some of you might have been lucky enough
one day to look at the sky and see
what’s called a murmuration it’s where
tens of thousands of birds could have
come together to make these just
astonishing shapes they’re just really
really beautiful things we kind of see
successful lives like that we see
successful people as being part of this
big motion this thing which just looks
like it was what nature intended doing
something amazing but the thing is life
is never that simple
think about that murmuration of birds
when you zoom right in what do you see
you see these individual tiny little
starlings flapping about scared half to
death
just trying to survive in that moment
and here’s the thing that’s my story
from the outside that’s a success story
I’m that guy that set up a business at
school when he was 14 I’m that guy who
grew it into an international company
running it from a mobile phone in his
school bag and then I went on to build a
portfolio career and became a
philanthropist and teacher all these
great international universities and
then got an MBA it’s pretty cool right
wrong here’s the thing you are an
observer you are just seeing me as part
of that cloud of people that we hold up
as being successful and much like the
cloud of birds when you zoom in all of
us are the same all of us are just
flapping around doing what we can in
that moment to survive with the
challenges that life throws at us I
always remember being quite an anxious
child and when you were a child
that’s actually quite a good thing it
made me curious I was that kid that was
up all night reading the encyclopedia I
took things apart and put them back
together I was building electronics and
just you know annoying my mum and dad by
blowing out the fuses at home and then
when I was 14 and I discovered complete
I discovered the Internet I got obsessed
with it but not for the reason you might
imagine a teenager would I got
fascinated by how you build websites and
how the internet works so I taught
myself to code and then in a futile
effort to make some money to pay for
flying lessons because that was my real
dream I started building websites for
companies and that’s when I started
running that business whilst I was still
at school but as that business grew my
anxiety grew with it but at the time I
was far too busy to care I was too busy
running a business being at school
getting bullied dealing with being a
teenager figuring life out and all those
things that you just happen to be going
through at the time so being anxious was
way down my list of priorities in some
ways it was kind of inevitable but
that’s fast-forward a little bit so now
imagine it’s around 1999-2000 the market
really tense I’m now 1617 or thereabouts
I’ve got an office in New York
Manchester London and Sydney and but
people knew were in a bubble
this isn’t right and much like so many
industries everyone’s kind of complicit
in that and then the truth came out
WorldCom went bust they are a giant
telecommunications company they lost a
hundred and eighty six billion dollars
of investor money in less than a day
which is pretty impressive and they
triggered a two trillion dollar economic
tsunami better known as a dot-com bubble
burst as a tiny side note to that
tsunami was my own company getting swept
away
I went from running at full pelt in this
amazing career to just hitting a brick
wall
I had this massive wake-up call
everything I knew about myself vanished
in that instant and I had to start again
but here’s the thing at the time I was
powered by adrenaline so I didn’t really
have the time or the inclination to stop
and lick my wounds so I threw myself
straight back into a new venture this
time in textiles and commodities
very quickly I was working harder than
I’d ever worked before learning a new
industry learning how this new market
worked and very quickly going back to
being held out as what they say is
successful but as the company grew I
started to get really burnt out and so I
decided as many people to open it just
make up at a time in my life now just to
kind of you know get a bit more balanced
but every time I made a bit of time it
got filled with anxiety initially just
little bits here and there and then more
and more and more consuming until
sometimes it became relentless on those
days when anxiety became all-consuming I
had a plan and my plan was at find a
sanctuary and one of those places was
right next to our office we had this
beautiful multi-story car park I say
beautiful because of the view I could
see out all across Manchester it was
quiet no one had looked for me there no
one had care I was there it’s a car park
right and that’s where I went just to
get some peace and quiet when everything
was getting a bit too much I remember
one particular day it been a really
ordinary day you know when you go to
work and you come home and you don’t
really done anything just a really
normal day but for some reason that day
my mind was tormenting me so at the end
of the day I thought right I’m going to
just go to the sanctuary for a bit and
just spend a bit of time calm my mind
and then continue I really remembered
today just looking out over the edge of
that carpark and you could see all the
lights of the cars coming into the city
people may be going a free evening
shouts and all the red lights of all the
cars leaving people going home and there
