Moment 33 - Reggie Yates on How Self-Awareness Changed His Life

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. Reggie Yates has had a tremendous career from acting, tv presenting, radio DJ, singing and now creating his critically acclaimed documentaries. But what was it that set Reggie apart from the other young kids on the North London estates? In this moment, Reggie breaks down how self-awareness was the skill that helped him work towards his goals and ultimately, change his life. Episode 90 - https://g2ul0.app.link/jMW7Hw6Vrlb Reggie: https://www.instagram.com/regyates/ https://twitter.com/regyates?lang=en THE DIARY OF A CEO LIVE TICKETS ON SALE NOW 🚀- https://g2ul0.app.link/diaryofaceolive 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.

• 0:03Steven Bartlett?

  When you look at your career, you are a tremendous outlier in terms of the journey you've taken and what you're doing now.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  That's very kind, thank you.

• 0:11Steven Bartlett?

  And then you trace it back and go, you came from a councillor state not too far from here. For you to have gone on that journey and achieved the things you have, I always, I always think there must have been certain factors in those early years that made you take a different course to those friends that might still be on the estate now.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:30Steven Bartlett?

  It might have been, you know, we talked a little bit about values there. It might have been, you know, I don't know, something someone said to you, an experience you had, or just the conditioning, whatever it is. But my question is, do you, do you know what those factors were that made you an outlier?

• 0:43Speaker 01

  I mean, you sound as though you've done a lot of work on yourself and in the little bit that I know about you.

• 0:49Steven Bartlett?

  Well, this is it. I get to meet people and ask, so I learn so much from these kinds of answers.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Right. And I've made documentaries for over 10 years, so it's the same thing, you know, you learn so much from your environment if you're willing to drink in the information.

• 1:01Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  And I just, in thinking about between therapy and also being present in moments like this, you know, yes, there are cameras, but I'm having a conversation with you and I'm learning from you. And that certainly was the case in 10 years of making films, you know, for the BBC. So when it sort of comes to me looking at how I've become the person that I am and how my journey has played out the way that it has done, it's an amalgamation of different moments and instances, but fundamentally it comes down to a desire, even as a kid, to understand and be aware. And it's progressed into this idea of being present and understanding the moment that you're in and why you're there and, and taking as much from the moment as possible.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  So as a child, I would always ask questions and I was far too aware of my environment for my own good. So for instance, I'll, I'll never sort of forget going to my friend Kieran's, oh no, yeah, it was Kieran Buckley's house. I went to Kieran Buckley's house in Barnsbury and my mum was very protective, so she wouldn't let me play at friends' homes. I know you know how that goes. And I went to Kieran's and I was in the garden and he had this massive, massive, beautiful Islington garden with several trees in it. And I asked him, how come you've got a park at the back of your house?

• 2:25Speaker 01

  And his mother sort of overheard and laughed a bit and it stayed with me. And it's like, that's not part of my garden. What are you talking about? Come on, free it in. You're in goal, mate. And then you play this game, you don't think about it. And then I remember going back to my council estate and looking at the, the one tree that me and Corey used to climb and think, I don't have what he has. Why is that? And then you start to think about these things and then start to understand class and where you are. And even so far as the area, you know, I, I started to really recognise the power of my walk to school, even as a kid. Before I got to secondary school, I was like, this is really weird. Like, I live in a borough, Islington in North London, that has everything from council estates with immigrants and white working class, right the way through to multi-million pound houses.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  And I lived on a road called Liverpool Road, which is such, it's such an important road that I haven't only, I've only become aware of how important that road is to my journey in recent years. So I lived at the Holloway end of Liverpool Road. Liverpool Road is a long road that runs through Islington. And at the other end is Angel. And Angel gentrified years before Holloway did. Holloway is a very different place now. And they had a Waitrose, they had a Sainsbury's and you had these gorgeous massive townhouses. And, you know, if you deviated off Liverpool Road, you'd be in Barnsbury and there were these beautiful little villagie roads. And Holloway was where the people that I grew up around lived. And you had these estates, you had every kind of madness you can imagine happening on my estate.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Like, I remember my first, the first time I saw a machine gun was in my estate at like nine years old, when the police were raiding a flat on my floor because there was all kinds of craziness there. And you're just playing on the balcony on your estate, on, on, in the floor that you live on. And you've got armed police there, you know, let alone the other times that you see other weapons or you see other things happen.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  And those walks that I would go on where I would be like, wow, the bit that I live in versus the bit that I'm walking through versus the bit that I'm going to, to go to school. I know what bit I wanna live on, so I better start thinking about how I'm gonna get to that bit of the road.

