BEST OF: Radio legend Christian O’Connell on coping strategies that beat red wine

but it's definitely not something I'm ever thinking about. Christian O'Connell thinks a lot about breathing, and a week long retreat in breathwork became an absolute game changer. Now. If you're not familiar with Christian, he was Britain's best known and most awarded breakfast radio presenter, hosting his own top rating national breakfast shows and collecting more industry awards than any other presenter, and even becoming the youngest radio presenter

ever inducted into the UK Radio Hall of Fame. But then he moved to Australia, where nobody knew him. The Australian Radio network took a punt on him, bringing him to Melbourne's Gold FM, a move that has worked out incredibly well. Now, my chat with Christian has been one of my favorite interviews this year. I can't think of a time that I had someone on the show who was just so raw and open and honest about work and life and the stuff that can make life really

challenging at times. So we talk about the biggest lessons that Christian has learned in therapy and how he managed to overcome panic attacks that were crippling him literally straight before he was due to go live to air, and I even become Christian's very first breath work client during this chat. My name is doctor Amada Imba. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy in Ventium, and this is how I work a show about how

to help you do your best work. So I wanted to know what's it like to have to be full of energy at six am in the morning every morning when Christian hosts his daily breakfast show on Gold one oh four.

it's too hard to live up to that. You can't do that. What do they actually need from me? They need me to be present, and they do need to be energized. But the more I'm dialed into beforehand, and these are things I've learned the hard way through getting it wrong. I've been did breakfast radio for twenty three years, and it's only in the last couple of years I've actually learned to have some a bit more healthy rituals

before a show to check in with my intention. And when I pay attention to that, I always have a better show. When I struggle it doesn't quite work, or I'm having a tough time or too much self critical thought. Is when I've got locked into that this isn't going well enough, I need to put more energy into it. I need to be ten out of ten. I'm letting myself down, letting the show down. Oh my god. And you know, you know where that.

of years, and they really really help. They vary. I try not to do the same thing every day, as you'll probably realize the more we get into this conversation. I need I need that spontaneity. It's very important to me, and so if it was to the same every day, I'd get bored of it and stop doing it. So, yeah, I do something for five minutes, but a breathing kind of thing to get me going and energize, jump in the shower, and then head to work. And here's where

it all starts. Actually, I guess the first thing is the would be the breathing stuff like five minutes. Then that time in the car twenty five minutes to get into the radio station. I would always listen to something that tunes me into my heart, and either it would be something funny or it might be a interesting podcast, just something which kind of I guess I'm trying to train myself to to find that part of me. You know that I want to come forward to do the show,

and so I use that twenty five minutes. I actually look forward to it. It's a time when I can just silent my mind down before like six am, because when the show starts, things move quite quickly, and I move quite quickly on and off air. So yeah, I do that for twenty five minutes. When I get into the building, I say loo to the team that I like to be in my studio alone by myself for fifteen twenty minutes. I will force myself to I'll start with a blank piece of paper and I just write

down a word. I think what I actually want, what I want the story today's show to be. So it might be joyful, it might be honest, it might be connected, whatever it is. I just I won't try and find the word. I just let it come through, and then I kind of like I dial into my intentions. I'm here to have fun, to be honest, and then I'll go through the emails that have come through since the

show ended. I read all the emails, good, bad, and everything, because there's always there might be something I can use in them. Even if it's a story which isn't that good, there might be a final line at the end of it. Or I always have a look at everyone's job tie sort at the end of their emails. I think there might be something in that. I like going through all the emails. It feels like I'm connected to where they're at.

