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I've been asked by the FBI I've been asked by the police to help with the FBI or the police went out with [Music] [Applause] psychological illusion doing extraordinary television and even better live shows Darren is a National Treasure welcome to the show the story We Tell ourselves is not what's real like for example I did a show called Miracle the Lord has his work cut out tonight and the second half was healing the woman came up and she'd been paralyzed on one side of her body since she was four in floods of Tears because she could move her left arm for the first time what you're seeing is that it's the psychological component of suffering right like nothing's happened nothing's changed but their relationship to their suffering that's been made to change it's not the things in life that cause your problems it's the story that you tell yourself about them it's the judgments that you make about them there's a lot of people that are trying to sell you on this [ __ ] that they can take your traumas or your your insecurities to zero I've never seen it happen we've completely obliterated the idea of just fortune and life sometimes life's throwing stuff back at us if we have no control over anxiety is still somehow the demon but you know without anxiety how do you know to change anything you know you can't do that without embracing anxiety to an extent you were is predominantly based in Psychology right so have you ever done anything and thought how the [ __ ] did that happen don't go home and start doing that two things come to mind before this episode starts I have a small favor to ask from you two months ago 74 of people that watch this channel didn't subscribe we're now down to 69 my goal is 50 so if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted if you like this channel can you do me a quick favor and hit the Subscribe button it helps this channel more than you know and the bigger the channel gets as you've seen the bigger the guests get thank you and enjoy this episode foreign [Music] the last few days reading all about your childhood oh truly fascinating thank you actually I've actually got a picture here have you um how strange that you have that picture yes that's me with a um a parrot on my shoulder after you have this little boy yes what do I need to understand about about him and the world he lived in and the way he saw the world to understand you what do you need to understand well I was an only child till I was nine uh so I guess that's kind of that's a pretty formative thing isn't it um quite creative like always always drawing and Building Things Lego um always been a bit of a people pleaser and maybe that at that age a kind of yeah sort of happy didn't have a lot of friends there wasn't like a didn't have a big gang I never really did I've always gone through life just with sort of a small number of of good friends uh but I think there's one that feels like a happy a happy time to think back on I remember sitting with Jimmy Carr and him telling me that um people often think of comedians as being like they're depressed so they're trying to impress other people to get some kind of thrill for their own sort of self-gratification but Jimmy said to me he said you should actually ask which one of my parents was depressed that I was trying to impress to understand how I became a comedian and I wonder you said that you're a bit of a people pleaser you clearly have this huge Affinity towards entertaining and getting the reaction back from people the amazement where where did that start can you have you pinpointed where that started in your childhood yes I think I could so when I was at school so my dad was a swimming teacher at school and uh he and I wasn't very sporty so I kind of um it shielded me from being like uh bullied as an as a non-sporty kid but I didn't love school mainly because I said I found a lot of the kids the sporty gets quite intimidating and so on so I kind of like but Dad teaching that helped and then when I got to and I was I was in with the wrong group the um the sort of classical music loving group or the puff gang as we were less charitably known um didn't even like classical music so it was a pretty miserable group to be stuck with um in sixth form I remember everybody sort of seemed to grow up suddenly become a lot more uh friendly and so I kind of uh I sort of exploded in a way into sort of like a attention seeking and I went from being very sort of quiet and a bit a bit intimidated by these sort of uh kids to sort of um suddenly they seem to sort of you know like me or at least you know they were fine so I I started doing impressions of teachers and I would draw caricatures with them and I was def I became a kind of really I would imagine quite irritating certainly some of the teachers um attention seeker so I think it all happened around then um and then it just sort of then progressed into University most of my twenties was um probably a lot of it was around you know based around that uh and it was quite a handy thing you know if you're going to perform it takes care of that need to just sort of you know just kind of impress I think it was probably a a good thing were you picked on ortized or anything in school before that point no so because I think because my dad taught there it helped but I was I was definitely always chosen last for the teams and and things hated uh Sports and so on there were a
couple of kids that were probably I mean generally fairly nasty anyway but I certainly got uh a a bit from them but no I think I think I sort of did all right I think I generally didn't enjoy school that much and I felt like I was sort of um I said intimidated but I don't I don't really remember ever getting sort of I never got beaten up or bullied or no one was making my life particularly miserable I think it was just the general feeling of not quite fitting in and religion I was incredibly religious well yeah and then I hosted it at about 18 became incredibly atheist yeah and you I read a similar sort of Journey in your story at six or something you'd asked your parents if you could go to Bible That's Right Mrs Whitaker one of our teachers at school was uh I really liked a lot and um she ran it was called Crusader class but it's basically like a Sunday school thing um and uh because I was six and she asked me if I wanted to go to it and I just sort of Presumed every Everybody did I didn't know any different so I said to uh I asked my parents if I could go and they said yes of course so I did and by the time I realized that oh no this is actually like a a thing that I now believe in it was sort of I was pretty much inculcated so it was uh hard to step out of it but I did eventually at University so many years later I uh through doing hypnosis first and magic and they always give you quite a skeptical outlook on things because you just see how people fool themselves and and so you sort of naturally start to view a lot of belief systems I think through those eyes including your own I don't know how it was for you but I um and also the very idea of doing hypnosis um I just remember that was because I was a member of the Christian union in my first year at University I went to Bristol and they were just totally up in arms I had I had um members of the that Christian union at the back of one of my shows exorcizing me and casting out demons whilst I was hypnotizing people on stage so again all of that just sort of uh made me quite just help with the sort of General skepticism and it took a little while to properly come out of it in fact that the Richard Dawkins book The The God Delusion came out around the time that I had sort of mentally made that step but didn't quite maybe have the sort of proper language for it so that was if that was a helpful book actually I'm sure it was for many people in terms of giving that lack of belief a kind of a structure it was for me one of the very sort of pivotal books in my life when I when I was about 18 years old um I also a bit about like compulsive behaviors from your childhood things like knocking your knees together and yeah a series of other things really Twitchy yeah a little on that sort of kind of Tourette's sort of scale I think there's a there's a there's a wedge that ends with um quite severe things but a lot a lot of people have that experience of um making a little funny tickly noises in the throat or having to you know not step on the cracks and uh there's all the kind of OCD thing that that starts to get accompanied by feelings of dread and so much I never had that but yeah I was twitching I I find a lot of um kind of creative Creative Kids are don't I don't really know what what it is it's a it's a seems to be a form of Auto suggestion um it's like when you get you get the idea in your head and then it's very hard to let it go and sometimes I I get it now sometimes I get it on stage because there's a certain amount there's a lot of muscle memory with doing a stage show so if you if something if a little twitch you think is crept in at one point during the show it'll just creep in every night um so I still kind of uh still aware of it um a little more over the last few years because obviously it's been such a you know weird few years for everyone's mental health so I've noticed it more than I had before um but uh yeah and it was quite it was a it was a lot my parents were quite despairing with it I think it's a very painful thing to watch should child do and not know what were they watching how to help knees knocking sniffing terrible sniffing yeah like Rip but really really loud I went to see a um Alfred brendel The Pianist playing in Berlin once when I was uh studying out there I think or did my Gap year I think it was out there and just I mean this guy's playing the I think it was the Beethoven piano sonatas just him on his own on the stage at the Berlin Philharmonic and there's this incredibly loud sniffing that I'm doing and by the second half everybody had cleared out I was just basically a whole empty area of the audience but yeah just it's such a bizarre thing um you just can't really stop it with the best one in the world you can't stop yourself from doing this there's these things and it's um and you also you don't have the language for it as a kid that's that's the worst part of it you don't have the language to explain that it's a compulsion it you sort of feel like you're in control of it you say you feel like therefore the only thing you can say is that you want to do it if you don't want to do it because it's horrible you'd really really want to stop and it's it's hard and frightening because you can't articulate it and it um uh and I I think there's no answer to it I think just it sort of passes as you've um as you've matured has your perspective of your childhood evolved because I've found that mine certainly has it's almost like with with a bit more wisdom I say that I'm 30 years old now but with a little bit more wisdom I've I've kind of have a different perspective now on the events of my childhood at one point I would
