using the kind of psychological techniques and the kind of the... just the power of sheer production and actors and stuntmen, all the kind of stuff around it to create... Pressure, authority, all these things

that make you say yes. To get someone to a certain point. And I've done various things with that over the years. So this new show, Sacrifice, is taking a guy, sort of American guy who's, he's been a right-wing guy and he doesn't like immigrants. Doesn't like immigrants. Doesn't like immigrants, particularly illegal immigrants.

And he likes people who it's like, if you're from here, great. If you're not, we don't want you. Yeah, that's kind of his bottom line and I the challenge is I Get him to the point so he thinks he's taking part in one show Which he thinks is a documentary so he knows he's taking part in a show off when I do these things they have no idea There's even like a TV show going on

But he thinks he's taking part in one show which is a documentary about he thinks he's got a microchip that I've implanted in him. It's amazing. Oh my gosh. That's going to enhance his performance or something. Yeah, exactly. He's trying, so he's got a motivational thing, this biotechnology. But the actual agenda of the show is to try and get him to the point

where he willingly takes a bullet and lays down his life for an illegal Mexican immigrant. It's unbelievable. And the scene at the end when he has to make the decision. I don't want to spoil it here. But when he has to make the decision and you watch his conscious. And it's unbelievable.

Again, you guys got to watch this because at the end it's going to blow you away. It was a really emotional journey. It's so unbelievable. And I hope it was as powerful in person as you guys made the was a really emotional journey. It's so unbelievable. And I hope it was as powerful in person as you guys made the production. Yeah, yeah. Even more, maybe. Because these things take like 10 months of maybe of work. For one moment.

For one moment. Or for one, yeah. Because you're not only creating that moment for the guy, Phil in this case. This guy's called Phil. I stopped calling him the guy, Phil in this case, this guy's called Phil, I'll stop calling him the guy, but also you're also having to create everything as a completely convincing fiction for somebody. So there's not only,

not only have you got to make it work as a kind of a story, but this guy can't know that this whole, again, it's a Truman show, you know, you can't break the fiction for the person. It's amazing. There's a lot involved.

We did a show called Apocalypse, which was ending the world for somebody. So here's somebody who's kind of gotten, he's sort of disengaged from life. He's like kind of selfish. He lives with his parents. They're like, you've got to change this guy, essentially. So I took the stoic idea that you value, like we need to value this guy, essentially. So I took the Stoic idea that you value, like we need to value what we have more. And one way of doing that, and the Stoics,

which were, you know, this big philosophical school 500 years before Christianity sort of burst into the scene. Stoicism, yeah. Popular, I'm sure you've spoken about it with many people. So I'm a big fan of the Stoics. So I took this idea. So the idea was, I guess, how do we take everything away from him in order to have him value what we have? Appreciate these things, yeah.

So we ended the world. So what we did, we took, we had cameras in his house. So he'd apply to be on the show, right? There's normally some application process. And we vetted him and we decided he'd be robust enough for it, ideal for it, and also suggestible enough. I look for people that are naturally quite suggestible. And then you tell them, hey, you're not on the show. Yeah, exactly.

We're not going to use you. Months later, you come back and like. And then months later, we put cameras in his house, so his family are in on it. He's like 20-something, you know, 23, I think he was, lives with his family. So we got hidden cameras throughout his house. And we began this process of convincing him

that the world was going to end through a meteor strike. So if you imagine, like, he's watching TV shows where they have, like, guests and scientists on, but we've, like, re-recorded our special versions of it that are only playing on his TV. That he knows it's, like, an authority. Yeah, yeah, he just thinks it's a regular episode of his show. We had control of his phone. We hacked into his phone so that we could send him, like, on his news apps and things like that. Even the NASA site, we were able to create convincing replicas that we could drop in these news stories. I was tweeting as his favorite, because he

was quite into science, tweeting as his favorite scientist and so on. So, bit by bit, we drip-fed this idea. He'd be out in a cafe that we knew he was going to be in, and we'd have the radio playing in the background with, like, real DJs knows like famous uk djs talking about this thing is like is it going to happen is it not is it a hoax and then we created this like pyrotechnic event for him where the world ends and then in the second part of the show he wakes up seemingly weeks later in a hospital. Shut up. And everywhere's deserted. There's no one around. And he then begins, basically he goes through the plot of Wizard of Oz.

He learns the important things. He learns about courage. He learns about having a heart. And learns about leadership. And, you know, kind of having a brain, I guess, is that other part of the Wizard of Oz thing. And he finds his way home, and he's finding his way back,

and kind of claiming himself as the best version of himself, and he finds a few other people, but there are zombies. There's no easy way of saying it. There's this whole kind of like zombie plot. I haven't seen this one yet. Oh, it's great.

I've got to watch this one. It's great. So these are big, elaborate, quite cinematic. It'd take years for you to plan out probably. Yeah, it was. You did another one I think I read. I haven't watched some of them because they're not in the U.S. But there's another one you did where you're like,

the guy's afraid of flying and you help him overcome his fears and has to like land a plane or something. So again, that was like, I've sort of met an airplane. Everyone's an actor apart from you. There's hidden cameras. Then there's a medical emergency. Can anyone land this plane? This is at the end of this big transformational experience for him.

He goes, he gets up. He rises to the challenge. Says, I'll do it. And he's terrified of flying. Has no idea this is being filmed. He goes to the cockpit to go in and do this. He's, again, very suggestible. So he's kind of conditioned.

I can put him to sleep very quickly. Wow. So I step out. He doesn't know I'm there. I step out, hypnotize him. We land the plane. He's like asleep. We land the plane. We then get into one of those very convincing simulators. He's asleep. He's asleep. And he then wakes up and steps into that. Then he goes through this whole plane landing experience, which is completely convincing for him, and comes out. I don't know if you've seen The Game, you know that Michael Davis film? Oh, it's the best. It's amazing. It's a constant reference point for me. Oh my gosh. So he comes out

and it's like a big party at the end of that. All these people that are there that were part of the journey and so on. I'm kind of spoiling the ending of all these shows. It's alright. I didn't spoil the ending for Sacrifice yet. Sacrifice is the only one I've done that's kind of like, I think, resonant. It's so relevant too.

Whatever you guys do, go watch both of these, The Push, The Sacrifice. Right now we're going to talk a lot more. And then you have a stage performance, which is just, I hope you edit these things because if you don't, you are like a perfectionist with your words on stage, and it's really annoying. Because when I speak on stage, I'm like, man, I i wish i could present that way so hopefully there's some editing in these things because it looks like you never miss a word well it's like quite long tours i do so i think it just gets in there yeah but you um you do something which i thought was fascinating

which is you kind of demystify these like faith healers that try to manipulate, because I think there's a lot of great faith healers or people in spirituality that help a lot of people, bring them faith, bring them like peace of mind, bring them inner peace. And there's some that don't. And there's some that try to manipulate to get more money out of you that say like healing you and give me more money. And then create a bad cycle of self-blame and so on and you create this experience on stage which it just blows my mind where you recreate it you say listen you know i'm

i don't believe in god i think you said that like i'm an atheist and but i'm going to heal you today and i'm going to show you through the power of suggestion the power of influence the power of like all these other you know stage performance techniques that these fake healers do. So this show is called Miracle, which is also on Netflix. Basically those three shows are the last three shows I've done and they're all on Netflix. It's amazing. The rest of it you'll have to dig around on YouTube and my YouTube back catalog. But this one you get everyone to like, you're like, if you felt a healing on the audience,

you're like stand up and come to the back of the room and there's a line of like 300 people who had some type of healing in like three minutes. Do you know, it was amazing. I've toured for like 20 years in the UK. I do a brand new show every two years. So this show, Miracle, was like one of the recent shows. And in that whole experience, that kind of career, nothing was as interesting as doing this every night. Because basically there's kind of two components to this idea of faith healing, at least as I see it, and certainly as I was doing it, and I was learning from the faith

healers and using their techniques. One is adrenaline. So you create, as you know, you know with your own background, you're not really feeling pain. Peak state, yeah, feeling like, yeah. Yeah. So if you get adrenaline going, it's a painkiller. That's the first thing. So if you've got some back pain and, you know, a wild lion. And you're slouched in a bed, yeah. A wild lion walks into the room. You're not worried about your back, right? Right.

The pain goes. So adrenaline kills pain. That's the first part of it. The second part of it, which is where it gets really interesting, is the stories that we tell ourselves, which is a recurring theme in my interests and life and work, and how we get restricted by that. And what I didn't expect was how...

I thought it was going to be people saying, oh, I had back pain and now it's gone. But within a week of doing the show, I remember a woman coming up in floods of tears. She was maybe in her 40s. She'd been paralysed down one side of her body since being a kid. And for the first time, she's able to move her arm. And this is how you can, of course, you can start to go mad as the healer and start to believe in it, right?

