I Tested Positive...

What I cover in this episode: - The first lesson this pandemic has taught me - I have a secret to tell you - Changing the shape of your brain - Less answers and more questions - What are some of the most important questions you can ask yourself? - The thing that invalided you when you were younger, will be the thing you seek validation from as an adult. Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Steven Bartlett?

  I tested positive for the coronavirus and that is why you didn't hear from me last week. I said I was gonna do this podcast every single Monday. We got off to a bit of a rocky start because during last week's podcast, I actually had the virus and I didn't know. And it turns out my PA had the virus, my cameraman who's over there also had the virus, my whole team around me tested positive for the virus at the same time and none of us knew. And in terms of the experience that I had with the virus, I had one or two tricky days. There was one day in particular last week where I had mild flu symptoms and then I started to get this really bizarre muscular pain in my back. And I remember it being 3 or 4 AM in the morning and I'm lying in bed thinking, how do I stop this pain in

• 0:42Steven Bartlett?

  my back? And I ordered Ibuprofen and I think like painkillers on delivery, which were delivered to my door at 4 AM. And that night, I remember pulling my pillows off my bed and sleeping on the floor of my bedroom to try and straighten out my back. Weird symptoms to get, I know, but that's the virus. The symptoms are so unpredictable and crazy. My assistant lost her taste and smell, which is quite a popular one. Jack had a bunch of cold symptoms and things like that as well. But thankfully, we all recovered. And that isn't always the case. A lot of people, especially people that are a little bit more vulnerable and have pre-existing conditions, aren't always that lucky. But it made me reflect, it made

• 1:23Steven Bartlett?

  me reflect on the craziness of the world right now. Isn't it nuts? Isn't it absolutely bonkers what's happened over these last seven or eight months? All of the lockdowns, all of the restrictions, the travel restrictions, the redundancies, the battles, the political battles. It's absolutely crazy. It's been the most crazy seven months of my life without exception. And hard times, as much as they suck in the moment, they teach us important lessons. And there's some lessons which I've learned more starkly than others, which I wanted to talk about today. The things that I've been writing about here in my diary. And I'm gonna start there this week. I'm gonna share one of the key lessons that I've learnt with you. So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is the Diary

• 2:06Steven Bartlett?

  of a CEO. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 2:19Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so the first thing in my diary this week is just a lesson that I've learnt because of this pandemic and because of all the restrictions and the lockdowns. I've just written in my diary, "Learn how to contrast in the right direction." Let me explain what I mean. You know, I had this moment this week where I started really thinking about all of the things that I miss. And to be honest, I keep slipping back into these thoughts. You know, in the UK and in the US at the moment, what we're seeing is the governments start to talk about further restrictions and returning to the lockdowns that we had in March. And every time I hear these stories and I go on Twitter and I see the headlines, I start to reminisce over my old life, you know, and I miss going to the theatre. I miss how fun my weekends with my friends used to be.

• 3:02Steven Bartlett?

  I miss, you know, as a big Manchester United fan, I miss going to Old Trafford and watching my team play. I miss New York City, which is where I lived before all of this craziness happened and before they shut the borders and stopped me getting back in. I miss speaking on stage. I used to travel around the world, speaking to thousands of people in every corner of the globe. I miss being in the office with hundreds of our team members, building the business together. I miss my old life. But I'm sure, I'm sure that many of you listening to this have reminisced over your old life and the things that you miss in the last few weeks and months, pretty, you know, unavoidably. And typically, when we do this in a more subconscious way, without really thinking

• 3:44Steven Bartlett?

  about it, we arrive at a place of sadness, a place of self pity, a place of grief. At least I know I did, you know? And I almost, honestly, and this is kind of embarrassing to admit, you'll understand why I think this is embarrassing now that I say it, I almost started feeling sorry for myself. And this, for the love of God, is why you have to interrogate your own thinking. And let me just interrogate exactly what I've just said to you about all of the things I miss. And let me try and refrain all of those things through another perspective. When this global pandemic happened, I was a 27 year old guy who was able to go to

• 4:25Steven Bartlett?

  the theatre, go to Old Trafford and watch my favourite team play whenever I wanted to. I lived in a beautiful apartment in New York City, eating at the best restaurants in the world, travelling around the world in business class, getting paid to speak to thousands of people on stage whilst running a global business that was full of my friends. The thing that took me from that is a global pandemic which has killed over a million people and it's devastated people's livelihoods, it stripped them of their generational family businesses and it's plunged them into desperation. Right now, many people can't even pay the bills, feed their kids, many people can't even bear the thought of their future. Meanwhile, all of my family are healthy, I have work, I have freedom, I can feed myself.

• 5:10Steven Bartlett?

  Right now, there are more people than ever praying for the family, praying for the health, praying for the opportunities and praying for the life that I have right now and that you have right now. And when you start to think about it like that, it changes things. And if you think about it like that, you'll probably arrive at the conclusion that 2020 shouldn't make you feel sorry for yourself. It should make you feel so unbelievably grateful.

• 5:40Steven Bartlett?

  And this is the power of contrast. When you contrast your life in the wrong direction, you can make yourself miserable like I did. You know, I was on the verge of wallowing in self pity because I couldn't go to the theatre anymore, because I couldn't go to Old Trafford and watch my, because I didn't get on business class flights and get to fly to every corner of the world. Even fucking privileged fuckers like me can make the mistake, right? So I can't imagine how easy it is to make this mistake for everybody else. When you contrast your life up, as I was doing, to the life you had back in March, to someone more fortunate than you, to someone that's prettier than you on Instagram, or to someone that looks more successful than you from the outside, you'll quickly arrive at a place of self pity and ungratefulness, which is the quickest way to unhappiness.

• 6:25Steven Bartlett?

