Adoption, leadership & chasing success in a dopamine-driven world

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0:57Chris welcome it's great to have you on great to have you on the podcast for those that may not know you or anything about your kind of background and your career it would be great if you could just explain a little part of history about that but importantly why it was important for you to come on to behind the title today. Sure. Thank you for having me. Pleasure. So I'm Chris Forrester. Until about five weeks ago, I probably considered myself a commercial leader for media companies. So most recently managing director, commercial outdoor for Global. Prior to that CRO for The Telegraph. Brief stint at Spotify.

1:40Managing director at PrimeSite before that. MD for a start-up for Digicon and then before that was all sort of senior manager roles at places like CBS outdoor and the Guardian so I'm here because I left my career if you'd like after 30 years to launch men's mental fitness practice I've called the wingman project so I'm not used to saying it and so I've seen a lot of your podcasts not very privileged to be invited and felt that at some point I've got to go out and start talking about it. It's not natural to me. I am pretty private. I've learnt not to be, but in the case of this, I want to go and do something that's very important to me.

2:23It means a lot. It is my next career. It's pretty much how I'm looking at it. And so I have to talk about it, and I thought this was hopefully a good platform. Love it. Thank you. It's funny. Whilst this will go out and people won't necessarily the date or time, we were just filming with John Maloney, and we were uh we were talking about um the stuff that he's done with media fight now but particularly his um uh his his wife abby and and her company and and it is hard it's hard to put yourself out there um especially if you're in a corporate role let alone doing something that is totally brand new and then having to think about pring you are the story um but i was i was fascinated um we we We cross paths very briefly during a time at one of your previous roles.

3:17And maybe less said about that, the better. Although we were holed up in a room, I think you'll remember, for about six hours trying to solve a problem with talent, believe it or not. It was bumpy, but we got there. It was bumpy. um but i when i when i'd seen that you were leaving and i'd seen what you posted i just thought it just triggered something for me and i thought on the podcast we've never had anyone come on specifically and cover off men's mental fitness which i think you know we we're comfortable with talking about men's mental health um before maybe i get into a bit more about kind of your journey Do you want to explain what the Wingman Project is setting out to achieve?

4:08And what's the difference between men's mental health and men's mental fitness? So the Wingman Project, I've chosen the Wingman Project because hopefully it's clear what it is once I explain it. And I didn't really want it to be my name. So that felt kind of more comfortable but also more appropriate. I'm coming to the end of training in solutions focused hypnotherapy and coaching so my aim is to provide a service or a practice that will support men around the area of mental fitness and I will be using solutions focused hypnotherapy and coaching in order to help deliver that either privately as in one-to-one and I've already seen actually quite a lot of people or maybe corporately where I sort of go to businesses, work with them.

4:57It looks like probably under any DEI function. Yeah. Why it's not mental health is that if you take physically, we sort of talk about physical fitness and we put effort and time into being physically fit. Yeah. When we talk about mental health, we sort of slightly stereotype it as it's something I do when I've hit a certain point and there was a problem my hope is that I already can support people in that area but in order to talk to people on a more broad scale if you talk about mental fitness and stronger coping mechanisms better balance, stronger thinking hopefully it avoids people entering what they consider being mental health problems so before the point of intervention effectively Yeah, and also there's men are, you know, slightly obvious men are different to women.

5:56We are not a good opening up and expressing and explaining what is going on. It's not as simple as saying, just talk about it. You know, we are wired in a certain way and we've been wired that way for a couple of hundred thousand years. So talking to someone about mental fitness and strong coping mechanisms and finding balance in our life and thinking positively and acting positively. It's probably an easier thing for men to get their head around and sort of lean into than saying, come to me if you're struggling with anxiety or addictions or depression. Now, it might be that that's what it is, but the narrative and how it's explained, I'm finding is important in terms of how it will make the door feel more open and for me to feel more approachable or the project itself to feel more approachable.

6:48is it a commonly used term men's not really no um because because because i'm as i'm saying it it doesn't make i'm not uncomfortable saying it but i'm i don't understand it and it's unusual and is it is it have you chosen that specifically either because you've academically trained in that or because you've had a personal experience um

7:16probably a bit of both the solutions I chose solutions focused hypnotherapy and coaching because it doesn't require you to look back so you don't have to delve into experiences of a child or trauma if you've suffered from it it's all around looking forward so the hypnotherapy side is based on how the brain works there's a bit of neuroscience in there solutions focused therapy which I think was sort of West Coast of America in the 60s someone called Steve DeShazer and Insoo Kim and they developed a therapeutic technique where you look forward so how can things be better and what would it look like if they were better and then trance work which is basically an easy way to access the subconscious and basically sort things out in our minds quicker and easier a lot of therapy will look back not everyone wants to look back sometimes the idea of revisiting something which we've blocked out of our minds can be a barrier to going to get help um took me a long long long long time and so i understand that so i've chosen something which enables people to come in and say you know we don't have to go into history you know our past does affect how we feel now in our future but if we can get good balance and good thinking now then we're probably not going to worry about the future as much or we won't look at it in quite the same way and we don't probably have to look at back too much so there are lots of different therapies i happen to be training in this because i think it works for me and what i want to do i think therapy in the main works really well i've had it it changed my life if i'm honest but for some people they don't want to go back and revisit and think and talk about something for you know months or maybe years depending on what it is well we're gonna we're gonna get a little we're back on your kind of uh your life in a second before we do um i'd love to understand you know you've had an incredible career um and you've been in you know very kind of senior roles with big titles but was there a moment across you know your your time in all these organizations where on the outside, everything was great, but actually, behind the scenes, you're crumbling.

