Behaviour Change Scientist: How I Lost 120lbs With Kindness: Shahroo Izadi

If your friend tells you about a new goal they want to achieve, would you tell them that there is no way they can do it, or that it wasn’t for people like them? Of course you wouldn’t! But why is it that so many of us speak to ourselves in this way? If you really want to change your habits for good, behaviour change specialist Shahroo Izadi believes that this self-talk is what is holding you back from the real change you want to achieve. Instead, Shahroo believes we have to treat ourselves with kindness to create lasting difference. In this necessary conversation Shahroo breaks down her kindness method and how her own life influenced it, from her work as an addiction therapist to the struggles in her personal life. If you want to change any habit in your life for good, this episode is essential for you! Shahroo Izadi: Instagram: https://bit.ly/3IpPG0C Twitter: https://bit.ly/3IpQbI2 Website: http://bit.ly/3I7ExjA Watch the episodes on Youtube: https://g2ul0.app.link/3kxINCANKsb 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?

  Imposter syndrome. How does one move past it?

• 0:03Speaker 01

  Oh, sit back.

• 0:05Speaker 02

  Sharu Izadi.

• 0:06Speaker 03

  She is an expert in breaking bad habits and beating addiction.

• 0:09Speaker 02

  Women's Health Magazine has called her Britain's answer to Brené Brown. And she's also an author, including the number one bestseller, The Kindness Method.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  I am determined to have binge eating and powerlessness and lack of trust that people have as a direct result of weight loss diets to die with my generation.

• 0:28Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 0:29Speaker 01

  I started dieting from a really, really young age and I was using food as a drug. When I got to my heaviest, I was like, that's it, I'm done.

• 0:35Steven Bartlett?

  How heavy?

• 0:36Speaker 01

  126 kilos and it eventually culminated in secretly getting a gastric band fitted. I started working in addiction treatment and I started realising that I was going about this the wrong way. I wasn't meant to be making my body smaller. I was meant to understand why I didn't like myself enough to take the same advice I'd give someone else. When someone you love is struggling to get back on track, you don't pretend that what they're trying to do is simple and you don't tell them to throw in the towel. And that's where people feel super disempowered because they're not taking the advice they'd give another person.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  I think people feel patronised because what they needed was understanding why, if I have all this information and I want to do this, I'm not doing it. What I always tell them is...

• 1:15Steven Bartlett?

  If you were to try and identify why some people are unsuccessful in their change, what are like the overarching themes?

• 1:22Speaker 01

  One of them is...

• 1:33Steven Bartlett?

  Sharu, can you tell me what your sort of academic professional bio might say?

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did a undergrad in psychosocial sciences in Norwich and then a postgrad in psychology. And then I went on to work for the NHS. I did a one-year placement as an assistant psychologist in substance misuse in North West London. And then during that time, I was trained in all sorts of different evidence-based approaches that are used to help people to change really ingrained behaviours around, mainly around opiate and alcohol addiction.

• 2:08Steven Bartlett?

  Now, what about your personal context? So take me below the age of, you know, I'm a big believer on this show that that origin story and our childhoods really shape who we become. Tell me about that.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Well, I was born here, I was born in North London and my parents are from Iran. They came after the revolution or during the revolution. And my first language is Farsi, so I learned how to speak English. And then I moved to the States for my dad's work for a little bit and ended up coming back. And during that time, I started to struggle, I started to struggle with trauma responses to things and started stammering to the extent that I found it really hard to speak at all at school. And then we came back to the UK and I started going to school here and I didn't have a great time. I was really overweight, kids weren't super nice to me about it.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  And then I started dieting from a really, really young age because of course it was like, that's what doctors were recommending at the time. And I started to have a really mean relationship with myself. Everything from the way I spoke to myself, to what I thought I deserved, to how unboundaried I was, to like behaviours of just like low, really, really low self-esteem. To the extent where I had a lot of really shameful behaviours, a lot of codependency, a lot of anxiety, controlling stuff. I just didn't have the best time at school, to be honest. And I didn't like myself at all, like really didn't. And now that I work with people who don't like themselves, I can say with confidence that sadly I was on the more extreme end of things.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  And I developed what I now realise was a binge eating disorder.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  And where I was eating myself, I was using food as a drug essentially, I didn't know that at the time.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  And I was just eating and eating loads and then it eventually culminated in me kind of secretly getting a gastric band fitted, which gave me all sorts of other issues, lying to people, lying to my friends about it, feeling ashamed, like it was an easy way out. And then I had to have it removed by emergency surgery and it was terrifying. And when I think now about the lengths that I went to. And weirdly, the fact that I never thought to change my relationship with food, I always just thought if I was smaller, the world was telling me if you're smaller, everything will sort itself out.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  So that was the angle I was going in for. Plus, I seem to think that getting smaller would teach me how to change behaviours, which kind of does a disservice to the whole science of behavioural change anyway. And then I went to work in addiction treatment. Long story short, when I, you know, I did my, went to uni, made the same friends I have now. And I started, I started working in addiction treatment and I started realising that I was going about this the wrong way. I was going about this completely the wrong way. I wasn't meant to be making my body smaller. I was meant to understand why I didn't like myself enough to take the same advice I'd give someone else. Or I didn't like myself enough to think I was worthy of liking food.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  I didn't trust, I didn't trust myself. I felt powerless. Like, these were the fundamental things I should have been dealing with. So I went to therapy and I started getting on board with the fact that I didn't need fixing. And then my habits started changing really, really quickly. And I was like, wow.

• 5:38Steven Bartlett?

  You said a second ago, you had to figure out why you didn't like yourself. Why didn't you like yourself? Did you ever figure that out?

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, using the tools that I hand over to people now, you know, it isn't, it isn't a plug. That was the whole thing. The reason I personally didn't learn to like myself, and this will be different for each person, but I, my value was wrapped up in how I looked big time and my size. So if the scales weren't making me happy, then I wasn't having a good day. And as a result, I wasn't treating myself well in ways that may seem unrelated to other people. But I got into my head that unless you look like this, you don't deserve.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  It's almost silly for you to do the things that people who like themselves do. Acts of self-care. Even taking pride in my appearance. All kindness was conditional on me looking a certain way.

