Facing death taught me how to truly live with David Smith MBE (E215)

0:28Watch it early on the High Performance App. Hi there, you're listening to High Performance, the award-winning podcast that unlocks the minds of some of the most fascinating people on the planet. I'm Jake Humphrey and alongside Professor Damien Hughes we learn from the stories, successes and struggles of our guests, allowing us all to explore, be challenged and to grow. Here's what's coming up today. When I lay in that hospital bed and I looked around the ward at everyone fighting for their lives and just trying to take that out of their breath. I was like wow I've chased this thing this medal or this sort of being of to try and maybe go back to my village and everyone goes wow you're the gold medalist and it really didn't matter because in a hospital room where everyone's fighting for their life it's you realize that actually just waiting up in the morning and breathing is one of the best gifts that will ever be given.

1:22I won't sit here and lie to you there's days where I don't even leave my bed I'm banging my head on a wall i'm crying i'm just like i know what i've had enough suffering now i'm i'm ready to shut my eyes and never open them again i don't want to die and um and it's it's yeah it's scary and uh to deal with it and know that it's going to happen again there has to be a level of acceptance of mortality within it all we come into this world on an inhale and we leave on an exhale two very very powerful defining breaths but every breath we take is defining so as you can hear from that short clip this is an emotional and incredibly moving conversation of high performance that we recorded recently at the happy place festival in tatton park so you're about to hear from a man called david smith now it's easy to talk about david as an athlete he earned a black belt in karate and was in the British squad for six years, took up sprinting, wanting to compete at the Olympics, turned to bobsled and actually missed out on the 2006 Winter Olympics spot by 100th of a second.

2:32He then moved into the world of rowing and won gold in 2012 at the London Games and subsequently joined the British Cycling Academy programme in 2014. So that's David Smith as an incredible elite athlete, a man who's superbly fit, a man who can take his body and his mind to places that most of us can't. But that doesn't even begin to describe who David Smith really is, because David is a man who is fighting for his life. And you're about to hear his incredible, moving, inspiring story. And there is so much we can all learn from what you're about to hear. So let's do it then. This is David Smith joining us on the High Performance Podcast live at the Happy Place Festival.

3:19For a limited time at McDonald's, get a Big Mac extra value meal for$8. That means two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun, and medium fries, and a drink. We may need to change that jingle. Prices and participation may vary. This episode is brought to you by Opera Air, the first browser with mindfulness at its core. Now, most of us spend hours every day online, but how often do we pause to take care of ourselves whilst we're doing it? And that's where Opera Air comes in. It's a lightweight, fast, secure browser built not just for productivity, but for your well-being.

3:56With Opera Air, mindfulness is built right in. You'll find free breathing exercises, guided meditations, and soundscapes with ambient sounds, lo-fi music, and binaural beats, all designed to help you focus, relax, and even spark creativity while you browse.

4:16The headlines will say that in 2012, in rowing, he won a gold medal at the London Games. The story, though, is so much more than that. In fact, it was not too long ago that Sir Chris Hoy, one of our greatest ever Olympians, tweeted, and he said, under resilience in the dictionary, there should be two words. David Smith and it's our absolute pleasure to welcome onto stage David Smith

4:53how you doing very well a little bit daunting there's a huge crowd in front of me but I think I lived here for six months and when I first moved here, it rained every day. So I think to be here in the sun, it's beautiful. And yeah, thank you very much for taking time out of your weekend to come and listen. Let's start at the beginning, if you don't mind. You know, I started the introduction to you by talking about the gold medal in London in 2012. But that is a minuscule part of your true story. Can we talk about where that desire to be an elite athlete first started? I would love to say the typical story that I watched the Olympics and fell in love with sport and wanted to be an Olympic athlete.

5:39That's not entirely true. It was my parents. I was a bit of a disruptive child growing up in Scotland. And I think my parents just to get me out of the house and get me away from under their feet was to throw me into the local ski club, karate club and a Scottish sport called shinti, which I'm sure none of you have heard, maybe a few people. and I guess for me I fell in love with it my dream was to go to the Air Force actually as a physical training instructor but there was a few health battles along the way that sort of deterred that injury and I've I guess I've always had the mindset of one door closes if you have a sort of growth mindset and you're optimistic there is another door there you just have to have the courage to walk through it and I guess my journey into sport prepared me for something later in life that was ultimately going to test me more than any sporting field.