9:44Were there any moments? Were there many moments? Yes. I can feel it. As soon as you started to talk, I felt that in my body. There was a pause there? Yeah. I feel almost like a shock or fear, whatever it was. yeah, I mean, there's a few. I think we all have it. I think you either block it out and pretend it's not happening and hope that it goes away, depending on how bad the situation is. I mean, there has been a few, probably Telegraph, brilliant place, brilliant people. I mean, like amazing people. I love my time there, but during COVID, it was very tough. Revenue was tough. We were thinking about, you know, a future everyone now knows where the commercial operation would look difficult.

10:30different sorry and that was quite a difficult time so um yeah I struggle this is probably why I am here now I you know I found it very tough I spoke to HR and said I'm not coping very well which took quite a long time to do I said speak to Nick who is a fantastic leader and he said you need to take some time out and so I couldn't go on holiday so I went and did an NLP course and that was actually started oh that's how oh wow yeah so I did I mean I've done meditative for a long, long time and I'd done a sort of a high level coaching course but it was going to do NLP starting to understand a bit more about the brain how my narrative is affecting how I'm feeling and then with the same company I went and did a hypnotherapy course and so interestingly whilst it was a very difficult time and some of the decisions we made didn't land well with everyone and I kind of knew that was going to happen and just COVID was tough, we all found it very tough so it's quite a lonely place to be um actually put on a personal point that that's started my journey to where i am now thinking about what i would probably want to do differently and what i would want to do next and and when assuming you would have had to deliver news at a company level an individual level like it's hard right to to it's a level of responsibility that you have and you feel towards people that you work with yeah um did you find yourself at any stage during then really just struggling to have the motivation to even get up in the morning and motivate yourself?

12:16I'm not just talking about do the job, but with some of the impending decisions that were being made. Yes, yes. I found it coming out through, I was upset, I think is probably the way I put it, rather than struggling to get up. Of course. So we have ways of dealing with it, and so some people will sit back, retreat, if you like. I found it came out more in emotion. So yeah, it was quite a difficult period. I felt quite upset during that time. But also, I mean, if you layered on everything that was going on, it was a really uncertain period. Lots of media companies were finding the revenue model, they weren't prepared for it, and it changed very quickly.

12:57And people were working at home feeling pretty anxious and pretty uncertain. And we lost the human connection. As humans, we need three things, positive interactions, positive actions and positive thinking or interactions actions and thinking if you take the positive away and that had been taken away from us so everything we were dealing with individually or as a country or as a world to a certain extent yeah we were finding very difficult because some of the things that we need at a very base level had been taken away from us i love it because because i think covid and certainly all the people we've spoken to on the pod for the last couple of seasons um covid was a incredibly tough time terribly traumatic um lots of loss and grief

13:48um we almost saw a level of behavior change in people and businesses that would take hundreds of years to do um because we were forced to do it and i think in the same breath we've seen this i guess this surge of people making decisions to alter the path that they're on you know whether it's i'm stopping the corporate career i'm going to launch a side hustle um i want to take a step back and go traveling i've heard of so many examples um but I think to actually and it sounds like you were connected before but to have had that kind of moment where actually maybe there is I've got time now to think about because I think it's hard when you're on the corporate ladder you're just going and you're going and you're going and trying to find time to do this stuff so over the lot over the next five years where did how did you find that time still having very senior roles uh I I had a bit of time in between Telegraph and Global so I did some more training and then I kind of paused it if I'm honest when I went to Global it's a great company it was a big job, there was a lot of change there were good pitches to do so I didn't do a great deal it would have been unfair on Global, that's not what I'd sort of agreed to do, so it sort of was put to one side and Mike and I knew that I wanted to do it, I told him on the way in that this is what I was planning to do um so yeah it was a pause you know I read about it you know I was interested in it but I did very little in terms of being able to practice it if you like yeah of course and you mentioned um you mentioned pitches uh I assume you were fairly integral or a big part of the large tender that would have been TFL which is no mean feat um no how do you how do you find coping you know with that pressure um you know i certainly on the agency side we're pitching all the time and we's had this conversation on a previous episode with john around the feelings that it brings around about whether it's anxiety whether it's stress um calamity utter implosion you know where where do you sit on that on that scale or do you not do you find it you thrive in those conditions it was a team of course so it was a good team I think we've all had our moments during the pitch process, it was tough it opened my eyes to how how hard it can be at times working with an agency and having to face into the idea of a pitch I sort of got through it, I worked very hard and

16:46at times a male approach will be not to talk about it to just get down and just work harder that's not always the right thing to do um i think women are much better at sort of communicating and thinking clearly that's no disrespect to men but we just we have a certain way of dealing with things and i definitely did that so i you know didn't break much and i worked hard and you know my partner was very understanding for the six months that it went on i sort of came out the other side so I tried not to do much thinking in the process or thinking about how I felt if I knew then what I now know about how my brain works better coping mechanisms which I've kind of had a bit of an insight into because I had started some training on myself approach differently so let's take a kind of step back for a second when we first spoke on the phone you shared two two things that I would say most men would probably never talk about uh with me um and i was i was really surprised at how honest and open you were and you know the trauma that you had experienced as a collective with lots of people you were um at hillsborough um uh but also one that's fairly personal to you that you were adopted when you were younger.