• 6:39Steven Bartlett?

  Why? Like, where had that come from?

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Well, all sorts. We can start with the fact that I was, you know, if your kid in the nineties, if your kid's being bullied for being fat, then you go to the G P, they were gonna put you on a diet. They were gonna put the kid on a diet. So with the best of intentions, that was happening. Second of all, I think the generation, particularly of women before me, the weight loss, I think weight loss dieting's got a lot to answer for. Um, in that sense, the, you know, the, this is your goal weight and this is how you'll look and then reward yourself with a new wardrobe because then you'll deserve it. Women who carry water bottles are slim and like all that shit. So it was a time. You know, that's what was going on. It isn't just that it was my own stuff and I should have done more to, not that you're saying that, but I think sometimes people will say like, what, was it deeper than that?

• 7:26Speaker 01

  And I just think women especially at that time, like, that's all you got. That's all you were shown anyway. Successful women, women who made money, women who got, you know, who were in relationships with people of value or whatever else it was, they were shown to you as a particular type of woman. And I never looked like that.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  So I just never saw that, I just never thought people like me did stuff like that. And then the worst bit was, some of it would have been really useful to me, frankly. You know, like, I'm not gonna exercise until I'm thin. I'm not gonna drink water, I'm not gonna take care of myself, I'm not gonna engage in the habits that would actually make it easier for me. So I speak to people now who are the same, who are like, they've sort of learned to put kindness towards themselves, they made it conditional on achieving a goal. They're making it harder to get there because the goal will be achieved more quickly if you take your life off hold. And I learned this, I write about this in the first book. I went to counselling and I was really, really low.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  This was maybe in twenty ten or something like that, really low. And my North Star, my whole life had been like, one day you'll be slimmer and you'll be someone who does exercise and you'll be someone who, you know, stands up straight and does their hair and all that stuff. And then you can do all the stuff. You can start enjoying the stuff. Because at this point, I was so wrapped up and not liking myself that I wasn't even listening to like a piece of music that I liked. Because I'd be like, no, no, no, hold on, wait, my day is coming. Or even if I caught myself having a nice time, like on holiday or something, I'd look down and think, or I'd catch a glimpse of myself and think, oh no, actually, you'd be having a much better time if you'd actually sorted this out. And what I didn't realise is that none of those things had anything to do with how I looked.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  I just picked up this idea along the way that I didn't deserve those things because I didn't see people who looked like me taking care of, being allowed to take care of themselves and being allowed to feel sexy and being allowed to feel all this stuff, I just didn't see it. And so then I had a session with my therapist and she said something that she was like, what if you never change? And I was so angry, I can't begin to tell you. And I'm not a particularly angry person, but I was really angry with her. Because I thought, well, if I don't change, then I never start living, I never start being nice to myself. That's what, that day never comes. So I came out, I started thinking about it, sort of entertained it, long story short,

• 9:56Speaker 01

  spent a couple of weeks acting like, if I don't change, I'm never going to change. And I just started doing the stuff that I was putting on hold. And then everything changed.

• 10:06Steven Bartlett?

  What changed?

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Well, what I needed to address was things like boundaries, things like binge eating, having no impulse control, putting a space between trigger and response. This was what was holding me back from the results I wanted, both mentally and physically, right?

• 10:26Speaker 01

  So what needed to change is that I needed to do the sorts of things and engage in the sorts of habits that enabled me to put that friction in place, to put a space between trigger and response. And it turns out, if you start from a place of feeling like shit and depriving yourself of all the stuff that makes you feel calm and positive, it's considerably harder to impose that space and to calmly decide which version of yourself you want to behave from. So as such, I was depriving myself of a real asset that could have helped me to do things in a row until they get easier, which ultimately is what I see all behavioural change as. You know, I can see great books on behavioural change in the background there. We're all trying to make people do things in a row until they're easier.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  My way about it is just saying that if you're nicer to yourself and you have the same conversation with yourself in that space, and you do the things that make that space calm and positive and feel mature, in the way of self-care and self-soothing and self-compassion and affirmation, then you can take it choice by choice in the direction of it becoming easier until you really do update the fact, this idea, this assumption that you can't do it.

• 11:34Steven Bartlett?

  And this leads on to The Kindness Method, which was the first book you wrote, very much inspired by your own experience with weight loss and struggles there. You work with people that want to change, you know? Many of them, I'm sure, are successful in that change. Some of them are unsuccessful in that change. If you were to try and identify why some people are unsuccessful in their change, what are like the overarching themes?

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Oh, sit back. So I've got, one of them is focusing on the outcome, thinking that your long-term desired outcome is going to be compelling enough on the spot to get you where you want to be. So you start from a place of desperation, this is it, this has got to change, I want this, I want the health, I want the outcome, I want the progression. And then you forget that that isn't, that isn't going to be enough. Your motivation will waver. Your plans will not go to plan. And you're going to need to have a conversation with yourself when your plans don't go to plan. That talks you into taking, making a decision you'll be proud you made the next day. So I think, one, people wildly underestimate how much it's about zooming in and getting

