HAPPY HIGH BETTER FAIL: The Ultimate Podcast Mash-Up with Fearne Cotton, Rangan Chatterjee, Jake Humphrey & Damian Hughes

29:46Yes. This idea of flipping a thought, flipping imposter syndrome, flipping doubt, flipping how you respond to something. It's all like, it already is there. It's just like, the moment you're opened up to that, you realise the power that your brain has and you realise how much of your brain is being used to make you feel like crap. But like Robin said, we have to be reminded of this stuff every day. Don't you forget all the lessons you learn. I have these amazing conversations. People say to me, I love this or that. And I'm thinking, how have I allowed myself to forget that? I know, I know. It suits through your fingers and it's sand.

30:19You know, this also something I think isn't commonly thought about enough is this idea that when you don't reframe these things, you kind of make yourself a victim to the world and you make yourself a victim to external events. And what that does, and why is that relevant to me as a medical doctor? Because that's what people compensate for a lot of the time when they're eating too much sugar, or they're binge scrolling, or doom scrolling online, or staying up late watching Netflix, and staying up too late, whatever it might be. They try and change the behavior by going, I want to stop that. But what I've found for years is that patients and general people, I think most of us don't realize actually that a lot of the time we're using these behaviors to compensate for the way we're approaching the world so this reframing stuff works for mental health it works for happiness it works for high performance it also works i think if you want to reduce your sugar intake because your sugar intake is probably in some way trying to manage emotional stress you could do a lot with that that's a great tip takeaway yeah love that rungan not an actual takeaway though because it'd be compensating too much salt so i'm gonna go for i mean i could probably answer like all of you on any given day i'd say a different answer because it's so hard but i think the one that's jumping out for me today is one that was relatively recent with Bronnie Ware who I think you've been to as well and Bronnie is so wonderful she ended up sort of accidentally working palliative care and just is a naturally very warm and gracious human that you want to spend time with so when she was caring for these individuals some were elderly some weren't she naturally just bonded with them because she has natural empathy and she's a brilliant storyteller and she's really curious about life.

32:28So she's written this brilliant book called The Five Regrets of the Dying, which had a huge impact on me reading this book. I was just, I couldn't put it down. And I think the one regret, I'm not sure which order it is in the book, but the one that we spoke about that I still think about all the time, and I can't, I'll probably truncate it. I don't remember the exact regret, but it's something around live your life how you want to, not through the lens of what other people are going to judge you on or assume about you. So essentially living an authentic life. And I think the word authentic gets thrown around so much these days, really flippantly and without us really knowing what it means anymore.

33:09We've said it so much. We're like, what is authentic? How do I live authentically? And the way that Bronnie talked about it was just cutting through the bullshit, really simple, going with your gut, doing what makes you feel good, not worrying what every single opinion means and and she's already doing that and she's always lived like that so there's this lovely tandem of her showcasing how you can live authentically but also you know these are incredibly powerful stories of people's final words and final regrets in life I think that whole episode just really got me thinking and it's something that I I go back to regularly amazing let me just ask a question right do any of these conversations cause you problems in your personal life?

33:54That's such a good question. Because they do need. Yeah, I think they do. I think they do. Because, say, after Bronny, I could easily go, fuck all this, I'm going to go and live in Ibiza and run a juice bar. Like, I'm not living authentically. Like, easily. I get it. I totally get it. I annoy my wife by going, well, you're responsible for how you react to that person giving you a... I love you. Jake, I love you so much. God bless you, gentlemen. I learn from one disaster to another. Don't worry about it. I just love it. okay who wants to take this one fern oh do you want to go first yeah go for it yeah why does having deep conversations matter i think it matters greatly i think our generation are in a tricky position in terms of i'm speaking extremely generally but i think most of our parents generation weren't brought up with the space to be able to have big chats it's by no means their fault but their parents and again there's that generational ripple effect they weren't given the space to have a deep chat if if you know if our parents were struggling as kids that they would be ignored or told to leave the room or whatever so I think we are all not just us podcasters but everybody in this sort of new generation trying to unpick the past we're still trying to recalibrate and figure it out and get what's the happy medium here like you know what do I keep for myself because I think that's also deeply important keeping some stuff for you and not simply just offloading everything.

35:23But I think deep chats matter greatly. They stop resentments, which I think is something that the generations before us had to deal with greatly. And they probably stop a lot of physical tension because when we're suppressing stuff, you know, more than anyone wrong and how that can turn into chronic stress and then manifest physically. I think there are many, many reasons why we're all individually trying to promote big, deep, honest chats that might help other people feel they can also speak out. I mean, personally, you know, I talk a lot about mental health because there is still a lot of stigma around mental health and people still do feel silenced in their workplaces or within their family unit and feel like they can't say, I'm really struggling and I don't know what to do.

