White Fox Talking
Talk About Mental Health & Well-Being… Why Not? Mark ‘Charlie’ Valentine suffered life changing mental illness, before beginning a journey to recovery and wellness; the darkness of PTSD transformed by the light atop mountains and beyond. Mark is now joining forces with Seb Budniak, to make up the ‘White Fox Talking’ team. Through a series of Podcasts and Vlogs, ‘White Fox Talking’ will be bringing you a variety of guests, topics, and inspirational stories relating to improving mental well-being. Find your way back to you! Expect conversation, information, serious discussion and a healthy dose of Yorkshire humour!
White Fox Talking
E62: Exploring Authenticity and Mental Resilience - Ed Stafford's Journey of Adventure and Self-Discovery
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World-renowned explorer and TV star Ed Stafford, the first person to journey the entire length of the Amazon River on foot, joins us to share his compelling life story. From tales of his rebellious youth and army days to his transformative expeditions, Ed opens up about the pivotal experiences that shaped his extraordinary path. Learn how the challenges of walking the Amazon for 860 days became a profound lesson in self-awareness and psychological resilience, with insights drawn from Eckhart Tolle and mindfulness practices that have become essential in his journey.
As Ed recounts his adventures, he also brings to light the mental health struggles faced by many, highlighting the importance of breaking the silence, especially for men. With poignant discussions on the pressures of maintaining mental well-being and the power of speaking openly, listeners are invited to reflect on their own lives. Through his candid narratives, Ed sheds light on the societal expectations that stifle authenticity, offering valuable lessons on how to embrace vulnerability and prioritize self-care in a fast-paced world.
Our conversation also navigates the impact of nature and outdoor education on personal and family life, revealing how a move to Costa Rica introduced Ed and his family to a more intentional and fulfilling lifestyle. By sharing anecdotes about adjusting to new cultures and the benefits of alternative education models, Ed emphasises the transformative power of simplicity and genuine human connection. This episode promises an inspiring exploration of living authentically, tackling mental health head-on, and finding richness in both life’s adventures and quiet moments.
Men's Minds Matter
Hello and welcome to the White Fox Talking Podcast. I'm Matt Charlie-Valentine, and at the side of me at the controls is Seb.
Speaker 2:Hi Charlie, I appreciate you using my surname today.
Speaker 1:Well, it's all over the internet anyway. So if anyone looks at the podcast notes, it's there, true, true. Why are you worried? I'm not worried. No, third time this week, though. Third time this week, well, I should say Happy New Year, yes, happy year, yes, happy new year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, did you have a good time over? Over next week or week after, we do pre-record this we do pre-record them.
Speaker 1:Of course we pre-record them. It's good that's for our scheduling, because we couldn't do them well, could do some live, but I think my edward, my would edward explode with the technology and and yours with me exploding. Yes, because of the technology. Yeah, let's forget that. Right, let's introduce our guest. So, yes, there's a lot to go at here. We would like to welcome Mr Ed Stafford to the White Fox Talking Podcast. Hello, how you?
Speaker 3:doing Charlie, how you doing Seb.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're good, mate, we're good, great to have you on. Thank you for giving up your time. That's all right, mate, easy, I was going to say I was trying to give you a little introduction. Would you say? You're an explorer, adventurer, survivalist. There's a lot going on, isn't there really?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I guess I don't really buy into any one of them. Really, I did an expedition which could be classed as exploration, but if I then became an explorer for the rest of my life, I think that would be a bit over the top, don't you think? It depends Whatever the Wikipedia says. It's probably right, it's normally true, isn't it?
Speaker 1:TV presenter, I guess, is probably the most honest, at the moment, from my own perspective, the sort of mental health aspect of what you do and what you've done in the past is extremely relevant, because situations of being away from home, food, lack of water all these things interplay, don't they, and play with moods and stuff like that. So if someone was wondering why we have got a TV presenter on the podcast, yeah. So you're very famously known for walking the Amazon.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:What was that? 800 days, 860, thank you. Oh sorry, I'd have been better saying 900, wouldn't I Round it down. But can I ask you before that early life and how you then came to a decision of spending 860 days in?
Speaker 3:the Amazon Right. So you just want me to summarise 33 years first of all, and then, well, take it there. I guess I was adopted. I guess that's where it all starts, and I guess that's also relevant to the mental health stuff. I was adopted. I was in foster care for the first eight weeks of my life. I was adopted by a really lovely couple in Mowsley in Leicestershire, which is what I call my home and my family. You know, they're my mum and dad.
Speaker 3:As far as I'm concerned, I had a good childhood. I was lucky enough to get sent to posh school, and so I went to a prep school and then a boarding school. I don't know whether the latter was actually that lucky if you were unpacking it from a mental health perspective, but it was. You know what doesn't kill you and all that. But I guess I had a little bit of a troubled upbringing got expelled from school for chopping a tree down that the queen planted on her bicentenary visit to the school. Shat on the astroturf, did a few naughty things, was getting a bit frustrated with boarding school life. Yeah, I went to sit from college, ended up going to university, did the normal kind of stuff at university.
Speaker 3:My mum and dad came up once to university and I hadn't seen them for about seven weeks and they came in to my room I was in halls of residence at the time and my mate had convinced me to have a bong before they came. And I remember before they walked in the room I could see my head just floating in the mirror, but I didn't have a body. And they came in. And they came in, they sat down. I was watching Neighbours, I think it was at the time, and I didn't speak. I just went all right and they sat down for about 10 minutes. They didn't really know what to do, so they just watched Neighbours with me and then they said, no, do you think we could turn this off? And so I turned it off and then we went out for this meal, but I didn't speak to them for the entire meal, and so at the end of the meal they're like we really think we should take you to a hotel and have a night away from university and I thought they were kidnapping me and so I had this absolute panic attack that they were kidnapping me. Yeah, I guess, if you were to unpack that a little bit, I was escaping from a lot of things by indulging at university.
Speaker 3:And anyway, yeah, I went on to join the army. I like the outdoors. I was scared of getting a job in an office. The careers advisor said you're suitable for being a logistics consultant for boots or join the army. And so I'm not going to be a fucking logistics consultant for boots or join the army. And so I'm not going to be a fucking logistics consultant for boots. I apologize, apologies if there are any logistics advisors who work at boots listening. But yeah, join the army.
Speaker 3:It was kind of me and kind of not me. I didn't like the discipline, I didn't like the authority. Yeah, crikey, I rebelled against every institution that I'd ever been a part of. So I don't really know why I joined the army. It was was a bit dumb looking back on it, but it did equip me with certain skills and I left the military and just took an interim job.
Speaker 3:Actually, I couldn't get a job.
Speaker 3:I was trying to get a job in the city, trying to be some sort of flash banker or something like that, because a lot of ex-army officers with all that uber confidence go into the city and do quite well.
Speaker 3:But I couldn't get a job. Took an interim job, leading gap year expeditions in belize. So it was taking kids from sort of 18 to 24 into the jungle doing conservation projects and community projects, that sort of stuff, and I absolutely loved it. I just felt immediately at home in the jungle and it was using kind of outdoor skills that I'd learned in the military but I hadn't really used that much and yeah, that that led. I led about seven expeditions in Belize and then I guess, wanted to do something a little bit bigger and tougher and I guess again, because this is a mental health podcast, if you were to unpack it I was deeply insecure, deeply insecure to the extent that I needed to beat my chest on a public stage and that involved trying to become the first person to walk the length of the Amazon River. So I guess, if you were to summarise those 33 years that's my version of it Quite a lot there.