  But if you contrast your life down to the billions and billions of people that would do anything to be in your shoes, that would do anything to have the health of their sick parents back. To have a warm home, to have a fridge full of food, to have a secure job, then you'll arrive at gratitude. And honestly, gratitude in my life has been one of the best ways I've ever known to be happy. The world we see and how we see it is a direct result of contrast and the contrast games that you play every day. If you stroll through the corridor of a hospital and you peer into the wards and you peer in and look at the different patients, what you'll see is people sick and suffering and in some cases unfortunately dying. And suddenly, because of that contrast, you'll feel so grateful for your good health. And

• 7:08Steven Bartlett?

  we, I do this all the time. You know, I had this problem a couple of years ago with one of my ears where I woke up one day and there was this faint ringing sound in my right ear. And at first I thought it was nothing. I thought it would pass. But after two days, my ear was still ringing. I go on Google, I Google it, comes up as something called tinnitus or tinnitus, right? And it, and I'm reading through these forums of people saying that they've had it for their entire lives. It came out of nowhere and it ruined their lives. It stopped them from sleeping. It made them depressed. It stopped them from focusing. It fundamentally changed their lives. And after 10 days of my ear just ringing nonstop faintly, I came to terms with the fact that I was going to have this for the rest of my life. And I couldn't stop thinking about it. Because when your ear is always

• 7:51Steven Bartlett?

  ringing, it's hard to ignore, right? And I couldn't sleep properly and I started to worry. And in that moment, after two weeks of one of my ears ringing, I can't tell you how much I longed and wished for my normal hearing back, for just normal ears, for that ringing to cease. And it made me feel so ungrateful that it took an ailment where my ear would just ring constantly for me to suddenly feel grateful for my eyesight, my ears, the fact that I can walk, that I have 10 fingers, that I can think. And that's the way that contrasts work. You know, the same applies for the technology in our lives. Those old Nokia brick phones were the best thing ever in a world that didn't have the

• 8:34Steven Bartlett?

  iPhone in it. And your life right now, in the midst of the pandemic, in what month are we in? October, is such an amazing privileged life. In a world where you can't remember your old one, the one you had back in March. This year taught me that the grass will always look greener on the other side until you start watering the side that you're on right now. And that's really all you can do. Contrasting up is just such a deadly sin that we all need to avoid, especially in moments like this. We all have to be aware, conscious and mindful of how we're contrasting because the world is a crazy place and there's no guarantee that it's not going to get crazier, right? And if you continue to contrast up, you'll contrast yourself into depression and despair

• 9:15Steven Bartlett?

  and misery and self pity, like I nearly did. Like I nearly did when I started reflecting on my old life and telling myself all of the things that I missed, not the things that I have. Having control of your contrast can fundamentally change the way you see the world. And if it can change the way you see the world, it can change how you feel. And if it can change how you feel, then it can change your life. Let's move on.

• 9:44Steven Bartlett?

  I have a secret to tell you, and this is the second point in my diary this week. It's a secret that I only found out and started to deeply understand recently. When I say recently, I mean, the last 24 months. It's a secret that I really started to understand, honestly, being completely honest with you, when I got rich and when I got rich friends. And those rich friends pulled back a certain curtain and allowed me to see behind it. I'd always heard about this. I'd always heard that there's another curtain. I heard Joe Rogan did a podcast with Kevin Hart. And on the podcast, Kevin Hart talks about meeting Jeff Bezos and realizing that there's this other level. There's this other curtain which some people have access to. And the more wealthy that I got and the more wealthy people

• 10:28Steven Bartlett?

  that started to surround me, I started to understand what Kevin Hart meant. And I started to understand what that secret is. Here is the secret. Access to information and information itself. That is the real privilege in this world. That's the thing. If your rich parent gives you money, that's like them giving you a fish, right? But if they pull you into the family business and show you how it works, they're giving you a fishing rod. Money is a fish in life and information is a fishing rod. And only one of those things will feed you for a lifetime. And when you get to the level that I'm at now, when you have access to a new level of information, you're associating with a different level of person, you realise how much you didn't know before.

• 11:13Steven Bartlett?

  And you didn't know because you don't know what you don't know. They are unknown unknowns. And so back then, I was kind of naive. I just thought I knew everything. And where I'm at now, I started to wonder why no one told me this stuff. The stuff I know now about wealth and finance and about how these systems work. And you start to realise why the rich get richer and why the poor stay poor. Information and access to information. Obviously, there's a ton of systemic issues which are controlling things. But for me, information and access to information is the single biggest one. When I made my first million, I started studying wealth, right? And I started studying investing and finance. And I started to get really obsessed with how I could turn the money I had into a lot more money.

• 11:58Steven Bartlett?

  I started speaking to more millionaires and billionaires. I started spending more time with billionaires. And I got to see what I refer to, to my close friends, as money games. The games that they play and how they double, triple and quadruple their money just by having certain information. And this is information that most of us don't have. We aren't given, we aren't let in, we aren't allowed to see behind the curtain. And these are games that I never knew when I was broke. Games they didn't teach you or me in school. Games that really rich people have no incentive to teach you because they're too busy playing them. The people that sell money and those finance courses on Instagram, they aren't rich, right? They're selling you courses on Instagram. If they knew a better way to make money, they wouldn't be spending their time selling you courses on Instagram. But there's another level, there's another level of information.

• 12:43Steven Bartlett?