was that background hum of city noise
it’s kind of like that white noise you
get sometimes we need to sleep and then
I remember then I wasn’t agitated I
wasn’t stressed anymore things just made
sense this was my only escape route it
was going to be quick and then it would
be over with this wasn’t the first time
I’d thought about doing something like
that but it was the first time I got
this close to succeeding
I approached the edge and I felt this
sense of overwhelming loneliness I
didn’t want to go in silence I just
wanted to speak to somebody anybody just
to have one last conversation that day
but I knew if I called a friend or a
family member what am I gonna get
shocked a bit of pain a bit of judgment
a bit of fuss and I didn’t want drama I
decided I just wanted to go so I picked
up my phone and I called a helpline it
was a number that had saved on my phone
a few days earlier what I’d be feeling
low and I just seen it on a poster and
I’d written it down and I called because
I knew I could speak to someone
anonymously then I would be a
disembodied voice on the end of the
phone like they would simultaneously
somebody and nobody
they didn’t say much they didn’t say
anything really they just listened but
for the first time in my life I told
somebody openly that I wanted to end it
all I told somebody openly that I felt
like a failure but I couldn’t cope but I
was scared
and I didn’t know what to do the space
that they gave me to say those words the
empathy they showed me by listening to
what I was saying was enough at that
time to get me to take a step back and
the next thing I remember was tears the
following day back in the office
business as usual how you doing oh yeah
I’m good man how are you yeah good all
good good weekend yeah great and that’s
the thing when you have anxiety and
depression you learn to become an actor
and for me that haptic that acting was
honed in the business world you know you
end up becoming this hyper masculine
hyper alpha caricature of what an
entrepreneur should be like but I guess
we kind of like doing this to ourselves
because sometimes it’s far easier to
live as this veneer of the per
you create rather than actually
admitting the person that you are and
unfortunately I still see this every
single day in the business world
we’re fueled by social media
affirmations right so we’re humbled to
bid incited to something or honored to
have accepted something we’ve kind of
taken the pissing contest out of the
bathroom thrown it into the clouds and
so when it rains on us what do you
expect it’s gonna fall it’s really
difficult for me to describe to you how
that conversation felt on the car park
but imagine one day you woke up locked
in a coffin it’s dark you can’t breathe
you’re hot you’re anxious you’re clawing
at the sides you literally don’t know
what to do and then all of a sudden
there’s a hole and through that hole you
can see the blue of the sky you suddenly
feel the cool fresh air hit your face
and then it’s just that relief was how
that conversation felt to me that day
coping with anxiety and depression is
hard but the stage after that recovery
is harder it’s like climbing a mountain
completely unprepared I started with the
usual things I went to my GP and then I
was on a waiting list and I was waiting
and waiting and waiting to see a
therapist so in the meantime I did what
we all would do I read more self-help
books and Tony Robbins could possibly
write in a lifetime I did yoga
acupuncture singing bowls anything you
can imagine to try and kid myself that I
was getting well but guess what it’s a
placebo and very quickly the clouds came
back but this time I remembered that
conversation that night on the car park
and I chose a different path I was one
of the lucky ones I could afford to go
and find the best psychiatrists and
psychologists to put me back together
and they spent hundreds and hundreds of
hours doing that but before they did
they had to trim
through miles of barbed wire assumptions
that I created in my own mind the first
of them was medication I’d always been
quite anti medication I’d been the
person that listened to people when they
went don’t take those crazy pills
they’ll change you they’re addictive
probably you know but here’s the thing I
tell you today I wish I taken them a
decade sooner medication saved my life
imagine that you had a friend with
cancer or diabetes or a heart condition
would any of you in this room be
irresponsible enough to say to them
don’t take those pills I read about this
to the magazine there’s an herbal thing
you’ll be fine just go for a run listen
don’t worry I really hope you wouldn’t
but we do that to people every single
day go through anxiety and depression
and a range of other conditions the
second thing was therapy in my mind
therapy was what crazy people did but
here’s the thing when you want to get
physically fit you see your personal
trainer it’s kind of like no big deal
when you want to improve your mental
health you see a therapist for some
reason that’s a big deal it doesn’t make
sense the medication gave me some
stability and the therapy or the CBT the
psychoanalysis all of those things what
gave me the operating manual for my
brain and the resilience then to cope
with life I also had to get over my ego
I’d created a barrier in my own mind
worrying what are people going to think