Speaker 1:So that insecurity, would you say, that comes from that being adopted, do you think?
Speaker 3:I think it did. I always have to quantify. Talking about the past, a lot of people have had a worse childhood than me. Clearly I had loads of advantages in life, adopted by middle-class family put me through fee-paying education, so I am grateful. But I do think there's a theory. I think there's a book called the Primal Wound, and there's a theory.
Speaker 3:You see it in incubator babies as well, even ones that then get reunited with their parents. But the only thing that a baby can do when it's born in order to survive is to have a connection to its mother, and you know it's completely dependent. And they theorize, I guess, that that separation of the baby at birth from the birth mother causes a trauma to the equivalent of death. And so you know, at a point where you don't actually recognize that you're a different entity than the things around you, you haven't developed a sense of self. Almost half of you has been ripped out, and I think then you get this adaptive behavior whereby you can tell I've gone through therapy and stuff, can't you?
Speaker 3:But you get this adaptive behavior which is essentially giving up yourself because the only thing that matters is trying to please the people around you, because you want them to like you and love you, I guess, and so a lot of a lot of people and, as I said, you see this in incubator babies as well as adopted kids but a lot of them lose sight of who they are as a result and and have this kind of well, if I'm on form and I tell jokes and people laugh at them, then I'm funny, but you know, if someone hasn't laughed at me today, then I kind of don't know who I am and I don't want to jump the gun too much in terms of in terms of my sort of journey, because I know you're going to talk about things like that experience on the island later but it took a long while to for me to get to a stage where I could not have what they call in psychology, which is a reflected sense of self.
Speaker 3:Everything was dependent on my environment around me and what was reflected to me in terms of how I was feeling, and that's pretty unstable really, and yeah, I do. I think it started with adoption and potentially boarding school didn't help.
Speaker 1:If you hadn't have done what you've done and gone and developed into doing this Amazon thing and everything you've done afterwards, I think you would have actually looked into researching this yourself, because you've said that you've had therapy there, which I think you would have actually looked into researching this yourself, because you've said that you've had therapy there, which I think is something that we're going to talk about a little bit later. Are you the sort of person that would be inquisitive to find out the reasoning for and have that awareness?
Speaker 3:I would like to think I would have got there in the end.
Speaker 3:I think the expeditions ended up being a catalyst for change because again fast-forwarding massively.
Speaker 3:I've just done this program for Channel 4 where I took kids and their dads into the jungle in Belize, and I was a bit worried about going into that initially because I'm not a psychologist myself, and yet it became very apparent very quickly that the reason that people tend to take giant leaps forward when they're going through arduous tasks in a sort of difficult setting is because whatever is letting you down at that point in life whether that be communication or self-confidence or whatever is the thing that you end up having to work on in order to get through that particular challenge or problem.
Speaker 3:So I just think walking the Amazon was extraordinarily long in its duration it was two and a half years of walking in the jungle but I think what it did was just, you know, there was no Facebook or phones, or cigarettes, or alcohol or chocolate, or you know, I was just confronted with my own issues and I think for that very reason and it's not a complicated one, it's quite a simple and beautiful one actually I think it got accelerated by the fact that I started doing these challenges for want of a better word, I guess.
Speaker 2:Do you think walking the Amazon was therapy in itself for you?
Speaker 3:I think it was taking the lid off. A can of worms is what I think it was. I was pretty ill-evolved At the beginning. I was a kind of arrogant ex-army captain who arrogantly thought that he was going to do something that no one else in the world had ever done before and it was going to be easy. I was humbled massively by it there.
Speaker 3:Definitely you know there's pages in my diary in Peru when it was quite dark and a lot of Peruvians would be quite melodramatic about what was going to happen to me in the next community. You know how many people were going to kill me and how they were going to kill me and all this and I let it get to me. And there's pages in my diary that I used to write in my hammock at night that are tear-stained because I was literally lying in my hammock. I couldn't show weakness throughout the day with the people I was with, but in my hammock it would all come out and as I'd be writing and my feelings and what had happened that day, they'd just start blubbing as quietly as possible obviously.
Speaker 1:I suppose being in the jungle and the Amazon and the landscape there did it force being present and just being in the moment, rather than this thing where we have distractions all around us in society.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I remember the former question now and I remember saying it was at the beginning of a sort of self-awareness, and I answered that it was opening the can of beans, I think in the same vein. I didn't recognize that my problem was not being present, but that was one of the things that made it as hard as it was. I was fixated on getting to the end. The only thing in my life that was important was getting to the mouth of the Amazon, which is great in some ways, because you've got a goal, you've got a vision, vision I could see myself running down the beach and flopping into the atlantic ocean at the end. And yet anything that got in the way caused me to be like angry, actually, and and when I mean proper like rage that I really struggled to get out of. So, yeah, I'm, I read eckhart tolle's the the power of now, after I came back and actually shared it, and for me it was steveshall, actually the naturalist, who recommended that to me and I read it and I just went. If only I'd known this stuff beforehand Because, yeah, I was fixated on something in the future and until that happened I wasn't happy. Therefore, the whole expedition, I kind of wasn't happy because I wasn't there yet and so I wasn't learning about medicinal plants, I wasn't paying attention to the guides who were helping me. I could have learned so much in terms of the bushcraft stuff that I do today, but they were little pawns in my journey and I didn't give them the time that they deserved. So the cliche of it not being the destination, it's the journey, or whatever, couldn't be more true. And somebody actually said to me the other day it's actually not that, it's who you become along the journey, whatever. Couldn't be more true. And somebody actually said to me the other day it's actually not that it's it's, it's who you become along the journey.
Speaker 3:And I guess walking the Amazon for me was the beginning of a self-realization, but I still, a million miles off, being anything other than a sort of raw reversion of what I was when I came out of it. Because I remember the first six months when I came back and I came back to quite a sort of accolade of praise. And even now I'd got sort of knocked down to quite a sort of accolade of praise. And even though I'd got sort of knocked down to quite a raw basic version of myself, I remember I became quite depressed in Peru when I was talking about crying in my hammock and stuff like that. But then I built up a confidence based on actually I can walk across those slippery logs that go across rivers now without falling flat on my face and therefore I feel quite good about myself. And I remember journalists coming in and seeing how difficult they found the jungle and I was like, okay, I'm actually building a sort of set of skills where I'm quite competent in this environment.
Speaker 3:But that all went out the window when I got back because I got lured into this nonsense of minor celebrity world. And you know, first of all it was television interviews and it was on the One Show and all this. Then it sort of went into radio interviews on Radio 4 and stuff like that, and then speaking, you know, motivational speaking for companies and stuff, and everyone would say such positive things that I think I've got that thing. You know, when comedians end up coming off stage and they have massive problems with their mental health, I understand that completely because there was such a high, and then I'd go home and be on my laptop until two o'clock in the morning just going what the fuck what? What is this all about this is weird and so weirdly fell into that trap and I drank so much and that's six months after I got back.
