'How my cancer diagnosis changed my life' with Phil Richards (Listener Stories)

0:10Watch it early on the High Performance app. right now then you can find our brand new strand of listener stories and actually so often on my socials or even when I'm just walking down the street I have people that stop me and say I love the fact that you get these well-known famous people on high performance but you do realize that everyday people have their own incredible high performance journey to share and we totally understand that you know we love hearing from listeners we love our community we love understanding what high performance means to different people and we're about to hear from someone called Phil Richards and Phil features on the listener stories on the High Performance app but his story is so powerful and so valuable and so important that we also wanted to share it with you right here.

1:13So in 2017 Phil was diagnosed with metastatic kidney cancer and he's about to share with you his outlook on life, how his life has changed since his diagnosis, his new understanding of the importance of quality time, discovering what really matters. And there is so much research that has been done into people who've been given a terminal diagnosis that they have freedom for the very first time, that they finally understand the world in a way that allows them to live with freedom. And if there's one thing that everyone who's healthy and hopefully with a long life ahead of them needs to do, it's to understand that it's a powerful way to be.

1:51So you don't need to be in Phil's situation to learn an awful lot from the things that he has to say and see the true value in a conversation like this. So Phil is the very first episode in our new series of listener guest interviews. If you want to check out all the listener stories, you can do so right now by downloading the High Performance app. They're all there. But right now, this is what happened when myself and Damien Hughes sat down with an incredible guy called Phil Richards, who truly opened up to us about how his life has changed in the last few years and the key lessons he's taken from it.

2:25I hope you enjoy.

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3:10saints and sinners unexpected laughs and unspoken truths good times hard times and of course family always family so pull up a chair and join us at fremont avenue a world premiere play only at arena stage performances start october 8th tickets at arenastage.org

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4:13welcome along to a very special episode of the high performance podcast with phil richards phil how are you absolutely brilliant absolutely brilliant and it is lovely to see you both well it's a pleasure to have you here with us before we get into the reasons why you're here and how you've ended up sitting in the hot seat let's start as we always do on high performance what is high performance to you high performance for me is how do you work relentlessly hard making those dreams a reality and not focusing on the excuses i suppose is the probably the easiest way i can just describe it and the dream can be anything for anyone and the dream can be something whatever stage of life you're at so how do you when you go to bed and you wake up and you've had that dream how do you then say how do I make it happen rather than how do I just accept the excuses and is that what you did throughout your life no definitely not really I've probably just coasted until probably 2017 when I you know had a diagnosis of an incurable disease but until that point I think I just coasted and I thought I was happy I thought I was lucky but I never really had a plan it's only from 2017 that's when I thought that's when I need a plan so before we talk about 2017 tell us about the origin story i know that you've worked at the same place man and boy in tesco yep and this is a great example about when you talk about high performance it's about what what's your purpose what is it you're going after and i think i just fell into jobs so went to college didn't really loved being with people but when you're like six or seven assignments behind.

5:52You're just, what do I then do? I had a part-time job at Tesco washing the dishes. Probably should have sacked me, to be honest. I was rubbish. I then managed to get a full-time job, probably much to the displeasure of my mum and dad who said, you can't just go and work at Tesco. You know, you've got to dream bigger. You're capable of more. I think I just fell into, well, how do I just get some money? How do I continue doing the things I enjoy, which is spending time with my friends? So that's where I started and that's where I am now. But isn't that okay though? Because, you know, we started this podcast thinking high performance had to be conquer the world, leave a legacy, change people's lives, blah, blah, blah.

6:28Isn't happiness what high performance is? And if you've been happy for all these years, why does it matter? I think that's the killer question. So was I happy or did I think I was happy? So I think you need to have a balance of what is your purpose and what makes you happy. And then if you looked at your diary and said, how much time am I investing in what makes me happy? I think that's what makes high performance. And I think where I was, and I call it coasting, I had big elements of happiness, but you also, you just get consumed by life. You meet someone, you get married, you have children, and then all of a sudden you're in the, you're on the treadmill of life.

7:09So tell us about that discovery of that sense of purpose then, because that's a really intriguing discovery about you. If I'm honest, I still don't think that I've got that sense of purpose now, but I know what makes me happy. If I think about what makes me happy now, what makes me happy is understanding and surrounding myself by the people that care and love me, but also that I love them and love spending time with them. So everything, if you looked at my diary, it would say majority of the time is spending time with the people that I love. But when you've got someone that finds it difficult to say no and with someone that works really hard and work can consume that.

7:46We'll talk about 2017 in a second. 2017 was my trigger to say, now you need to start saying no because you realise what your purpose or what makes you happy. How do you then explore that more? So do you now reflect on all those years before 2017 and think, oh, I got it wrong. Like I should have been with Annie Moore. I should have said no. I should have prioritised other things. Or are you able to accept that actually like life gets in the way of life and that's what happens to everybody. There are so few people who get to the end of their days and go, I've got that right. We're learning as we go.

