Dr Aria - Mental Health, Marriage and Mindfulness

**Steven Bartlett** (0:09)
Dr Aria, he attained a first-class bachelor's degree in psychology at the University of St. Andrews. He was the only student in Scotland to receive the McNeill Scholarship to Study Psychology at an Ivy League University of Pennsylvania. He holds a doctorate in clinical psychology from UCL in London, and he's one of the world's leading performance psychologists. He works with everybody from leading sportsmen to Hollywood actors on a variety of things, from relationships to business to food, everything. And I got to sit down with him in London and talk about things that were on my mind, things that I've been mulling over for a couple of years, and things that I think might be holding my happiness and my future back. We had an open conversation, and even after the mics turned off, that conversation spilt out into the hallway. He's someone that I consider a friend, he's someone I look up to, and I think he's someone that's going to give you a tremendous amount of value as well. So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is The Diary Of A CEO. And today I'm joined by Dr Aria. I hope nobody is listening. But if you are, then please keep this to yourself.
Dr. Aria, thank you so much for agreeing to do this. It's very, very sort of strange how this came about. I met you in Newcastle when we were both speaking at an event there. And from our conversation in the green room, I thought you were incredibly intelligent, incredibly fascinating. And you thought in the same way as me, but I felt like you had a much deeper pool of knowledge than I do on a lot of topics that mean a lot to me and that I'm personally very interested in. So I was very, very keen to sit down with you properly and share that conversation we had in the green room just briefly with the listeners on this podcast in more detail. And from reading through your bio and your educational experience and the work you've done with Hollywood actors to athletes, there's so much that I'm intrigued in. So starting from a kind of a broad place, I guess the first question is something again, this is when I ask these questions, I'm asking them because I'm interested. What is mindfulness?

**Dr Aria Campbell-Danesh** (2:28)
That's a very good question. Mindfulness in the way that I define it is the awareness which emerges through paying attention in the present moment. So to break that down, at any point in time, our mind can be either focused on what we're doing or it can be elsewhere.
Actually, a study found that on average about 49% of the time, we're thinking about something else compared to the activity that we're doing, which is phenomenal when you think about it, that half the time we're absent. because of the brain's negativity bias, we can often drift off, we can tip into a negative spiral and we can drift off to regrets about the past or even anxieties about the future. So mindfulness is a practice, it's finding a way to reconnect to this present moment right now. So that when I'm with you, Steve, I'm talking to you, I'm listening to you whenever you're speaking to me. I'm not thinking about what I'm having for lunch. So whenever we are more present, whenever we're actually here, and that means that when we're speaking to our partner that we're listening to them, when we're at work, we're engaged in the meeting, whenever we're playing tennis, we're in flow, whenever we're acting, we are in that moment. It means that we have much more creativity, much more presence, much more clarity to be able to bring our best selves into that moment.

**Steven Bartlett** (3:49)
You're speaking to maybe the least mindful person ever. I'm horrifically distracted. I've got WhatsApp notifications going off all the time. I'm thinking about a million things. I'm thinking about things I did last night. At the event I spoke at, I'm thinking about what I've got to do later. I'm thinking about the flight I've got later on. I'm very unsuccessful when it comes to just being present. People that know me, probably people sat in this room will realize that even when you're sat next to me, I'm a million miles away. How does one somebody like me that's incredibly busy and that has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people messaging them daily go about achieving mindfulness?

**Dr Aria Campbell-Danesh** (4:26)
So a mistake that people make sometimes is that they think that they're multitasking and that they're doing multiple things at the one time. But really at any one point in time, our attention is only on one thing. Now you can jump from one item to the next, but generally we find that when you return to what you were doing previously, you're going to lose productivity because it takes you more time to get back into that state whenever you're... When things are just flowing, you know... Have you ever had that whenever you're working or you're...