Believe you're like a god. Start to take an effort to think, yeah, exactly. This isn't something I'm doing. This is something you're doing. So that psychological component. So basically, it's like the part of our, you know, not for everybody, of course. I'm only dealing with a percentage of the audience, right? So I've got maybe 2,000, 3,000 people in the audience, and here are 300, right? So we're kind of, the numbers are getting smaller. Most people aren't feeling it, or maybe they didn't have pain or whatever.

Exactly, yeah. And then the number that get invited up is smaller again, right? It's like the most adjustable people or the more like. Yeah, exactly. The people that certainly experience the most. But the fact that You know if you x-rayed this woman before and afterwards clearly nothing has changed right but her Somehow in the story she was telling herself about this condition. I

Can't move my arm. This is something I live with it's a restriction that I have maybe the bit of adrenaline at the start and and then the kind of the challenge of like, if you couldn't move something before, try it now. Notice what's different and come up and tell me. Just that sort of, okay, I'll think about it differently, just snapped her out of it. She's not just feeling a difference, she's actually kind of physically moving.

And night after night, these things happen. And it varied from night to night, and some nights were more dramatic than others, but it was extraordinary. And then, and again, percentages getting smaller, right? So now we're at the top, like, probably half a percent, which is always going to be kind of extraordinary, but people then saying, like, a year later, this is, you know, this is a permanent thing.

Again, I'm thinking it'll work for 10 minutes when they're on stage. Right, because they've got the adrenaline. Yeah, but they'll go back, and they're going to be as they were, which is where those healers, where it starts to get nasty, because then they're saying,

if this healing doesn't last, it's, you know, it's your fault You didn't have enough faith and so on. So that's where it gets nasty. So I I'm being open and saying look You're gonna go back. It's probably gonna be the same don't throw those pills right? what I said earlier on but Some people it works for it. So it continued to work. Well, here's the thing, you know, my girlfriend Jen She's a doctor of physical therapy and she she works on people who are in chronic pain right who are broke who pulled muscles who like have bad neck pain you know back pain knee pain all these things joints and she'll get them on her table and literally have them start changing the story around it's an emotional thing that they're holding on to. They're just really tight.

And when you get people to relax, they can usually move better. And the pain goes away. And so the way you were doing it, I was just watching, I was like, wow, you're just getting people to really relax. You have them take deep breaths.

You have them like, I think close their eyes at one point and see the best version of yourself. But it wasn't really even relaxing. It wasn't like a, because you can't stand on stage and have people just relax for 20 minutes. It was just amazing.

It was crazy. It was crazy. And then I started to think, well, maybe I could present this as a thing because you could pack out Stadia if you said this is a secular healing show. I'm not making any claims. But that is when you start to go mad because we said this is a secular healing show. I'm not making any claims. But that is when you start to go mad because we never advertise it as a healing show. But you heal people there. Or people are feeling better.

Yeah, but you don't want people coming to the show wanting healing because they're into kind of a dark area. What you do when you're doing cooler is you start to guess where people's, or not guess, I shouldn't say that, but you start to call out where people's pain is. And you're just, by looking at them, it's like your left knee, and they're like, what? And you're like, yeah, my left knee can't, you know, whatever. And that isn't someone going, ugh. Yeah, exactly. Which would be very obvious, but yeah.

But it's amazing. Yeah, but again, I'm using the techniques that the healers use. Really? And what are those? Are you allowed to share? I always find, if I say, oh, this is how they do it, people then go, oh, okay, well, that wasn't how the healer I saw. I do a lot of stuff debunking psychics and mediums.

And I never say exactly how I'm doing it because then people go, all right, well, that's not how my guy did it. Got it, yeah. But I've sat in those. You've studied a lot of them, right? Well, yeah, and like talking a bit about some of the methods which are kind of unpleasant. But you know those like the studio audience type of psychic, like the TV psychic, the medium that comes out and there's a big audience. I sat in that audience.

I won't say who it was, but he was certainly a big name a little while ago. And he came out and you have an audience of believers, of course, right? And he comes out and he's saying, so is there anybody here who's hoping that someone's going to come through? So like, you know, 50 hands go up. He said, well, tell me and I'll let you know if they come through. So who are you hoping will come through? And people start to just tell him everything he wants to know. And is there anything that I can look for that would be absolute proof that no one could possibly know? And they tell him all these things. Yeah, it was my son and he died. And it's just

heartbreaking. And then they start taping. And of course, he comes out and says all those things. Oh, really? And it's horrible sitting there. And you kind of think there's not even, like, if you're a magician working, I have to work so much harder because you've got to prove you're not cheating, in inverted commas, prove. You've got to show there's nothing up your sleeve and then still do it. He's asking questions for four years.

Yeah, when you've got an audience of believers, it's different. But it's because the lie is so bad. I think that's why people don't believe it. You'd rather believe that that was really happening than that lie. Do you believe there are mediums or individuals like that who can connect on a different way? No, I don't. I think because it has been tested.

It's been looked at again and again. It never holds up. Never once in the history of that business, which is maybe the second oldest industry in the world, it never holds up. And our capacity for... I did this one in one of the stage shows I did. I had people up on stage and I did mediumship, right?

But I'm debunking it as I'm doing it. So I'm saying, I've got your grandmother here. Her name's Alice. Is that right? They're like, yeah. How do you know the name? And she's saying, that's my secret. And she's saying,

and she's not saying anything. I'm lying to you. You understand this. But she's saying she had a little dog called Jasper. Is that correct? Yeah. And she's,

I'm making this up. You're making it up. So I'm debunking it as I'm doing it. I'm saying I am lying to you. And you're making it up or you have other... I'm not making, well, I'm telling them correct information. But at the same time, I'm debunking it as I'm doing it. I'm saying I am lying to you. And you're making it up or you have other... Well, I'm telling them correct information, but at the same time I'm saying I am lying.

Yes, yes, yes. So it's kind of an interesting... I felt theatrically kind of an interesting sort of weird play. Anyway, so after the show there was a girl at stage door who said to me, could you put me in touch with my grandmother? And I said, well, I hope it was clear from the show that I can't really do it.

I'm kind of debunking it. She went, ohing it oh no no I know it's fake and everything but would you be able to put me in touch with my grandmother and it was just a really interesting moment of our capacity for that kind of dissonance to like hold those twin ideas in your head they're completely conflicting is extraordinary so our capacity to essentially kind of fool ourselves, I think, is so... To want to believe. Yeah. To want to believe that this person can

or that this person's connecting through someone somehow. Yeah, exactly. And I think there's a lot of that you've got to get through before you reach the possibility of anyone doing it for real. What do you think is your greatest superpower? Because I think you can do a lot of things extremely well, and I feel like you're a student of life and understanding people, and you've been doing this for a long time.

But what do you think is your greatest skill set? You're very kind. I'm happy if my breath smells okay in the afternoon. You have a weak handshake, I understand. If I have a toolkit, like a magician has got his deck of cards. I think my toolkit is people's stories that they tell themselves. I think that's what interests me. Can you give an example?

Even just like a magic trick, right? When you watch a card trick and you go, you know, he had me pick a card and then he put the card back in the deck and it disappeared and then it was in my pocket. That's impossible. Now, that is a story you're telling yourself and you're going from point A to point B to point C, but of course there's like also A.1, A.2, you know,

but what the magician's doing is just encouraging you to edit the story in such a way that normally all the sleight of hand happens right in front of you but you don't pay attention because it doesn't seem important and then the bits that do seem important are the bits that later are going to join up to form the story right and they're a little like there's a when i used to do a lot of this kind of magic and like a thing i'd always say is so let's say you've got like a deck of cards at the beginning that is in a special order so you can can't shuffle them, but there's a point halfway through the trick where they can shuffle them.

I would normally say at that point, okay, look, shuffle the cards again, but this time do it under the table. So they follow that instruction, but it sounds like they've shuffled the cards before to them. Does that make sense? Shuffle the cards again. Because I say shuffle the cards again, but this time do it under the table. Now they haven't shuffled the cards before because they were in a special

order, but then later when they're reconstructing the trick in their head, let alone when they're then telling someone else about the trick. Shuffle the card a bunch of times. Yeah, I shuffled it at the beginning. And it's like a false memory that you start to implant. So you're just working with stories. And so what I do, because the sort of magic I do isn't very proppy. It's kind of more based around suggestion.

So it really is... There's also conjuring in it as well. I mean, I'm using magic techniques too, but largely, like, the bit that interests me... The story. Yeah, it's people's ongoing perception. I hope you're enjoying this interview with Darren Brown. I'm fascinated with everything he's said and everything he is about to say. But I wanted to take a quick moment to talk about my greatness mastermind. Now, if you are an influencer, a content creator, or you have a business that is generating seven figures or eight figures, then make sure to check out greatnessmastermind.com. This is a highly curated group of passionate individuals

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greatnessmastermind.com right now and only apply after you read the entire page. And if you feel like it's the right fit for you, again, check it out at greatnessmastermind.com. And now let's get back into the interview with Darren Brown. When you meet people, what goes through your mind first? Not trying to ask you like about me, but just in general, like what goes through your mind when you see someone? Are you always thinking of like, I wonder if there's a way I could tell them a different story to like create an aha moment, or I'm just curious curious about this individual or are you just kind of not thinking anything? No, do you know what?