6:27So tell us, you were a great bit of an athlete at karate, and then you moved over to Rowan. Just explain a little bit about the transition there then, Dave. So I think what was great for me is my parents put me into team sports as a kid, so I learned early on about the we, not the I. And I think that was super important, because fast forward until I've left sport, and some athletes reflect on medals and what you've won. For me, I look back and think the best thing I got out of sport was friendships and relationships that have lasted a lifetime and I lean into some of those people now to deal with what I deal with now but I also believe that sport gave me the mindset and the physical body to deal with cancer and paralysis but cancer and paralysis taught me how to live so I think that sport was the perfect place to learn all of the values of resistance persistence lessons courage and respect and also how to get sleep right nutrition right and perform in a high performance environment but ultimately most athletes would say that prepared them for a world championships in olympic games for me that really prepared me to sit in oncology and fight for my life so who were you then in 2010 i've seen a brilliant photo of you i mean you look unbelievable you're running on a track you're ripped you've got your top off and i'm like the sort of six-pack I've been dreaming of.

7:44I'm promising my wife for 20 years. But what you say under the caption of the photo, you say that this is me at my physical peak. I had no idea that when this photo was taken, there was already something growing inside me. So who were you the day that photo was taken? If I'm being completely honest, I think I was a selfish athlete that was very focused on himself with probably some narcissistic traits. It was all about winning. It was all about about David and I've been humbled massively. I think I've always been a nice person. My parents gave me good values to always be nice to people but I was very focused, very driven.

8:23I'd say I was very attached to the physical being that I was so I was I guess I had a lot of insecurities about how I looked. I was never in I thought I was not in great shape and I had to get in better shapes. I had a lot of insecurities around my physical body. And it's funny, when I first went into hospital, I was a hundred kilo roar. And after three weeks, I woke up at 65 kilos after suffering a stroke and having my first tumor removed. And that was the first time I guess my ego died. I wasn't worried how big my arms were. I wasn't worried about the six pack that you've longed for for so many years.

9:00It really put into perspective just how beautiful this gift is of life and how important it is but also how we get so hung up on things that really don't matter and i know it's easy to say and cliche to say but it really is when it's all said and done and you're lying in an icu or in the highlight of your day is as a bed bath after you've pooed yourself um it really puts so much into perspective and i think at that point i detached from the physical being and tried to transcend into more of a spiritual mindful place so just go back to that phrase that you use there that was the day the ego died would you explore that a little bit more for us tell us what that means and on what it did mean in that next stage for you yeah i think we get a lot of our sense of self and how we perceive other people perceive us and i think at that point i purely identified with what an athlete was and in the Olympic motto it's sit just at first 40s so faster higher stronger so I had to be a six foot four powerful athlete and then all of a sudden you're lying in a hospital bed you can't sit up you're relying on people to feed you wash you dress you and at that point I just I detached completely from the ego so all of a sudden it wasn't about how other people perceive me it wasn't that I sort of thought I was never going to be good enough until I won a world title or or I went to an Olympic Games all of a sudden it was like well actually it's okay just being me it's actually okay leaning into the struggle crying being upset it's the I often like my emotions to the Scottish weather there's a bundle them within a minute I go from ecstatically high to depressed the joyful happy but I think when when I lay in that hospital bed and I looked around the ward everyone fighting for their lives and just trying to take that other breath I was like wow i've chased this thing this medal or this sort of being of to try and maybe go back to my village and everyone goes wow you're the gold medalist and it really didn't matter uh because in a hospital room where everyone's fighting for their for their life it's you realize that actually just waiting up in the morning and breathing is is one of the best gifts that will ever be given so would you mind sharing with us how you went from being on the olympic rowing program to lying in that hospital bed yeah so it was it was probably a lifetime in the making my tumor was a very slow growing tumor i think it started to present symptoms around about the age of 17 and i'd spent my whole life in sports so sort of stuff like so increased bladder function not control over your bowel sexual function i'm not too shy to say that anymore i used to be very embarrassed when i had the ego to talk about that but i think it's a very important indicator of when the body's not working right.

11:50And lots of fatigue, pain. And every doctor I seen just said, you're doing too much sport. You're doing too much training. So I would go away from the doctor. There was no Google. My mum had a huge big medical book and I used to try and flick through the pages to self-diagnose. And the more I read, the more I thought I was going to die of a million different things. So I decided to park the book. So I spent 10, 15 years in and out of hospitals. And eventually one day after our rowing session the physio had done a light manipulation on my neck because rowers are genuinely suffering from bad backs and we thought it would be a bulging disc and uh he said look the easiest thing we'll send you for some tests the tests that led up to the scan were were pretty horrific lots of things getting cameras getting stuck places you don't want them to be put and eventually said look we'll just scan your neck and they scanned my neck and And I guess in that day in 2010 is when my life really completely changed in many ways.