Speaker 3:I made the mistake of moving in with an old mate of mine from school and he just got divorced and so he was just like letting loose and we spent a fortune. We'd go out and have champagne breakfasts like three, three mornings a week or whatever, and just like, go fuck it, I'll have a champagne, and like I was earning more money from the motivational speaking than I'd ever done in my life and had nothing to to to prove that I'd earned any money at all. By the end of six months my accountant was literally pulling her hair out. She's just like what are you doing? You're spending. Do you know how much you spent at one restaurant where we had breakfast? It was like it was in the tens of thousands. It was just fucking ridiculous. So no, million miles away from the um finished article. But I think it was the beginning of understanding that unless you do have some strategies for managing your own mental health, then your eye certainly was extraordinarily volatile.
Speaker 1:Yeah I'm just listening to the power of now. Well, not at this moment, but I went because of the PTSD that I had. I went through all that sort of learning and I don't know whether I should have done the other way around. But yeah, I think it's fascinating all the information out there, and then we seem not to prepare ourselves. Yeah, Did you do much preparation for the? Well, in fact, one preparation for the Amazon trip and then preparation for the other trips that you do has that evolved For the Amazon trip.
Speaker 3:It was all about money. We didn't have enough money to do the expedition, so all of my preparation was sending you know, blanket emails out to loads of different companies trying to get sponsorship for the expedition. Eventually this guy said oh, it's one of my mates, said we've got a place on a pheasant shoot, do you want to go on it? And I'm like, mate, I don't shoot pheasants, I haven't got any plus fours or whatever. Anyway, ended up borrowing some wanky clothes and going on this pheasant shoot. And one of these big old chaps with a long barrel came up to me after this dinner Jonathan Stokes, sorry I'm taking the piss out of you. But he said look, I didn't want to say anything in front of the chaps, but we'd like to sponsor your entire expedition. And I was like this just takes the piss, doesn't it that one day you stopped actually looking for money for the expedition and you just paid for the whole thing.
Speaker 3:I didn't do any psychological training, and the other thing that I slipped up on is I didn't do, I didn't research the indigenous tribes that I walked through enough at all, and so I was stumbling into some really dark situations with people who have experienced firsthand massive trauma and bloodshed and stuff like that without understanding their background. And that was quite clumsy of me retrospectively. But in terms of the way I prepare for trips now it's come a long way and I think you know, in terms of the survival stuff, it's all about mindset for me, if I'm in my head. I mean, I think probably the sort of catalyst for change started coming about when I did my first ever for TV show, walking the Amazon wasn't for TV, I just took a camera and filmed it and then sold it afterwards. But the first commission I got was a program called Naked and Marooned Naked Castaway in the States, and that was 60 days on an island on my own, naked, with nothing. And I remember thinking who in the world spends extended periods of time on their own? That would be able to advise me. And I thought you know aboriginal australians go walk about, don't they? They'd be brilliant people to speak to.
Speaker 3:And so I hooked up with this aboriginal healer. Actually he's an amazing chap, but he basically explained to me that some aboriginal cultures not all, I mean there's obviously lots of different subcultures of aboriginal culture but have this concept of you've got three brains, your biggest brain being your, your gut and your instinct, your second biggest brain being your heart and emotions, and the smallest brain is your logical brain. That a lot of westerners believe is you know who they are and he reckons that's why we're all a bit messed up. He said the word they use to describe the brain, the top brain, the smallest one is called nandupuru, and nandupuru also means a fishing net that's tangled beyond repair or fucked, basically, and that's the same word as they use for that brain. So he's like, if you're in this analytical brain, this forecasting brain, this anxious brain, the whole time, you're going to have such a hard time.
Speaker 3:You need to try and come from a more instinctive place and that was great in theory, but of course you know when you're filming a program for millions of people potentially to watch on Discovery Channel and you haven't got any food and you know I was in this brain, most of that. But it was a start into a world of trying to understand mental health and coming from a place which is more present, which is more instinctual, I guess, and I now have quite a reliable meditation practice and try and always obviously be aware of my thoughts being autonomous and pinging around all over the place and my feelings and kind of maintaining that distance and just not going down a rabbit hole with it all, I guess, and spiraling down, because still to this day, if I wake up in a bad place and I don't hold my own hand through the day, I have a capacity and I think a lot of people who've had problems with mental health before and are fine and functioning now. You still have dark days, don't you? You have days when you wake up and you haven't looked after yourself, you haven't done certain things, to hold your own hand through the day. You can. You can end up reverting to a very ill-evolved version of yourself and I can easily go down that rabbit hole and you know whether it's starting drinking or smoking or whatever.
Speaker 3:But yeah, it's. It's all a working process, but I think it's that that was the first expedition that that I properly took advice from and started preparing for from a mental perspective. Because, yeah, I, I certainly think survival it doesn't matter whether you can light a fire with two sticks or you can build a shelter and stuff. If you're in a good place, everyone's got common sense, everyone's gonna be able to cope with the environment.
Speaker 1:But that comes so much easier if you've got some composure definitely yeah, so we're talking about the 60 days marooned on an island there, aren't we? Yeah, I watched again recently and obviously there's sort of things that you went through there putting yourself to the test, as in water, food, shelter, fire. You know the sort of basics of life. But then the loneliness on top and I think you mentioned the loneliness, didn't you?
Speaker 3:afterwards yeah, I mean, I don't think. Yeah, I mean, when did I start unpacking this and really realizing it? Again, I had a bit of a breakdown about God knows how long it was. It was halfway through the subsequent series. There was a spinoff series of the 60 days which was called Marooned, and it was 10 days in each location.
Speaker 3:I filmed three of them, fine, and it was just packing for the fourth one, and I was just at rock bottom. The concept of packing made me cry and I couldn't get out of bed. And it was the first time I'd ever actually seen a psychotherapist or psychiatrist, I think he was and he said to me if you were to describe your courage like a bank account, he said I've got no doubt at all in my mind that normally your bank account's got loads of courage in it. He said, at the moment you're just massively overdrawn. And that was the first.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I went into um, into any kind of therapy. I guess I opted for um cognitive behavioral therapy as a sort of subsidiary in place of taking taking any medication for depression. But I was, yeah, diagnosed with severe, severe depression, and I think it was the cognitive behavioral therapist who actually recommended meditation for the first time and so, and so I downloaded the Headspace app, and I've used that ever since. I think that's probably of all the tools that I use today, that's probably the one that has been the most consistent and the most helpful over the years.
Speaker 1:For, like a self-care process, is this a daily practice a weekly practice, it's daily.
Speaker 3:If I'm looking after myself, I again fall into the trap of if things are going well and I'm busy and I don't need to meditate, today I'll be fine. But kind of, kind of can feel it after four or five days of not meditating and not being present and just going like things are positive and I can live from here fine because I'm busy and I'm occupied and I'm doing stuff. But then if the minor thing goes wrong and you've just not set this foundation I've got I don't know whether it's too long-winded to explain for the sake of this podcast, but I had read a lot. I've obviously been through a fair amount of expeditions that were quite challenging, but I've also read a lot about therapy, been through quite a lot of therapy and and I was a bit overwhelmed it was about a year ago, I think I did start doing this.
Speaker 3:I, you know I go on a run. Is that the way to fix myself? Do I meditate? Do I write in a gratitude journal? You know, what on earth am I meant to fucking do now? I'm just I can't really make a decision.