The work that I do is like, is very sort of controlling. Like I seem to be able to control people's minds or control people's actions or whatever. I actually think that's a terrible way of living. I'm a big believer in the stoic idea idea that there's all the things you can control and then the things you can't control. If you try to start controlling things that you can't, you're just going to get frustrated and angry and anxious, right? But the only things you can control are your thoughts and your actions,

and that is it. That is it. So you have this choice. You try and control all this other stuff, or you could just decide that it's fine, that everything else is fine. And the thing is, it always is. It always is. And if you let that thought of, so like, you know, your partner is driving you mad because

essentially they handle stress badly and they're putting it all on your head or whatever that is. And you're in charge of how much you maybe do try and help them or how kindly you can meet them. But essentially, if they handle stress badly and they're having a bad time, you can emotionally separate a little and go, that's okay. It's okay. And in that sort of clarity that comes with that, then you can actually be like a better partner and be a better help

as opposed to making it all about you and turning it into a huge big thing that you don't need to do. So there's like, there are gray areas, but essentially, it's like, I'm sure sport is the same. So you, if you go into, I don't know, tennis, you go into a game of tennis,

if you try and control the thing you can't control, which is the outcome. So if you go in thinking, I must win, I must win this game, then what happens? You start to lose, you become anxious, you don't play as well. Whereas you can go in thinking,

I will play as best as I possibly can, the best of my abilities. And I'm not going to react and be negative and I'm going to control my actions. Yeah, well, it's just a different story. You're on this side of the line. And of course, you play better. You do actually play better, so the results tend to be better. But you're just trying to keep it

on the right side of the line. So there are kind of matters of social injustice that you think, well, that's not fine. That needs changing. Well, fine. But then just emotionally commit yourself to doing your absolute utmost to change that thing, not to an outcome that may, this may not be the time, that may be like, gonna be years after you've done your efforts that that's gonna change, but you'll do a better job, because you'll be less bitter, you'll be less frustrated, you know. So what I'm saying is, in life I'm like, you know, the least controlling person. Actually, what I think is more important is to have an easy relationship with fate, fortune.

You know, the Greeks used to, they really believed in this thing called fortune. So imagine a graph, right? And I love this image. And it comes up, I wrote a book on happiness. And I just found this a recurring image from the ancient Greeks onwards. So imagine you've got like an X, like your X-axis and your Y-axis, right? Is it that way or is it that way? I can never remember. So along one axis you've got, say the Y axis is your aims,

the things you want to do, the things you want to achieve, right? So that's like that axis. This axis down here is just stuff. It's fortune. It's stuff that life throws back at you. It's stuff you can't control. What we are told again and again and again is if you believe in yourself enough and if you set your goals clearly enough, you can sort of the life you lead, this line will be kind of up here somewhere, really in line with what your goals are.

And, I mean, that can work sometimes, and that's great when it does. But what you're not then respecting is the stuff that just happens that you don't have under your control. So what happens is like when people, we call people losers now, right? We used to call them unfortunates. There was a slightly more sympathetic approach to when things don't go right in people's lives. So what I think is important is that actually what we live is an X equals Y line, right? We try and do certain things and we try and pull the line a bit up here, and then life pulls back a little bit. And you can either let that drive you mad,

or you can just let that settle in as a kind of... That's what life is, right? That's what life is, which is whether you make your peace with that or not. Are you like a dog that's pulling at the lead and like this all the time, or are you kind of trotting along a bit more harmoniously with it?

So this is, I think, a really really big thing and that same idea comes up do you know michael she sent me hi he wrote flow yes yes yes he studied like amazing yeah athletes musicians chess players anyone that had like a zen state like a state of flow where they felt this is the best version of me and i'm achieving the most and What he saw was that they're in this X equals Y line. Imagine like you've got your skills on this side, you've got the challenges you're facing on this side. When your skills roughly match your challenges, you settle into this flow state, right?

You lose any sense of like time and those things, regardless of what the skill is, like a lot of people experience this. Anxiety, anything, you're like in the zone. Yeah, you're just in the zone. You're in the zone, right? If your skills are greater than the challenges, you kind of get bored. If the challenges are greater than your skills,

you get anxious. But there is this X equals Y line. Schopenhauer, like great 18th, 19th century German philosopher said, you know, I guess it's so relevant today when we're just told believe in yourself and set your goals like you said If you playing a game of chess

You start out with a plan But if you just stick to that plan all your life if you stick that plan for the game It's nonsense because like someone else is playing so you have to adjust right so again. You've kind of got this idea of Moving home Freud Freud who started psychoanalysis. He wasn't trying to make people happy. He figured life is pretty much unhappy a lot of the time. Suffering, yeah. Yeah, so he said, I want to restore what he called natural unhappiness, as opposed to unnatural unhappiness that people have. Natural unhappiness.

Just natural unhappiness, he called it. And none of this sounds kind of… It's like being in the UK. Yes, like living with our weather in the UK and our teeth. And it doesn't sound kind of like… You don't sell a lot of books with those kind of – it's a sort of pessimism. It's like a strategic pessimism it's been called.

But I think actually a little bit of that is valuable because otherwise it's like the faith healer that says, if you don't continue to feel better, it's your fault. You've let yourself down because you didn't have enough faith. And if you swap out faith for self-belief, I don't know if you're a fan of like, you know, The Secret, but it's the same model. And it says quite explicitly, if these things don't come to you, it's your fault. It is your fault because you let go of that self-belief. And it's a recipe, I think, for anxiety and disaster. Do you face a lot of anxiety in your

life? I don't. No, I don't particularly. I have the opposite problem that I'm... You're too relaxed. I'm so good at avoiding anxiety. How do you avoid it? I just have this natural constitution that I just avoid stress, but then I don't... The difficulty is getting stuff done then, isn't it? Anxiety is really important. Because you need a little pressure to complete things. Yeah, that's our signal that something needs changing in life, right? You have a deadline. It's like, I've got to do this thing or yes, I'm not working How do you change you don't change your job? You don't know it's wrong unless you start that you know Hey your job you don't cross the road on your own

Without letting go of your mother's hand first right something has to die in order for something new to to live right and I'm 47 so did you get kind of into the middle bit of life you start to notice You're kind of like your ego has to now just settle down and you actually putting yourself in service of something that's bigger than you like whether it's you know your kids or or a passion or whatever it is that those things start to become important let you know things have to sort of you have to let go of some things to you know to to move on to to move into, you know, growth. But you don't grow unless you embrace some level of anxiety.

It's tough. So I find that difficult because, like, I'm too the opposite and I need to embrace a bit more anxiety probably in life. Do you feel like, did you used to have a bigger ego at one point? Have you, like, started to kill the ego off for yourself? Oh, well, you know, I was a magician. It's just awful. It's embarrassing, you know.

Trying to please people or trying to, like... Oh, trying to impress. It's just terrible because the bottom line of magic is, look at me, aren't just awful. It's embarrassing. Trying to please people or trying to like... Oh, trying to impress. It's just terrible. The bottom line of magic is look at me, aren't I impressive? That's it. That's all it has to say. It is the quickest, most fraudulent route to impressing people. And there are some wonderful magicians, and I love great magic, of course,

but there's a lot of grown-up, lonely children in that world because you learn to show somebody something that is a cheat, you know, it might be actually really easy, and they go, you're amazing, you're amazing, and that's quite an addictive cycle. So I think I've hopefully let go of some of that, but I know I was unbearable. I couldn't have a conversation without doing tricks. Really? Yeah.

Because you wanted that, it was like a drug. It just felt like, it always felt good. It was that hit. Yeah, and we don't like people that are trying to be impressive and that was such an obvious truth that I just hadn't quite realized. We like people that are kind

and we like people that are nice to be around. Good listeners and yeah. Yeah. Not always trying to get all the attention or whatever, right? Exactly, yeah. And interestingly, we don't like people that necessarily like us

because we always try and be like people. We try and be like people we admire to get them to like us. So we instinctively try and, you know, be like them. And actually, it's not really what we necessarily are drawn to in people, I don't think. Why were you so into magic or learning about all this stuff in the first place? I remember hearing a little bit about... learning about this stuff in the first place. I remember hearing a little bit about... I was a really insecure kid

who needed to impress and feel solid. I saw a hypnotist in my first year at university and I kind of... So I was studying law, right? I was supposed to be a lawyer. And I saw this guy and it just ticked all these boxes. It was performance. I'd never really thought of myself as performing,

but I think that I needed that. And the control side of it was like, it was a great show. It wasn't making people look stupid or anything, but it was nonetheless, I kind of, a bit of me was like, all those kids that I found intimidating at school, those kind of sporty guys.