36:07And obviously for men, there's a whole other problem with that side of things. So I think big conversations matter deeply for many, many reasons, probably because we're all feeling it from the past, but also because there's still a whole bunch of stigma around. Yeah. Damien? I think it matters just because I think everybody's got an amazing story to tell. That's often one of our philosophies on the podcast is that everybody's got a story to tell. Everyone knows something that you don't know. And I think when you create a safe space for people to come and share that, collectively the wisdom that we all gain from it is just a privilege to listen to.

36:48So I've often been brought up with the idea of just ask a question of everybody that you meet because they'll know something you don't know. And I think that's really what we're trying to do on the podcast of everybody's lived a unique set of circumstances, but tell us the generic lessons you want to pass on. And I often find it amazing how much wisdom and how much vulnerability people are prepared to give you if you just ask them and then create the space to do that without applying a judgment or an opinion or a statement of facts on the back of it. Yeah, beautiful. I think there's a couple of things I think about.

37:25The first thing is I think we've lost the art of nuance, right? I was going to say that. No, but that's such a good point. You can both rip on this. We're on the same wavelength. It's a big one. I'll make the point, you explain it, because you are far away. You make the point. I've got another one. You can do it from a journalistic side, which is relevant. We've lost a lot of nuance. I've got four. I struggle more and more as a football host, operating in a world with zero nuance and massive anger and strong opinions. And our podcast is all about find the nuance, find the empathy, find the understanding.

37:58And those two things were really starting to clash in my professional life, really. and I found it really hard to stand and talk about should a manager be sacked should a referee be criticized should a player be dropped on live on the television when all week I'm talking about let's understand someone what what are they carrying what's the challenge so that's the first thing losing the art of nuance the second thing plays into that which is this idea of like leaning into people I think it's really hard to dislike someone when you lean in and understand them and you know Damien and I now do a lot of work going into businesses and talking to them about high performance and a lot of people talk in business world about about um resilience and like what we say is well how resilient you need to be in the face of kindness and not very resilient at all and too many of us are walking around having to be resilient when we shouldn't need to be because we're not getting to know each other you know if you're listening to this at work you might know how your colleague takes their tea but have they got an ill parent have they got a health challenge that they're dealing with have they got a child with personality or behavioral difficulties you know what's going on around that that maybe leans into things and that wonderful phrase if you'd have lived the life they lived you'd act in exactly the same way um which was shared with us by a previous excellent guest on high performance um so i think there's yeah so there's that and i think the final one is um i suppose when you've done the you know particularly the job that um fern and i have done on the telly for many many years like this idea of being judged is painful right and the criticism you have to live with and for a long time that sort of social media criticism i was getting just for literally going to work to do the best i could to pay my mortgage and feed my kids and my wife was like ridiculous and was definitely a conduit to challenging mental health period so i think the final thing that i love about doing podcasts is just stopping people from being so bloody judgmental of others like we're the only species on the planet that seems to be like this like you don't have koalas looking at each other They're going, oh, overdone the eucalyptus a bit, or, you know, a tortoise.

40:02Going, oh, your shell isn't that shining, bro. You know, we're the only species that seem to think the worst of everybody else, and I don't understand why we've got to this place. It's because we're all deeply in self-loathing ourselves. It seems to be. Do you know what? I think you're a fucking idiot. Now prove me wrong. That seems to be the starting point for everyone. Yeah, it's really pointing at me out of everyone. Finally, I can reveal. I've been harbouring for 20 years. But this idea that like, I'm going to think the worst of you until you prove me wrong is so dangerous and so prevalent.

40:34I'd much rather we lived in a world where it's like, I'm going to think the best of you until you prove me wrong. And I think hopefully we shine a light on people to all of us, by the way, I'm talking about to a really deep level so that people listening can go, shit, I didn't know that about you. And now I understand an awful lot more. So just understanding each other. We're all just doing our best, right? Yeah, I've loved every single one of those answers. And I suppose I just want to underline the fact that we're talking about connection. Yes. And about forging a point of common ground. And I don't think there's much greater respect that you can pay to someone other than really listening to what they have to say and creating space for what they have to say because each individual is unique and important.