Speaker 3:I'm in that really horrible place where I just want everything to fuck off, and I and I recognized that I needed to simplify the whole thing because I'd almost got too much advice. You know when people know loads about, I don't know, eating and fitness and stuff like that, and yet they're still eating loads of shit. And it's like it doesn't matter how much knowledge you've got, unless you put it into place, put it into practice, rather it's useless. And so I developed this little pyramid and I will briefly explain it, and it works for me and it might be really crude for other people, god knows, but it but it's a sort of four-sided pyramid. So the base has got presence, surrender. So presence, obviously, being present, being in the moment. Surrender, accepting things as how they are. You know, like things just are how they are. So if you're not completely accepting of how they are, then you're wasting energy and you know not wanting things to be different, like I don't know, I'll be okay as soon as the kids have left school, or we paid the mortgage off, or this or that, or when the next deal comes in or whatever, just in really being surrendering to accepting what is. Third one's gratitude, being grateful for everything that I've got family, et cetera. And the fourth one's kindness. Actually I've noticed like, for example, if I'm getting into into a taxi, this is really my good guide stick of whether I'm in a good place is if I start chatting to the taxi driver and you know, telling jokes and asking him about himself and those days being and stuff, I know I'm in a good place. But if I just like go, yeah, and I need to go to wherever and I don't want to talk, I can tell that I'm not in that sort of giving kind space and so for me those four things are quite essential as a sort of foundation.
Speaker 3:And then I've got there's a book called the Road Less Travelled and it talks about life is complicated. There's always challenges in life and the way you deal with those challenges is discipline. And they're not talking about a sort of controlling sense of discipline. They're talking about a sort of quite healthy sense of discipline and they say look, with discipline you can solve problems. If you've got no discipline you can't solve the problems in life. You've got some discipline, you can solve some problems. If you've got 100% discipline you can smash life, you know. And it breaks discipline down into four things Delayed gratification, you know, not just going for the thing that's going to make you happy in that immediate moment. Honesty, complete honesty with yourself. I've added consistency into this one because I think if you're not consistent about this, but they use a term called balancing. And the third one is responsibility taking total responsibility for your situation in life and not blaming others and putting yourself in that position where it would all be okay if fucking my wife hadn't done this or they'd commissioned this or whatever. So those four things together come to discipline.
Speaker 3:And I think when you've got that base of just being in a good place as a person, but then you've got your discipline sort of things in place as well to be able to tackle the problems that are presented in life from day to day or from moment to moment, then I find that for me that puts me in a good place.
Speaker 3:And if I can't find the motivation to do any of that at all, I tap into the sort of, I guess the base of the pyramid which I think is pretty much everyone's motivation in life, which is love.
Speaker 3:And I picture my little boy when I come back off trips and the look in his face and the happiness when I see him for the first time and him running at me and screaming daddy and give me a big hug, and that just allows me, gives me the motivation to go right. You're doing this, you're going to put yourself in a good place, you're going to put all the things in place that you need to be able to deal with all the problems in your day. And then that's my practice, and it seems convoluted, but it's quite. I run through it quite quickly. It's four things's, four things, four things, sposh, and it for me, it enables me to sift through all this mountain of knowledge that I've I've kind of experienced and and and read about in my life and put them, put them all together in a kind of practical way, works.
Speaker 1:For my mind, anyway, there's so much out there to distract, to distract the mind. You know, if went back to power now, you know the mind is not there, just to it's not there. There. Sometimes you're not controlling the mind, but I don't think you're controlling the mind at all.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean certainly Aboriginals and, yeah, eastern philosophies is like your thoughts are autonomous, aren't they? They'll pop around all the time, you know they'll come up. And I noticed this on the island. I thought I was going mad because like the waves were crashing on the reef that was around the island and they were out of sync with each other, which really annoyed me. And they weren't. It was just as I don't know.
Speaker 3:Imagine you're a dj and you've got two songs that are playing and there are different speeds or something and that and that. But I couldn't stop it for 60 days and I was like this is fucking annoying. And then my mind would try and put music over them to turn them into something that that sounded so and it was. It was really annoying music, but I was like it worked for a bit and then it started to annoy me because the songs were getting so repetitive and I was like this is nuts. You're creating this music and you're angry at yourself for creating this music and you can't stop this music. Which one is, which one is fucking?
Speaker 3:You and I now, with a little bit more sort of experience on these sort of things, put that down to the fact that thoughts are autonomous. You know you are not your brain. It's this thing that's generating lots of thoughts all the time because it has to, because it's looking for danger, it's trying to remember things. It's you know. It's pinging off all these thoughts. But that's not you, and I think that's probably been the biggest transition from the volatile young me that was getting into trouble and fighting and stuff like that, and the one today that's gotten a degree of balance, is like, as long as I'm grounded and centred and being present, I can tell that I'm having dark thoughts, but I step back from them and go all right, you're doing that again, aren't you, ed? And yeah, I think if you think that you are every thought, then that is a recipe for going mad, quite frankly.
Speaker 1:Yeah sounds like you're trying to give yourself 60 days of the Chinese water torture there. You know, if you go to bed and you can hear a dripping tap and it gets into your head, you're like but the taps are dripping, it's not out for you, it's your head.
Speaker 3:That's just like that trip was probably the biggest catalyst for change, I think. I think actually I'm going to say one more story about that particular trip because it's massive, like when I got dropped off on that island. I wasn't a survival expert. I'd walk the end to the amazon, but every time I'd lit a fire I'd lit it with a lighter, and you know I got a bag full of dry lighters as well, and so you know it wasn't an issue. But I told discovery that I could survive for 60 days on an island and they just believed me. Because of what the amazons had to learn. I had to go and get a bushcraft instructor to teach me how to like fire with two sticks and stuff like that. But I definitely wasn't an expert at all, I could just about do it.
Speaker 3:And I remember coming onto the island and getting off the boat and, obviously because it was naked, the producer who then left on the boat but he's like Ed, it's time to take your shorts off. And I just felt like such a prat and I took my shorts off because I could see in the eye of the Fijian boat driver that he was just like who is this fucking idiot that's taking your shorts off and getting into the water, and I felt, you know, like those dreams If you're as insecure as me then you probably you've had them. But dreams when you turn up at school and you've, you're not got any trousers on, and like you, just the the ridicule, and like I was physically manifesting that in real life I was, I was making myself the boy who turned up at school without any trousers on, except I was broadcasting it to millions of people. It was like ridiculous. And I remember going off to the beach and I felt sick. I didn't know all I had to do that day was drink some fluids and I'd be fine, but I was just totally overwhelmed, I couldn't work out what I was feeling and making so many little blunders.
Speaker 3:And the first few days were extraordinarily difficult because, again, to go back to that concept of reflected sense of self there was no one around me. There was no one to say you're doing really well, ed, keep going, or you know, it's not probably the best decision. It was just down to me and I'd never had that before and I'd built my whole sense of self based on other people's opinions, I guess, and as a result I was totally spun out and so I think it was within the first two weeks, I sat down and just went do you know what I'm going to decide, who I am today? And I didn't have a pen or a paper or anything like that, but I just made a mental list of all the things that I wanted to be and I was like well, do you want to be flaky? You know a person who makes an appointment but then, at the last minute, you know, cries off sick or whatever and lets people down. I was like no, I want to be reliable. And then I was like was like well, do you want to be deceitful? Do you want to cheat on your partners? I was like 100%. No, I want to be honest and dependable and trustworthy.
Speaker 3:And I went through this list and about halfway through making this list, I was like this is just stupid. You're making this up. And then the other voice in my head because there's quite a few went it's not stupid unless you decide who you are, irrespective of everyone else in the world. Who else is going to make this fucking list for you? You've got to make it up in order to have a self, you've got to have a list of morals that you think is you and even though, again, even after this 60 Days thing, we're a million miles away from the finished article, I think now I look back retrospectively and I feel like I am the person that I decided to be on that day.
