ben fogel ben relentlessly pursues

adventure

risk and challenge but this doesn't come

from a place of strength and courage

it comes from the opposite this if you

think you're gonna fail

you're gonna fail you just have to have

this positive attitude and it was only

actually working with

olympians that i've done now when i

climbed everest i realized you need this

confidence verging on arrogance that i

will

get to the top of this mountain three

weeks before he was due to be born

naturally and we lost our third child

and it was

an awful awful experience that

affected us profoundly i became really

introverted

i'd go to events and i'd find myself

going to the loo and just sitting

sitting in the little cubicle for the

duration of the whole

event big mistake we got death threats

and worse

i i shouldn't have shared this idea

in a social um media platform

but i was amazed at the vile vitriolic

abuse

[Music]

ben fogel he's a tv presenter

broadcaster and author

he's climbed mount everest he's trekked

across antarctica

and he's rode across the atlantic ocean

ben relentlessly pursues adventure risk

and challenge

but this doesn't come from a place of

strength and courage it comes from the

opposite

from a place that you would probably

never expect this was such a diverse

conversation we covered

so much and so many things ben has been

on the most incredible

journey tearing up the script and

ignoring the standard society

sets for all of us on this never-ending

continuous journey of rebuilding himself

as he says in his own words

and that journey has been inspired by

one simple idea

his desire to take back control of his

own

personal narrative something he believes

we've all lost control of

and this podcast is going to take you on

a journey from the need to a positive

attitude to resisting your labels to

taking leaps to rediscovering the

importance of simplicity

in your life that ben has learned from

living in the wilderness and

to answering the question that we all

seek to answer pretty much every day of

our lives which is how to be happier

and how to be more fulfilled so without

further ado

i'm stephen bartlett and this is the

diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening

but if you are then please keep this to

yourself

[Music]