12:49I guess an old David died and I knew David was born on that day and I had a greater appreciation for life and what lay ahead. So you came back from that to win gold in the 2012 London Games. What was the difference then of the David before that diagnosis and the one after it? because I'd set the goal and my dream was was to make it to London when that diagnosis came my my internal narrative was I don't have time for a tumor I'm trying to get ready for a games and it was just this this annoying thing like a stone in my shoe I had to get rid of I didn't realize the stone in the shoe was going to revolve cutting the front of my neck open cutting into vertebrae cutting into the spinal cord to remove this tumor to then send me home I then had a stroke at home and almost died and was rushed back into hospital and and that's when i woke up and i was looking at the the roof for almost a month the goal was just to touch my nose so there was some paralysis at this point yeah there was like a it's almost like a temporary paralysis i think anytime they cut into the spinal cord you're going to disrupt the cord so i woke up i couldn't really move and went from 100 kilos to 65 kilos and i've i was to the doctors you know i need i need to get out i need to get training london is a few years away and i don't think i really to be honest with you i think for the last 13 years i i'm still in denial that there's actually anything wrong with me i still attached and even though i don't have the six pack anymore and probably resemble a bit more of your stomach yeah um i still you too yeah i still identify to that photo yeah and and i think i've just sort of seen this thing i need to get it out of the way and and six months i think after that surgery i was back in a boat in 11 months world champion and then 12 months sitting on the start line of London.

14:36Mate, that's incredible. I mean, that absolutely is worth a round of applause.

14:46Obviously, for a long time there, you couldn't do anything to physically get closer to rowing. So what were you able to do? It sounds ridiculous to me, but to still be a rower, even when you're lying paralyzed in that hospital bed? I think for me, I realized that was the initial realization of the power of the mind. So I'd done lots of sports psychology, years, and spent most of my childhood doing karate. So I understood imagery, visualization. So I was very disciplined. Those first sort of three, four months, every morning, I knew the rowing team were going on the water. At 7 a.m., I went on with my mind.

15:21I couldn't go anywhere. There was no Netflix. so I would just lie in my hospital bed and visualize 18 kilometers on the water every stroke I would smell the water feel the water and I split my day up into different sports so I would do karate for an hour rolling skiing running all the all the sports I'd done to try and reconnect the nervous system the neural system and I was the stubborn horrible I apologize to all the nurses I was that patient who when they came into the room I was already ready to go get me up I need to move. And I believe 100 % that the mind played such a key role in getting me from that hospital bed into the start line in London.

16:03Do you think without that visualization, you wouldn't have competed to the level you did? I think it's hard to quantify that. I think it is quite subjective, but I do believe that it played an integral part of getting me. Because you have to believe in yourself when the doctors are telling you, look, you're never going to walk again. sport's never going to happen again this is who you are now is that the message from them yeah pretty pretty much and so you have to believe in yourself and another thing with sport is is that it hits a rugged environment and people are fighting to get to games into your places it doesn't stop and wait for you so i very quickly realized that that boat had already gone and and if i was going to be on it i had i had to do the work and to be honest with you i at the time i thought i can never go through this again this is absolutely horrendous it's brutal and i think the last stroke i ever took in a rowing boat was the one that crossed the line in london and i said at that point i'm never going near a boat again i'm never going near a hospital again i'm done with tumors rehab training and everything and i was quite happy to close the book and have a normal life go back to that phrase yeah i had to believe in myself because when you sat in a doctor's surgery and they're telling you you're never going to walk again you know london is a is a far away dream how do you believe in yourself because i'm sure there's lots of people here have got their own challenges where that's useful would you tell us how you do it for me it was having good people around me and having people who did believe i also searched for vicarious experiences I went and looked for people who had already done it and been there and thought, well, if they can do it, I'm no different.

17:44And I guess in many ways we aren't, right? I don't see myself as anyone special. I'm from a little village in the north of Scotland, had some opportunities, took them. I think we all have, I don't want to generalize and cliche, but I do think we can really surprise ourself. I've seen some people who thought they weren't strong enough and then they're given a diagnosis. They wake up in ICU and they can fight. I was asked two days ago who my inspiration was. And obviously I should probably say Chris and other athletes, but inspiration can be found really close to home. And I've found it on these wards, seeing normal people doing incredible things.

18:21And when you're really tested, just how much you can tune into it. I think the one thing I always say to myself when it got hard is, I always ask myself why I started. And I was always very clear on my why. I've done a lot of work with psychologists and studied psychology. and I realized if I had, it was very clear in my personal philosophy, very clear in my purpose for each day, my purpose as a son, a brother, an athlete, a husband, whatever that may be, very clear in my purpose and also always reminded myself, why did you start? So what was your answer to that question? Why? So when I went through surgery one and two, why I started is because I wanted to be a world champion and I wanted to be the best in the world at what I did.

