What are you doing right now? I can guarantee there is one thing that we're all doing in this moment, breathing in and breathing out. It's something that is part of our whole day every day, 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
Amantha Imba. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of Behavioral science Consultancy in Ventium, and this is how I work 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.
Well, I don't have to be full of energy. I don't think people want to turn their radio on in the morning and sort of have that fake nervous, desperate energy, you know, like someone trying to do an infomercial. I'm more like a dimmer switch. I am talkative at six am like this, but then who I don't need to be yelling. So I learned that it had to learn that lesson to be honest, because otherwise it puts you on just terrible fake this kind of pressure. You know,
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 a dim breakfast radio for twenty three years, and it's only 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 goes.
Absolutely. Now, can you talk me through your pre show rituals?
Yeah, I mean, you'll have a film day with this, but they work for me, and so the work works. Now the alarm goes off in the morning, and that's for twenty seven. And I hope you might think, why does he set off at four twenty seven am? Any extra minute I can be in bed, I would be, so why wouldn't you so? Yet? Four twenty seven? The first thing I'll do for about five minutes is I will do some breathing energizing techniques that I've learned the
last couple 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 on 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 sign at 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 a lot to the team. Then I'd like to be in my studio alone by myself for fifteen to 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 fine line at the end of it. Or I always I always have a look at everyone's job ties 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 we sort of I will say, oh, here's what's happened to me. Here's a couple of ideas I've got. Jack shares here's 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 don't want to do that show. I can't stand the thought of that. I like there to be some gaps for the spontaneity, for the magic for the unpredictable to show up and do the show with us as well.
That's that's quite the ritual in terms of how you've mapped that out. I find that really fascinating. I do want to ask more about a few things there. I want to get into breath work. And I remember when when I read your book, no one listens to your Dad's show, which I must say I loved, and it was actually because of it sounds it sounds a bit weird, but it was actually because of that book that I was so keen to have you on the show, because yeah, i'd heard you on the radio a little bit, but
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 scripted 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 mom, 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.
I don't get that a lot. I'll take that from you, mum, and please thank her. She must have just heard a very very small slip of the show one day where I might actually get somewhere near sounding intelligent.
But the seriously, I loved your book, and you do talk about your breath work in the book and for a memory you actually mentioned I think your breath work teacher in the acknowledgments. Can you tell me what led you to learning breath work?
Well, I guess like most of the stuff that we do as adults to try and bring us comfort, we'll try and steady us because it's when you think about it, just being a human on this strange planet, having our strange existence. It's a lot, isn't it. As you get older, you realize life is really odd, just being a human just getting through the day. It's really odd sometimes, isn't it. And I'm very lucky, isn't entitled? You know guy, 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 now 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 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, like, 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 realized how how with panic or anxiety or anything, focus or anything, our breath is everything. It's the first thing we did when we're born, and we start our life to 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 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, to 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 back, 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 and 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. Maybe 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 panic attacks, what helped? Getting help, going to see a therapist really helped massively. And the breathing thing that was a big difference to me and will always be.
So let's just say I'm preparing to do a podcast interview, and like, even if I've been doing it for a few years now, I still get nervous before some interviews, particularly where I'm going to be speaking to someone who's been a hero of mine for years, And can you give me something that I can do, Like in the five or ten minutes before I'm live, what can I do.
First of all, why are you doing this?
Why am I doing this? Well, firstly, I'm doing it to learn, and secondly, I'm doing it as a way to I guess, like scale the impact that I can have. So I'm very motivated by unpacking complex science and putting that into simple strategies that people can use to improve the way that they work. And for me, the podcast came out of a natural curiosity around how did the
world's most successful people work? But also as a channel, I mean, podcasting is so brilliant for reaching lots of people with their strategies and impacting as many lives as possible. So that's why I do it.
Yeah, so I can understand right, all that big brain stuff. What feelings when it goes well or afterwards when you go that is a groat? I really enjoyed that. What is that feeling? If you had to give it a value a couple of words, what is that when it's going well? What is that? What does it do to you on a physical level? What does it do? Does it make you feel happy? What would you say?
I'm just like, I'm so energized, I'm pumped up, I'm kind of on a high. Like you know when I learned some really cool stuff, I'm like, oh my god, I can't wait to share that.
Right, So, now you've got that, Now you're in touch with why you really do it. Okay, Now close your eyes and think about the last chat you did where you really felt that you know, your words, energized, connected, and breathe in. Just close your eyes, breathe in three and three your nose. It's count of five. Don't have to be big breath, but just and then just hold it and then breathe out slowly againto the count of five, three your nose again, and then breathe again through your nose,
acount of five. So wait a bit and slowly out through the nose again. Look out a five, four, three two one one more round of this in through the nose, look at the five one two, three four five, Have a gentle smile with your mouth that's closed, and then breathe out again. Look out 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, so so good and come and just different. I feel like I've shifted.