ben uh as i read through your

story your books your interviews and i i

remember remember watching

uh a youtube documentary of you sailing

across the atlantic many years ago

um obviously the most sort of striking

distinctive

standout thing about the way that you've

chosen to live your life over the last

couple of decades is your seemingly

insatiable appetite for adventure

risk challenge uh extreme adventure

as it relates to everest and things like

that where did that come from

i think it's do you know it's not

necessarily

an absolute thirst for adventure i think

it's about kind of

finding the real me see if i go if i go

right back as a child i was

so shy i had no confidence i failed all

my exams i was

hopeless at sport and actually i think

it i think all of the things that i've

done

since have been about like rebuilding

and it sounds it sounds a weird way to

describe it but it's not

just i'm not an adrenaline junkie

there's there's this assumption that

maybe

you know that that would be how to

describe

myself but it's not that at all actually

those are the things i do are really

really slow

you know like rowing across the atlantic

took best part of two months

walking across antarctica took many many

months climbing everest took

many months so actually if if it was

jumping off a mountain base jumping or

going uh

on a motorbike or even a mountain bike

down a steep slope

i hate all that it's too fast i quite

like

this slow movement but i'm quite good at

long endurance events and all of those

have been about

rebuilding my confidence and what took

your confidence or why didn't you have

confidence i think i think it's the fact

that i was

i was hopeless academically for many

different reasons undiagnosed

dyslexia um a kind of

a slight mistake maybe not on my parents

part but they

my father's canadian he wanted me to be

bilingual so i was sent to a french

school

and i just i just i just didn't

i couldn't do the french school the

french system and with all apologies to

any french

watching or listening to this it's just

quite a hard system

the french one and and and it was quite

it was quite um strict

and i'm just i as a child i just i was

surrounded by dogs dad was a vet

mum was an actress it was all quite a

liberal my actual childhood at home was

quite liberal

full of actors um lots of drink

lots of animals around it was i suppose

crazy but normal for me

but then in this french system it was

very rigid and

and it meant that i didn't learn any

french and my english went backwards

so when i went back into the system i

was way behind and it

and the result was the combination of

that and dyslexia

just meant i was hopeless i could barely

write and i

and i failed all my exams and i was

surrounded by people who were better

than me at everything everyone everyone

seemed to be more handsome when it c

if it was the boys they had more luck

with the girls they were better at

playing

um sports because they could actually

kick football unlike me that have i have

two left legs

and and they were good at um academics

and when it came to the exams they just

they didn't even you know they could be

up all night watching stuff and then the

next day turn up for the exam whereas i

was just

i was almost making myself vomit i was

so nervous about the exams because i

knew i was gonna fail

and this is this is the first thing i

convinced myself i'd fail

and of course i ended up failing because

what i've discovered

since is that so much of what we do and

what we endure and how we intest

ourselves

is here in the mind and if you go in

with a negative attitude which

i had then it's self-fulfilling

and and the result was hopeless is

everything and it just stripped me of my

confidence

i i had you know i just i didn't

believe in myself and that that went

right through

you know probably into my 30s if i'm to

be really honest i think that was always

lingering over me this little voice just

telling me

that i was uh that i wasn't good enough

at what i did and did that voice come

from

your own assessment of yourself or was

was there external forces bullying or

your parents or no my parents were

amazing you know

my parents have i don't think they could

have done more

for me than they did i think it was

no i think it was all internal if i'm to

be honest

i think there's a pres i think there was

an external pressure

to conform because if you think about

how

if you take the schooling model in the

education model it is

kind of about conforming because exams

are all about

getting the the correct grades we're

we're learning to

a specific model that has been um set

by the government and and it's it's sort

of painting by numbers when it when you

think about education and if you don't

hit those targets then then you've

effectively failed the

system and for me you can hear from my

accent you know i'm i'm posh i went to a

private school mum and dad worked really

hard

to send me to a private school and

actually there was a great guilt

that the fact that they had worked so

hard

to be able to afford to send me there

and yet i still failed

so i think actually a lot of that voice

was internal

and actually i wish if i could go back

in time i wish i could kind of shake my

shoulder

shake a young me on the shoulders and go

just

don't don't overthink things just chill

out a little bit

and we were you a chronic overthinker i

was and i still am absolutely i still

overthink things if i'm to be honest i

i i to work in the medium that i work in

is a little bit strange because i don't

really belong in this medium when i say

this medium you know

front of house as a presenter because

i've got a really thin skin and i

overthink everything so when i read

something negative whether that's on

social media whether that's a newspaper

review whether that's a journalist that

has

written something um which i don't like

um or which doesn't seem true

i take it really personally which is

kind of really strange because i should

have

i should have been able to overcome that

after 20 years and i'm almost there

stephen i'm almost there but one of the

reasons i'm happy to talk about it is

because i know so i'm i know i'm not

alone i know there are many many people

out there

who are high achievers who've done

brilliant things in life

but are still burdened with their own

voice of doubt

and through all of these challenges i've

done

i've been able to really build that

confidence and i'm i'd say

i'm a few hundred meters from the summit

now of

peak confidence and i can't wait until

i'm there

i hope i do i i hope i reach that point

what is it about those challenges

and this sort of slow monotonous nature

of those challenges or just the

challenges themselves or challenge

as a you know as a as a construct itself

that helped you to build confidence

because i'm

one of the most frequent questions i'm

asked in the comments section of this

podcast or on instagram or anywhere else

is

um how do i build my confidence and i

