Dr Alex George Reveals The Secrets To Become 10% Happier Everyday

when's the last time you sat down and thought is this life that I have the life that I want and if it isn't what am I doing each day to work towards the life I do want now from my experience of the doctor and also probably from your experience watching or listening to this we probably know that we don't really treat mental health in the same way as we treat physical health and so with that in mind today's episode is an interview between me and Dr Alex George now Dr Alex is a TV Doctor best-selling author and youth mental health ambassador to the government now as you might be aware if you're in the UK Dr Alex was first featured on love Island about five years ago and love Island this reality TV show kind of catapulted him to fame his first book is called live well every day that was released in 2021 and became a Sunday Times bestseller and he has recently released this second book of a mind manual mental Fitness tools for everyone it's an idea I talk about in the mind manual it's called the traffic light Theory we go around we would say red Amber or green how you're feeling today now if I said that I was Amber every day maybe every day the similar stress or pressure was I was facing maybe I just can't get quite on top of my sleep it allows you and as that person to learn about why they might feel a certain way also allows the people around you to learn what's normal for them we talk a lot about mental health about the stigma around mental health and we explore some of Alex's own personal experiences and personal history with struggling with mental health issues including anxiety and including the fact that his brother died from suicide a couple of years ago remember sitting there literally like sobbing away reading it being like it's going to get better it's going to get better and thank God it did it did get better and after eight to ten weeks it was like a cloud lifted okay Dr Alex thank you very much for coming on the Pod thank you very much for having me you talk a lot about the idea of uh mental Fitness uh what what does mental fitness mean um I mean I chose uh the word mental Fitness to sit along uh the Mind manual as the title of my book or the subtitle and the reason I chose that is I think a lot of the time we view mental health as this inherently bad thing in fact if you say physical health to someone they'll conjure ideas of Joe Wicks running in the park fitness they might even say things like cardiovascular weights yeah they might say Illness but I bet you'd be a lot of positive connotations if you say mental health is always or almost always depression anxiety sadness or you know we need you know does that person have mental health or this person in headline papers admits to having mental health it's like you have a heartbeat you have both physical health and mental health you know this and so I I feel very passionately we need to change the conversation around it so that when we think of mental health we don't automatically jump to that negative subsection in a way I guess it's that spectrum is now one end got perfect mental health which hardly anyone has and this end you have severe mental illness which a percentage of people have most people sit somewhere along here and the good news is that you can build upon that you know in the same way you know I wouldn't go right I've completed the gym I've been the gym for the last year never need to go to the gym never need to work on my physical fitness again what happens if I stop going to the gym I get weaker my cardiovascular drops off my life expectancy would change are more vulnerable to the disease I'd be less productive it's not good and mental Fitness is the same if you work on it and you build and you keep watering that plant it grows to be a strong you know tree or shrub whatever you'd like it to be but it'll be strong and that's why I believe in mental Fitness okay beautiful um so this conversation we're going to talk about a bunch of these mental Fitness tools um before we go there one thing that you talk about a bit is about trying to Define what normal looks like for you what do you what do you mean by that and how does one go about defining normal for them I think a lot of the time um in society we set a lot of standards of expectations or ideals of what someone should be like in reality we're all very different we have different genetic makeups our nurture is very different our environments are different um our neuro development might be different and so learning what the normal is for you is the bit that matters because you know there's a huge variation between people and I think a lot of the time and happiness can stem from the fact that you're constantly chasing something which for you isn't necessarily achievable or for you might not be your ideal of Peace So an example an easy example would be like if you're an introvert versus you're an extrovert you're ideal of how you live your life and what a good day feels like to you it's gonna be very different like my idea of a good day is spending a little bit of quality time with people I care about a lot of time in nature in a decent amount of time alone that could be health or some extroverts yeah and so you need to learn what your normal environment of what you want your life to be but also what am I like you know what do I feel like and how has that changed and people often ask me how do I know if you know someone's struggling how do I know if my son or daughter is in a bad place I say well what's normal for them if it's changed and they've gone from this kind of person to someone that they weren't a few weeks and months ago then that tells you that something has happened and so learning a normal about yourself very important but also understanding you know looking around you look and listen hear feel gut instinct is a a powerful um idea and it works or we know from you know seeing patients in the hospital I know you're going to talk about the collab of fancy tests and the CRPS and inflammatory markers all the stuff but a lot of the time the psychometer as we call it comes from gut instinct doesn't it yeah does this feel right or not yeah yeah it like it reminds me of when when doing a Pediatrics placement a lot of the question is like how is the kid relative to what's normal for them and the parents would be like oh come on there must be something more objective it's like no honestly if it's normal for them it's probably fine if it's not normal for them it's probably not fine it's an idea I talk about in the mind manual and I I talk about a lot actually when I visit schools and universities and I've had great feedback from this and it's a great way to work out what normal is for people you know around you and also get you to reflect on your own normal and it's called the traffic light Theory so say we're sat here now we've got croissants here we could be having a lovely lunch together we could have our children around the table and we'd go around we'd say red Amber or green how you're feeling today red being bad you get the idea now if I said that I was Amber every day and I wasn't quite feeling great but I wasn't terrible and I was able just to articulate a few reasons why like maybe every day the similar stress or pressure was I was facing maybe I just can't get quite on top of my sleep it allows you and as that person to learn about why they might feel a certain way also allows the people around you to learn what's normal for them but then all of a sudden if this person that was maybe green a lot of the time suddenly becomes red maybe three or four days in a row it makes you go hang on what's happened Something's Happened Here that's changed and the great thing is about having going around in a circle around the table and using this is that you all learn from each other as to what things actually make up good mental health versus what might drag your mental health down and so I think it's a really it's a really powerful tool to use to learn about your own normal and other people's normals and that's why you know a lot of this stuff I mean how long does it take to sit around a dinner table and do that traffic like Theory a few moments yeah it was actually used um in the pandemic by a lot of intensive care nurses um I believe one of the ones I heard was UCL and they were using at the start of end of certain end of the Handover shifts to basically identify nurses that were struggling that were burnt out so the senior management senior matrons could focus their support on those that are saying I'm red I've been working five days in a row I'm knackered and and so on and it allows that early identification I think that's one of the biggest things when we go back to like why is mental health viewed badly why do we have such high suicide rates particularly amongst men it's because I think in certain subsection Society we're not that great at like recognizing our own struggles and acting upon them all the struggles of other others and when you talk about men's mental health I mean why are men up to 10 times more like to take their own life than a woman well you know is that because of their genetics is it the testosterone level men and women are actually incredibly similar there are slight variations in our makeup I mean when you look at the grand scheme of extreme event we're actually incredibly similar there are slight differences most of the theory around why it's so much higher in men comes from the way that we brought men up to be if you've grown up with man up grow some balls don't be a girl and all these kind of harmful things is it a surprise that when we've been teaching men to be tough and speaking and sharing is emasculating when they're at the point of their weakness how are they going to do what most unnatural to them and for them so it's it's so important that we do these things and we embed these kind of techniques into family and into the into family dynamic because it teaches us new law it teaches our own normal it means that we can talk about things when things are abnormal it's like in the hospital isn't that you know um the most dangerous scenarios when you've got a team that isn't communicating to each other when someone is aware of something and there's a patient they're worried about but they're afraid to talk out and it's very similar in mental health in a way to keep quiet keep quiet keep quiet and eventually this problem becomes so big it spills over you've got a cardiac arrest on the ward and everyone goes yeah but the sodium's been this high for three days why didn't you say anything because you were stressed because the feedback I mean I've done so many uh talks and I've done I've visited schools from Scotland all the way up to the North Coast of Scotland uh down to the South Coast next country island Wales ever at universities as well and it's been one of the most popular things I've suggested for families workplaces small teams it's it's great it works so well red Emma green uh we tried that once in a team meeting and it was really helpful and we just completely forgot about it since then so I'm gonna revive if that goes back to this point and people go oh yeah we've been talking about mental health it requires discipline one of the biggest cons in the mental health space and the well-being industry is that it's easy that is an absolute con it's hard work there's a very good uh saying that you know nothing worthwhile in life comes easily and I believe that to be absolutely true in the same way you've got to go to the gym if you want to get really strong you've got to go and do squats you lift heavy weights you're breathless if you like me you're sweating like a pig and you're walking out nearly collapsing after a hard workout it's the same with your mental Fitness as well you've got to dedicate time and energy you know you talk so much about productivity but discipline's a huge part of productivity isn't it that kind of motivation versus discipline you know motivation lasts a few weeks I mean we can see that by how many people retain going to the gym from the start first of January to the end of January it's like 90 of people no longer in the gym that's because they relied on motivation motivation must quickly be replaced by discipline so emote debate as a team to start this traffic light system but the discipline needs to take over because discipline mitigates for all of that does Mr discipline doesn't care how you feel doesn't how tired you are it just knows that it needs to happen and yeah I think I think that's the the con in the industry because and also the problem of selling this story that oh it should be fluffy and easy all the time the problem is is that when it isn't people think they're doing it wrong that they should give up and it's not working you know sometimes it's the hard work like therapy is a good example going to therapy is hard I have therapy every Wednesday it's really hard talking about difficult things talking about past traumas talking about stuff that I maybe don't want to talk about but I can only get better by going through the hard stuff how long have you been doing therapy I've been having therapy on and off for I think it's been about three or four years now and I've got to the point where I have therapy every week and