Vicky Pattison's formula for life

0:03Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of High Performance. I'm here with Professor Damien Hughes. Hi, Jake. You all right? Very well. How are you? Yeah, very good. Thank you. And what we thought we would do today was speak to the prof about an episode of High Performance that still lives with him. Something that resonated, something that impacted the way that he lives or the way that he thinks. And just to delve a bit deeper, does that sound fun? Yeah, I'd love it. I've really enjoyed doing this sort of excavation of the archive, Jake. I think we're incredibly privileged that we get to speak to some of the planet's highest achievers.

0:35and sometimes you'd be foolish if you didn't take some lessons away and I think this is a really nice way of doing it. Okay, who have you gone for? I've gone for Vicky Patterson. This is an interesting place to begin because when you say planet's highest achievers, why have you chosen a former reality star and where do you think this view of high achievement sits when it comes to Vicky? Well, that's part of the reason the reaction that you've had there is exactly why I wanted to choose her because it was one of those occasions where it forces you to put the brakes on and stop and think, hang on a minute, I've maybe made a misjudgment here.

1:12So when we first had Vicky propose to us as a guest, we got sent a copy of the book that she'd done called How To Be Happy. I remember I was reading it in bed one night and I've got to confess, I wasn't aware of Vicky, I didn't know a lot about her background beyond the book. And when I was reading her, I was horrified at some of the stories she was telling, that most people are familiar with her. So she started out as a young graduate going back to Newcastle where she's from, getting a role on some programme called Geordie Shore that I wasn't familiar of. But it was a bit that she speaks about when she was almost pressured to have sex with her boyfriend on television.

1:51Shortly after that, she ended up in a fight in a nightclub and got a court sentence for what she had to go through. So there was lots of things I wasn't familiar with her about. And I had the same reaction of, are we really choosing somebody like this to come on the podcast? What are they going to teach us? And it was the interview that really did change my mind in terms of how rich she was, how humble she was. So how she was prepared to challenge our perceptions and how she's had to battle that on quite a grand scale to be able to have a successful career in the media. So when you say rich, you don't mean financially rich.

2:26You mean rich in depth and rich in sort of offerings for us to learn from? Yeah, massively. Her whole career has been littered with incidents that she's reflected on that can actually teach us all some valuable approaches that we can take in our own life. Let's have a listen to one of the examples here. I used to think in order to be successful, I used to have to kill myself, basically. I used to think coming from the place I've come from, if anyone was going to take me seriously, I had to be the first one there. I had to know everybody's name. I was going to leave last. I was going to be respectful, polite, and I was going to do that every single day.

3:04There was no place for days off. There was no place for lateness and all of this. And like, I truly believed it. And actually it's so counterproductive to have that train of thought. Like all you do is burn yourself out. All you do is lose the love for anything that you are originally passionate about. You become resentful. You slip because we're all human. We can't go on like that forever. so Bill my life coach he taught me about numbering my days and basically those days that I just described to you you know getting up in the morning doing breakfast telly going straight from there to radio from radio to a record of something else from that to a big event you get home 12 o 'clock you're knackered your feet hurt you're tired but you know you've had a great day you've smashed it that is a number four day it's high octane it's stressful it's big you're getting a buzz from it it's amazing but it's hard it's hard going and you have to take that into consideration and then after that you've got your day threes so that is say like a couple podcasts maybe you're on Lorraine you might have like a little photo shoot in the afternoon still quite stressful you know but not non-stop pressure pressure pressure but it still takes it out of you then your day twos maybe you don't leave the house maybe you've just got some zooms in the morning and a podcast in the afternoon you fit in a nice dog walk bob's your uncle fanny's your aunt it's a good day but then you've got your day ones and these are the days that i absolutely live for and they are like days where you turn your phone off you have a digital detox you watch like back to back emily in paris you wear face mask and you play with the dog and you just give in to all of the foods that you haven't been eating that week and all of the things you probably haven't been doing and you just totally chill and recharge and that is it is important in life to have a mixture of these days if when you it comes to having a number four day you're going to be the best bright shiny positive brilliant version of you you can't do it if you haven't had your number ones so how did this um resonate so deeply with you well this was one of the first ideas that she spoke about in her book about how to be happy that had the impact where the idea that we can't always spend our life in the fast lane moving from one challenge to the next filling our diaries with all kinds of activities constantly being on the go so vicky came up with the idea of numbering her days from one to four i like the idea of giving yourself different days to almost driving different lanes at different speeds and to make sure that recovery is an important part of that process and have you adopted that yeah definitely so what i do try to do is at least one day during the week give myself a day that's one over two so i'm not going out anywhere i've not got a full set of phone calls to do and it's more just a day to stop and do the things that recharge my batteries now there'll be people listening to this demo who are like that sounds great i would love to have loads of days of the week where i can sit at home and plan the direction of my life but but actually they have mortgages to pay, demanding bosses, difficult jobs, a bunch of children, a load of mates, all sorts of demands on their time.

6:17So what have we learned, maybe from the conversation with Vicky, maybe from a conversation with someone else, about how even the busiest people can work this time into their week or into their day? Well, a great example of it is the phone test that Vicky told us about. So the people that you surround yourself with, the support networks, what type of category do you divide them into and Vicky spoke to us how learning to become a little bit more discerning about who you let into your life tells you about how well they either recharge or deplete your energy from your battery let's have a listen to Vicky explain that right so there's three types of people in life and you can work out who they are by how you feel when they ring your phone and so you have people who when you see their name like flash up on your display screen you think oh for fuck's sake you know like and you know like as i've said this to you everybody listening to this will know that person instantly um and it's the person who you know they're ringing you probably because they want something or because they want to have a whinge or because like they need a favor they need you to get you into this nightclub or they want you to look after their kids they just want something from you and you never feel like it's a two-way street like you don't mind picking up your pals who are always there for you but this isn't that person and they are called the draggers they are like if you said to them oh i'm thinking about um starting a new diet i'm going to try and be really healthy 2022 they're thinking what you're gonna do that for you'll only end up you'll only end up ruining it you'll only end up eating loads of cake and i think right okay you are a negative influence on me they are the draggers we don't want those in my life really okay next you've got like the middle of the road as so when the ring you sort of think hmm should i answer should i not okay i'll give them you know i'll get a pick up they don't set your world on fire they're perfectly nice like if you said to them oh i'm going to try and eat more healthily they'd be like good for you good for you you can do that but they're perfectly pleasant we shouldn't like we shouldn't be dismissive of them the hearts are in the right place and then you have the igniters this is who we should all strive to be the kind of person that when you see their name pop up on your on your screen you can't wait to answer you grin from ear to ear your whole body fizzes with excitement because you know they're ringing with something let's go on holiday well done for this i'll eat healthy with you as well they inspire you they lift you up they make you they make you buzz like an old fridge you're just fucking thrilled that they're in your life and i feel like those are the people who you should have around you i mean how interesting you know in that very short little episode of high performance to talk about someone who we knew nothing about but who actually had a really interesting way of approaching life and not getting burned out giving us an example of what happens if you do and a tool for how anyone can adopt this in their daily life yeah and the reason i've chosen this episode is because it's a great example where high performance can come in many different forms from many different people and i'd encourage anyone to say go and listen to vicky's episode number 99 in our archive but equally go and pick the people that you haven't heard before or maybe people that you don't like go and explore what they've got to teach you brilliant so there you go vicky patterson is episode 99 of high performance and honestly there is a whole back catalogue hundreds of episodes for you to go and delve into so uh please do it's all there for you and enjoy thanks a lot damo thanks mate, loved it.