19:06If you ask me that now, it's a completely different answer it's more about trying to make people see how important life is we come into this world on an inhale and we leave on an exhale two very very powerful defining breaths but every breath we take is defining i often challenge people to say did you wake up this morning put your feet on the floor and say that you were grateful for your feet were you grateful for the legs that took you here today and i know we're tuning into our breath death but on an average day how aware are we of these breaths that we take and just how amazing they are how special they are and now when i feel like i want to give up i say to myself well david you you have a purpose of understanding what it's like to be on the edge of mortality and face your death but you also know the real beauty in humanity the real beauty in the world and i sort of feel that if i can share that then people might not have to go through what i've gone through to have the death of the ego and to wake up just to how amazing life can be.

20:11So you crossed that finish line at 2012 and said, I'm done with running. That was brutal. And although you'd changed after your cancer diagnosis, you probably hadn't changed totally because you actually were unable to leave elite sport behind. You called Dave Brailsford, who runs British cycling at the time and still heavily involved and started training with people like Sir Chris Hoy got to an incredible standard and then you get another phone call yeah so I thought I'd given I was actually trying to avoid a real job more than anything else but I I realized that the sport is is sport saved my life it's a big part of who I am and I sort of think when you're an athlete you get so worried about retiring and transition but the only thing that really changes is that you just don't have your national team top written on your back but you're still an athlete and I think Nike coined it beautifully that if you have a body and move you're an athlete so I think we're all athletes of life and but unfortunately I guess there was still a part of my ego popping through and thought you know what it'd be great to go to another games it would be great to to go and do something else and before I knew I was I was living down here cycling on the velodrome everything was going great but I was having regular scans and it was the opening ceremony of the commonwealth games and i remember i was called into to the hospital to get the results and i was delivered in a very matter of fact look the tumor is growing back you're going to require another surgery and i remember walking out sitting down watching the triathlon on the on the tv in the waiting room and and the tears ran down my eyes because i i often say to myself i couldn't go through all that again and now here i was faced again and i think uncertainty breeds anxiety when you don't know what's coming but I think sometimes ignorance is bliss and now I knew that I was about to have my neck cut open and it was going to go back to ground zero and and you know I didn't think I had it in me but somewhere I found the the strength to to go in I didn't want to go in I was about to get on a plane and just run away and see how long I could live before it before I couldn't couldn't take any more breaths but it was inevitable I had to walk through those doors and yeah six months after that surgery I was I was back on a bike riding for Britain again so your response of wanting to run away from that is something I can empathize with so what stopped you doing that I think the reality of the if I did I would I would have died and I think there comes a point where I realized that I often looked at the scans and I often used to think is that somebody else's scan because I actually don't feel ill I've never really felt ill and And I think I just had to sit down and be like, well, if I don't walk through those doors to go through for the surgery, I'm going to die at some point.

22:51And I love life and I don't want to check out yet. I feel like I've got a lot to live for. I love the sunrises and the sunsets. And I feel that, you know, I had to go in and have that surgery. And thankfully I did. They saved my life. And six months later, I forgot about it. And I was cycling again, thinking, well, that's it. I couldn't go through that again. i'll just continue on in sport and and live my life and what happened next i was diagnosed again so within a matter of months i was back in a scan machine and i sat again went did a training session here got the train down to the hospital and then was told look the tumor is coming back but you have some time go and enjoy yourself so i came back up booked a trip to majorca went cycling but knew it was coming i still don't think i've ever really processed that yet and i remember coming back i packed up my flat in in nutsford i parked my car in the velodrome i put the key in the post and sent it to my dad and i said you look you can you go and pick up my car i thought i was only going to be in hospital for a few weeks and i'd be back on a bike a few months later and unfortunately that surgery uh there was some form of complication in the surgery and I woke up and I was paralyzed from the neck down and six months later I was pretty much still looking at the the roof and I've never moved again on the on the left side so did you know when you went into that surgery that there was a serious paralysis risk at that point yeah there's always the risk there's the risk of dying in the surgery there's also the risk of waking up as a quadriplegic losing everything from the from the neck down so when I realized that I'd only lost the left side i was i was actually very grateful i was grateful that that it could have been both sides and and there's there's some incredible human beings living incredible lives as quadriplegics i'm not going to say that it hits an athlete harder but for me i lived to move my body and to lose that ability i'm not so sure i could live so to only lose one side i could still get back on a bike.

25:00I could still swim. I taught myself to ski again. And I could still, I guess, cling on to that identity as a sportsman.