it's I know it's a privilege I know that it's therapy is expensive but it's the best 70 80 pounds that I spend in my in my week by far in fact I feel it's absolutely essential for me you know I've been through a lot of different things in my life we all have and there's many things I don't think I could deal with without the support of my therapist and I think that I'm a better friend family member I'm more productive and certainly generally more at peace in my life because I have therapy every week it makes a huge difference to me have you had therapy I had my very first session uh about an hour ago before we started recording this good timing for this great timing yeah it was so good um well no I I think I I dabbled with a couple of sessions in in the past and had like an online one and but this was and how did you find it that's really good um in the past I've sort of tried to two different therapists and I sort of felt like we didn't really have anything to talk about and they didn't really get me but this new guy um who I've started working with James I feel like he really gets it and the thing I'm trying to work on or you know focus on is feeling my emotions in a sort of more conscious way because I think I have drunk the Kool-Aid of like I'm a chill guy stoes is a man up don't be a girl don't be gay all all of the stuff that you get are sort of growing up uh in in a boys Secondary School in the UK and I'm sure in other places around the world as well that uh encourage uh encourage us to repress and suppress our emotions did you find it it's interesting because um even in those and you know I mean I've seen your your work and your content for a long time even as someone that is quite reflective as you are you're quite open I think as a person you're quite transparent about things even as that person who actually on the scale of prep stoicism or being worried about being emasculating you're on the spectrum of being someone quite open I'm a pretty open gun you're still affected by it isn't that it's not true so for so for those that perhaps are less like that yeah it's even it's even harder and it takes a long time to unlearn this stuff I mean you know something like 80 to 90 of our neurodevelopments done by the age of five years old and so the things that we hear in our early years are so so important and they can be often quite hard this can be often quite hard to unlearn the good news is that you you can unlearn those things and people go why does that matter well understanding about the way you are and your natural reactions to situations means you're better adapted to deal with things better and also you're less likely to have conflict I mean you know the one of the biggest challenges we often face in our lives is difficulties in relationships maybe finding the right person being happy in our relationship knowing whether we're the right person these kind of things you know one of the top searched things on YouTube is around relationship stuff and break up and heartbreak advice is up there and one of the best things you can do is to learn about yourself I mean the whole book attached which is you know a massive book of fantastic I'd I'd advise anyone to to read it's a it's an Evidence research-based book that I think is um I think it is shared or was written in a way that's very accessible you know it talks about this idea that you can be securely attached securely attached which if they say about 50 of the population I think that's probably way off that but you get the kind of idea these are people that will be comfortable in scenarios they won't lean towards avoidance they won't lean towards anxiety they're set more in the middle then you have your anxious you have your avoidance and your anxiously avoidance and I think even just understanding a little bit about that stuff really helps and and so if you have therapy you know I think it can make a difference to to anyone's life regardless if you have something to talk about I think I one of the most common things I get asked is how how do I know if I'm bad enough for therapy well the first thing is if you're asking me am I bad enough for therapy your answer is not yes you're bad enough but it means you need therapy I mean to but but actually the irony of the whole point is that is that you don't need to need it to need it I think everyone can benefit again it's like going to the gym and saying I've got the gym mastered I know how to use everything in here there's no way I can improve my training techniques if so why why do we bother having training athlete trainers and stuff like that and you know pts for Olympians and why are they continuously mastering the art of their their technique we can all learn and I think if you can add 10 of you know we use we'll talk about happiness maybe later but we'll use the the currency of Happiness if you can feel 10 happiness happier wouldn't you think that's worth that in your day I mean most of us would like to feel a little bit less suffering and a little bit happier so if anyone's listening to this and going oh I don't know if therapy is for me I really think everyone could benefit from it and the point you made you have to connect with a therapist it is a human interaction it requires two people to feel comfortable to share and reciprocate and understand so if you are with a therapist who you feel that you're not you don't feel that you can share or you don't think they get get you just find another therapist I could be with one therapist I really connect with and you could be with that same therapist you can have them sorry I connect with them and you don't that's fine they won't get offended by it therapists are very used to it they know they know how it is so find someone that works for you well so I'm I'm fully with you on this I think therapy is almost like and I think I've drunk the uh Alanda baton Kool-Aid on this uh therapy therapy is like you know having a personal trainer in that just because like it's it's a thing that just helps you improve your health rather than a thing that you should get once you've had an injury but then I'm you know I mentioned to my mom at one point that yeah I was thinking of starting therapy and my mum's a consultant psychiatrist and she's like quite anti-normal people having therapy if there is nothing to like work on and she views it as a like medical intervention and you wouldn't just to really nearly give a medical prescribe a medical intervention for everyone in the public um and I can kind of see that that perspective as well that's because the um therapy was originally a you know uh designed as an intervention for those that were ill but that was based on a module where we only really intervened when people were in severe illness or in a bad illness I mean look at it this way I mean a lot of this comes from the fact that the very model that we have for supporting mental health is based on like a tertiary treatment level so if you look at this so one of the biggest issues you have is waiting lists for Mental Health Services child and adult Mental Health Services have you know several year weights in some cases two or three year weights to be seen now um I've you know I work alongside with a lot of the you know the psychiatrists and then the mental health nurses who head up uh cams and so on and as they will say that model was designed to treat severe mental illness it wasn't designed for early intervention it wasn't designed for prevention and so on so a lot of these tools and treatments we have were made with that thought in mind now what we're trying to shift towards in this country is early intervention and ideally prevention of illness and what we've learned is that actually therapy therapeutic techniques when adapted for people to um you know learn how to process life learn about themselves learn how to deal with um instances and relationships and challenge whatever in whatever isn't their life can be hugely beneficial it's not just about I've got PTSD I've got a huge trauma or I was attacked at some point or whatever it might have been yes of course it's got its place there but for everyone we all experience micro traumas we have all had a past there's always been challenges and there's always stuff that we can we can learn so yeah I think that that for me is is the point really it's much better to intervene early to support people to learn about themselves to develop techniques of dealing with life's challenges than it is waiting until things are already bad I mean this is a stat that scared me when I first heard it that the average time between a person's first um mental health symptom or illness symptom of mental illness to diagnosis is on average around 10 years a decade so someone that has so for example me it makes sense I mean my first symptom of actual anxiety which was in a way quite debilitating at the time was at least 12 or 13 years before someone ever told me have you ever realized that you actually have uh you know diagnosable levels of anxiety at people with depression sit for 20 30 years was actually quite severe depression in some instances they're just barely coping but they spend all this time suffering rather than improving and I'd much rather people go early and be told actually on the very rare occasion actually you don't need therapy yeah much better to go than to wait until you've suffered for 15 years before you go oh I really could have dealt with this a long time ago which is actually and let's be honest that's generally more often the case I mean I'm not on medication anymore but I was taking surgery from anxiety for about 18 months and it saved my life it saved my life and it changed my life in fact I don't know if I'd be here if it wasn't for that medication I mean I was at the point of very very dark point at that point and I took that medication and it saved and changed my life I'm no longer on it but that medication allowed me it gave me that mental energy if you like to make changes to my own life that basically mean that I'm here and so you know don't have any Shame about going to get therapy or treatment or support if you're questioning it Go and ask for it this episode is very kindly brought to you by heal I've been using huel I've been a pain customer of huel since 2017 since my fifth year of medical school when I first discovered it and basically what it is if you haven't heard of it is that it is a meal in a shake it got the perfect balance of carbs and fiber and proteins and fat and it contains 26 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there what a risk that is um you know the fact that I chose a e is my career running around in a e as my kind of interest if you like the way that I live my life now it's quite obvious probably to many that would know me that I that I have ADHD but I was younger I was really trying to conform to a neurotypical life Academia in school for many the reason it doesn't fit is because you're basically saying all of you need to fit into the structure of Academia and learning otherwise you're a waste of time basically yeah so I forced myself to conform and that's never going to and you have to kind of shoe fit yourself into something it's never going to come without consequences so I found myself to be a very anxious child as a very sensitive and as I went through University I just found like a lot of things really affected me perhaps more than I saw affected others I'd developed a lot of anxiety around time I'd worry about other people a lot and I think I got a lot of anxiety from scenarios um whereby I was kind of stuck in a place for a long time and it makes sense if I you've got ADHD and you're stuck in a room or in a lecture for several hours it's not great is it and I think since I've learned more about the ADHD and anxieties got better which I think is part of the reason that I've came off medications I mean I had on top of that of course um you know I lost my brother a couple of years ago three years ago to Suicide ad you know I worked throughout most the pandemic and you know if you'll allow me to say that then I think and I was one of a few doctors who really was in the hospital and sharing what was going on from the hospital every day and I was filming full arrange show BBC News was live on BBC News in the evening I was working every day and the pressure people gone what's going on what's Happening we need to film this we need to hear from the front line we need you know can we get a consultant on to talk with you about this and I all of that took its toll it really took its toll on me um and yeah I I I'm very fortunate really for that medication I think what impact did the medication have so at the point where I called my GP I remember the day actually um I was working in any shift and I was questioning whether I needed help I was actually I got to the point where I was so anxious and I might actually start from this from this idea a lot of the time we separate anxiety and depression and I'm sure your mum you said is consultant psychiatrist would agree with this as well is that when you've got severe on the severe end of either scale the two become so in in intertwined so if you're severely anxious how can your mood not be affected how many people have severe anxiety and they're not low mood or you know burning out and they're getting