Yeah, And that's like thirty seconds. Anyone could do that. Now you understand why I like it. It's quick, it's instant. You don't even have to get into the woo woo of what's happening there, don't even try to analyze it. It's that's all in us. And now, if you were to go and do a chat now, whether it's this one, you will do it differently. You would enjoy it more and you'll be more connected to yourself. And there you're also 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.
Absolutely. H that's good. Oh, I feel like I feel like I've just had a shift and we're on to like act too.
Well, you know what, You've just become my first ever what do they call them clients?
Yeah, you've just been my first time protege. Let's say prank you. Now. You mentioned therapy and you write a lot about that in the book and your experience, and I feel like it's something that I don't I don't know if I've ever talked about therapy with the guest on the show, and I'm a huge fan of therapy. I'm a psychologist myself, and I've spent years in therapy
and I currently see a psychologist every fortnight. And I want to know for you, what have been the biggest lessons or things that you've taken out of the therapy that you've done.
Great question. Like I said, I was so reluctant. I've don't know if it's a man thing. I think it predominantly. Is that a bit embarrassed about having to ask for help. We're really good at giving other people help. We're terrible at asking for help, aren't we. I tell her what I got from it really was compassion. When I went in saying I'm having panic attacks, I can't do my job. I think I'm gonna you know, I can't work with any mortgage. I don't know if I can ever do
it again. It was 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 it and work out what is what's worrying at the moment. If it had a voice. What is it trying to say? And Darling, is 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 loved one a 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. 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.
But then you're in an unusual situation where you're also like you're drowning in feedback from listeners and people who maybe have just listened for a few minutes, Well, see.
Even that isn't that interesting to use the imagery of drowning. If I thought of it like that, I'd have a flipp and panic attack. I can. I've learned to swim, and sometimes the waves crash over me, and other times I can surf on it, and yeah, I can turn that on and off. On a bad day, your ego gets a bit of a din because someone shoots you an email and like hate this show, they need to fire you, and you like, Then you have to remind
yourself that's more about them. That's someone who's having a tough time moment 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 video 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 I 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.
Yeah. I want to know more about that, because in in your book you paint a really vivid image of what it was like packing up your bags from the UK, where you'd had this twenty year super successful radio career and deciding to move your whole family to Melvin, where you know, you really didn't know anyone except for a handful of people in the industry, and things are really tough when you started on air here and people were really resistant to someone not from Melbourne doing a local
radio show. So what strategies did you use to cope, particularly in those early days.
Unfortunately, I wish I could have an intelligent answer. Red wine and spoiler alert it doesn't always help that strategy. Yeah, I mean, look, I might as well say what I am English in Australia. Suddenly, as someone in the early days emailed me, no one invited you. I felt like that uninvited and had I just rocked up here and just put myself on a breakfast show and people like no, so who I'd an English guy. We don't know him.
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 everything 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 careers come here, because it really really humbled me, stripped me of everything that I'd built up over a career. 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 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.
We will be back very soon with Christian talking about how he got to know Melbourne through Uber Drivers, how he gets on stuck when he has a bit of writer's block, and we'll be talking about life quakes and how to deal with them and the impact that they have on our relationships with those around us. Now, if you are not connected with me on the socials today, you might beg the day to do so, because I share a lot of really interesting content through a couple
of my social networks. So firstly, you can find me on LinkedIn just search for my name amount the YMBA and say hi that you found me through the show. Or you can find me on Instagram at Amantha Ie. You right about getting to know Melbourne through Uber Drivers. Can you tell me how you did that?
Yeah? I mean, obviously I had no car when we moved here, my wife and I and so I had to get to work every day and around the city, and so I'd use Uber a lot. And the great thing is those people are driving around a city all the time, they know all the suburbs, and so most people don't ever talk to them. They're staring down at their phones. I'm suddenly wide eyed. I was a sponge. I really wanted to get to know the city. The more I got to know it, the more I could.
You have a better life on air and off air. 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? Why do
you think 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.
I love that. Now I want to talk about creativity, and I want to know for you, how do you get your creative juices flowing?
I do you know what I actually I hope you will find this interesting. I don't know, but I love talking about creativity because creativity isn't limited to someone like me who writes or talks or you know, stuff like that for a living, or comes up with ideas. It's actually creativity. Like a friend of mine is a carpenter, and he once made these friends of ours as a
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 and just see it looked like to me he 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 round 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 mind told me a funny story the other day. He told it so well in that exchange with the two of us creativity, that the choice and the words he had without maybe realizing it always 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.
So what do you do like, Because you must experience times where you do get stuck or you've got the you know, metaphorical writer's block, what do you do to get unstuck?
Stop looking directly at a blank piece of paper. It's too intimidating. I'll go for a walk. Then it's out of view. It's there, but it's out of view. The amount of I get a lot of ideas just going to walk in my dog, I talk to myself, you know, and our write down idea. I got a small team. I like working in a small team. I bounce off them Jack and Pats who do the show with me. They give me ideas. They might tell me story or just like I had an argument the other day about
this or what is it in the 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? I feel embarrassed, you know, I tried to bond with a teenager. It's so hard. So yeah, it's to pay attention.
