Build Sandcastles out of Bullsh*t
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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 learned more about British politics in the last three months than I've learned 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. 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 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. We become little people in this massive echo chamber of information, being refed our own thoughts or being refed ideas that we've sought out.
But in the same way, I've talked before on 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. There are a number of famous studies, specifically my favorite is by a guy called Tim Kasser, 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 Kasser, 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. 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 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 liked 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.
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. That's 13 hours of the people that I follow serving me either uplifting, optimistic, extrinsic, intrinsic, toxic, or 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 this 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 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 thinking about Ibiza this summer.
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 a person of more substance. And what I also did is I replaced all of those people with people that I thought were really smart and people I wanted to be more like, right?
So, I went onto 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 with a wider perspective. And I honestly, I honestly want every single person listening to this to just do this experiment for one week. When you log 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 unfollow them, or 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? 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. 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, 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 a waste of time. With algorithms, you've got to retrain them, but with people, you've got to choose to follow them.
Okay, so the next point in my diary, I've just written, "Project Perry." Let me explain. About eight or 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 on this podcast before, but the one thing it really made me come away with was this feeling of responsibility.
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. 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 inbox was very, very native and very understandable and very quick and very easy for the 8,000 people that messaged me. And when you look at the stats, messaging is growing at a rate of about 150 to 200 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 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 idea is inspired and named after the guy that killed himself. The guy that killed himself that shared my video is called Ibish Perry. So, we're calling this Project Perry.
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 center operated by the likes of CALM or The Samaritans or one of the big mental health support lines.
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 10 percent of young people consider phone calling one of the most important forms of communication, whereas 70 percent of young people would message an 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, it's been in the news last week, I think, or the week before, that one of the contestants on Love Island killed himself, a guy called Mike. And as I scrolled through Instagram, 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."
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 at 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 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. It will help offer people a shoulder to turn to, someone to advise them on 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 with through Project Perry, we're going to 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. I sent an email to the very, very head of Facebook in EMEA, which is 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. 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 going to 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 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. I remember when I had made my first business, going to meetings that I thought were make-or-break, and them just telling me, "Nope, 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 that they wouldn't support her book, and now she's the queen of that shit.
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 myself personally, this isn't about how bad I want it. 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.
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. If I say something that's a little bit sloppy, or if I say something that might cause offense, please don't be 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. That's also, on 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 45 in the UK. Because men don't talk about their feelings. They bottle it up and they don't share their emotions because of the stigma attached to that in our society.
But I wanted to understand if talking about mental health and labeling 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. There's a really, really big difference.
You know, sadness is a normal human emotion, and we all experience sadness. 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 good events become negative events for someone that's feeling in that way.
And 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 this week—that you don't jump to label yourself with depression or anxiety or something or bipolar.
Because the human condition is a rollercoaster. The human emotional spectrum is a rollercoaster. 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 labeling our emotions as disorders.
Because you can feel sad and not be depressed, right? And you can be nervous and apprehensive and concerned and worried without having anxiety disorder. 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 labeling, we've got really obsessed with calling things OCD because they are not neat or because the colors don't match. And it's the same sort of over-labeling 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? Mental health issues and disorders are not to be trivialized. 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. Don't just give it to yourself because you've had a bad day or because a bunch of colors or something isn't neat and it makes you feel anxious, right? Be slow on labeling.
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 McIver Skin. This miracle treatment that makes your skin great.
And it was founded and created by a lady called Kate McIver 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 check it out.
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 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 McIver passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. And there's a couple of lessons that I've learned from Kate McIver. I guess the first lesson is about how everything in life doesn't 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 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 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 McIver 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 happy ending in every story. But the most important thing is that we can learn to build sandcastles out of bullshit. 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 want to do with the Kate McIver 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 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 re-emerge later. You have to confront your emotions.
And that kind of leads me onto 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 bottle things up because of the stigma, because they want to be tough, they don't want to be seen as weak. So you have to confront your emotions, allow yourself to be sad, speak to people.
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 for dealing with the death of close 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 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 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.
Point number four, I've just written "humor." Humor is one of the things that allows us to get in touch with our own humanity and 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 humor 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 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 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 time strikes 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 when they're trying to improve their emotions and to make themselves happier. And some of the 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 McIver brand is doing now. A percentage of the proceeds made from the sales of Kate McIver's products are being donated to cancer charities and cancer organizations. 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.
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 McIver brand a real success and to build a legacy and a huge value for the family. Rest in peace Kate McIver.
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.
"Specialness," to me, is 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. An 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, while also realizing 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. 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 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 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 success, is comparative again. So let me say this in simple terms. My mom 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 mom 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 mom doesn't learn from them, right?
She's 25 years into business and she's not had the big break because I know from my observation she defaults often to blaming people and God and external factors for her lack of success. And what I think the best thing for my mom 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 mom, right? We're all playing the same fucking game. My mom can fail just like anybody else can fail. I've detached myself from thinking that I'm owed anything or that I'm special. I am normal. I am normal but I'm unique and I'm normal but I'm talented at the things that I'm good at. And that's enough to get 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 were. You're not destined for anything other than 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 world view where we stop thinking that we're owed shit. And I don't think I'm owed anything. You're not special.
Okay, the next point in my diary I've just written, "This is the closest I've ever been to being myself." Here's a realization I had earlier this week. I realized that much of the reason why I've got more happy and more successful and better and more confident and my personal brand has grown isn't because I've learned anything. It's because I've gotten closer to being who Steven Bartlett 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 criticized 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.
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 etc. etc. 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's shit, so me just sat here—this is being videoed as well for you guys that are listening in the podcast store—with zero fucks as to what people think of how I look. 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 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 percent of times when I'm really right have defined me. 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'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 thought would offend people, I would skirt around topics 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 is the reason why I think a lot of you listen to this. Think about that. 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 offense. I don't want to insult people, I don't mind causing offense 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 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? I've never had any mental health issues in my life thank God 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 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.
Secondly, or thirdly, or sixthly, or whatever we are on this list, 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 closer 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 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. And a lot of people will experience those negative consequences of being themselves and run right back to faking it and being somebody else. I made the decision that I care more about being myself than I do the negative consequences of being somebody else.
The next point 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 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 I'm spending more time doing the things that are in line with who I am.
And the key to getting close to being yourself is I guess—I guess in many respects 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 criticized 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 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 and 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. 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.
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 Steven Bartlett?" "Yeah, yeah." And he went, "I just got a question for you mate, how do you do it?" And I went, "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. 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 and 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. 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 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 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, then for me that's worthwhile.
And I also 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 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 20 days I've been in hotel rooms in different cities around the world and it's almost impossible as a 25-year-old, 26-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.
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. 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.
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 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 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. 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 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 loved ones. 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 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 any 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, I'm trying to get to 500 five-star reviews in the App Store, we're at about 490-something. If you could give this podcast a five-star review that would 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 shape this podcast.
But also on the point of reviews, please do give feedback as well. Like let me know 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 trying to record it, I'm practicing writing some in more detail before I start recording and then I'm 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 would be more useful than anything else. So please do that and I'll catch you again next week. Thanks.