ON PERSPECTIVE… With Adeel Akhtar and Pat Cummins

Perspective is something we all chase - because when it slips, life can feel chaotic and overwhelming. But when we find it again, everything becomes a little clearer. In this episode, actor Adeel Akhtar reflects on a time when he lost sight of perspective and how becoming a parent helped him rediscover what truly matters. Cricketing great Pat Cummins shares how the loss of his beloved mum reshaped his relationship with sport and why he’s now more determined than ever to put family first. Listen to Adeel Akhtar’s full episode of How to Fail here: swap.fm/l/eWxKBXUJZAAkfovquzwi Listen to Pat Cummin’s full episode of How to Fail here: swap.fm/l/DecJN4jHYh5gSeSUN72t 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: Elizabeth’s Substack: https://theelizabethday.substack.com/ Join the How To Fail community: https://howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @howtofailpod @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod @elizabday Website: www.elizabethday.org Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Elizabeth Day?

  One of the things I hear a lot from listeners is how tiring it can be when your mind just doesn't settle. And I can only imagine this feels even heavier with intrusive thoughts. It's that quiet sense of being worn down by something you never asked for and never wanted, but just can't seem to switch off. If you struggle with this, I want to tell you about NoCD, because it's a resource that genuinely helps people. NoCD provides specialised treatment for OCD. And what I appreciate about their approach is how human it feels. You're matched with a licensed therapist trained in ERP therapy. That's exposure and response prevention. And over time, you learn skills that help your OCD symptoms become manageable, so you can live more of the life you want to live.

• 0:45Elizabeth Day?

  If you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NoCD can help. Book a free 15-minute call to get started at learn.nocd.com/fail. Confession time. I have a tendency to postpone certain decisions for far longer than is sensible. Not the big life decisions, oddly enough, those I can usually handle. It's the smaller ones that somehow become disproportionately complicated. For me, rugs fall squarely into that category. I've known for a long time that a rug can completely change how a room feels, but I've always found sizing for a space tricky. That's why Ernesta appealed to me.

• 1:26Elizabeth Day?

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• 2:09Elizabeth Day?

  Welcome back to this week's episode reflecting on some of the best bits from the How To Fail archive. This week, we're taking a look at how keeping perspective is sometimes easier said than done. And even some of the most successful people, including actors and athletes, struggle with it too. First off, actor Adeel Akhtar talks about his past self failing to keep things in perspective, but how becoming a parent helped him to do just that, and he finally cracked it. Cricketing legend Pat Cummings discusses how losing his beloved mom brought perspective on sport, and how when he's on tour now, he doesn't just want to be looking

• 2:49Elizabeth Day?

  at the clock, but instead really endeavours to be present in the moment. First up, we hear from Adeel.

• 2:59Elizabeth Day?

  Your final failure is your failure to put things in perspective.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yes. I suppose in the sense that there's some things that take a lot of thought, and there's other things that you don't even think about that much. I suppose that's what I mean. And the benefit of age maybe means that you can be a bit discerning as to what those things are. Like, definitely with my career, I go, okay, there's a character, I can see it, and I understand where that lies in me and how I'm going to play it. My failing perspective, but when I was a lot younger, would be like, right, all the research, how does he walk, what's his shoes, does he like prawn sandwiches, which is a real thing, people sort of like, what sandwich does he eat? So to be, with age, you can sort of be a bit more economic with your energy and how you invest in things and stuff.

• 3:49Elizabeth Day?

  Do you think you have a tendency to depression?

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Oh, very good question. I think I did when I was in that sort of chunk of time, maybe in my late twenties, early thirties. I definitely, looking back on that now, I would say I wasn't totally happy. But as of late, like, I wouldn't, I've never, ever felt that level of despair. And I think it's because of this ability to...

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Just be myself, you know. I think the through line with all this, now I'm thinking about it, is the moments that you feel that that anxiety, the moments you feel the depression, the moments you feel those really intense feelings of whatever emotions are. There's a sort of incongruity between how you see yourself and how you're trying to present yourself to the world. And now I'm just sort of caught up with the fact of not having to perform any other part of myself that isn't weird and complicated, you know.

• 5:07Elizabeth Day?

  Given your experiences of your childhood and your quest to embody the truth of yourself, that essential truth, how has having your own children changed your perspective? Has it made you more or less anxious, do you think?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Somebody told me this sort of psycholog- this sort of child development stage from nought to five, and it's called emperor narcissism. Have you heard of this?

• 5:34Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  It's wicked, isn't it?

• 5:35Elizabeth Day?

  My best friend's a therapist, that's the only reason I've heard of it, yeah.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  I love it because it suddenly makes sense of your role as a parent where this like little emperor is running around and you're like, I'm so sorry. And like you're apologising way more than you, like he's really, really terrified. Oh, fuck, you know, is he in a good mood today? I love that, you know, and if I didn't have kids, I wouldn't be able to conceptualise what that is. And basically what that is, is we need to feel the centre of somebody's world. But then when I look in the world and I see that not happening, and there's an incongruity with people, there was something there, you know, something happened where you weren't, you didn't feel like you were the centre of things.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Whether it's through our writing, whether it's through doing this, or whether it's through our acting or whatever, whatever else, you just want to go, oh, I hope I'm making a little bit of a step in that direction for people who never did. There's a pla- again, like that thing I'm saying, like a placeholder for really complicated feelings. My kids have just taught me to sort of go further and deeper in that journey, really.