  Which is what I think Kevin Hart was referring to when he spoke about being able to peer in behind the curtain. And, you know, I'm gonna really disappoint you here after what was probably one of the biggest buildups that I've ever done on this podcast, because I don't have enough time in the hour or so that we have on this podcast to teach you everything that I've come to learn. And to be honest, even if I did, I don't think that's the most valuable thing that I could give you in this hour that we have together today. Just like money is a fish, right? Me telling you today's information is also a bit of a fish, because things change quite quickly in the world. And even if I could tell you everything I knew now about money games, it would at some point expire. It

• 13:23Steven Bartlett?

  would very quickly change. I think the most valuable, important fishing rod that I could give you in this hour is in fact a change of mindset. I think if I can get you to realise that your monetary future value and how rich you'll be in your life is perhaps somewhat equal to the value of the information you have in your brain, then maybe, maybe, just maybe, you'll start to value information and learning and the pursuit of knowledge even more. And in the world we live in, we all have access to the same information pretty much. But most of us still don't understand the true value of it. One of the greatest privileges I think I could ever give to my future kids is to teach them the value of learning, gaining experience, acquiring information and self-education,

• 14:07Steven Bartlett?

  which is something we can all do now because we all have Google, right? We all have the internet, we all have social media, we all have YouTube. You know, you're doing it right now, some of you that are watching this online. I think we tend to overvalue short-term financial incentives and undervalue learning opportunities, which will give us that long-term value advantage. And all of the young people, and even some of the slightly old people that I get a chance to mentor, this is one of the key lessons I try and teach them, is to be able to spot short-term value from long-term value. You know, and I'm gonna go off piece just a little bit here, and I'm gonna tell you a bit of a personal story that happened to me actually quite recently. And this is the, you know, this podcast is the home of the truth, so make sure you do keep this to yourself. I had a young person

• 14:51Steven Bartlett?

  in their early twenties asked to come and work with me. And when I say work with me, I don't mean, you know, in the same building as me, I mean with me. And because of the lockdowns and the way the world is, all of my sort of real close team are literally working with me in my home, or in, you know, in a small co-working space. And This was, in my opinion, a fairly unique opportunity, right? Because we're gonna be sat together pretty much every day. And they were so persistent that eventually I ended up offering them a job. And I offered them a job on the same salary, the same wage that they're earning right now in their current role. And I offered them a guaranteed pay rise in 60 days' time. And they effectively turned the offer down because they wanted a little bit more money now.

• 15:36Steven Bartlett?

  And whatever I say from this point onwards is gonna sound petty and biased and bitter. I have no other way of saying it. I'm just gonna be honest with you. Honestly, from what I know about their situation and from what I know about where they wanted to go in their career, and as impartially as I could possibly be, that was a fucking stupid decision. Just purely based on the fact that if you sit next to me or someone that's fortunate enough to have the access to the level of information that I have access to, someone that is willing to give you that information and information that's probably gonna help you fulfill the goals that you have. Fuck a 2K pay rise. That information can quite literally make you a millionaire too. And I've seen it make people millionaires. You know, much of the reason why I'm sat here as a millionaire

• 16:20Steven Bartlett?

  is because I got to sit next to people who had gone on the journey that I wanted to go on. And that's what I mean. We tend to overvalue the short-term financial incentives and undervalue the learning opportunities, which will give us long-term value. Knowing how to make, spot the difference and knowing which is which will change your life. And sometimes you have to play a long game. You have to delay that gratification. You have to hold off on that 2K pay rise because the situation you're in is giving you real long-term value. Your long-term future will be better if you make long-term decisions. Or your life will be slightly better in the short term if you make short-term decisions. But then your long-term future is compromised. And that's what delaying gratification is. You have to learn to do that in your careers too.

• 17:02Steven Bartlett?

  I'm gonna close off this point by telling you the easiest, simplest change that I've made in my life to radically, radically increase the amount of information and the amount of good quality information that I'm exposed to. One small change. But before I tell you, we're gonna play a little game. Just imagine for a second that you could pick up an imaginary... Phone in front of you and you could just listen in to the world's smartest minds, the world's smartest minds in in fitness, in business, in finance, spirituality and philosophy. Just imagine, imagine if you could be a fly on the wall as they discuss ideas, as they seek to understand the world and as they talk about what they know. And as they play their money games and enrich themselves, imagine how transformative that would be. Imagine how much that information would change your life.

• 17:44Steven Bartlett?

  It would change your health, your happiness and probably your wealth. And imagine if all of that, that access to information was free. It is free. That's Twitter. That's social media. That's YouTube. You can literally watch and listen to the smartest people in the world, think, discuss and ideate. So it does beg the question, you have to be honest. Why the fuck do you still follow Jenny from 10 years ago, who you do not give a F about? As she publicly complains to some customer service rep on Twitter about her T-Mobile data plan being expensive and slow. Or Kylie Jenner, as she publicly advertises the results of her plastic surgery and demolishes your self-esteem in the process. All that clown on Facebook that tries to convince you that 5G internet,

• 18:26Steven Bartlett?

  the coronavirus and Bill Gates were all part of some Illuminati conspiracy theory. Why are you choosing that information? Why are you allowing junk to seep into your mental diet? Where is that information going to take you? Information is the privilege and you have to be the gatekeeper and the unapologetic defender of the information that you consume. I've said this before and in fact, it's proven to be so important in my life that I'm going to keep saying it until I feel like you're listening to me. Who you follow online, especially if you're someone that spends hours of day on the internet and social media like I do, is the single biggest influence on your life. For the love of God, follow better and unfollow faster.

• 19:10Steven Bartlett?

  My trick, which I'm going to give to you, is I basically mute everyone. 90% of the people on my Instagram are muted, probably nearer 95%. I just don't see their stuff. I don't see their stories. I don't see their posts. Because usually it's actually not that helpful to me. 50% of the people on my Twitter are muted. And I'm muting people because just like you, there are real world consequences of, you know, unfollowing friends and people and family and things like that. So I just mute them. It's a nice middle ground where they don't know and they don't need to know, right? And if I start talking shit online, I give you permission to unfollow me too. Please subscribe to this podcast, but I give you permission to unfollow me too. And this has changed my life, honestly. It's the simplest thing, the simplest decision that has had the single biggest impact on my life.