• 12:45Speaker 01

  involved in and excited about demonstrating your capacity in a row. As opposed to hoping that remedying some negatives long term will be exciting enough to keep you on track, long enough to make that habit automatic. The other thing that people do wrong, I think, is focus on what's wrong with them as opposed to their assets. And they, and they don't have that locked and loaded for that moment where they doubt themselves, they want to throw in the towel and think, I can't do this. They need to be ready to have to really debate with that, with genuine evidence to the contrary. In the spirit of wanting to update it more generally, not just in the context of that habit, taking life off hold.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  So all those things I said now, everything you're going to reward yourself with, really look at it and ask yourself, if I started doing it now, would it put me in a better position to do difficult things, which is ultimately what behavioral change is? Simple, but not easy. The other thing people do is they, um, what else? Oh, yeah, of course. I mean, you've had Gabor Maté on here. The, um, they focus on what's wrong with the behavior that they're engaging in, as opposed to how it's serving them. They look at it as a problem as opposed to a solution. And not only does that take away the component of compassion and understanding that's required when they're stuck thinking, why am I finding this so hard? I have no willpower, I must be stupid, or whatever it is.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  It also deprives you of understanding whether there's a problem that still needs solving when you take that away. And with compassion. And sometimes people find themselves filling that gap with another solution. As opposed to doing it in a way that says, you know what? This behavior is doing a job for me. So if I'm not changing, something's going on. And that needs some curious, compassionate inquiry. That definitely. I think the other thing is that, um, this whole tough love, the way you speak to yourself thing.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  People, people think that like tough love when you're speaking to yourself often isn't very smart love. So if, let's say for example, you came to me and you're like, Shro, I'm trying to stay on track with this plan and I've just fallen off track. And I'm, and my task was to get you back on track, believing in yourself as quickly as possible and equipping you to carry on, ultimately making myself redundant to you. I wouldn't say to you, come on, you shouldn't be finding this so hard. This should be easier. This is just like your teacher told you when you were little. You're just the sort of person who starts things, doesn't finish them. And then you should start on Monday.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  You know, that's smart. It's not smart. And that's where people feel super disempowered because they're not taking the advice they'd give another person. That's the important bit here. That's the self-esteem bit. We don't have a problem in knowing how to change habits and people don't have a problem in knowing what habits they want to change and how they would benefit them. And now, thanks to many of the books behind you, we don't have a problem understanding exactly how habit change works. I think people feel patronized because what they needed was understanding why if I have all this information and I'm smart and I want to do this, I'm not doing it. And instead of beating themselves up about it, to delve into the story. How did I come to be this way? With compassion.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  How cool is it that this isn't my fault, but I've decided to make it my responsibility? How can I use behavioral change as a Trojan horse? And the discomfort I have to sit in that's unavoidable, short term, urges, cravings, to listen in on the way that I speak to myself and work out whether these predictable alerts from my body are turning into commands that I'm obeying. I just think these are check-ins we should do. And I wanted to give people something so that they didn't feel like they had to wait till things got really bad. And also, so it was a private process. That's what the kindness method became. It was basically everything useful I wish I'd had, everything useful I saw in addiction. And then when I went on to train addiction staff, which was my next job after that and

• 17:01Speaker 01

  work in criminal justice, just everything useful I saw with the most challenging, resistant client, myself included. Bear in mind, I start using this stuff and like iterating, using it on myself, using it in different ways.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  And I put it in the book step by step.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Just in case there were people like me. Who wanted to change habits on their own terms. Kind of checking with the program that they're running, where did it come from? Who's it from? Do I want to? Switch it up? Do I want to update it? Some of it fake news. I think habit change is a great Trojan horse for listening in on the way you speak to yourself. And debating with it until. It's updated and I'm really surprised that we don't do that in life.

• 17:47Steven Bartlett?

  If I've got a really stubborn story that I tell myself. Really stubborn, you know, something traumatic that happened to me under the age of, I don't know, ten. And it's created a story, a narrative in my mind. That is just, you know. Has control of the wheel, is driving my life, my decisions and is driving the self-talk in my head that's utterly negative. You must encounter people who have that, that just can't shake it. Is that possible that there are some things that we just can't? That just have too much power over us. They've, they've changed the, the circuitry in our brain to an extent that. You know. We can't change.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  I don't think people like me. Should say yes or no to things when they don't know who they're talking to with the size of the platform that you have, to be honest with you. Of course there are traumas that I can't speak to. Of course, I mean, I've worked in addiction, with young people in addiction. I wouldn't have the audacity to sit here and say, yeah, just. And that's, that's actually what really pisses me off about Instagram sometimes. I'll see, I'll see something and I'll be like, oh, just replace a negative thought with a positive one. It's like, oh, wow. Are you a wizard? You should be on the news.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  And, but I think one thing I will say is I have been really pleasantly surprised by what happens when you appeal.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  To people's need for evidence. Disprove it. The stuff we tell ourselves a lot of the time, it's not true. Or it hasn't been true for a long time. That's compelling.

• 19:12Steven Bartlett?

  People think they can disprove it by looking in the mirror and saying. That's not true. You're, I love you and you're amazing and you're fantastic. You're going to be so successful. Does that work?

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Helps.

• 19:23Steven Bartlett?

  Does it?

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Some people, yeah. Affirmations help, yeah, of course. I think with all this stuff, it's got to be a combination of things. I think people just have to have to be given the permission to not be judged, to strip this harmless stuff down, you know, and do it in a combination of ways that makes them feel good. You want to do a couple of affirmations for a while, fine. When you go off it, you want to do something else, whatever, fine. I just feel like we have to hold it lightly and stop calling it remedial. You're just checking in with yourself.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  But no, I think, listen, I was a pretty extreme case. And for me, it was a case of saying, right, which, when you write down, it's one of the exercises in the first, in both books, actually, when you start writing down, like, what are the things I say to myself when I fall off track? A lot of people realise that they don't even use that vocabulary in their day to day life. That's not theirs. And that makes it compelling to change it, too.

• 20:18Steven Bartlett?

  What is it that people tend to say when they fall off? What did you say when you fell off?

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Me? Oh, all of it, like, of course, I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm weak willed, some people can do it. That was just, that was a fluke anyway, that I had a bit of a streak. People like me don't get things like that. Mainly, I'm weak, I'm stupid, I must hate myself. Because bear in mind, all these people are giving you these like legit reasons why you should do other stuff and you're going the other way and telling you that you're harming yourself and you know that you are. You know, I'm powerless, I'm weak, I can't trust myself, all of it. And then thinking up like extreme ways to sort it out.

• 20:55Steven Bartlett?

  They do that because they love you though, right? Like, that's the paradox, is they're doing that to try and help you. They're saying, you're doing something wrong, you know, you're...