You'd have terrified me. Big guys. They're now like, they're the ones that tend to respond really well to those kind of sporty sporty guys you'd have terrified me big guys yeah they're now like the they're the ones that tend to respond really well to this kind of stuff so now i'm in control you know it was all that kind of stuff it was it was um and hopefully you know hopefully i've grown out of some of that at least but that's why you got into in the first place from insecurities and it was like absolutely yeah wow when did you realize that you had like a gift for this were you just all of a sudden funny and interesting and a great storyteller in the first few months? Or did you bomb a lot and get embarrassed even more? It isn't a gift, I don't think.

I think it's like if you have that insecure thing or whatever that makes you... Start playing the piano, right? Probably not everyone's going to play the piano, but anybody could in theory. You just got to put in thousands of hours, whatever the figure is today. But not everyone's going to do that. So yeah, it clicked for me. But it was a slow process. I remember

one weird seminal moment and I was the guy at university that would hypnotize you, right? That was my thing. So I would, people would come over and I was learning hypnosis so I'd sort of practice it on people. Were you practicing every day just all the time? Yeah, yeah, all the time, all the time. So I would come over, and I was learning hypnosis, so I'd sort of practice it on people. Were you practicing every day, just all the time? Yeah, yeah, all the time, all the time. And I would leave, like if they were good, if they responded well,

I'd leave them with this suggestion. If you come back and I click my fingers and tell you to go to sleep, you'll go straight back into the sleep state, right? If people are highly suggestible, that will work with them. And it just would speed up the process the second time. And this guy came one week, and I thought I'd seen him before. So I sat down, I said, click, I clipped my fingers, go to sleep. And he went out.

He went to sleep. He went to sleep. Well, it's not sleep, but he went into this kind of relaxed state. But essentially went into a trance. That's what it looked like. He slumped out. And we did whatever we were doing. I can't remember what it was.

Maybe he wanted to give up smoking or something like that, and then it was only afterwards when we were talking about it, and I realized I hadn't met this guy before. So I thought, well, how did he? Because I don't have any magic fingers or something, nothing I'm doing, and I just realized it was just my kind of commitment to that, my confidence and my belief that he was going to respond.

And the fact he was very suggestible was just like a fortuitous coincidence. And that was a moment of going, right, the key to this is not these long scripts that I've been learning and it's not really the technique as such. It's just something about that person's ongoing experience in the moment, which I'm kind of, it's up to me to manage that. So now on stage I get people up and I shake hands with them

and they collapse out on the floor, hypnotized, inverted, whatever that means. There's a whole other discussion as to what it is, but I know that that moment of stepping up on stage is bewildering and there's suddenly an audience. Right, there's lights and they're like, and they just, boom. And desperate for direction, desperate for clear instruction, which is like a gift if you're a hypnotist,

because then you know that whatever you say will just unconsciously, you know. Wow. So someone tried to hypnotize me once, and I was like, I want to be hypnotized. I was like. You were too enthusiastic. Well, I was like, first off, I was like,

I never want to be hypnotized. And I'd watch it and things like that. Well, this was back in the day, I was like, I never want to be hypnotized. And I'm watching things like that. Well, this was back in the day. And then I met a guy who was like hypnotist. He was like, you know, well, I'd love to like show you and guide you if you want. I was like, all right, I'll try it. I'm open to it. Like, I just don't know if it's going to work.

And he's like, well, you need to come to the space that it is going to work. And that's what he said to me. He was like, I want you to, you know, you want to be this. This is something you want. Like, we're going to work on it, whatever. And he did the whole, like, arm pull thing or whatever, and it just wasn't working. And I was trying to.

Pulling your arm? It was just like a quick, like, you know. It was like a stage setting. How weird. It was just like a little, you know, I don't know, like a little pull where you. Be careful. Oh, sorry.

Don't break the hand. But at the same point, I was like, okay, I'll just, like, try'll just try to go along with it and really just try to more relax in the process and just try to be relaxing, breathe, and relax. He took me through a visualization of becoming your greatest self. He actually put me through an actually nice process because I love the power of visualization.

I've been doing it as an athlete since as long as I can remember. And I believe in the suggestion suggestion the story we tell ourself The projection I would say this is how I'm gonna show up tomorrow at the game and I'd walk myself through Every move every play every whatever maybe and see myself performing Well, I'd also be putting years of hard work to back it so it wasn't just like I'm gonna do great with no work But we affirming that belief. And so he put me through a nice little kind of guided visualization, meditation, whatever you want to call it.

And he was like, I want you to imagine the greatest version of yourself standing right in front of you. And in that moment, I'd actually never heard the way he told it before. And I was like, wow, I could see myself like with 100% confidence, calm, poised, like the best looking version of myself whatever just like standing perfectly not slouched just every part of me the best version and i was like wow i can push myself to be a greater person by seeing it first and then taking the action steps to becoming that yeah so i was like that a nice little… As long as you build in this kind of sub-clause that… Because people can set these kind of goals that last forever.

Joseph Campbell, I'm sure you know, a big writer on Myths said, you can spend your life climbing a ladder and then realize you had the ladder against the wrong wall. You know, so there's… I mean, it's wonderful. Why are we climbing the ladder, right? Why are we climbing this? Yeah, we spend a lot of time focusing on stuff like this. We have this image of this version of ourselves that we're moving towards.

And it's always out there somewhere. And it's kind of like all those things that, well, look, it's helpful. Like if you're going to have a self-image, of course, why not have a great self-image? Because we tend to make terrible ones. But it's just an image. It's just a picture in the air. It might as well be a good one. Yeah. But in the meantime, there might as well be a good one. Yeah.

But in the meantime, there's also like the here and now, and there's like making your relationship to the parts of you that aren't right or don't feel right, and making peace with that and understanding that in a different way. Like, you know, if you're in a relationship, and I heard this as a philosopher in England called Alain de Botton, I really love this. He said, if you go to sleep, if you go to bed twice a week with your partner and you're thinking, what am I doing with this

person? This is terrible. That's normal, right? That is like a normal thing to start with. And that's, to me, is much healthier. That kind of thinking is healthier than, I'm going to have the perfect relationship, and I can visualize that perfectly, and I'm going to make it happen. Because sometimes that's great, but sometimes it just sets you up for a kind of, why have an impossible standard? So there's a balance, right? I think there's a sub-clause that goes, if everything turns out brilliantly, then yes. But if it doesn't, If everything turns out brilliantly, then yes. Right.

But if it doesn't, then that has to be okay. Yeah. That has to be a situation that's comfortable and also exciting. Why not also be happy with things as they are? Yeah, exactly. It's an important bit that gets missed. Of course, appreciating and being in gratitude and all those things. Do you have any regrets of all the work you've done or just anything in your life where you regret maybe something you did or something you didn't do or something you wish you'd done?

And I have no clue what you're going to say here, but I'm just curious if you have regrets from whether your personal life, your career life. Well, it's difficult. I always think of like, a friend said this, which I thought was great. You know, Richard Wiseman, if you come across his work as a kind of popular psychologist, it's great. He said, like, you know, it's like trying to pull out a, imagine like a big jar with loads of different colored threads, you know. You just, sometimes you try and pull one out. But of course, it just all comes out together.

So how you go back and, like, remove one thread from your life. I'm gay, but I didn't come out until I was, like, 30. So that's, like, that's kind of late. 17 years ago, right? Yeah, that's right. So that's like, I do kind of think that's normally where my mind goes. Really? Do you regret anything?

Because that was like a really long time. But I don't think I'd have put half the energy into sort of doing the stuff that I do if I didn't, if I wasn't A, desperately trying to avoid any conversations about sex and just like basic human conversations. So that you tend to get very good at like deflecting attention with dazzling, amazing things, right? That's like a good strategy if you're trying to avoid that kind of subject.

So, you know, weirdly that kind of helped. And so I don't know. So you can justify these things as well. You're like, well, I wish I would have came out earlier, but at the same time. Yeah, and you know what it really did? I think gay or straight or whatever, we often have things about ourselves that would be good to come out about, right? Stuff that we just carry a lot of shame around about. I could never tell people.

And what's fascinating and why the coming out thing, regardless of what it's about, not necessarily about sexual, just anything, if it's something to come out about, and this is what I found, it's liberating not because you get to go, oh, I'm gay or I'm whatever. It's that you realize no one gives a fuck.

No one cares. Maybe two or three people or something. Yeah, but they don't, yeah. That's it. What really settled into my head was this idea that we'd worry a lot less about what other people think of us Maybe two or three people or something. Yeah, but they don't, yeah, but. That's it. We would, what really settled into my head was this idea that we'd worry a lot less about what other people think of us if we realize how seldom they do. They really don't, really get, so once you've done that with your big thing that you've

carried all this shame around for, then you realize, oh, everything's fine. Wow. So because of that, other than, I was probably a bit of a dick for a long time while I was, like, struggling with all that stuff. But that's, I kind of, you know, you've got to forgive yourself that. Can't be at peace with it, yeah. Yeah. So I don't have any regrets.