• 19:54Steven Bartlett?

  I'm definitely smarter, happier and more professionally capable because of it. So if there was a small thing that you can do now to really change the most important influence on your life, it's to go through your social media timelines and every time you see someone who isn't contributing towards the values or the information that you want to consume, boom, mute. But, and here comes a very important caveat, you have to be careful not to unfollow or mute people just because they disagree with your opinion. A few years ago, if I saw someone in my timeline that overtly supported like a different political party or had a completely opposing opinion to mine, or just like strongly disagreed with issues that I really care about, I would just unfollow them. Boom, bye Felicia.

• 20:38Steven Bartlett?

  And I think I did that because I didn't want to feel the frustration that I felt when I logged in and saw their posts and tweets. And also, I didn't want to keep biting and arguing and debating with them online. But when you think about that decision logically, it's a pretty terrible decision. All I'm doing by doing that is narrowing my worldview and I'm building, reinforcing this echo chamber around me, which is full of people who believe everything I already believe. And the fundamental truth that we all have to have the intellectual strength to believe is that often, there really is no right or wrong. Everything is really just a bunch of perspectives. That's what the world is full of. Very, very few things are a case of right or wrong.

• 21:21Steven Bartlett?

  Probably all agree that the sky is blue, but as it relates to the way the world should be run, our political opinions, how people should be treated, there's typically quite a lot of variance. And those perspectives that perfectly agree with yours are actually the least valuable. They're not going to challenge you or broaden your perspective or teach you anything. Only the perspectives that differ from yours can do that. Whether they differ because they're a little bit more developed on your opinions or because they disagree.

• 21:49Steven Bartlett?

  But it's not easy and I'd be lying to you if I pretended it was. I've genuinely, and this is a weekly battle. I've genuinely struggled to keep people on my social media timelines within my social media bubble that say things I really disagree with and that support ideas that I despise. But I also think, if I'm being completely honest with myself, I'm better off because of it. Listen, I'm not, I'm not gonna let Ryan on Facebook tell me that 5G internet caused coronavirus, but I am gonna fill my social bubble and my circle online with people who honestly disagree, people who can respectfully explain why they disagree and people who view the world differently to me. You know, I, I hope this is the last time that I make this point on this podcast, but it just keeps coming to the front of my mind.

• 22:34Steven Bartlett?

  So if you've not cleansed your social media following, please do it now. I really, really hope this is the last time. I feel like if I can convince you to do this now, today, this week, it will be, for some of you, the greatest thing I was ever able to do for you, the greatest gift I can give you for listening to this podcast. Also, you know, turn all your notifications off, all of them, but we'll save that topic for another time. Okay, so the third point in my diary is about changing the shape of your brain. You can change the shape of your brain. What a load of nonsense. Over the, over the last couple of years, I've heard a lot of people, people that I respect a lot, including Tom Bilyeu, who came on this podcast, tell me that you can quite literally change the shape of your brain.

• 23:18Steven Bartlett?

  And at first, I'll be honest, I thought this was potentially some, you know, some of that self-development fluff and nonsense that we read a lot about, you know, the hocus-pocusy nonsense bullshit. And I thought to myself, how could you possibly change the shape and composition of your brain without having some type of invasive surgery? But I hold my hands up, it turns out I was wrong and I wasn't just a little bit wrong. I was really, really, really, really wrong. Over the last few months, as I've gone on the journey of writing my book, which is coming out called Happy Sexy Millionaire, The Unexpected Truth About Fulfillment, Love and Success, which you can get right now on Amazon, I started to develop. A bit of an obsession with neuroscience. And I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go too deep into the science because you don't necessarily need to know that stuff.

• 24:01Steven Bartlett?

  But I'm gonna tell you about some of the things that I learned on that journey. And particularly, one thing that changed my life. And here it is. Our brains are malleable, just like Play-Doh. And our experiences determine their shape. This process is almost best compared to physical exercise where, you know, 30 reps today isn't gonna make you super muscular and big, right? But 30 reps every day for a year will. And the same is true for your brain. The science says that whatever you focus your mind upon, be it anger or self doubt or fear, your brain will eventually literally change in shape. And I sound like I'm talking nonsense. I can hear myself saying this. It sounds like some hocus pocus magic, but I promise you, this is the truth. And listen, if you know me, you know, I'm just as immune to self-development nonsense

• 24:46Steven Bartlett?

  and fluff as you are. So I only share things with you that I think are fundamentally true and that are supported by some kind of evidence. Let me give you an example. If you're a compulsive worrier, the science shows that your brain will quite literally change to become a finely tuned anxiety and worry machine. You'll get, your brain will become tuned for worry. And I've looked through the research. I've looked at before and after pictures of brain scans of people who've overcome worry and addiction and negative thinking about themselves and other more serious psychological conditions. And it honestly blew my socks off. I've always believed that we are, you know, we are what we think. But the science shows us that we quite literally, from a neurological perspective, become what we think. You know, I read this great piece online by this neurological expert called Brian Penny.

• 25:29Steven Bartlett?

  And he has this lab where they've worked on being able to predict the age of your brain just by looking at it on brain scans. And your brain age is associated with increased mortality risk, cognitive decline, increased risk of dementia and overall general poorer physical functioning. They can literally see how a life change that you make, a decision you make in your life will change the shape of your brain over a number of years. They can see how a person that gives up X, Y or Z then has a completely different brain just a few years later. Just like how, you know, if you stopped going to the gym or you stopped... Started going to the gym, you'd have a completely different body a few years later. And they've identified a number of methods, just simple everyday choices and cognitive tools

• 26:13Steven Bartlett?

  that science suggests can positively change the shape of your brain. I'm just going to tell you about one of them today, and it's the one that fascinated me the most. It's called observation without engagement. This is basically what they call self-observation, which is a pretty big part of meditation. If you've ever meditated, you'll understand this. And it really helps you do exactly that. It involves like mindfully observing your thoughts and your feelings and your bodily sensations. The best example I can give you is if I asked you to observe right now, how tense your body feels. Instantly, you might take a step back and start focusing on your sore toe or the tightness in your chest or that headache, which you didn't notice before. But you can only notice when you start to observe yourself.