18:10I'm probably going to unpack these two separately. I'd love to just understand a bit more about your experience with Hillsborough, but I think in particular, not the event itself, but what stayed with you since that time? Because I can imagine it was quite traumatic in some capacity. Yes, it was. um what stayed with me so i it'll become clear why but i don't tend to i didn't tend to communicate things so i shut it down refused to talk about it um i thought after it happened yeah i thought about it quite a lot but i didn't really communicate outwardly and probably till i had therapy in my 40s wow so we all think we all but i mean everyone who's in that sort of situation will have their own sort of coping mechanisms my coping mechanisms that I'd learned from years earlier partly through adoption partly through loss of my dad was just ignore it and just get on and that wasn't the you know I now know that's not a healthy thing to do which is probably why I'm I go around talking about it but if it comes off I'm more comfortable talking about it

19:30because my therapist actually put it a really really easy to understand what's easy for me to understand was that you know if you put your hand out and put boxes on and those boxes are sort of major stressful events if you don't take those boxes off at various intervals in the end the boxes will topple over um so what i did a therapy hide in my sort of 40s really helped unpicking and understanding and being comfortable with some of the things that happened and one of those things um was what happened at hillsborough but at the same time you didn't nothing toppled up until that point that you went into therapy um did it topple and and and arguably it may not be an obvious thing i think that's what i'm finding when we're having these conversations yeah so many people don't realize how subtle the effects of different life events can have on them and so it may not have been a big no t trauma no it was it was so my coping mechanisms i developed weren't particularly healthy so you know i drank and the periods i took drugs and that i thought was making me happier funnier good to be around and it you know talking about alcohol does it gives you a of confidence so whilst inside i probably didn't understand the feelings i had that i now understand now um you know having pals around me you know being in a job i really enjoyed it was very sociable and you know i you know i was socializing a lot and i drank quite a lot sort of suppressed it the older you get certainly well my experience is the older i got and the less kind of like that was working for me the more I thought this isn't really me then the more it starts to come out and so there wasn't any there's never really been one event where I thought this isn't great but there will be a number of occasions in my life where I start to do meditation because it was suggested by someone that you're quite an angry man and I was sort of dragged by my now ex-wife kicking and screaming to meditation and And, you know, I've got a guy sitting opposite me who was, you know, a hippie.

21:49He was a lovely guy. And I was very, very different. And, you know, four days later, kind of being fairly resistant to the idea of doing meditation. You know, he got me to do it. I had to chant, which was very odd. The only time I had to chant. And it took me half an hour for him to persuade me to chant. Room like this, no one there. That's still the idea. This is weird. But I started meditating. and it was a Friday, Saturday, Sunday morning and we then went home, practiced, practiced the next day and then went to see him on Monday evening and he walked in and he said, anything different? I said, yeah, people are looking at me different and he said, yes, because you don't look stressed you look a different person and it was very early in my 30s but it was sort of the first time I thought there is something different I'm sitting across from you right now and I feel incredibly relaxed um I I also practice meditation I call it quiet time mainly just because I sit there quietly and probably haven't got to a stage in which I'm in deep meditation I use it every day really just as a reset before I rush out the door and cause carnage chasing you know and behaving in ways that I probably shouldn't but it's hugely powerful you know I use the headspace app and it's guided meditation which helps me yeah I was actually looking the other day I can't remember what it was but it started about six seven years ago and like oh you have meditated how many 1700 days I was like wow Wow.

23:30Do you know what I mean? When you break it down like that, so you'll probably quadruple that given the time that you have been meditating. Do you think during that period where you were possibly a bit angry, maybe frustrated, was there shit that you'd wish you said either to your partner or a boss or your therapist? did you find yourself at times holding something in or something that you've maybe addressed now but you could have addressed it much earlier? I mean, as I sort of alluded to, I hold a lot in. Still? No, not anymore. Like, I'm different now. I'm still probably not as open as some people.