And then Jack and Rio come into the studio. Rio is one of my producers and Jack is my sidekick. And then for fifteen minutes, I will say, oh, here's what's happened to me. Here's a couple of ideas I've got. Jack shares his, and we start to roughly a very pencil blueprint for that day show. Now there'd be some ideas that we already know that we might do on a Tuesday or a Thursday, but yeah, we start to

just plot. I don't like to have too much in if I see a show where there's everything planned in. I do want to do that show. I can't stand the thought of that. I like that be some gaps for the spontaneity, for the magic, for the unpredictable to show up and do the show with us as well.

not a lot. And your publisher sent me the book and I thought, this looks interesting. And I try to read at least the first chapter of books that i'm sent, but yours just scripped me. And I read it, you know, over a few days, and I'm like, I have to talk to this man. And then finally enough when I mentioned the interview to my mum, who doesn't listen to a great deal of radio. She said, Oh, yes, Christian O'Connell. I've heard him, and I've always thought he sounds like a very intelligent man.

that I have a very good life. And so about seven or eight years ago, I had some very very severe panic attacks, and they only came right before my job doing a live radio show and my last show in the UK that I had for twelve years was National, went all around the UK and I had two and a half million listeners. Never had any fear about radio

or stand up or live TV. Suddenly out of nowhere, really severe panic attacks about twenty minutes before going on air, and I guess i'd call it was a mini breakdown. When I look back now, it was the best thing, one of the best things that ever happened to me. It made me go and get help, even though that was reluctant at first. I didn't know what was going on. I remember going to see this therapist and even being embarrassed that I'd had to go and see a therapist

that I somehow screwed up myself and my life. And I said, I just want the panic cut out. I remember him just laughing lot, Oh, this guy is going to be a field day unpacked. This guy he wants the panic cut out, and he went, where is it, I'll do it now. And so through that I also learned breath work because I needed to, and I realize how how with panic or anxiety or anything, focus or anything. Our breath is everything. It's the first thing we do when we're born and we start our life, and it'd

be the very last thing we do. And we don't breathe very well. We don't know much about it. But I've learned through learning breath work is just how much it can change your mental, physical, your zest for life. I've learned how to regulate myself ever get stressed or if I'm tired and I need a bit of energy rather than having caffeine. So yeah, I went away in a week long retreat, a breath work retreat. I loved it so much, went back the following year, did another

week and you'll love this. I'm currently doing a course. It will take me about another four or five months to be a breath work master so that I can actually teach it. I would love to be teaching it next year. Not full time. I didn't expect, but it's only because it's helped me so much, so much, and I use it every day and it makes a big difference in my life. I'm like, I'd really like to be able to share this with people. I've struggled so hard to meditate. This feels like this is something I

can do. Whether it's five or ten minutes. You don't need any more than that. It's not just that it's some that it's portable. I can do it in the car. You know. I'm trying to teaching my teenage daughters to help them, but they are that age fifteen and seventeen when they're just resistant to anything that comes to mom and dad. You know, they want to go the other way. So I've got to let them come to it their own way. But yeah, I'm such a big fan of it.

It's free, it's very easy to learn, and they're all kinds of different breathing techniques you can do to help bring about different changes. Yeah, I do it regularly during the radio show before the show in the car. Like I said, I loved it better for it. So yeah, I'm currently I'm actually learning. You know, I have to

go on these calls once a week. I get up even earlier and at half three am I'm on a call for an hour and a half with an instructor mentor for that week's homework and how I've got on and teaching him online how I should teach somebody to do it, and I love all that. It's really nice learning something new that's nothing to do with what I do for a living. It'll be a part time thing for me next year. I don't know how it's online

or in person, but that excites me doing that. I'm like, that's something new, that's something which isn't about me or trying to be funny or you know, sell something. It's just me trying to share something which really really has helped me through a really really tough time. And anxiety and panic attacks aren't something that go away. The panic attacks I don't have so much anymore now, but low level anxiety is something which has still be around in

my life. Hasn't defined me, but I know the breathing really really really helps, and a lot of people since the book came out, like you, have said, oh, I've suffered panic attacks. What helped? Getting help? Going to see a therapist really helped massively. And the breathing thing, Matt, that was a big difference to me and will always be.

lots of people with their strategy. Isn't impacting as many lives as possible? So that's why I do it.