Speaker 3:The most dishonest thing I think I do is television actually, because, you know, television is a little bit smoke and mirrors and you're producing a product and you've got limited time and so they, you know they edit things in certain ways, but in the rest of my life I am as honest as the day is true, and it's so much easier, you know, not having to worry when your phone bleeps that it's the other girl, that you're shagging or whatever, and you've got a. You know. So much easier, so much easier to be just I'm honest and there's nothing to hide in my phone and my laptop and everything is just, you know, free for anyone to look at. And I think, yeah, that was. I think something that not many people do is sit down and go. Well, what are my morals? How am I going to live my life? And maybe people have had that drummed into them as children. But again, I'll go back to the boarding school days.
Speaker 3:It was almost an environment where and the military, actually, for that sake, morals. You'd think that the military would be a really a place full of integrity and discipline and stuff like that, wasn't it? But in my officer's mess they'd have a second 11 night which basically meant you came with somebody that you were shagging that wasn't your wife or girlfriend, and it was a night that they had regularly in the officer's mess. It was almost institutionalized. Well, it was. It was institutionalized adultery, basically, and they'd have them and this was nuts and the boarding school as well. It's exactly the same.
Speaker 3:It's like plan a was deny everything. It was all about getting away with stuff and and and stealing and, and you know, not having a moral compass in any way. And so I I said your mate tony, who who I was at university with, like, he had a strong father. I remember really envying this in Tony because he taught him what was right and wrong, and Tony always had a real sense of what was right and wrong. But I never had that, which might have made me quite an interesting mate because I was prepared to do all sorts of stuff. But you know, there was a solidity to Tony because he knew, because of his solid parenting, what was right and wrong, and I think, unless you have that in your life, it's something that that you probably everyone who doesn't have that needs to sit down and address.
Speaker 1:we could look at that and say that you left your early years, then the boarding school, then the military and walked the length of the amazon and then went through this self-realization yourself where other people that have been through that are now running the country without any self-realization 100%.
Speaker 3:I've got a program that I'm trying to get off the ground at the moment, which I've got to be a little bit bleak about how I talk about, because it's not been commissioned yet. But it's all about how. World leaders don't go for a rite of passage ceremony. Tribal situations men go for a rite of passage ceremony, and the more I dug into it, it's not about beating your chest and proving that you're really tough. It's about saying goodbye to the selfishness of youth and embracing the community and the responsibility of being an adult. And we just don't go through that, do we as Westerners? And therefore you get your Donald Trumps and your Boris Johnsons and people like that ending up in positions of power and so to their own end, you know. And if they want to lie in order to manipulate situations, then of course they will, because they've done it all their life and you know they've not had to go through anything that has forced them to evaluate themselves, I guess. So yeah, I mean, it's a pandemic.
Speaker 2:So should we send them all on an island?
Speaker 3:Oh, yes, please. Well, I do think you know I'm an advocate for it. That's why I did that into the jungle program with dads and kids. I think you know, the more you go through challenges in remote places, the more you learn about yourself. And for me, I'm not a spoon whistler, I don't like bushcraft because I'm a geek and I want to, you know, be able to survive doomsday or anything like that. It's actually just it's little intense sort of technical aversions of of challenges in life and you learn a lot about yourself and I think you more have more of those challenges concentrated in one period of time, and I think that's why it's healthy for people, rather than you know, becoming this, this uber survivalist who can, can survive the armageddon that's coming, probably never I've been on a few expeditions myself in there and and then doing a bit of bushcraft, and I went in belize actually, for I didn't want in belize, which was what a testing environment.
Speaker 1:But yes, I think one of the one of the things that I sort of realized with the bushcraft was actually making baskets out of what we're making baskets out of soft rush and that presence of just people in that moment. And and then the instructor said to us it was a friend of mine anyway and he said to us right, you can go in and have your dinner inside now, or lunch, whatever you may be, and everyone just carried on, you know, and sat around. And then I suppose that reverts. We can look at that, as you know, with these indigenous peoples sat around doing you know where the group are doing something for the good of their future, their tribe, you know. But we seem to have forgotten all that now.
Speaker 3:But I don't think they're consciously doing it, are they? We've just added so many complications, complicated layers to our lives media technology, distractions, alcohol, whatever it is. There's so many layers that take you away from that present moment. I'm guilty of it as well. As soon as I'm bored now, I just take my phone out my pocket. It's a habit. I pretend that it's work. I've got to check emails, I've got to check WhatsApp because something might, but it's not. It's a distraction, and I think for me, those sort of environments, like you're saying in Belize, making a basket you're just deliberately removing yourself from all of those sort of things. That's why I loved the.
Speaker 3:When I left the military, I did these gap year expeditions for for a number of years and I loved them because you saw such positive change in these kids, not only because they'd never done anything like it before, but because they were stripped of all their fashionable clothes, their you know new trainers, their phones, their this, that and the other, and they were all down to this base level, with machetes hacking of all their fashionable clothes, their new trainers, their phones, their this, that and the other, and they were all down to this base level, with machetes hacking through the jungle, having the absolute time of their life, literally without exaggerating at all, 95% of them would say that was the best thing I've ever done in my entire life. And to have that sort of success rate on an expedition with a complete mishmash of people is ridiculous. But it's amazing how just stripping away all the complications of life I think just is extraordinarily beneficial. So I don't think those indigenous tribes deliberately do it at all and we've forgotten it.
Speaker 1:I just think we've added so much nonsense over the top of it that it's hidden. You've mentioned the series, the recent series on Channel 4, was it Into the Jungle? Yeah, because I thought that working with young people in care very often and if some of the young people have been excluded from school and sometimes it's behavioural, sometimes it's ADHD and we give them alternative provision, which is bushcraft, climbing and all this. So that series that you did, was it a purposeful thing? One, where did the concept come from? And two, you know you must. Obviously we saw changes on the screen. What did you see actually being there on the ground, with the relationships and with people growing?
Speaker 3:it was actually when I when I put on social media that was moving to costa rica with my family, one of the research developers at a british production company went. Do you know what? That's quite cool. He's putting his money where his mouth is and he's doing all this stuff on TV, but he's actually taking his family out to the middle of the jungle to simplify his existence for the benefit of the whole family. And so she proposed it to Channel 4. And obviously I said look, obviously that's what we're doing. It couldn't resonate with me more.
Speaker 3:But as the program approached I became a little bit conscious that I'm not an expert in mental health or psychology or anything like that, and I was a bit worried, and I think I touched on it before. The beauty of the program working didn't need me to be an expert in any of these subjects at all, because whatever the issue was, that the child or the parents or the relationship had that was going wrong was the thing that was letting them down doing each one of the different challenges, and so I think it's yes, okay, the setting's outdoors and we took all their phones off of them, and that was all an amazing start, but then we pushed them, you know, and it's a bit like pressure testing an engine, like if you rev it really hard in order to see the bits that aren't working or the weak links, I guess. And they were the things, therefore, that they had to work on in order to go through, so almost I didn't need to be there as long as they were doing something tough in the jungle, and so, yeah, I think it worked hugely well. I mean, there was a boy called Dexter from Manchester and I think the week before he came and filmed the show he was at school. He was excluded from his classroom for four days out of five, and excluded means that he was put in a separate classroom with no supervision at all, not even an adult in there on his own. And when I heard this, I was just like what? Because he was the most attentive, the most outgoing, the most funny of all of them and his brain was just like it's got so sparky, partly because he was outdoors, partly because he was enjoying it. But it just made me realize how there is such a gulf between how we're meant to learn, or how we would naturally learn in a more natural setting, and four walls and a textbook and a teacher droning on. That's taught the same subject so many times before and I've got a lot of respect for teachers.