8:19Yeah, you're so right. Often we're caught up in hindsight, aren't we? We're caught up in hindsight. So, Jake, the question is, do I look back and think, did I get it wrong? I don't think I got it wrong. But hindsight says, could I have done it better? Yes, I could have done. And the reason why I say I haven't got it wrong is, at that moment in time before 2017, if someone said to me, Phil, are you unhappy in life? I'd have gone, no, I'm not. I'm happy. So that's probably the reason why I say I haven't got it wrong. But hindsight's a wonderful thing that you just look back and think, oh, I could have done something.

8:51Listen, we've done over 250 episodes of this podcast. High performance is the best you can where you are with what you've got. Yes. And I think that you did that. Yes. You're now operating with hindsight. Yeah. Right, but you didn't have hindsight then. So you did the best you could, which was had a job, had your two amazing kids, married your wife, looked after them, took them on holidays, paid the bills, where you were with what you had. You didn't know what you know now. 2017 hadn't happened. So you need to be kinder to yourself maybe about all those years. You're probably right. You're probably right.

9:24And that's why you do the job you do, right? Shall we talk then about 2017 demo? Yeah, go on. You tell us about 2017 and I want to add something later on. So 2017, it was, I remember the day, it was March the 17th. I was very very unwell that day so I went out to work came back home very unwell and I didn't recognize the warning signs so if I look back now with hindsight prior to that day on the 17th of March extremely tired low motivation feeling lethargic stomach aches pain in the flank and then it wasn't until that day when I started passing blood I still didn't even realise so I went to Dr Google and said I'm passing blood what is this and you look for the option that you can cope with and the option I could cope with was kidney stones so I thought that's it but then the pain got unbearable to cut a very long story short went to hospital diagnosed with 11 centimetre tumour on my right kidney what probably makes this or magnifies it is my wife Annie is a clinical nurse specialist in oncology.

10:39So she knows all about cancer. So when I had to make that phone call in the morning to say, you never guess what, they've told me I've got 11 centimetre tumour on my right kidney. She broke down. And I only know now why she broke down is because she knew more than I would ever know. I just thought, I've got a tumour on my kidney, so they're going to have to sort it and I'm sure I'll be better. So that was the day that, that was the start of it. And how old were you then, Phil? So I was 39. Wow. Too young to go through anything like that. What did Annie know that you didn't then? I think what Annie knew was because of her background in cancer, the disease that I had was not a curable disease.

11:23So in her head when she's planning about what our life looks like, what she's just come up against is a massive stumbling block. So she knew it was incurable. I didn't know it was incurable at that moment in time. I just thought I had a tumour on my kidney and they said they're going to have to take my kidney out. But I didn't realise about all the other stuff about the constant surveillance, it will progress and there is no cure for it. There's treatment that can prolong life. And she knew all of that from that phone call. I didn't. So tell us the impact on you of how you, when you did eventually discover the incurable nature of this, how did you process it and how did that change things for you?

12:03Processing took a long time. so from day one if you asked anyone they would say it's amazing how you're coping with it the reality is is I didn't cope at all you know when you wake up in the morning you think oh crikey that was a good sleep what what day is it what am I doing today I didn't have those thoughts anymore because I woke up and I thought you know you've got cancer don't you you know that you're going to die and I remember going into the bathroom mirror and this must have been for a period of like three or four weeks. And I remember looking in the mirror every day thinking, you know you're going to die, don't you?

12:40So when you talk about how did you cope with it, I don't think I did. But I thought my way of coping was to ignore the fact that I thought I was going to die and just concentrate on my family and putting on a brave face. The reality is, is that did change over time. So I remember getting up one morning and looking in that bathroom mirror and rather than saying, you know you've got cancer and you're going to die, I remember saying, you know you're not going to die today. And I think that was a seminal moment for me because the next day I would say the same, you know you're not going to die today because you can look in the mirror and you feel okay.

13:22And then it got to the point where it's like, you know you're not going to die this month. so automatically I've got the gift of time and then it was you're not going to die this year what are you going to do with your time so has it changed the way you live your life completely completely changed the way I live my life isn't it sad though that we we go nearly you know you were almost 40 when you were diagnosed it's like I suppose my feeling is how can we get other people you know and your family will listen to this when you're not here and your grandchildren will listen to this when you're not here and maybe even your great-grandchildren and their children.