think we live in a

culture especially on instagram where it

seems like everyone else

is super confident and chasing their

dreams

and we we never get to hear the whispers

of their self-doubt so it

might feel like we're the only ones so i

guess my question is

how how did those challenges build your

confidence

it happened by accident so that's the

first thing to say i didn't chase it

thinking this is going to help

it was like a slow series of blocks that

were built so

it started when i failed my a-levels and

i went off traveling i went to

costa rica a place that i know you love

and i went to university out there

and i think it was spending time in a

different culture

in a different culture country with a

different culture different

language different religion away from

home away from mum and dad

and and first of all i had to kind of

think on my own i couldn't defer to

other people

up until that point i'd always kind of

dad what do you what do you think mum

what do you

should i do you know i i i didn't trust

my own judgment so first of all that was

gone so i had to

stand or fall on my own decisions and

then

secondly just the immersion in this

exciting new

place was just i mean it just

it it was the most exciting year i've

ever had if i'm to be really honest

and i decided then that that that's what

i wanted from life i didn't want

to conform by getting you know i i

didn't want the degree

the the um the job the mortgage the

sitting in an office

i didn't want to go down that

conventional route that

that is why because i didn't

i didn't feel like a conformist i did i

didn't want to be a sheep i wanted to be

the shepherd i didn't want

to just conform to the expectations of

what society deems is successful

why because i'm just making sure you're

not playing

you're not you're not doing it just for

the sake of devil's advocate just to go

against

no not at all i'm not i'm actually not a

contrarian i'm not someone who says

left just because the other person has

said right i'm really not a concern if

anything

for someone who doesn't like criticism i

should probably stand back and therefore

i should sit on the fence and

become the sheep but i i'm i'm

you're gonna discover as we chat i'm a

ball of contradictions

yeah so so nothing kind of makes sense

um i just know

what i have learnt over the years but

for me

conformity maybe i was stripped of that

just by the fact that i couldn't conform

when it came to exams so i couldn't

conform to what the

what the system wanted me to conform to

and therefore i wasn't going to conform

when it came to other things i wear

shorts all year round i'm not

you know i stopped wearing a suit ages

ago i kind of

slowly as my confidence has build has

built

i've found myself straying even further

from conformity

i think i'm going to end up one of those

ridiculous kind of english eccentrics

wearing a bow tie

you know you know the one like walking

around with a cat stroking it

because i kind of that that's how there

is

this kind of there's an enemy that i

have never

i still haven't really fully found but i

knew i wouldn't find

that person sitting in an office on a

computer

in a job that society expected me to

take

just so that i could follow the

narrative and the narrative being as

i've kind of explained

you know getting a good job that you can

then

um get a promotion you get the the good

wage you might get a bonus

you can buy your house you can get your

car you marry you get the dog

you have the children and then you

end up retiring and then you do all the

things you want to do and here's the key

because is it the journey or the

destination

so for me it's 100 the journey yeah yeah

so many people don't see that but you

should

but this is where you and i have quite a

lot in common okay we're

maybe what we're doing now in life is

very very

different but the fact that you will

suddenly just wake up one day and go

yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna resign from

yeah

honestly it sounds everything you're

saying like i want to make this about

you but i feel like i've been on the

same journey as you're saying with the

you know one day you might have the dog

and whatever which is just trying to get

closer and closer to who i actually am

and um trying to find the courage the

strength to

um not allow society to write

to tell me what my how my story has to

be yeah so who's and this is the thing

isn't it whose story is it

yes is it yours or someone else's of

course it's someone else's story and it

was written

at another time in another age if we're

talking about marriage and these

constructs in our society for someone

else in the circumstances they lived in

and they probably weren't happy anyway

so to think that that same narrative and

storyline would be

would equal happiness in stephen

bartlett's life in 2021

is uh you know probably patently false

like

but don't you find this strange i'm not

going to don't i'm not going to tell the

whole thing although i'd be quite happy

to because i think you're a fascinating

person but

it is strange isn't it that archer i

don't think you have you know yet okay

so

so i've got two young children aged 10

and 11. so

obviously i'm really aware of the system

that they're now in that

failed me and i'm really nervous about

that fortunately i married someone who's

really intelligent

and has the thickest skin you'll ever

meet on anyone in the world so actually

my children are pretty resilient

much more than i was and i owe all that

to my wife but

i digress if you think about it it's

still a strange thing that

children are expected from the age of i

don't know four or five

to go off to nursery and then to school

where they're in a classroom with four

walls it might have a window if you're

lucky

you've got some teachers that may or may

not be really invested in their job i

don't want

that to sound disparaging to all

teachers because i know a lot of

teachers put a lot of hard work in

but it's still a gamble as to whether

you're going to get those that are just

doing it for the job or those that are

really passionate and driven and then

it's just

about ticking those boxes isn't it get

the exam grades

that the government have set so that

they can then go look hurrah we're doing

a great system yeah gcse grades are all

up

a level grades are all up it's all

looking great look at the number of

people going to university and i'm like

hang on

what is this expectation that everyone

should go to second

to further education to university it's

not i get people calling me or

emailing me getting in touch with me on

social media saying how could do you

think i should do a

degree in filmmaking and in broadcast at

university i'm like no

get an apprenticeship job if i could do

that i'd take on apprenticeships

no work your way get experience

and uh and and it just i find it really

odd that in 2021

we haven't changed this is a model yeah

i

i i did a tv show called um called

secret secret teacher with channel 4.