of me if they find out what will people
say when they hear that I’ve been going
through this or that I tried to make an
attempt on my own life what will people
say but I had to lift that veil and
expose that scarred reality to the world
and it was raw but I’m really glad I did
and there’s three reasons first of all
you’re not alone everyone is a bit
broken the second of all if anyone
judges you on something as arbitrary as
your mental health they don’t deserve to
be in your life I don’t care who they
are
and thirdly people might not understand
what you’re going through and that’s
fine they can still show you love and
and compassion and help you get
through it
I also had to really re-evaluate what
mattered in life and it might sound
strange coming from a business person
but it’s not money or things or this
thing we call success what matters is
the simple stuff spending time with the
people you love your friends your
hobbies your cats listening to your
favorite music whatever it is I had to
make time for me to be me not a CEO not
a philanthropist not a professor none of
those things I had to make sure that I
became the sanctuary I could escape to
when things got too much because that’s
how you learn to survive I also had to
realize that vulnerability is not a bad
word and that’s really difficult when
you’re growing up trying to be taught to
be a man about things but vulnerability
is not weakness
vulnerability is a superpower it’s the
tool that we have to be human it allows
us to receive and show empathy it allows
us to take chances on ourselves which
make us move forward vulnerability is
meaning that you’re the first person in
a relationship to say I love you
vulnerability means that you forgive
yourself for everything that you are
everything that you’ve done and maybe
even tried to do and it allows you to
move forward and heal vulnerability
means that you can recover and recovery
means you realize there’s no such thing
as well there’s no such thing as the
perfect physique and a perfect health
the perfect life and it doesn’t matter
what Instagram tells you I would never
ever wish for anyone to get to the
position I did on the car park that day
but I’m actually really thankful because
in those moments and in the journey
since it allowed me to reflect on life
in a way that people only tend to get to
do in those last few moments when our
time is up it’s allowed me to realize
that you don’t need a purpose to be
purposeful
you don’t need a reason to live you
don’t need an identity to be human or a
position from which to speak the truth
you don’t need Beauty to be beautiful
you don’t need space to feel peace in
life all you need is just to be thank
you
[Applause]
one day to look at the sky and see
what’s called a murmuration it’s where
tens of thousands of birds could have
come together to make these just
astonishing shapes they’re just really
really beautiful things we kind of see
successful lives like that we see
successful people as being part of this
big motion this thing which just looks
like it was what nature intended doing
something amazing but the thing is life
is never that simple
think about that murmuration of birds
when you zoom right in what do you see
you see these individual tiny little
starlings flapping about scared half to
death
just trying to survive in that moment
and here’s the thing that’s my story
from the outside that’s a success story
I’m that guy that set up a business at
school when he was 14 I’m that guy who
grew it into an international company
running it from a mobile phone in his
school bag and then I went on to build a
portfolio career and became a
philanthropist and teacher all these
great international universities and
then got an MBA it’s pretty cool right
wrong here’s the thing you are an
observer you are just seeing me as part
of that cloud of people that we hold up
as being successful and much like the
cloud of birds when you zoom in all of
us are the same all of us are just
flapping around doing what we can in
that moment to survive with the
challenges that life throws at us I
always remember being quite an anxious
child and when you were a child
that’s actually quite a good thing it
made me curious I was that kid that was
up all night reading the encyclopedia I
took things apart and put them back
together I was building electronics and
just you know annoying my mum and dad by
blowing out the fuses at home and then
when I was 14 and I discovered complete
I discovered the Internet I got obsessed
with it but not for the reason you might
imagine a teenager would I got
fascinated by how you build websites and
how the internet works so I taught
myself to code and then in a futile
effort to make some money to pay for
flying lessons because that was my real
dream I started building websites for
companies and that’s when I started
running that business whilst I was still
at school but as that business grew my
anxiety grew with it but at the time I
was far too busy to care I was too busy
running a business being at school
getting bullied dealing with being a
teenager figuring life out and all those
things that you just happen to be going
through at the time so being anxious was
way down my list of priorities in some
ways it was kind of inevitable but
that’s fast-forward a little bit so now
imagine it’s around 1999-2000 the market
really tense I’m now 1617 or thereabouts