It's actually kind of, it's fine. I'd like to be, you know, I kind of, I'd like to be a better partner and a better person. Those are things that I think are, you you know good to engage with in the present Is there anything you're struggling with right now? Is it like or what is the biggest challenge for you? Because you don't have anxiety Oh, hey, I have anxiety I just mean my I get so good at natural avoiding it Yeah, I don't have anxiety like some people have anxiety, but there are different patterns on there. So you've got classically

like some people have anxiety, but there are different patterns, aren't there? So you've got classically anxiety pattern and avoidance pattern. So like if there's a stressor, if there's a challenge, if there's something in your life that comes up that's stressy, do you run towards it like a magnet and try and fix it? Like some people do. It's what my partner does. It's like, absolutely, like, that makes it worse, I think. But. But are you drawn to stress? Probably, yeah, yeah. Or do you just naturally avoid it? I'm very good at avoiding it, but that isn't, both sides have their ups and downs, right? Then it kind of, it's kind of nice, we work well with each other because he makes me

a little more engaged in things, and I, you know, help him calm down a bit about other stuff. What I find interesting at the moment is the tension between the urge, it was kind of like what you were interesting at the moment is the tension between the urge. It was kind of like what you were saying about, you know, Nietzsche, he kind of had this line of become who you are. That was his drive, right?

So there's that one idea of that there is a version of you that's out there somewhere that you want to clear everyone out of the way so you can just focus on that. And I think, you know, if you get married or you've got kids and stuff, that kind of tension, that sense of like, can be very strong. And then there's the other completely conflicting impulse, which is, well, maybe the best version of myself, rather than being out there somewhere, which I'm never going to reach, right,

is actually, yeah, maybe the self is something that extends and is sort of active and fluid and extends out into the relationships that you're in now. But, you know, both are important. What's hard is, and I think this, you know, is just generally in life, is hard, is conflicts, ambivalence is important and, again, real. It's part of life that things conflict and things are ambiguous and things are, you know, messy and that that's okay.

And actually, it's okay to let completely conflicting opposing ideas settle. I mean, politically, we're so like this now that we each think the other side is just mad and evil and we've kind of forgotten, which is kind of what sacrifice is about. Oh, man, yeah. We've forgotten that actually the dialogue between the sides,

forgetting the personalities involved, but the dialogue between the sides is actually where you find humanity and where truth is ultimately going to be found, right? You've got two very different narratives about, you know, the conservative version is essentially about protecting the group, right? It's about holding things together. Hierarchy is holding that together, but it can happen at the expense

of the weaker individuals. And then the left-wing narrative is about protecting the weaker individuals. And tearing down... Yeah, and letting... If that can happen at the expense of the overall structure, that's fine.

So sometimes we do have to think as a group, and sometimes we have to think as individuals. And we've evolved along both lines. And both sides ultimately are going to be important. So dialogue is important. And likewise in life, things are messy and they're complex and they're ambiguous. And there is a...

Growing up is tolerating ambiguity, I think. That's true. What is your greatest fear? You're going to forget about my hand and give me a really hearty handshake at the end of this? I don't like spiders. I don't. Greatest fear, I don't know. I think kind of, you know, getting it all wrong.

I hate the idea of, idea of letting my partner down. Just sort of letting things and people down, letting myself down. I really think about these things and try and get them right and I try and communicate them through the work that I do. You can only ever be good enough, right?

Again, it's not about ever being perfect. You can give your best, yeah. You can't control how people respond or react. Exactly, exactly. To the way you show up, right? Yeah. So it's not a kind of anxiety fear, but in terms of the things that I think about

that part of me, as I said, wants everyone to clear out the way and I just want to pursue these things. But then what am I going to be? I think I'm becoming this great, fascinating version of myself. I've probably just become some weird old man. You know, we cross state, don't we? We develop like a sort of a hard shell when we're on our own for too long.

And what relationships do is they make you more conscious of all the things that are just mad about you. Because otherwise you're unconscious of them. And it's the things you're unconscious of that will own you and will come back and bite you. So relationships are so important. Because I'm naturally kind of a bit of a loner. It's like I'm really aware at the moment of that tension.

For me, in the kind of middle bit of life, that's what I find really interesting at the moment. Wow. Since you do like to be alone, it sounds like, and be kind of in your art and your crafts and your photography, like isolated in some sense of the word. But I'm hearing you say that when you are around people or your partner, you don't want to let those people down. Is that what I'm hearing you say? Yeah, because that's a potential for sort of not only letting

other people down but just becoming this intolerable, horrible version of myself as well. Gotcha. It's just trying to get that stuff right. How old are you? 35. 35, okay. So you've probably got a while before those sort of things start to become pressing. Well, I think I've been talking a lot about this

just in my work that, and through all the people that I've interviewed over the years of different backgrounds and stuff, there's really three main fears that I've found that most of us have. The fear of failure. We don't go after something or pursue something or speak or do music or whatever it may be because we don't want to fail. That fear of like, oh, I'm a failure, I'm a loser, right? The fear of success where then we're leaving our pack, our community, because if we're succeeding

and they're not coming with us, then I'm alone and they're not going to accept me or the pressure that I have to perform again. I have to repeat the success, right? You might have felt that when you had this hit show and it's like, it's got to be better. It's got to be better, right? And then the third one. Spiders. Spiders, yes.

Spiders and snakes and heights. The fear of judgment. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Of either way. and snakes and heights. The fear of judgment. Oh yeah, yeah. Either way, making sure that people like us, fear of like, well, either one, if I succeed or fail, are people gonna like me? And for me, the judgment was always the fear

until I addressed it about five years ago. Because as an athlete, I was taught that you had to fail to succeed. And I was the youngest of four. I was this tall when I was like 11 and just like goofy and gangly. I wasn't like this stud athlete or whatever. I was the one that everyone made fun of. I was in special needs classes, so it was hard for me to read and write all through

college. I almost flunked English in high school, all those things. So I had a lot of insecurities about the perception people had about me. Like my image, my ego, like what do they think about me? What do they say about me? Am I saying the right things? Like I always thought I was off.

So that judgment was what drove me to be a great athlete, to succeed, to achieve, to perform well, and to win at everything. So it was like accomplishment driven. And I realized that failure wasn't a fear for me because coaches taught me you've got to practice. You're going to miss shots. That's how you learn.

So I was like, I'm going to fail every day and it's okay. That's the foundation for achievement. And that's all I wanted was the success. But it was like, did I slip? Did I look silly? You know, the fear of what people think about me. You're still living that out, that same fear of judgment. You're still living it out, but you've turned it into something.

I'm aware of it. I'm very aware of it. Well, I started to accept it, and five years ago, I opened up about being sexually abused as a kid, and I've talked about it many times on this show and wrote a book about all that stuff. And it wasn't until I fully opened up about all my fears and insecurities about that and many other things. It wasn't until I like opened up about it. And my fear was like,

everyone's going to judge me. Everyone's going to, no one's going to love me. No one's going to accept me. Like they're just going to make fun of me even more. Yeah. And I had everything to lose, right? I had a successful business and career and everything. But I was like, no one can know about this stuff. Like, no one can know that you're gay or whatever. Maybe that was the feeling. I don't know. Yeah, totally. And for me, it was like the most shameful thing that I held on to for 25 years or until I was 30.

And when it happened, I was like, man, this weight. Like, no one cares. No one cares. Yeah. And in fact, they cared more about me at that moment. They were like, I respect you more. I trust you more. Because I felt like something was, your ego was in the way.

And when people are like that, when people have that thing that like people when they're closeted, for example, whatever it is, there's always a bubble around them. Like I knew I had it around me and I have friends that have come out since. And there's just a bubble and you just can't quite get to them because they're constantly affecting. Yeah, something. And that was me. And you were probably doing the same, as was I. And then, so people only go, ah, and they step in closer.

It's only a good experience. And all of a sudden, everyone was telling me vulnerable things about them that I never knew. And I was like, wow, we can connect on a deeper level. Yeah. It's a whole, it's an amazing thing to kind of discover, discover isn't it it's such a simple thing for everybody else but it's amazing thing to discover but once I kind of let go listen I still have an ego and like you know I want to you know perform well and all these things I want to do a good job and and do all that stuff

but it's like I care so much less about the way I look and the way people are judging me because I'm like they're going to judge me whether I'm doing nothing or doing something. Either way, they're going to judge me for a moment and then they're going to let go and judge someone else, like whatever. And so I think I've come to the point where I've accepted myself. Because I used to not think I was enough and that's why I was constantly living in one of these fears. And I think once we can start to just accept who we are as opposed to saying,

well, I'm not the perfect version of myself like you were talking about. Let me be where I'm at right now and appreciate the moment. I think the most we can hope for often is just being conscious of these things. We can't always, it's not easy just to go, oh, great, and then change anything. But being conscious means that it earns you less. So from the word go, we come into this world and we are given powerful messages from our parents, our caregivers, our authority figures kind of going, here is the relationship between you and the world.