Look out of five. So wait a beat and slowly out through the nose again. Look at the five, four, three, two one one more round of this in through the nose, look aunt of five, one two, three four five, Have a gentle smile with your mouth that's closed, and then breathe out again. Look ount of five through the nose, count down five or three, two one? Feel that warm, energized glow and open your eyes and how do you feel now? Ah?

you will do it differently. You would enjoy it more, and you'll be more connected to yourself and there you're also to be more engaged and connected to what you're actually trying to do as well, rather than the strategy. And yeah, I get I understand about networking and what it can do for you, but that isn't really why you're doing it. It's something else.

that bad. It was about understanding that it's not it, it's a part of me that's scared, and that part of me needs to be given I guess, compassion, listen to and work out what is what's worrying at the moment, if it had a voice, what is it trying to say? And dying to that because a lot of our critical self talk is so judgmental and so mean. It's like an inner heckla, you would never speak to someone in your life, I love one or colleague the way you

talk to yourself in the mirror. And it's learning about that and just watching that and that's a day to day,

rest of my life thing. But that I had to sum up the two years I did, that would be the biggest takeaway for me that I still use every day and use it when I'm talking to my daughters as well, is that you know, when they go, I'm feeling this, it's remind ourselves part of you is angry right now, part of you is really pissed off, and then understands you have to separate that because there are many different parts of us, you know, we all have

different parts, and then actually to separate from that and just go okay, I am angry, which part of me is angry and why? And then you can have hopefully a better dialogue with yourself and that that and changes everything.

to remind yourself that's more about them. That's someone who's having a tough time moment they've they thought the best choice for them in that morning is to find my email address, type out an email, check it the spelling mistakes, click send, and that is more about them. And actually, at the end of the day, other people's opinions of me really aren't my business when it comes to a radio show, you know, I don't want the show to be for everyone. I'd make a very different kind of show.

I hope it's some people that are like me, and I put it out there and I hope it finds the right people and the right people find it. So, yeah, I've got a lot of a healthier attitude towards feedback, should we call it, than I used to.

So what strategies did you use to cope, particularly in those early days.

You're not from here. You don't know about AFL, you don't know about John Farnham, you don't know about barn Zy, you don't know about Vida Crumble. And radio is built around intimacy. Intimacy is built around connection and shared experience, isn't it. And suddenly my accent, I think, didn't have that,

and so there was a bit of a disconnect. However, looking back now, the single most exciting thing I've ever done in my radio career has come here, because it really really humbled me, stripped me of everything that I built up over a Korea. When you've got a following on TV, on radio, whatever, they're your people and they follow you from a radio station to a radio station and there you've got them, and that is amazing. I

didn't have that here. Suddenly it felt like I was starting all over again, and I actually I needed that. I had to start all over again but differently, and that learning that first year of never ending trials in my two worlds, which was at home, my personal life, and then at work as well doing a radio show

as an outsider. Oh yeah, really hard here, But I came for a reason and it changed my life in bigger ways and just about a radio show, and that I'll always be grateful for every single one of those hate emails. I'll always be thankful for I will.

couple of my social networks. So firstly, you can find me on LinkedIn just search for my name Amantha Imba and say hi that you found me through the show, or you can find me on Instagram at Amantha I You ride about getting to know Melbourne through Uber Drivers, can you tell me how you did that.

I really wanted to get to know the city. The more I got to know it, the more I could, you know, have a better life on air and offair. You know what areas to go and take my kids to do? I'm a wife to go and eat, or let's go over here. There's supposed to be a great Italian restaurant. This is where all the Italian community is about. The food here is amazing. There's the Greek one. The Uber drivers, I would constantly say, what's this area, what's

this area called, what's it known for? Where do you not like going? Where do you like going? What do you think of this monument? What do you think of that? What's the most popular place at the weekend? All this stuff, and I was constantly just taking it all on board, loaning the shorthand of a city in the UK. I just i'd had that. I know the burroughs and the suburbs to make a joke about in London, there's almost like a punchline. I didn't have that here, and I

had to learn it as quickly as possible. And the uber drivers will always be very, very grateful for they're up my spies. I've been spying on us all these years.

wedding present a four poster bed. He made that from wood and carved it all and bit by bit I would go around his garage and workshop just see it looked like to me hadn't made much progress, and then suddenly there was a bed and I was genuinely right in all of his creativity, his focus, his craft. He's had to learn and master, get wrong, still get right,

And that is creativity doing that, you know. It's like my plumber came around and I thought I would need a really big part that was going to cost thousands. I was like, this is the last thing we need this year. I was like, now I know I can do. I can do an improvise. That's creativity. I think sometimes we overemphasize the sort of creative fields, you know, of writing and talking and comedy and stuff like that and storytelling, and actually creativity is in bars. You hear it at barbecues.