• 21:01Speaker 01

  No, well, no, actually, if you think about it, like, when you tell someone you, when someone you love is struggling to get back on track,

• 21:11Speaker 01

  you don't pretend that what they're trying to do is simple.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  And you don't tell them to throw in the towel. You remind them of their capacity to do something difficult. You remind them of the times they've done difficult things in the past. And you support them. Plus, you give them perspective. This is what I mean about the smart thinking, too. You don't go, oh, well, you've that one blip. That's you've got got to just spiral. This is a terrible catastrophe. You say, well, just get back on track. And, you know, back in the day, like, the first thousand times I had this conversation about self-talk, I used to always use the example in groups and stuff like, think of someone you love. Write down what you'd say to someone you love. Write their name in the middle of the page. If they'd fallen off track and you were tasked with getting them on back on track. And through the discomfort involved in achieving their most meaningful long-term goals.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  So their behaviors and their values are aligning. And people would write like, you can do this. You're amazing. What can I do for you? It's just a blip. You can learn from it. Think of all the other amazing things you've done. And then I would get them to cross that that person's name out and write their own name in. In the spirit of starting to say, look, this is by your own admission. These are the things that you would tell someone you love. Then over time, I realized if I gave someone a hundred grand to motivate someone who's fallen off track. They're not going to say, oh, it's because you're weak. And you're rubbish, just like your teachers told you. There's no point starting until Monday. You might as well, you know, destruct this whole thing for now. You might as well throw the whole plan out.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Just because of one tiny blip because you weren't perfect. It's not just kind. It's just not good advice. Yeah, I'm just not here for the tough love.

• 22:56Steven Bartlett?

  There's this word we use a lot in society at the moment, which is impostor syndrome. It's a really interesting concept. I mean, the word itself, the phrase itself is kind of loaded with a series of assumptions that I don't think are necessarily helpful. But you must, in your practice, deal with.

• 23:14Steven Bartlett?

  A lot of people that are showing signs of what we know as imposter syndrome. What's your, what's your take on it? And really like, how does one, how does one move past it?

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Well, this is a very new, this is a hot take because it's through an observation. The way that I come up with things is I spend as many hours as I can speaking to people, human beings, one after the other, as many human beings as I can in different contexts, and seeing how they are using these tools and what's working for them and what isn't. And for imposter syndrome, essentially not, not being able to internalize

• 23:52Speaker 01

  your accomplishments, feeling like a fraud, which I've had.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Managing my binge eating and my anxiety differently helped me, changed my imposter syndrome for the better. And I'm seeing why that is now. I've just started to work, well, now that I'm so passionate about binge eating as a result of weight loss diets being a thing that goes with my generation.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  What I've noticed is that when people give themselves permission to find whatever they find difficult, difficult, whatever it is, even if it's subjectively far more simple than all the things they're managing to do every day, something extraordinary happens.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  And that tends to have a really extraordinary impact because usually with the people I work with, because I'm talking about like booze and other drugs and food and stuff, there's a lot of shame and guilt associated with it. So that extra bit, we all, we all find it difficult to acknowledge, you know, a lot of us find it difficult to say, I was great at this. And that's the end of the sentence without any caveats or, and it could have been da, da, da.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  When it comes to acknowledging our, say, our professional accomplishments or academic accomplishments, the people I work with a lot of the time feel so ashamed and guilty about this thing that, that still eludes them. That, that's the bit, they'll be like, yeah, I got a pay rise, but I still haven't sorted this out. People don't know how I behave when no one's watching. And like, that bit, that's what drags people down. It doesn't let them really. Really internalize and process their capacity. Because, well, for example, I've written two books. That's cool. They've done well.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Um, writing books was not hard for me. Doing this, this is way, this is, you know, being able to not stammer while I speak to you. Because I had the confidence to sit and breathe before I came in here rather than look at notes. Or only binge eaters will understand this, but being able to start a binge and then bring it back. As opposed to just starve myself for weeks or whatever I was doing before. Is a power and a trust in myself and an ability to close the gap between what I, what I would tell other people to do and what I do. And a sense of integrity when no one's watching. That seeps into every area of my life.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  But the trick was to allow myself to find something incredibly difficult that other people thought was a no brainer. And not think that that meant I was stupid or weak, but just that's the way things have gone for me.

• 26:34Steven Bartlett?

  I, I remember sitting with Marissa Pia. Um, and she said that she's never had a patient, whether they were a sports star or a, you know, successful millionaire or whatever.

• 26:46Steven Bartlett?

  That believed they were enough in terms of her patients. So the people that had come to her struggling with something at the root of it is that they, they didn't believe they were enough in some capacity. Do you agree with that?

• 27:01Speaker 01

  I think, uh, yeah, I think self-worth. Self-worth is something that comes up a lot.

• 27:07Steven Bartlett?

  And if I come to you and I, you know, it's clear that I have my self-worth is in the proverbial bin. I just think I'm a fucking, you know, useless, worthless, don't deserve anything.

• 27:21Steven Bartlett?

  What's the start of that process to, to get me to a better place? Like, where do you, what do you do with me?

• 27:26Speaker 01

  So if you came to me, it wouldn't be just, the problem wouldn't be I don't, I have low self-worth. It would be, I want to change this behavior.

• 27:33Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  Right?

• 27:33Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, and I want to change it. I've been, you know, drinking too much alcohol, smoking too much of that, sniffing too much of this.

• 27:40Steven Bartlett?

  Where would you start with me?

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Well, we would get an honest baseline of where you're at now. So that's why in the book, we do like a snapshot letter without judgment, totally private. To just say like, I think a lot of the time we create plans for who we want to be as opposed to who we are. And we use this stuff to find ourselves. And I think first of all, you meet yourself and you get on board with who you meet.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  And then I would help you to understand why you've come to be this way.

• 28:07Steven Bartlett?