and i was i had the same bewilderment

about the education system and what how

it was incentivized for grades and

league tables and not

based on the child's like intrinsic

passions and who they want to become

because obviously

for me i was running multiple businesses

in the school all the school trips had

done all the vending machine deals so

our school made money from the vending

machines

and yet i was kicked out because i

wouldn't go to health and social care

and

push a plastic baby around the school

like i wasn't interested in that

so like the school viewed me as lazy but

really if you think about it the school

was lazy for not taking the time to

understand who i was

at that age but in filming that show i

learned something very valuable about

how the whole system works so i went

inside the school got to sit down with

the head teacher and i was like

how does this system work and he said um

the better the grades we get

the more students come to the school and

we get paid per

student so he gets uh let's say four

thousand pounds from the government per

student that they have

so his whole incentive is grades

grades grades grades and it's just like

a business they have customers

and the more customers they get the more

money they make and then as it as you

got the

you know the the institutional lad or

whatever universities are the same the

more they send to university the better

their

their rankings if their rankings are

good more parents will choose that

school

it's a business and it's incentivized by

money at the heart of it

and if at some point you could take the

money out of the system um then you'd be

able to fix it but that poor head

teacher he was the ceo and he said

i won't be able to buy pencils if we

have

a hundred less students come next year

so we better be on that league table

um and then i realized what was what was

wrong with it you know these are good

meaning people incentivized badly

yeah um and it's ha and it's how we

change the system though

you know because that's this is where i

could turn the tables on you and go

listen you've done these incredible

um startups you've been incredibly

successful

and i i know there have been a couple of

entrepreneurs who have attempted dabbled

in the school

uh model and how do you do it it's kind

of obvious to me one of the problems is

that there's

so many children how do you make it

financially viable to give everyone

access to um you know

a a a fair education for them

and to to have bespoke systems for every

single pupil

cost a lot of money but i in the same

way as i'm talking about apprenticeships

you know i'm a keen advocate of like a

national service not a military one

but i think everyone aged 18 should go

off and spend

a month with the nhs with the fire

service with the police service

um just volunteering to see what maybe

working in the school system

and and if you imagine now that if if

all parents got invested in the school

and

volunteered to go in and help with the

classes

and help paying for different things i

just think

our education our education system could

be in a different place

i completely agree yeah i think it's um

i've i i did say when i left social

chain that the challenge i'd take on

would be the education system

so who knows let's see but uh i i came

to learn that it's like anchored in

place from all angles by parents

who believe that success for them as a

parent means their kid going to

university so my mum was disowned me

because

it made her look bad that i left the

system then you haven't but culturally

for lots of people it is still

really really really important my mother

is african so yeah she left school at

seven years old

and all of my friends who live

in various countries in africa or or in

latin america

it is or india it's still to to have

further education and by the way

obviously

to have further education for vocational

work like being a doctor or an engineer

you know we we really rely on on all of

that but

i think we have to change our attitudes

because can you imagine stephen this is

what

i find really shocking i i work with

people now

who are um working on production who've

left university with

40 grand of death and they're now and

they're scrabbling to

pay that back and get a job in the world

that they want to work in in this

post-pandemic or

middle of pandemic um world that we're

in right now

i mean that cannot be a good way to

start your life kind of in debt

is that not part of the system and it's

so unnecessary

i mean you what you spoke to everyone

about internships for me

is is the answer getting experience

right however that might be

and at my company we employed 700 people

at the time that i left

and i couldn't tell you who had a

university education or not it just

it was such a low down on the list of

things that actually mattered number one

is obviously

what are they capable of in terms of

experience um and then

the piece of paper i did i didn't have a

[ __ ] clue

who had gone where or what they'd

studied because it just doesn't matter

in reality

um but anyway i wanted to ask you get

back to one of the points you said

earlier you said um

you don't think you'll ever you're not

sure if you'll ever find

out who you really are could you expand

on that

what do you mean well i think we're all

the

the product i suppose of our experiences

and who we are

and and i think if you look at if you

look at

life as this journey and not just a

destination then

we're constantly evolving and changing

and

and growing and i think however much you

try to be yourself you

you become a bit chameleon-like and and

you end up

you end up kind of the lines between who

you are and

what everything else is does begin to

blur a little bit

so the way i look at it you know i

started off as this

deeply unconfident shy child that then

kind of

morphed into you know how i started when

i was on

one of the first reality shows which was

called castaway i was

sent to live on an island for a year and

then i kind of became

this posh real reality show

contestant and then i started working in

daytime tv

and i became a daytime tv presenter and

then i kind of became a broadcaster

and and you're i see it all the time you

become stereotyped so you whenever

when whenever your name is is written it

will say

you know it will have either an amount

that you made

or it will have the company that you

started but is that really

is that really you so so if you or i

went on strictly come dancing now by the

way that would be changed instantly and

it would then be stephen from

strictly come dancing or ben because

you're only

you're as you're remembered for the last

big thing

and that constantly changes but it then

means it's quite hard to

leap away from that so if you're

suddenly going to decide actually i'm

going to become a

an mp now people be like well hang on no

no that's not the narrative and what

happens i i

think what happens is you you become

blinded by people going i'm just not

really sure this is right because that's

not

that's not really who you are that's not

part of the narrative that

i think you were going down for the book

that you're writing of your life and i

don't mean

the physical book but just the

metaphorical one so

speaking of books yes in my book i have

a chapter called resisting your labels

and it's exactly this exactly what you

said so i refer to it as your label

and i say that your your label comes

with a set of instructions

implicit instructions about how you have

to behave going forward so my labels

would be

i don't know black social media ceo

and with that comes a set of

instructions as to how i'm expected to

pave in the future

and that can be imprisoning right so one

the reason i wrote that in the chapter

is because leaving social change i have

that same like existential moment where

you're like

okay so who the [ __ ] am i you know and

society's going

you'll be safest if you just [ __ ]

