Pod Insights The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett E29: Build Sandcastles out of Bullsh*t About this episode Welcome back to Chapter 9 of The Diary of a CEO. This week, I talk about my obsession with the tragic yet fascinating mess that is Brexit, and how I’ve learnt more about British politics in the last 3 months than I’ve known in the last 10 years. Through...
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:14 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so the first point in my diary this week, I've just written "algorithms are running my life." Here's the context on this diary entry. I've been absolutely obsessed with Brexit for the last maybe three months. I think I've learnt more about British politics in the last three months than I've learnt in the last 10 years, right? For me, it's become more obsessive and more interesting than Netflix is. I just think the whole thing's fascinating. It's also tragic and it's also a mess, but I also find it fascinating. Anyway, every single day I will go home after work and I'll watch Brexit videos. And I've been doing that for many months now. And what I've noticed, as one might expect because of the presence of algorithms in our lives, is I'm now being served more and more and
0:59 Steven Bartlett? more and more Brexit videos. So if I opened up my phone right now or went to YouTube, all I would see is Brexit videos, because that's what I've been watching. And it made me think about that in a sort of wider context. The algorithms that are across all of the major social platforms are designed to show us more of the same. And we become little people in this massive echo chamber of information, being re-fed our own thoughts or being re-fed ideas that we've sought out. But in the same way, I've talked before in this podcast and on my social media channels about the importance of who you follow, because they also are feeding you information non-stop 24/7. And there are a number of famous studies, specifically
1:43 Steven Bartlett? my favourite is by a guy called Tim Casser, that prove the stuff you're being fed by algorithms and the people you choose to follow are impacting your happiness, your mental health, the amount of knowledge you have, your perspective on the world, your optimism and even your values. In that study with Tim Casser, where he conducts this study on these little kids and a toy and an advert... He proves that the values that you choose to adopt in your life will impact your happiness and your mental health. And if you have intrinsic values, i.e. you do things for the good of doing the task. So you play piano because you like playing piano. You do it
2:24 Steven Bartlett? because you enjoy it in and of itself, then you'll be a happier person. But if you buy a piano and post it on Instagram to try and get laid, or to try and get paid, or some sort of extrinsic reason, those people are the most depressed, the most unhappy, and the least fulfilled, right? And it got me thinking. It got me thinking about the people I follow and how I've trained the algorithms in my life. Because my phone this week has told me that in the last 24 hours, I've spent 13 hours on social media. 13 hours. That's 13 hours of algorithms serving me the same thing, or the same ideas, or the same values, right? That's 13 hours of the people that I follow, serving me either uplifting, optimistic,
3:08 Steven Bartlett? extrinsic, intrinsic, toxic, informative content, or the opposite of all of those things. And so, earlier this week, I decided to take back control. I really, really believe in the statement that I'm about to say. I really, really believe that to our generation, to the social media digital generation, the timeline is the single biggest influence on our life. Just in terms of time, at least, right? There's nothing else that I'm doing for 13 hours a day. I don't even sleep for that long, right? So how important is it to train those algorithms and to follow people that are bringing you value? I made the decision
3:52 Steven Bartlett? about three months ago, that I was going to actively unfollow every single person in my timeline that lived their life promoting extrinsic values. So there are tons of girls that I used to follow, that will just post that they're going to a bar for drinks, and then they're buying a Chanel bag, and then they're chasing after a boy, and then they're watching trash TV, and then they're, you know, thinking about Ibiza this summer. And it was just that on repeat on my timeline. And so about three months ago, I unfollowed all of these people. And I have to tell you this. It's changed my life. It's definitely changed my life. It's made me...
4:33 Steven Bartlett? A person of more substance. And what I also did is I replaced all of those people with people that I thought were really fucking smart and people I wanted to be more like, right? So I went on to someone's Twitter account that I really, really respect. And I thought, well, who does that guy follow? And I just followed loads of people that he followed that I thought tweeted really sort of inspiring, informative stuff. And now my Twitter feed alone is full of really, really inspiring people that every time I log in, every time I spend those three hours a day scrolling, I'm learning stuff. My values are being focused on things that are intrinsic. I am getting new information. I am viewing the world in a more sort of with a wider perspective. And I honestly, I honestly want every single person listening to this to just
5:18 Steven Bartlett? do this experiment for one week. When you look into social media, actively, look at the types of things people are saying. And if those people aren't posting things that you think will bring value to your life, or make you the type of person that you want to be, do one of two things. Either A, unfollow them. And if you can't unfollow them, because there are sometimes sort of political things with friendships and family and colleagues, then hit the mute button. The mute button will prevent you from ever seeing any of their stuff in your timeline again. This is your library. Your timeline is your library. And it's your responsibility to make sure that the books in that library are beneficial, not toxic, not shallow, right?