• 26:56Steven Bartlett?

  If I asked you to observe your thoughts and your feelings, you can also do that too. You might start to think about the things you're worrying about or that particular unsolved situation in your life or about your family's health because of this virus. The things that are going on subconsciously, which you didn't really notice about that big decision on your future, which you're procrastinating making. The point is, you can take an observer's perspective on your anxious thoughts, on your feelings and on your bodily sensations. You don't have to try and live inside of the problem all the time. You don't have to live inside of your feelings or your emotions. And when you do this, don't try and engage. You're not supposed to try and fix it, just observe. Let me give you another metaphor, which I think explains this best. It's called the clouds metaphor.

• 27:37Steven Bartlett?

  Imagine your thoughts and feelings or bodily sensations as just clouds that are floating through the sky. And sometimes those clouds are dark, sometimes they're angry, sometimes it's raining. And sometimes they're light and sometimes they're calm and thin. But you're not the clouds. You're the blue sky who just observes the clouds as they're passing without engaging in them. You simply observe and you let them pass you by. And as the 20 something CEO of a big company, who knows that every time I look at my emails or my WhatsApp in the morning, there's going to be a ton of unpredictable, yet unfortunately inevitable bullshit. Not just small bullshit, severe bullshit. I'm talking ruin your day bullshit, bullshit that can rear its head from any corner or person in a global business of 700 people.

• 28:21Steven Bartlett?

  As that guy, this mechanism has quite literally saved me. I really, really believe that. And from my conversations with Dom, who's my business partner, who's been with me this whole time, you know, which I had on this podcast in chapter 10, where he described that running the business made him an alcoholic, made him anxious and made him experience some pretty severe mental health problems. I genuinely believe that this, this technique was the fundamental difference between me and him. Self-observation, which is something that for some reason I've always defaulted to. We both had the same intense stressful experience over the last 10 years. But in his words, I survived it and he nearly didn't. He said, right, and this is a horrible thing for me to talk about. He said he considered

• 29:04Steven Bartlett?

  jumping in front of a train and killing himself because things at one point were so almost unbearable. And the difference is here, it's in your mind and the mechanisms you rely on to deal with your portion of unpredictable life bullshit, which is coming your way, whether you like it or not. I've said in this podcast before that I viewed the hardest moments in my life as, as really a video game. I naturally, and again, I don't want to take too much credit for this because it's not something that I did consciously. I naturally adopted this strange video game mindset where I would almost see the situation I was in like a game of chess, like I was removed from it. When things got really, really hard, I told myself without thinking about it, that this was all just a game. Yeah,

• 29:45Steven Bartlett?

  like a, like a game of chess. And I'm not the pieces on the chessboard because they can be killed. I'm the person responsible for moving the pieces. And whatever happens, I'll be fine. Just like, you know, like a game of Call of Duty. I'm not the character in the screen running with the gun, the one at danger of standing on a landmine. I'm the person holding the controller sat at home. And even if I stand on a landmine or two, that's fine. I can just restart and rejuvenate and, you know, go again. And for me, this perspective, which is very similar to what I've described with this self-observation, was the most liberating thing in my whole career. It allowed me to develop my own calm within any form of chaos. And it allowed me to think clearly without being clouded by emotion.

• 30:28Steven Bartlett?

  And if you're a CEO, if you're running a business, that's so incredibly important. And I genuinely also think that my business partner, Dom, was inside the game. He was the pawn on the chessboard. He was the soldier running through the battlefield in the Call of Duty. He was taking the enemy fire. So he internalized that pain. He internalized the stress and he became the conflict. And honestly, nobody can survive that. Nobody, not even me. But fortunately, for whatever reason, I was removing myself. And that helped. Self-observation isn't just handy for increasing your self-awareness. It genuinely provides you with a sense of detachment in the most challenging situations you'll find yourself in. Instead of being controlled by the situation and the thoughts that come with the situation and all of those feelings,

• 31:11Steven Bartlett?

  it gives you this ability to hold it out in front of you, to observe it and to let it come and to let it go without impacting you too much. And the brain research they've done on this topic completely supports this. They've studied the part of your brain that becomes active when you're drifting from thought to thought and overthinking and worrying. And they've seen clearly how this can have a detrimental impact on your personal wellbeing and, over a number of years, the shape of your brain. They've then also observed how that detachment, which you can achieve from self-observation and that video game mindset where you become the sky, not the clouds, can quiet that part of your brain. And there's one particular study that shows that people who meditate

• 31:52Steven Bartlett?

  have reduced activity in that part of their brain versus people that don't meditate. And listen, when we talk about meditation, I was a bit of a skeptic on the whole topic. Meditation doesn't have to be sitting with your legs crossed, humming to yourself, right? It can literally just be taking a few minutes out to relax and pause. And for me, meditation is usually in the form of a massage. It's the time where I can stop, I can pause and I can detach. And that, for me, is crucial, crucial, crucial for everybody. No matter what walk of life you're in, you have to find Pause and listen, this isn't going to stop you getting anxious or worried or stressed. But learning the habit of self-observation and that video game mindset and becoming the sky,

• 32:32Steven Bartlett?

  as I'll call it, will allow your problems to come, go and limit the impact they have on you without having to always engage in them and therefore making them worse than they have to be, without making a mountain out of what could have just been a molehill.

