Words in the cracks

[Applause]

hi everyone i must just tell you this

story before i start my talk i’m i’m the

fish out of water on time and this whole

thing i’m not nhs

um and i didn’t really know how much of

a fish out of water i was until a

conversation i had just today this isn’t

on the script

um but um yesterday we some of us

met for a rehearsal and so yesterday i

was in jeans and shirts would be

informal so the first time anyone in the

production team or anyone my fellow

speakers are seen in uniform was today

walking in this building

and uh loads of really strange comments

but this is my favorite

um paul just seeing you in your uniform

walking around an nhs event

in a theater you look a little bit like

a stripper

okay um i’m here

uh i’m gonna start with this picture

it’s um obviously a picture of our

beautiful country

taken from the international space

station and um

you know we live on this amazing planet

don’t we planet earth and

um you know science is just a testing of

hypothesis so we don’t really know

quite how old earth is but the current

theory is that it’s about 4.5

billion years old which is quite old um

we as

a specimen of species of of the earth

are not quite so old um

and again depending on what scientific

approaches you uh you believe

and the oldest we can be really is

something like seven million years old

um but maybe if we you know you consider

us like a mobile phone

um our latest upgrade into homo sapiens

is around sort of one to two hundred

thousand years old

so we haven’t been here very long

compared to the beautiful bit of rock

that we live in

um if actually if you put the history of

the earth into context and put it into a

24-hour clock

we haven’t been here long at all so we

arrived

in our former current form homo sapiens

in latin means wise man whatever

however you want to interpret that but

we arrived at 23

57 hours we’ve only been here

for the last three minutes of the

earth’s life

it’s not a long time is it so what have

we achieved in our three minutes of fame

well i guess if you really start to

think about what we’ve done

you’re automatically going to start to

think about things like history

behaviors

public stuff that we all know and read

about in the in the press or in history

books

so i guess on the most amazing

examples of what we’ve done penicillin

the internet

splitting the atom uh man on the moon

that kind of stuff but at our worst

may be our worst our worst hour was the

holocaust

um and even today you know our greed is

so out of control that

2.3 billion people one in three people

amongst us on the on the earth will wake

up this morning without a toilet

so at best we are incredible species at

worst

potentially we don’t even deserve to

breathe with that awful

so it’s such a range of of who we are

that gets your whole in whole thinking

into identity as a mental health

sergeant working in the nhs and have

been for the last four to five years

my passion is actually evolution of not

what we’ve done behaviorally but

actually what’s driving it

inside because everything we

fundamentally do in our behaviors and

our choices is fundamentally triggered

by something

inside and obviously mental health is a

massive part of that

let me just give you three examples of

how i think we might have evolved so

three moments in our time just random

out off top of my head

off top of my head but they’re selected

by me so

adam and eve whether you believe this is

a true story a literal story or an

allegory you know representative

representation of the human race

potentially adam and eve arguably was

the first man and woman to actually

choose an identity they went against

what their

their purpose was their their god-given

identity was and they said no no no we

can we can be who we want to be

so that was the first maybe the first

arguably moment in time that

that we chose our own identity

uh another moment in time 1957 the dawn

of television

the first television advert was for a

toothpaste called gibbs sr

some of you will remember it i won’t

because i wasn’t alive

um but was that a moment where we went

okay so we can be what we want to be and

now actually we can have what we want to

have

and this is this is all connected with

our identity so marketing advertising

media

magazines size 10 size 8 size 6 all the

pressures

that are now building up on humanity

with our own internal evolutionary

identity

maybe 20 years later in the 1980s in

this country probably was a defining

decade for us i was alive then

um but maybe that year maybe that decade

thatcherism

materialism markets foot market forces

capitalism

was the decade where we accelerated

again and actually it was like well we

can be who we want to be we can have

what we want to have

and now actually we can have everything

we want loads of money

so you can see how we’ve evolved in the

last three minutes internally and how

that affects our

behaviour on the outside

so i just want to talk to you about

um what that evolution has had that

evolutionary effect has had on my own

life

because if we take it to the extremes if

we have to be everything we want it to

be and other people’s expect us to be

if we have to look like the right person

sound like the right person drive the

right car

we become diseased with things called

perfectionism

or an approval addiction and i’m not

going to the long short story of it but

i

suffer from approval addiction it comes

out of my childhood most of our damage

and brokenness comes out of our

childhood but i suffer from

approval addiction and a bit of

perfectionism at best

it uh makes me really productive it