You are small, the world is big. You have no power, the world has power. And we learn very quickly what that is. It's a skewed vision. We have, you know, Jung talks about the greatest burden the child has to bear is the unlived life of its parents. How great is that? So that's like right on us from the word go. Putting the pressure, yeah, yeah.

But we are adapting creatures, right? The thing that makes us so great at evolution, because we adapt, really starts to kind of fuck us up a bit with this sort of life thing. Because we adapt to that. We internalize it. We go, okay, so I'll think of myself like this and I'll think of the world like this. And we start to kind of live that out. We develop a template of what love means from our parents,

which is entirely unrealistic because you see all the nice stuff. Like they presumably, hopefully, please, give us the best side of themselves. But we don't see the arguments they have when they're, you know, we know what it's like now as adults, what the experience of parenting is like. We don't see them screaming and arguing and losing sleep. I saw that. Yeah, I saw that.

Maybe you did. Yeah, yeah. But very often at least, so there's an idea of like this template of what love is that isn't really realistic. And we start to bring that into our, that becomes our template for our adult relationships because that's all we know, right? And then we're projecting all of that stuff onto our partners.

And expecting certain things, yeah. And we live out these same patterns. Everything comes back again and again because we just, the stuff we're not conscious of is the stuff that rules us. And if we bury one part of us, like if you're, you know, if you're the homophobic, I don't know, the homophobic televangelist who, you know, preaches against all that and then gets, you know, caught in bed with some guy

and there's like a big, it'll come back and bite you if you bury these things, you know. So the most we can do, I think, is become conscious of how we adapt in these ways to skewed messages, skewed. Our compasses are all over the place. We internalize it. We think that's the truth. And then we go through life kind of looking for things that, in a familiar way, repeat that pattern. So people can have the same problems with relationships again and again.

Because that's what they know. Because that's what they know. That's what they're supposed to be is true. How do you think, no matter where we're at in our lives, how do we rewire and master our mind? How can we say what- You're asking me like I know. Bear in mind, look, the only reason why I have any language for this stuff is-

You study this stuff. It doesn't come naturally. If it came naturally, if it was all sex, I wouldn't have the language for it. That's why you're an expert because because you've studied this, and through all the experiments you've done and all the people you've worked with, just by observing people, how do you think, I feel like you've had thousands of interactions with people where you've been able to set things up for them, tell a story or not tell a story, to have them go in a certain direction. So how do we rewire our

minds to at least be aware of what we want, what we don't want, and how do we become more of a master over our minds as opposed to it being a master of us? I think we set our goals realistically. We allow for failure to be comfortable. We align ourselves with that X equals Y line and not try and crank everything up here. Because if we're trying to do that, we're just buying into someone's system somewhere and we're going to make life miserable for us eventually and we're going to blame ourselves when that happens.

What do you mean failure comfortable? Meaning be okay with failure? Yeah. Is it even failure? I mean, I don't know. It's just experiences, isn't it? It's learning, yeah. Yeah.

How you make your peace with the fact that life isn't going to always produce what you'd like it to and make that okay. That's huge. And as I said, the best we can do is become more conscious of these things. So that can happen through psychotherapy, right? A psychotherapist is going to hopefully, like depth psychoanalysis, that kind of thing, increases your sort of dialogue with yourself, increases your consciousness about those things. But it's very expensive and it's long form and a lot of people aren't interested. But that's one way of doing it. Another way, I guess, is to look honestly at your life and see, well, where are these

recurring patterns? What keeps cropping up? What am I a bit obsessed by? What am I constantly trying to avoid? What just keeps coming back and biting me? What does life keep throwing at me that's bad and causing problems? And then we just trace that back, see where it goes back to. And are there any other possibilities? Are there any other ways of behaving? And it's not like it just goes great and then you change, but you become more conscious of it, and then it's like a little drip by drip feeding into the soul

that can make a difference. I think these are sort of modest goals. They're important. I'm curious, who is more influential in your youth, your mom or your dad? To you, more influential? Well, both. My dad may be kind of in a sort of negative sense. I mean, there was not like any bad blood, but this is quite common, I think, with like

boys that are gay growing up, is that you tend to have the stronger bond with the mother and the father's sort of, there's just kind of a bit of a disconnect there. But of course, both end up being hugely influential because both of those impulses inform who you are as an adult. I was closer to my mother, certainly. Mom, closer, yeah. What was the greatest lesson that your mom and your dad taught you? I heard recently somebody say, it was so great, how great is this, that kids spend their life

wanting their parents to apologize. Parents spend their life wanting their parents to apologize parents spend their lives wanting their kids to say thank you that's not a nice thing um because i studied law i was surrounded like neither of my parents my dad barely read or write and neither of them went to university or anything anything like that so here i was amongst all these other law students that were like from these really big, powerful families. And they were, that first set of exams we came across, I saw that they were all really nervous. Not because they were going to fail for them, but what their parents were going to say. And I'd never had that experience. I couldn't relate to, so your parents would, your parents would be angry at you for failing? And I wrote my parents a letter

because I just suddenly realized, oh, actually, they've done this amazing thing of just saying, you just do what makes you happy. And they'd never tried to, the only thing they ever wanted me to do was learn to drive. And that's the one thing I don't do. I don't drive.

You don't drive. It was so, like, intense that they'd try and... You still don't drive? I still don't drive. No way. Which in LA here is just, like, a sign of mental illness. In London it's fine.

So I've kind of slightly lost track of your question but the greatest lesson from them. So that was it. I feel I've done kind of well in my life and what they were giving me was just do what makes you happy. And that's always been my impulse. I've had no

genuinely no ambition which is why I'm kind of like cynical about that's always been my impulse I've had no genuinely no ambition I'm which is why I'm kind of like cynical about the whole goal setting thing I've never never done that I only felt is what I'm doing now you know enjoyable and interesting and feel worthwhile and and that that was on day one when I graduated and I had no money and I was just doing magic tricks and I thought this is kind of fun quite like this. I'm walking around dreaming up tricks and then going out and performing in the evening. That's nice. And that is exactly the same now. That hasn't... It's on a bigger scale now. It's a bigger scale, but being kind of successful with what you do doesn't really

change those things. You mentioned the fear of success. I have a good friend, I found this a really interesting thing. He built up a company, pulling back, he had a relationship with his father where he felt he had to achieve and show achievements to get approval. Really common, really common. Again, in terms of those stories that we get in from an early age and then we just kind of adapt to it and think that's what we have to do and think that's real. So his way of responding to that was that he had to be a really high achiever. And, you know, the world becomes dad, right? The world becomes wanting approval from everyone. So he built up this company, and he had this dream that I'll build up this powerful company, and then I'll sell it, and I'll be a multimillionaire. And I guess... That'll love me.

I guess then, yeah, essentially brackets, you know, that'll love me. He did it. He built up this company, and this is a very good friend of mine, and he sold it, and he sold it for a lot of money. And then he was in therapy within like a year because that need, that thing, that doesn't go away. That's the thing that has driven him in his life. Now he's done the thing, he's achieved the goal, so now what?

And he went to therapy and realized that he was not alone. This is a really common thing. This is another whole thing with the goal setting. There isn't just the problem of what if it doesn't work. What if it does work? What if it works and you've spent like 13 years making it? I'm still not happy. Yeah, because the thing that was making you do it is still there and now it's got no work what if it does work what if it works and you've spent like i'm still not happy yeah because

the thing that was making you do it is still there and now it's got nowhere to go and that's like then you've got no meaning and like forget happiness meaning is like what what we need right we need to make sense of ourselves in the bigger scheme of things so what happens when that goes out is horrific but you know great for him because now he's he's like become conscious of that stuff now so he's he's worked you know a lot of that stuff out but that was my that was kind of my upbringing as well as like i wanted to prove people wrong that was my meaning yeah it was like a negative meaning it was like the three to five bullies that picked on me in school and told me i was stupid and laughed at me when i couldn't read in front of the class like that stuck with me and I was like I'm gonna become so big so strong

so athletic so talented that I'm gonna prove these kids wrong and I did right it's like I achieved all these accomplishments and went on and did all these great things or whatever and I was like why am I still not yeah I was like I'm proving them wrong but why am I still not happy? Yeah, I was like, I'm proving them wrong, but why am I still not happy? Like I did the thing that they said I couldn't do, and I still don't feel good about myself. That's because you never reach the point. You never reach the point when you fully prove them wrong. There's always another thing.