6:00 Steven Bartlett? It's the single biggest influence in your life. Protect your library. Upgrade your library. And on the point of algorithms, because of the way algorithms work, they'll show us things that we searched out in the past, which means that, you know, a couple of years ago, or even last month, if we wanted to be somebody else, if we were somebody else, if we cared about Ibiza and partying all the time and Chanel, then we're still going to be served that today, right? If I clicked on that yesterday, I'll get it today. So what you've got to do is you've got to break free from your algorithm. Quite simple to do, in fact, and I think I've done that on my YouTube in particular, where I've started to watch more things that are motivational, that are inspirational,
6:45 Steven Bartlett? that are informative. And now on my YouTube channel, there are a real mix of that stuff. And I've stopped being served stuff that is shallow and maybe time wasting. So with algorithms, you've got to retrain them. But with people, you've got to choose to follow them. And I think the last thing for this is to to really see the next week in your life as an audition. Put everybody on audition for one week. And when you do that, what I want you to do is I want you to report back to me. You can tweet me, you can DM me and let me know how it changed your perspective. Here's the thing I wanted to close on. It's not easy. It's not easy because we all trick ourselves into believing
7:28 Steven Bartlett? that we're going to miss somebody or something or an important event or piece of news if we unfollow Jenny, who we used to know five years ago, that does fuck all on social media and really posts about herself in very sort of shallow, vapid things. We think for some reason that we're going to miss something, or that if we unfollow them, we lose them as a person. But my advice to you, honestly, and I felt those feelings, I would hover above someone's name and think to myself, fuck, if I unfollow this person, they are going to hate me, they are going to think badly of me, talk badly of me, etc., etc. But you've got to ask yourself the question, if this is somebody who's promoting values that are going to risk making me depressed or unhappy or anxious or unfulfilled or experience
8:10 Steven Bartlett? less joy and more despair, as the science says, then how much do I want them in my fucking life anyway? Right? And that's the question I ask myself. And I just savagely went through my list of people that I followed and I just cut them. I cut them. And I think now I'm left with a group of people that bring value to my life and make me realise that how I should be living my life in a way that will make me happy. So that's that point.
8:40 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so the next point in my diary, I've just written Project Perry. Let me explain. About eight, nine months ago, I made a video on Facebook about mental health issues and that video garnered about 20 million views. In that week alone, we gained 8,000 comments and direct messages to my inbox from people suffering with mental health issues with questions. And of those 8,000, about 400 of them contained the word suicide, right? And a couple of months later, after that video went out, a guy messaged me that I know, a fairly well-known YouTuber. And he said to me, Steve, a guy in Norwich has just killed himself. And I went on his Facebook and the last video that he's posted is your video. Really made me feel a variety of emotions, which I've talked about in this podcast before.
9:23 Steven Bartlett? But the one thing it really made me, I guess, come away with was this feeling of responsibility that, you know, often we just look at impressions and views and likes as a bunch of numbers, right? We all get sucked into that. What does 20 million views really mean? But in that moment, everything became real. And as I looked on my inbox and I felt that sense of a sort of responsibility because this young man had killed himself and I was probably one of the last people that spoke to him, I felt like I needed to do more. And I think in a podcast two weeks ago, I said to all of you that I've felt this sort of obligation to do more. And I just wanted to keep you up to date with what we're doing. This is still pretty top secret, but listen, this is the diary of a CEO. And if you're not getting the exclusives here, then you're not getting the exclusives anywhere.
10:08 Steven Bartlett? So here's what we're doing. One of the things that I noticed that week, when I got those 8,000 messages, was my only option was to forward them to websites like the Samaritans. And the issue is, on a website like the Samaritans, you have four options. You can write a letter, which we know that young people won't do. You can send an email, which we know most people won't do. You can book a visit, which a lot of, you know, introverted or shy people definitely won't do. Or you can call a hotline, which a lot of people don't do because of costs to phone bills and they don't want to speak to somebody, they're feeling shy, especially men who are more shy about speaking openly than females. It still feels a little bit broken, but my
10:48 Steven Bartlett? My inbox was very, very native and very understandable and very quick and very easy for the eight thousand people that messaged me. And when you look at the stats, messaging is growing at a rate of about a hundred and fifty to two hundred percent a year. But you cannot WhatsApp the Samaritans, you can't send them an Instagram DM. And you can't do that for all of the main mental health charities. So. After speaking to a lady, the managing director in my team called Katie Leeson about this and her telling me her stories about this and. And what she wanted to do and that she'd sent a message out to the CEO of the Samaritans, we came up with an idea. And the the idea is inspired and named after the guy that killed himself. The guy that killed himself that had shared my video.
11:34 Steven Bartlett? Is called Ibis Perry. So we're calling this project Perry. And it's and it's fairly simple. What we're going to do is we're building an interface which allows anybody anywhere in the world. To send a WhatsApp, an Instagram, a Facebook Messenger message to something called Perry. And on the other end of that is a mental health support centre operated by the likes of. Calm or the Samaritans, one of the big mental health support lines. And because we believe that mental health support hasn't managed to keep up with the changing world. And young people, they don't make phone calls. We know the data on it. We know that ten percent of young people consider. Phone calling one of the most important forms of communication, whereas seventy percent of young people would message a.