complete lethargy and so on and vice versa if you're feeling so low in your mood that you can't lift your mood make you pretty anxious isn't it it's pretty anyone listening knows it when you you wake up and you cannot you feel so low and you can't lift that mood it's a pretty anxiety inducing feeling so the two become really intertwined and I think I got to the point where I'd realized I was like is this anxiety anymore am I is this just severe depression and anyway I was in a shift in a e and I was like this is bad and I walked outside side and I literally rung the GP practice I was very fortunate actually that I got an emergency appointment and I told the GP where I was at and they said listen you know you've obviously done so much stuff to try and improve this I'd done all the techniques I talked about and it just wasn't working at that point I was at a severe end of the scale and I think I was also experiencing a lot of the grief about my brother so I started searching and the first eight weeks were really hard you know in medical we learn like warm people the first two weeks um wow I mean it's literally worse than you'd even explain and that's two or three weeks of hell is the only way I can explain it and you go oh my God I feel this bad now it's making me even feel worse and I think the only way and the only reason it was kind of tolerable and the reason I got through that is because I sat down I screenshotted a load of testimonies and and if you go online you'll see people sharing kind of their experiences of going on medications like Sertraline and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel I was like oh my God this person saying it'll get better I remember sitting there literally like sobbing away reading it being like it's going to get better it's going to get better and thank God it did it did get better and after eight to ten weeks it was like a cloud lifted and all this gray my whole life just become gray there was more color like there's color in the green and all of a sudden I lifted and it was it was I honestly that's one of the scariest times of my life being in a situation where you feel so bad you can't see a way through and I'm a very resilient person I might be very sensitive I might get anxious but I'm very resilient I've been through a lot of crap in my life and I am quite resilient and I really was frightened during that period of time and I'm very glad to be out the other side am I you know you you always face challenges my mental health goes up and down at times but I know that even in the bad times I can get through and that perspective in life is very important you know knowing that and this is a challenge for young people my brother was 19 when he passed away he didn't have a perspective perhaps that dark days don't last forever that they do pass you know I think one of the challenges for human beings whatever they're experiencing this current moment feels Eternal you know anyone will know that when you've had something go wrong you failed an exam that was really really important or you something bad has happened someone has died in your family that you loved you think that suffering is eternal because it feels that way we only have the present the odd the odd I guess dichotomy or the odd thing about life is that we only have the present and yet we spend a lot of time in the future and past but when we're suffering in the present we're very bad at remembering that there is a future and that there might be a future self that doesn't suffer and I think that you know I wish you know for my brother and I I talk about a lot you know for for everyone I hope to to realize that even the worst suffering doesn't last forever got a tattoo here it says this too shall pass and in my worst times I read it I remind myself like it will pass yeah it's like all the spiritual teachings teach us to live in the present moment but if that present moment is very dark that's potentially an unhelpful place but the odd thing is is that pain makes us you know you see you get into a cold shot I have a cold shower every morning I think I'd really recommend this one of the things that really helps um Center you and to start your day but just like a cold shower is you know it's cold a shocks you brings this present so just pain in a way so pain makes us very aware of the moment that we are in and sometimes when that pain is so bad especially when it's a it's it's an emotional but almost physical pain all the time when you're when you're struggling that much you get so bogged into the present moment you get so and you also feel so isolated the cruel thing about mental illness is that it's an isolating thing it makes you feel like you're entirely alone there's a great word um that I learned recently called sonder to sonder and it means to be aware of other struggles even though you don't know what the struggles are so it's kind of the idea that you could be sat in the train station you know you've got all these people that are walking past you and you just stop for a moment and go all of these people that are walking past me have challenges in their life they've had things that have happened things that might happen things that might be happening right now someone might have the worst call of their life and it's not at all to think like oh I hope other people are suffering too but it's an awareness that your own suffering isn't the only suffering to happen and there's a sense of like unloading that comes with that and it's a similar feeling to when you share a problem I mean when I told my mum that I was really really struggling at med school which was the first time I struggled with my mental health and it was one of the best feelings of my life which is really odd because you think how could that be a best amazing feeling but all of a sudden I wasn't carrying the secret of suffering I was sharing it and I was like oh I've shared this and I feel better and maybe I can get better yeah what what kind of struggle was it at med school um at med school I would just severe I just I became severely isolated actually and and that isolation made me feel so lonely and anxious so I was I went to Peninsula medical Peninsula medical school um extra Plymouth and Truro so I was on placement down in Truro long way from family and friends I was away from my girlfriend at the time and I got into a really lonely place people go like is loneliness that bad well if you smoke 15 cigarettes a day it's pretty bad for your health we all know that loneliness actually causes more harm to your health than smoking 15 a day it kills a lot of people it affects mental health physical health cardiovascular health human connection is absolutely vital it's a reason why the whole chapter in my book is focused on connection because without that it can really really impact us and I basically lost connection and because of my lack of connection and therefore almost lack of purpose in my day I stopped eating well I slept terribly I didn't exercise didn't go outside I actually became more isolated because I felt lonely I actually became more isolated and there was like a negative spiral but it got to the point where I was really in a bad place and you'd think well why didn't you go you know did you go to the med school uh why didn't you go and speak to someone well as you know I think in the medical profession I think it's probably one of the last frontiers of really bad stigma I think in terms of mental illness and I thought you know if I go to the university and say I'm struggling my mental health what they're going to do they're going to hold me back a year they might pause my studies I thought no way they'll say Alex you can't be a doctors you can't look after yourself so what did I do I stayed silent as a lot of Med students do and the suffering got worse until eventually I realized I couldn't carry on in that way and thankfully I told my mum and from that moment of speaking to her a whole chain of things happened all of a sudden I didn't feel as alone she also made a very good point she worked and works well she used to work in in a bank so not MediCal at all she said Alex why would you feel good when everything you're doing in your day will make you feel bad and I was like such a really good point I was like maybe I should get up at seven in the morning go to bed at 10 maybe I should probably eat food that's a bit better for me in general probably exercise a good idea I could call my mates and go and make the trip and see them on a Saturday you get my idea all of a sudden I started making changes and at first and this is why the discipline's important I saw no change I was like oh my God I feel just as bad but after kind of 10 12 16 weeks the cloud started lift I suddenly started feeling less anxious I felt more assured I felt better I felt purpose and all of a sudden I was I was better and I think that's the first time a I'd realized oh my God mental health can just hit anyone and that's the first time I'd really kind of understood how I felt that and I went to the GP to talk about it you know and I think that's also the first time I really understood that it does matter this kind of wishy-washy stuff as I thought before about kind of self-care I was like you know what damn it's really important because you know what if you don't you can end up in the state that I was in yeah that's one of the things about mental health that it seems just like it's such an invisible thing that can just strike seemingly at any time and your life could be going on absolutely swimmingly and then the next thing you know you're like you know you never know you never know I mean you never know what can happen in life I often say um the things that we worry most about aren't the things that come to pass you know often it's a Tuesday afternoon at four o'clock when the Sun's shining you get a phone call that changes your life that's what happened to me you know I was sitting down to eat dinner with my friends you know just come out the pandemic I was supposed to go back to Wales to see my family the week later my phone rang and I have um uh agreement with my parents that if they are ringing for the chat for a chat just ring once say my phone started buzzing now they'd ring once because often I'm filming stuff or I'm in meetings or doing something like this and if they film once and if they phone once I would just call them back later but if they ring twice I know it's really important so if they run twice now I'd answer um and the phone was buzzing and buzzing and I thought oh okay so I answered and I immediately from the tone of voice I just said who's died and like that you know your life my life changed and it has changed forever so even if you don't believe that mental health can just or mental illness can just happen to you from a state of you know this is creeped up on me as it does for a lot of people things just can happen to just send you down and that's why it's so important to learn about yourself to learn about your coping mechanisms to learn your emergency toolkit like what you're going to do if something really bad happens in your life someone passes away it's likely that everyone's going to lose loved ones in their life it's life what are you going to do if that happens if a bad day happens or say you lose your job whether it's a financial crisis or something changes in your life you have a breakup you need to have some you need to have a plan in action to look after yourself and luckily by that point I had been working on a lot of the stuff I was in the midst of writing my first book liberal every day and and I was using a lot of stuff I'd learned from med school but also obviously my experiences and I think without some of that stuff an awareness that I you know things can get better I don't know where I'd be um so I'd say to anyone look just work on this stuff make it part of your day because you know if you're wherever you are like if you're having your days are 70 and they're quite good did you want them to be 80 you know build upon it if you want to be more successful in your career and you want to achieve more or whatever it is it will help you it will help you achieve [Music] how did it feel in that moment when when you got the phone call I have I mean just think this can't be real you just think this cannot how how can this happen to me like how has this happened you know I was supposed to go home a week later my brother clear uh was 19 he had a place at stampton med school he's going to be a med student um and he was gone and you know we didn't we didn't think that he was in that place he was 19 and fed up after the pandemic was kind of locked away quite a lot but we didn't think he would felt anywhere near like that and that's the problem I mean he made a binary decision right there's a there's very few decisions in life that irreversible very very few there's very few decisions that are truly binary that you cannot claw back or you can to some extent mitigate deciding to take your own life is one of those examples where there is no going back so he made a decision to leave us rather than talk to us and say how much is struggling and when people go like ah stigma we haven't really fixed it well why would you make that decision to not even try and tell us and let us try to help you you've