carry on with the social media ceo thing

yeah but at my heart i'm like no i'm i

no one was born with a passion for

something that didn't exist when i was

born social media

i'm a guy with a bunch of interests

music and creating stuff and

curiosity and how do i go back to those

fundamentals for my life and not the

label

yeah well i'm i'm slightly obsessed with

the label because

society loves to label us and uh and and

it's

and you'll never get away from that but

you i say you would never get away from

it

it will always be there in the context

of social media

and the the print press and and

um broadcast journalism but you can

i have tried to challenge the status quo

a number of times with

different things that i have done in

terms of

challenges um and other things the the

problem is that

i did so many of those challenges to get

away from just the daytime tv presenter

or just the reality show person that

then i became the adventurer who

does those things and the expectations

you know whenever

when i climbed everest two years ago

part part of the disappointment was

people going

oh yeah of course you'll do it of course

you'll get up but that's what you do

yeah of course you'll get up the

mountain i'm like it's not quite as

simple as that that's

you know i'm not a natural mountaineer

you know this is the boy who was

hopeless at sport it's still a

tremendous challenge but i i love

i love just testing failure

because i'm deeply fearful of failure

because of having so much of it

in in my early childhood you know just

to to back up

some of the data i've already given you

about how hopeless i was as a child you

know i ended up going to about five

different schools i actually went to

three different universities in the end

um uh took my driving test eight times

so it kind of it failure became

a really a word that i was really

fearful of

and and as i get older i find myself

actually

kind of um i find myself

confronting failure on purpose as much

as i can

to to try and become less fearful of it

i think you have to confront your demons

believers or not and

and failure so if we go back

to the challenges for example um because

they're one of the things that

kind of have really defined me you know

i somehow managed to row across the

atlantic ocean

i should have i should have quit there

really you know 49 days in a little boat

you know for for those who never saw it

it was a 20-foot rowing boat you know a

couple of oars

me and an olympic rower and it's pretty

dangerous out there it's the middle of

the atlantic ocean you've got waves that

are

30 feet tall where our boat got capsized

we nearly drowned we hit you know

it was the most amazing adventure but

also pretty scary and quite dangerous

and i did that and reaching the other

end of that

is still probably the biggest

achievement of my life and you know a

lot of my wife sometimes says why do you

not just quit there

because quit while you're ahead same i

could say to you

come on you've you did this amazing tech

startup

uh and i think a lot of people would

think that you've made all this money

just sit and enjoy it but but that's not

but then you're just taking life like

the destination

and you're thinking that well there you

are so money is everything and

and money i think money is a really

fascinating thing for me because

i am not money motivated i know people

may go well you can only say that when

you've made enough money to not be

motivated by money

and they have a point money buys

security

money gives you the opportunity to do

some of these big challenges i'm a

i told you there's lots of

contradictions here um and i'm aware of

all of those things but

we also live in a world by where success

is

defined by your monetary

value so when i you know if i google you

and i look you up

every single one has a sum of money of

various values right next to you so it's

next to your buyer so

listen by the way i think it's something

you should be really proud of if you

have if you have managed to make that

that much money i think that is that is

your everest that is testament to

dreams that lots of people have but i

think we need to change this notion that

being wealthy is a sign of success in

life

if you if you look at the model that

jacinda adam was trying to do in

in new zealand it was to change gross

national um

product to to change what the country's

values are by including the happiness

index

and the kindness index and how what what

a good

nation you are and how healthy you are

and your obesity levels

you bring into all of those things

because for me as a parent

i want my children to have the security

of having enough money to put food on

their

plate and a roof over their heads but

whether they make

huge amounts of money is kind of

irrelevant as long as

they are good rounded kind

happy individuals yeah i think you've

never known that this is actually why my

book is called happy sexy millionaire

because

when i was 18 all i wanted in life was

to be

as it says in the front page of my diary

range rover sport a million pounds

before i was 25

because i was it's the same similar to

what you've described the thing that had

invalidated me as a child

was being the only poor family

in a middle class area and never having

anything no birthdays no christmases and

everyone on holiday

so obviously that was my insecurity and

i chased it as an adult

and then i got it and then it you know

but by the way just

to reiterate i i think to have a goal

like

that is so important whatever your goal

is i'm just saying i think

to to have the the pure monetary goal

maybe isn't necessarily for for everyone

now for children

shouldn't necessarily be the priority it

can be a it can be a byproduct of being

successful

you know when i'm sure you get the same

thing when when i go and give talks in

schools and i go say what does everyone

want to be when they're older you know

i get a large number who just want to be

famous

and and i always say to them that's it's

all very well i i get why you want to

be famous but there needs to be

substance to that

fame so you need to be famous because

you have succeeded in business because

you're a great footballer because you're

a great

actor or actress and uh and and then

as a byproduct of all of that you can

become a great millionaire and

and um and and sort of

reach those dreams as well yeah so again

exactly what you've just said there

i think there's a the distinction for me

is like whether the goal was

intrinsically or extrinsically motivated

and the kid there that says he wants to

be famous is pure

is actually saying i would like people

to like me i want admiration

my goals as when i was younger were

clearly i want to fit in

i wrote millionaire but what i meant was

i'm insecure and i want to fit in

and obviously upon reaching that goal

because it wasn't ever intrinsic it

wasn't ever something that i wanted

inside of me

it was just to try and satisfy the

approval of others it felt like nothing

one of the things that's integral to

performing at the highest level is

nutrition it's something that i

i i guess i took a a long time to

finally believe but

that is why having hewlett's response

for this podcast is such a privilege

because

there was a time in my life especially

when i was early in my business career

where i wasn't getting the vitamins the

minerals and i wasn't having a sort of

nutritionally complete diet i was

if you look at some of my old photos i

was definitely lacking protein as well

and a lot of that maybe it was an excuse

was because

i was um i was busy and

when i discovered huel when a guy called

mike walt passed me in the office

wearing a heel t-shirt and shaking a

little bottle and

you know upon my curiosity of asking

what was in that and why he was drinking

it

it really really did change my life it's

almost religious my love for your but

for good reason

and if you haven't checked it out i

would um i would employ to check it out

because it's only going to do good in

your life

when you asked asked me earlier about

whether i believe the journey or the

destination

i just don't think the destination

exists every time you get there it moves

off into the distance like a mirage

yeah because as soon as you've got that

car you'll want the better car

as soon as you've got the house you'll

want the house in the south of france

so we're constantly changing our goal

posts because we we

i think it's human nature you know the

grass is always greener

i think of all the sayings i really do

think that is the one we

all look at other people and and social

media is a fascinating

medium now isn't it because effectively

social media one of the reasons i think

it's having

such a negative impact and when i say

social media you know the the

kind of twitter instagram why i think it

can have a lot of

negative impacts on people is because

it's

it's almost it makes people feel jealous

because people are projecting

uh it's i don't want to use the word

fakery but

it's it is an edited world isn't it

however whatever photo you do it's a

it's

a tiny second of your life that you've

thought about how you're going to

compose that photograph

or the image that you want to project

how you're living

and uh and i think that is all built on

this notion

of of wanting what other people have but

it's even worse because then you get

ranked on it yeah likes comments yeah

and then and then you know you post

you post a certain photo and then the

likes are down half and you think oh my

god i'm [ __ ] ugly

yeah you think the world can i put my

hand up

and honesty i i feel the same i i i'm

you know someone who's 47 you know i

should i should know better now but i

still look at

uh my instagram accounts and and if

there aren't so many likes or if

there's one negative comment amongst

hundreds of really positive ones

i just look at at the either the low

figure or the

the negative comment because i think

it's human nature that we're kind of

we're drawn to this this sort of

um this notion of competition

and is life a competition i i i kind of

wrote about this

at length and um i've realized that

value is

um obviously just relative so the

analogy i get i gave was that

i was really happy with my nokia 3310

but in a world of iphones

i'm devastated to own a nokia 3310 it's

the same [ __ ] phone

and they have these um really remarkable

studies that show

how we attribute value value to things

including ourselves where they'll put

like three stakes on a menu

and um if there's a really expensive

stake in a really cheap one everyone

picks the middle one

three tvs on a shelf people pick the

middle tv because they think that one's

too expensive that one's a piece of [ __ ]