have kind of narrated them differently but now I see different sort of truths and through lines in my early experience I think I'm quite fond of my memories of myself as a child and I um it felt like there was quite a clean break once I sort of went off to University it felt like life sort of stopped and started again so I when I think back to my kind of um the sort of story of myself that I guess I'm sort of quietly living out the back of my head I sort of don't really go much Beyond uh University age um and I'll happily find anything excruciating like you know more than you know anything I've said or done 10 minutes ago I find that quite easy um and that feeling I suppose kind of gets weaker and weaker the further I go back in terms of finding myself you know embarrassing I and then by the time I get to Childhood it's all perfectly or feels fine I mean I'm aware as I said that I was kind of would sort of just get on with my own things but nothing I I uh I think I was sensitive I think I still am I was quite a sensitive child I used to I did used to cry a lot I know that makes me sound unhappy but I I used to it didn't take much to make me cry um and I think I probably retained a sort of uh sensitivity which is sort of interesting so to write a lot about stoicism and a lot of the things I think people you people do tend to write about the things that you know that they either need to learn for themselves or our learning so you know you express those things um often better because you're discovering them for free for yourself um so uh perhaps like a lot of stoics I'm you know secretly quite uh quite sensitive too so I remember that but not not um not really unhappy not not totally blissfully happy either but just a kind of Fairly content solitary kind of kid that sensitivity um I've always wondered if if we're particularly taken by the Applause are we therefore also taken by the criticism so people that don't end up committing their lives to being like public entertainers and living for the response and the reaction that their work has are those then also the people that are most susceptible to when you know the opposite of applause uh yeah I yes I guess so you're definitely putting yourself out there aren't you if you you perform and you thought you are kind of you are um opening yourself up to both extremes of reactions but it wasn't really about that for me I I um I think it was about uh control was a big part of it and also as a sort of um like I didn't come out until I was actually sort of quite late in my 30s um and I think around the time that I was getting into the hypnosis that was you know sort of University time really uh and I think first of all it was this is all wasn't clear to me at the time but with hindsight that the control aspect of it was very um clear uh and actually ticked well if you watch a hypnotist hypnotizing people I mean it's just that the whole thing is a big exercise in in control and I think I've sort of that was appealing to me although I didn't know it I didn't it didn't strike me quite in that language at the time but I think looking back um that was helpful um and also I think if the old um outmoded cliche of the the gay man in particular being you know a hairdresser or a interior designer and all of those sort of horrible old cliches what they have in common actors as well is the um the notion of being able to create dazzling surfaces because they they deflect people from the more difficult but if you're feeling Shame about you know what's underneath um and I think Magic's very good for that as well you know you're you're sort of creating this bubble around yourself this sort of this um you're literally hiding behind a trick and people will look at that trick and go oh gosh you're amazing how do you do that you're amazing that's a very appealing thing a lot of kids get into magic because they're underconfident um and a lot of people even going through magic into adults they they've learned to rely on that to impress people and haven't had to go back and just work through normal social skills that most people do so it's it's a very appealing thing I think all of that was all of that was helpful to me as somebody that was not out and you know kind of working all that stuff out use the word shame there it reminded me of listening to your audiobook where you talk about those two kids beating you up in your sleeping bag I can't remember them oh yeah yeah that's right yeah and one of the lines you said in that section of the book is that you were very good at I think you said embodying shame but I know that's not the exact word you used but they were very good at liking holding shame you're full of shame I think was the the um the message yeah I I can't remember exactly what I wrote but um yeah kind of it creeps up on you I said I I find now it's um yeah I can ease I'm prone to it you know if I feel I've uh upset my partner I'll it's it's a shame that I'll go to rather than defensiveness or you know yeah I just I'll easily I can easily get back to a feeling of like oh I've you know I've been bad I've just sort of let this person down is that what does shame mean to you because I think I've been using the word a little bit without um a very focused definition I've been saying that I felt a lot of shame because I was the only like black hidden in all white school and we were the poorest family and so that feeling of Shame turned into like a motivation which made me want to become a happy sexy millionaire but what does shame mean to you in that context
well I suppose if you distinguish it from embarrassment embarrassment is sort of where you sort of you've let yourself down in front of or you've it's it's a feeling you're going to get from other people they're they're important in that it's how you've appeared before them or as I suppose shame as how you've appeared before yourself that you've sort of let something down within yourself it's that isn't it um uh but I think the experience of it is just a sort of um it just becomes an easy resting place whatever it is but it might be someone else it could be anger or Fury or whatever if there's just a an emotional through line that you've that was a familiar place when you were young it's just you just find yourself settling back into that and I suppose part of getting older is recognizing those kind of things aren't they recognizing Ah that's that is a you know a needless pattern and as you said with your own experience with that can those things can be really helpful they can provide a real impetus and a motivation to um you know to do things you wouldn't if I mean like not not being out all that energy was going into creating this Mr Magic kind of Persona and I just you know and although it's easy to say you know you should always always come out and all the rest of it and of course those things are important too but I don't think I'd be I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you now I don't think if if that had been an easy ride you know um shame being a a familiar resting place as you kind of describe it and you said that kind of starts in your childhood I just want to be because I want to make sure that I'm clear on the context here that that has a familiar sort of um history in your childhood because of the social dynamics of your childhood because you felt like a bit different and a bit like a loner is that what you're saying or is there other Dynamics with parents where they I know I think specifically with sort of the the gay thing I think I think I think that's what it is I think if you feel and hopefully it's different now it's just you know it's just going back a bit I'm 51 now so but if you feel like those things are just embarrassing and awkward you're kind of you know it's not like you really get to well you're finding it out in real time about yourself aren't you so there's just uh it becomes an uncomfortable Center of everything that starts to affect so much of what happens on the surface and there's a real experience I think if you're not out which I've recognized in many friends as well but there's a bit of just a bit of a bubble around you because you're sort of you're having to maintain a kind of a um a sort of curated exterior and and part of that then is then what's happening underneath is is uncomfortable and difficult and feels shameful um so I think that's it I think that's where I don't remember feeling that as a kid as I said quiet and so on but I don't remember feeling that as an experience but it just sort of just kind of crept in and the more the more I sort of um uh kind of was leaning into the magic Persona thing the more the more the outside becomes sort of you know the the harder and more sort of um uh opaque this sort of exterior presentation becomes I think the it goes hand in hand with a more shameful interior until in the end you just sort of oh [ __ ] that and just sort of let it all be fine was was there a point and this might be a really naive question as a straight guy but was there a point where it became crystal clear to you that your your sexual preference was different or was it slow sort of realizations and yeah it was cut um if it's sort of because you can never really climb into anyone else's head yeah and sort of understand what their experience is it's it's it's sort of um it's often difficult to really know and of course at the time I was also a proper Christian um which uh slightly kind of messes the thing up and just slightly gets in the way of the whole thing I had a friend who went through the um some of that kind of uh Living Waters movement which is the kind of gay conversion it's got called Gay conversion therapy it was a bit more subtle than that but nonetheless is basically that so he was going through that and although I didn't I was kind of um skirted it a little bit because I was his friend and you know it was something we were talking about a lot um so all of those things an obviously by the way it doesn't work just in case I was wondering um I mean I went in straight it worked for me um uh so yeah it was sort of um I don't know I don't there's never just a clear moment it's just uh I think as I just got in the public eye I thought I don't want this to be some weird sort of thing that's like a secret um so uh and then you come out of it and you come out about it and then actually the uh the The Joy the reason why it's liberating at least it was for me and probably hopefully most people now is that people just don't care like this thing that you've carried around and that experience that shameful Center that's there again shame is a really strong word but nonetheless it is kind of just this sort of awkward thing and eventually when it when you sort of are open about it it's just people don't care why why would they care so that's that's the lib that's why it's liberating it's not because suddenly you can you know spin around in the street with your shopping bags it's um it's just that oh no one cares about you're driving difficult private stuff in the best way so actually and you've done the big
