Moment 18 - Ben Fogle on How He Lost & Found His Confidence

00:07Ben, as I read through your story, your books, your interviews, and I remember watching a YouTube documentary of you sailing across the Atlantic many years ago. Obviously, the most sort of striking, distinctive, standout thing about the way that you've chosen to live your life over the last couple of decades is your seemingly insatiable appetite for adventure risk challenge uh extreme adventure as it relates to everest and things like that where did that come from i think it's do you know it's not necessarily an absolute thirst for adventure i think it's about kind of finding the real me. See, if I go right back, as a child, I was so shy. I had no confidence.

01:01I failed all my exams. I was hopeless at sport. And actually, I think all of the things that I've done since have been about rebuilding. It sounds a weird way to describe it, but it's not just, I'm not an adrenaline junkie. There's this assumption that maybe, you know, that would be how to describe myself. But it's not that at all. Actually, loads of the things I do are really, really slow. You know, like rowing across the Atlantic took the best part of two months.

01:31Walking across Antarctica took many, many months. Climbing Everest took many months. So actually, if it was jumping off a mountain base jumping or going on a motorbike or even a mountain bike down a steep slope. I hate all that. It's too fast. I quite like this slow movement, but I'm quite good at long endurance events. And all of those have been about rebuilding my confidence. And what took your confidence or why didn't you have confidence? I think it's the fact that I was hopeless academically for many different reasons, undiagnosed dyslexia.

02:11a kind of a slight mistake maybe not on my parents part but they my father's Canadian he wanted me to be bilingual so I was sent to a French school and I just I just I just didn't I couldn't do the French school the French system and with all apologies to any French watching or listening to this it's just quite a hard system the French one and and and it was quite it was quite um strict and i'm just as a child i just i was surrounded by dogs dad was a vet mum was an actress it was all quite a liberal my actual childhood at home was quite liberal full of actors um lots of drink uh lots of animals around it was i suppose crazy but normal for me but then in this french system it was very rigid and and it meant that i didn't learn any french French and my English went backwards. So when I went back into the system, I was way behind.

03:06And the result was the combination of that and dyslexia just meant I was hopeless, I could barely write. And I failed all my exams. And I was surrounded by people who were better than me at everything. Everyone seemed to be more handsome if it was the boys. They had more luck with the girls. They were better at playing sports because they could actually kick a football, unlike me, that have two left legs. And they were good at academics. And when it came to the exams, they could be up all night watching stuff and then the next day turn up for the exam.

03:40Whereas I was almost making myself vomit. I was so nervous about the exams because I knew I was going to fail. And this is the first thing. I convinced myself I'd fail. And of course, I ended up failing because what I've discovered since is that so much of what we do and what we endure and how we test ourselves is here in the mind. And if you go in with a negative attitude, which I had, then it's self-fulfilling. And the result was hopeless at everything. And it just stripped me of my confidence. I didn't believe in myself. And that went right through, probably into my 30s, if I'm to be really honest. I think that was always lingering over me, this little voice just telling me that I wasn't good enough at what I did.

04:30And did that voice come from your own assessment of yourself? Or was their external forces bullying or your parents? No, my parents were amazing. My parents, I don't think they could have done more for me than they did. I think it was all internal, if I'm to be honest. I think there was an external pressure to conform. Because if you take the schooling model and the education model, it is kind of about conforming. Because exams are all about getting the correct grades.

05:07We're learning to a specific model that has been set by the government. And it's sort of painting by numbers when you think about education. And if you don't hit those targets, then you've effectively failed the system. And for me, you can hear from my accent, you know, I'm posh. I went to a private school. Mum and dad worked really hard to send me to a private school. And actually, there was a great guilt that the fact that they had worked so hard to be able to afford to send me there, and yet I still failed.