After I read your book and I've you know, followed you on social media and you share a lot of personal stuff about yourself, which you know, particularly I think
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? Day? Which is today? And I thought, yeah, yeah, sure, I'm so happy to do that.
And I so sat down to write it yesterday afternoon and I'm like, like, I didn't want it to be you know, some generic like you know, ask someone if they're okay today. You know, the world doesn't need more of those posts. And I thought well, you know, for me, I think the thing that I was thinking about is the last couple of years of 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, 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.
Yeah, once more, a brilliant question. And I would just say to you, just thank you for sharing. What you just did. Is that often when we're going through a really tough time, and that is I had this great phrase recently, life quake, an earthquake in our lives and that lovely life quake. Our lives will give us life quakes. They just will. That's just inevitable, what that is. We've all felt those already. You don't get to have a life without life quakes. And you've had a couple there after.
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 a 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 connect 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 mom 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 easy in 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 you trust people with your emotions.
They might use it against you, techning 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, oh, 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, and I was going, you know, it's and I was giving her the lecture and she just looked at 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 here's my I didn't. I kick quiet, and that's and 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
through 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 side 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 ha 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 have 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 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. The book yet strap in and I remember, I, you know, almost starting to have a full blown panic attack. And I had to
go back and do my breathing and paying attention. You're sharing the story. You can't control how it's going to be received. And I remember I found the first couple of interviews, it's all what anyone want to talk about. You've read that. It's only about ten percent of the book about the panic attacks at the beginning, and then we'd go on to the rest of it. But it's all anyone want to talk about, and it kept almost
bringing them on going back into it. But then something really life changing happened, and I would get the 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 yeah, 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 greater 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 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? In life? The small ways.
Something that caught my attention in your book that just popped back into my mind is the death watch. You were a death watch for three days, and I have to ask you about, like why and what happened.
Yes, death watch is a watch and you are put into it your age, your your activity levels, and it crunches an algorithm and lets you know roughly when you're going to die, and it then starts counting down backwards until your death. And so you look at it and you go, oh my god, time sticking away. I already lost five minutes doing this. I thought it would make me stop wasting time and be a wake up call. All it does is it's stain traffic. Looking at it
going three minutes closer to death. It raised my stress was it was bringing me closer to death, closer than the countdown. I remember. It became very problematic in my marriage. My wife will 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 is done when we're breaking that death watch. What a crazy idea for someone like me that overthinks anyway.
Totally, Oh my gosh. Now I did. When I was preparing for this interview, like two months ago, because we were meant to do it a little hot. I was. School was open because we weren't in lockdown in Melbourne like we both are now. And when I would drive my daughter to school she's seven and a half, I'd put on your show, The Christian O'Connell Show on Gold one O four and I explained to Frankie, I'm going to be interviewing this guy, like what questions do you
think I should ask him? And at that point in time, I think a song from Trolls came on. It might have been like a Cyndi law for song that's in Trolls. And so Frankie's question for you is do you like the movie Trolls?
I do. I love kids movies. They're beautiful, aren't they? The ones we grew up with? And then the ones that come along now, the ones that come along now are masterful bits of storytelling. I love the movie Trolls. I would like to ask your daughter why if she had to tell me one line, one sentence why she loves that movie, what would she say? I'd love to know what it is she really loves about it.
I will ask Kara and I.
If you could then report back to me. I do like the movie Trills, assure her.
Now Christian for people that want to consume more of what you're doing and get the hands on. No one listens to your dad's show, which I cannot recommend highly enough, does thank you. It's just it's so brave and inspiring and like it's grip. It's a griffing read I was just completely enthralled. What is the best way for people to do all of that?
I will say that I also say to you, I think that there is a great story and book in you. I'll say this to you as a bit of dispersonal advice. Whether or not you want to share this is entirely up to you that feeling. When you're worried that you're over sharing, you're not. You're actually putting into the world
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'd like knowing, 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'd be really interesting.
Thank you, Christian. I will take that. I'm actually working on a book for Penguin at the moment. It is certainly has nothing to do with that, but maybe that'll be the next book. Maybe I'll pitch that to them. So Christian back to you. How can people connect with you?
Oh, you can find me hanging around working around on Instagram, mister Christian O'Connell. You can know where you find your radio shows or podcast. You can google the book, you can buy it in the shops, and you can get it online book Topia, Amazon, support your local bookshops, magical places. Yeah, thank you very much for the chance to have a chat. Really, and just I've really enjoyed talking to you. I loved all your questions.
Thank you so much. That's high praise coming from you. Well, I've just I've love this time to get the Christian. Thank you so much.
I'm blessed. It's been the high light of my day. Thank you.
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Perfect Strangers. And as you may or may not know, in October, How I Work is focusing on wellness at work, and with Leanne, we'll be talking about Tashi deals with that voice in her head telling her that she is not good enough. How I Work is produced by Inventium with production support from Dead Set Studios. The producer for this episode was Jennakoda, and thank you to Martin Nimba who does the audio mix for every episode and makes everything sound awesome. See you next time