one like you've so now anything else after this will be will be fine that I think that's why it's a liberating thing I really quite I think it was in the telegraph well you'd said that um maybe the journalist was commentating that um something as simple as mislaying your keys can trigger a whole new wave of self-hatred oh God that was me saying that was it uh yeah that's just Fury though isn't it when you can't find a circle you can't find your keys or your pen um self-hatred I mean is a strong strong word uh I think the people maybe yeah maybe it does yeah I probably would yes I would reflect it back on myself rather than being angry my partner anybody else who's probably lost it that's what he'd do he'd be angry that I I must have put his keys somewhere because he can't find them I would just be yeah beating myself up for why am I always losing stuff why can't I remember where I put things yeah I definitely would do that interesting I wouldn't no no it wouldn't I don't think it would reflect on my my own self-image if I lost the keys or even if it did it wouldn't negatively reflect I think that's just who I am that's who I am yeah I'm one organized versus like oh I'm so in organized I hate I hate that about myself yeah well I don't know when I said that that was probably quite a while ago and uh I don't know if I'd necessarily be that hard on myself now plus unless you exaggerate these things for rhetorical effect um has anything changed like on a really fundamental level yeah I'm so curious about how how how could we are actually changing some of these things because we say yeah we talk about it but as I've got an older and older and as I've done more and more of these interviews I tend to find that they're like real fundamental stuff is never healed it never goes away and I actually think that's really good news for people because there's a lot of people that are trying to sell you on this [ __ ] that they can take your traumas or your your insecurities to zero yeah I've never seen it happen no that's all wrong and even even stoicism in a way is sort of um a little guilty of that um even something that's talked about talking about rolling with the punches of life is still kind of suggesting that and if you get this right you won't be disturbed you know you won't experience anxiety that is all that's a little bit off really I think the nature of life is that it is it is difficult and uh not all the time but a lot of the time things really go badly and they certainly don't go as you planned and you know that you actually as you start to get older you realize your plans probably have nothing to do with how things are turning out but the illusion that they are is what propels you through the first half of life um so uh actually I think the project the task our task is um a certain amount of is sort of personal development and in integrating ourselves with the parts of us that we are uncomfortable with so again that's the project of relating to what's difficult within ourselves and then how we do that in life as well how we relate to things that are difficult and tricky in life because the thing about although that experience can be very um isolating those feelings of you know when life lets you down or you feel you've failed they tend to be quite isolating experiences um like shame right that's a very isolating thing whereas actually and weirdly this I'm doing this show showing at the moment and this is entirely what the show's about those isolating experiences like they're exactly the things that join us all up that is the that is The Human Experience how how do we deal with the difficulties of life you know when things are going badly and we feel like we fail that's that's what we all have to find our way through so the things that feel most isolating are the things that tend to connect us um so I don't think it's about trying to bury them under sort of you know some sort of forced optimism and it isn't about reaching a Nirvana of of um a problem-free life I think that's uh it's a really sort of terrible project because you're going to end up blaming yourself for failing you weren't a good enough stoic or you weren't a good enough Optimist or whatever um always reminded me of the faith healers that I um spent a lot of time watching and when they do that thing of saying throw away your pills and if your illness returns it's because you didn't have enough Faith like it's your fault and that's no different from the you know the the secret you know the um the Law of Attraction this is yeah it's the same thing it's the same thing you have to completely commit yourself and if it doesn't work out if the universe doesn't provide you with it's always jewelry and money and cars a bit odd um then you didn't have enough Faith um it wasn't you know it was your own fault um so it's a perfect cycle of uh blame um uh which exonerates the um the actual system completely inputs the blame uh entirely on on you so I'm yeah I uh there's a bit of an irony in the fact that people choose those books because they they don't want responsibility but failure puts responsibility back on them because I think of like the the law of attract I actually had a conversation with um a girl I was dating many years ago in New York and she actually got out the cab and walked off because I said to her that I she believed that she could visualize anything into existence I went so you believe that you can just think about something and then it will happen so you could think about becoming a billionaire and what happened she
went yes I was like no I don't agree with that but house because you put out into the universe and then it comes back and what they're doing in that to me it seems like they're alleviating their own sense of responsibility they're putting it up to the puppet master in the universe but as you've described then when that fails the blame is ultimately on them for not doing it yeah it must be awful as opposed to it was just a bad idea to to begin with and more helpfully how do we live comfortably with the universe that doesn't give a [ __ ] what we what our plans are well why would it doesn't make any sense so how do we how do we navigate and that there's a there is an ancient uh sort of image it's it's appeared in so many different forms of an x equals y diagonal so if you imagine a graph and you've got along one axis you've got the x-axis is the stuff you want to achieve in life your aims and your plans and then the other access the y-axis is just life what they used to call Fortune it's all the stuff that just gets thrown at you um if you imagine the line that we lead in our in our lives it's a sort of an x equals y line right it's sort of an undulating line so sometimes our plans are winning and we're doing great and sometimes life's throwing stuff back at us we have no control over and things are gone horrible and someone's got ill or whatever it is so there's this sort of undulating x equals y diagonal where we're being pulled in these two different directions that's what we live that's just sort of reality and the nature of the kind of the American optimistic model is that by believing in ourselves weaken and this is not it's an old hangover from protestantism um the sort of work ethic that you can by believing in yourself you can crank that line up so it's in line with your aims and your goals um and we just it's it's a we've completely obliterated the idea of just fortune and life from that you know we used to we used to call people um unfortunate now we call them losers you know so there's a there's a a lack of respect now for just the fact that life is throwing stuff back at you so how do you how do you navigate that I think actually stoicism is a very good toolkit foreign pretty much all of your listeners will be familiar with but the the bottom line of it is is that you know the the the things in life it's not the things in life that cause your problems it's the the story that you tell yourself about them it's the judgments that you make about them which is a very good and sensible idea that's made its way down to us um over the last couple of thousand years and then Allied to that you take all the stuff you have no control over outcomes what other people do and what they think and so on and you can just decide that that stuff is fine as it is and you can just focus on the stuff only try and change the stuff you can actually change which is the world of your own thoughts and your own actions and that's where we should put our attention and then there's interesting there is a middle ground of uh you know like if you're well success of any sort you know there's parts of that you're in control of and parts that you're not so it's like a best analogy I've read for is like going into a game of tennis if you go in determined to win and then your uh your opponent is playing better than you you're probably going to get anxious and you're going to feel that you're failing whereas if you go in determined to play as well as you can again just to control the part you're in you're in charge of then uh it sort of doesn't matter if your opponents a bit better than you or they start to win you're not you're not failing you know you're and the same goes for um you know the stomachs were big movers and shakers you if you want to change the world you can but you're only gonna emotionally commit yourself to your intention and your actions not the outcomes which may happen a generation after you've after you've died you know that's something out of your hands I think all that's very helpful and very useful the only thing if you see it as a toolkit um to be lent into when it's helpful but the uh even that uh if you take it as a sort of a you know almost like a spiritual way of life can fall into the um problem of and therefore we shouldn't have any anxiety therefore anxiety is still somehow the demon but you know without anxiety how do you know to change anything in your life how do you know to change your job unless the current job is making you feel bad or you know things have to become anxious and things have to fall away in order for us to move forward and grow and we you know you can't do that without embracing anxiety to to an extent as I've aged I've started to realize that the kind of compass of my life is how I feel and that's kind of what you've alluded to there that we have this signal sometimes it comes in the form of anxiety sometimes it comes in the form of fear but these are all like really useful signals um do you resonate with what I just said there in terms of like feelings that our body is giving us are the greatest signals for uh for us to navigate versus like narratives versus like what my mum wants or I end up in a working in the city in like a suit and a tie because that's what Society had an expectation of but I'm feeling a signal inside which is I know depression or I'm feeling you know I think those things are very important to listen to I think we we do live out stories very easily we do tend to uh see things in terms of a narrative and that's um it's an interestingly double-edged thing because on the one hand whether you know someone's written in or out of a story it's become very important language and
harm and all of those things have all got suddenly very tied up and store the very notion of story has become so important um taking authorship of your story and so on but the other the other side of that which you know I live out in my in my job as a magician is that stories are just stories you know if a magician fools you with a trick in a way that works you what you're being shown is that your story that you're performing with the world isn't quite right like there's something you missed and you always feel like you properly paid attention you saw everything you you were taking in all the information but it shows you that you've missed something that your Narrative of what reality is isn't the same as the world um and uh so that the the story side of things it seems to be part of just our makeup but it's important not to fall in love with it too much and to realize that the nature of a story is that it there's stuff you're excluding there's an image isn't there of telling a story over a campfire and a clearing and it's cozy um but then there's all the forest in the darkness with all the stuff that you're uh excluding from that story and that's where the monsters live and the nature of monsters that they come and bite you and all the stuff that we don't include in a story whether it's the story we tell about uh tell ourselves about ourselves um or whether it's a story We Tell ourselves about are Nation or our culture whether it's a social thing or whether it's a private thing the stuff that we bury and the stuff that we don't include within the narrative because the narrative is really too simple is goes deep like it's getting sort of gets buried it gets buried in our own unconscious or it gets buried in the untold story of whatever the thing is and that's what comes back and bites us that's the the stuff that comes to own us in our own lives and and in our uh you know in our societal lives as well as the stuff that we've buried and I think as you as you get older this is where that those feeling signals come in I think it becomes more and more important to pay attention to the things that we are banishing from our