• 32:48Steven Bartlett?

  For the next point in my diary, I've just written less answers and more questions. You know, so much of the self-development, career progression advice that I got when I was younger, told me to speak up more, you know, make sure I'm heard and to get my point across whenever I can. And I'm telling you, the older I've got and the further I've travelled in the business world, the more I've learnt that that's really shitty advice. In the real world, it's impressive to know an answer, of course, but it's also impressive to admit that you don't. It's impressive to say and to have the sense of yourself to say, I don't know, to say, you're probably right, to say, that's not my area of expertise, to say, I don't know, but I'm going to find out, or just to remain silent. The least impressive thing you can do is speak for the sake of speaking.

• 33:32Steven Bartlett?

  We all know people like this and they typically do that because they are insecure and because they think if they have nothing to say, then they're not very valuable. We all have this contribution reputa- let me call it a contribution score. You won't know what your contribution score is, but you'll probably know the score of the people around you, the people in your friendship groups and in your family. You'll know that person within your friendship group or a colleague at work that just seems to speak for the sake of speaking. And most of the time, when they add something to the conversation, people kind of like roll their eyes and, you know, and they think to themselves, that was a really dumb thing to say. And it gets to the point that before they speak, everyone in the room presumes it's going to be something dumb again, or weird, or unhelpful, or irrelevant.

• 34:13Steven Bartlett?

  I think you'll know that person and that is because their contribution score is low. That is what a contribution score is. It really, really matters because if you constantly speak for the sake of speaking, or you speak when you're not informed on a topic, people will gradually stop listening to you. They will receive your ideas with a preconceived bias that you're probably going to say something that doesn't matter. And so your ideas suffer, even if they're good, because of that preconceived bias and that preconceived opinion of what you have to say. So even when you do have something valuable to add, everybody will disregard it. They'll pre-devalue it before it's even come out of your mouth. And that's because, just like a credit score, we all have a contribution score.

• 34:56Steven Bartlett?

  And in that case, it's because you've ruined yours by always feeling the need to chime in, even when you don't know what you're talking about, even when you shouldn't. If you don't know the answer to something, at least know the value of admitting that you don't, or staying quiet. As someone that's had the pleasure and sometimes displeasure of working in boardrooms and in creative brainstorms and in intense investor meetings with big personalities and sometimes competitive personalities for the last decade, I've seen how someone can ruin their contribution score by constantly feeling the need to say something or add something when they don't know the answer and when this isn't their field of expertise. And I've also seen the opposite. I've seen people who will sit and listen humbly and just observe and often learn.

• 35:40Steven Bartlett?

  And the people that walk out of the room with their respect and contribution score intact are always those that are secure enough to admit that they don't know and to, in many cases, stay quiet. And the ones that lose respect are those that try and pretend they know something that isn't in their field of expertise or that they know something about, usually because they're insecure. And this is why, as a general rule for life, it's always better to have more questions than you have answers and to be able to admit when you don't have the answers. Your contribution score really, really matters. And I think you come to learn that the further you go in your career. It's the thing that, for me, made investors, believe me, this notion I think they have in their head, which is when Stephen speaks, it's probably something informed and something worth listening to. It's the things that makes employees trust you as a CEO.

• 36:25Steven Bartlett?

  It's the thing that, as a colleague, earns respect. And ultimately, if you have the humility to learn to listen in areas that are outside of your expertise, it will be the thing that expands your knowledge. And again, that will change your life.

• 36:40Steven Bartlett?

  And this brings me to the next point in my diary. And I've written in my diary, what are some of the most important questions I ask myself regularly? And when I say this, I mean, in all areas of my life. If it's more important to know the right question to ask than to have the answer. What are the questions that you should ask yourself every single day? And the first one in my diary is, which part of this situation can I control? You know, as a CEO, but just as a human being that's living life like we all are. There are so many times where I encounter a situation of conflict or stress or chaos. And I'm desperate to fix it and I start committing energy to trying to solve the problem. Usually, and this is something that I've come to learn.

• 37:22Steven Bartlett?

  There's really only like three or four things that I can control in this situation. And if I know what those things are, I can invest my energy in those levers, in pulling those levers. And that gives me the best chance of getting out of the situation. It also is a great tool for liberating yourself from all of the stress of worrying about things that are completely outside of your control and that you can do nothing about. And I've done this over the last two years in particular, where I will hone in. And I will sometimes even write in my diary, the two or three things in the situation I'm in now that I can control. Gives me that clarity, it liberates me from stress and it focuses me on the things that will actually help me get out of the situation I'm in. And the second question, which I ask myself religiously at least once a day.

• 38:07Steven Bartlett?

  And it is actually held as a permanent point on my to do list is, what am I avoiding right now? This is something that I dare you to try and ask yourself every day. Because for me, understanding what I'm avoiding helps me overcome it. And as Nir Eyal said on this podcast, we are creatures that seek to avoid discomfort. So there's nearly always a reason why I'm procrastinating or avoiding something. And if I can become conscious about that thing and the psychological discomfort that's making me avoid it. It helps me to overcome it. And usually the things we avoid are actually really, really important. And that's part of the reason they're causing us discomfort. So that's a question that I recommend everybody asks themselves every day. Make a list of the things you want to ask yourself.

• 38:50Steven Bartlett?

  The first is, what part of this situation can I control? And the second is, what am I avoiding? The third is, what would my idols think about this decision? And this is a question which I religiously ask myself when I'm facing a big life choice. Because I think we all understand the values and the principles that our idols lived by. We study, you know, we study their lives, we read their books, their podcasts, whatever. We understand the way that they think. But when we're in a situation, when we're facing a big decision, sometimes we kind of relapse back to our own innate fear-driven decision-making mechanisms. And we lose sight of how our idols, the people we want to be like, would make that decision.