05:41So I think actually a lot of that voice was internal. and actually I wish if I could go back in time I wish I could kind of shake my shoulder shake a young me on the shoulders and go just don't don't overthink things just chill out a little bit and were you a chronic overthinker I was and I still am I still overthink things if I'm to be honest I I to work in the medium that I work in is a little bit strange because I don't really belong in this medium when i say this medium you know it front of house where as a presenter because i've got a really thin skin and i overthink everything so when i read something negative whether that's on social media whether that's a newspaper review whether that's a journalist that has written something um which i don't like um or or which doesn't seem true i take it really personally which is kind of really strange because i should have i should have been able to overcome that after 20 years. And I'm almost there, Stephen. I'm almost there. But one of the reasons I'm happy to talk about it is because I know I'm not alone. I know there are many, many people out there who are high achievers, who've done brilliant things in life, but are still burdened with their

06:54own voice of doubt. And through all of these challenges I've done, I've been able to really build that confidence. And I'd say I'm a few hundred meters from the summit now of peak confidence and I can't wait until I'm there I hope I do I hope I reach that point what is it about those challenges and this sort of slow monotonous nature of those challenges or just the challenges themselves or challenge as a you know as a as a construct itself that helps you to build confidence because I'm one of the most frequent questions I'm asked in the comment section of this podcast or on Instagram or anywhere else is um how do I build my confidence and I think we live in a culture especially on instagram where it seems like everyone else is super confident and chasing their dreams and we never get to hear the whispers of their self-doubt so it might feel like we're the only ones so i guess my question is how how how did those challenges build your confidence it it happened by accident so that's the first thing to say i didn't chase it thinking this is going to help. It was like a slow series of blocks that were built. So it started when I failed my A-levels and I went off traveling. I went to Costa Rica, a place that I know you love. And I went to

08:09university out there. And I think it was spending time in a different country with a different culture, different language, different religion, away from home, away from mum and dad. And first First of all, I had to kind of think on my own. I couldn't defer to other people. Up until that point, I'd always kind of, Dad, what do you think? Mom, should I do that? You know, I didn't trust my own judgment. So first of all, that was gone. So I had to stand or fall on my own decisions.

08:41And then secondly, just the immersion in this exciting new place was just, I mean, it just, it was the most exciting year I've ever had, if I'm to be really honest. there's going to be so many Ben 18 year old Ben Ben's listening to this right now who have listened to this and thought you know what I'm really low confidence and I've been knocked and you know I'm not sure if I'm good enough and I've been called a failure by my job dad whatever it is what do you say to those people having walked you know lived their life what do you say to them what's the advice you give them don't don't buy into someone else's narrative that's what you're doing by listening to the failure, whether it's absolute words coming out of someone's mouth saying, well, you're no good, whether it's even perceived narrative that you go into a pub and everyone looks like they're having more fun than you and the girl or the boy doesn't want to be with you, they want to be with the other person.

09:40I think you just have to own your narrative. You are, in this world of, what are we, 6.7 billion, I probably got that wrong, but in this world of many, many billions of people, there is no other Stephen. That is fact. There might be someone similar. There might be someone with the same abilities, the same body type, maybe even looks a bit like you, but you are completely unique because your personality belongs to you. And don't try and change that. Don't try and be the person that other people want you to be, be the person you are. And it's a really hard thing to buy into because I spent so much of my life trying to be the person I thought society wanted me to be. Always embarrassed that I wasn't. I was either too posh or I wasn't posh enough. I was either too successful or not successful enough. You see what I mean? It's almost like you're always just trying to fit in.

10:36But actually, once you own your narrative, once you're confident that you are unique in whatever way. It might be a geeky kind of unique. It might be a cool kind of unique. It might be a quirky kind of unique. But if you can own your personality, your narrative, and accept that, you're halfway there to this self-belief and this confidence. And that also means not trying to buy into someone else's narrative. You might think you want to be the, if you're the geeky one, you might think you want to be the cool kid. You might think that you want to be playing in the first football team. You might think that you want to be sitting at that top table, but that's not necessarily where your personality wants you to be. And I think stop wanting and start being.

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