stories you know what what do we if we think about what makes us feel resentful or what we Envy or you know what are what are those things because those are the things that we're bearing somehow and I think there's a shift in the second half of life and a membership I'm a chunk older than you but um where we can disengage a bit with the the story that we've been telling of how to move forward in life that's all about a dialogue with the external world that's where we're getting our cues from people showing us what we need to be successful what we need to look or act in a certain way that denotes moving forward in progress we do that for the first half of life and it is sustained a little by this optimistic illusion that the child the castles that we're chasing in the air that will reach if we just you know a lot of Happiness deferring going on and a lot of you know focusing on the future and then something happens around midlife where actually the project shifts to taking the cues from within rather than from the outside world and I think then that's a good time for priorities to shift from what will give me success in the future to what is actually what might bring pleasure and satisfaction and meaning now in the in the present I think that's a useful thing to lean into towards the second half of life it was University that's um sort of sparked your interest in hypnosis right yeah yeah yeah you saw someone on campus doing Martin Taylor was doing a show yes it was in my freshers week and uh wow that was amazing and I I left and walked back that night with a friend and said I'm going to learn how to do this and my friend Nick said oh yeah so am I but I knew I meant it I knew that I've never seen it before never come across hypnosis I obviously heard of it but um and it was a good show like it wasn't you know embarrassing people are making them look stupid it was sort of just jaw-dropping um how did you know that you meant it because I've had that feeling in my life before where something just connects yeah well I think it was the again those boxes were being ticked something about performing something about control uh I didn't really know it it just felt like I want I I have to do that it's the most amazing thing I've seen and it was uh it was appealing in ways that just weren't really um I suppose I hadn't really thought about I hadn't thought about performing hadn't uh but yeah I think I think that's what's happening isn't it there's something it's resonating unconsciously it's something that you kind of need and it was absolutely no there was no doubt so I I bought borrowed stole any books I could find on the subject you probably just learn on YouTube nowadays but it's probably a dodgy thing because you need to you need to learn it the long way around so that if you run into problems or if someone's having a weird time when you're hypnotizing them you can't be like fumbling around trying to Google what to do you know you need to have the skills there and the wherewithal to to deal with it so I definitely learned the long way around uh yeah and then you became I think from what I was reading pretty obsessed with magic and hypnosis and yeah to the point that you have a conversation with your parents and you tell them that you're gonna yeah I remember saying to
my mum I think I'm not going to be a lawyer I was studying uh law in German I said I'm not going to be a lawyer I'm going to be a um a magician I said oh fine that sounds great sounds much more fun which actually made me stop and think okay hang on probably being a bit probably being a bit rash um what did they say so they were okay with it totally yeah yeah yeah yeah that's what she said she said oh that sounds great it sounds much more fun it's nice isn't it I wrote them a letter at the end of my first year saying because I I saw all these other law students really fretting about their exams because of what their parents were going to think if they didn't pass and that had never occurred to me as a thing that your parents would make you feel so I uh wrote them a letter thanking them for for that just for um letting me always do what I wanted to do the only thing they ever put any pressure on me to do is learn how to drive and I don't drive I still don't drive that's still that drive it's it's quite a common story I have to say that um your obsession seemed to come from or at least be driven by some kind of insecurity as in like the reason why hypnosis initially resonated so much was because it was giving you some it felt like it might offer you something that you were looking for or didn't have yourself yeah that's a story I hear also obsessions are though isn't that the nature of them aren't your eyes it's just that the level of obsession I saw when from that day when you discovered hypnosis like getting all the books teaching yourself yeah and then even Beyond University where you start working in restaurants for many many years how long how long from that first day when you saw hypnosis for the first time until um let's say before you the TV stuff began how long is that sort of tenure I think the tenure is about is about 10 years 10 years I think so let me think so I I graduated 94 and then uh by that point I was doing the odd um hypnosis show for students I oh actually the the first TV show went out in December 2000. so I was into all it was about 10 years but also included my University career but there was a six-year period after University by which point I was already doing it mainly for students when I was just then signing on or just about scraping a living doing hypnosis shows but a lot more magic I was doing magic in restaurants in Bristol and then people would book me for their parties and um and I wrote a book for magicians which kind of got me known within that world which that then led to um being picked out for a TV show that led to me getting a phone call my name getting passed around in that world so that's almost 10 years of practicing yeah um without real any real money when you say signing on for people that are in America signing out as in welfare I guess you'd call it yeah I was I was I lived in this my student flat I stayed in it was quite a nice flat I had all my books in it and my parrot and uh that didn't cost me very much and I just loved his life I would go out dreaming up magic tricks during the day and then I would go out and do them in the evening and so I developed my own sort of approach to it all and uh that yeah that I I just remember thinking I've never had any ambition at all and and I just remember thinking if I if I can take us like a a cross section of my life is everything in the right place like am I I'd like to get up whenever I'd like to get up I'd like to feel I can make my own decisions about what I do from day to day and I just had a vague idea of those sorts of things that were important to me and um and if anything didn't feel right it'd be easy to sort of change and that was all that was always how I was never about looking forward into the future it was never about where do I want to be it was just is this day this week sort of the life that I'd like to be living and that's never changed um I suppose the difference is is you get successful you start to have people around you that are doing those other jobs for you the grown-up jobs and you know I've got a manager and I've worked with producers and all that kind of things so it's not like that doesn't have to happen somewhere along the line but it doesn't come from me I've um uh you can feel like a kid a little bit a bit like a child in a world of grown-ups so I feel that sometimes except now the grown-ups are younger than me which is uh strange um but also I think maybe that's a good way to feel maybe that's a nice way to be if you can trust yourself from today yeah to the to that young man in those restaurants in Bristol doing the magic tricks is there a difference in your level of happiness I think about this I I I think it's about the same but it's different I mean the the um a bit like being a kid and playing on my own most of my twenties were cut well my twenties were sort of Fairly fairly solitary as well and that's another template that settles in so um that's again an easy place to go back to I love my own company all my interests the things I love doing out of my job painting writing and reading and they're all like solitary things I said that's a comfortable place for me so pardon me slide more of that then so it slightly misses that but actually that's you know I also aware it was that was lonely sometimes and um you know I like being in a relationship too so it's different had a different feel about it um I think the freedom to just do what I wanted to do and kind of um create this sort of world for myself that was kind of lovely and that's harder to do that as you grow up and you do have
responsibilities and you know you're contributing to a household and you've got a partner you've got dogs and all of that it's not not quite as easy so a childish part of me would kind of quite like going back to that but not really not really I wouldn't really press a button to make it happen it's just a a nice little sort of back of the head dream as we probably all have maybe don't we a slight kind of fantasy thing it would never really live it out but it's just something nice about about that um it's almost like um I feel like you were my head is like you know you're in Bristol mining your own business enjoying the the simple life and then they pulled you they ripped you out of Bristol um you were really successful so they put you on TV that was really successful and sometimes when people are successful they sometimes forget and I think I've done this in my life a few times kind of we forget to take the moment of pause and consider how intentional this journey and Direction and direction of travel is kind of get pulled and dragged and then ends up feeling a bit like you're throwing the coal in the the steam engine of the train just to keep it moving has there ever been a moment of pause in your life where you've you've gone do you know what I need to take some time and just think about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it because I've been successful and then I've climbed the ladder people do that a lot in the corporate world they become a good lawyer then they get promoted then they're a partner and they go [ __ ] am I doing here yeah I think we drift towards the things we're second best it's like you know the the great teacher that becomes a Headmaster but would have been a better teacher than uh that's an easy thing to do isn't it um and I think that sometimes I think about oh it might be quite nice to act I think I'm doing exactly that thing of sort of going from being um someone who's really good at what I do now and I just to sort of why why would I want to tell that might be fun but like what a strange thing we naturally start to drift towards things that we're not as good at um uh I the only I would say when you said that I was thinking of um the early the Early TV shows when I was sort of which were very much a response to David Blaine's success in the states I'm out doing you know mind reading tricks and things and I I kind of felt like I'd grown out of it but I was that was sort of the mode that I was caught in and I definitely felt like I'm not really enjoying this and that led to a shift in the type of shows I was doing so the I mean the last show I've done is on Netflix called sacrifice if people have no idea who I am and they've listened this far um uh and generally what I've been doing for the last decade or so with the TV shows is putting people through these kind of Truman Show style big social experiments often quite life or death situations they found themselves in without realizing they're part of a show and what that