• 39:31Steven Bartlett?

  So every time I make a big life decision, I almost like interrogate it against what I know that my idols would do. Because my idols are my idols because they have values that I admire. And so if I can kind of sense-check my own decision-making against what I think they would do, which is sometimes easier than knowing the right thing to do, I tend to make a better decision. And the next question I religiously ask myself is what would future Steve think of this decision? And this question is super handy to ask yourself whenever you can, because future you is going to pay the price for the decisions you make today. So future you is quite a selfish person. They want to be, they want to have a six-pack, they want to be super smart, they want to be rich. And that is almost all of our North Star, our future self.

• 40:16Steven Bartlett?

  And so if you ask yourself, genuinely ask yourself the question, what would future Steve, the happiest version, the best version of me, think about this decision I'm about to make to eat this entire double pizza to myself? Usually that allows you to see if this decision you're about to make is in line with your values. And the next question that I like to ask myself regularly is if I'm saying yes to this thing, then what am I saying no to? I think it was Steve Jobs who once said that it's only by saying no to things that you can concentrate on what's important in your life. And I love this line because it really helped me to realise the potency of that question, be it in our relationships or our career, or in our health, or in our mental health.

• 40:59Steven Bartlett?

  I think it's important and I think we need to reflect on what we hold most dear now in this moment in order to live a life and to attain a future that is in line with our values. And we need to become aware of how a yes decision is going to prevent us from doing other things that we also consider to be relatively important. It's a question that appreciates that you can't do everything and be everything and that life is about prioritisation. Prioritizing the things that are most important. And so before I say yes to something, I like to consider all of the things that I'm saying no to as a consequence of that yes. It helps me to make better decisions today. And it's a sign, a signal and a nod to how much I respect the limited amount of time I have.

• 41:43Steven Bartlett?

  And the last question, which I've written in my diary that I ask myself religiously is a much more direct question, which is, does this thing align with my values? You know, people often make decisions that don't align with their values. I know that I do it every day and there are tons of reasons people do this. You know, they, they binge on alcohol, they, they smoke 20 cigarettes a day, they have Big Mac pizza, you can't have a Big Mac pizza, they have Big Mac burgers and Domino's pizzas religiously, even though they know that their future values of health and being around to see their kids grow up and those kinds of things are in conflict with those short term detrimental actions. And often we do this because we don't stop to ask ourselves this simple question and

• 42:25Steven Bartlett?

  we don't really stop to think about this simple question, which is, how does this short term decision align with my long term values? Next time you're doing something and it doesn't feel quite right and it feels a little bit naughty, ask yourself how it's serving, what you value most in life. And that having, you know, the obsession I have now with continually cross checking the decisions I'm about to make versus the person I want to be or the life I want to attain has, has been transformative for me. Honestly, it's really, really changed my life. And I'm going to throw in a bonus question. I did say that was the last one, but I'm going to give you a bonus question, which I've just, I've just been thinking about. And it's a little bit cliche, but I promise you, it's helped me overcome, you know, some of the most fearful moments of my life.

• 43:10Steven Bartlett?

  The question is, what's the worst that will happen if I attempt this? And I remember being really, really young, 16 years old, when someone first asked me to speak on stage and then 17 and then 18 and then the stage is getting bigger and the audience is getting bigger. And I remember one day, speaking in Barcelona in front of about 10,000 people and being stood backstage and starting to feel a little bit of that anxiety, which we all feel. And I, for some reason, just like the video game mindset, which I've talked about in this podcast. I default to asking myself, what is the worst thing that can happen? And I don't just ask myself that question in the cliche way that a friend might turn to you and say it. I genuinely run through the process of what, you know, what is the worst thing that can happen?

• 43:50Steven Bartlett?

  I could walk up on stage and as I'm walking on stage, I trip on the first step, I fall, I smash my face. My trousers come down, people see my underwear and my, you know, my willy. Um, and I, I walk up on stage and then I deliver the worst speech in my life. And people start walking out and throwing stuff at me and I walk off stage. And, and to be honest, it's nearly always the case that the worst thing that can happen isn't actually as bad as you think. We tend to, you know, before we confront it and rationalize it that way and look at it in that way. We tend to, I guess, think it's death. I think, I think we think we're gonna die and everyone's gonna hate us. And, and then you ask yourself this sub-question, which is, if the worst thing that I think could happen, happens, what is the long-term impact of that on my life?

• 44:34Steven Bartlett?

  And even if I fell on the step, hit my, you know, hit my eye, walked on stage with a bleeding eye and then did the worst speech of my life, it doesn't actually have any long-term impact on my life. Okay, I wouldn't get booked to speak there again, but the, the, the material long-term impact of my life is pretty much nil. And so it doesn't make sense to be fearful because the worst possible outcome has no long, long-term impact on your life. And for me, that's a question that I really hold dear. And it's a question that I still turn to in moments of intense pressure and fear, um, fear of failure. And I think it's a question that can change your life if you're a very fearful person. Those are my questions. And I, I, um, I think it's important to have questions and be armed with questions because as I say,

• 45:17Steven Bartlett?

  in life, it turns out that having the questions is much more important than having all the answers. Okay. So the last point in my diary this week is, is just a sentence. I'm gonna read that sentence to you. The thing that invalidates you when you're younger will be the things you seek validation from when you're an adult. And this is, um, this is something that it really took me about 30 years, the 28 years I've been alive to learn. Um, when I was younger, as a lot of you will know, if you've listened to this podcast before, I came from a, a background and a family that didn't have a whole lot of money, right? We were Pretty much bankrupt for my whole, um, my whole childhood, or at least the last part of my, my, my time living at home. We lived in a, in a house that was beat up. Um, the window on the front of our house was smashed for a good decade. So,

• 46:00Steven Bartlett?