I’ve got an office in New York
Manchester London and Sydney and but
people knew were in a bubble
this isn’t right and much like so many
industries everyone’s kind of complicit
in that and then the truth came out
WorldCom went bust they are a giant
telecommunications company they lost a
hundred and eighty six billion dollars
of investor money in less than a day
which is pretty impressive and they
triggered a two trillion dollar economic
tsunami better known as a dot-com bubble
burst as a tiny side note to that
tsunami was my own company getting swept
away
I went from running at full pelt in this
amazing career to just hitting a brick
wall
I had this massive wake-up call
everything I knew about myself vanished
in that instant and I had to start again
but here’s the thing at the time I was
powered by adrenaline so I didn’t really
have the time or the inclination to stop
and lick my wounds so I threw myself
straight back into a new venture this
time in textiles and commodities
very quickly I was working harder than
I’d ever worked before learning a new
industry learning how this new market
worked and very quickly going back to
being held out as what they say is
successful but as the company grew I
started to get really burnt out and so I
decided as many people to open it just
make up at a time in my life now just to
kind of you know get a bit more balanced
but every time I made a bit of time it
got filled with anxiety initially just
little bits here and there and then more
and more and more consuming until
sometimes it became relentless on those
days when anxiety became all-consuming I
had a plan and my plan was at find a
sanctuary and one of those places was
right next to our office we had this
beautiful multi-story car park I say
beautiful because of the view I could
see out all across Manchester it was
quiet no one had looked for me there no
one had care I was there it’s a car park
right and that’s where I went just to
get some peace and quiet when everything
was getting a bit too much I remember
one particular day it been a really
ordinary day you know when you go to
work and you come home and you don’t
really done anything just a really
normal day but for some reason that day
my mind was tormenting me so at the end
of the day I thought right I’m going to
just go to the sanctuary for a bit and
just spend a bit of time calm my mind
and then continue I really remembered
today just looking out over the edge of
that carpark and you could see all the
lights of the cars coming into the city
people may be going a free evening
shouts and all the red lights of all the
cars leaving people going home and there
was that background hum of city noise
it’s kind of like that white noise you
get sometimes we need to sleep and then
I remember then I wasn’t agitated I
wasn’t stressed anymore things just made
sense this was my only escape route it
was going to be quick and then it would
be over with this wasn’t the first time
I’d thought about doing something like
that but it was the first time I got
this close to succeeding
I approached the edge and I felt this
sense of overwhelming loneliness I
didn’t want to go in silence I just
wanted to speak to somebody anybody just
to have one last conversation that day
but I knew if I called a friend or a
family member what am I gonna get
shocked a bit of pain a bit of judgment
a bit of fuss and I didn’t want drama I
decided I just wanted to go so I picked
up my phone and I called a helpline it
was a number that had saved on my phone
a few days earlier what I’d be feeling
low and I just seen it on a poster and
I’d written it down and I called because
I knew I could speak to someone
anonymously then I would be a
disembodied voice on the end of the
phone like they would simultaneously
somebody and nobody
they didn’t say much they didn’t say
anything really they just listened but
for the first time in my life I told
somebody openly that I wanted to end it
all I told somebody openly that I felt
like a failure but I couldn’t cope but I
was scared
and I didn’t know what to do the space
that they gave me to say those words the
empathy they showed me by listening to
what I was saying was enough at that
time to get me to take a step back and
the next thing I remember was tears the
following day back in the office
business as usual how you doing oh yeah
I’m good man how are you yeah good all
good good weekend yeah great and that’s
the thing when you have anxiety and
depression you learn to become an actor
and for me that haptic that acting was
honed in the business world you know you
end up becoming this hyper masculine
hyper alpha caricature of what an
entrepreneur should be like but I guess
we kind of like doing this to ourselves
because sometimes it’s far easier to
live as this veneer of the per
you create rather than actually
admitting the person that you are and
unfortunately I still see this every
single day in the business world
we’re fueled by social media
affirmations right so we’re humbled to
bid incited to something or honored to
have accepted something we’ve kind of
taken the pissing contest out of the
bathroom thrown it into the clouds and
so when it rains on us what do you
expect it’s gonna fall it’s really
difficult for me to describe to you how
that conversation felt on the car park
but imagine one day you woke up locked
in a coffin it’s dark you can’t breathe