and they're just using the context

are you in my head now because this is

exactly what i would this is yeah yeah

yeah exactly so and

i might but it's just we a trip we

attain value by the context we see

something in

if you remove the other two tvs this now

becomes the best tv in the world

and it's the same with us i said you

know in a world where there's no other

humans i am the prettiest richest

most successful person on earth but you

put a couple

and this is the crazy thing about social

media you're comparing yourself to

fake like a fake context and

and you you can never win right because

you get to see your bts you're behind

the scenes you look at them you think i

got spots

and i'm fat what's that pouch down there

and no one else has got that

so it's a losing game and and so i

implore people but you know because i

work for 10 years in this [ __ ] game

so

i implore people just to make their

context way healthier and real

um and for me that means that i meet 95

percent of the people i follow

i have like if i go on my instagram now

there'll be 15 people

and five of them are in this room do you

know what i mean

because i just want to play this game

and even though i'm aware of it

my lazy ceo brain has been wired

from the for 10 000 years to make snap

judgments

snap judgments to keep me alive i can't

stop it

you know so i just have to be conscious

about the way i use these tools

yeah i mean i think it's a it's a

fascinating world and again as a father

with young kids who are terrifying

embarking into that world

i i i'm struggling to find the tools

to arm them for the battle ahead yeah

and

i'm aware that they can be fantastically

useful that you know that

it's amazing the the interactions that

you can

get you know is it's it's how i'm here

today i wouldn't be here

if it wasn't for uh social media

chatting to you now so i i'm aware of

the beauty of being able to share things

it's just how we get away from

kind of the the fakery if if that is the

term to use

and and the abuse you were talking about

a second ago negative comment one

negative comment can throw you off

mm-hmm

the kind of the the whole world of

trolling

fascinates me because deep down i just

know that those people that write

the nasty comments sometimes aren't even

real

sometimes they're just disgruntled and

it's probably no different to

how life would be in a pub there would

be some person in there that would go

muttering under their breath the problem

is on social media it get

it gets kind of brought to the surface

and

for whatever reason i think we probably

know newspapers

love to then regurgitate what that

single

individual spotty teenager in their

bedroom

has written uh as a as

validation they sort of validate it so i

i had a

funnily enough during the first lockdown

my daughter thought it would be nice to

get the nation to sing happy birthday to

the queen and

i realize there's lots of people who

aren't monarchists i understand that

we're

in a country where not everyone agrees

on the same thing but i thought it was

quite a nice sentiment

and foolishly i decided to let her use

my twitter account to kind of ask people

to do it

big mistake we got death threats and

worse

uh i mean the vile abuse to my

nine-year-old daughter partly my fa

you know i shouldn't have allowed her to

i shouldn't have

shared this idea in a social

um media platform with a g with with my

daughter i realized

but i was amazed at the vile vitriolic

abuse and that was partly

kind of enhanced by the press who jumped

on

a few negative comments wrote about it

and as soon as they had written about it

uh it went i mean it i had to give up

twitter i actually

um abandoned it and haven't i haven't

gone back to really

crazy there's a lot of talk at the

moment about

what social platforms can do for this

type of behavior and i just

i always come back to the point of like

i'm gonna tell a little bit of a story

here

so when i worked in silicon valley for a

little while for about a year when i was

20 after i left my first company

and i got to see behind one of the big

social platforms that was emerging at

the time

and it taught me something about humans

because someone in the daytime who was a

very civilized school teacher

just being completely honest would get

his [ __ ] out at night

because of anonymity and what it taught

me was that people

good people are capable of pretty

alarming things

if you allow them to cover their face

and there's a piece of jealousy and

evilness and darkness in all of us

um and anonymity allows you to be both

yeah and so

until platforms don't allow people until

we verify people who people are when

they sign up

and there's no and there's no real and

there's real world consequences of the

behavior

it's never going to stop yeah and i

agree i agree it's the anonymity thing

so you know the number of people that

say just get up just just

ignore it and i do largely so i still

use instagram

and occasionally you know the odd troll

flares up and i do ignore it now

um occasionally you know i get a bit

more stung than

than other times but i think you know

it's symbolic of the world that we're

we're living in right now and i think

anonymity can be quite a dangerous thing

wokeness wokeness woke wokeness is

fascinating

wokeness is it's fascinating and it's

really complex now especially as a

documentary maker

i go off to to

countries all around the world and and

i've been accused of

of um gross xenophobia

just because i go to these countries now

and

maybe make a documentary about a local

group of people who live there

it's seen by the extreme woke brigade

as being as other ring people this is

the this is the woke

term right now don't other people so

by by taking a document i know it i mean

it is laughable but they're quite but

they have quite a strong voice

and and i've you know i've had to talk

about this on

other people to other people is to make

them

feel like they aren't a part of

normal i mean this comes we've come full

circle right now so

other ringers to make people um kind of

feel

like they don't like the specimens or

something yes specimens basically so to

other

so effectively going if you imagine you

know going to a group

of indigenous native um

uh people who live in the brazilian

amazon where once that was seen as you

know

anthropological study of how people

live and what they do now it's seen as

sneering and laughing at people because

you're othering them and you're showing

look look at them still hunting with

spears and bows and arrows

now this is the wokery brigade who

interpret it like that i interpret it as

a great celebration

because more often than not i kind of

been seeing how we should be living and

how we should

be um treating nature and the flora and

fauna around us

rather than living in big cities where

we're fantastically wasteful and we're

destroying the planet

actually the the this kind of nomadic

way of life or this very simple hand to

mouth way of life i

i go and i i feel i feel huge

admiration and i'm not laughing or

sneering but there are lots of people

that

interpret that form of television as

that now i've just given you one form of

vocary right now and there's is

so we all have to we have to think about

everything we say

and everything we do and is that

cultural i've just got a kilt

i've been sent a kilt because

it's the big global climate conference

in glasgow later this year i'm going to

be up there in

scotland obviously the kilt is is the

national dress

and i was asked if i could wear a kilt

with a special environmental fabric so

i've agreed to do that

but i can already see when it comes to

that culturally

that by the way i'm a quarter scottish

as well but i'm not even going to try

that because it wouldn't it wouldn't get

past the woke

police because it's cultural

appropriation i was going to say if you

went to the

amazon jungle and you saw that tribe and

you showed up with a spear

and a skirt but you know if

so if you look at what bruce parry used

to do where he would immerse himself and

he would live there i don't know if you

remember bruce perry

he would go and live there for there

being

with a a group of with a tribe somewhere

and he would adopt their native dress

whether it was just a little

you know whether it was a very simple

skirt whatever it was

and he would live as they do i don't

know if you could get away with that now

because it would be seen as a mix of

cultural appropriation

othering people um and it should be

we we should leave people to live as

they do

without trying to mimic it that's that

that's how it is

interpreted by some people where is all

of this wokeness going because i feel

like it's gaining momentum

and i i worry about the trajectory i'm

like it's not is it going to come back

this way because it's been i feel like

society has swung in a work direction

maybe because of social media it's kind

of like reinforcing reinforcing all of

us on our echo chamber

yeah that's perfect you're perfect that