There's another thing. And so I stopped that as well. I was like, okay, instead of trying to prove a few people wrong that I don't even talk to or whatever, and don't even remember their names, it's like, why don't I shift my meaning and purpose towards lifting others up and serving humanity and serving people in a powerful way to support and educate, entertain, whatever it may be, to help people as opposed to getting back at people. Yeah.

That's a good one. That's a good idea. Right? That gives me so much more meaning, and it strips anxiety from me. It strips anxiety, and it strips the fear of judgment. Because I've been speaking on stage for about 10 years. I used to be so terrified to speak on stage. And I went through a year of public speaking training and Toastmasters just to force myself to dive into the fear.

So I was like, I don't want this fear to control me anymore. And I used to, you know, I got good at speaking on stage, but I still get really nervous before. And it wasn't until about three years ago where I talked to a guy who was like a coach of mine who was like, because you're still concerned about what people think of you. You're focused on like being perfect and missing a word or forgetting a story. He's like, you're going to mess up. Just own the fact that you're not going to be perfect. And quit focusing on what people think about you and start thinking about them and being of service to them.

Yeah. And the idea, I think a lot of that fear of public speaking is helped by the realization that it's an idea that you're all engaged in, that you're presenting and everyone's learning about and you're engaged. It's not about you, which is also the difference between proving those people wrong and being of service to humanity, as you put it, is that it's not about you. And I think things get better in life when they're not about you. So much better. I can't think of any job that you don't become better at that job when you stop making it about you. A teacher that's just looking for kind of approval and for the kids to like him and all those things's not going to be as good as the teacher that's genuinely about serving those kids. And public speaking is the same thing.

That's the trouble we focus on. It becomes about us. And that's just going to drive us mad. If it's about the ideas, if it's about, again, that sort of middle life thing, I think, just letting go of ego and serving something bigger. We find meaning in life by finding the thing, something that's bigger than yourself

and just throwing yourself into that thing. Let's go into that because you talk about being an atheist, right? Yeah. Did you grow up believing in God or religion? I did. And then when did this shift? What was the idea behind that?

Okay, so I grew up, I didn't have like a religious family or anything, but I went to a sort of Bible reading Sunday school type thing when I was quite young. So there was a teacher at school I really liked, and she ran these classes. So I went to that, and I just, you know, believed in it. And then by the time I was old enough to realize, oh, I actually have a belief that not everybody has,

I was pretty inculcated, so it wasn't going to shift. So that was fine. I didn't have a lot of Christian friends or anything, but I had one good friend at university, at school first and then at university. And then it actually started to change with the fact I was learning hypnosis and magic because there was such a negative reaction, such a strong ab reaction from my Christian friends. Of you performing these things? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you shouldn't like that. You're the devil.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I thought, well, okay, that's just them not understanding what it is. So, okay, that's sort of all right. But that's like just fear, isn't it? And then, so that was the first little drop of a kind of skepticism. And then I had a friend who was a psychic healer

and we used to have long arguments because i was so skeptical about that kind of stuff which magic tends to teach you because you learn about how we fool ourselves right and how tricks work and naturally you know so we you tend to become quite skeptical about those sorts of belief systems and i started to think well i'm just am i just doing the same is it just another circular belief system so i thought well i should really look into it maybe i should try and uh because i was the guy that would sit you down in a pub in england and tell you why you should believe in god here are these you would do that yeah i was that guy like

i could i could prove to you college yeah yeah i was you were hardcore i was pretty hardcore i could prove to you why god existed, all those things. But part of me thought, yeah, and like for 2,000 years, philosophers have like not been able to answer that question. So probably I'm like, you know, I'm overreaching there a little. So I just, you know, I kind of started to look into things like how the Bible was put together and so on. And then the… The translations, the this, the that.

Yeah. A bunch of people writing stories. Exactly. And bit by bit, the conviction fell apart, which I thought, well, maybe that'll give me a more honest belief, based on a kind of honest sort of doubt, weirdly, rather than just all these convictions that didn't really have any intellectual bravery to them. There was a lot of intellectual cowardice. But anyway, it all fell apart. I couldn't really put it back together again. Really? What then tends to happen is you go from being, if you're a real believer, you become a real

disbeliever. So I was a very vocal atheist. And I still am in the sense that atheism gets a hard rap because people think it has an agenda attached to it, which obviously it can do with certain people, of course, or individuals bring what they want to it. Just like anyone with any belief, yeah. Yeah, but I don't know. Do you collect stamps? No? No.

So you are an aphilatelist, right? You could be described as an aphilatelist, which doesn't mean anything. It's like, okay, but if people started to suggest that you held an agenda as an aphilatelist, that that kind of implied any kind of anything. You'd get sick of the label. So I'm an atheist and I don't believe in God. But now what I think is I kind of see religion as like, well, at some point it really gave people the experience of transcendence. Somewhere in history, people were having kind of a phenomenological, like an experiential, embodied experience of transcendence. That meant, like it meant something. Whatever was

happening historically was there in living memory with people, whatever this guy was talking about, whatever the experience was, and was like giving people a real thing. And then time moves on, and that thing moves out of living memory, whatever the sort of historical context was. So to recreate it, you introduce practices, things that you can do. Rituals and things that will just give you back a bit of that. But of course, you're now moving into belief as opposed to a kind of embodied knowledge that it was.

And dogmas start. All these things start to kind of come in that are replacing what was actually a very, an experience. Yes. And then, you know, of course that body, that church gets powerful and monetized and political, you know, so there's a whole lot of, and then you are where we are now. Where, to me, a lot of the atheist arguments feel a little bit like it's that kind of straw man thing. Like, of course you can point at some of where we are now and go, well, that's kind of silly, that's ridiculous.

But I think to give religion its credit, it may not be doing a very good job at it now, but actually those things are signposts back to what is important, which is the value of transcendence, which is only what we're talking about. All it means is, it doesn't have to mean anything overtly spiritual. It's just losing yourself to something bigger, which is what you're saying, right? What you've done turning that thing of proving the bullies wrong to serving something bigger. And that's massive,

but we don't instinctively get that that is an important thing. It takes people like you to say this is a valuable thing and makes a difference. And we go, does it? Okay, but actually, like, that, which is why I think the mythological side of religion is important because these sorts of, that things have to die for new things to grow. You know, these are kind of religious myths that serve, I think, this very basic need to transcend.

Because when we don't put it somewhere valuable, we put it in, you know, the idea of money, wealth, fame, and so on, which don't put it somewhere valuable we put it in you know the idea of money wealth fame and so on which don't serve it they do not yeah yeah they don't serve it they don't give you that they don't give you that experience that you use what is the thing you believe the most then and what is the thing you're what's the meaning that you're giving that's bigger than you right now if it's not God or religion or faith or in those things I think it's I mean this will

sound very self-centered but I think in as much as we can only sort ourselves out can't we that you've got to just sort yourself out and then before you even think about anybody else so I if there's anything in my life it's trying to maintain the best possible which is does not mean perfect, just good enough, kind of dialogue with myself and understanding of that so I can just do this thing

as well as I can, which is, you know, that's a life project and not one that's of any interest to anybody else. I don't expect it to be, but that's interesting enough. And then what's nice is

taking stuff that I do learn out of that and then putting it into a book or putting it into a project. what's nice is taking stuff that that I do learn out of that and then like putting it into a book or putting it into a project that's nice because again there's less about me so that's where it gets valuable have you been able to answer the question about why you're here where you're going what's the point of all this have you been able to figure out a solution a proof a formula I don't think they're helpful questions, really. I think what's the helpful bit is what's important to us, and I think meaning is important. I think meaning is more important than happiness.

We think it's happiness, but it's not. Meaning brings us joy. Yeah, meaning puts everything else into place. And the other part of that is that thing about tolerating ambiguity. The trouble with words like meaning and happiness, and even like the self is that they hide the fact they're not nouns really they're verbs these are active things like maybe there's no self maybe we just kind of self maybe our what this is is something that happens in our relationships and yeah and happiness is maybe it's an activity and meaning is an activity, which means they're messy and they're complex

and they're active. And that's a tricky thing to kind of maintain and hold in place. But all that stuff is important to me. What about the thing you're most proud of? What's the thing you've done that you're most proud of that maybe a lot of people don't even know about? To be honest, the first thing that comes to mind

is when I've done this show, like this show, Sacrifice, sorry to come back to it. No, it's all good. Bring it up, man. I love it. In the show, Sacrifice, this guy goes through a genuinely transformational experience that has really changed him.