24:15Certainly on social media, I find it hard to sort of post there and go, hey, this is me. but I am a lot more open but I mean as an example my best friends at school didn't know I was adopted no one knew so people did obviously know because a kid doesn't appear in a village six months old and people don't work it out but in my head nobody knew and I was never going to talk about it and not until I think one of my best mates was dating a girl in the village and she said innocently oh he's the adopted one and he said it to me he said i didn't know like she called me one and um and and he even down to the important thing like hillsborough just i wouldn't talk about it so um i find it much easier to be open and vulnerable we have good days we have bad days when we're feeling out of balance and we understand why we're feeling out of balance yeah to be able to express that makes life a lot easier for the people around us you know if you're left guessing why someone's grumpy short-tempered you know bad coping mechanisms it's hard so you know whether that's a work environment or a private environment so um it took a long time for me to learn I wish I'd learned it a lot earlier I think life would have been easier I'm neurodiverse so I've known I was dyslexic since probably in my late teens and my mum said no don't worry about it yeah and um and then I hid it so I spent I found so many coping mechanisms at work to sort of get around it and only faced into it with my daughter we found out she was dyslexic so I went the opposite way like it's a great thing you don't have to worry about it because I didn't want her to go through life being kind of a shame I have quite a bit of shame in me that I now understand but I hid and that was definitely one of the things recently found out I'm ADHD and a lot of people have said yeah no shit I didn't know so yeah I operated in a way which was just shut it down don't talk about it, carry on through many areas and broadly I'm better, I think it'll probably be better without embarrassing people or making them feel uncomfortable and wearing everything just being a bit more open you said something there about the kind of communication and often you know those nearest to you don't they normally bear the brunt of it if you're not communicating i um i talk about this quite a lot of time normally if i'm a little bit off uh i am either hungry angry lonely or tired okay and so i need to halt i need to stop slow down and just reflect um and more often than not um i would say i'd say it's linked to my anger um or my tiredness and that's because i think that i tend to just take on quite a lot um wanting to be an overachiever loving what i do um so i can i can completely identify um if uh if we if we kind of just shift a bit into the wingman because i'm really interested to talk um about men's mental fitness um where do you think men get stuck most uh in terms of being able to know where they i don't sorry being able to identify where they sit in society be that as uh in their family or in their workplace um but also what do you think that they struggle with the most is it articulating how they feel is it about um asking for help you know just love to unpack that a little bit more so i'm still learning this so uh when i say something this is all part of my learning my development so i'm not trying to you know upset anyone or annoy anyone where I'm sort of making a view also your framework I think you I'd love to hear more about that as well I think you might come on to talk about that yeah so I think so I mentioned 200 ,000 years ago you know our cortexes have evolved longer than that but we sort of recognise who we are now we're probably about 2 ,000 years old 70 ,000 when we've probably developed a bit more so our brains are wired to be something that we are not men men and women it's changed rapidly if the last 200 ,000 years was a year we were hunter gatherers till mid-December we were farmers until probably a couple of days till midnight a couple of hours till midnight and where we are now from where technology has become so dominant in our life it's like a second or two partly it's just we've got a wiring, a brain that's wired for something, a life that we're now not living you know our role as a man during that time would have been 3Ps protect, procreate and sort of provide and that's changed pretty quickly and so the fact that there was an expectation that we'd be strong, we would defend territories we'd be risk takers so we learnt as young adults to be risk takers because that's what was needed in those times life I think mainly to the benefit has moved on and there's a bit of an adjustment to what does that now mean for masculinity, I don't think masculinity is bad I do think that's an evolution of masculinity but understanding it from our evolutionary past in terms of why we think what we do why we shut down and not want to admit vulnerabilities because you couldn't admit a vulnerability most of the time we've been on the planet because you might have been kicked out of a tribe and couldn't afford that to happen you die and you needed to be strong and you needed to be able to take a risk in a way that women don't women are much better at sensing risks because that was what they more would have done and we kind of ignore risk particularly in a certain time in our life when we're growing into females because that was what was needed so um from an even reasonary point of view it's changed really quickly for both of us for anyone on the planet it's become um an overload of cheap dopamine so dopamine would by and large we'd have to have earned it, now pick up your phone you know I don't want to do that task I'll pick up my phone, I'm getting dopamine from either doing a task and working at it it takes work, I'm just going to work on the phone I'll get it cheaply so that's a very quick evolution that our brains are struggling to sort of comprehend but it's not just social media, I would say the phone in general because of the changes in how we live our lives we're probably on anxiety more so we're in our amygdala more than we should be and more than it was designed to be so we've stopped building serotonin in the way we've done before we get it from activities and some like but a lot of it would come from being grateful and being positive in our communication we're not necessarily negative in our communication but we're much more attuned to what we're not got what's going wrong in our lives and rather than the small simple things which sort of give us pleasure and joy which are passing us by so our serotonin's getting less our dopamine is getting cheaper um and all of us need to sort of adapt and work out how we can make it well work in this world the world's not going to change we're not suddenly going to give up on tech we're not suddenly not going to have a phone but we do need to understand how we can make learn from some of the lessons of the past of a lot of about however far back you look in order to make sure we're shaping a positive sense of ourselves and from a male point of view we until relatively recently young males would have grown up around you know dads and uncles and you know when uncle john i had was an uncle sort of thing and you would have learned how to become a man um you know industrial revolution meant for the first time boys didn't see what their men did they were to the factory and that has continued to evolve personally what i've seen what i see is we don't tend to be in our community that we've grown up in anymore and we don't have those people around us leaning in and it's not just that men don't always have access to a father figure at a certain point in our life 14 15 16 whatever you need other men because you kind of reject your father that's your job to your wiring in terms of i need to be an adult and a man part of that is rejecting your dad but also learning from those around you if you went back to still trying to do it now where elders step in and people who are excellent in their trades and you start to learn and sadly what's happened relatively recently is we don't have that in the same way um and there is a kind of there's no expectation to war anymore you know we're in a weird period but probably for the last 40 or 50 years there's no national service and for the first time in many hundreds of thousands of years our expectations of young men have changed so um it's a very long-winded way of answering that isn't it it's fascinating so i was i was i'm all in i i want to build on on that a sec um so one other thing so i'm a stepdad uh to my uh my step son harry got great relationship um with his uh with his daddy calls me harry's second dad so um i know firsthand the responsibilities i have to help both support harry as he's growing up educate him on you know how he needs to maintain you know a a sense of strength and independence and stand up for what he believes in uh and and really that you've got to work hard for what you want it doesn't just come to you but the flip to that is that you do need to have a an empathy or an understanding of different situations and circumstances um that people are in and there was um i'm going to read from from this because i won't remember it all but there was um some research that channel four did um we talked about it called the mirror on masculinity yeah and i'm paraphrasing some of this here but it was specifically looking at personas or profiles of you know um men in today's society and um you you've kind of got you know worthiness and identity um and this is about being you know men as builders so earning the title of a man through competence and self-mastery probably what we traditionally know as a male uh personal responsibility showing up following through um skill and discipline so being outdoors practical um and then like a builder mindset progress craft and resilience so that feels like most akin to what we know of you know men in in in the uh historic sense and then there's the leadership right and and it's it's leadership is responsibility not a superiority um speaking up for what matters the values the fairness the protection the integrity um emotional expression gap um many men still don't feel fully able to be seen um it's probably a bit of a conflict there with men as builders because they've alienated everyone and then come under pressure accountable and then the last two are kind of provision so like the breadwinner expectations still shapes many men um uh and you almost kind of there's an element of that's being reframed now to be more about domestic competence emotional labor stability care yeah um like home leadership is really important i have at home quite a lot my other half i'm like no no i'll do pick up and drop off today you do your thing and then the final one is um representation versus portrayal so um you know the stereotypes um versus what you actually see and sometimes there's this you don't know what you're getting in people and I may have not articulated that the way the exact research was meant but I'd love to unpack some of that because you talk about in your framework that we discussed actually there's just three simple things that we need to, I think you may have covered it earlier but I'd love to unpack a bit about that and what do you see there is still these different roles in masculinity or do you think they've evolved even further?