12:19 Steven Bartlett? Instant messenger service if they could. They can't. I called the CEO of Calm this week. He says that they can't. It's broken and that's what we're going to do to fix it. And really for me, the lesson here is. Sometimes shit things happen and we feel helpless and we always have a choice in that moment of how to respond. And I think this is how to respond. This is how to respond. I've heard, you know, we it's been in the news. Last week, I think, or the week before, that one of the contestants on Love Island killed themselves, a guy called Mike. And as I scrolled through Instagram, I I saw the genuine sincere message that I've seen every time we've had a famous suicide. Which is more needs to be done.
13:03 Steven Bartlett? We express our condolences and then we say more needs to be done. But we don't say what needs to be done because quite honestly, none of us have a fucking clue what needs to be done. Not one of us, right? And I've done the same. I've gone on Twitter, strange hours in the morning. And I've seen, oh my god, someone really famous that I admire has just killed themselves. And I too, I feel totally helpless and I write out the tweet. I'm absolutely devastated. More needs to be done for mental health support. If you're feeling sad, please talk. And I leave it there and I carry on with my life and I think I'm sick and tired of doing that. I want to do something to help and I just hope that this will help the effect of mental health.
13:43 Steven Bartlett? It will help offer people a shoulder to turn to, someone to advise them and how, you know, the feelings that they're feeling. It doesn't address the cause of mental health, right? That's a different project. That's a different piece of work. But I certainly hope we, through Project Perry, we're gonna help to create a better solution to seeking advice. And so we're working with a number of partners. I'm actually meeting Facebook this week to speak to them about it. They've been amazing with me. And I sent an email to the very, very head of Facebook in EMEA, which is, you know, Europe, Asia, Africa. And she responded super fast and she directed me to the right people in the team and they've asked for a meeting straight away.
14:24 Steven Bartlett? So there's a good chance in the next couple of months that we'll have an awesome platform for every young person in this country and in the wider world to use where you can WhatsApp or send an Instagram message or a Messenger message and speak to a trained mental health advisor. That would be an absolute dream come true. We're gonna really rally the whole social chain team around it. I sent an email to the team this week and everybody's on board. So off me and Katie go to try and get this done and I think we can get it done. It's a bit of a huge ambition, but huge ambitions are the story of my life. And do you know what else is the story of my life? I was thinking about this because I was thinking if I get to London and Facebook tell me to fuck off. I remember people telling me to fuck off before.
15:06 Steven Bartlett? I remember when I had made my first business, going to meetings that I thought were make or break and them just telling me, no, it won't work, bye. And I remember the fight for the next five, six, seven, eight, nine months to make them change their mind. Fuck off means nothing to me. No means absolutely nothing to me. No means try harder. And I think if you can really embrace that in your life, that idea that sometimes people are going to say no to you. In fact, they're more than likely to say no to you. And in fact, that's just life asking you how bad you really want it and to try harder. You'll go so far. We hear the stories of Oprah, how many times they told her she wasn't fit for TV and now she's the queen of that shit. We hear the stories about the author of Harry Potter, J K Rowling, and how many publishers she went to and they all told her to
15:50 Steven Bartlett? that they wouldn't support her book and now she's the queen of that shit, right? So in your life, if you don't experience no's and carry on, then you don't deserve to be the queen or king of anything ever, right? That no is the hurdle and I guess that's life asking you how bad you want it. And I know for for myself personally, this isn't about fucking like, this isn't about how bad I want it. This is, this has to happen. I have to do something. I can't just keep writing these messages of condolences and saying, I want more to be done, you know? Someone has to do something. And if not them, if not somebody else, then it has to be us. So let's do it. I'll keep you updated.
16:31 Steven Bartlett? Okay, the next point in my diary is highly, highly controversial, highly, highly controversial. But that's what this podcast is all about. I'm just going to riff for a second and talk on this issue openly. So if I say something that's a little bit sloppy, or if I say something that might cause offence, please don't be, you know, politically correct with me and try and call me out or try and take something out of context. Here's what I wrote in my diary this week, is talking about mental health causing mental health as well as helping mental health. So here's the thing, when people have mental health issues, one of the things that's really important to do is not to bottle it up and to speak to people. We all know that. The science shows that helps. That's why we have support lines.
17:14 Steven Bartlett? That's also in the contrary, why a lot of men in particular take their own lives and why it's the biggest killer of men under the age of, I believe, forty five in the UK, because men don't talk about their feelings. They bottle it up and they don't share their emotions, right? Because of the stigma attached to that in our society. But I, but I wanted to understand if. Talking about mental health and labelling ourselves has also had a bit of an adverse effect where some of us have got to the point where we don't know sad from depression or we don't know nervous from anxiety disorder. Because you can be sad and not be depressed and you can be nervous and you can feel anxious but not have anxiety disorder.