allowed me to do was not be the center of attention and the reason the reason for it is actually apart from just my own dissatisfaction with it but just magically if you um if you can click your fingers and make anything happen which is sort of what a magician does dramatically that's a very um unsound uh place to be and this is you know pet and Teller the yeah yeah so something that teller who apart from being a beautiful magician is a wonderful thinker as well he's spoken a lot about this that it's actually very bad drama if you can make anything happen what we want dramatically are heroes people that are struggling with the situation maybe they are trying to get to point a but actually they end up at point B um and his thoughts and my own sort of sort of dissatisfaction I guess with that first stage of my career led to this shift where I could be in the background pulling the strings but actually you're watching a real member of the public go through quite intense drama and that has to be more appealing than somebody going hey look at me aren't I clever which is sort of the bottom line of what most magic is so I think that was a kind of semi-deliberate shift that came from a moment of pause was it quite intentional for you to take you know I've seen multiple documentaries you've done where you're proving that magic or the supernatural isn't real and again that's super compelling because we would expect you to be leaning into that and persuading us of the supernatural whereas some of the most compelling stuff I've watched you do whether you're confronting like a psychic that's pretending to speak to the dead or I remember that reading you did where the woman had pulled up outside of the Mercedes and the minute on a mini yeah yeah and you would you basically what was it you you um you read her not her future you read into her life I think it was that the psychic that I was challenging had mentioned um for many years that she drove a little red mini and she'd been really impressed by that but actually I've seen him pull up his car uh right parked next to her in the car park yeah but actually I think it's the opposite I think the um there's a long tradition of magicians pulling apart psychics and charlatans and I think it's because we end up with a knowledge of how those things work um and it goes right back to Houdini and the seances and exposing the fraudulent mediums in the dark you know it's a long a long and probably before that but there's a long history of it um so I the only thing about it is that you're if you're just going no this is fake you're not being very entertaining and by the nature of what those people do it's more entertaining so they've kind of won the game so I've tried to avoid making when I when I have
sort of you know attacked those areas rather than just attack them and make it negative I've always tried to recreate something and make it more interesting and and better while at the same time saying I'm not really doing this so for example there was a in one of the shows I did I had an audience on stage this was in Infamous which was a previous Stage Show and I um was giving them mediumship readings right so I say just come up if you've lost somebody if there's somebody that you would that you'd want to get in touch with if you were to see a medium and a skeptical audience kind of like me right because they're my audiences but so they'd come up and sit down and I would start to give them these readings and I would say and I'm getting a message from your auntie Jill is that right do you have an auntie Jill that passed away that yes and she's saying she's not saying anything I'm just making this up but she's saying that you've got oh you've got a little dog called Bella that she really loves is that right yes and um and I'm lying to you but she said so I would like pepper these like impossible information I was giving with reminders that I was making it up um and I just found that really really sort of interesting and and um theatrically it was really interesting and much more interesting than saying these people are fake and prove it and if you can prove it I'll give you a million dollars whatever so I've I've tried to find a more creative approach to that do some people think you are you are Supernatural in your powers some well I was going to say actually after that about a week into that show I came out there's a girl at stage door said um I wondered if you could put me I say girl which was you know you know in her 20s but if you could put me in touch with my grandmother who's passed on and I said oh God I'm so sorry I hoped it was clear from the show that I can't really do it that stuff isn't real and she don't know I know I know you can't really do it and it's not real but I just wondered if you could just put me in touch with her like it was extraordinary um how we kind of can balance these things in our in our heads so yeah I I I'm sure people believe all sorts of things about me I think the the way of the way I look at it is a bell curve so at one end of the bell curve it's people that think it's all fake it's all Stooges it's all set up um and I never use Stooges and that's not what it is and at The Other Extreme people saying I'm psychic and I won't admit to it which is also not true um and then there's this main swell in the Middle where people sort of get it um and that's really all you can I think take uh responsibility for really there's always going to be people at the far edges that will have uh strange and extreme reactions um and then you know I think there's a certain license on stage which is different from TV if you're doing stuff down the barrel of a TV if you're talking to people at home there's a level of directness and honesty there whereas it feels like on stage there's a kind of theatrical quotation marks around the whole thing so I feel like I do things on stage which I wouldn't do on TV um so that changes it too it's quite an interesting line sort of treading treading that I kind of in the very early shows very early TV shows it was very much like I'm I am doing this for real that's what I said this and these are not tricks um and then once the show's realized once we realized there was going to be some longevity and there were going to be more shows it was important to me just to bring it back to a place that was honest and kind of ambiguous as well and to and I've enjoyed that now I like leaning into the ambiguity ambiguity of what I'm doing because again it it it means that you can do more interesting stuff with it the you know if there's a lesson in it about how we see the world how the story We Tell ourselves is not what's real how we mistake that story for reality you know we mistake the limits of Our Own um field of vision for the for the horizons of the world you know if we if there's something in there to be said in something as childish as magic if there's some something worthwhile to be said it's much easier to say that if you're not trying to make it about yourself has anything ever stumped you in terms of the supernatural I you know I was your work is predominantly based in Psychology right so has there have you ever done anything and thought how the [ __ ] did that happen uh two things come to mind one I was in a restaurant in Bristol approaching a table which is always excruciating um uh if people aren't interested and I'm walking up with a deck of cards and I sort of introduce myself and it's two businessmen and one of them says oh no no thank you so much and I said okay and as I walked away the other one went but Queen of Hearts 13 cards down and I sort of laughed and walked away then went into a corner and counted the guards down at the 13th one down was the Queen of Hearts no idea how he did that if you are listening please get in touch that's bugged me for 20 years and the um the other thing was actually doing I did a show called Miracle which is so this is also on Netflix it was a uh uh previous uh stage show a few State shows ago and the second half was healing it was like Evangelical uh healing people being slain in the spirit and um had no idea if it was going to work because again very skeptical audience like not you know if you I've been to these events with these big big name healers and of course people are
arriving expecting it to work and they've got a certain amount of you know uh Readiness for it which obviously helps and I didn't know if it was going to work at all but it did and again I'm sort of undercutting it like I'm I'm doing it and I'm creating these healings and inverted commas for people in the audience but at the same time I'm kind of undercutting it too but um it was extraordinary I mean I remember in the first week a woman came up and she'd been parallel she was probably in her 40s she'd been paralyzed on one side of her body since she was four or something in floods of Tears because she could move her left arm for the first time um and night after night things like that sometimes as I imagine just you know someone people with a bad back that felt better but sometimes really quite dramatic things too and it was although I could explain it because I knew what I was doing it was um what what you're seeing is the psychological component of suffering right like if you take an x-ray before and after nothing's happened nothing's changed but that how that person is living out their um Affliction how they live their relationship to their suffering has that's been made to change so what you're seeing it's just a mix of two things that are going on there's certain there's adrenaline which is a natural painkiller so you make that you make the whole experience full of adrenaline um you know in the same way of a you know lion walked into this room and you'd previously stubbed your toe you'd run away and you wouldn't feel the pain of your toe right because there's a bigger threat um that's just adrenaline that's fine and then but this other thing that which is maybe kick-started by the experience of the adrenaline that you you've this thing that you've lived out like presumably this woman her arm had been fine for many years but she hadn't she just continued to live as if it wasn't you know and all the stuff that you build up around pain you know the the way people respond to you so you there's a whole network of um social aspects to it over protecting something that doesn't need protecting anymore you know it's much more complicated than simply the organic cause of of um of your pain there's lots of other things that sustain it and can keep it going Beyond really where it's useful so there she was having this extraordinary experience she couldn't explain um when really nothing had happened Beyond she was just had been snapped out of something that was that was sort of amazing and kind of wonderful that I started to you know do the thing of going maybe I could do this maybe I could offer this as a show of like secular healing it'll only work on some people and you're only dealing with relatively small percentages um and I did start to think that and of course that's where you start to go mad that's when you start to think you're playing God and and then of course people because I when you go to these events the big name healers I've seen Benny Hinn and others um what you what you don't really see when you watch those things on TV is that there are in some of these big venues hospital beds that have been brought in there are people with you know a kid with Down Syndrome that I spoke to the mum and she'd she'd taken her son to so many shows following around the country um and things that just they're not going to get they're not going to get healed by those kind of Dynamics um so that's an uglier sort of side of that because people have become very dependent on it are not going to get any help and then there's the lack of any sort of