37:20Because this was done about a year and a half, two years ago, this research. I think they're evolving. I get that. I mean, this idea of modern masculinity has to fit with how we are wired. I would agree with that as terminology. So, you know, providing doesn't have to mean providing in the traditional sense where there was a male breadwinner is actually those two. You know, households run differently now. And so this idea of how do I show up in all parts of life rather than I just go to work and come back, I think is important. We do need to feel that we are accomplishing something and we are worthwhile.

38:08And that's something that we can't really control. I get quite upset when the word mansplaining is used, and I didn't know why. I very recently worked out what it was that men try to explain stuff because they want to feel like they are in some way helping or doing something and you know if you're getting it wrong because it's come across the wrong way and some men do mean it that way but on the whole when it was tabled I feel something inside I feel really uncomfortable and I now understand why but we need to feel useful and we are doing something and building or delivering or creating because it's very very important uh you know the way we are built so the the positive thoughts positive interactions and and positive actions is not really masculinity it's just you know if we are living our life more positively then that will help us so that framework fits for everyone really i'm coming it from a masculine point of view because i want to sort of support you know men's mental fitness my learnings on masculinity are still evolving and it came from losing my dad at 12 um the being adopted is quite a difficult thing to get your head around probably was is probably an easy way of explaining it or a simple way i think for everyone who's adopted in the 70s it was sort of dealt with slightly differently um i was uh you know family meeting and at the age of eight my sister was 11 in her room.

39:41We never had a family meeting in her room. So it felt a bit odd. With mum and dad? Yeah, with mum and dad, yeah. And it was explained that we were adopted in a very gentle way. We obviously thought it through. Looking back, it's in a way funny because I'm ADHD so I ask a million questions. Parents are Scouse. I used to go to my grounds in Liverpool. I supported Liverpool. I just thought I was from Liverpool. I had no idea. And so they then explained to me that I was born in there. Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. A missed call doesn't feel like anything. No red flag.

