Lessons from the month with Jameela Jamil, Martin Lewis, Tom Kerridge and Esteban Ocon

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1:54Welcome back to High Performance. Myself and Damien Hughes are about to reflect on another busy month where, well, we've had four very different guests over the last few weeks joining us each Monday. And we've picked a few clips and we've only just noticed when putting these clips together that there's something that we think binds them all together. Yeah, it's the theme of somebody somewhere has decided to impose their will on a situation. They're not happy with the status quo. And they've decided to actually do something about it. And they bring energy, they bring a clarity of thought, and they bring just a righteous indignation, if you like, to change the world.

2:29And I think it's been fascinating to have picked up on that theme and then go back to the interviews that we've done and see how common it is. Shall we start with Jamila? Jamila Jamil, yeah, I think is a perfect place to start. Let's listen to the clip and then we'll pick up on some of the detail of it. We pathologize everyone now with anxiety and depression. We're telling everyone that they're sick rather than addressing the fact that this is a sick society. And we really need to have a bigger conversation about that because it's not possible for this many people to suddenly be mentally ill. Is it a mental illness or is it a very reasonable reaction to a very unreasonable state of being?

3:12So are we broken or is society broken? Yeah, society's broken. We're not broken. We're fine. we're having very normal reactions it's very weird to not be anxious uh it's very weird you know i was talking in the car with my publicist earlier about the fact that you know we don't understand the chemicals in our own brains we don't understand the computer of our own brains we don't understand really how dopamine works we know it's bad to look at the screens we don't really understand why we don't really understand the impact that that has on your dopamine which is a fundamental part of your mental stability and your access to happiness we we sort of go like oh exercises you know this is why i've got this whole exercise movement that i've been doing so we don't really think that we know exercise is kind of important it's supposed to be good for the mental health we don't really understand why we say endorphins we don't really know what endorphins are we don't really understand how fundamental our stability is and how much those chemicals in enhance our stability enhance our clarity of thought uh obviously help our physical health and help our sleep, which improves every part of our lives.

4:13We just don't really know what we're working with up here. And the more I start to learn and understand that, the more I want to spread that word to other people. So that's Jamila Jamil, TV presenter, actress, activist, and extremely cool, very funny person who delivered a remarkable conversation actually on this podcast. But really what she's talking about there is this idea of imposing your will. And And I think there is so much around us that is set up to make us realise that we don't have any power, right? But let's realise the power that we do have. And really what Jamila was talking about there, this idea that we're all OK, it's society that's sick.

4:52That's not a very common conversation. Yet she's really driving hard this narrative that actually we're all OK, we're all reacting in a normal way to what society has in store for us. It's the narrative around that that's the problem. Yeah, and she spoke to us really powerfully about her own struggles with this. She spoke about the attempt she had to take her own life when she was in her late 20s. And many people would have said she was at the peak of her popularity in terms of many ways. And yet she's reflected on that period. And she spoke about the steps that she's taken to almost reinvent herself, to step away from the things that were making her unwell and to start to embrace the things that she does love doing and that, in turn, has been its own energy supply that's taken her out to America and made her really successful in Hollywood and beyond.

5:44And you talk about success leaves clues, right? You know, she said to us that she can earn an awful lot more money than she is at the moment by focusing on the acting, focusing on being a Hollywood megastar. But actually, she feels that there is a real need for these kinds of conversations, right? And the more that she has these conversations, the more that she realises that they make her feel like she's in the right place with her life and actually that's the clues that she needs to do that and I think all power and credit to Jamila for not just chasing the money and thinking do you know what I will leave a conversation about the world's mental health challenges to somebody else I'll just focus on making a few quid and living a nice life I love it when people put these passion projects at the centre of their life yeah and the other thing that stands out from that is not only is she passionate about it she's marrying that up with the real self-awareness as well so i like the bit where she spoke about the mistakes that she's made of sometimes the passion had spilled over into being a little bit belligerent and that's so and she realized that being angry was also turning some people off you know i think you use the phrase with the jake that i can't shake your hand if all i'm doing is shaking my fist and she acknowledged that and said learning to find common ground with people is a quicker way of helping them to understand how they can change.

7:01Okay, who shall we hear from next? I think the next guest who demonstrated a real powerful force of will was the conversation that we had with Martin Lewis. There's a really powerful anecdote he shares with us where he was sat in the Prime Minister's office having a conversation. Let's listen to what he says. Sat at an energy summit run by David Cameron, one of the bosses of the big energy firms said, Prime Minister, we need your help. People don't trust us and therefore we're not getting the information across that we need. And we need your help and we need everybody in this room to help make sure that customers trust their energy firms.