follow-up you know there's plenty of infrastructure in place if you want to donate but no infrastructure if you've been in any way adversely affected by it and you want help or if you've had a healing and now you you'll don't know how to sustain that or what you're supposed to do other than being told to give more money you know you know when um people discovered through your TV work that you had this skill and talent I imagine you've got lots of approaches to use it for Less ethical reasons because I I mean help me get the girlfriend back help me close the deal or help me rob a bank a little not um I suppose people would have to ask that wouldn't have the the only I I remember I've been asked by the FBI I've been asked by the police really to help I mean it's never gone beyond that discussion because I just I mean even you know there's plenty of businesses as well but it's just it's not my world I feel like a I'm an Entertainer I'm also quite um introverted I don't quite have that thing of like you know yeah let me get out there and and a change the world or B I don't have to whatever that thing is that I feel I could just apply this to would it be anyone everything or the police went out I don't know because it never went beyond them saying would you come and talk to us about something and us getting back and saying no it's not appropriate so I don't know now I want to know I had a few words to say about one of my sponsors on this podcast as the seasons have begun to change so has my diet and right now I'm just going to be completely honest with you I'm starting to think a lot about slimming down a little bit because over the last couple of probably the last four or five months my diet has been pretty bad um and it started to show a little bit really over the last two months I go to the gym about 80 of the time so I track it with 10 of my friends in a WhatsApp group and this tracker online and I'm currently at 81 um so 81 of the days I've done a
workout in the last 150 days right so I'm going to the gym about six times a week and so one of the things I'm doing now to reduce my calorie intake and trying to get back to being nutritionally complete and all I eat is I'm having the fuel protein shake thank you heal for making a product that I actually like The Salted Caramel is my favorite I've got the banana one here which is the one my girlfriend likes but for me salted caramel is the one we are lucky enough to have Intel sponsoring this podcast and in previous episode AIDS I've introduced the Intel Evo platform the badge of approval for high spec laptops that will enable you to be more productive on the go all of their designs are tested to make sure they're extremely thin and making them super portable and they also have a high quality display and camera features for example this Samsung device that I'm using for those of you that are watching on on YouTube or Spotify is super light making it the perfect on-the-go device 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just absolutely loved it wanted to stay there I see the tenure bit which a lot of young kids don't appreciate because we all want it now and we want it for the wrong reasons but what else was it about you the way your delivery your style that you think in hindsight made you compelling oh it's a really difficult one it's difficult it's difficult even if I knew the answer would be hard to say it um I I think I don't think it's that I think it's sort of it's not quite that intentional I think you've probably grafted and done those things I can't speak for Jimmy and others but probably just because you really enjoyed them in and of themselves you probably weren't thinking I don't do this if I get ahead I can secure this for myself probably and if that is the case if you are just doing it because you love it and that feels like in and of itself what you're doing and there's no particular need for a plan beyond that then you'll keep at it you'll get very you'll get very good at it if if that's if that feels like all you need in the moment anyway then why why wouldn't you you know love it and put your all your passion into it and get very good at it so that helped um uh and then when things did sort of take off a bit my manager also had a similar um ethos of just sort of Slow Burn Slow Burn there was never any sense of me you know being thrown at a public or any sort of overnight success or anything like that it was a very deliberate thing it just slowly kind of letting it get out there and that so that was helpful um I think as I've I had a good team around me um it's not like a one not really a one-man thing there's always although I had had my own experience for those 10 years of doing it on my own once I got into the TV there was like a little group of us which I'm sure is fairly common and then I think I think what does help is letting it grow up with me as I've as I've got older I've just let the thing develop with me like I don't really know what job to you know you asked me before we started like how I'd refer to myself I never really know I mean Mentalist I think technically it's what I am but I mean I remember a couple of years ago I had the book on happy happiness come out which is essentially a book of Greek philosophy come out the sake the same month as a ghost trainer for the thought Park and I do remember thinking I don't know what I don't know what that is I don't know what job that is that allows for those two things it certainly isn't mentalism um so um uh so yeah just allowing allowing the thing to grow up with me and in terms of like you know I occasionally you know people talk about the brand and so on it's it's um it's a very helpful thing I think just let it let the thing just be you and not particularly be driven by the limitations of what it when I first started I remember reading I used to go on them magic discussion forums and so on to see what magicians were saying about me and there was a lot of like oh this isn't even mentalism like there's a certain type of magic called mentalism and I wasn't quite doing that I was doing stuff that wasn't 10 and they would they would see that as a real sort of negative and I always thought that's why that's interesting that that would bother anybody a who knows what the word even means who cares and be that that would that I wasn't somehow sticking within that um so and that's another thing about playing on your own isn't it and um you you or being if you if you feel like an outsider as a kid I think as you get older you start you value that that becomes like a bit of a superpower you you hang on to that feeling of of um being an outsider and you kind of use that so that's always helped me and I've just followed my nose for what feels
fun and interesting and worthwhile and as I've got older I've let those things grow with me and um I find a lot of Life much more interesting than magic Magic's quite a childish thing really so it means that the stuff I find more interesting about life I can bring into magic you know I think if you've got if you've got both feet in your craft or your art form or whatever if as in if the thing is feels to you so huge and expansive and all that you know you can't you're sort of a bit overwhelmed by it you can't move it anywhere so if you've got one foot in that thing and your other foot in the rest of Life at least you've got some leverage then to take this thing that you do somewhere interesting so maybe that's helped as well I see that in your shows I see how your other passions are riddled throughout the show I remember watching a show in New York which was just astounding it's funny because I think of myself as a smart person you know I think I'll figure this out I'll he won't be able to um make me look the other way or he won't be able to control my narrative he won't be able to get me and every single time I've been to a shows in London New York they're all just I leave in silence yeah like because you're right that like misdirection where you've got me thinking this thing yeah and then I go what the hell like it's this constant like disappointment with myself that I'm not as smart as I think I am oh that's so nice it's always like what can I there's you know 2 000 people trapped in a room with me what can I what can I do with them it's always it's a lovely feeling to start with and that the section on when you have the painting I don't want to give anything away the painting is this in the show that you saw in New York I believe it was New York I've seen I've been to two London and New York one with my family in London which was many years ago about four probably I'd say four or five maybe five years ago yeah and then the one in New York I think was was it wasn't pre-pandemic it couldn't have been yeah it was just before the pandemic so I'm painting a picture that someone comes up and thinks of a famous person and I start to I do a painting and then it's upside down and I flip it around at the end is that what you're thinking of yes yeah yeah and the thing that I think stuns me the most is how unbelievable you are as a painter thank you very much and the fact you could do that upside down you can paint such an incredible image upside down it's also stunning um but that clearly is describing what you've described there where you've pulled in a love of painting yeah I I think it's yeah I think all that's really uh otherwise what's left you know just it's just hey look at me aren't I clever and that's just not you know that might be interesting for audiences for a little bit um maybe once and then that's that's kind of it so I I yeah I bring what I can to it and I just make I make sure the shows are about something else you know showman is about how the things in life that are difficult are actually the very things that we share which weirdly was written just before it was all due to go out before lockdown started and it um was going to go out the first week of lockdown and was assured about how the things in life that isolated so actually the things that we all tend to have in common which then gets played out literally for two years during lockdown um so I've always tried to make them about something else something of value um and I don't think I I love magic obviously but I don't think in and of itself it has tremendous value as a childish way of impressing people so it's what you what can you bring to it that will give it value and then I think then you're into a much more interesting um worthwhile area in your books about happiness um happy and a little happier one of the things that surprises a lot of people is that you're not a fan of goal setting and having spoken to you now I can kind of understand because you have a much more today this week do my best approach to life but what's wrong with goal setting in your point of view oh no there's anything wrong with goal setting for short-term goals obviously you know can be very useful it's it's the long-term stuff I think we just get a bit hung up on it as a way of as a way of life you know a friend of mine um it's a bit of a always being a workaholic um and he certainly buys an account when he was younger was made to feel that kind of needed to achieve stuff in order to feel valued you know which obviously is what most workholics will say so he decided he was going to build up a company and and sell it and become a multi-millionaire and that was sort of the goal and then did spent and all the time that I knew him he was building up a company and um sold it relatively young and had a huge amount of money and then she didn't know what to do with his life it was miserable um and as she found himself going to a support group with a bunch of similar millionaires that had all made the same mistake and he'd sort of missed the fact that actually it was the it was the building up of the company that was is what gave him a meaning in his life that was that was what was important and it's that old thing isn't it of you know the you know the arrival at the end of the journey is just it might just be taking a coat off and putting your bag down that might be all it is it's not necessarily the destination you know it's the you know it's the old thing isn't it of the journey being what was important but that was certainly he realized that um and that really changed his life actually realizing