  So in that first step, getting, you know, getting to understand who I am and getting on board with who I meet. That's through a snapshot letter.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's essentially saying, here we are today. This is where I'm at. This is where I've got to. This is where I'm starting. Usually it's quite a fed up letter, like something's got to change. Here we go. But what it does is it sort of anchors the process and says, right, this is where we begin. And then what we start moving on to is the fact that you already know what to do. I believe that the people who buy my books already know what to do. And I believe that a lot of people feel really patronized when they're told what to do. They know what to do. And if they don't, they can Google it. They don't know why they're not doing it despite wanting to do it. So then we start thinking about closing the gap between the advice you'd give another person. So I just say to people, what would you like to be doing?

• 28:59Speaker 01

  I don't give them an A or a B.

• 29:01Steven Bartlett?

  I would like to be running a marathon every, you know, every couple of months. I'd like to be fit. I'd like to be skinny. I'd like to be a good partner. I want to be perfect.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Why, why are you here? Why are we having this conversation?

• 29:18Steven Bartlett?

  Because I'm not. I'm drinking so much alcohol, sniffing so many things and doing all the naughty things I shouldn't be doing. And I can't stop myself. But I know you're right. I do know what I should be doing. I just can't do it.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:32Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  And in the past, when you've created plans to change.

• 29:35Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  What have they looked like?

• 29:39Steven Bartlett?

  I've basically thrown all of the alcohol out my house and everything that I could possibly sniff. And I have emptied the fridge and put only vegetables in. And I have written it down on a piece of paper. And then a week later.

• 29:58Steven Bartlett?

  And back to all of the naughty habits.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  So what you've done is you've punished yourself, you've put things in place.

• 30:04Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  To say this has got bad.

• 30:05Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  I need to create this environment and control and isolate.

• 30:09Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  So that I don't do the bad thing.

• 30:11Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Did you establish why, what, what you're afraid you might have to experience if you change? Did you identify if you get there? What if it's not as good as you think? If you get there, will you have to do all the things that you've told people you're going to do when you get there? Is the process of getting there one that you're familiar with?

• 30:28Steven Bartlett?

  No.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  All of that, what do you think you're going to have to get through? What are you going to have to prove? What do you, what triggers you're going to have to respond to differently? These are the things people don't talk about. What self doubt are you going to have to push against and disprove and update along the way? It's, it's not about thinking you're going to be able to focus on what's bad. And also you should anticipate that in a week's time, you're going to want to use. You should put things in place.

• 30:52Steven Bartlett?

  What can I put in place to, you know, this is, I found this really compelling in your book, the, because it's something I think about a lot. You know, we think of motivation as being this like constant, people ask stupid questions like, how do you stay motivated all the time? Which is again, it's an assumption that people that are successful in whatever facet of their life are able to always feel a sense of motivation. But um, how does one prepare for that? That dip, that speed bump, that, you know, the regression, the relapse?

• 31:20Speaker 01

  It's, I think the best bet you have is the conversation you have with yourself when your plans don't go to plan. And of the, I think first of all, you prepare by, yeah, you can have the best plans in the world, but you should assume that your plans will not go to plan. And even with the best tools in the world, you should assume that you're not able to preempt every single trigger, every single challenge. The way that you do it is you start to reframe challenge as an opportunity to voluntarily demonstrate your capacity.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  You're like, here we go. I, I'm off, I'm off grid right now. And all I've got is the advice I'd give another person and the conversation I have with myself that's going to turn into what I do with my hands, or don't do. And I think that if you really focus on making that conversation, one that holds firmness and compassion together,

• 32:10Speaker 01

  then that's the best thing you've got. Because what you're chasing there is to feel smart and calm and proud of yourself. And you already know what you tell someone else.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  So the more you do that and the more you take that advice and you see the results, obviously, and it actually works, the more you start doing it in other areas of your life. And my, my job is to make myself redundant to people as quickly as possible. I think we should have been taught this at school. We have to change habits our whole lives. Like, why is life dragging us along and making us change them when we're all depleted and desperate? So yeah, I would say it's the conversation you have with yourself. And the conversation you have with yourself, very often, people, people say to me like, how, how can I hold kindness and firmness at the same time, right? So how can I change habits which involve sitting in discomfort and craving and urges and still be kind to myself? Because being kind to myself means doing whatever I want, whenever I want to

• 33:03Speaker 01

  do it. And what I always tell them is, it's kind of like if you, let's say you have a kid and you read an article somewhere and realize that this treat you've been giving your kid at 11am every day for the last year is actually not very, it's, it's really unhealthy. So as of tomorrow, you're not going to give the kid the treat. You know you're not going to give the kid the treat. The kid doesn't know yet. Kid wakes up tomorrow, it's 11 o'clock, you're not going to give them the treat. What's, what's the kid gonna do?

• 33:31Steven Bartlett?

  Want the treat.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  And, and what else?

• 33:33Steven Bartlett?

  Cry.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Kick off, yeah?

• 33:35Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Would you blame the kid for crying?

• 33:40Steven Bartlett?

  No.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  You'd expect the kid to cry.

• 33:42Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  It's used to something. You wouldn't make its life miserable. You'd make it as comfortable as possible. And you just repeat that in a row until it realizes that it's come out unscathed. Compassion. I know why you feel this way. Of course you feel this way. You deserve to feel this way. You scream all you want, babe. That doesn't mean I'm gonna do what you want. That's the conversation you have with your body over and over again, where you hold compassion and firmness together until you've done it in a row, until it's easy. That's my angle.

• 34:12Steven Bartlett?

  And if I, it, does it, does it help to remove the, you know, the kid wants the candy or whatever, whatever the thing the kid was expecting in the morning? Does it help to remove it from the environment? So if I, if it's, you know, I've struggled sometimes with like, I had this like sweetie drawer in my house at one point and

• 34:30Steven Bartlett?

  I I knew I didn't want to eat the sweets, but when something would happen, maybe it'd be late at night, I feel a bit hungry, maybe you know, a bit stressed, I'd end up in a drawer. And so I always always wondered to myself, would it just help to just remove the drawer? Just like pour it in the bin? I ultimately did.

• 34:47Steven Bartlett?