17:57 Steven Bartlett? There's a really, really big difference. You know, sadness is a normal human emotion and we all experience sadness. If you, you'll, you'll experience it in your future if you haven't already. But depression is much deeper than that. It's a much darker cloud that sort of covers your life and even, you know, good events become negative events for someone that's feeling in that way. And I guess, I guess really the reason why I wrote this in my diary and I wanted to share it with the world is I just want to appeal to everybody to not be so quick to label yourself, right? And to not get too sucked into the idea that if you're feeling an emotion, if you're feeling nervous or sad or you've had a shit day or there's shit things going on in your life
18:41 Steven Bartlett? this week, that you don't jump to label yourself with depression or anxiety or something or bipolar because you can, you know, the human condition is, is a roller coaster. The human emotional spectrum is a roller coaster, but there is no happy without sad and there is no nervous without excited, right? These are polar opposites on the same spectrum. And I really worry sometimes that there's a real danger that we're getting a bit too carried away with labelling our emotions as disorders because you can feel sad and not be depressed, right? And you can be nervous and apprehensive and, you know, concerned and worried without having anxiety disorder.
19:24 Steven Bartlett? And, you know, depression and anxiety are real, real things, but there's a big difference between those things and normal human emotions. And in the same way, as a society, on the point of labelling, we've got really obsessed with calling things OCD because they are not neat or because the colours don't match. And it's the same sort of over labelling that I think is fundamentally really dangerous. You don't have OCD if you like things to be neat, right? You're just a tidy person. And I just hope that we all understand the danger of conflating serious mental health issues with. Human emotions and personality traits, right?
20:07 Steven Bartlett? Mental health issues and disorders are not to be trivialized, right? And if you start labeling yourself those things, there is a lot of science around the idea of self fulfilling prophecies. If you start to believe that you're a depressed person and that you're an anxious person, not because you are through chemical reasons or through other, but because you have attached yourself to that label, then I also think that that can be quite dangerous. We have to be clear on the distinction and we have to be slow to label ourselves based on social media, based on quotes on Instagram. Depression and anxiety are very, very real things, as is OCD. And allow the doctor to be the one to give you that sort of diagnosis.
20:49 Steven Bartlett? Don't just give it to yourself because you've had a bad day or because you, a bunch of colors or something isn't neat and it makes you feel anxious, right? Be slow on labeling.
21:02 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so the next point in my diary is about a very, very inspiring woman who taught me a number of very important lessons in the last couple of months and that sadly passed away this weekend. I'm going to give you some context. I was flying on a plane a couple of months ago and I was scrolling through Instagram and I saw this brand that everybody was talking about called Kate MacIver Skin, this miracle treatment that makes your skin great. And it was founded and created by a lady called Kate MacIver who was going through chemotherapy and decided to turn that situation into a product, right? She had terrible skin because of chemo and she found the perfect solution with this product called The Secret Weapon that is absolutely raved about on all social media platforms, by the way, if you haven't checked it out. And if you have bad skin, you've got to, got to check it out.
21:47 Steven Bartlett? And I reached out to her, I reached out to the team and I started talking to her and her team and a few others. And she was, it was just the most amazing woman. She'd created this amazing product. She was the most pure, wonderful, funny human being, so inspiring, so optimistic, even though she was terminally ill with cancer. And so I felt obliged to want to get closer to the business and to see how we could help. And over the last couple of months, that's what we've been doing. Tragically, this weekend, Kate MacIver passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. And there's a couple of lessons that I've learned. From Kate MacIver, I guess the first lesson is about how everything in life doesn't
22:28 Steven Bartlett? happen for a reason. This is the single most contentious point I think I've ever talked about on my social media channels. I think if you want to believe that everything in life happens for a reason, then you have to mean everything. You have to mean the situation with Kate. You have to, you have to mean that that happened for a reason. It can't just be your boyfriend dumps you, then you find someone better. You have to mean the four-year-old kid that's having his eyes burrowed out by maggots and parasites in Africa. You have to mean the baby that's going to die of leukemia this week. You have to mean everything. I don't think everything happens for a reason. And I think the belief
23:08 Steven Bartlett? that things are controlled by external factors or by the supernatural puppet master that's got this grand plan for all of us is actually conducive with being less successful, less happy, and feeling like you've got less control, right? That's what the science says. I think shit, things happen. Things happen sometimes that are out of our control. And we have a choice in that moment how to react. And with the Kate MacIver situation, it really did shake me because it's a reminder that life is fundamentally unfair sometimes. This is something that I don't think especially insecure people ever want to confront. The fact that there's not always a fucking happy ending in every story. But the most important
23:53 Steven Bartlett? thing is that we can learn to build sandcastles out of bullshit. We can, we can take situations that are horrendous and try and build them into great things. And this is exactly what I want to do and what I know Kate's team wants to do with the Kate MacIver brand. Unfortunately, she's passed away and she's no longer here, but she's left behind this amazing product and this amazing brand. And we really believe that together with her team, we can make this a really, really powerful, inspiring brand. And that also we can donate proceeds, which they're already doing, to causes that will help other people suffering from cancer. And so what it made me do this week is it made me write in my diary six ways to turn
24:35 Steven Bartlett? a bad situation into a good one. And the first point in this is to confront your emotions. One of the worst things you can do is to fake optimism when you've gone through a shit time. It's conducive with having mental health problems and compartmentalizing things that will reemerge later. You have to confront your emotions. And that kind of leads me on to point two, which is you do that by speaking to people, speaking to people honestly that you can trust by crying. If anyone ever tells you not to cry, then they are a fucking asshole. Sometimes it's okay to cry. It's okay to feel your emotions. And the people that do are, according to science, they have the best mental health. This is again why men commit suicide much more than women do, because men don't speak about their emotions. They
25:18 Steven Bartlett? bottle things up because of the stigma, because they want to be tough. They don't want to be seen as weak, right? So you have to a confront your emotions, allow yourself to be sad, speak to people. But the third point is discipline and structure. I'm really inspired by what the Jewish community do when somebody dies. The Jewish faith, for example, has this thing called shiva, I've written in my diary, for dealing with the death of close to loved ones. People are given very specific mourning tasks for seven days, allowing them to go on autopilot rather than continually overplaying the loss of their loved one. It's really important to keep moving, right? At the same time of confronting the issues that have emerged in your head, the emotions, you have to confront those emotions. But at the same time, you have
26:02 Steven Bartlett? to keep going. You have to keep a sort of level of discipline in your life and keep structure and not allow yourself to collapse, because much, much of the thing that keeps us sane in our lives is the structure and the discipline. It is going to work. It is going to the gym. Those things keep us healthy, both in physical form, but also in mental form. So I think the most important thing there is also structure. That's point three of how I think you turn a bad situation into a better situation.