that what he thought was going to be important wasn't important um plus how do we know what's going to make us happy that so many years before you know it was so terrible at gauging that um we lose flexibility depending how we set those goals but we become too rigid in them and it's like playing it's like playing a game of chess schopenhauer talks about this I was a really good analogy that it's like starting a game of chess deciding how you're going to play and the strategy you're going to use and you're how you're going to maneuver from the start there is this other thing playing which is you know life Fortune stuff that's going to throw get thrown back at you so how how can you decide those things why do we want goals do you think it gives us a sense of certainty well we need we it's about it's about moving forward isn't it we need to it's important because we need to navigate through life and in the first half of life I think it's it's really important if you didn't have that optimistic sense that you can chase the castle in the air and somehow get it just by setting those goals I think life would be very difficult I think actually it's I think it's important I think it sure has evolutionary value I think like it's part of our impetus so it's not a bad thing really but like all those things we just need to check it and just see its limitations I think a story I see the goals that I had as a story that gave my life meaning when I was yeah younger the meaning was kind of misunderstood it was I thought if I got the Lamborghini then I'd be happy and important and worthy and shame would be alleviated but as I as that failed me yeah I realized that um I was gonna have to set about pursuing something else well those are the two problems you either get the goal yeah you succeed in it and then what or you don't and you've failed I mean you're sort of and the very thing that's giving you pleasure the very thing that's giving your life meaning which is moving towards you know building up the company or whatever it is you're doing yourself out of your your purposefully and intentionally moving to the point where you can remove that meaning from your life have you developed any coping mechanisms for adversity chapter three in your book A book of secrets is about the role friction has the relationship it has with with happiness and we've talked a few times about adversity but is there any any sort of tools that you've learned that you might be able to impart that have helped you to deal with when life throws [ __ ] at you well the big stoic thing of how can this thing be fine and it's not they don't exactly put it in that language but that's the language I found how could this thing be fine so first of all is what's happened which side of the line is it is it within my control is it my thoughts and actions or is it out of my control is it something out in the world of course it's always the latter is always something out in the world in which case how could it be fine how could it how could that how could it be okay that this thing is like that um and not just to go oh it's fine it's fine it's not just about saying it but to actually let that thought sort of you know drip into the soul I find that very helpful that's also partly just my personality my partner's has a much more um sort of anxious personality than I have and that stuff doesn't help him at all um but it certainly helps me um another thing there's a great book by David Destino called emotional success and I thought it was great he was talking about motivation and how a lot of our tools for motivation are very sort of top down in the sense that you know well if you do this for ten thousand hours or you put in an hour a day for a whatever um like a lot of kind of work to change one habit and he's talking about a bottom-up approach of there are certain emotions that if you get them into place they naturally create a more motivational State and he he's a psychologist and his when he talks about motivation that the way he's tested this is talking about where you value your future self and what your future self needs more than what you need in the moment right so if you take the example of are you going to study for your exam are you going to go out and party well the person that is going to not party and study for the exam is valuing the needs of that future self that's done well in the exam more than the current self that sat there and would like to go out right so he's taking that as the sort of the world of motivation we're talking so he sets up various um experiments to see what can you do to maximize people's uh you know the value they place on that future self and the three emotions um again and again which help compassion gratitude and having the right sort of Pride about what you do a good Pride for the stuff that you do well not the bad sort of Pride where you go well I'm good at this therefore I'm great at everything but just having a a good sort of comfortable pride in the stuff that you do well um so he would you know experiments would be something happens outside the room before the person comes in to do the experiment that makes them feel grateful about something and then they come in and they have to do a task that's impossible but how long do they spend trying to do it and they'll spend 40 longer than somebody that wasn't primed to feel grateful before they came in and the Gratitude has nothing to do with the experiment so seemingly completely independent thing something happens that make you makes you feel compassion um and then you come in and you have to do some task and you do it better or for
longer or whatever these sort of skills are that the motivated person has more of um one of the questions was uh uh how many so is dollars but how many dollars like if you could have a hundred dollars a year from now or x amount now what would that x amount be that would balance it out and it's normally 17 like it really makes no fiscal sense at all but most people will say okay I'll take 17 now rather than a hundred right a year from now that seems to be the number that people go for but if you're primed to feel grateful if you're if you're asked the same question when you're in a state of gratitude for something again totally unrelated um it goes up to 31 that was that was a great sort of uh by the by finding when they did the experiment it averaged out of 31 in other words people were valuing the future needs more than the need now if that makes sense it could actually be shown with something as simple as that gone well I read a bit of chapter 12 of your book um was on exactly that and I actually said before you arrived I sent it to my friends I sent that one paragraph in your book about that that instant gratification delay graph because it it when I say it makes sense it makes absolutely no sense yeah like I can't understand how gratitude how making someone feel grateful with a completely unrelated incident would make them choose to have um more money well we'll make them delay their gratification in life it does exactly and I think the reason why there's no kind of rational link because it's a sort of it's like an emotional basis he's talking about an emotional heart that then kind of spirals upwards because if you if you if you find yourself acting more compassionately which say just sometimes happens anyway right you might just be feeling compassion you might be feeling very grateful to somebody that then affects that person's behavior and then that feeds back and affects yours and there's a certain kind of upward spiral thing that happens that definitely puts us in I think a more just a better kind of state than say when we're feeling the opposite of those things feeling hateful and resentful um so I do get it I I sorry does that mean that people that are lowering gratitude are more short-termist in their decision making they probably binge foods that they probably shouldn't have they probably make other kind of Reckless decisions they probably shouldn't make because of their own state of emotions and gratefulness and compassion perhaps I mean it sounds like you'd have to ask him I don't know I don't think he says that in his book but I can certainly imagine that again so if you're going through your life feeling generally resentful I can't imagine that person being very motivated it's so interesting it answers actually a lot of questions that I've had with like friends of mine where I've wondered why they make such short-term missed decisions but I think there's an emotional question that I should really be asking which is like how do you feel and we don't we don't often pause to ask that we kind of assume that their character is they are lazy or just stupid like bad at decisions whereas really like go to work on the emotions and you can change that which is it's an it's a I thought it was a very uh yeah very compelling way round of looking at it rather than the normal top-down approach we come across love uh-huh you described yourself as a bit of a introvert and someone that likes their own company yeah um sounds a little bit like me what's your journey been like with understanding love and then at 35 you came out um what's that Journey been like well I've had two long relationships and then um a few little bits in between um and I think there's definitely a lot of learning in the first one that I think I've now brought to the second one of course that's what we do is it's next you have another relationship you bring all those lessons that you can't you can't change them and you're in one but you can you get to start afresh the next time um we're quite different as well it's not like we're we're not similar people at all I'm I have that sort of a bit of emotional Detachment that I can easily go to he is very um engage and as as uh people the little on the anxious side tend to be very sort of hyper Vigilant about stuff so you know packing to come to London to do this shows two very very different worlds always leads to argument I'm kind of travel light and here's another but we might even do this we might need this we might need this bags and bags bags so uh we see each other sometimes you know as caricatures of ourselves because because we're quite different in those in those ways my kind of stoic uh whatever will seem to him just sometimes just to be laziness or not really um not engaging with something not that thing not being not taking it seriously and for me his his what I see is uh anxiety or impatience to him is a strong sense of justice he has a real strong sense of justice something's not right he'll want to go and sort that thing out and fix it um and I think love for me is allowing that other person to be another person we'd probably start off our relationships just projecting everything we need onto a person and we barely do them the service of you know allowing them to exist as an independent creature we sort of we just want them to be the thing that we want them to be um and I think if relationships are going to have any longevity at some point that has to shift into actually this person is a mystery and I might spend the rest of my life trying to get to know