25:12If you're still overpaying for wireless, it's time to say yes to saying no. At Mint Mobile, their favorite word is no. No contracts, no monthly bills, no overages, no hidden fees, no BS. I made the switch because I was tired of those ridiculous bills and sneaky charges from my old provider. With Mint, I'm paying$15 a month and getting the same high-speed data, unlimited talk and text, and the coverage on the nation's largest 5G network. Honestly, the quality is just as good, if not better than what I had before. And the best part? You don't need a new phone. You can keep your current one, bring your number, and all your contacts.

25:47I use Mint Mobile, and you should too. Ready to say yes to saying no? Make the switch at mintmobile.com slash HPP. That's mintmobile.com slash HPP. Upfront payment of$45 required, equivalent to$15 a month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow up with 35 gig on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.

26:11This sounds very much like a grieving process that you would have had to go through. The death of the old you to embrace the new. Would you tell us a little bit about how you got through that process quickly and in such a productive way. I still think I am going through it. I maybe have to come and see you for a session on the sofa. I don't know if I can ever accept the spinal cord injury because it wasn't my fault. There's days where I can't accept it and I'm grateful for life and I'm cycling my bike through the Alps and it's beautiful. And then there's other times where I fall over in the street, I can't tie my shoelaces, I need people to dry me and sometimes need people to dress me and i say you know this is this is not what it was meant to be and i cry i go through the grieving process and i think what i've realized is that that's okay i think to stay strong the whole time is is too tired and i think actually in strength is vulnerability and i think it is okay to cry choosing my moments carefully when i do cry and just accepting the human for what it is and the emotions that the human goes through and i've spent a lot of time doing therapy i thought it was great sitting on sofas talking about all of it and trying to understand it and process it but still my number one coping strategy is is getting into nature moving my body and being with my friends and i don't think that ever changes and i think that's where i've found so much gratitude and still been able to use my right leg and my right arm so but i think that's an indication of the of actually how much you had changed because you know we started this conversation with you telling us that you were like a selfish athlete it was all about you you were number one which is often how it has to be when you're an elite performer and now you're simply grateful that only half your body has been paralyzed have you read read the book man's search for meaning yeah i think it i think man's search for meaning and eckhart tolle the power now were probably the two most powerful books i've read somebody gave it to me in hospital when i was first paralyzed and said look i think you're going to benefit massively from reading this.

28:19And I think it helped me to try and somehow find meaning in the suffering and discover a purpose. And I think one of the biggest things I took from it was the space between a stimulus and response. I think we've become very reactive. And certainly when you're paralyzed, it's very easy to start throwing plates at the wall. And I tried to really work on the space between stimulus and response that I took from the book. How do you do that? a lot of mindfulness a lot of meditation a lot of breath work and and again just i guess many ways i try to think back to the younger david and what the older david knows now and what he advice he would give him but also i try to look forward and say you know what if i if i'm i do a lot of memento mori which is not for everyone the meditation of your own mortality i think in my situation i have to be connected to that and i think it makes me use every second of every day wisely so i try to look forward and say well you know if i'm lucky enough to live to 85 that's 480 months 2 000 odd weeks uh how am i spending them and who am i spending them with so time became a very precious thing to me so i said you know every day i want to leave my house i say a little thing before i leave every day i say be curious be compassionate and and be more someone with more courage and i try to stick those three values wherever i go courage more courage more courage more courage can you give us we were talking backstage dave can you share that example you said of those three values in action that story when you went into the restaurant with the with the rude waiter so i think life happens and we all become humans and that space between stimulus and response sometimes goes and i turned up to a restaurant in london and i wanted to sit outside but the waiter didn't want to put me outside he wanted to put me inside so my best self didn't show up the younger athlete showed up no i want to sit outside and we had this bit of an argument so i sat down eventually get in my way and sat outside and and i thought that's not who you are i did a mental journal in my mind i thought that's not the human i want to be it's not who i hold myself accountable to the values i live so when he came back to the table i said look i'm very sorry for not being nice i don't think that's who i want to be and he said look don't don't worry about it my brother just got diagnosed with a brain tumor i was probably short with you and i was like oh wow i have a tumor too and the two of us started crying and he was italian so we were hugging each other and it all got quite emotional and um i had a great meal he looked after me but a year later i went back to the same restaurant and he was very rude to me and this is life happening and i said how's your brother and he stopped in all of the rush and all of the noise and he looked up and he went oh david i have your seat for you clear the restaurant bring him in and for me it was a great example of compassion of being curious as well we're all going through stuff and i think it's easy to jump in the car in the morning go to work and get road raging cut up people and life happens right and i think you know so many people it's a little bit cliche but we are all dealing with stuff i think if one in two people are impacted with cancer so it's inevitable you're going to come across somebody in your working day that is dealing with something something pretty big and that i think for me that was compassion and awareness and curiosity and also having the courage to actually admit when i was being a bit of a I don't want to swear say the word dick when I was being a bit of a dick

31:53thank you for your work I want to say it again though

32:05I want to touch on this idea of resilience because I think that when people see you they don't think that you're paralyzed because I think we have a kind of a linear view of paralysis. You're either paralyzed from the waist down, as my grandfather was, and every single time we saw him, every single time, his departing line was, be grateful for your legs, which lives with me today. And then we think of paralysis from the neck down. You are paralyzed. People don't see that. Would you mind sharing with us the physical impact on your body today that you are living with every single minute of every single day?