7:45And David Cameron nodded and said, yes, yes, absolutely. We need to look at that. And I put my hand up and I was at the end of the room and then eventually he turned to me and he said yes and I said I just want to say having heard the call on trust I will do everything I possibly can to ensure that nobody trusts you because you are not trustworthy the latest data shows 56 % of whatever it was of people who come to your call centres are given incorrect information. I will not tell people to trust you until you become trustworthy. Again, it's about imposing your will. It's also about bravery, actually.

8:29I think that it's really easy to have the courage of your convictions when you're sitting around a dinner table with your mates, or you're having a drink with your friends, or you're hiding behind an account on social media. It's easy to have an opinion. It's not so easy to do it in the face of the Prime Minister or in the face of leading public figures. But those are the moments where the true courage of your convictions is actually tested. Yeah, definitely. You know, I don't believe what you say, but I believe what you do. And the fact that he was somebody prepared to look at the eyes of those CEOs from the gas companies and tell them, I don't trust you because you haven't earned the right to be trustworthy, was powerful.

9:07And I think in the wider conversation, if people want to go back and listen to it, we spoke to him around the trust equation this is almost his usp for himself as a presenter on tv but his company his money saving expert company is the power of trust and when we understand that how he's leveraged that there's so many rich learnings for people to take from him and if people haven't listened to the episode i think it's easy for them to go oh yeah martin lewis who sold his business for tens if not hundreds of millions yeah it's easy for him to have a strong opinion about something because there's zero risk, right?

9:40But if people listen to the full conversation, they'll hear him tell us that he could have sold that business for multiples more than he did. And it comes back to the conversation we've had many times on this podcast, which is life isn't about the things that you accumulate. That's not where true thrill or pride comes from. It's about having purpose. And whether it's Jamila talking about mental health or Martin Lewis talking about trust. Purpose is at the heart of both of their movements and that's why they're being successful, why people are listening, why they're being heard. Who else this month has really captured your imagination?

10:16Well, the conversation with Tom Kerridge. I mean, I love a chat with a chef, Marcus Waring, Gordon Ramsay, you name it when they come on this show. I love the conversation. And I think what I really liked about this, and we'll hear a clip from it now, is that people get tricked into thinking there's only one way to find high performance. There's only one way to be successful. But he has rallied against that. He was a total outlier, yet had incredible success. Let's hear him talk. And I was very lucky that as an 18-year-old, I found a world that I loved. So, you know, there's so many people that go through life that just have jobs and do things just to exist and then live for a weekend.

10:59And I've always thought, no matter what, when I was at school, like I wasn't great at school. I wasn't the naughtiest boy, but I wasn't, the education system at that point wasn't necessarily for me. But I always thought it was really weird that people would work five days to have two days. Surely the five days should be the thing that you enjoy. And I was so lucky that as an 18-year-old, I went into a kitchen and went, this world, this is, I love being immersed in this environment. and that was first and it wasn't about performing high performance it wasn't about cooking mission size it wasn't about this it was about being in a world that I just really loved and then I started to realize that because it's such an amazing industry hospitality is such a special place it's so diverse and eclectic of the kind of people that work in it and it's all the better you can you can create an amazing career from it and you kind of realize that when you're in it 18 and you start looking around you start seeing people that traveled and been places and seen things and done stuff and you start thinking like i never thought you could do that coming you know single parent family from a working class area gloucester and just going hold on a minute how does like people have visited these spaces try you know and being a part because they can cook and you just go well this is a mate so i started then questioning and trying to get realizing that if you push yourself the better you can be the more experience and the more fun that you can have and gain and then i think across that journey i mean i've been cooking been kitchens and chefs in the hospitality for 32 years now and then it starts becoming i think the point when you start working as a in top kitchens and you start realizing you look around you and you see that there's other chefs in there that are from the same sort of backgrounds or different backgrounds or some that are even worse I used to work with a guy that couldn't even read or write, but his cooking was exceptional.

12:48And you start looking at these people and you go, I need to start picking up on that. I need to question myself and push myself and drive those things. So I think high performance, I think, is a self-driven thing. It doesn't matter. And then you need to surround yourself by people who also want to perform at that level. I think you have to find the balance between all of it. And then, and it's also, it's not an overnight thing. It's a long journey. It's a long thing to that point of success or where you think you're successful. And I question that. I say, I don't think we are. I look back at it and I go, well, maybe we're doing all right.

13:27But there's always that, I think you've probably talked about it to people who have self-made and done it before, that there's always that, there's a fear. There's always a fear that it's just going to disappear. And that's the thing that keeps you driving. So it's a constant, And it's almost like every day you get up and you have to push yourself. You have to ask questions of yourself every single day in every aspect of everything that you do. I love everything about that conversation, actually. Yeah, you know, that Steve Jobs quote about I'd rather be a pirate than join the Navy really captured it for me, that this is a guy that didn't quite fit into the mainstream.