41:20and actually all the bad things, all the fear we feel, the ignorance, the prejudice, the discrimination that flourishes comes about when we don't understand each other, when we don't know each other. And so really a deep conversation is about attacking that notion and you're right that we live in a culture where nuance is increasingly sidelined as is the ability to say, I don't know, teach me about that, please tell me about it. that's how we learn that's how we grow and so much of social media or our 24-hour news cycle is about sound bites and having an immediate reaction to something and a lot of the time I haven't had time to formulate an opinion the way that I learn about the world is by asking other people who know better more different things than I do and that's why I think deep conversations are so crucially important and by the way my final point a conversation might be deep but it doesn't have to be serious it doesn't always have to be about trauma or what we've overcome or what we've learned about resilience although those are some of the most amazing conversations i've ever had you can have a deep conversation about light-hearted things too that's all about what makes us human but podcasts are absolutely fucking amazing yes creating a space for that and the length that we need for that kind of intimate human connection Elizabeth Day everybody Brilliant That was seriously good I really feel that long form conversation these deep conversations are the modern day campfire I really strongly believe that as we become lonelier more isolated more addicted to short form content now now now you know I don't have time to do anything I just want to get through I think podcasting is the antidote to that for so many people it is for me where you can take some time, get away, you know, create space, go on your walk and listen to, you know, one of your favorite podcasts and hear a deep conversation.

43:23And it's only through conversations with others that we get to know who we are. So I think all of us on our shows, what we do, we're having an intimate conversation with our guest, but that in some way is reflecting onto the listener. They're hearing what they want to hear from it. They're taking a bit, oh, that's relevant for me in my life. So I think deep conversations are needed today more than ever before. If we think about the division that's going on, the toxicity, you know, certainly in the online world, I think podcasting can save the world. I genuinely do believe that because, yeah, I really do.

44:04I absolutely believe that long form conversation can save the world because it's like that phrase I shared with you guys on when I came on high performance that if you were that person you would be doing exactly the same thing as them that for me has been a massive shift in how I approach life over the last few years and it's changed everything and deep conversation fits in there because once you hear someone you hear them speak you are you hear them articulate the reasons why they believe the things that they do we just understand people better we become kinder we become less judgmental we become more forgiving it's a time of year for gratitude what is one thing your podcast has made you grateful for jake basically it's given me freedom like i feel like um i don't know whether everyone feels like this that is involved in the tv industry but it feels like the most thick and you might have an answer for this fan it feels like the most exciting job in the world when you're 17 feels like a pretty incredible job when you're 21 still feels like a rather amazing job when you're 27 and 28 but then there comes a time almost where you feel like why am i addicted to being on the television why do i need to do this is this really what i was put here for another conversation about another sporting event or something like that or like the hardest ones like for me anyway was like hosting like daytime quizzes where you're like i used to i did i did this show after I finished doing Formula One where it was a daytime quiz show and I was used to saying if Sebastian Bettle wins this race he is the champion of the world and that felt kind of like it mattered and then I'm standing there going okay answer this question for 15 pounds do you want to hear my worst quiz show yes please um I'm age 17 yeah and I'm hosting a tv show called Pet Swap, where the children who come on the game show dress up as their pet.

46:02Could be a gerbil, could be a rabbit. And they then do an assault course that is relevant to that animal. Beat that. Dressing up as a lobster, running around the Blue Peter Garden, popping balloons of foam. Large starfish temperance. So anyway, I suppose the point is, and you might feel the same, is that you feel in some ways chained to doing that because that's your job. and actually when you start creating something and talking about something that you really love you feel like this like it feels really intentional it feels really purpose-driven and it feels like we're still certainly on high performance i don't know what the rest of you think i feel like we're at about five percent of what we actually could be like i feel this could be really really incredible so i feel it's given me freedom and hopefully you know um it's given the audience something special along the way do you can you relate to that yeah i mean totally i I feel I've probably got a more sort of selfishly skewed answer as well because I definitely get that sense of freedom.

46:57Also, I'm extremely grateful that I just get to meet the most interesting people every week. Like you were saying earlier, Damien, everyone's got a story to tell and it feels like an absolute privilege to just sit and listen to someone else's story. It gets me out of my own bullshit. We've all got the propensity to go, oh, and this is going wrong and I should be doing this and all these intricate bits of the day and we're so stuck in our own little bubble of stuff. And then you listen to someone else speak and you're like, oh my God, there's so many other perspectives and lived lives and experience and angles to look at everything.