was good good you're bad bad

that's bad he's bad get him but surely

you know this

probably more than than i do that you

have extreme wokery on one side

but then we have the extreme we've got

kind of fascism

and the complete opposite yeah on the

other side

and that 4chan and yeah and that whole

world

is is equally

more obnoxious yeah the racism the

xenophobia

and then you've got walkery here and

it's just like everything else in life

it's everything has gone

like this so you're either in or you're

out you're up or you're down it's black

or it's white

it's there's no middle and for

everything i've just said to you about

not wanting to be the sheep

and wanting to be the shepherd i i'd

quite like to just be a sheep amongst

quite a few others

in a field kind of having a reasonable

conversation it's very very hard to have

a sensible conversation now because

people

have gone to these extreme sides

it's probably easier for the newspapers

to write stories and to highlight the

workery

than it is to do the fascism because

that's really ugly and

and it's deeply offensive to so many

people but we see it you know

we know it's on social media you see

what's happening to footballers the

racist abuse that they get

and we do read about it but the wokery

for some reason is something we hear

about even more and maybe it's used

to try and counterbalance the really

ugly side of racism and xenophobia

and and anti-semitism all these things

that are equally

rising um and i don't know how we get

back to this

middle just being a sheep in a field

because i i

you know i long for a good solid

conversation i

i can't sit at a table now with people i

don't know really really well and have a

conversation about covert

because that's politicized i can't have

a conversation about politics

because that's that that went ages ago i

can't have a conversation about brexit

i can't have a conversation about indie

ref 2

i can't have a conversation about what's

happening in northern ireland

i can't really have a conversation about

international policy and

by the way i have more interesting

conversations and just says these

i am actually quite fun sometimes but i

really like debate and i like hearing

what other people have so when i travel

to other countries

my favorite thing is chatting about

their interpretation of what's going on

and

and uh and i really thrive on that but

we can't anymore because it's become too

emotional

people feel it's really personal to them

or they're too afraid to talk about it

in the first place

you talked at the start of this

conversation about not wanting to be

imprisoned by society's conventions

this is a form of imprisonment isn't it

of course yeah and it and it and it

which is maybe one of the reasons why i

still find myself drawn to

far away places so the show that i do

new lives in the wild where i go to live

with people

who've dropped off the grid they've

they've woken up one day and they've

decided

i i don't want this life anymore

sometimes they're millionaires

sometimes they're just everyday folk who

have

got bored of the nine to five job and

they've gone to live in the jungles of

bali in a little cabin in alaska

and uh and i really covet their lives i

really admire their lives i'm really

jealous of their lives because

they've simplified it we're living we

make we've made our lives pretty

complicated haven't we really if you

think about it oh yeah

um and actually if you strip it back

what do you really need in life will we

you know you need shelter you need food

you need water

some good company we've really realized

that with the pandemic i think people

have realized

that we're social we need to have

friends and family around

you need a smile on your face and that's

kind of it

and everything else it's a distraction

or it's an extra bonus

isn't it you know to to you know have a

fine wine

or whatever it is you like in life

but all these people that i've spent

time visiting i've done this series for

10 years now and i've been to 100

places um all around the world that

simplicity

is is really attractive and they don't

worry themselves about

those big topics i was just you know

describing there

it's it's kind of unimportant to them

what happens with brexit doesn't really

matter

for the person that's chosen to live on

a tiny little island up in

norway who lives hand-to-mouth catching

fish each day

and there's i i've i find it really kind

of hypnotic and mesmerizing

to spend time with people who have

stripped their lives back to the

absolute

bare essentials and the assumption is

that

that they're really enduring and they're

suffering and they're

surviving but that's not always the case

sometimes

it doesn't mean their lives are easy but

almost all of them are happy almost all

of them have have abandoned the

complexities that many of us are

stepping around they don't have to deal

with walkery and trolls

you know all these things are very first

world problems although they're not

actually they're

the the the developing or the lesser

developed world i should say

um i suffer from all of these um

these things as well i was on a uh to

speak to the point you just met i was on

a

motorbike like a little crappy motorbike

in bali don't know two weeks ago

and i'm just bombing down the street in

the field

sunshine walk going through the little

villages and i had this like real

overwhelming sense that i'd lived my

life wrong

and i got off the bike and said to my

friend and it's so crazy and

i don't think me and him will ever

forget this moment before i could say

the words to him

he went god isn't that what life's about

and it was just being on this bike

having no problems no care in the world

but also seeing a culture where they

also they live

in such a simple manner that made me

reflect on the decisions i was i've made

in my life

and it's such a remarkable thing as you

say those people are typically their

lives aren't easy but they seem to be

much more at peace than

the successful first world quote-unquote

people

well there's there's a great kind of

story that's kind of hypocritical but i

suspect it's true

a tourist goes to west africa let's say

they're in senegal they're on a

beautiful beach staying in a hotel

he he's on the beach every day and he

sees a fisherman go down and cast his

line over the story

it catches a few fish and uh and after

the week he goes to him and says listen

i think

why don't you invest in a second rod so

that you can catch twice as many fish

and then you can sell twice as many fish

and then eventually get a net and then

you can get a boat

and then you can start selling dozens

hundreds of fish

thousands of fish and earn even more

money so that one day you can retire

and do what you want to do and the man

who's fishing says what

fish and i just i just think there's a

lot to be said in that

because it's about chasing these goals

and and what your goal is

and and i think if we too many people

are kind of blinded by and again coming

full circle this notion of life is a

destination

and eventually you're going to reach

this nirvana this this this

glorious place where everything's

perfect where

you you just lie around i don't know

everyone has different things they dream

obviously you know someone just wants to

go and play golf i have no idea why i

don't know

but someone just might want to play golf

all day someone might want to play cards

all day someone just might want to just

move to the south of france and sit and

drink beer all day someone might want to

go surfing all day

whatever it is but there's no reason why

you can't

be doing that throughout your life you

just have to think outside of the box

don't you

you just have to have this positive

attitude and you know this comes back to

what i was saying to you as a child i

realize this if you think you're going

to fail you're going to fail

so every driving test all of those ones

i told you i failed

i would get in the car and this booming

deafening voice was saying you

are going to fail and sure enough i'd

mount the pavement

all right i got stopped by the police

once because i wasn't wearing a seat

belt yeah on a driving test

but because it was almost like

self-fulfillment

of my mind's attitude and it was only

actually working with olympians that

i've done now when i climbed everest i

went with victoria pendleton the cyclist

when i rode the atlantic it was with

james cracknell

and i've been lucky enough to work with

some other olympians that i realize you

need this

absolute confidence verging on arrogance

that i

will get to the top of this mountain i

will

reach the south pole because as soon as

you go into an event where you're

there's any self-doubt it's it's it

it will be self-fulfilling you must know

that you you yes you know that

but it's like it's a fake in my view

like i i

really i'm i'm quite repelled by this

culture of like

people looking in the mirror and saying

you are going to be a millionaire you

are great but d

because i my opinion of how beliefs work