• 4:29Steven Bartlett?

  It's so fascinating you'd say that. It took me in my head back to, back to my own experiences being a kid and I had this really vivid memory I have one day of looking up at the sky and seeing a plane and then looking down at my street and thinking, I wonder if all of these fam, this is what they wanted from their life. And then the plane for me was the juxtaposition between a family going on holiday. I'd never been on, like, other than coming from Africa, we'd never been on holiday. So I was thinking, oh my God, people are going on holiday. And then I look down at my street and I look up again and I see this plane. And a lot of people will have that, but it takes a different mind to then think, I want to be on the plane. I want to be at the other end of Liverpool Street. But then also, I have some idea about how to get there. Or maybe you didn't have some, an idea about how to get there, but maybe just the, I mean, I don't know if you believe in that

• 5:14Steven Bartlett?

  manifestation, just that I want to be there. So I'm gonna make decisions over the next 10 years in that direction.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Right. Well, my journey's super weird, right? Because from the age of eight, I was a working actor. So I was constantly reminded about my difference just by being present and by being aware even as a child. So it didn't take much for me to realise, you're not like your friends, Reg, because you're currently working while they're at school and you've been allowed time off school to work. So straight away, you're like, okay, I'm a bit different. And this is a bit of a weird situation to be in. And then you look around and there's a hundred people on set and you're the only black person, both in front of or behind the camera. And you go, okay, wow, I'm not like any of these people here. And the conversations that you hear about what people did on the weekend, or where they're going there even, or even conversations about wine,

• 6:03Speaker 01

  like little things that people take for granted culturally. Nobody drinking wine in my house. You know what I mean? Like, Chaleur was a big deal, you know? Going to Sainsbury's was a big deal. Like, we used to walk to Dulston with backpacks to go and buy meat and tinned tomatoes and carry them back because we never had a car.

• 6:20Steven Bartlett?

  What does that do to you, though? When you're on set, everyone else is a different skin colour. And they're talking about things that you're not familiar with in terms of like, let's be honest, like class, right?

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 6:29Steven Bartlett?

  What does that do to you? And does it put a chip on your shoulder? Does it make you more ambitious? Does it make you think, fuck, I'm out of place, I'm an impostor?

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, it could have put a chip on my shoulder and I'm incredibly thankful that it didn't. What it did do was make me. So hungry to create an environment where I could feel comfortable. And what that progressed into was understanding that it's going to take me a while to get to the point that I'd like to be at. Therefore, it would be and become my responsibility to create that for someone else, to create that for another eight year old me or fifteen year old me. And I feel incredibly proud that I'm able to do that now because I recognise the power of it. And regardless of those moments of feeling out of place or being sort of feeling as though, you know, your class is being is being waved in your face. Like I told this story the other day to a friend of mine, who's I'm godfather to his

• 7:21Speaker 01

  child, it's one of my good, good, good friends, Sam Wilkinson, he's a director who I made a lot of my documentaries with. And he's got my gorgeous little godson in his hands, little Teddy, and we're chatting away. And I was telling him a story about being at this primary school in Islington where you've got kids from estates and kids from quite, you know, affluent homes, all in the same school. And at lunchtime, you had these kids with Thundercats lunchboxes and these incredible sandwiches and Kit Kat minis, all the things that I never had in my house, you know. You're sort of looking at tin foil that hasn't been used fifty times and you're like, oh my God, they're throwing the tin foil in the bin. What the hell? What the hell is going on? Not being made to fold and put it back because you could use it for dinner tomorrow. Anyway, so you're like taking all of that in.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  And every lunchtime, I'll never forget, Pat, God bless her, the head dinner lady, it's a big lady, big lady, would walk out and she'd go, free school dinners. And all the kids that were on free school dinners used to have to stand up and go and get your food. And it sort of broke you a little bit as a kid because your mates were just a bit like, oh my God, can you imagine? And I told this story to Sam and he started crying. And Sam started crying, I think, not because, well, I think he felt a little sad for little mini me, but he also, as a father, imagined his son in that position. And I'm sure we'll get on to family and fatherhood and stuff, but I, you know, I realise how

• 8:42Speaker 01

  much fatherhood has softened a lot of my friends and also has made me very sort of cognisant of my journey and also just how important my childhood was in shaping who I've become.