• 6:50Elizabeth Day?

  There's another element to this failure, which is incredibly sad. And I want to preface this by saying, I'm so sorry for your loss. And if at any point you don't want to talk about this, please tell me. And it's about losing your beloved mum. And you were on tour in India in 2023 when this was happening. Could you tell us about that?

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, of course, um, you know, I think that's the other layer as well to kind of the end of 2021 and our being born was, we knew mum didn't have very long. It was probably months more than years. You know, every time I was going away on a tour, I knew that was time that was, you know, finite and it was time that I could be spending with mum. You know, really, really challenging. I was over in India playing in a test series when kind of mum went into palliative care. So I flew, flew out to India, knowing that I was going to be back on a plane a week or two later, kind of flying back to, to be with mum. Obviously, I think, um, you know, mum and dad were really strong on me going. They derive so much joy from sitting together, watching me play cricket on TV and representing

• 8:00Speaker 02

  Australia. So they were adamant that I, I should go. I think, I think the other layer to it as well was, you know, they, you know, mum particularly was a super private person. That is as well, they don't want any fuss ever. And the nature of my role is, you know, if I'm starting to miss cricket, it kind of becomes public pretty quickly. So I felt that tussle as well, I think of just wanting to be a son. But yeah, it was kind of half me that wanted to continue to keep playing, but the other half just wanted to be a, a son lying at the foot of the bed.

• 8:32Elizabeth Day?

  Your mum was diagnosed with cancer, was it breast cancer?

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Breast cancer, yeah.

• 8:37Elizabeth Day?

  And how many years ago was that?

• 8:38Speaker 02

  So mum first got diagnosed in, I think it was about 2005, I was in year seven. And then, um, the last kind of four or five where it was, um, yeah, knew that it was, it was going to be terminal.

• 8:51Elizabeth Day?

  So all of your teenage years were played out against this backdrop of your mum's illness?

• 8:57Speaker 02

  I think mum and dad tried to protect it from us. So I remember I was, I was, you know, 13 years old. And yeah, my dad kind of sat us children down and was like, oh, mum's gonna be sick for a little while. She's gonna get some treatment, but it's only gonna be, you know, six months and then she'll be back to her normal health. So I was like, oh, I'll take your word for it, whatever. No worries, you know. Yeah, you don't realise till afterwards when you're a parent and you're an adult, just the severity of it. Yeah, on- once I was kind of back into my twenties, it it came back and yeah, you started to realise that. No, they'd kind of, they knew this day was gonna come, whereas I probably, all of us kids probably hadn't fully grasped that.

• 9:35Elizabeth Day?

  That was such an act of parental love, that shielding and protection. You said that you wanted to be a son and lie at the foot of the bed. Did you get a chance to do that?

• 9:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, so I flew back and had about ten days in the palliative hospital with mum, dad and, you know, all my siblings. It was a really magical ten days, like we shared a lifetime full of memories and stories and lots of laughter, tears, but a really special, just family time, really. I'm so glad I I went home. I'd be ruining that for the rest of my life if I didn't.

• 10:11Elizabeth Day?

  Sometimes I speak to people who have witnessed or supported someone through the dying process and they say that it teaches them so much about life and how to live life. Has it changed the way that you live your life?

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. Probably comes down to the time management. I'm like so crystal clear now and like, you know, family's priority. You just can't keep kicking things down the road, you know, a lot of sports people, but you know, maybe me in particular. You think, okay, I'll play cricket till I'm thirty five, thirty six. Albie will be six years old and then life will start and then we can start hanging out as a family. I've definitely changed my mindset now. It's like, no, I'm gonna live life. You know, say a big emphatic yes to things that we wanna really do as a family. You know, when we're on tour, let's make sure we have the time of our lives, because when we're on tour, we're away from our families where we don't want, just wanna watch the clock kind of tick by, bring the families along, just trying to live life a little bit more.

• 11:10Elizabeth Day?

  Do you feel your mum with you when you're on the pitch?

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, every day. Um, you know, I think particularly since becoming a father as well. You remember the lessons that kind of she passed down to us kids.

• 11:22Elizabeth Day?

  What was her name?

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Maria.

• 11:24Elizabeth Day?

  And what was she like?

• 11:26Speaker 02

  Did everything you could imagine. Um. So when we were, you know, really young children, she set up like a play, play group for, you know, the community and all us kind of kids. When we got a little bit older, she created like a social group for us teenagers to hang out. And then kind of once we moved out, she, she started setting up um some disability netball teams. She would go and um feed the charity on Wednesday. She's never hear a bad word said about mum. She was amazing.

• 11:52Elizabeth Day?

  Sounds like you learn so much about leadership from her as well as love.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Totally. Yeah. Hundred percent. It's, you know, that's, that's always been instilled in us kids is, I guess, how lucky we are and not to waste that.

• 12:16Elizabeth Day?

  Please do follow How To Fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.