26:29 Steven Bartlett? Point number four, I've just written humour. Humour is one of the things that allows us to get in touch with our own humanity and it allows us to ridicule a situation that we think is out of our control. No matter how traumatic an experience is, we can always, always find humour in it. And that allows us to better deal with the situation and brings a bit of optimism to the moment. Point number five, I've just written, celebrate the victories that exist. Even in shit times, there's often a silver lining. There's often some kind of victory to celebrate. And I think it's important in tough times to really try and find those victories. In Kate's story, the victory is so, so clear. She leaves behind an amazing, I've not met her, but I've heard from many people, an amazing,
27:14 Steven Bartlett? amazing daughter, an amazing legacy of memories for who she was and what she stood for. She's donating money to charity, even though she's no longer here through the creation of her product. And she leaves behind an amazing, powerful brand, which in and of itself is an inspiration to people. And that's the victory. That's the victory. And I try my best, and whenever I go through a hard time or I hear news like this, to try and focus a little bit on the victories as much as I'm focusing on the loss in the situation. Number six in my list of things to do when shit times strike is to pay it forward. I read a book called Lost Connections, which I've talked about on this podcast more times than any other book in the life of this podcast, which talks about how different cultures act
27:59 Steven Bartlett? when they're trying to improve their emotions and to make themselves happier. And some of the most happiest cultures globally, in times of hardship, they will go and help others to make themselves feel better. In times of hardship, Western cultures, we go and help ourselves. We go buy shit, retail therapy, we go shopping. But I believe in the approach of other cultures, which is to go and help others and to pay it forward. And this is exactly what the Kate MacIver brand is doing now. A percentage of the proceeds made from the sales of Kate MacIver's products are being donated to cancer charities and cancer organisations. So because of her greatness, because of what she did, other people who are suffering are going to suffer less. And I don't think there's anything more powerful than that.
28:43 Steven Bartlett? So that's my six step guide to how to make a shit situation into a good one. And social chain, myself, my team, everyone around me is going to work really, really hard to make sure that. We're doing everything we possibly can to make the Kate McQuiver brand a real success and to build a legacy and a, you know, huge value for the family.
29:03 Steven Bartlett? Rest in peace, Kate McQuiver.
29:06 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so the next point in my diary, I've just written, you're not special. And when you say this to people, when I tell people that they are not special, I am not special, it really hurts their feelings because I think we're all raised to believe that we are special. We tell ourselves that our mummies and daddies told us that we were special when we were kids. But I don't believe it's useful to believe that you're special. And I'm going to explain to you why. By definition, the idea that you're special is a matter of comparison, right? You're saying you're more special than somebody else. The definition on Google of special is better or greater than. And if you start to believe that humans have different amounts of innate inherent value, that some are more special, some are less special, some are inferior, some are superior. I think that's dangerous.
29:50 Steven Bartlett? Specialness, specialness is to me about the idea that somehow the rules of the world don't apply to you in the same way that they apply to everybody else. I think it's a fallacy that creates the very worst type of ego. And ego, when mixed with low self-esteem, becomes your worst enemy. The most productive position to take on this matter is one where you can be completely confident in who you are and where you've come from and what you do. You can embrace your own uniqueness, right? You know your talents, you're self-aware enough to know what you're good at and what you're bad at, whilst also realising that you're not inherently special. You're no more special than anybody else. The world absolutely does not owe you anything. You're not better than anybody else.