decided that you'd rather take this option rather than share and you know in that moment there was just such a realization of like wow like why don't you call me you know why didn't you give me a phone call you know I was I was very much talking about mental health well before that um before I went on love Island I I used to spend a lot of time in lewisham hospital teaching Med students and I spent a lot of time talking about mental illness because I said look you guys come here and you think a e is all about physical you know car accidents and heart attacks look at the mental illness that we see you need to learn about this stuff you know I'd take them into speak to patients who are struggling with mental illness to try and get an understanding because I think a lot of the time at med school we just think oh Psychiatry is just that bit in the corner you know um and and I actually made a video about what to do if you're struggling with your mental health I made on YouTube actually like couple of weeks before he died and you know you think wow why didn't you call me you know why didn't you pick up the phone and that's something I have to live with for the rest of my life you know um but yeah I'm here it's ups and downs in life you have everyone has difficult times I certainly don't sit here and go like oh pull me or pity me or anything like that don't pity me um uh we're all working through stuff but please you know if someone's watching they're struggling just make that phone call tell someone and do it early if you're asking the question you're watching this and you feel triggered or you think are you listening to this and you feel triggered and you just think oh gosh is that me or am I struggling enough to get help just get help just talk to someone share in how you're feeling you know I I wish my brother had shared how he's feeling a year before six months before whenever it all started and we could he'd be here today I'm I'm confident that with the right intervention anyone can get through almost anything why do you think he didn't chat I think I think the stigma of it is just so hard for some people you know there's an analogy that um you know as children um we all begin with this suitcase this metaphorical suitcase and as things happen in our life knockbacks things that are said to us challenges we add things to the suitcase and a suitcase if we don't unpack things and we don't deal with those things we don't share we ask someone to help us with it then or someone to carry some of the stuff in the suitcase and just gets heavier and heavier and heavier until eventually you're dragging the suitcase and eventually you either have to share and you get to the point where either you share and ask someone to help you because it's so heavy or you drop it eventually it's just too much to bear but for someone to help you you often need to ask them you need to open your mouth and ask for help and I guess at that point he he decided he couldn't carry this but he also couldn't you couldn't carry this any further but he also couldn't ask for help that's the reality of it and it happens we lose so many people every three day days in the UK a student dies by suicide every three days Ben West who's another activist in the space um uh he's amazing he lost his brother at a very at a close age in close time to when I lost my brother and he's currently working at the moment to get the government to create legislation of responsibility around mental health for universities which you think was obvious I mean it's a physical responsibility but there's not currently legislation or framework around the mental health of students which I mean this should be shouldn't there so some of the most obvious things that there should be but every three days we lose a student in this country I know we have a lot of students that are listening to to to this uh podcast and it doesn't have to be that way I think that's the point it doesn't need to be that way we don't need to rely on people waiting until they're at the very sharp end to get help get help early I mean if I was limp if I was limping on my ankle you know was I was clearly limping on my ankle every day be like what's going on you're right let's go and take the doctors you don't wait 10 years do you but I think with mental well mental health we often wait so long so so long too long yeah one thing I've heard from a lot of people um and especially if I look at like you know the YouTube comments in our podcast community and things where you know while we would like the stigma to be a lot less there's still that sense of well if I get physically injured then No One's Gonna question my self-worth but if I am mentally injured or if I'm saying that I can't cope or whatever the thing might be oh I'm just being a softy oh I just can't handle the pressure of oh I signed up to medical school knowing it was going to be hard and now I'm here and I'm buckling under the pressure and therefore I am deficient rather than I have I have an illness I have a I have a disease well you know I think if you've been through something you really are something you are somebody because you survived you've endured I've got a tattoo in the back of my wrist that says I endured and people might think oh that's you know seems silly but I remind myself you know I am here I've been through and survived all of my most challenging days and in many ways you might look and go well actually you know I've been through some very difficult things and yet I am here but also I experienced difficult days that nothing really caused them and yet I'm still here so at med school I felt lonely but I nothing overtly had happened to cause how I was feeling at that time although of course as I said loneliness is a very is a huge thing and you know the opposite of of loneliness is connection um it is very very important that we all work towards meaningful connection but nothing had happened to me but I ended up in a difficult place and I got through that and the things I learned from that experience make me stronger and more resilient you know I you know you know if you break a bone then when the bone rebuilds it builds back stronger and and and and and there is like an overcompensation of that bone to to make it more resilient and I think if you've been through difficult times you've got support and you've got back got yourself back to a better place that makes you pretty tough you know and the opposite of that is what trying to pretend that you're absolutely fine I'd much rather if I you know my team I'd much rather people tell me early that they're struggling so we can work with them and help them get into a better place then struggle on and get to an even worse place even if you weren't thinking of this from a ethical perspective and a moral perspective which you should where humans should care about each other if you think about a team you don't want someone to get the point of breaking point where it's going to take them two years to fix themselves and be back functional surely admit to it early on and let's get you there everyone goes through stuff I mean I hate the stat one in four people have mental illness I'm like well okay wonderful people get diagnosed at the doctors how many people go through bad stuff in their life everyone goes through bad stuff something will happen to every one of us in a life that is difficult that is challenging you might you might get you might get failure exams that get into University you might go through a really bad breakup you might lose your job that you loved your dream job you might not even you might get to a point where you've nearly achieved your dream job and then you it all goes wrong and you can't do it maybe you do get a physical injury that makes you incapable of doing your or carrying on doing the passion that you love difficult things happen to everybody so I think the sooner we kind of drop this idea that only you know that you know it's weak to admit that you've had a difficult time just be it's being honest actually be honest and also what it requires As Leaders I think within Sports within politics leaders within the world to actually be a bit more honest as well you know people often talk about the success they don't often talk about their failures you know to you talk about it um a lot in in the work that you do that to get to any end result you have to go through multiple processes and learn what processes work learn what are the weak points of what you're doing the strengths you have to learn about yourself you've got to adapt you've got to discipline all these different things you have to apply all of those learnings require failure all of them require you to mess up I mean how many people are so lucky they have a business idea that goes straight to the top and they make a billion dollar company off a business idea and they they've not failed at all along the way absolute rubbish look at Elon Musk is that he's failed all the time apparently he's still doing rather well isn't he the richest man on Earth again yeah something like that 190 billion or whatever he's worth that's the one and has quite a lot of haters I don't know how he deals with it yeah yeah there's a lot of haters and uh and I think there's a really good Point around that as well it's like at what lengths do you want to be successful whatever that means I think it's better to take people along with you to care about each other care about people's mental and physical health care about the team and build something that's meaningful and an environment where people can generally talk and get support and you know share yeah that's so true yeah we've had this issue a bunch of times within within our team as well where someone's been feeling overwhelmed and has been trying to plaster over the cracks for like six months before things like come to Breaking Point and then turns out that they hadn't taken a day off for the last like eight months what yeah and that comes as a complete shotgun system would help that yeah it's like going back to the intelligence if you sat down with your team and you go around the room it takes a few moments they'll say actually a feeling kind of um you'd have learned about the Amber six months eight months ago exactly yeah and you're like why everything will actually I've worked for eight days in a row why have you worked eight days in a row right let's resolve that right you'll feel green you feel green new for green right how do you support this person that feels Amber or red it's a great if you if you've got if you're listening you've got a business you use that technique you know all about ways about people pour so much money into HR and think of like all right how do we do this kind of fluffy stuff to support well-being of Staff just to have a system where you can actually ask people how they're doing and you know if you listen ask ask good questions and listen to the answers and you'll find that a lot of the time the solution presents itself those are good um is it so just to zoom in on red Amber green is it like uh red Amber green with a with a reason or just purely the word or like how does it work so so if you think about emotional literacy a great way to teach children emotional literacy is just a name just say how do you feel I feel you can use whether you can use cloudy rainy or sunny if you want but red Amber green is something that we're all brought up with this idea of traffic lights even if you don't drive you learn about the Green Man and the red and you've learned yeah we all learn it's pretty Universal so I think the most useful thing is to say two things one what color you identified to I Feel Red Amber green and just a sentence or so of why and if you feel green why why do you feel green well today I've completed a task I did my gardening I got a bit of exercise I slept well last night and you are cognitively and subconsciously um establishing and reaffirming the things that help you feel good you know we've got two parts of our brain broadly haven't we got the conscious mind or two parts of my mind we've got a conscious mind and our subconscious mind our conscious mind is only about five ten percent of what's going on right most stuff is just running along all the time subconsciously like you're not thinking about how you're sitting the whole time yeah when you drive your location if I asked you about how what Corners you took you wouldn't even know you're thinking about the radio and all this kind of stuff the only time you click out of automatic pilot mode of driving is when you see a horse in the distance with a rider on top you have to make decision I have to break or I have to drop back or I need to overtake slowly then the conscious mind Clicks in but most the time it's subconscious but the thing is you have to train your subconscious and if your subconscious has been trained through childhood to think there's one way of being and that's the only way of being or this is the way I'm going to be and we're just going to tick along in the background then let your conscious mind makes a decision to retrain the subconscious it never changes another exercise you talk about is um sort of Wheel of Life to give yourself a mental health audit I wonder if you can elaborate on that yeah so um one of the one of the biggest things that I