If there's a neighbor, a neighbor of mind told me a funny story the other day. He told it so well in that exchange with the two of us. That's creativity. That the choice and the words he had without maybe even realizing it, or he's just instinctive storyteller. So I enjoy finding creativity everywhere. You see it in nature. It's all around us. It is our nature. Everyone is creative.

what is it in a supermarket? When you do that and I'm like, go, oh, I know what we can do with that. Oh, I've got it reminds me of so and so. We could do this with it. So a very reactive, very reactive as well. Like I said about going through the listeners' emails, my job really is to pay attention. That's it. It literally is what we

should all be doing. But I pay attention. So even if that's me yesterday and being crushed when I try and bond with my fifteen year old daughter and I mentioned a song that i'd heard was a really big hit on TikTok and she just raised her eyebrows because teenagers are not there to validate you, and she just went, oh god, that came out like last year and I was shot down. She gave me nothing and that again, I just got to pay attention to that. What is

it you feel embarrassed? You know, I tried to bond with a teenager. It's so hot, So yeah, it's to pay attention.

for a man, is fairly unusual. And you know, I was reflecting on just, you know, the idea of how much we share about ourselves in the last twenty four hours because I'm doing this campaign with LinkedIn at the moment called change Makers, and they emailed me yesterday and they said, hey, I know this wasn't on the on the kind of list of deliberables, but would you mind just writing a post for are You Okay?

my life have been quite quite challenging and stressful. So I separated from my husband two years ago by choice and became a single parent, and that has all sorts of challenges, and I sort of I was always very conscious in terms of who I bring to work. I try to be very open and you know, transparent and

vulnerable with my team. But in the back of my mind, like with some of the stresses I've had to deal with over the last couple of years, it's like, well, I, you know, I don't need to treat them as a dumping ground for my stress. So I'd withhold a lot

of the time. And so I sort of I wrote the post about you know, I guess I kind of, you know, part of me regrets maybe not being you know, more open and more vulnerable during the really tough times where I kind of chose not to share because I thought that's going to have a negative impact on the people around me. But instead I think maybe it created

more distance. And I think about like the choices that you've made in terms of how much you share about yourself, and I want to know, how do you decide what's okay to share? And perhaps you know what you don't share.

Often when we're right in that, when we're right in it, we don't know we're in the middle of it. We don't know if we're near the end of it. And actually we don't have a very good connection to ourselves, do we. So it's really hard if you haven't got good connection to yourself and a good ongoing conversation, a kind one with yourself. There's no way you can have it with somebody else. So you were just struggling to get yourself of the day, let allowing it, knowing how

to open up a conversation with somebody. And you know, I get this at work as well. I used to think that being a team leader, which I am of my team, was about being superhuman and actually bringing you know the right time when it's appropriate. But vulnerability and honesty actually connects you to your team on a much deeper level than let's do this, let's do that. Here's the next big thing we're going to do. That's far

more important. So, yeah, those life quakes when you're in them, But in terms of what to share and how much I think sometimes, I mean, I did share in the book about the panic attacks and therapy, just so you understand, I'd never told anyone other than my wife about No one knew about that. My mum and dad didn't know. I had to tell them a week before the book came out. I hadn't told anyone in eight years. My

best friend, when he read the book, rang me in tears. Going, I knew we were hanging out, then you could have said something I could have done. I could have done, But like you, in that moment, that life quake, I was terrified. I was gripping onto everything. And as a man, you know, no sex, no gender, has it easier life. But as a man, I think we can all agree we're not raised to trust our emotions and to know how to share them. You're actually taught not to do that.