Speaker 3:I just think the system is broken. We've been lucky enough there's a Waldorf school, which is like a Steiner school, near where we are and we've just put my little boy into it about three months ago and the change is night and day. He hated school. He hated school in England. He hated his first school here.
Speaker 3:You know, when you drop your kid off you've got kids but you drop your kid off and they're screaming and you can still hear them.
Speaker 3:When you've walked 200 metres away to the car and I remember a couple of times I'd get in the car and I'd start crying because I was just like I would come to Costa Rica to be happy and I just want my boy to be happy. There were tests every week and he was not keeping up with his levels and stuff like that. This new school there's no test at all and it's all about nurturing the soul, nurturing the confidence, nurturing self-respect, respecting others and, as a result, his natural inquisitiveness has now just gone through the roof and he wants to learn stuff and I just think, yes, this is a long-winded answer, isn't it? I've come quite a long way from your question, but I do think that the series was really successful because it because it highlighted certain failings as well as the fact that getting people outdoors and obviously doing the stuff that you're doing canoeing and climbing and stuff is extraordinarily beneficial, and it's not just a pastime either, is it? It's just, it's a, it's a necessary part of staying healthy as a human being.
Speaker 1:I think yeah, I think, without getting too off topic, seb, sorry, because you know what, you know where I'm going there's a lot. There's a lot based on results isn't there? And people seeing that time spent out maybe learning to build a shelter or kayaking or, you know, rock climbing or whatever, that's wasted time when they could be doing something that's academic. But we're not doing things that are academic because we're doing it. You know, someone's studying a classroom repeating something that people then that the young people have to remember to pass a test. Yeah, if you get chance, if you get chance, there's a book called free to learn that I'm going through, by peter gray, and he mentions these schools no tests, you know, and it's exponential learning and some of the subjects you can go if you want and if you don't want you go to as long as you stay on campus and they're all learning.
Speaker 3:There was a video I watched on that subject. Before we move on. There was a video I watched recently which said Western teaching has kind of fallen into this trap of thinking of a child as a vessel that needs to be filled up with information and the alternative to that. I think it's called the SPARC organization. I think it's called the SPARC organization, I think it's American, but it's like no, a child isn't a vessel that needs filling up with information. It's Tinder, I guess, needing to be ignited, and it's a spark needing to be ignited and it's nurturing that spark so that the child just evolves into themselves rather than just shoving a load of dates and the Battle of Crecy and the Battle of Agincourt and all of that nonsense into your brain because it's just, oh, that's going to be really useful in life, isn't it? I know when the Battle of Crecy was.
Speaker 2:Hiking yeah.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah. Could I just ask you going away and spending time away from home, how does that affect you? One, you're preparing for it because obviously you've got children. Yeah, Then you're going away. And then how about your family? Are they just used to it now?
Speaker 3:I think it's a sacrifice and it is at their cost. I think a little bit at my cost. I miss them to death, obviously, but my little boy shows it more. He's seven, he's the oldest, he shows it more than the others, he's a bit more sensitive than the others as well and you know, it'll impact his behavior for a few days after I've left and a few days after I come back.
Speaker 3:I was given a really lovely analogy by a friend a few years ago though, which was like it might be obvious, I don't know, but she said look, a ship is safest in harbor. That's where it can rebuild itself. You're not going to get into trouble in harbour, that's where it feels like it belongs as well. But you don't build a ship to stay in harbour. You build a ship to go out to the sea and to sail, and I think for me that has given me the ability to do these trips without feeling guilty. You know I am providing it's my job. At the end of the day, it happens to be one that I absolutely love and get a lot of fulfillment out of, and you know, sitting on a plane without kids listening to a podcast or something is just heaven, but I don't feel guilty anymore and, yes, it will have a bit of an impact on my kids and I think, in a purist parenting manner, I'd want to be around a little bit more.
Speaker 3:I might be away for four or five months of the year, but when I'm home I'm really home. I'm not doing outside of school hours, I'm not having to work late or anything like that. I'm around when I'm around. So I think they get, if not almost the same amount of time with me, if you were to compare it to somebody who is really busy and getting up early to go to work and coming home late and all of that sort of stuff. But I also think it's slightly lost my train of thought. But yeah, I think in the inner world of interesting people it's very rarely that those interesting people nothing has happened to them in their life like I find I resonate with people who've been through something and been through something quite hard.
Speaker 3:Certainly that's why I connected to my wife. You know she had a messed up childhood and it turned her into the person that she was, and so I think the little caveat that I give myself is that I am having an impact on my children by going away for the amount of time that I do. One, that'll give them a little bit more depth of character, because they'll have experienced sadness and they'll have had to work through it and work out a way of managing that sadness. But two, I'm not a drug addict. I'm not beating my wife and kids up. You know. There were far worse traumas that I could be implementing on my children's lives and I think a little bit of separation is for me an acceptable level of this you can tell me sort of justifying this to myself but an acceptable level of impact on on the kids yeah, no, I think there's.
Speaker 1:Um, I think for myself it's like a you can have separation while even being present with a family, as in you know someone's going out to work from six in the morning till getting home at six at night and then being absolutely knackered and, like you say, taking the stresses out. So, have you seen? Have you seen much apart from your boy who's in new school? Have? You seen much changes in your family in Costa Rica. Yeah, just with their life there nature 100%.
Speaker 3:Partly it's the culture here. It's so much kinder. There was a I don't know. I could give a million examples of this kind of different attitude that Costa Ricans simply seem to have. They've got this almost catchphrase, which is pura vida, which means sort of pure life literally, but it kind of encompasses so much that life is about generosity and giving and being kind and connecting people. And if they say hello, how are you? They're looking in your eyes and they're maintaining eye contact and they really care, like Laura.
Speaker 3:The car broke down so Laura called the taxi driver to come and pick her up to take her to where she needed to go. But the taxi driver said, well, let me just have a quick look at the car. So he popped the hood up, he went I think this is this part. He then drove 15, 20 minutes to the local town, bought the part, came back, fitted it, got Laura's car working and then wouldn't accept any money for doing the extra journey. And you get that kind of stuff all the time. People are kind of are you kidding? That's just not what people are like.
Speaker 3:And it is having an impact on the kids. They're more engaged. They don't have any personal devices, they have got ipads. Actually we'll give it to them on airplanes or really long journeys, so we're driving seven hours or something, but just so they don't fight in the back. Basically during the week they've got no devices.
Speaker 3:We take the tv. We have squidgy day on a sunday. We might watch two films, but we're quite selective about what films they are like Home Alone or Ghostbusters. They're kind of 80s family films that are a little bit more slow-paced than this sort of frenetic series and stuff that they have these days. But then at the end of Sunday the TV gets taken upstairs and gets put in the upstairs bathroom and they don't even ask for it anymore and I think that's having a big impact.