30:36 Steven Bartlett? You're equally susceptible to hard times than everybody else and you're equally capable of great accomplishments. You're not special and you're not inferior. You are you, unique, talented, capable of great things, providing that you're willing to do the hard work like everybody else that it takes. And I've, I've met many people in my life that think they're special. And they are amongst some of the most unsuccessful people that I know because they inherently believe, and there's somebody very close to me in my life that I'm not going to name, but because it will cause me loads of shit, that thinks they are special. They think that Jesus Christ, God, is guiding them to success, right? And the sheer nature of success in a lot of sort of pursuits, let's say business, or let's say monetary
31:20 Steven Bartlett? success, right, is comparative again. So let me, let me say this in simple terms. My mum wants to be a millionaire, right? She wants to be really successful, own loads of properties and be a multimillionaire. But in our society, you become a millionaire by being the best at some shit, right? Which means that everyone else, therefore, in many cases, can't also be a millionaire at the same time. My mum believes that for some reason she's special, God's going to make her a millionaire. That thought is in fact the reason why she's never going to be a millionaire, because she attributes her success and failure to some man in the sky that, in my opinion, doesn't exist. So when bad things happen, my mum doesn't learn from them, right? She's 25 years into business and she's not had the big break because I, you know, from my observation, she defaults
32:05 Steven Bartlett? often to blaming people and God and external factors for her lack of success. And what I think the best thing for my mum to do would be to embrace the fact that, okay, there's not a God that's going to make her get it. Her getting it, her succeeding is going to be a direct result of her own actions and her failing is a consequence of her own actions, right? There's no different rules for mum, right? We're all playing the same fucking game. My mum can fail just like anybody else can fail. I've detached myself from thinking that I'm owed anything, that I'm special. I am normal. I am normal, but I'm unique. And I'm normal, but I'm talented at for things that I'm good at. And that's enough to get
32:49 Steven Bartlett? it if I'm willing to put in the hard work. And I am willing to put the hard work. You're not special. Stop believing that you are. You're not destined for anything other than what you, what you deserve and earn. You can sit there thinking, I'm going to be a millionaire someday and do fuck all about it and just lay in bed all day. You're not going to be anything if you carry on like that. You're going to die with regret, right? That's what happens in a, in a worldview where we stop thinking that we're owed shit. And I don't think I'm owed anything. You're not special.
33:21 Steven Bartlett? Okay, the next point in my diary, I've just written, this is the closest that I've ever been to being myself. Here's a realisation I had earlier this week. I've realised that much of the reason why I've got more happy and more successful and and better and more confident and my personal brand has grown, isn't because I've learnt anything. It's because I've gotten closer to being who Stephen Butler actually is. You know, we all go through these phases in life where we conform to shit. We conform because we think it's easier to conform. We conform because we don't want to be criticised by others. When I was like 14 years old, I wore skinny jeans and I watched the Arctic Monkeys and the Kooks and all of these indie bands play because those were the things that my friends thought were cool. I was just conforming to the crowd. I was a sheep.
34:06 Steven Bartlett? At 16, I'm like into hip hop. I'm a bit of a chav. I'm wearing like helly Hansen clothing, Rockport, Stone Island, et cetera, et cetera. By 18, again, I'm kind of going with the crowd a bit, listening to the music that people listen to, going to the places that people go to. And I'm conforming and I'm also really scared to speak my mind and to express myself in rooms. By 26 years old, which is where I am now, I've really shaken off all of that bullshit. And you can tell by the nature of this podcast that I am no longer scared to just be myself. I'm not wearing my hat, which is a huge thing because my hair is shit. So me just sat here. This is being videoed as well for you guys that are listening in the podcast or with zero fucks as to what people think of how I look.
34:48 Steven Bartlett? I'm literally wearing shorts, a black t-shirt, shoes with massive holes in them and they're dirty. And I don't care. And I'm saying whatever I think. And because I've gotten closer to being myself, I'm happier than ever before. Because I'm doing things for my reasons, on my terms, and that's in those are the intrinsic values that science has proven makes us happy. Because I am more of myself than I've ever been, I am happier than I've ever been in my life. I'm more creative than ever before and I also have way more conviction for what I believe. So I can be sat in a room and someone can say something and I have a thought and I just fucking say it. I don't give a fuck if it's wrong. I know I'm wrong sometimes and I know I'm right sometimes. But the 10% of times when I'm really right have defined me.
35:32 Steven Bartlett? If you can become more of yourself and stop trying to be somebody else or trying to act up to who you think you have to be to fit in. I guarantee you, you're going to find your flow. Point number three, it's grown my personal brand and it's made me more interesting. Because I genuinely believe that peacocks are much more interesting than sheep, right? And I was a sheep before. I wouldn't say things that I think would, that I thought would offend people. I would skirt around topics and, and not really say it how it is. And now I've gotten to the point where I just say it how it is. And if you don't like it and you don't like me, then, you know, unfortunately, I can't do more than that because I'm unwilling to be a sheep. I'm unwilling to put up an act. Being myself has, is the reason why I think a lot of you listen to this. Think about that.