  you know, you'd get the draft coming in from outside. We lived, my back garden, the, the grass in the back garden's about six foot high. And there are fridges and TV sets and all kinds of nonsense in there. In fact, the back half of my house was actually knocked down because I think at one point my mum thought we had the money to do a renovation, but we didn't have the money. So they just, the builders just knocked the house down and just left it as a derelict house. So one of the, the doors, you know, which used to go into one of the rooms was actually, would just actually take you outside. And we just removed the, the handle so that no one could really break into our house. The front of our house was the same. We had, you know, the grass was, you know, a good metre and a half high at times. And it was fairly embarrassing. Growing up as a black kid in an all white school who already felt a little bit different with my curly hair,

• 46:46Steven Bartlett?

  knowing that our house also looked so marked, you know, remarkably different and that my life was remarkably different from a financial perspective. We didn't have, um, Christmases and birthdays by the time I was about ten, ten, eleven years old because of the financial situation we're in. And I, and I know that it created a real deep insecurity within me. I remember Christmas days, sat in my brother Kevin's room on the floor as we joked about the things we were going to pretend we got for Christmas. You know, like, and I have to make, I have to, to bring context to this, right? Like, I know now as an adult that this was a terribly naive, selfish, immature way to think. I know now that I should have been looking at all the things I did have, which was a loving family.

• 47:27Steven Bartlett?

  Two parents that were together and loved me, a roof over my head, food on the table. I know now that those were the important things, but back then, when you're a young little kid who doesn't really understand the world, you feel sorry for yourself. You engage in self pity and I did. And I would go to school embarrassed and I would go to school and lie about our financial situation and it made me insecure, invalidated me. You know, it was one of the, the biggest worries or, you know. Insecurities I had as a kid. And so at fourteen years old, I started to really, really value money. Money for me just felt so important. The lack of money we had in our life was the reason that I had so much shame. It was the reason that my mum and dad would scream at each other so much about our house and about our finances and about Christmas

• 48:12Steven Bartlett?

  and about all of these other things. And money was the problem. So I grew up thinking, and pretty obsessed with attaining money. Off I went to university at eighteen years old, dropped out, started a business to try and make loads of money. And then when I finally got money, say at twenty-one, twenty-two years old, I had a really unhealthy relationship with it. And I went to nightclubs and I spent, I think, one year like fifty, sixty thousand pounds on champagne in a nightclub at twenty-two, twenty-three years old, just to try and impress people. And then I went out to the countryside and bought this seven-bedroom mansion with a tennis court at the bottom of the garden and two living rooms and an outhouse and big gates and a one hundred metre driveway, just to try and impress people. And this

• 48:55Steven Bartlett?

  is, this is a force in our lives which will ruin our lives if we don't understand it. And the thing that I came to learn after literally like twenty-five years and after being a puppet, you know, the puppet master being this thing that had happened to me as a kid, after being a puppet that didn't know why he was doing what he was doing, but was just buying these tables in nightclubs and buying material things and trying to show off to people, I came to learn that the thing that invalidated me when I was younger had become the thing that I sought validation from as an adult. And that will be true for you, no matter what it is, no matter if it's romantic affection, no matter if it's validation, no matter if it's money, no matter what it is, the thing that invalidated

• 49:36Steven Bartlett?

  you when you were younger will be the thing that you seek validation from as an adult. And until you understand what that thing is, it risks being the number one thing that can ruin your life. I've like gone through every like corner of my childhood to try and understand the things that made me feel invalid, in order to understand some of the forces that are in play in my life right now as an adult. And honestly, it has liberated me. I wrote in my diary one day, the reasons I'll go broke. And it was pretty much this, it was because I was.

• 50:10Steven Bartlett?

  Broke when I was a kid and because that developed a really, you know, psychological issue with money where money for me became a plaster. It became the thing that would make me feel the opposite to whatever shame is. And I just think it's so important for everyone to, to, to think about the things that happened when they were young. And to understand the forces that invalidated them because if you don't understand them and if you can't make them conscious and hold them out in front of you and examine them, they will control your life subconsciously somewhere. And honestly, I've got to be honest, do I think I'll ever really overcome this unhealthy relationship I had with money?

• 50:49Steven Bartlett?

  I don't think I'll ever truly overcome it completely because it is so deeply hardwired into me. At a time in my life when I was so impressionable and when every emotion just seemed to cut more and carve into me. But that's not really my aim. My aim isn't to overcome it. My aim is to become conscious of it. And if I can become conscious of it, it has less impact over me. And fortunately, where I'm at in my life now, I don't make those stupid dumb decisions all of the time. Sometimes I make dumb decisions. Like, I'm not going to pretend I'm some fucking like prophet that, you know, lives their life perfectly and always makes decisions that are in line with their values. Sometimes I do things to impress people, but it's like 99% less than I used to.

• 51:32Steven Bartlett?

  And that's because I'm holding out my sort of psychological relationship with money in front of me. And I'm able to look at it and I'm able to question myself and interrogate my decisions against this known flaw that I have in my psychology. I'm able, Steve, why are you trying to buy a Rolls Royce? You don't really like Rolls Royces. You don't know anything about them. Nah, because you think, oh yeah. Because you think it's going to impress somebody. Because you think somewhere deep inside of you, that child that had nothing will feel more fulfilled if he has that Range Rover or that Rolls Royce or that mansion.

• 52:07Steven Bartlett?

  And whenever I go to make these big decisions now, it's the first thing I think of.

• 52:14Steven Bartlett?

  So I don't think I've overcome it. But I've definitely been able to understand it. And if you can understand it, if you can understand the thing that invalidated you when you were a kid, that's as good as overcoming it. And that will help you stop seeking validation from it as an adult.

• 52:34Steven Bartlett?

  And that... That will change your life.