  But I'm just wondering if those cues, those triggers, removing them completely is the answer.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  I have this question all the time about abstinence and sobriety and whether. Actually, no, again, there are some people for whom it's easier. My approach is very much more for the general population. And so a lot of the time it's more, you know, we all sit in the middle. And I want you to feel like you can have chocolate in your house and consume it and enjoy it and not feel powerless over it. So at the core of my message is you decide what you do with your hands. And any negotiation you have internally about it is a jumping off point and doesn't actually make you do anything. And is an insight into how what you're telling yourself about the sugar and what it means and how you'll feel if you don't have it.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  If you were trying to build up a streak and get some time under your belt, yeah, maybe. But ultimately, what I would recommend under those circumstances, impose some friction. Give yourself some speed bumps to start thinking about whether you actually want to do it. So for example, if I want to, if I'm working into the night, writing, which I love doing. Invariably, at like 1am, I start thinking about Deliveroo. And about 3am, I regret it strongly.

• 35:59Steven Bartlett?

  Same.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  So with that in mind, I don't just delete Deliveroo. Car details are out, address is out. It's not because I don't trust myself.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  It's because I want to put in moments where I think, ah, remember you didn't want to do this? Do you remember why you didn't want to do this? Make it harder for myself to do the thing that I don't want to be doing. And easier for myself to do the thing that I do. Like back in the day when I used to hate exercise, I used to go to sleep in my gym kit.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  So there's just one less thing to do.

• 36:29Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm. So that's like removing friction first than adding it.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Exactly. So I would, if I were you, I'd impose friction first, like put that drawer somewhere else. And, and then when you go looking in another place, start thinking to yourself, God, why is that drawer? It disrupts the autopilot.

• 36:49Steven Bartlett?

  That's what's something I struggled with. I, I do a lot of like late night eating and then I always regret it in the morning because you wake up feeling bad. And especially if you've eaten just before you fall asleep, the body hasn't really had a chance to digest it. Sometimes you get like some, I don't know, reflux, whatever they call it. And I've always wondered how to stop myself doing that when I have, when I have the urge. How do I break that habit? I guess, what's the friction that I can add?

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Don't be hungry at that time.

• 37:14Steven Bartlett?

  True.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  That's, do you know what? Sometimes I get really deep in the weeds about binge eating and policy around it and obesity and how we've got to take down all the diets and everything. And sometimes I forget to say stuff like, don't be hungry. That helps, you know? Like there's so many like deep psychological stuff and we all have our own complex relationship with food and stuff. And that's what's really difficult about talking about food is because it is all the good things too. It really is. And much like with alcohol and other drugs, when people, people who struggle and feel powerless around it feel really misunderstood. Because they hate it by that point. It's the bane of their life. It's all they think about all day. Have I been good? Have I been bad?

• 37:55Speaker 01

  What am I going to have? Was that okay? Conflicting nutritional advice, like it's got out of hand.

• 38:02Steven Bartlett?

  You wrote a book about that topic, The Last, called The Last Diet. Why did you call it The Last Diet?

• 38:07Speaker 01

  Because I will never go on a diet again. I don't want anyone to go on a diet again. They didn't work.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  They, they just didn't work. Like whenever anybody says to me, like, Yeah, but so and so is overweight and it's unhealthy or whatever, they have to go on a diet. I'm like, well, no, actually quite the contrary. I'm now working with people who have not only been left not with the physical results that they wanted, but have been left with a much more serious issue, which is an eating disorder, a binge eating disorder, which is wildly damaging their mental health and their self-esteem and their ability to enjoy their lives. Most of the people who come to me now couldn't give a shit about losing weight anymore. They're like, remove this lack of trust, remove this powerlessness, like make this end. How did this come about? And that was because of weight loss diets, in my opinion.

• 38:53Steven Bartlett?

  On the back of this book, it says, this is the last diet you'll ever go on.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:58Steven Bartlett?

  What is that diet?

• 39:01Speaker 01

  It's the diet of learning to stop, of trusting yourself and taking common sense advice. Now, obviously, we can, we can go into like whose body what and blood types and da, da, da, da. But ultimately, the people I speak to are doing so much, so many of their behaviours are causing them to gain weight, a lot of weight, because of the guilt and the shame and the all or nothing and the scarcity mindset and the feast or famine that has come with weight loss diets with the best of intentions.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  And so, once they have managed that and built the self-efficacy that they so deserve from managing to break the all or nothing thinking, trust themselves around food, learn to enjoy food again, sit in the discomfort of realising that they're going to be okay without it, get on board with the fact that they find it hard when other people don't, and build their self-esteem that way and use the unhelpful behaviours as a vehicle to remembering how capable they are,

• 39:59Speaker 01

  then they can just take the same advice they would give to another person because they're not scared of food anymore and they're not scared of themselves anymore. And they like themselves, so they're more inclined to make, to make judgements that feel smart. You know, I got to a stage where I was doing diets where someone would show me a banana and a canister of cream and I'd be like, well, the canister of cream is obviously better for me.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  That's how messed up diet and do you know what? I know you think it's weird. I assure you, I've spoken to enough people now who are going, I know exactly what she's talking about. That's the extent to which intelligent people start moving away from intelligent decisions. Because diets needed us to come back. They needed you to be powerless. They need you to need guidelines or else you need to pay more and pay someone else and go find another guru or get another diet. As opposed to teach you how to take the same advice you'd give another person. There is no way that if someone was trying to manage their weight and they ate something bad, you would say, oh, well, you've blown it now. You should have fifteen more.

• 40:59Steven Bartlett?

  You said earlier, you secretly had a gastric band fitted.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Well, secretly, close friends knew, but a lot of my close friends didn't know. I was just done. When I got to my heaviest, I was like, that's it, I'm done.

• 41:11Steven Bartlett?

  How heavy?

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Hundred and twenty six kilos.

• 41:16Steven Bartlett?

  And then you had it removed in like an emergency operation?