this person that that's I think that's okay and I think that's also the same within ourselves in the parts of ourselves that we're we're um alienated from again the things that we just put outside of the story um the the that sense of what the other is of the great mystery you know it's there in Magic it's there in within ourselves the sides of us that you know we need to live more comfortably with and in our relationships as well here is a a great mystery that we sit down with every day and have breakfast with and talk to and misunderstand and disappoint and occasionally delight at each other and and it's it's uh you know it's kind of wonderful and sometimes it's hard work and and uh but I think seeing your partner somebody who could spend a lifetime getting to know uh and as a source of Wonder and mystery I think is a that's a very helpful thing one of the messages that I took from that is about expectations and being really conscious that you keep your expectations in check because when you don't frustration and unhappiness um might Prevail and I think about this a lot with my partner who's the complete opposite I consider myself to be like very logical I need to I need to understand everything I'm very um maybe scientific in my viewpoint whatever the opposite of that is she is and so you can find yourself in conversations where the basis of reality you're conversating from is completely different yeah she will believe that that a rock has energy and that yeah and I will obviously not believe that but we're completely opposites but that's also why it works because there's not an expectation that we become the other person she will tell me something she knows I don't believe and at the end of her saying it she will not wait for me to nod and agree yeah because she knows it doesn't believe and that's fine yeah and vice versa and it's that's what when you sing except that we're two different people yeah actually being able to do that and her not trying to change me into like a spiritual whatever me not trying to turn her into a scientist yes allows for the upside of that difference which is like I can Marvel at the world she lives in and go oh that's interesting I'm gonna try that you know what I mean and also I think a big Allied to that is to think of not which is such a a guy thing to do isn't it it's not fixing yeah not um most of our frustrations come from the fact we just haven't really been heard or seen or understood during the day so we've been bashing our heads against some wall we come home and hers yeah exactly exactly so we they come home and then just offload this stuff and when because I I know I do it when my partner does this to me but he sort of offloads all this frustration and I'm sure you do it too it sounds like you do is to go into this mode where we're saying well it's okay it's probably just this and why don't we think about it in this different way and we're just doing exactly the same thing they've had all day we're just not hearing um uh but it's just not it's not an intuitive thing is that you sort of that is such a such an easy mode to go into um Darren are you happy that was the name of your book I think so yeah I think I think as I've got all the happiness is it was easy to say I remember being asked that when I was single for a while um by Hugh Grant of all people we were sat opposite each other at dinner and talking about happiness maybe I was writing the book at the time I don't know and um he said are you are you happy though and it was he was said it in a sort of a mood of like no one's really no one's really happy are they um and maybe just the way he asked it but I said yes and said it very confidently and felt it very confidently and he didn't think he didn't know what to make of that uh or maybe he just didn't believe it and now when you ask I still feel it's yes but I think I think things are more complicated I think there's a more complicated in relationships I've got older um 51 and I think I think that's a good sort of um you know I said things things just change the currents of Life shift a little bit so I am but I uh I think it's it's a I don't think it's about happiness first of all I think it's about meaning and it's about you know things in life that are bigger than you and what you how you throw yourselves into those things which is what gives religion its meaning you know that that need for Transcendence or finding the thing that's bigger than you we all need it somewhere because if you don't have meaning in your life that's that's when you have problems not really happiness is sort of um a very difficult thing to pin down but uh and we can be unhappy but it's when we when we feel meaningless that it's that it things get bad um it's a bit of a [ __ ] question isn't it are you happy in many respects yeah you know what is it you know things that used to mean the story of a life it was something you couldn't say about anybody until they were dying and look back over their whole life you know it's meant our relationship with God we weren't even supposed to be happy on this Earth because of uh you know because it was something that we could only have through Union with with God it's meant so many things over the ages but now it does just sort of mean a mood um uh which is uh is it makes it sort of a difficult one to answer but I think I think Life Is Life is good it's just interesting and sometimes difficult but you know ultimately good way I think life is full of [ __ ] questions and in some respects it's like
a form of misdirection the fact that I yeah we never supposed to reflective questions are actually valid because if I'd said what number is Fork hmm you it mean you would say that's not a valid question but because are you happy or the questions like have you found your passion there's an assumption in there that there's one of them there's one passion you have to go searching for it yeah all in loaded into the question and nobody nobody when you ask those questions pauses to think of whether the question is valid and then the the frustration we encounter when we can't properly fit into a invalid question I see I see that causing so many young people so much pain because culture pops up these like questions you've got is it love well is it love I mean it alludes to a yes or no answer and then I have to know that your definition of love what you mean by that because as I was saying I love peanut butter I love my dog I love my mum and it's all very unhelpful like this is why I love going back to what you said the star like how'd you feel nice open question which allows for a bit more maneuvering yeah I think people are tormented by these um questions yeah yeah your show there's nothing like it that exists in the event space really on TV I mean I prefer doing it seeing it in person because obviously cameras can create certain Dimensions but seeing it in person just bends the mind because it makes almost anything seem possible in life I'm talking about sales and ambition and creativity and Imagination if that's possible then anything can become possible and I think that's a cause of great inspiration um so I would just employ anyone that's listening to this if you're looking for a once in a lifetime very unique experience that you can't get anywhere else they've got to go and see the show they've gone I really mean that I'm not just that you didn't tell me to say this I really need you there you know yes yeah you'll never know yeah but thank you but I really really mean that it's there's nothing like it so great day idea great family idea so I'm definitely going to come what can I expect that's different from the other shows that I've been to well it is it's got a real heart to it this one you get all the feels as some people say um it's uh it's I it's also got I mean it's got the best if this is all right to say the best reviews of anything I've ever done in 20 odd years which is nice to know because it is such a personal show so that's a um that's a lovely thing that has been received so well um I do swear the old the audience to secrecy um so it's hard to go into details um other than yeah it is about the things that connect us as people and then how the difficult things in life are the things that join us up it's also show based on audience participation like like they all are and I should say I I would hate the idea of being dragged up on stage so I throw out frisbees to choose people which means it's the easiest thing to hand to the person next year if you you know if it lands on your lap and you don't want to get involved so there's no pressure to get involved at all but it is a it's a big show of audience participation and it's it's more than More Than People expect I hope we always try and make the show properly over deliver give you give you more than you thought it would I'm so excited I genuinely really excited thank you so much for your time we we have a closing tradition on this podcast we're the last guest asks a question for the next guest and they don't know who they're leaving it the question for oh fantastic I get to see it when I open the books excuse me if I take a while to read the handwriting um oh this is for me right yes great oh God okay top or bottom I can imagine I wonder if that was the question if you could only speak with call C touch four people for the next four years who would they be I feel this is quite a yeah boring answer but it's honest so my mom uh partner probably number two really good friends Sharky and Stephen I'd have to include Jenny in there somewhere so maybe they could alternate weekends or something um yeah friendships really mean a lot to me now as I get as I get older I'm not old but you know getting older I have a really I think it happens something like on your 50th birthday or something suddenly your friendships really mean a huge amount to you um and they didn't before they always did but just not in such a conscious why what changes why I don't know it's just a real real sentimental like valuing of them Nostalgia as well like really um I just find myself just that was kind of yeah sentimental sort of uh leanings um and my friends just suddenly they've obviously always meant a lot to me because I've been my friends but suddenly even more so I love meeting up with people I haven't seen for years now I love doing that much more than I used to um so yeah I'm that's it Mom partnering up a couple of really good friends um uh that doesn't include my dog is I forgot I didn't forget I had two dogs but I have a clear favorite which is uh unfortunate for the other one I was only thinking of doodle and I forgot about humbug it's okay I said people so yeah so sorry that's not a very clear answer but lovely question thank you so much for your time thank you for the inspiration thank you for coming and doing this you're someone that I've been honestly quite obsessed with since for the last 10 years watching on TV watching on Channel 4 coming to your shows and stuff so it feels like a real honor to get to speak with you and as I said I read your book in the jungle it was very much the basis in the jungle you didn't say that yeah yeah so I took it took a brief I took a suitcase out to the
jungle and I was I wanted books on happiness and yours was on the Shelf so I took it was it that one was a happy it was the yellow one yeah happy um and I'll be honest I this sounds like because I bought it not knowing it was you interestingly yeah yeah and then when I saw I got to the jungle and I saw the name on it I couldn't I had to Google to check it with you because I couldn't believe you'd written a book on happiness and you get this a lot don't you yeah I do and a while back I got a um the only time I've ever dropped my own name trying to get a restaurant table um in SoHo and I did and I got the table suddenly we have felt ah I pulled that off went in and then at the end of the meal the waiter said would you mind signing one of your books so yeah of course and he came back with angels and demons oh [ __ ] it's fantastic [Music]