14:01So he created his own band that he could be a part of, that he led for a long time with his hard party in ways, that he told us about that were a bit eye-watering. But again, he had the courage to stop, reflect, reinvent himself and take a different path. He still leads that team, but he does it in a healthy and more sustainable way for himself. Yeah, I thought it was a really cool conversation and I applaud his honesty for talking about the challenges that he had. And I love the fact that you can have mainstream success with a non-mainstream approach. I think that's cool. And actually that plays nicely into the final guest that I think we're going to hear from.

14:39Esteban Ocon, the Formula One driver, drives for Alpine, had a challenging start to the season. But again, there is one way to be successful in mainstream motorsport, which is to come at it with millions of pounds and buy your way to the best seat and the best car and the greatest success. All those are the way that Esteban approached it, which is humble beginnings, no money, bags of raw talent and incredible determination. Here he is. All the hard moments that we've been through, me, my family, and all the people that are close to me. And it was just all of these difficult times, all the pain that we had, it was just all worth it just for that moment.

15:23So, yeah, beautiful. I had a lot of weight on my shoulder very young because with the amount of sacrifice that my parents put, I had no right to fail. basically are hard to succeed. Otherwise, we are going to be in big trouble. You know, my dad and my mom, they were doing the job of 10 people with, you know, the catering, the 10, the go-kart, the engine, everything, you know, we are living in a caravan basically for five years, going around all Europe, training and practicing and basically dedicating our life to racing. You know, my dad told me recently that he went on his bed like that and thought, if one day I got a kid he wants to do a sport, I'm going to do everything that I have in my hands that I'm capable of for him to succeed and not have the failures that I had.

16:18So very early on in his life, he had set a plan for me to get to where I wanted. We both really enjoyed his company as much as enjoying the conversation, didn't we? Yeah, we did. And I think the force of will that we're talking about here as a theme from this month was the force of will of his own dad that at 15, when his own cycling career was curtailed for a number of different reasons, including his unwillingness to dope and engage in those unethical behaviours, to lie on his bed at 15 and decide that if I've got a son one day that's got a passion for sport, I'm going to impose my will on that situation and make sure that he never faces those dilemmas that his dad did.

17:03To me, it was just really moving. That was a really good example of somebody being prepared to put their money where their mouth is and sacrifice their own short-term happiness for that longer sense of purpose of being the best dad he could be. And as we record this, I think he has a challenging Formula 1 season ahead of him because of the car that he's been given. But I also feel that his background, his upbringing, his story to get to this point is going to be more valuable than ever for him in this situation, actually. You know, he's not someone who's had it handed to him on a plate. He's had to fight his whole career, and every time his back has been against the wall, you've seen the very best Esteban Ocon there is, and I have a feeling that 2024 will deliver the same.

17:43Yeah, well, again, he spoke to us, didn't he, about that rivalry he had with Max Verstappen, and how Verstappen had advantages of his background and a certain degree of privilege, and how that he had setbacks where, even though he'd beat Max he didn't get a seat and Max did and how that he went back to his dad's garage he was planning to go and work there that shows a humility and a work ethic before Toto Wolff gave him his shot this isn't the end of his story this is just another chapter that hopefully he'll come back and share with us on another occasion another busy month? it has it's been crackers haven't it I'd like to say just for people because people like sometimes a bit of the context around this and I called in a favour with Tom Kerridge when we met him I was telling him about a mate of mine Bob who's a really good chef up near where I live in Manchester and he's always keen to learn and develop himself and I mentioned it to Tom and asked whether he could come and do what they call a stage in his Hand and Flowers Michelin star pub in Marlow and it's a testimony to Tom that immediately he passed on his details and my mate has gone and worked with him for three days there he's had the benefit bit of meeting Tom and learning from him and his team and I like that because I think it sometimes gives us as well as listeners a clue as these high performers we're talking about don't just come on here and tell us soundbites or polished anecdotes that demonstrate what they are they're living this 24-7 and again every one of the guests that we've had has been a brilliant example what a nice story did your mate enjoy it did he pick up some good tips and loved it he thought But the equivalent he said to me was, he said it'd be like me giving the chance to go and have a kick around with Manchester United.

19:30He said getting the opportunity to rub shoulders with people at that level was just a privilege. There you go. Wonderful. Thanks a lot, mate. Thank you, mate. Loved it. Hope you enjoyed the conversations this month. Keep on coming back for more learnings, lessons, insights from the most fascinating people on the planet every week here on High Performance.

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20:52Learn more at capella.edu.