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42:06all got rearranged for me these were my parents and they've always been my parents but i was born to someone different and i was born somewhere different so that was then never talked about again so i learned that you just sort of shut things down then losing my dad at 12 at a point where every boy needs more of his dad yeah you know you know that start of the journey into sort of you know how you become a man has meant that it's been a sort of a well a bit of an session is the wrong word the understanding why I feel as I do I've had a lot of shame and Brené Brown was very helpful at one point in my life about 10 years ago about understanding it I still have it that I don't quite fit there's something not quite right but I understand that I know it's in my head that it's not real I've got some great friends wonderful family and I've had great support so it's my head playing tricks on me not the reality um but masculinity became a real fascination and i'm learning i'm not at the point where i think i'm particularly well placed to comment um there's some brilliant work out there um actually the netflix program so most people have now watched it it's interesting and i think louis three is brilliant but there was no there's no theory behind it um there's one on oh manosphere yeah i thought you were mentioning adolescence sorry no no the manosphere yeah um but equally both from yeah i mean adolescence was was was um again in a way education and brilliantly done but um ross i uh from east end yeah ross kent kent thank you he's done one which was started off as incels it's a five-parter but they've gone into talking to experts so there's a lady sophie hill king i think her name is from birmingham university who's studying you know masculinity particularly from a young male point of view um so there's the white papers out now there's some research there's center for social justice they've done some work as well so i'm throwing myself into it because as well as men's mental fitness i'd love to be able to understand more around rather than we need a new masculinity because we don't we're not wired to just be something different how in the world that we're in that can evolve positively for everyone but but you know positively for men and particularly for young men coming through i think we need to have done and we should be doing a much better job of you know raising men raising boys to men and i think knowing what men are like the more we do and lean in and help raising better boys we're gonna feel good about it you know if you go back to the three p's part of that would be how do we become better in society about evolving because you know in effect that's what we're trying to do so when when you when you your parents pulled you together and you were eight and she was 11 um i have warned her that i'm going to talk about it because she'll watch this so fine she's very she's very cool about it but um do you think that helped shape i guess some of the the kind of the value and the beliefs growing up but particularly to go about belonging and feeling part of do you feel like that even though it sounds like you've done lots of work to address it that still sits with you yeah yes um my partner will be watching natalie as well and she doesn't like this bit because we're very close um i've got some lovely friends lovely family but there's a bit of me that still thinks i just don't quite fit it's called primal womb there's a book called primal womb which is about adoption and there's something that you kind of just can't really fix that you see you understand it as i've said brenny brown's work on shame has been it was very helpful about 10 years ago just understanding it you know it's not real it's insofar as it doesn't mean that i'm not supportive i haven't got brilliant people around me i've been really lucky even i've had some quite difficult life events that you know weren't expected people around me have been really supportive throughout my life and that's just you know people friends family bosses everything so from that point of view I'm very lucky but it does mean that I'm continually not dealing with just aware of it's there you know I pressed send on a LinkedIn post that I did the other day to say I've left global and overwhelmed actually I sort of thought might get 40 or 50 likes and a couple of comments because i don't post i don't i don't deserve it because the more you put in the links in the more you get back and i don't really so but i was overwhelmed but also for me that's quite an uncomfortable thing because just part of my makeup it's those bits lots of people out there sort of like that they find that sort of thing a bit uncomfortable and i now understand where it's from it's not just i don't like doing it or i'm lazy it's that's my makeup it's only walking into a room there's certain things where i do it and i'll end up be enjoying it but for me there's a bit of a do I belong here belonging is very important I think you know the work that companies do on belonging is super helpful I don't like the idea of anyone not belonging anywhere even when I don't go on with someone I want them to feel like they belong I think it's kind of like a core thing to me because it's great and if you know again you go back far enough the idea of not belonging in a tribe and that was scary that was life and death literally life and death so some of it will be just you know somewhere within my makeup and some of it will be the things that have happened during my life which made me feel belonging was a bit more difficult i mean i i know that when and i talk about some most episodes i know when i got sober and and i went into a 12-step fellowship everything changed for me but it's only now nearly 18 years on still going you know um to meetings i feel i can belong anywhere i i feel that i can walk into a room and in one breath feel completely alone but in another breath feel so full up and normally if i feel alone it's because something in my head is just triggering to say you don't belong here or more often than not it's me thinking funnily enough i'm better than all of you so you so you kind of i go through that inferior and superiority um but i would say 90 98 99 of the time i can walk into a room and if there's 20 people there i was i was uh an event on tuesday and you could leave me at the bar until we need to sit down and i'll stand by myself because i'm very comfortable knowing that i don't need to fit in um but i get it yeah um it's it's hard and i think in this industry we've changed a lot and in the same breath we haven't changed and so to fit in you do need to or sorry there is a perception that you need to go out and have a few drinks and you know um have a big night and actually you don't no it's totally different um in fact it couldn't be more different now i think people are quite happy to go to a gym class um than uh than get boozed up um obviously when you lost your dad it was your mum you know your mum was still a rep you know who helped shape some of those morals and values that then took you into what has been the last 20 years of a hugely successful career thank you um yeah my mom she's still my uh i worked it didn't tell i oh god what it would have been that must have been my 30s that she is the person i try and emulate

50:09so yeah my mum I'm a sister, I've got an older sister I think a good job, there's bits that they can't do there's the gaps, that's what I've been searching for ever since to understand the gaps that they just weren't able to I had a grandpa who learnt a lot about sort of Victorian values, but positive Victorian values. But there wasn't many, there wasn't loads of men really in my life. Mum didn't meet anyone else. And I do feel guilty because I'd said when my dad died, I don't remember the dad, I'm not quite sure. I think that landed because she never met anyone else. And I then felt really guilty by the age of 18 because my sister's moved away and I've moved away.