Speaker 3:So it's not just the country that we're in. I think we've adopted slightly different. You know parenting styles and I think maybe it's just easier to do here than it is in the uk. You get incredibly caught up with what everyone else is doing around you, don't you? I think you know the amount of kids on computer games and social media and stuff in the uk is probably a lot higher than it is it is here. So it's easier to kind of be a bit more purist, I guess, if the people around you are doing the same thing how are your kids coping with the language?
Speaker 3:I mean, they were funny at first, just refusing to learn, so it's like no, I speak english. They're starting to come out like they started calling me papi instead of dad. I wish, I'm not sure whether I want to be papi or papa, but they, they can understand it. They could. All three of them can understand it. Maya's obviously born here, so she can't speak yet, but but the, the three kids of, of of, uh, yeah, the twins are four years old. They, uh, they understand it and they're just starting to come out with it now, but we've been a year and a half, so they, they need to start coming out with it soon, otherwise they're gonna get battered.
Speaker 1:They're not, obviously it's the thing about young people's brains isn't that they pick. They'll pick languages up a lot easier yeah, I've got.
Speaker 3:I've got a mate who moves to scotland. He was living in manchester, moves to scotland and his kids in a. How do you pronounce it with scottish? They call it gallic, don't they? It's a gallic school, not gaelic, don't they? It's a Gaelic school, not Gaelic. And they don't learn English at all. And he said all of the kids when they leave Gaelic primary school have a better level of both written and spoken English than the kids who have been in English-only schools, because they're obviously going home and speaking in English but by all of their education not even part of their education being in Gaelic they've got a better level of english as well and, which is extraordinary, just opens the mind that bilingual thing is is hugely beneficial, I think yeah, yeah, I was on a.
Speaker 1:I was on a chairlift in andorra when I was doing my busy, when I get my teaching. I was in and the little girls were only about six, just spoke five languages and I said I don't even speak english properly, it's a different language is it an item that you always take with you, like on an extraditional adventure or something Not on Naked and Marooned?
Speaker 3:I think you know those shows are artificial constructs. Obviously, you get put into a location it's completely arbitrary, like it's, you know you're not really surviving. But I think one of the things it has taught me is an independence from articles you know Of. One of the things it has taught me is an independence from articles. You know. Of course, it would be a lot quicker if I had a knife, and if you're talking about a sort of bushcraft or survival scenario, it would always be a knife because it speeds up so many other things. But I think one thing it has taught me is if I don't have these things, I don't have to panic. And so I'm quite, I'm quite non-materialistic actually, I think. I think there's not many things you know. Invariably the things I miss is my family and my mates, but not objects, I don't think, not anymore.
Speaker 2:I can see you kept your bushcraft skills up because you taped a spoon to your headphones.
Speaker 3:I've taped a spoon to my headphones, but yes, it does also mean that if I get hungry, I've always got a spoon, as long as I'm doing a podcast when I get hungry.
Speaker 1:So on your Instagram recently, you've been putting a few things up relating to men's mental health or mental health in general.
Speaker 2:Haven't you yeah.
Speaker 1:And the project to walk Snowdon. Is that something you're promoting yourself or you?
Speaker 3:know. I think again. I do think it's important. Talking about mental health, I did a bit of a failed podcast yesterday, back when we had lockdown, when absolutely everybody started a podcast and I interviewed Foxy from who Dares Wins and I thought he was a fucking brilliant guy and I wanted to interview him because I watched that first series of who Dares Wins and he was opening up about PTSD and they had this beautiful looking straight down the camera lens interview style in who Dares Wins and I just went. I just I saw in his eyes that he was broken. I fucking loved him immediately for it. And remind me of the question, sorry.
Speaker 1:It was basically going to your on your Instagram.
Speaker 3:you know the snowed and climbed sunrise, but obviously he obviously Foxy came, came close to suicide and he's been very public about that and I think you know men's minds matter is the is the charity that I've been supporting and they informed me I didn't realize that. You know, under the age of 50 in the uk, the most likely way you're going to die as a man is by suicide. You know it's above cancer, it's above heart attacks, it's above everything and it's suicide extraordinarily. And and I just thought, do you know what? I don't do any of the shit that I do to beat my chest and be tough and show off. It's all because I think, personally and in terms of, I think the value in it, if there is any value in it, is how you deal with situations and how you manage stress and how you deal with hardship and and stuff like that and so so I just you know they got in touch with me and I just thought you know what this is. You know I'm not filming at the moment. I definitely want to help with this and I just think it is.
Speaker 3:I started before I met my wife. I started a master's degree in mindfulness-based psychotherapy and I think I still, if everything fell apart in terms of the TV stuff I would like to like to do that sign of stuff. It's. It's the stuff that interests me so much more than physical exploring. You know I could, I could be trying to get an expedition off the ground to walk to the south pole, but you know I it's just walking and packing a rucksack and putting a tent up and stuff like that. Isn't it not knocking outdoor adventures at all? They've all got their place. But I think the ego side of it is kind of lost on me. But the things that fascinate me are how the brain works. And then even pushing further than that into yogic philosophies and energies and consciousness and those sort of subjects I find absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 1:I think the statistic was, when we had the virus, it was the biggest killer of under 35s in the country, and then it was the biggest killer of males up to 40, and now they've lifted it. So it means they've lifted it up to I think it's another five years, which is more. Men of an older age are now taking their own lives.
Speaker 3:Certainly. Yeah, the 50 was the figure created to me. It's extraordinarily sad, isn't it? And you know, thankfully, I think, if there are positives to the internet. You know there are spaces where men can get information now about how to help each other out, how to help yourself out, and looking for support. It's now quite accepted to talk about mental health problems. It's also accepted, you know, accepted that we all need to have chats with mates.
Speaker 3:It's an important part of life and I think sometimes it's a bit lonely, especially as a dad, when you've got all those stresses of providing for the family.
Speaker 3:And I don't mean to be sexist about this at all, but I do think I was having a chat with my wife about this the other day and she just worries about different stuff and I'm like, if there's not work coming in, I find it very hard to be Zen because you know, okay, we've got a bit of a buffer, we've got nine months worth of money if we're living at the same sort of standards, but then at the end of it, you know, how can I be Zen if I don't have something in the line?
Speaker 3:And I think a lot of men feel similar pressures and I think it's a really really healthy thing that there's an active conversation, because you know, in my dad's generation and our father's generation nobody talked about mental health at all and all of it was bottled up inside. And you know, in a british, the best british way of dealing with that kind of pressure, I guess, is drinking and and obviously then that's a dark, dark spiral and that's that's that's probably why the stats are so bleak at the moment. So I think for me it's a, it's a no-brainer in terms of of both speaking about it and promoting it and stuff. I think you know, the more, the more awareness and consciousness about it, the more people can be helped and the more people can help themselves, I guess, as well.
Speaker 1:For some reason I'd I'd kept mine quiet, my ptsd quiet, I think, for some people around me knew, until I'd actually gained gained some level of award, which was the winter mountain leader. And then I told everyone and it were like, and it was, but it was because of I had that validation in myself and I told everyone. When I told everyone, it was like you know, and I read this big post and there were the amount of messages of support, but before that it was that fear of being different by talking about it. And then, and then, someone actually messaged me and because someone actually messaged me, before we started the podcast, someone started, someone messaged me and, of course, someone actually messaged me Before we started the podcast. Someone messaged me saying why are you always banging on about mental health? And then I went quiet for two weeks and then we started a podcast. It was one of the About mental health.
Speaker 3:Fuck you Exactly.
Speaker 1:Stick that right where it hurts.