And has he stuck with it? Yeah, yeah, and he will tell you this, because I did say to him, I'm going to probably do some promotional stuff around the show. Is it all right for me? Yeah, yeah. And he will tell you this because I did say to him, I'm going to probably do some promotional stuff around the show. Is it all right for me to say, what do you want me to say? And he said,

apart from having my kids, this is the best thing I've ever done. I do it in a heartbeat. And when you watch it, it's going through some dark stuff so you wouldn't necessarily

take that for granted that he would say that. So given that television and entertainment can be such a kind of ludicrous, or just as a meaningless kind of experience to occasionally do things like that that make a difference. I think in terms of feeling proud of anything,

that's all I can really think of. I don't really feel proud of things that relate back to me because that's not as interesting, but because it's like... Helping someone else, yeah. Yeah, and not in a kind of like a... not in a trying to make myself sound anything, but just genuinely, it's much easier to feel proud of something when it isn't about you, and it's something that's, you're going to probably feel proud of your kids, then you're going

to feel about your own business achievements, that would be normal. Yeah, of course. Your kids like spelling bee, then you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, amazing. What's the thing that you've been thinking about maybe for a while that you haven't been able to create yet? An experiment, a performance, a trick, you know? I don't really have them. I just sit, when there's a time for a new project,

I just sit and think, what's interesting now? Because I've got to live with the thing for like 10 months. So if it's some idea from somewhere in the back of my mind from three years ago, it's not going to be interesting. And I'll have grown up since then. So no, I have no ideas and no ambitions. You're very present, yeah. Until you come up with an idea, then you start acting on it.

Yeah. Wow. And what's your favorite hobbies? Is it art? Because you're an amazing painter. Your work is unbelievable, man. Oh, thank you. You're like a professional, like a real, not just like some amateur. favorite hobbies is it art because you're amazing painter your your work is unbelievable man oh like you're like a professional like a real like not just like some amateur it's like check out

your stuff on his website it's amazing oh thank you i paint and take photographs that's your main thing what is it about both those things that you love the most it's that flow thing we were saying yeah you know but that again that could be anything that might as well be surfing i guess but that it definitely gives me that. I have a very public job, so they're also quite private things. Because I'm naturally quite introverted, really. I'm quite shy. I don't know, you'd probably describe yourself maybe as a bit shy,

even though your personality might be very extrovert. But I'm kind of generally quite shy. So there are things that sit well with me. Like I do street photography, so I'm kind of out taking just candid pictures at the moment. And you're kind of in an interesting mental space because you're separated and you're kind of detached, but you're also very open and engaged.

And in the UK, because I'm quite well-known, I used to naturally, if I went out, keep my head down. And now I don't. I'm kind of open and engaged. And of course, no one's stopping me or anything. That was another fiction I was living out in my head. But it's a really lovely, it's a great state of mind. Again, I think it's that easy... Something about that X equals light,

like you're just a step back, but you're also very open. It's a very porous state. I think that's a very nice place to be. A couple of final questions for you. This has been fascinating, so I appreciate you all opening up. I've enjoyed this so much.

Thank you for having me. This question is called The Three Truths that I asked everyone at the end. Okay. So I'd like for you to imagine for a moment that you get to pick the last day for you that you're going to be on this earth, right? It's your last day.

As many years out as you want to live. Wow. Okay. Whatever. You're 100. You're 200. It doesn't matter. Whatever age you are.

And you've done everything that you want to do. You only think 10 months out, so you do everything in 10-month increments. But you've done it all, right? You're happy with your life, essentially. You've created the work, the shows, anything you want to do. You only think 10 months out, so you do everything in 10-month increments, but you've done it all, right? You're happy with your life, essentially. You've created the work, the shows, anything you want to do, you've done it. You've got the relationship with your partner. You've had the family if you want that. Whatever it is, you've done it. And it's been a great life. But for whatever reason, all the work that you've put out into the world, you've got to take it with you. Your books, your shows, you know, the amazing shows on Netflix.

As in like none of it's going to exist after I go to the show. You've got to take it with you and it goes into wherever you go next. But you get to leave the world with your three final truths. You've got a piece of paper and a pen, you get to write it down or maybe it's a hologram at that point, who knows what it is, but you get to give them,

the world, three lessons back to the world that you know to be true from your life experience that could benefit them or serve them in some way. What would be your three truths? I'm probably going to be repeating myself because I think I've probably said everything that I think to be true. Yeah, that's fine. I'd say don't try and control the things you can't control. The stuff you feel shame about, no one really cares.

And flossing. I think flossing is important. It's a good one. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. Okay, great. Make sure you guys watch Sacrifice, which is on Netflix right now. It's all over the world too, right?

You can watch it. It is. It is all over the world. Not just US, but anywhere Netflix. Yeah, yeah. It's all over the world too, right? You can watch it. It is. It is all over the world. Not just US, but anywhere Netflix. Yeah, yeah. It's on, yeah. So if it's not on the homepage of your Netflix,

just type in Sacrifice. I think it has an exclamation mark. I think once you've watched it, it's on your homepage every time you see it. Then it's up there. It's riveting, yeah. So go there.

Watch it like tonight. I'm telling you, watch this thing. It's only 60 minutes, I think. It's not even that. It's like 47 minutes. You don't want it to end. I'm telling you guys, you do not It's only 60 minutes, I think. It's not even that. It's like 47 minutes. You don't want it to end.

I'm telling you guys, you do not want it to end. So go watch it right now. Sacrifice. Then you're going to go down the rabbit hole. I'm already going to tell you. I'm going to get people messaging me on Instagram stories, tagging me on your YouTube, just watching every video after this. There's a lot there.

Watch Sacrifice. Then do yourself the favor and watch The Push right afterwards. Oh my goodness. It's crazy. The moment when people were kicking the butt. Oh God. Yeah. It sounds really dark. I couldn't believe watching this stuff. The last five minutes of the show is just amazing. It's crazy, man. It's unbelievable. Watch the push after. It's crazy. It's crazy, man. It's unbelievable. Watch the push afterwards. It's crazy.

It's going to blow your mind. And then watch your stage show, which is called Miracle Zone. Miracle is the stage show that's on Netflix as well. Watch the three shows tonight. I'm telling you, you're going to love it. I want to acknowledge you for a moment, Darren, for bringing so much joy to so many people. Whether it's on stage or if it's at home, like for so long you've brought joy and intrigue and wonder and creativity into people's lives when they don't have it. And I truly say this from an honest place that you bring a lot of people hope and inspiration for a better version of themselves, whatever that looks like for them, by showing people what's possible and by showing people that their way of thinking doesn't have to stay

that way. So your quirkiness, your struggles from childhood to obsessing over certain things, of trying to impress people is paying off in a massive way through your creative service. And I really acknowledge that and appreciate you. So. It's an amazing thing to hear. Thank you so much. Yeah, of course, of course.

I have one final question for you, and that is what is your definition of greatness? Of greatness, living in easy accordance with fate. By fate, I mean fortune and stuff that happens every day. Wow, Darren Brown, thank you so much, man. A gentle handshake. Thank you so much. To. A gentle handshake. Thank you so much.

To end the night. I was actually gripping you harder. It was a grip. That was a good one. Thank you for sparing my poor British soft hand. Appreciate it, man. Oh, and where can we connect with you online? Where do you hang out on social media?

I'm on Twitter, which is at Darren Brown. It's an unusual name. It's D-E-R-R-E-N. Darren Brown. I'm on Instagram, too. I mainly put my photography and painting on Instagram. That's great stuff on there. And my website is DarrenBrown.co.uk.

Annoyingly, because someone's sitting on DarrenBrown.com out there and they won't let it go. Go buy it, yeah. Make sure you guys follow Darren on all social media accounts. Which one do you hang out on the most? Probably Twitter. Twitter. So send him a tweet, retweet this link to your friends and

check out Sacrifice, The Push and the other show. So Darren, thanks again, man. Thank you so, so much. Thank you. I love it. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. If you did, make sure to check out the Netflix specials that Darren has right now. Sacrifice. It's going to blow your mind. The Push. It's going to take it even to a different level. And Miracle. You're going to get three different experiences. Binge watch them all in one night for all I care.

But make sure to tag me, at Lewis Howes and at Darren Brown. That's D-E-R-R-E-N Brown. Make sure to tag him on Twitter and Instagram and let him know what you think while you're watching those shows on Netflix. And during this interview, we'd love to hear your thoughts

about what you enjoyed the most from this interview and what you took away from it. Again, a big thank you to Darren for coming on and sharing this. Make sure to get tickets to his show on Broadway next year as well. Support Darren on all the good things that he has going on. Marcus Aurelius said, waste no more time arguing what a good man should

be and be one. And Albert Einstein said, once we accept our limits, we go beyond them. No matter where you're at in your life right now, no matter what limitations you might be feeling, no matter what blocks you have in your way, we must understand who we are, the human nature behind us, why we're driven to do certain things. Create that awareness in yourself right now. Start assessing your life. Start looking at the people in your life, the actions in your life, the thoughts. Every decision you make, start assessing them. If you want to become a better human being, it's time to assess it and become one by taking the daily actions towards the desired results that you want. Again, once we accept our limits, we go beyond them, said Albert Einstein. It's your time to go beyond them. And as always,

you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Thank you.