13:57So what can they be doing when they're 10, 15, 20, 21 to know what you know now and use that to inform the way they behave and act? Because it's too easy to go, oh, realise life doesn't last forever, isn't it? It's like those messages fall on deaf ears till we're told what you were told. I don't know the answer to this yet. And I suppose the equivalent is when you're asked a question, what would you do if you won the lottery? You can talk about, you know, how I'd spend the money, how I'd help people out. But the reality is, you know it's not true because you haven't won the lottery. It's the same thing if someone says, what would you do right here, right now, if you were diagnosed with an incurable or terminal illness?

14:37You'd just say, I'd give up work, I'd go and live my life. But the reality was, until you're told that, you've then got the choices to make. So if the question is, what would I tell other people, my children, my grandchildren, children is how can you look back at life knowing that you did the best you could with what you've got in the moment you're in but the barometer has got to be happiness i mean part of our connection was that i got one of what i would consider one of the most beautiful emails from somebody that's not a part of your family from sophie that works for you who spoke about the legacy that you've left on her life the kindness the decency the humility you've obviously had a profound impact on her and and as sophie and your other best friend has wrote to me and told me you've had a ripple effect on lots of people's lives and i'm interested has this happened since 2017 that you've that you've decided that you're going to touch other people with kindness i would say it's significantly changed and since 2017 because what I was able to learn is how you listen so how you listen to the person in front of you and not listen to interrupt not listen to give advice but purely listen to really understand what I'm also conscious of as well is this is not a game of top trumps so when I'd have people phone me saying like I need to talk to your boss because you know I'm not feeling very well or I need to get the dentist and it's not as not as bad as your problem and I have to try and take that away from the table to say you know you don't ever have to ask you know you you know I'll always say yes I think I think what I learned in 2017 is how do I always start with yes whether that's with the family whether that's the team I work with how do you start with yes because then it takes down all the barriers but what it does is increase psychological safety because they will tell you anything and if you say I'm just going to say yes anyway so you don't need to ask what that encourages them to do is then ask and tell you and keep you informed but knowing that there's no threat of you saying no what does doing that do for you it's almost like a sense of enrichment because what you see is we talk about this word loyalty an awful lot but how do you get loyalty i think the best way you get loyalty is by trusting people but also building the trust between yourself and with them so if i was um if i was a tv camera crew and i came to follow you for a day what behaviors would i witness i would be kind in everything that i did so for me what's really important is how do you operate as if every day is your best day.

17:24So we all have bad days, but how do you make a conscious effort to show the world it's your best day? So saying hello to people, if I was walking down the street, made eye contact with someone, I'd give them a raised eyebrow or I'd say hello. Now look, nine times out of ten, some people won't even do that, but it's not about them. And I think what we do and what I've learned is as soon as you realise that it's not about other people and it's about yourself, so you do the right thing rather than expect them to do the right thing what you then do is like almost create an environment or a behavior so one of the big themes that we've picked up on the podcast phil is the the idea of the latin phrase memento mori which is a reminder that we're all dying there was somebody that's had in quite graphic terms a reminder of that and the finite time that we all have here you're almost in a position to be able to provide us with a manifesto for living in the face of death what is it the key messages that you would want to pass on to anybody that ever listens to this i love the momentum aura by the way and i think certainly listening to the podcast that's something that i'd never heard before but certainly resonates with me there's um there's a phrase that i use which is called what's the worst that can happen and I think if I'm going to give advice to anyone just ask yourself the question before you do anything is what's the worst that can happen and a friend of mine once said well funny enough he said to me at the um when we did the high performance uh podcast Dan Carter and he said to me right let's go up to the stage door and let's see if we can um get a photo with like you know Dan Carter and I went no because there's rules you're not allowed to leave your seat you wait till you go and no one's saying come and meet them here so we don't he went if you don't ever ask the worst that can happen is you go back to neutral he said but if you go and ask you can then end up elevating your life and as a result i've elevated my life what about um finding strength in the face of adversity because that's something that you've had to do let's fast forward a few years you know one of your children might be thinking I just haven't got the strength to deal with this.

19:42I wish my dad was here asking him a question or something. So for them, for your wife, for anyone that might see this conversation, if they don't feel strong, what would you tell them about strength? If I talk about myself first, because I think if I translate how I found strength, it might help answer how I can help them find strength. I like to class myself as a strong person. So if I'm thinking about once I was diagnosed and the severity of it, probably the biggest part of strength that I had to find was how do I tell my children the truth about what's happening? Prepared it in my mind. Myself and Nanny talked about it.

20:20The reality was when I went to open up my mouth, nothing came out apart from tears and I ended up looking at the wall. She ended up delivering the message. But I think it's okay to realize that you can't be strong at everything. what I realized in that moment is the way that I can be strong for my children and for my wife is how do I stay on this earth long enough so I don't you know put them into the point of worry and pain so I then had to realize what's in my control how do I then look after myself how do I then do the right things but I think if I'm going to give a some advice to my family or anyone else listening my advice would be how do you find real motivation so for me my motivation was i want to stay alive longer on the planet because i know that the happiness that i spend with my family not just for me but for them would be um would be beneficial so if i'm giving any advice what's your motivation because your motivation will help you find the strength and the times when they look what might be ahead of them and feel too weak to cope That's okay.