like so i always use this example this

millionth time i've said this if i were

to hold your loved one at gunpoint now

and say believe i'm jesus where i kill

them

there's nothing you could do to actually

believe i was jesus

you could only lie to me because that's

not how belief works but as you've

proven beliefs take evidence

and you've built that evidence for your

challenges right so like just just

telling yourself to believe something

doesn't work even if

everything is on the line um but if i

suddenly turn this into wine and then

start levitating yeah you might think

wait wait a minute but this is but but

you're

you're taking it slightly too literally

when it comes

to what that is so here's the thing i i

th there's a man called mark boyle who

who um

lives in ireland a fascinating man i

think you should get him on here

he has lived as the moneyless man and he

gave up everything and tried to live

without

any money for a year and he ended up

with a with a house

is is what he did by trip by charming

trading up

uh literally just working his his way

through the system but never ever ever

using money

it was always trade and barter and

borrowing and i don't think there was

any stealing

not that i know of but i love this

notion that he had an absolute

confidence that

this would work and that he would be

able to do it

now with something like everest you're

right

you couldn't just take someone off the

street and say believe you're going to

climb this mountain and you're going to

get to the summit

because you need to do with the

acclimatization you have to get yourself

physically ready you have to understand

about

um high altitude and and you have to

understand the

the the basics of climbing at least uh

so you you're right but if you even with

all that

if you go into that arena as such

into the mountains with any doubt

it it's it it's going to be a

self-fulfilling prophecy that you won't

succeed so it's i think this idea of

belief that you can

you're right it's much more than just

looking in the mirror and going i'm

going to be the best musician in the

world

this comes back to school kids who

aspire for fame you know i think it's a

the kind of the x factor britain's got

talent has a lot

has a lot to answer for because it's

kind of made this illusion that

anyone can be whatever they want in life

now part of my whole

i i suppose part of of of the story that

i tell is that

that you can follow your dreams but i

always

give say that with the caveat it has to

be reasonable if you

if your dream is to be a top footballer

you're

but you have to be but if if you know if

if someone comes up to me and

a a youngster says i really want to just

be um a top footballer i want to play

with a premiership club

i don't see why they can't but there has

to be a there has to be a base level

of pretty brilliant football from a

start you said i mean of course so i

think you have to be realistic

with those aspirations if someone wants

to be a top

neuro scientist or a top doctor

i don't see why they can't but they have

to have it was going to be impossible

for me i wanted to be a vet

uh and i think i would have been quite a

good vet but i just didn't have the

academics so i didn't even get

off the start plate i think it's a

really important thing to

reiterate to people that i do believe in

that mindset

believe you can aunt middleton who's

been on here he's another keen advocate

of that

just believe in yourself this positive

mindset but the positive mindset has to

has to also um marry up with

ability and skill so i completely agree

with the um because i genuinely when i

think there's a butt coming here

yeah no so it's it's actually not a but

to your point

it's a it's a it's a question about how

to achieve this point because

i completely agree when i've been asked

um what my talent was i was like

can't spell can't do math still probably

dyslexic just never

gone to check um but i just always

believe that's what i've always said for

my whole life i always believed i was

gonna bit so think about what i wrote in

my diary

as a kid that didn't have a driving test

and his parents weren't speaking to him

with shoplifting pizzas

gonna be a millionaire within four years

gonna have a range over sports can be my

first car i didn't even

i and i genuinely believed it and for me

that was my

mother gift that life gave me was this

like low-key delusional belief

and that took me out and so when i was

living in moss side stealing pizzas and

stuff

i started recording it in my diary and

doing little videos

and it's crazy in the first page of my

diary i lied to my diary i said

i'm recording the these um this journey

because

a production company has asked me

to because like you lied to yourself i

lied in my own

because i i couldn't i i almost didn't

know how to say to my diary

that this was going to be part of a

story i was going to tell one day and i

and it's not that i'll share my diary

the first page of it it's like

because and and also because i think i'm

going to have to tell this story one day

that is a guy that saw himself

on an island and knew he was getting off

the island and wanted to

like wasn't dwelling on so i completely

agree i think the only reason i'm here

is not because of smarts

my parents were completely broke um

obviously i had privileges of being born

in this country

well born in africa actually but um it

was just that i always believed i'd be

here

however when i try and impose that onto

people and tell them the importance of

self-belief

and i see these people who have got

their confidence just absolutely in the

bin because of experiences they've had

or their dad when they were four years

old told them that they're a piece of

[ __ ]

and my fluffy words you know when

they're 35

aren't stronger than those words that

their dad said to them you know i

struggle to try and tell them how to get

to that place of genuine self-belief

because as i said you can't fake it if

stephen had a shred of doubt in moscow

i'd still be there

so like what do i say to that person

well it's the building blocks of life

isn't it it comes back to that so if you

you know the the series of challenges

and things that i've done in my life

have slowly built themselves up so i

started on that year on

living on an island in the outer

hebrides now if you strip that back it

was

it was pretty simple it couldn't really

fail it was hard work it was hard being

away from people no

no contact with the outside world no no

phones mobiles

family i didn't see anyone for a whole

year just this small group of people

well once i did that it was kind of

that was the fir that was like the

foundations i was like oh my gosh

well i've done this and then and then i

put the next block in which was running

the marathon day saab six marathons in

six days i'd never even run a hundred

meters stephen

and suddenly here i was agreeing to run

across the sahara desert

and i managed to get through that i came

last but i didn't manage to do it

and and these building blocks have just

gone up so when you

say to people you know when you're

trying to encourage as i do as well

people to

this self belief it has to be a

realistic self belief

to of the slow building blocks of life

if we come back to kind of

reality shows because i'm slightly

obsessed with reality shows and

and and this kind of what's happened

over the last 20 years

what it's done is it's given people this

belief that anyone can become

world famous overnight and and i've

already alluded to

britain's got talent x factor but big

brother love island all of those shows

because it takes

everyday folk and it catapults them onto

the front pages

of newspapers five million followers

overnight on social media and earning

quite a lot of money

but how long does that last for now for

many people you know it's the famous

andy warhol only 15 minutes

it doesn't last very long because what

happens is there's no substance to it

there's no roots and what happens is the

next show comes along

and they're cast aside but what also a

lot of people do is that they

the leap from one brick to the next is

too high and if you if you go too big

it's doomed to failure i remember

funnily enough i think

one of the reasons why me a reality show

contestant

is still working in tv after 21 years

because i should have my 15 minutes was

up a long time ago

i think the reason is more because of

the things that i turned down

than the things that i i agreed to do

so i turned down some pretty big shows

big prime time saturday night shows that

a lot of people who work in tv would be

like i would do anything for that but

the leap was too big and i didn't

believe that

i i think i i think the the um

even though i like to confront risks i

like to be realistic with those

so k2 is a far more dangerous mountain

than everest i could have gone straight

to k2 but

instead i want i want to do a

sensible building block up

to that ultimate challenge and i think

right back to television

i think if you if you if you take too