I believe is that you have to you have to understand to fix any problem you need to understand what the problem is first of all you can't find a solution without knowing the problem is again going back to medicine is very hard to treat a patient if you don't know what's going on and the the wheel of life is just a useful way to break down the sections of your life broadly you know I sat about certain examples but break it down and then be able to give a score to that section about how happy you are that you're in the right place so it could be like I'm just gonna say like you know uh physical fitness is just a random one right and you can give your scoring something you can give zero to ten whatever you'd like to use but give yourself a number or an understanding on this scale about where you are have several factors in your life you could break it down into finances you can put it into fitness you can put into mental health you can put into your hobbies you can put in whatever you like are you achieving what you want to achieve in that area or are you where you want to be and it allows you to have a general look back and go well actually do you know what my physical fitness is pretty pretty good but actually I don't feel that I'm doing the things I enjoy in my life I'm not achieving or doing my hobbies at all and so it just really helps to zoom out and then Zoom back into the areas that you want to want to work on and you know I I would say like with um like with the track traffic light system it's just knowing what's normal for you and knowing where you want to be and then putting in place those changes and you know I use the idea of a toolkit all the time at the end of the day like my toolkit will be different to yours like I will have a different routine I probably get up at varying different times there's certain things I'll do my day might be similar to you or different to you and just understanding how you are what you use to have your maintenance stuff yeah what things build your mental Fitness and what things are in your emergency toolkit and I know it sounds silly but have an emergency toolkit so on a day where everything goes wrong what you're gonna do what are you gonna do to look after yourself you know because often let's be honest the default is drinking for most people this let's be frank I mean the hospital bad day on the wall what should we do let's go to the pub or end up drinking the irony of course is that we use drinking and it makes most things worse you know people say oh but alcohol relieves stress actually a recent study showed that even drinking free glasses of wine a week raises your Baseline cortisol levels which is obviously a hormone we associate with stress and inflammation in the body so alcohol isn't that great for stress it's not actually that great for anything really so learning what your good coping mechanisms are going to be on bad days is as important as your maintenance day today yeah yeah like um the The Wheel of Life is one of my favorite things to to do personally but also to do as part of a group um we were in Austin Texas last week and we did a meet-up for like 100 of our YouTube Academy students and at the end of my keynote I was like all right guys we're gonna do a little exercise bear with me on this one and we just split life up into 10 different things and I just gave them the the 10 categories everyone's on their phone wrote just a number on how how aligned they're feeling with each one people were like whoa you know that's that's really helpful it's like I've realized I'm not spending enough time with my friends and I just hadn't realized that until I literally was forced to give it to give it a number and so I think exercises like that that you would find in you know life coaching books and things like that that might seem a bit uh weird especially for an uh a somewhat intelligent audience um I remember the first time we did we we did The Wheel of Life it was in our fifth year of medical school and it was a session called how to be a successful doctor where the twist of the session was that you know our tutor doctor later craps basically said that for Cambridge Medical students it's almost a given that success is becoming you know getting that like oh intense like ranking in your FPS or in your sd3 applications or becoming the Regis professor of physic but actually there are loads of different ways to be successful whatever that means to you and he handed out this Wheel of Life exercise and like half of the class absolutely loved it half of the Year group the other half was like what the hell is this this is a total waste of time I can't believe I came and follow those people if you follow those two halves and you see who was most successful at the end and what in actually most ways you develop that you'd measure success the group that enjoyed it would have been most likely for successful not because size is amazing but because they were open to new ways of thinking and towards introspection people that are that are Steph that don't want to think of new ideas they don't want to think outside the box or understand they might be Merit in things they don't understand are often the ones that perhaps don't end up where they want to be and I've seen that in my life I mean it's only anecdotal I'm not backing I'm not saying there's that I've got evidence for that but in my experiences generally those that are adaptable in life are able to get the most out of it and it's exactly the reason that I want schools to focus a little bit less on academic results and a bit more on building well-rounded resilient um you know children there are people that are able to work in teams they're able to adapt to adversity they're able to overcome and able to find and are able to look for the positive and useful thing like even if you're doing something so if you put me in a I decided to go along with friends a random thing like salsa or whatever and being able to go along while I'm here for an hour let's get something out of this let's use as a confidence building exercise rather than going to something going this is a waste of time I don't want to do it you're going to gain you're not gonna gain anything if you go with attitude if you go to the attitude to try and learn something you might Justin to use um the reason I think that this stuff is also important and the reason that actually understanding where you're at right now is so important is to use a an old Arrow very much overused adage you know knowledge is power it's absolutely true like often we feel feelings of discomfort we don't know what what the reason is like why am I even if you everyone knows the feeling of being angry and you've munched away on a class and you're probably a bit hungry off your therapy um yeah you know hungriness is something we all under stand but how often do you walk around hangry and you don't know it's because you're hungry and it's actually a girlfriend your mate goes have you eaten you seem hangry you go oh my God I am really angry you thought you were just not you thought you were literally annoyed about this random thing that happened this train that's late but actually you were hungry so we're not very good we're good we're good at feeling discomfort yeah we're not often very good at knowing where discomfort comes from so if you're feeling not at ease in your life then working out where that comes from is your primary yeah you know that's the most important thing where does that come from is it because I'm lonely do I lack good connection in my day today am I hyper connected online the digital space but not really having a meaningful connection face to face or am I actually just sleeping like crap you know a lot of people feel really rubbish a lot of the time and a lot of it is for a lot of people it's because it's just don't sleep enough they they don't sleep and um if you sleep badly everything else goes wrong you know so just just having a little think about where where does this feeling come from where does this discomfort from all right we're going to take a very quick break from this episode to introduce our sponsor which is brilliant.org I've been using brilliant for the last several years and they're a fantastic online platform for 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where you learn a little bit and then you apply it and then you learn a bit more and you're generally paired with an expert in the field and you kind of learn together and figure it out and build the building blocks of the knowledge in your own mind over time rather than kind of being spooned of fire hose of information and I expected to regurgitate it one of my favorite courses I'm brilliant other than all the stuff on computer science which is like my specialist subject outside of medicine but they've got a really cool course on scientific thinking and this course explores the laws of physics and engineering and just helps you generally get an understanding of how the world Works brilliant are also constantly updating their lessons and courses so for example they released a new course on crypto back when that was blowing up so people could understand that they have a really interesting course on neural networks and how they work which feeds into all the artificial intelligence stuff and it's just a generally great way of keeping up with all these Topics in the field of stem so if any of that stands up your street then do head over to brilliant.org forward slash deep dive and if you're one of the first 200 people to hit that link which is also in the video description and in the show notes then you'll get 20 off the annual premium subscription so thank you so much brilliant for sponsoring this episode and let's get right back to the podcast for me one thing I've really realized in the last in the last few months which I've you know it's taken me 28 years to realize this uh that like sometimes I feel like this like low level like level of agitation and I realized it's just because I need a Wii and I've just been holding it and I'm just like oh that's it all right you know what let me just take a break wasn't there a study once you're the audio you're the expert in productivity was there a wasn't there a study that like found that people needed a Wii during their exams they got they've got better marks probably you're like so focused I gotta answer this question and I used to try and use that in med school exams when I needed a week I thought right I need to just like harness this feeling right now because apparently it'll make me better I'll remember the anatomy of whatever one of the one of the truths that you speak about um in the book is about boundaries you're right having boundaries is key to mental Fitness and lots of us need to reclaim our lives from the ex from the expectations of a society that never says no um yeah what are your what are your thoughts and boundaries I feel like this is something I struggle with that I've realized in the last couple of weeks well that's when you say that because I think um you know you're you are you're you're you're you're a very articulate expert in productivity and what I mean by that is that I think you articulate Theory fantastically well and you also I think you also um you're very skilled at making sometimes quite complex ideas um I think uh uh achievable and almost like engageable I know the word is for for most people I I know that one of the things that you've talked about in the past is like working like working prioritizing but also working out where you put your energy right and time this concept of like you have a resource which is your time you know you talk about all this all the stuff and I and I think that you know we innately all of us feel as human beings that we need to say yes to everything and that we need to share this resource with everyone and I think one of the things that again is a bit of a bit of a con or I don't know the word is it's a bit of a misleading thing to say is like we need to be yes people be a yes man you know that felt like when I was growing up that was like the buzzword be a yes person okay and true I did have my friend Freya saying you need to try and do things more and I think in a way advice is great but it also LED that me to do and say yes to almost everything and you know when I when I um I can pay basically I the reason I became mental health and master is because I went around and spoke to all of the experts and leaders in this space as well as young people as well as teachers and everyone and I came up with a quite agreeable rest list of all the things that we thought needed addressing and this was kind of like you know broadly these are the big areas you need to work on and I basically use social media to bang on number 10's door when they opened the door and say and I said this is the things that we found I wasn't trying to really do anything other than make them realize what what we were what needed to be sorted I didn't have an idea that I was going to be an ambassador in this kind of space but they said look you know you you're working with a lot of these Charities and in areas and whatever why didn't you represent them and you know work alongside Us in the sense that share with us what where people think you know work needs to be done the problem was when I took