32:38Yeah, so I'm paralyzed. sort of from C2 down, which is sort of here. So I've lost everything on the left arm, the left leg. That runs down the whole body. And on the right side, I have no feeling. So I have to, where you cognitively didn't probably think about walking in here today. You might have been with the audience who were here. You might have been mindful of the grass under your feet. And I have to constantly think of every time I'm standing, where my weight is. And then that becomes extremely tired. And there's times where I will just fall over the signals from the brain to the legs. i often think the brain is speaking maybe chinese and the body speaking english and they don't quite communicate and there's sometimes the signals just don't go and and that can unfortunately in some instances mean that your bowel just opens in tesco while you're waiting in the queue which has happened um or you need the bathroom or your legs just give weight and fall over and that makes navigating the world quite challenging because if i arrive at an airport or in tesco or wherever people won't think oh this guy's paralyzed from the neck down i need to give him some way and it was only yesterday on the tube in london that i was shoved over in in people trying to get on the train because they don't they don't see it and so it's given me a huge awareness of of that you know people are struggling with things that we don't often see not every disability is visible but it's a it's a daily i guess it's a daily reminder of how lucky i am to be alive there there is no escaping it and i think that's why sport is so important to me because when i jump on a bike i clip into the pedals i feel for those hours i'm on the bike i'm cancer free and i'm also paralysis free it's just me the bike mountains and those moments in the day are so beautiful for me and i guess that in many ways is where i do all the mental reflection the mental processing but there is no escape of the paralysis it's you know i have to go to the bathroom sometimes six times a night so i gave up wearing and sleep tracking because it was it was so shit they basically told me that there's no point just give up in life so i had to take it off um so then you know you have the bottle at the edge of the bed sometimes you miss the bottle and you end up peeing all over the room so there's all these things that just take constant management and it's relentless and to be honest with you there's not a day goes by where i i don't type into google has anyone found a cure for spinal cord injury yet.