36:16 Steven Bartlett? And then ask yourself the question, how much of yourself are you actually? When you think something, do you just say it? Right? I don't want to go around offending people too much or insulting people. I think there's a big difference between insulting people and causing offence. I don't want to insult people. I don't mind causing offence because of what I say, because that's not my intention, of course. My intention is the truth. But yeah, it's made me, it's definitely grown my personal brand. And I think the key to growing personal branding in an era where we care so much about filters and fakery and being perceived a certain way is by doing the exact opposite. It's by being authentic and being your true self and showing the, the good with the bad. And that's exactly what this podcast is. Next, it's helped me with my sort of mental health and my happiness, right?
37:01 Steven Bartlett? I've never had any mental health issues in my life, thank God, but, but my mental health is definitely better because I'm able to express how I'm feeling, again, without the stigma or without the worry of what people might think. I talked earlier in this podcast about how men are committing suicide at a much higher rate because they keep themselves bottled up, right? They are not, they are not themselves. They are scared to say how they're feeling. And if you are yourself, one of the great positive consequences of that is your mental health will be better. Do you know how tiring and exhausting it is acting and trying to keep up appearances and not expressing your emotions? By being myself and getting closer to being myself, my mental health is definitely the best it's ever been and ever will be. Fortunately, my mental health has always been good.
37:46 Steven Bartlett? Secondly, or thirdly, or sixthly, or whatever we are on in this list, it's it's made me avoid anxiety because I care less. Much of anxiety is worry, worry about the past, worry of what will happen, worry of what people will say. And when you get close to being yourself and you're comfortable there, anxiety just evaporates. It evaporates. I can post something on my social media channel and give very little fucks as to what people might say to about me or or against me. Being yourself is an absolute anxiety killer, but it's not easy. I don't want to create the impression that it's just a decision because it's not a decision. It's a trial and error exercise. You try it one day, you experience the consequences. A lot of people will experience those negative consequences of being themselves and run right back to faking it and being somebody else.
38:32 Steven Bartlett? I made the decision that I care more about being myself than I do the negative consequences of being somebody else.
38:39 Steven Bartlett? The next point is it is it's helped me learn more. In order to develop, you need a sense of humility, right? You need to have an honest view of what you're good and bad at. And it's hard to have that view when you're just acting all the time. What I've done over the last couple of years is I've just said to myself, listen, Steve, what are you shit at? All of those things, right? Spend less time doing those things. What are you really good at? Those things, okay, spend all of your time, or as much time as you possibly can, doing more of those things. And don't be insecure and try and think that you can fake being good at the things you're not good at. Just embrace who the fuck you are, embrace who that you are you and double down on the beauty and the talent and all the wondrous parts of you. And that has made me a better learner. It's also made me more successful in my business because
39:25 Steven Bartlett? I'm spending more time doing the things that are in line with who I am. And the key to getting close to to being yourself is, I guess, I guess in many respects, it's that it's that decision you make every time you do an action. And so let me give you an actionable point of how you can become more of yourself. I think every time we take an action, we make a decision. Sometimes these decisions feel subconscious, like sitting in a meeting room in the corner and not speaking up. We're doing it because we're scared of being criticised often. We're scared of what people might think. And that is not a good enough reason not to act, right? So the key reason why I've been able to get closer to being myself
40:10 Steven Bartlett? is because I'm now doing things for the right reasons irrespective of the consequences. So when I'm sat in the corner of a meeting room and I hear an idea that I disagree with, I will say I disagree with that because of this, right? I'm doing that because of the right reasons. I'm doing that because I do disagree and my purpose in this meeting room is to get to a better solution. On my social media channels, I will post things because that's what I believe in, it's true to myself, not because I'm trying to impress somebody or get likes or retweets, right? So really, the first way to get closer to being yourself is doing things for the right reasons, not for extrinsic reasons, not for external approval, not for other people's opinion of you. Do it for you, do it for internal reasons, do it because it's the right thing to do and that's what you believe.
40:54 Steven Bartlett? And if you do that on a trial and error basis, you'll get very, very, very, very close to being yourself. And in getting close to being yourself, you get all of the things that I just listed. Happiness, less anxious, a greater personal brand, you'll be more creative, you'll learn more. And all in all, you'll be more fulfilled. And that is the most important thing, ladies and gentlemen.
41:14 Steven Bartlett? Okay, the last point, or the second to last point on my list in my diary today is a question, really. It's a question I get asked all the time, which is, how do you do it, Steve? I was on the train this week and a kid turned to me and he said, are you Steve Bartlett? And yeah, yeah, and he went, I just got a question for you, mate. How do you do it? And I'm, what do you mean? And he goes, well, you fly country to country, you're running this business, you're super young. How do you do it? And the honest answer is I'm just doing my best every day. I never try and do more than my best. I think there is nothing but anxiety and depression and sadness and negative emotions outside of my best. I triple down on trying to do my best, right? Because that's all I can do. Right, I don't think too much about the past either. I don't think too much about fucking up.
41:59 Steven Bartlett? I also, this sounds crazy, I don't think too much other than planning about the future. I don't try and worry about the future. I don't think, I worry about what happened in the past. I just try and be as present as possible every single day. I wake up in the morning and I try and do my best. It's not more complicated than that. I don't have a system to success and to being productive and to achieving great things. It's very simply just trying to do as much as I can in the moment I can control, which is now. And I think if more people did that and spent less time worrying about the future in the past, they would be much more successful and productive. I also, I feel like I'm driven on a mission. My mission is multifaceted.