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm always careful about talking about it because again, I'm afraid that people are gonna be, actually, you know what? I'm not promoting it by any means, sorry. I, I know that there are people for whom it's been really helpful, but it did not teach me to eat differently. And the reason I had an emergency operation is because my relationship with food was so profoundly important to me. I didn't understand at the time that I, um. I've never talked to anyone about this, but the band moved. Cause I overate.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  But I kept having it tightened because I didn't want to be allowed to overeat. Cause I thought if I've done this to myself and honestly, Steve, like the pain.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  It was horrible. It was horrible. I felt so ashamed. And then I lost a bunch of weight because it actually can. I won't go into details, but it can cause a different eating disorder. I lost a bunch of weight and I, people start being really nice, like, you know, they reflect back to you your worst fears. When you lose weight, they'll be like, oh, wow. We were so worried about you. Finally, now you can live your life. And you're like, shit, I thought that was just me.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Um, and then I felt ashamed because I thought like I'd copped out. And now I realize on reflection, it's extraordinary that I thought I'd copped out. And do you know what? The first version of the kindness method doesn't have that in it. I wasn't ready. I wasn't, I hadn't forgiven myself for being so mean to myself. I hadn't forgiven myself for feeling so shameful.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  And I hadn't told some of my closest friends who were there at the time, and I'm sure knew. Um, but had the grace and the kindness not to embarrass me.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  But it was horrible. And the day I came out of surgery, I remember with the, the emergency surgery. They told me they were gonna try and keep it in. And I remember I came out and the woman went, um.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  I'm really sorry we had to take it out. And I burst into tears of joy. I hated it. I hated the whole thing. I hated the lying. I hated the shame. I hated the guilt. My body didn't feel good. Because even when I lost weight, it wasn't because I was taking care of myself. It's because I was liv- living on so little. It just felt like another version of punishment, you know? Um, it did not do good things for me.

• 43:40Steven Bartlett?

  How do you, how do you feel about that person that you were, that, that young woman who made the decision to fit that band and went through all of that pain? How do you, how do you feel about her?

• 43:53Speaker 01

  I can't believe how quick she was to think that people would be upset with her or ashamed of, or, or that she should be ashamed. I can't believe there wasn't that extra layer that said, gosh. This is tough. This isn't nice. Look what you're having to put yourself through, or you think you have to put yourself through. There wasn't even a bit of that. It was as though I was born with the knowledge, is as though I had told, told myself that I was born with the knowledge to make the best decisions for myself ever. And if I wasn't, then it was a failing on my part and I was faulty.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  And I, you know, I don't feel that anymore, thank goodness.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  You know, I think it's also important to remember that I was all the great things I am now then. That was the point. I was allowed to enjoy my life then. So there's also a part of me that's just like, wow, it's a real shame. It's a real shame that you didn't kind of lean into the other stuff. Because I was always fun, I was always funny, I was always kind.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  I wish I had known at that age that you're allowed to think that your good things too. That, you know, that's okay.

• 45:04Steven Bartlett?

  Were there any sort of specific moments or catalysts or dominoes that fell that created the change you've seen in your life from the person you were then to now? Was there, you know, if someone can relate strongly to that situation, where you're having that gastric band removed in an emergency op, and they're looking at the person you are now. What's the piece in between, the actionable piece in between that they can, or even the first step in that journey? Is it going and seeing a therapist? Is it?

• 45:37Speaker 01

  The first actionable step is practicing, listening, listening into the way you speak to yourself.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  I think it'll, I think ultimately it comes down to that. I think listen in, and the great news is if you try to change a habit, however small, it's an incredibly effective way to turn up the volume.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Listen in on what's going on. Inquire compassionately, curiously. What am I telling myself? What are my, what are my assumptions about myself in this situation? What are my assumptions about what I deserve? Curiously, write them down, think about whether you'd say that to someone else. And then start thinking about where it came from. Start seeing whether it's true. Just start curiously inquiring, because I think that's the best thing you've got, and it's free.

• 46:30Steven Bartlett?

  Where are you, where are you now in terms of your own self-talk and your own process and your own perception of self?

• 46:37Speaker 01

  I am really good. I am.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  This is the best I've ever been.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Because everything's not great. There's a lot going on and I'm fine. That's why. That's how I know. I know how I would have responded to things that are happening right now, two, three, five years ago. This. You know, I slept really well last night, I'm not telling you. I kind of felt like this would go well. Like this was my time to tell people what I'm passionate about and speak to the people who feel like some people don't get them.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  So right now I feel great because it's kind of, it feels like my nervous system's kind of got the message. You're safe, you're harmless, you're just trying to be nice. And no one's coming for you like. And so far. The more I'm myself, the more it seems to go all right. Which for me personally is of course, considering what I've told you, is an extraordinary thing. And other than when I have to say my name on the spot, which I know a lot of stammerers have. I don't seem to be stammering and I know that it was a trauma response now. And I think that a lot of the self compassion work that I've done has helped me to calm down. Like a lot of this stuff, realise that if I stammered all the way through this.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  I'd still be someone who is worth listening to.

• 48:04Steven Bartlett?

  That nervous system, the anxiety you talked about, what sort of methods have you put in place to help you calm down?

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Writing for sure. So when I'm panicking about something, most of the time, you know, there's that confirmation component of just like, yep. And it did happen, you only remember the times it did happen, right? So I started collecting all the things I thought were going to happen, that I was worrying about. And like just writing them down or just saying them into my phone. And then every now and then I'd reflect and be like, wow, good to know that like, I need evidence. You know, I need stuff. So I was like, all right, well, the last hundred times you worried about this, it did not happen. And so that helped me calm down. That made it compelling for me. Breathwork. Talking about anxiety, understanding anxiety and what it is and what the brain's trying to do and about keeping you safe and all that stuff.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  And eventually, much like, you know, whether it's the militant mindfulness that I come at, or the more like meditative stuff and the more old school stuff, it was essentially a separation between what I'm thinking right now and what's actually going on, and a curious compassionate look into why my thoughts are going the way they are. And also, it's an understanding, it's a preemption. So for example, I should, well, I probably won't now that I've said it, which is another thing, like get it out, put it in the, put it in the light. Loads of us are suffering with anxiety, to a different degree, of course. But preempting it made it a lot more predictable and a lot less personal.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  So for example, the last big podcast I went on, I anticipated, I actually wrote myself a letter before, and I was like, after you leave, even if you think you smashed it, you're gonna start second guessing everything you said. You're gonna sketch out and not want to talk to anyone about it, because they're gonna ask you questions and you're gonna think you forgot something. So I just preempted it. I just, as we say in addiction, I played the tape forward. And then it started making it more like, oh yeah, this is what my brain does to keep me safe, take me back to my place where I'm used to. But actually, the last hundred times it tried to do that, I had nothing to be worried about. So I kind of just realised that I wasn't by myself anymore, I was with myself. And we were working out what was going on. And it got a lot more predictable, and that made it a lot less personal, which made me a lot more calm.