35:03So on those difficult days when you wake up in the morning and the first thought is why has this happened to me? I used to compete for my country as an elite athlete. What are the tools that you employ in those moments? So I think for me it was it was dialing down on my values so again I believe we can train three things in life we can we can train our body which most of us do we train our craft which may be our sport our job or work and then it's our mind and i don't think we're often given the toolkit to to work with the mind we're given this sort of hardware and software is the mind and the brain and we're sent off into the world with with everything that's been inputted by our parents for the first seven years and then our teachers and that's usually well you're not good enough you're never going to get there i guess in many ways that's why i i go back to the karate days and in the dojos that i that i fought in and if i was punched and knocked out it was like i had to get back up and go again and so i think for me on the bad days again i connect to how fortunate and lucky i am to be alive i also tried to observe my thoughts and feelings and emotions as a watcher and with no judgment so i tried to watch them and accept them okay well it's okay to to feel shit i struggled a lot with survivor's guilt to start with because i was going to a spinal rehab center where people were quadriplegic and i felt i why am i feeling bad he's worse off than me that really tortured me for years and then eventually a therapist said to me look it's relative to you of course he's going to have a bad day but also you're also going through some shit it's also okay to feel bad and i think accepting those emotions was a big part and then for me it's having a list of things knowing my values what i really value in life being in nature being on my bike being with friends I liken them to the legs of a chair and they hold me up and if you take them away the chair falls down when all three of them go I won't sit here and lie to you there's days where I don't even leave my bed I'm banging my head on a wall I'm crying I'm just like I know what I've had enough suffering now I'm I'm ready to shut my eyes and never open them again and then some way through all of that my phone maybe goes and someone sends me a message to say hey you know thinking of you or you know never give up you inspire me or or i just look out and see a simple bird land on a tree and go wow life life is so beautiful and there's people who it's taken too early and they don't have the choice when i started radiotherapy in 2019 a lot of the people i started that journey with are no longer alive and i thought wow i actually owe it to them to get myself out of this bed and to get living and i think back to the david in the hospital when he's lying in icu in pain with tubes coming out of him and think wow that david would have given anything to go out and and and ride in the rain or just to sit and have a coffee and read a book so and i think that's the thing with humans sometimes we always want more can you tell us a bit about your relationship with your wife during this period as well because i can imagine from her point of view she's watching you go through this suffering how does she process it my family of it's it's hard for the family you bring on the journey because i think when it's happening to you you kind of have to find acceptance you you you deal with it but when the family are watching on i think it's it's really hard because they want to help and then they inevitably say the wrong things mostly like just be positive that usually drives me mad or everything's going to be okay which also usually drives me mad and then it's it's going back to victor franco's stimulus-based response and me sitting in that space and being like well how do i get the people around me to come on the journey that they give me the best support so it's a little bit of education but i've watched friends loved ones you know fall fall apart i had a army friend on the phone two weeks ago and he was he couldn't even speak to me he was in tears he broke down on the phone i was like hey it's happening to me not you but i realized that everyone's different and i think for me it's brought everyone so much closer and i think that it's given me such a great appreciation of time that when i'm with you i'm with you so when i'm with you i'm not on a phone and i and this is i think what my loved ones have taken from this is that you know when we're together we're we're i'm with you i'm listening to you i'm hearing you i'm not just sitting listening to reply or looking at my phone and doing a thousand things and i think if you leave with anything today leave with that you know we're addicted in the dopamine rush to our devices when you're with your friends and loved ones you know really like be with them put this stuff away and i think that's probably if i can leave anything with my family that's been the biggest lesson from all of this so it's it's been hard for them and i think it always will be because my tumor is never well i say never going to go away it's it's something i live with for for every every living breath i take so it's something that i have to navigate with with my loved ones picking up on the conversation you had with your your friend who's in the military who was in tears and you were having to say to him on the phone hold on i'm the one living this life you know um often it can be so hard for other people because they don't have any control over over this whereas you at least have some element of how you react to what's going on and I guess that conversation revolved around your most recent diagnosis would you mind sharing with us where this story is at at the moment so so I had fought for radio life radiotherapy my whole for the last 13 years and eventually I got radiotherapy in 2019 and from every scan for the last four four or five years have been clear so the tumor had sort of just died and it was there and I was sort of I guess falling back into life and trying to chase goals and and just living and then there was a little scan cropped up it was done in May and I sat in oncology a few weeks ago and they they said look there's a there's a little nodule growing I hate that word as soon as I heard that word I was like oh my god um at that point I got on a plane and went to Pakistan and And I went and hid in the Himalayas for 10 days.

41:15But I realized that Haydn is not going to solve the problem. I have to come back and face this. And then I was like, how do I tell people? This is the fifth time. I don't really know. They've already done radiotherapy. I was like, oh man, how do I even navigate this? And I put a little bit of a cryptic message out on social media. And the people who had been on the journey the whole time picked up the phone right away and went, what's up? And my army friend was one of them. And he burst into tears. and any cry and any sort of phone someone else and say, look, you need to go and see Dave. So the next day someone came and visited me and said, look, I'm here to, Dan couldn't speak to you, but I'm here.

41:50And again, for me, I didn't want to say anything to anyone because I was like, I just kind of suffer in silence. And then I was like, no, I'm going to need my friends more than probably ever. And to be honest with you, I could probably just start crying now. It's like, I don't want to, I don't want to die. And it's, yeah, it's scary. and to deal with it and know that it's going to happen again. There has to be a level of acceptance of mortality within it all and just to make peace with that. I'm the only Scotsman that doesn't drink alcohol, but I have a beautiful 18-year-old bottle of Glenfiddich in my house in Scotland, and I'm actually en route to get that bottle of whiskey now to go and sit with my friends because I realise that in many ways it's a gift because sometimes we don't really get to sit and be with our friends and maybe say goodbyes and stuff and for this i'm going to go and knock on some doors and sit and open this bottle of whiskey and and sit and just share some stories because i realize at the end all we have is memories and memories are made from experiences and we don't really have experiences if we don't learn to savor the moment and saving the moment for me is about being where your feet are and being in the present moment and i think that's how i'm dealing with the current situation so how long did the doctor say that your life expects they won't give me a number on that i did ask that question i thought it was an appropriate question to ask uh what can they do they can do surgery again so that would be surgery number seven they said radiotherapy would maybe buy me six months but you know i went away and i think now that i don't have my mom's medical book to look for i do have google i typed it straight in google and the answers came up right away there's a new things move in the medical world so fast there's a new treatment in germany called carbon ion therapy so i'm going to head to germany very soon to have discussions with doctors there to be like you know is this something that they think would work and you know we have 18 600 seconds in a day if that's right if my math is right i just want to live all of those seconds and i'm very clear in my values and my philosophy for life and if i can just get the most out of them and i've wrestled with the question right now would i'd rather live 50 years but live every day or live to 100 and have not lived any days and i don't know if i'm scared of death i am scared of death but i'm also scared of not living so for me at the moment it's just like how do i get the most out of life who do i spend time with how can i influence people's life to to go out smash it enjoy every one of those seconds every one of those breaths and and just you know can i say balls grab life by the balls