42:40 Steven Bartlett? There's more than one mission in my life. I'm trying to create a great business that changes the world and changes an industry. But in doing so, we're creating a great life for a lot of people that work here by trying to create a great place to work as well. And in doing so, we're learning a ton, we're building a lot of resources. And with those resources, we're going to try and make the world a better place as well. And for me, those, those three are inherently connected and they're three things that are so important to me. I want to make my family's life better. I want to make the lives of my employees better. And I want to make the, the lives of people I've never met in, you know, corners of the world significantly better too. I feel like I'm driven on a mission and if my whole life is doing this and I'm sacrificing my younger years and my energy to pursue that mission,
43:23 Steven Bartlett? then for me, that's worthwhile. And I also, I feel like I'm on a mission to do myself justice. I think this is a really overarching thing that I've never really been able to understand. I feel like I'm trying to prove to myself that I was the person I said I was when I was younger. The person that I thought I was, I thought I was different. I thought I could do big things. And I'm trying to prove that person right. I'm trying to prove myself right. And you know, doing, leading the life that I lead is, is really not easy sometimes. Please for a second, don't think that I'm not grateful because you'll never meet a more grateful person. But you know, in the last, I don't know, twenty days, I've been in hotel rooms in different cities around the world. And it's almost impossible as a twenty five year old, twenty six year old, to build any kind of life or relationship. When you don't know where you're going to be tomorrow, or you're going to be in a different city tomorrow.
44:08 Steven Bartlett? You can't have like a proper girlfriend, or you can't really see your friends or anything like that. So there is tremendous sacrifice of things that are very important. But again, that mission and the enjoyment of the mission and the sense of gratitude guide me through that.
44:25 Steven Bartlett? I remind myself that I'm absolutely living the dream. I am absolutely living my dream and I'm getting to do something that a lot of people around the world would absolutely love to do. And if I ever disrespect that that level of privilege, then I think it all ends for me. So, yeah.
44:43 Steven Bartlett? The next point in my diary is about relationships. I've not talked about relationships in a while, but I thought I'd bring it back this week. Where am I in my relationships, my romantic relationships? Honestly, I'm I'm single. I'm more single than I've ever been, and I think I'm struggling more than I've ever struggled to like try and hold down a situation. I'm not really sure what I want. I'm not really sure who I'm looking for. I'm not really sure how I can maintain a relationship with the way that my life currently is. And I'm also, I I get increasingly concerned as I get older, as I think we all do, that I might look back and regret it, right? That I might look back on this part of my life and think, Steve, why didn't you find someone to love? And why didn't you fall in love and have kids and all those things? I don't know whether I'm going to regret it. I know something for sure.
45:26 Steven Bartlett? I know that you can't have everything and that sacrifice is sacrifice. Something's got to give. I can't be giving myself to my personal brand, to the business, to my to my team, to my investors, to my mission, to trying to save the world. Whilst also giving everything that I have to, you know, a family and to a loved one. And then you start to ask yourself what's more important. I guess my conclusion is the two are interconnected. If I'm able to build myself up, I'm able to build resources that will take care of my family and my future wife and all those things. That's what I tell myself. Maybe I'm wrong. And that's a lesson that I think I won't know until later in my life. I'm going to do my very best to try and focus more time on that part of my life, but it's
46:08 Steven Bartlett? just been very, very hard for the last couple of years, for the last couple of months, and it doesn't seem to be getting any easier. I can't see it getting easier with the amount of aggression and energy I dedicate to my career and my other areas of my life, but I'm going to do my best. Really what I'm hoping for is I'm just kind of hoping that someone's going to come along at some point and it's going to be worthwhile, but you know, maybe they've already come along and I missed it. Time will tell. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast this week. I really, as always, appreciate it. It's a super cathartic experience for me and it's a good chance for me to just vent for a second and get things off my chest. So you guys are helping me more than, you know, I probably help you, I think. If you could do me a massive favor again, please, please, please, if you haven't already,
46:51 Steven Bartlett? I'm trying to get to 500 five-star reviews in the app store. We're about 490 something. If you could give this podcast a five-star review, that'd be super helpful and tag me in it if you share it online and I'll retweet you and message you and all that stuff. I go through and I read every single review, so your reviews mean the world to me and they really do shake this podcast. But also, on the point of reviews, please do give feedback as well. Like, let me know like what you think of the podcast and the episodes you love the most and the episodes you don't love as much. That'd be super useful because we're experimenting a lot with the podcast at the moment. We're doing new things and we're, we're, we're trying to record it. I'm, I'm practicing writing some in more detail before I start recording and then I'm
47:34 Steven Bartlett? practicing saying it in different ways and delivering it in different ways and being more edited or more unedited. So if you could leave a review this week, make sure it's five-star and just give me feedback on the podcast and also tell me which is your favorite episode to date. That would be super, super useful. In fact, that'd be more useful than anything else, so please do that. And I'll catch you again next week. Thanks.
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