Speaker 3:I think it does piss a few people off. I remember there was a guy called Dave I think I can say his first name he was one of the safety and survival experts and behind the scenes on my initial shows and he'd make sure all the risk assessment was done and stuff. But he was ex-military and he'd obviously got PTSD as well. The first time I met him it was a handshake at a distance and there was a real distance and then you know, I like getting under people's skins and like before too long, when we saw each other, it was a hug. And then you know, I got him crying about bits and bobs and he's like what are you doing to me, Stanford? But he said initially it's like no, some it, we just get on with life.
Speaker 3:But he had huge amounts to unpack. He dealt with huge amounts, I think, out in afghanistan and he needed to talk about it because you know he was the kind of person that when they did get drunk, got extraordinarily volatile, because then you're in that position where you can't keep a lid on it and it explodes, doesn't it? And I think he he would be first to admit he's a different human being now, not due to me, but just due to the fact that he's acknowledged that if you go through a trauma, you have something like PTSD, then yes, of course you can cope with it Well, many people can cope with it. But if you're avoiding emotion, if you're standoffish and your way of coping with sad feelings inside you is to shut off that part of you, then you're skimming through life a little bit, aren't you, I think, and so I'm pleased it's gone this way. I really am.
Speaker 1:You're not living life, are you really? You're just suppressing emotions and there's so much evidence now, if you read sort of Gabo Maté's stuff, of suppressing these emotions and then that manifests itself in illness, so you just continually fill in this bucket that's just steadily overflowing. So yeah, I mean and I just want to go back to that point when you were talking earlier about about yourself and talking to therapists and it's, it's one of them things where I was speaking to some psychologists recently and I went in this conversation about brain science and I went I think I'm I think I'm a bit out of my depth here and they were like well, we teach it and we've learned it, but we've not lived it. Opinions of people I mean, all three of us have gone through our own mental health issues as we have this conversation now and it's all valuable, and if that information is not getting out to other people, then I'll be honest, I feel a bit selfish by keeping it in 100%, especially if you've learned from it, and you're now.
Speaker 3:you've turned the page a little bit, and you're. I remember it was my wife's sister who was in such a dark place and she was drinking too much and taking prescriptions, medicines and stuff, and I'm fine with this being in. By the way, I remember her putting this video up on YouTube or Facebook, I think it was. If you want any help, then you know, chat to me and I'm like if anyone needs any help, you're the last person that they need to chat to right now.
Speaker 3:So I do think there's, you know, it's not just about sharing darkness and just then, suddenly you're helping people. But I think if you kind of feel inherently within yourself that there are things that you've learned and experienced along the way that could help people, then I think, yeah, it's a super positive thing.
Speaker 2:It might be quite difficult to answer. Have you got a piece of advice for someone facing challenges, navigating through everyday challenges?
Speaker 3:well, one piece of advice, frankie, it is a hard question, isn't it? I think? I think acknowledging that life is difficult is is is a good one for me, like expecting life to be easy is setting yourself up for failure, you know life is full of. If we don't call them problems and call them challenges, challenges will present themselves all the time and if you think, oh no, this is happening to me again and you take a sort of victim stance on this, then life is just going to be this constant battle.
Speaker 3:But if you go right, this is a challenge and this is how I'm going to deal with it, and I'm going to be conscious about how I'm dealing with it, I'm going to use it and I'm going to learn and grow and get wiser from doing it, then life is full of opportunities to learn and grow, and I think that's quite a big change, isn't it? It's kind of almost problems. You know, losers go into this blame or victim mentality and winners feel the same frustration that the problems come up, probably at first, or the same pain or the same initial emotion, but they don't let that emotion send them on a sort of a negative spiral and they use it for positive gain. And that's probably. If you were to pin down any of them in terms of attitude towards life, everyday life, that's probably quite an important one.
Speaker 1:No, obviously we wanted you on because of the, the stuff that we see on tv, and we had a connection which made it even, which it made it better. But I mean, you could talk about these subjects all night long, really. Yeah, because there is so much, there's so much to learn from just going back to them. Basics, I think. Do you know what I mean? I totally agree. And when you've got them fire, shelter, water, food, yeah, and you go back to them. If, if anyone you know, there is an explosion in all this people wanting to get involved in these things, and I'm hoping, I'm hoping it's because I'm hoping it's when they go out and try these, and even try mountain climbing or whatever and the outdoor stuff that it's because they then become present and they'll learn something and you know, much like yourself, you develop from them experiences.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Do you think people want to get involved? Because it is where we come from, from being hunters and gatherers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think we're all becoming increasingly aware that our modern life is far too complicated and complex. I mean, that was why we moved to Costa Rica and it wasn't actually because we didn't really realize that the people would be kinder and everything like that. It was simplifying life. You know, we'd fallen into the trap of having two expensive vehicles and, you know, big house and lots of responsibilities and dogs and chickens and pigs and fucking all these things and I was just like it's too much, my brain can't deal with all this responsibility. I am struggling massively and my wife was kind of a little bit more enjoying the sort of high life and stuff. But I was like I'm never going to be happy with all of this stuff. It's too complicated for me and we live in a much smaller house and have much less going on in our lives now. But I think it's simplifying is is quite an important thing.
Speaker 3:I think our modern day lives are too complicated, it's too fast paced as well, for us to really really be able to be truly at peace with, because there's too many things to deal with and and yeah, I guess you you can use things like going outdoors and going climbing and stuff, but if you're going back to a cluttered house full of responsibilities and payments and stuff. I think I think we also need to look at our everyday lives and go. You know, do I need to be doing as much as this? Or, you know, would I be happier with, with a simpler car that I was paying less per month on? Or you know all of those things because they all stack up incrementally, like in none of them you shouldn't have a fucking big car, but if you've got so many of these things for me anyway, it just it was overwhelming and and I'm much happier without them, and I love the fact that our car out here is 21, 22 years old now and it's breaking down all the time, but it doesn't, doesn't matter if it's in the garage.
Speaker 3:the neighbors will give us help with taking the kids to school and and everyone helps each other out, and I don't know there's quite a beauty in the sort of two fingers up of the rat race. I guess yeah, and just simplify life because, and again it comes back to an existence which is more, a little bit more natural, I think, before these adventures you've done and experiences, and before I forgot how many days I'm doing 860 days in the Amazon.
Speaker 1:You got it? Yes, I'm terrible. Would you have had the resilience to spend five hours with your bow drill, like you did in the Atacama bow drill? When it's working, it's amazing, it's an amazing tool, but when it's snapping and when it's not lighting, probably not.
Speaker 3:No, I was a hothead, I was impatient, I would have thrown it away. Yeah, you're absolutely right, but again, that's nice. I bet it's also age, isn't it? You know, as we get older, we we're a little bit less I don't know hot-headed. But yeah, no, certainly I put a lot of it down to a lot of it down to the, the challenges and the expeditions and the time spent outdoors and and, and I think it just accelerates you in a way that I don't think you would necessarily get. If you're getting on a tube every morning going to a job, that's the same every single day coming home. That is my idea of an absolute nightmare.
Speaker 2:I have to say, Ed, thank you so much for your honesty and your time. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Seb, thanks Charlie, I've really enjoyed chatting to you both. Thank you, I appreciate it Brilliant thanks.
Speaker 1:I'm sure this will go out and it'll help people to develop themselves and get into their own adventures. Thank you again, thank you cheers guys.