44:33i made the most of it and you know and be with friends and i know that johnny mack have always been on you guys are friends john mackie and i i he's someone who reminds me of this daily about making the most of life and for me he's someone that i always look at and think well here's a guy who's very clear in his values and lives them every day and i think as long as i'm doing that the time I have left here is irrelevant as long as I'm living by those values. That has been the most inspiring conversation we ever could have had. Thank you so much for sitting with us here at the Happy Place Festival.

45:17Damien. Jake. I think the standing ovation that David got at the end of that conversation at the Happy Place Festival says all that needs to be said almost, doesn't it? Yeah, I think even when he was talking and we were looking around the audience, there was people in tears, there was people visibly moved by his message because he is the perfect messenger to tell us about how do we live even when we're facing death. and that's really what this is about this is about someone who knows that unless he finds some alternative treatment as you explained to us his his life is severely limited and all we can do right in many ways like for people to listen to that and think oh i feel i feel for him like you know he has my sympathy that's useless to him and it's actually useless for us as well this is about us as listeners to this podcast who have our health and who you know as far as we're aware have time to realize the value of what we've got and not throw this away because none of us want to be woken up to what life really is by having a diagnosis like david said we need to realize that right now the beauty and those little things that he spoke about and if if someone with a terminal diagnosis can find the happiness then it should be there for all of us definitely and i think that was a big reason why david's made himself so vulnerable uh such a like heartbreaking taking time of his life to come and share this story and to share the lessons isn't because he wants your sympathy is because he wants you to understand all of us that life is there for living when he talks about the simple things of when you're with somebody don't burn your phone connect with them appreciate the joy of going out for a bike ride and the just seeing the countryside around you the waiter in the restaurant just try and connect rather than dismiss him as being rude these are all opportunities for us to really embrace the full spectrum of emotions that life has available and on offer to all of us and you and i are recording this little conversation after we've had the the chat with david because it was done on stage and we had to leave the stage and actually as we left the stage i had a quick chat with him and he said you know what i i really don't want people to think that um they've got loads of time and i haven't he's you know we're talking about the fact that actually none of us have very much time, even if he lives, let's say another six months and maybe I live another 30 years, right?

47:44By the time I get to the end of those 30 years, I will be able to go, wow, that 30 years went by in the blink of an eye in the same way that his six months would go by in the blink of an eye. I sometimes think we trick ourselves into thinking, well, I have so much time, but you and I are in our forties, right? How long ago were we in our twenties? The blink of an eye. How long ago were we turning 10? Remember getting your 10th birthday card blink of an eye you'll now be in your late 70s in the same blink of an eye and i think it's really important to say that because i think people people go well i've got at least another 50 years left so i'll start to enjoy it towards the end but for now i've got jobs and mortgages and getting of course i know all that stuff is there but it goes by quick yeah and there's a palliative care nurse called bronnie ware that's written a really beautiful book called the top five regrets of the dying that went and interviewed patients that were facing similar terminal diagnosis the regrets of the dying were all around things like i wish i'd spent more time with the people i loved i wish i hadn't have stressed about things that weren't worth investing that time in i wish i'd have made the time to actually seek happiness there was nothing in there about that would cost us money it just cost us a little bit of focus and a little bit of our time and I think that's the key message that I'd encourage anyone to take away from David I know I certainly have yeah and of course huge thanks to David for joining us on high performance sharing so much with us and we wish him the very best with his journey as he looks to find a treatment to extend his life Damien thank you thank you Jake it was a privilege this one absolutely Absolutely.

49:25Thanks a lot, David. You're a true inspiration. And your messages I know will have helped so many people who've just listened to this podcast. Thank you, mate. so there we go um look if you could do one favor for me and the high performance team it would be to share this episode with somebody i think that we all need a reminder sometimes of actually what we've got rather than what we haven't got i don't mind how you do it but i would love this episode to be heard by as many people as possible i believe that david deserves that and i hope that whatever is going on in your life. This episode gives you some energy.

50:01It gives you some perspective as well. And David, thank you so much once again for giving up your time. Don't forget you can also watch this conversation with David on YouTube. And if you can hit subscribe, that's really helpful for us. Thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you again soon for another episode of the High Performance Podcast.

50:27Thank you.