It's dangerous. You can't trust people with your emotions. They might use it against you, take the mickey out of you, shame you, and make you feel ashamed. So suddenly, when you do have a life quake, you actually haven't got a lot of the skills. You don't know. You feel like you're weak. I did. That's why I resisted going to therapy and actually getting help, And so the book came out. Really of my daughters start to have tough times, and my wife said, why don't you tell them you

know about your panic attacks? And I went, oh, I don't know. You know, I don't think they need to know that their dad's weak. And they went, well, what you're trying to tell them At the moment, you keep trying to tell them that it's human to struggle, which is what they were doing. And one day I was trying to connect with my daughters who was having a really tough time settling into a new school in here

in Australia. You know, I was going, you know it's and I was giving her the lecture and she just looked in the eye and said, what do you know? And so I should have said, I do know about my own but my own story with this it's not yours, but he's my. I didn't. I kicked quiet, and that's when I thought, do you know what, I'm going to tell the story now? I'm not going to have in the shadows anymore. I need to share this with my kids. And it came to the conversations and what that brought us.

That's when I start to think, well, maybe I'd been asking a couple of times, you should write a book about what it was like to come to Australia, the sort of the world, and start again, what do you write? And I'd resisted it because it felt pretty boring. That story,

I don't know, it doesn't interest me. Now I had that oh, if I'm going to tell that story, I've got to take them back eight years to have them panic attacks, because if I didn't have them, didn't get help, didn't pay attention to what was really going on, I'd lost my mojo and start asking questions why I've I lost my mojo? What would get it back? What am I really needing right now? In my life, I wouldn't have come to Australia. And so that's why I wrote

the book. I wanted to share it, and I was terrified about sharing it, and several times I said to my life, I can't I'm not going to put the book out there. I'm really think I'm over sharing. I'm talking about therapy. I think the listeners are going to think I'm weak, you know. And I remember the week before the book came out, there was a profile in the newspaper on me and it mentioned anxiety in the headline,

and I remember it was a Sunday. I remember throwing the newspaper at the floor and I started to cry. I was I felt ashamed. I'd used to seeing a picture of myself in the newspaper along the words with success or you know, something like that. I didn't want to I couldn't see myself like that was, Oh God, what have I done? And she was forty eight hours before the book coming out, and my wife looked to me, like, this is the start of it.

all anyone want to talk about. And it kept almost bringing them on going back into it. But then something really life changing happened. I would get I was getting these emails and people who were stunned that I'd been that honest in it. And all I was getting from men and women was I had no idea, here's my story, or thank you for saying that. I just presume that people like you don't get it. You know, it was a story of hope mine and I guess we need that in the world. Don't we. And yet I was

terrified of sharing that. I'm used to sharing stories where I can control where people laugh. This is one I couldn't and that really that was a radical, massive shift for me. I was, ah, yeah, so I do know what it's like to risk yourself. And sometimes when we risk ourselves, what actually comes back is it's great to connection,

far greater connection. And actually I think we connect to each other when we hear stories of overcoming tough stuff and even just being honest about it and saying I went through this, because all people really feel is I, oh you too. Everyone's struggling in their own different way, in some shape or form. It's what it is to be a human, to be honest. So it's been life changing, really has in small ways, you know, But those are the important ways, aren't they?

three minutes closer to death. It raised my stress levels. It was bringing me closer to death, closer than the countdown. I remember. It became very problematic in my marriage. My wife would be talking to me, you know, talk about some arguments she'd had with her friend Marie, and I'd be looking at a death watch, going this is another flip in five minutes until I die, and my wife would get really annoyed going that watch. And then one

day she just stamped on it. She broke it. One of the best things, many great things, my wife has done. When we're breaking that death watch. What a crazy idea for someone like me that overthinks anyway.

that's in Trolls. And so Frankie's question for you is do you like the movie Trolls? I do.

what's really really needed from you. Often what we are worried and think we need to hold back is actually a thing that's most it's most magical about us, that people really really really need more than any other part of us. So I don't know what that might stir up in you or nothing, probably, but just hearing your story what you've been through, I love I'd know, Yeah, that's scripping. I'd like to know about what how are

you balancing that and work and what you do. Now, that's a book i'd love to read where you talked about that. That would be really interesting.