you’re hot you’re anxious you’re clawing
at the sides you literally don’t know
what to do and then all of a sudden
there’s a hole and through that hole you
can see the blue of the sky you suddenly
feel the cool fresh air hit your face
and then it’s just that relief was how
that conversation felt to me that day
coping with anxiety and depression is
hard but the stage after that recovery
is harder it’s like climbing a mountain
completely unprepared I started with the
usual things I went to my GP and then I
was on a waiting list and I was waiting
and waiting and waiting to see a
therapist so in the meantime I did what
we all would do I read more self-help
books and Tony Robbins could possibly
write in a lifetime I did yoga
acupuncture singing bowls anything you
can imagine to try and kid myself that I
was getting well but guess what it’s a
placebo and very quickly the clouds came
back but this time I remembered that
conversation that night on the car park
and I chose a different path I was one
of the lucky ones I could afford to go
and find the best psychiatrists and
psychologists to put me back together
and they spent hundreds and hundreds of
hours doing that but before they did
they had to trim
through miles of barbed wire assumptions
that I created in my own mind the first
of them was medication I’d always been
quite anti medication I’d been the
person that listened to people when they
went don’t take those crazy pills
they’ll change you they’re addictive
probably you know but here’s the thing I
tell you today I wish I taken them a
decade sooner medication saved my life
imagine that you had a friend with
cancer or diabetes or a heart condition
would any of you in this room be
irresponsible enough to say to them
don’t take those pills I read about this
to the magazine there’s an herbal thing
you’ll be fine just go for a run listen
don’t worry I really hope you wouldn’t
but we do that to people every single
day go through anxiety and depression
and a range of other conditions the
second thing was therapy in my mind
therapy was what crazy people did but
here’s the thing when you want to get
physically fit you see your personal
trainer it’s kind of like no big deal
when you want to improve your mental
health you see a therapist for some
reason that’s a big deal it doesn’t make
sense the medication gave me some
stability and the therapy or the CBT the
psychoanalysis all of those things what
gave me the operating manual for my
brain and the resilience then to cope
with life I also had to get over my ego
I’d created a barrier in my own mind
worrying what are people going to think
of me if they find out what will people
say when they hear that I’ve been going
through this or that I tried to make an
attempt on my own life what will people
say but I had to lift that veil and
expose that scarred reality to the world
and it was raw but I’m really glad I did
and there’s three reasons first of all
you’re not alone everyone is a bit
broken the second of all if anyone
judges you on something as arbitrary as
your mental health they don’t deserve to
be in your life I don’t care who they
are
and thirdly people might not understand
what you’re going through and that’s
fine they can still show you love and
and compassion and help you get
through it
I also had to really re-evaluate what
mattered in life and it might sound
strange coming from a business person
but it’s not money or things or this
thing we call success what matters is
the simple stuff spending time with the
people you love your friends your
hobbies your cats listening to your
favorite music whatever it is I had to
make time for me to be me not a CEO not
a philanthropist not a professor none of
those things I had to make sure that I
became the sanctuary I could escape to
when things got too much because that’s
how you learn to survive I also had to
realize that vulnerability is not a bad
word and that’s really difficult when
you’re growing up trying to be taught to
be a man about things but vulnerability
is not weakness
vulnerability is a superpower it’s the
tool that we have to be human it allows
us to receive and show empathy it allows
us to take chances on ourselves which
make us move forward vulnerability is
meaning that you’re the first person in
a relationship to say I love you
vulnerability means that you forgive
yourself for everything that you are
everything that you’ve done and maybe
even tried to do and it allows you to
move forward and heal vulnerability
means that you can recover and recovery
means you realize there’s no such thing
as well there’s no such thing as the
perfect physique and a perfect health
the perfect life and it doesn’t matter
what Instagram tells you I would never
ever wish for anyone to get to the
position I did on the car park that day
but I’m actually really thankful because
in those moments and in the journey
since it allowed me to reflect on life
in a way that people only tend to get to
do in those last few moments when our
time is up it’s allowed me to realize
that you don’t need a purpose to be
purposeful
you don’t need a reason to live you
don’t need an identity to be human or a
position from which to speak the truth
you don’t need Beauty to be beautiful
you don’t need space to feel peace in
life all you need is just to be thank
you
[Applause]
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