on the role everyone came knocking on my door saying this this idea have you seen this research can you fund this can you find out about this can you make this happen can you everyone wanted a piece of me and at first I said yes to everything but what I quickly learned is that if you say yes to everything you make a tiny bit of almost almost undetectable impact across a load of different things and nothing is even almost measurable in terms of impact whereas if you go do not rather than doing 300 things actually quite badly and also doing actually the negligible difference if you take together all that time from all those things and you add them up and stack them up on top of each other in two or three aspects or even ideally one aspect you make a massively measurable amount of change and that's why all of a sudden after about a year I said you know what this thing I really care about is early support hubs I want to have an early support hub for under 25 year olds in every community in the country where they don't wait two years you have walk-in support access to therapy wrap around support so they're looking at your life as a whole you talked about that life wheel but that kind of idea of working out where does this young person need support what can we do is it actually Financial struggles is it education is it is it the fact that this person might have ADHD and they've not been diagnosed like are they lonely how do we get this person back into sport or whatever it might be all of a sudden all of my energy challenged into this and I've made I think quite a huge amount of progress in this area well there's two areas that there's two things I want to achieve this year and I hope I'll get there first is early support Hub funding I need 200 million pounds to fund 190 hubs that'll cover each health district in England my plan with them or our plan as a coalition would be to then roll that out so you'd have that as a starting point and use that as a model to roll it out the other thing that I want to do is to create a legislative framework in the workplace so at the moment there is virtually no legislative legislation around mental health and workplace you have to have a certain number of physical first aiders um per Workforce number so for every 50 people you need one physical first aid and I want there to at least be parity with mental health which seems pretty obvious given the main killer of under 35 year olds is suicide so those are the two things I want to achieve and by identifying those two things it means you can focus all of your energy into achieving that and we have a saying amongst the team um is it essential and it's a very simple way that I approach most things and I'm here sat with you because I think this is essential I think this is a great way for me to speak to a lot of uh young people as well as those within businesses and so on I can speak to a lot of people on this podcast a about mental health and why I think it's important to everyone and also I can talk about the things I'm trying to achieve I'm trying to you know people are hearing hopefully about this these two Targets and they might go away and think oh do you know what if I see a petition around that or if I you know if I've got anywhere I can support him maybe I'll try and help towards those two goals so it's essential for me but if it's not essential I now say no and that can be really hard at first and that's where the boundary chapter started it's like I realized that I say yes to everything and achieve nothing most the time that's how I felt I was cheating yes to everything achieving nothing when I decided to start saying no to almost everything I started saying yes to things I thought authentically want to say yes to do it too and I actually started achieving things all of a sudden I had cognitive space creative space energy and time to do things you know we do something now um with my diary my diary was crazy it was absolutely it still is I mean it's it's it is packed jam-packed months in advance but what we started doing is clearing weeks in the diary not for annually that's different times with clear weeks whole weeks in the diary which are just breathing space for creativity and allowing space for ideas and things to just happen and you know what those weeks are when I achieved by far the most we start a week as a team with nothing planned and it feels a really uncomfortable feeling oh my God you've got to have the dice all this stuff to do no have that week free to breathe and you'll find you do so much more in that week and Achieve so much more than the weeks that you've diarized everything and it's the same concept say no to stuff create space and you'll find that you'll do so much more use that in your own life as well boundaries are not just for the workspace you know how often do you end up going to a social event or doing something or saying yes to a party or wedding you didn't want to go to there's nothing worse than wasting time the most the most valuable asset you have is time you know and and everything feeds into that and everything feeds off that if you spend time you ain't getting any receipt for it there's no there's certainly no refund for your time there's nothing worse than feeling that you've wasted your time and there's two things I'd say have boundaries so you don't waste it and make sure that you spend the time with your loved ones and doing the things that either work towards your goals or build up your enjoyment your hobbies or whatever work towards one of those um slices of the pizza on your wheel um and the other point is if you are going to spend time and you said yes to doing something really commit to it you know if you decided at the moment do you know what I do think it's worth so let's make a joke out of it today if I decide I was going to come on this podcast I'm going to come today I might as well come and get the most out of it and really make this an enriching time than dragging myself through it you know so if you're going to commit to something what I'm saying is if you're going to say you're going to do something do it like if you're gonna promise someone you're gonna do something give them your best and the only way you can do that though is to allow yourself to have enough energy to do that if you promise to do everything yeah you won't do anything and a great catchphrase and I talk about in the mind manual about having ways to deal with um situations where you need boundaries so I've been six months over or six months alcohol three hours of yesterday which I'm proud of um important to say I don't have addiction I'm speaking from perspective I made a Health Choice I don't I don't compare myself to those that suffer from addiction it is very much you know um something that I decided to do because I felt that I'd be happier without it and healthier and so on but it's still a challenge it's still hard not to drink because the society is kind of constructed around the consumption of alcohol almost in every different facet and way and ironically if you're trying to be productive probably the biggest thing that will be stopping you achieving your goals will be alcohol you know almost for every single person if you drink alcohol and you want to do one thing to improve your productivity outcomes your health your relationships your Fitness anything just stop drinking it's one of the best things that you can do but people ask you to drink all the time so having an anchor phrase is really useful and sometimes even just an awareness of how you're going to respond to that like people go and say Alex doing a drink I just say I don't drink but thank you or I go say would you like a drink I would say at the bar so we are at a restaurant what would you like to drink I'd say I'd like to have um a whatever name of the drink it might be in my sparkling water or I want whatever it is don't allow for space of conversation if you don't want to have that around drinking and if someone questions you and says oh do not drink say oh no I don't drink if you don't create space for the conversation it doesn't happen some people will be curious because they're so be curious and say oh that's really interesting how come you stop drinking and then you can have that conversation if you'd like to but have boundaries over what you share you don't have to explain away everything the same way if someone says um Ali I'd love you to come to uh this restaurant next week we're going to have dinner so oh thank you so much I really appreciate asking but not this time we'll do it another time or just no thank you you don't have to give excuses and often when you give excuses it just feels so and authentic it's not authentic just say you don't want to it's fine your time is precious and it is the keyword is your time suspend it in the way that you want to but a great anchor phrase I find for work stuff and I don't know what you use but you know I get asked to do lots of different things if I am absolutely certain in my gut that it's the right thing to do I'll say yes to it but if there is even a Shadow of Doubt that I think this might not be the right thing to do I need to think on it I say ask me in 24 hours you know I'd be sat in the room here my my um EA and I'll say to ask me 24 hours she puts it 24 hours next to whatever the question is could you ask me again tomorrow it allows your brain time to think about am I making a reactionary decision or am I or am I actually uncomfortable with this another piece of advice I'd give is never make never make an important decision in fact if you can avoid any decision from a position where you've just achieve something or succeeded or want something or something you've really lost or something bad that's happened if you're on a high of success you'll often take on more things because your endorphins are pumping you're like oh do you know what um I've done this Masters let's do a PhD yeah don't make a decision once you've just achieved something yeah also never make a decision when you're reeling from A Loss when things have gone wrong we have a context of like again going back to that point this is forever the suffering this pain that's awfulness is forever you're much more likely to make a bad decision allow breathing spaces most things do not have to be decided in the moment you're in other than what kind of coffee do you want to drink when you're stood in the cafe most things can have time you don't have to commit to things too quickly yeah the boundary thing is something I struggle with so much why do you struggle with that I thought I'm surprised you say that because given how much you talk about there's some surprise it's very honest if you'd share it but I'm surprised that you struggle with I think uh because I have a people-pleasing tendency and so whenever someone asks me something if they're asking me in person or even often if they're asking me on message and it's someone that I know in some way personally I will feel this strong compulsion to say yes to the thing can I give you a phrase please I would love yeah any tips I'm at capacity it's one of the best phrases you can use that I think is pretty well understood by everyone and it can be taken in any people understand and go there either capacity in terms of they don't feel they have the energy for it they are too busy they're just politely saying I can't and I use that phrase and I've had DMS from people I just say I'm really sorry that sounds brilliant I don't even say it's actually Delight I don't say I'm sorry anymore I say you know thanks so much for asking I really appreciate it but I'm at capacity at the moment capacity I would use it because you can't be offended by that how can you be offended by someone saying they're at capacity that capacity means you can't take more and I think people really understand that I found no one has ever come back and said oh wow no one has ever done that I'm at capacity and you know what there you go you said about your therapy that's a great thing to what why are people pretty pleaser yeah all of that stuff I think why do you think you're a people for Lisa I've been reading a good book called No More Mr Nice Guy uh which is very good is written by some therapist who deals with sort of people pleasing tendencies in men and that book just speaks to me so much because he talks about how a lot of Early Childhood experiences or can contribute to a child feeling as if they're not enough as they are and they have to perform or do something or get that perfect grade or whatever and then that cycle of perfectionism becomes part of their being and so when someone asks you for something you're like oh yeah you know I want to be a good person a good person says yes two things and is not selfish and any amount of self-care gets rid of selfish and selfish is seen as bad and so all of these different patterns add up to create this feeling of oh yeah I'm gonna say yes even though I don't really want to say yes to the thing it's uh it's something that's shared by a lot of people actually I think and um you know you're right it's so much of it's from childhood I mean I had Parents um I think it's fair to say my dad was quite strict um I was the first I was the first child I think my parents were kind of from that area and I grew up in I guess 90s early 2000s