50:54And that's it that's out with me. so but um again long-winded way of saying my mum was is still a huge influence you don't have the last 23 or 24 years but her way of behaving her values are very strong so it's so so wow so you for quite some time now it's been yourself and your sister who have had that shared experience together of yes yeah i mean i've got two adult kids and I've now got a three-year-old so I've got Max, Izzy and Milo and Natalie and lots of friends, you know, I've got I've also had, I'm going to, I hope I don't embarrass people but I've always looked for male role models I didn't realise I was doing it but I'd look for, you know, guidance I'd observe them, I'd try and learn from them they probably know who they are, you know quite a few of my bosses over the years will have known that I'm trying to learn how to behave, what the values are.

52:02A very close mate called Mac who's older than me, he's like an older brother. Tom, Loren, Mike, there's a lot of men that I've worked for that are older than me, that once I realised in my 30s what I'd missed and where I thought there was gaps, then I'm constantly scaring for it which is why I'm interested I've read more books on masculinity not all good some of them are terrible and some of them I don't agree with their position of it but it's all for them concerned data if you like and learning even if I don't agree with it it's like well I don't like that I'm going to think the opposite way um and I worry that that is missing in in a lot of men's or young men's lives manosphere partly good partly not good it's very broad.

52:49It's not just Andrew Tate. There's ex-Navy SEALs there who are talking about things like resilience and young men are out there looking for it. I hope that some of those negative influences get rid of them. They just become irrelevant because societally we're much better at... Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. A missed call doesn't feel like anything. No red flag. No notifications screaming at you. It just disappears into your call log. And nine times out of ten, that was someone ready to hand you money. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O.

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54:20encouraging and leading and educating the next generation coming through and supporting whatever, you know, generation behind it, generation behind that, generation behind that. My view is women are 100 % supportive of it. We all want the best for each other. It's not a zero-sum game. I've had as many good luck messages and congratulations from women. Lots of them have reached out, come and have a coffee. I'd love to hear more about it. We're all in this together. We really are. And sometimes we allow the fringe to make more noise or attract more attention and actually for the majority of people we just want you know our sisters our mums our partners and our husbands our brothers and our cousins we all want everyone to do well you see there's um i'm sure you will know there's a an ex-industry um hugely successful lady called kathleen saxon who i have quite a lot of respect for from the sidelines because she again has relaunched an entire career but similar to you which is why i want to on the podcast huge admiration is that you've retrained in a skill so you're not just launching i'm a consultant you know come along i'm checking it you you saw a vision you had a plan you executed that plan you're now you know stepping into that world and and that to me is is hugely admirable because i think that anyone that can bring about positive change uh to me should have a platform like this to talk about it uh we don't do enough of that there's too much performative um conversations within the corporate world forget our industry the entire corporate society yeah um was there a kind of a moment that you stood in front of the mirror then and said right well I've done my job now enough is enough I want to I want to go and do my thing i.e.

56:21I've achieved everything I wanted to achieve and it's time for me to just close that book finish the chapter and start a new book um no Kathleen's a friend actually so I've I'm nowhere near where Kathleen is in terms of the books and five years to be you know psychotherapist there's a lot more that Jill has put in so I'm flattered but you're on a journey I'm on a journey thank you so

56:54probably not no I don't think my life has been little sort of like little sort of micro steps almost and there has been obviously the things that happened when I was younger that sort of that stand out there is various stepping stones if you like meditation presentation, you know, when I did NLP and suddenly, wow, learning about why I think as I do and not everyone agrees with NLP, brilliant insight into, you know, our programming, you know, how we talk to ourselves, what language we use, you know, I've checked in every single day since when I went out, so it's eight years, how do I feel, how do I want to feel, made a massive difference, I do what's been good, you know, what are the five things that have been good, genuinely, you know, change, you know, when I'm not feeling good, I can see are not feeling good, how do I want to feel?

57:42Not just a case of telling yourself, but it's an intention to want to move out of this state and move into that state, because I think probably that's going to suit me better for the day. It doesn't always work, but it is a positive direction.