21:28And I think you can't choose what thoughts come into your head, but you can choose what actions you take with those thoughts. I think it's okay not to have the answers, but it's not okay to recognize those thoughts when they come in your head and not do something with them. And a few years ago, before your diagnosis, would you have ever thought that you were strong enough to get this diagnosis, to live through everything that's happened since, and to be able to sit here and have a conversation like this about it? Definitely not. And I think part of that will be, unless you're in the moment, you don't benefit from the learnings.

22:04What surprised you the most? Who you think would be there for you versus who is actually there for you. And it will be no surprise to you both that your family are always there.

22:20and what I saw was people that I thought wouldn't necessarily care or wouldn't necessarily be interested they're the people that completely take you by surprise and when you're diagnosed with something like this the first question people ask is if there's anything you need just give us a shout and I'll do it for you and lots of people would say that to me and I remember this you know one of the neighbors said like I've just heard the news and anything you need and jokingly I said I need my cars cleaned on a Sunday because I just don't think I'm up for it he went oh no no you have to get someone else to do that but I think what it definitely taught me was some people say things so they think it's the right thing the people in my life that really showed that they were a true friend are the people that didn't ask they just did.

23:12So my one friend said, what's on your mind at the moment? Oh, I'm really annoyed because I've had this operation. I now can't put my washing pole up. I can't make the patio furniture. And he just came around the next weekend and just built it all for me. He didn't ask what I needed. He just came and did it. And what would you say thank you to Annie and the girls for? For their patience. For their patience, first of all, but definitely their support. I don't think they realize and I definitely don't think I tell them enough how they are my motive so I've never said to them you are the motivation to help me live longer there's a great phrase about you know in your time of need who who stands up or you know who walks in the room and who walks out the room that's a that's a great phrase um my family have just knocked down the door to make sure they're in the room with me so if we can do some quick fire questions then Phil sure what are the three non-negotiables that you and everyone around you has to buy into?

24:10I'm going to start with kindness and kindness isn't about being nice. Kindness is about being kind and doing the right thing. My second non-negotiable ties into kindness but probably humility. So you can't say that you're a nice person and behave in a way that's not a nice person. And I think my third is probably gratitude. Thank you goes a long way. Recognition goes a long way. And I think the more we do of it, the more we talk about the good stuff rather than the bad stuff. If you could go back to one moment in your life, where would you go and why? I would go back to the moment where I finished my GCSEs at school.

24:53Finished my GCSEs, got my results. And at that moment, I would say, right Phil what do you want to do with your life because if I'd have looked at what I wanted to do and what I wanted to achieve with that word of purpose I think the most important things I've got in my life now I would still have because my wife my children bring me happiness but I think I could of elevated happiness in other ways in other experiences what's your greatest strength and your biggest weakness my greatest strength is probably it's listening but also the art of communication and the only reason i say that is because that's what people tell me you know if i say to people what is it you like about me they all say you're just the best listener but also So you're great at keeping things simple and a gifted communicator.

25:50My biggest weakness is probably procrastination and not being able to say no. So I say yes because that falls into my whole kindness and the non-negotiables. But saying no is very difficult. And the last question, your one golden rule that you'd like to leave people thinking about who have watched this for living a high-performance life? The golden rule has to be happiness. so targets mission statements whatever it is you go after you've got to start with the barometer of happiness so if you put that at the top then set your goals and your targets around that your crack life been there done it completed it listen thank you so much no thank you

26:39i would just like to say um a huge thanks to phil he is an inspiring incredible special guy and for obvious reasons you know life is challenging for him and so for him to come on to this show and share with us the things that he did it means an awful lot to us so Phil just a personal thank you very much for being a great friend a great partner a great parent and a great person in many people's lives and if you would like to hear even more from listener stories you can hear business owner Laura Pomfret sharing why she began her female focus finance app. George Harris, a teacher, joins us and talks about how he uses high performance in the classroom.

27:17We introduce you to Manny Crook, who explains her journey to beginning her very own podcast and the importance of finding purpose. And Damien and I love sitting down and talking to listeners of this podcast, members of this community, amazing people who aren't going to be stopped in the street and ask for their autograph, but they are inspiring. They are motivating. They are incredible they are all absolutely high performance so please right now check out the listener stories collection on the high performance app and thank you for listening

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28:56Always family. So pull up a chair and join us at Fremont Avenue, a world premiere play only at Arena Stage. Performances start October 8th. Tickets at arenastage.org. For 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.