when I think it was kind of strict Parenthood it was that kind of time um success means doing well at school and yeah I had the same feeling I think you know our perfectionism wanting to be the best anything from the best but the best is not great and worst of all it's actually terrible if you're not the best and I very much unearned those things but it's taken a lot of work and I still come those Tendencies often still come back at times and I have to go oh actually where does that come from why am I feeling that way and actually can make you um it can make you feel two things number one that if you don't agree to do something because someone's asking you that you're a bad person that you're a failure but also can make you really start comparing to others and thinking what if I'm not doing as much as that person or that person that I'm not successful I mean one of the things I think is fascinating is that we slightly not patronizingly but we slightly go off social media yeah um comparison culture and social media just about body images and six-pack it isn't is it you speak to a lot of um professionals they'll go oh yeah but you know I feel comparison you know I had a psychiatrist tell me a few months ago um I obviously won't say who adult was said they find it really hard and find it triggering online because they see other consultant psychiatrists presenting more papers or doing more conferences or writing or you know getting published in this article so you know we are a little bit like oh it's about flash cars and Six Packs yeah there are it is a comparison is about every metric of comparison human to be human is to compare so we'll compare anything um yeah but actually it's a huge thing in in the workspace as well productivity I mean there's a huge balance of productivity and what's productive what's toxic what's you know if you're sharing doing a run at five through in the morning yeah are you sharing that because you're celebrating within yourself or you're just sharing because you're showing other people that you're doing 5 30 in the morning what impact does that have on other people and I'm not saying it's wrong I mean there's so many ways and I share things like okay I shared that my children's book one children children's book of the Year why am I sharing that you could dig into all these things you know I'm very proud that I that I did that and so on but there is a that we have to think a little bit sometimes about why we're posting stuff but also if we're seeing something if we're reacting negatively why are we doing that because sometimes you know someone's posted something with the best intentions but it's fad a negative effect on you that person's not trying to have a negative effect and you've got to work out why where does your reaction come from yeah is it because you're now beating yourself up because you didn't work harder on something yeah when actually you're already doing so much I I think that that's really important part of boundaries in life is around all that stuff it's also a social media I mean the average person spends between three and four hours a day on social media that's a huge amount of time make sure you you'll know why you're using it's the first thing like like you know if it's to make yourself laugh that is a valid reason but just know what reason it is doesn't have to I'm using it to propel my business and to start them it can just be when a giggle looking at cats that uh whatever cat that is dog videos whatever it is doesn't matter just know while you're using it don't get sucked into it and also just be careful if you're having negative reactions to stuff then you know moderate who you follow call your following you know if you're following people that trigger you don't follow them like follow people that inspire you probably one of the biggest things I'll say you know how often do you do people open up their phones in the morning and get triggered by something you know create boundaries but one of the truths in the book is you are enough and in that section you talk a lot about imposter syndrome which is something that like whenever I do any kind of poll on the internet loads of people struggle with imposter syndrome I wonder can you riff Riff on imposter syndrome yeah so you know the human mind is negatively biased and the reason it's negatively biased because it's protective mechanism you know when you look at um human neurodevelopment in fact human development at all we haven't really changed much in thousands of years we we really haven't changed think of how different the world was in 300 years ago let alone thousands of years our brain and the reason it's negatively biased is because it's a protective mechanism like if if for example um we walk out into that we walk into the forest and it's full of wolves and those wolves could kill us uh we get away from that situation and survive the next time we walk into the forest we're going to be very weary and think negatively there's probably wolves in there because it protects us you know that's that is an important protective mechanism as is anxiety you know adrenaline and all these things you know it's a fight or flight to deal with a problem that's in front of us and you know we retain memories because memories allow us to learn from the past and make decisions in the present that make our future more certain you know our self-preservation is like the number one goal for humans as individuals on the race we need to survive and so we survive by learning sticking together broadly acting in the present but worrying about the future the problem is that modern day Society not for everyone I'm talking broadly for a lot of people we perhaps don't have that kind of fight or survive or life or death in every moment of Our Lives most moments that we're sat here now quite safely you know we're not under immediate threat sat here but our minds as we said have not changed in thousands of years and so they will fixate on things the negatively biased mindset will always fixate on worries and it will spend time ruminating on the past where people talk about depression is because of a rumination in the past and anxiety being our Obsession of the outcomes of the future but we're living these experiences in the present moment and the problem is with imposter syndrome and why everyone experiences it because that negatively biased mind is trying to protect us from outcomes negative outcomes the problem is is that sometimes it is overbearing into our detriment so um we might think oh I I can't give this uh talk on um alcohol's effect on the on the liver in front of all these people I'm an imposter actually that person you might be a registrar in liver studies you spent the last six months reading the papers you've just published an article around you know you are an expert is what my point is but yet we feel still feel the inner child often in times vulnerability when negativity takes over we actually go back to our inner child and we forget everything that we've experienced we go back to that vulnerable state of like oh my gosh like what am I doing here I mean I remember my first day in Kings on the wards and I went to prescribe paracetamol I had a sudden moment of panic of genuinely like what am I doing here get me out here I can't remember the dose of paracetamol I literally turned to the nurse I was like oh my God I'm feeling really bad like in like I feel just like and she knew almost she was like it's fine it's just the first few days you're just feeling you know you feel imposter a little bit like that's it happens and it's the negative mindset now I I think people wonder oh wow would be great to get rid of imposter syndrome I don't think it would entirely because you become an egomaniac and think you're amazing everything it's great to have a perspective of like I'm good but not perfect yeah or I'm valid or worthy of this but maybe I'm not perfect I can still learn that's really important but if you let a imposter syndrome can take over your life it can prevent you doing anything and I almost think it's worth remembering I have a saying and I always say to myself what is the worst that can happen I know that sounds if I'm going to bring you know lightning to be struck on me it's not what I mean and it's not even a throwaway of like oh what's the what's gonna happen I don't care that's not what I mean I literally mean what is the worst case here so if I'm getting up to do a talk um about mental health you know you talked about when you um you know you've done many Keynotes but say doing Keynotes uh on YouTube or productivity or business in front of a lot of people you might think oh gosh I'm doing this they might be like quite good entrepreneurs in the room I'm speaking about this what's the worst that can happen genuinely you make an absolute fool yourself that's the worst that can happen and like really the worst case you make an absolute fool yourself partly you probably haven't but you might feel that you have you're still alive you're still recoverable you can still be a successful business person you can still have a valid enjoyable life you have to laugh with your friends you can eat dinner afterwards we often think that the outcomes are so much worse than they are in most scenarios they're not truly the case and so I think it's sometimes applying a bit of perspective to imposter syndrome gets you gets you past that mindset you know I had it I mean I sat down with Boris Johnson when he was prime minister I was in Margaret Thatcher's room in number 10 down street right and the picture of Margaret Thatcher was above his head and he was sat there and I was presenting to him everything that I'd found out from all the experts I'd spoke to from the Charities from the Royal College of higher trade kind of garnered all this kind of stuff that we'd put together and I was taking it to him imagine how much of an imposter I felt but I literally said to myself because I felt I felt it coming on before I went in the room and I thought I was feeling almost panic and I thought what's the worst gonna happen yeah I'm in this room for half an hour max it'll be done worst case scenario I never come anywhere near this place ever again I just run away it's fine I'll surviving which is the same as what uh most people's position is already that yeah they're not going to be a really good so the worst case scenario is like you go back to you know you just gotta I think sometimes imposter syndrome it's asking yourself what's the worst that can happen it's realizing that everyone feels I have never met anyone in my life I'm sure there are a few people out there but I'd argue that probably they're not in the spectrum of normal that that most people will feel at certain times that they are an imposter most people feel that and therefore feel a degree of comfort and also realize you would you know I remember I remember once um doing um as an SHO do an OBS and guinea I was doing a night shift with a consultant new consultant she's like I feel like a complete imposter I was like what you've done all this training you're literally I just watched her do a surgery she's literally so skilled I mean she was so slick she was just like she bossed it I was like you feel like an imposter she's like yeah absolutely and I had this real realization I was like wow everyone I've just seen this person it's probably one of those skilled people but in life and they're smashing this and they feel like an imposter you realize everyone feels like it it's not that bad a thing when those feelings come on board look for evidence look for evidence for the fact your imposter then write down all the evidence of the fact you're not and I will nine times out of ten you'll find out that you're not an imposter and you know what if perhaps it does highlight somewhere that is an issue then deal with it say you're doing a new rotation in medicine and a new rotation is in something really well say you're doing like um HIV as a rotation okay first of all you're not going to be like taking over and having to know everything about HIV so often remember imposter syndrome a lot of the time it's because you think suddenly like everything's on you or like the world will collapse it's not gonna collapse if you don't know anything about HIV you'll go in there the consultant will assess your kind of knowledge capabilities they'll always have be there to guide you and so on but it might highlight the fact that you haven't looked up HIV for a long time you need a bit of work and revision so always look at things and think what is this highlighting why do I feel this way what's the average foreign to the contrary and actually if there is a learning outcome like maybe before I start HIV uh rotation in a few weeks time I'll spend four or five hours reading up on HIV and learning and all of a sudden you feel bolstered and you feel better I suspect if you asked 99.9 of doctors would you write a book called The Mind manual they would say hell no I'm not allowed to write a book like that until I'm at least a Psychiatry trainee if you ask 99 of Psychiatry trainees they'd probably be like no I've got to wait until I'm a consultant if you also consulted the wheel and I've I've got to wait until I'm like the Regis professor of psychiatry in adolescent medicine and even