57:58Do you think that when you made the decision with Mike and Cota, it's time, did something trigger there? What was I it's like I've been waiting yeah so I've been you know I said I've put it to one side of the global idea but I still would read about it probably more reading that's probably a better way of putting it reading about it from masculinity I'm really interested in how the brain works it's a neuroscience rather than a practitioner in it so it's been building up inside of me um i'm very very aware that i'm not there yet i'm still learning you know i've got a long way to go i might feel i never get there but i certainly be more skilled than i am today but it is really important to me and i think that there is a brilliant opportunity for men i couldn't be more proud interested supportive of men we have got a way to go in terms of this change it's probably coming slightly later than us than it has done for women and if i can do my little bit in terms of men's mental fitness and positive messages then that's kind of good enough for me there are so many good things out there you know i was looking at something the other day on the back of the ross kent program which is called um lads for dads which is a charity that's been set up where men come together to support other young men who have grown up without a dad in their life john might have talked about carneys there the boxing gym down there you know i've gone down to spend a bit of time with with george there's so many amazing things going on that i almost i'm very proud to do today but i'm sort of slightly humbled by it and i'm not sure i'm ready i'm not sure i'm the right at the right stage in what i'm doing i guess let's see but there's so many other people out there who do amazing work who don't get the publicity that's why actually if anyone gets a chance look at the ROSCAM program it's a really interesting state you know whilst it came from an incel and you know some of the negative views around that and I do get that and you know aggression from men particularly to women which is horrific and we do need to find a way around that around it for doing something about it there's a lot of positivity in it speaking to a lot of people around you know what we can do or what they are already doing you know men's groups and young lads going to learn a skill like carpentry or or being an electrician it was just i found it whilst it's really uncomfortable to watch no doubt about it it's very upsetting um like really upsetting but then there's also some real hope within that as well i mean you you you do sometimes i do sometimes hear people that are quite outspoken that will talk about well men have had their time and you know it's time to change or you know uh we have just as many challenges we're still trying to close you know uh gender pay gaps and general and all this sort of stuff but what i love about when we first spoke and this conversation and all the stuff that i'm seeing out there for all the is negative i.e people like hst tiktoky and giving them a platform on the mainstream you know again not personally not a fan of that and i don't think it should even exist um through to things like adolescence um we had daniele fiendaka on a previous episode uh who runs an organization called hard as nails um again trying to uh de-stigmatize this hard exterior that men have and actually when you just bring people together for conversation and that and that's for me is what i see this mental fitness as and why it's so important is because i think mental health is almost highlighting the problem whereas mental fitness is about the solution and that's what we need to move more towards is the solution how do we support men more in being better at showing up in being uh examples for the people around them be children or you know they work with so i think that whatever and wherever the journey takes you uh i love it because there's not enough out there um i want to kind of bring it to a close and i've got kind of the questions in two parts sure um what do you wish that someone had said to you 20 years ago before you had to learn all of this the hard way but the flip to that and we finish on this often in the podcast is the permission slip you know what permission do you give to people in order to kind of think feel say or do differently um to make a change either in their life or others lives um so it's really kind of i know you talked about not looking back but a bit of looking back what could someone have told you and then what would you like to tell other people

1:03:31probably that i'm an absolute dick drinking I love the honesty yeah it's just you know there was a realisation I remember it it was at Cannes and Cannes just eat you up and I thought you know get any confidence and I'm a bit funnier and I'm not an awful I'm not in trouble I'm just a dick and then but I'd also forget and I woke up one day at Cannes and thought oh my god this is really public I was probably really pissed and that moment was just I'm going to stop, I told myself that was the moment I looked in the mirror and went this has got to stop I was listening to Brené Brown a lot of the time which is kind of like I understand why I'm doing it but I don't need to be the funniest guy I don't need to be lighting up the room, it's just not me just be happy with who you are and that made life a hell of a lot easier I still like a glass of wine but just I'm just never drunk and just that's okay, that's alright so and it has been a lot easier since you wake up in the morning without fear it's like that was a nice night, that's okay sometimes it doesn't involve booze, sometimes it does we're just not excessively the permission slip, I felt long and hard about this, I keep coming back to the same thing which is positive interactions positive actions, positive thoughts when we focus on them when we genuinely observe it we're stuck with positive has to be big and our brains are wired to spot endless sign of negative and extrapolate that to sort of like disastrous situations and if you flip it to looking at every small micro good that is going on, be it an interaction or an action and you think about it, you're producing more serotonin you're bringing balance back in there, it's not all about everything that's going wrong and it will have a marked effect on how we all operate and how we think and how we feel and broadly how we act so it's not a permission slip I'm going to change it, I'm sorry it's just, it's an action if every day you look back and be one of those good things that have happened to me today what was great, a cup of tea, someone said hello I got a seat on the tube I got home in time to back to kids, I met a friend for a drink and it doesn't have to be I saw an old friend I haven't seen for 20 years my team's got into the Champions League final I've got a new job, I've won the lottery they're the big things, of course you're going to celebrate them it's all those small bits that make us human and when we do that you get into the practice and if every day you make a note of it and we even make a mental note i'm going to write that down tonight how we see and how we feel and how we interact becomes different also just how we interact with people different you will want to be positive you will give people the benefit of the doubt if they're not having a good day you won't allow your internal um amygdala to come up and either fight fight or freeze them you'll be like hey it's a bad day that's okay so it's a it's a slightly different permission slip just go and make a note every single day you feel over a month if you did it for a month every day at the end of that month do you feel slightly different are you noticing good things as well as the not so good things in life i think it's uh i think it's it's it's perfect and you haven't changed it and and i'll make one build which is i've talked about on the previous on a previous episode but uh i was taught when i was in therapy um about the ace framework which is not dissimilar to what you said there so every single day i need to try and one have a sense of achievement do something and that could be something small from taking the bins out all the way through to finishing a project um c which is connect you know make sure that i have some form of human connection with someone either a family member a friend a colleague but most importantly we forget this is enjoy what sense of enjoyment have i got today whether it's eating a chocolate bar or whether it's laughing with someone or watching something on tv that i really like um and if you can ace your day every single day i think that i think you're onto a winner um chris i am i am genuinely in awe of the wingman i love it i can't wait to see where it goes um i think we need more of this um you've had an amazing career our interaction with brief but to have you on here and to have such honesty from you um is truly testament to what i think a leader you are so thank you very much for coming on thank you that's a wrap it's great Yeah, awesome.

1:08:17Absolutely awesome.

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