• 50:24Steven Bartlett?

  And in terms of food?

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:26Steven Bartlett?

  What's your relationship like with food these days?

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Calm and wonderful. I never thought this day would come. I eat what I like. I look forward to eating.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  I don't feel like I need to justify to anyone what I'm eating or why I'm eating it. And, great thing happened, which for me, you know, with writing self-help books and stuff, you know, especially when you're telling people, you're gonna change for good, and I've changed for good. Well, I only wrote it five years ago, what do they know? You know, so sometimes you have to do things privately for your own integrity to be like, oh, thank fuck for that. And lockdown, I put on weight. I didn't eat differently. I didn't feel bad. I thought I looked great. And I was like, yes, I needed this. And then after lockdown, I got into fitness and I've lost weight, lost a bit more weight. And I honestly, I don't like myself less or more. So during lockdown, what I saw was,

• 51:22Speaker 01

  An example of what it is to just be a human whose body fluctuates without much judgment or emotion around food. And it was a wonderful, important lesson for me. And I'm really glad now on reflection, even though it wasn't planned, that I did put on weight during that period because I needed to see that it didn't matter anymore. And it wasn't because I was neglecting myself because usually I run around town all day and I wasn't doing that. And it was so lovely to just have that be for regular body reasons and not shame or guilt or sadness or abuse or numbing out or whatever.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  So yeah, I love food now. Plus,

• 51:57Speaker 01

  I'm really glad no one talks to me about it anymore because of the book that I think they're scared to.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  I think people don't quite know where I sit like because I think it's fine for people to want to lose weight.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  I think it's really messed up that we got told for a lifetime, especially women. Lose weight, lose weight, lose weight, lose weight. Oh, no. You can't go on a diet and you're not allowed to want to lose weight. You have to love your body exactly how it is. Meantime, a bunch of us tried to do what they said and came out of the diets bigger and with a eating disorder that makes us feel powerless even to even to follow common sense nutritional guidelines. So yeah, I don't have any problem with people wanting to do whatever they want to do. It's just that in my case, it came as a result. I was never before lockdown, when I'd done all this work and I had all the methods and all the things I share. There was never a time when I was overweight because I liked food. Or I was enjoying food or it was too much of a good thing.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  That's why I understood addiction. If you saw that I was overweight according to whatever, you know, scales and society and whatever, bigger than I am now. It was always because I, those are the times I hated food the most. It was the bane of my life. I barely tasted it. I know. But the same if you speak to someone who feels dependent or powerless over alcohol. They're not going to be like, oh, I love booze.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  It becomes, when you're powerless, it becomes horrible. And so there was a space for me to like myself a lot more when I was bigger.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  But because I neglected all these other habits of self-care, I wasn't drinking water. It wasn't like just basic stuff.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  At times when I was bigger, it meant that I wasn't being good to myself. But that is not the case for everyone by any means. In fact, for many people, it's quite the opposite. So that's where I think, because it's quite a nuanced conversation and one that I've given an enormous amount of thought to, don't get me wrong, I didn't. I didn't, I wasn't naive about coming out to talk about things like this. I knew I needed to work out where I sat, but I knew I meant well. And I knew I was on the right path, but I had to understand where I sat. So that's where now, I think people sometimes they don't ask me about it because they're not sure which side I'm on. And the fact is, it's both.

• 54:24Steven Bartlett?

  What is your mission now? What's your, what's your personal mission? What are you trying to do in the world?

• 54:29Speaker 01

  It's twofold. I want, one, I want to convince people that kindness gets shit done. Being nice to yourself and taking the same advice you would give the people you love and closing the gap between what you would tell them and what you tell yourself and what actions you would tell them to take and what actions you take yourself. That's kindness and it gets shit done. One. And two, now that I've seen what's come back from the second book with The Last Diet, I am, I am determined to have binge eating and powerlessness and lack of trust that people have as a direct result of weight loss diets to die with my generation. Like, it's gotta go.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Cause people my age, they know they don't want to pass this on to their kids. No one does. Um, it's going with me.

• 55:25Steven Bartlett?

  We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question for the next guest, um, not knowing who they're leaving it for. The question that they've left for you. Or is it ever appropriate to hurt someone's feelings?

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  I think so. I've recently hurt someone's feelings and it was very upsetting for me as well, but it was appropriate because it wasn't all mine to carry and it was appropriate to share. It wasn't nice for me either, but it wasn't all mine. So it was okay to say to them,

• 56:06Speaker 01

  this is, this is what's upset me about you and I know it will upset you to hear this, but I shouldn't be carrying all of this when you're responsible for some of it.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  And that will have upset them. Yeah.

• 56:27Steven Bartlett?

  Sure. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for these wonderful books. Thank you for all of your work. Thank you for the wonderful way that you articulate and deliver your opinions. It's, it really does cut and that's, that's exactly what makes for a great conversationalist and podcaster. And I love your no BS approach to the way that you communicate and serve and think, because it's, it's really refreshing, to be honest. And that's very much why I've loved this conversation, but also I wanted you to come here because I saw your conversation with Mo.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Ah, yes.

• 56:57Steven Bartlett?

  You have a really no BS way of articulating yourself, which I think is very much needed. And your, your perspective on kindness as a method to many of these things that we were trying to solve as humans, we often default to like the opposite of kindness. We're mean to ourselves about and mean to others about, I think is, I've learned the hard way that is very much the way forward. So thank you so much.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.