47:31So every time I do a podcast, I get sort of woken up again. I get sort of shaken, like, come on, wake up, Fern. Get out of your own bullshit. Every time I have that experience. So I think selfishly, it is about the meeting of new people, the hearing of new stories. how long did you slide back into your own bullshit afterwards I mean it really depends on what we've chatted about some have stayed with me a very long time like I remember when we interviewed Ashley Kane and he talked about losing his daughter I did not stop thinking about that for months and months and I still think about him and I'm still in touch with him a lot but we're so lucky that we get and hopefully the listeners have a similar experience of oh yeah let me get out of my own head for a minute and and think about other lived lives i get to turn up to work now as myself not this sort of sugar-coated version of myself that has to be super happy and positive all the time and pretend to like songs that i don't i'm you know i can just be like i've had a shit day or i've had a good day or whatever and and i feel like i'm you know i can luckily say that we're lucky i feel so lucky i found your podcast i'm like we're lucky we just get to do this we are so lucky how fortunate is that it's so fortunate I'm incredibly grateful for the community and for the fact that it has changed my life I am aware of the irony that a podcast called How to Fail which came out of my own feeling of failure has gone on to become the most successful thing I've ever done I will never stop being grateful for that and I'll never stop laughing at the absurdity of it but it has brought me into contact.

49:14It's exactly what you said really, not only with incredible people that I've met through them being a guest and doing me the honour of being a guest but the people who listen and who make me feel seen as I am and I'm sure you all relate to this. There's something so special about doing a live show or doing a festival as Fern does that you feel that wave of acceptance. That's the most beautiful thing. I feel my interview style is appreciated just for what it is. Which is such a relief. And it took me a while to believe that. It took me a few seasons and I think if you listen to my early interviews I'm still finding my feet and I'm still a bit nervous.

49:55Oh, we all were. I don't want to listen back to my early days. I couldn't do it. I don't think go back to the early days. No. Did you not used to go and knock on the door in the early ones? Yeah, we used to have like I'm on the train going like what the fuck was that about? Yeah, I mean I'm eating a Cornish pasty on the train. I love that. I remember you going to knock on Mary Berry's front door. I felt like I was in the front garden when you were talking about the fox gloves. Of course, you've got a great one. I don't remember that. But that, I would still rather look back on my early happy places than like me on the telly in the 90s, which really makes the old toes curl.

50:26I don't even want to go there. But yeah, we've learned and we've grown and we've changed because of it. It's great. Damon? I sort of really welcome the chance just to treat people with kindness, to try and come with that empathy and understanding and hopefully it gets reciprocated. reciprocated so what i find is like when i meet people now that listen to the podcast they tend to be kind back and i think what you give out comes back at you in ripples so i often find that that rather than coming in with judgments or opinions just trying to be empathetic to people so a really good example for us was i know you had her at the happy place festival was vicky patterson and i'd never heard of her i wasn't aware of her story and she sent as a copy of her book and I was horrified as a father of a daughter at some of the stories she'd been through.

51:14And yet when we met her on the podcast, she sort of admitted she was a little bit fearful of coming on what she thought was a male-dominated podcast and just a chance to be able to role model kindness and empathy and understanding for what she'd been through rather than a judgment or some sort of snide, snaring remark about it. I think ended up being a really good interview because it was a level of connection. so I think just the opportunity to role model kindness that you get to do it what I've found is that it tends to come back at you in waves you need to reclaim the word kindness that's yours, you can have that can I have another thing I'm grateful for actually really quickly I'm really grateful for you because this is the only sort of double header podcast in the room if you like with two hosts and honestly I do think that if I'd have just tried to do this on my own it would have lasted about five episodes and I would now be meeting commissioners begging for a job on the telly give me that quiz show please let me on the daytime quiz show and honestly what you bring to high performance the empathy the understanding the amazing knowledge you have of psychological studies and research from over the years but just being like a really genuine and generous kind nice guy doesn't get mentioned enough I don't think I say it often enough so I'm really grateful for what you've brought to high performance you are the true high performer thank you there you go lovely thanks mate And I'm also grateful to Fern because she told us to do high performance.

52:37We weren't going to do a podcast. And I was like, do it. I rang her and said, I'm not going to bother. I don't have podcasts. I'm not sure it's for me. She said, it's the greatest thing I've ever done. So genuinely, Fern, is probably the reason why it happened. I mean, where to start in terms of what it makes you grateful for? At the end of every conversation, I feel energized. Like I feel, even if I've caused myself a bit of stress by thinking I'm not prepared enough, or I didn't get through the entire book, I only got through 80 % of the book or whatever it might be. When I let go and have the conversation, it always flows because it's just a conversation, right?

53:17And I always feel full of life and energy afterwards. And so I know this sounds potentially as though I'm exaggerating, but I honestly believe that podcasting has has really made me appreciative of being alive and being able to have these conversations. I just love them so much. I put so much of myself into them. I think I spoke about this when I was on How to Fail Elizabeth about perfectionism and recovering perfectionist. I think it really helps to teach me to let go and go, it's all right. And anything's okay. Just connect with this person, talk to them. And so it really makes me grateful about life.