then I'm not qualified to write a book called The Mind manual there are so many doctors who have to have this issue but what seems you've gone over it well when do you know and also you know when do you when do you stop and I guess the point is is like if I didn't write this book and already it's been out a few weeks and I've had the messages from people that it's helped if I didn't write this book because I was almost restricted almost by ego but I'm preventing something that will help other people because of ego regardless of his mind or other people you know I wrote the book a better day and I had a number of messages now you know I've won children's book of the year for that book I I've I've got thousands of messages from parents whose children it's helped what if I didn't write that book think how many thousands of kids we've not helped and I think sometimes the greatest shame is that people have so much to give people have so much to share and they don't do it because they're worried about what other people will think so think about how many psychiatrists out there could share knowledge they think to them is like not that big but to other people if you don't know it you don't know it he knows that old concept you don't you don't know what you don't know think how much they could help with the people if they didn't feel so restricted by it you know all of a sudden we're seeing doctors like you know you you myself Dr Karen we've seen Dr Julie um you know we've seen so many people starting to go hang on why are we not sharing this no one owns Health there's no it's like I own health you don't own it you know you also don't get to decide whether the people Help other people do you know what I mean don't be afraid of that of course act within uh boundaries you know I basically for this book it's a [ __ ] it's a split between my own experiences in life and and the stuff that I share is all evidence-based stuff I mean there's doctors we learn to what do we learn we learn to critically evaluate and analyze information and come up with some reasons basically what we do we see pretty much it can basically use evidence to look at a patient put it all together and come out with an outcome and you know I I yeah I I really think that um the world is changing I think doctors are realizing that we don't have to be so insular and it's not like only one way to do something you know I really encourage doctors if you want to if you want to have a long career in medicine trying to have hobbies outside at the minimum but also have other fields of Interest I think you know I went and did um I did level three PT personal training because actually in medicine we don't learn a lot about Fitness physiology and the facts of exercise on the body and if I'm going to talk a lot about mental and physical health I want to understand those things I learned so much I literally was like oh my God I didn't know this stuff and I benefited from going away and like immersing myself I've got a friend that does um is a GPU does yoga as well and they bring so much of the learnings from yoga into the GP room because what does yoga teach you teach about presenteeism it teaches you about mindfulness it teaches about you know dealing with anxiety and depression and therefore this person has a fantastic insight to help their patients and what a GPC a lot of mental health issues so look for ways to enrich that you enjoy don't be ashamed about stepping outside of like the OST hierarchy or whatever whatever and if you ever get attacked for it I can tell you that most of the time it's from a position of jealousy it's an absolute fact it's from a position of uh of jealousy if there is truth in what they say take it on board and learn about it you know with this book I mean I said to before I started I taught this book apart three times this is the my manual 0.3 or whatever you call 3.0 because I tore it apart to make sure if I'm going to call it the my manual it'd probably be a damn good book and I'm proud of it it is a damn good book and I've had psychiatrists and GPS and doctors tell me that it's a good book um so don't be afraid you know give things a go don't let imposter syndrome prevent you from living your life because one day you'll be dead and it'll be done anyway you know we're alive it's often this is called the Deep dive podcast so it's fine um you know we're alive for a blink of an eye you know the the Earth has been around the human race been around for like 300 000 years something like that um the Earth has been around for a couple of billion years right it's a long time got a billion years we measure time in 2023. that's how much we measure modern time 2023 the average human lifespan is 70 80 years it's literally blink of an eye and let me tell you if you're worried about things you're suffering problems and you'll be spending a lot of time thinking about your problems just remember in three generations and only them now in two generations one generation you probably won't even remember your problems right now in 20 years let alone you might remember roughly what you're thinking about but I bet you most things you worry about you won't remember but in two generations time No One's Gonna remember so just just free yourself from the constraints of that sometimes you know if you want to write a book write it write the book if you want to try a new hobby do it if you want to leave the career in you now regardless of medicine whatever whatever you're doing if you want to leave your career and you want to try something new you want a new challenge or you feel that you're not in the right place that you belong somewhere else or that you want to try something you then do it because life is short nice a certain mates such inspiring stuff I love it um um happiness is an inside job what do you mean by that so I talk about happiness in the book slightly begrudgingly because I think we try and convince people that we should try and be happy and happiness is the end goal but in doing so we make lots of people very unhappy and that's because happiness is just a deflection from the Baseline happiness sadness grief anger jealousy regret remorse all of these deflections play a role when I failed to get the marks I needed to get into med school first time around I missed out my chemistry a grade by two marks my coursework was moderated down um and I missed out by place at Liverpool uh the head teacher rung and said Alex would be a good student you know give him a go nope if I was walking around happy that whole day it's smiling away it'd be pretty weird I haven't been like what is wrong with this guy he's just lost his place in med school and also if I was happy all the time I wouldn't do anything no one does anything hard or does anything without feeling there is an urgency to do so there's an intention to do so if I was just happy all the time nothing if the whole human race was happy all the time nothing would get done there would be no there'd be no reason like imperative Initiative for us to do anything that's happy to find by like uh hedonistically Happy rather than you demonically happy or like yeah I think what happened but I see I think the problem is it's tarnished because we use as that I think what people mean is peace I think it's balance equilibrium right like human dynamics in the body like being in a state of of Peace as I think the is the is the goal this kind of hedonistic I agree with the absolute idea of happiness I mean you know chasing this feeling of like warm fuzzy feeling all the time it just leaves you to misery and also people then go well if I'm not happy all the time there's something wrong with me and that creates discomfort and discontent and the opposite of Peace when someone dies in your family you should feel sad and grief when something bad happens you should feel frustration when you want to achieve something and it feels far away you want to feel determination and all that kind of stuff and I think the real goal is just finding that equilibrium between everything I think no one should live in anxiety all the time no one should feel sad all the time I just feel happy all the time you know we we've got to find that balance between everything and you'll find actually when you stop chasing happiness as defined by the hedonistic view of Happiness you'll actually find that you're much more content in life you know it's kind of like a relationship if you're looking for a relationship that's full of Thrills and highs and craziness all the time this kind of dopamine Rush of like love all the time you know the Newton's third law tells us every every um every action has an equal and opposite reaction of energy so a lot of the kind of Love Drunk relationships also have huge lows and huge arguments and fallouts and so on really you want a relationship with someone where you're content you're at peace you balance each other out and that generally you move through life in a synergistic way that's actually what most people want again in love oh you should be looking for someone that you know you can't stop thinking about that sounds pretty bad doesn't it to me that doesn't sound like a good relationship but it's what we're sold so I think redefining our view of Happiness looking at it as like I want to feel that in each day I generally have a state of purpose there's a reason to be that I get joy out of my day that I'm able to deal with life's challenges that I can create connection with people that I spend a reasonable amount of time doing things I enjoy I think that to me sounds like a good life and just again if in doubt ask yourself what does a good life look like to me what does it mean to have a good life well you know when's the last time you sat down and thought is this life that I have the life that I want and if it isn't what am I doing each day to work towards the life I do want if you're just moving constantly and doing things because people expect you you do and it's not essential and you agree to stuff and don't have boundaries before you'll know before you know it you'll end up wherever the river's taking you you know the river will take you in the way in the direction that it's flowing and if you allow yourself to succumb to that you will just follow the direction of that River you've got to kind of I think you've got to sometimes in life just stop you've got to step out you've got to paddle towards the shore get out of the river take a moment to have a look at the direction it's it's heading in and then decide if that's what what you want discomfort tells you something if you're feeling discomfort in your life signal it's like pain we learn about it don't we the pain is telling you something it's just a message it's just telling you that there's something happening you've got to make a decision if you're going to take your hand out the fire and all this your decision but if you just don't look at your hand that's burning you're not going to know what's happening are you just gonna get it carry on his way it's like oh well should we like get rid of pain no we need pain because you need pain to know otherwise you you don't know when you're standing leaning on on the stove you know absolutely Alex I think it's a great place to end this thank you so much this has been wonderful um any parting pieces of advice wisdom for anyone who's listening to this who's gotten 200 hours into this conversation and is resonating with what you say right it's the very final words of wisdom this is a deep dive I think for anyone that's struggling just please know this too shall pass I think it's one of the most powerful things that I've ever read you know and if you're facing a challenge then you know you can overcome anything in life with the right people around you if you're struggling ask for help there is no share in that see it as a sign of strength and just never give up I mean chase your dreams fear less spend more time caring about what you think rather rather than the opinions of of others and I think you'll probably end up somewhere near happiness as we call it thank you for having me I really appreciate it so much all right so that's it for this week's episode of Deep dive thank you so much for watching or listening all the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are going to be linked down in the video description or in the show notes depending on where you're watching or listening to this if you're listening to this on a podcast platform then do please leave us a review on the iTunes Store it really helps other people discover the podcast or if you're watching this in full HD or 4k on YouTube then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode that would be awesome and if you enjoyed this episode you might like to check out this episode here as well which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode so thanks for watching uh do hit the Subscribe button if you aren't already and I'll see you next time bye

Channel: Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal

Views: 44,064

Keywords: Ali Abdaal, Ali, Abdaal, Ali Abdal, Abdal, Deep Dive With Ali Abdaal, Deep Dive, Ali Abdaal Podcast, Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal Podcast

Id: lQvON019PUA

Length: 95min 28sec (5728 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 13 2023