53:59It makes me grateful that I get to do podcasting and have these conversations with people. But I also want people to not think that they need to have a podcast to do the sorts of things we're talking about. What we're talking about is just an intimate conversation where you pay attention and you listen. Every single person can do that in their own lives. And it's a real moment of connection and presence, which I think is very hard to get. Sometimes I think, I don't honestly think I sometimes will sit with my wife for two hours and none of us get distracted or have to do something else. So I just feel an incredible gratitude that I get to do it, but also hopefully showcase to people that you can also do it in your own lives.

54:45How has making the show affected you personally? they all of the things that i've said but i think the key the key aspect is teaching me how to deal with failure in my own life so i went through something difficult i'm i've had recurrent miscarriages the last one that i had was a couple of years ago and having done how to fail helped me to know that i was going to be okay and it helped me to know that even if the failure itself had no meaning in the fullness of time it would teach me something meaningful if I allowed it to so I think that it's helped me really understand how the way we're brought up impacts who we are as adults but also how a lot of our personality is not who we are, it's who we became.

55:43And just as we became it, we can un-become it if we choose to. So it's been really empowering for me because by talking to such a breadth of different people about so many different topics, one of the things I think about a lot, and I think the podcast has usually inform this is that everything's stories. Life is story and we get to choose so much of that story which I think is incredibly empowering. So as I shared before with Edith but even beyond that just the knowledge that I don't have to be a victim of my past and I can create the future that I want I think that's been the most powerful message I've taken from my own show.

56:36so my podcast is called happy place which can you know we talked about titles earlier can be quite a loaded title and I think I I'm pretty comfortable with the fact that it's quite loaded and that people might question the title happy place the word happy is in there because obviously I established the idea during a period where I really wasn't very happy and I was probably quite obsessional about happiness. And I think my podcast has taught me that happiness isn't the be all and end all. And it's certainly not a final destination that we reach at some point, it's gonna come and it's gonna go.

57:10And there's actually so much wealth in sadness and anger, and anxiety, like even the things that we fear, there's something to be learned from all of them. And I really didn't see that at that point in my life, I was trying to reject anything that felt uncomfortable or that felt like it just wasn't working for me whereas having all of these conversations has allowed me to see that there's just a richness in everything we experience if we're willing to dig around in it and learn the lessons nice it's taught me that I need to have the same conversations with the people in my personal life as I have on my podcast yeah god that's a big one because I thought a while back I thought bloody hell I love it when I do like three or four records in a week I feel engaged and empowered and then I'm thinking why am I not feeling like that about the people I meet on the school run or who come around for a drink or even I'm married to or live with you know like I should be having these kinds of conversations with everyone that's one big thing that it's taught me to try and connect to everybody really like connect and I think the second thing is that it's reframed my thinking of what high performance is I genuinely started high performance thinking it was about the success it was about the glory it was about the the medal the trophy the big car the nice house high performance we've whittled down to three lines, which is do the best you can where you are with what you've got.

58:28And for some people, high performance is just getting out of bed. For other people, it might be winning an Olympic medal. But for all of us, it's the same thing. Do the best you can where you are with what you've got. No one can ask you to do any more than that. That's what it's taught me. Yeah, me too. Mine is just admitting the power of what you don't know and getting comfortable with it. There's so many of our guests. I remember quite early on, we interviewed Dylan Hartley, the England rugby captain. who'd come over to England from New Zealand at the age of 14 and speak to him about rugby. And he was eloquent.

58:59He was smart. He was going into a level of granular detail, but he'd just become a dad. And when we asked him about how many of these lessons he was going to take to being a dad, he went, I don't know, mate, I've never done it before. And it was a really good reminder of where your expertise ends and where the novice mindset begins. And I think if there's one thread that we've seen through so many, is just the humility to not claim knowledge where you don't have it, but to be curious and open-minded. And I think so much of life depends on us just admitting. I'm not sure. I don't know the answer to it.

59:33Yeah. It's probably the healthiest thing you can do. Yeah, it's liberating. Yeah. I love that, guys. So did I. I want to do it every week. It was phenomenal. Thank you. Every week might be a bit of a challenge for all our diaries, because this was hard enough, by the way, to try and get us all in one room at the same time. But how about we actually commit now, in a year's time coming back let's do it again let's do it again and just seeing how things have changed for us in the last year whether we feel the same feel differently I don't know I'm bringing snacks next time we're going to make a thing of it it's going to be a proper social to do catch up yeah I hope you all have an amazing 2024 and you guys and you guys happy to have you all in my life happy Christmas guys very grateful happy Christmas happy Christmas

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