makes me really successful it makes me

achieve a lot

it’s probably the reason why i’m

standing here today at worst

it cripples me at worst it makes me

depressed i still take antidepressants

today and i probably will for the rest

of my life

so it’s a real balance it’s a real fight

um

this whole perfectionism thing i want to

give you

three moments in my life when i’ve

actually changed the language of my life

i want to use this thing called

kenzugi kinsugi is a japanese art form

and it is totally

counter-cultural to the whole

perfectionism

that we live amongst today in this

country

konsugi is about piecing broken stuff

back together

in this country broken stuff is

discardable wastable

it’s not wantable it’s all those you

know all those different things we just

go oh it’s broken let’s

get another one consuki completely

challenges

that whole concept of brokenness is bad

because it pieces the stuff back

together it sees broken stuff as a

point in time of that item’s life

it says it shows that the chip or the

scar or the mark

is just a part of this object’s history

it values the object whatever

form it’s in and it pieces it back

together but not just with

average glue no no no it pieces it

pieces it back together with the most

precious commodities that we

value gold and silver and platinum

so by the end of the whole consogi

process the item is still valued but now

it’s valued more and it’s even more

unique than it was in its original form

the cracks in the kansugi potentially

are

also opportunities for us to grow as

individuals because we can actually

write different words in those cracks

when we break

so i put it to you that actually

breaking as human beings is actually a

good thing

i’m going to tell you about three words

that i’ve written into the cracks in my

life

and i’m going to tell you how i came

acro across those

those words and only how i came across

those words

so i define myself by three words in the

concept of consuming the first word

i define myself as resilient these all

happened in 2010

i knew that i was resilient i chose and

wrote the word resilient in the crack in

my

consuge person in june 2010 when i stood

on the edge of a 200-foot cliff on the

eastern edge of the isle of wight where

i live with a coast guard helicopter

over my head

and my colleagues coming down the hill

to section me

i could have jumped and actually

unbeknown to them

every time they detained me under

section 136

actually i’ve been here many more times

i went to the cliff to build resilience

i went to the cliff to go

no i don’t want to do this because for

the days leading up to that moment i had

been suffering and suffering and

thinking that the hope was was going so

i went to the cliff to go no

you’re better than that you’re resilient

and i would then start another two one

or two or three weeks of hope

until it drained again and i would go

back to the cliff and go

no you’re resilient that was my

relationship with the 200-foot cliff so

i wrote the word resilient in the cracks

in my consuki body

the second word i wrote for myself only

came through another episode of being

cracked i spent 14 hours

in a police cell not just any police

cell

my own police cell the cell i used to

run as a custody sergeant i spent 14

hours in detention

under arrest for criminal offence

relating to my serious

severe depression and that experience

and three hours an interview that i

experienced was

one of the most life-changing

career-changing moments of my career

because i suddenly realized just how bad

not just my

my force was this is this was a national

problem but how

illiterate the police service was when

it comes to mental health if you fast

forward the criminal justice process

from us we’re the investigation

branch of the criminal justice system if

you fast forward into prisons 80

of people in prison have got one mental

illness

60 of people in prison have got two

mental illnesses and people like me put

them there

through courts that have no literal

literacy with mental health either

it wasn’t until i experienced the

illiteracy and unprofessionalism

unfortunately to say

over police service dealing with someone

who was fundamentally broken not bad did

i realize how

awful things were and how things needed

to change i could have walked away from

my organization at that point and go do

you know what no more

but i chose to write a new word in my in

my crack and that was rebel

which is quite ironic for a conformist

law enforcer what do i mean by rebel do

i

you know do i go into police stations

and start pushing people around no of

course i don’t

what i’m what i’m talking about is

actually when you see a culture that’s

failing when you see a process or a

procedure that’s failing you

deliberately push against it because no

one else is going to

you become a non-conformist for a really

good reason you become a rebel

through something that’s that’s grown

inside you so i’m now a resilient

rebel and those are the new words in my

cracks two words i would have never have

written for myself had i not been

that broken the third word i wrote is

innovator i’m on the national innovation

accelerator program

um we’ve we’ve got a new model of care

and we’re scaling up across the

country but i wasn’t going to be an

innovator in my life until i spent three

weeks on the mental health ward

and when i spent three weeks on a mental

health award eating and playing

chess and board games and spending time

with people in the garden that had

similar mental illnesses to me

actually i looked around and saw many

many people in the mental health or that

where i

where i was many of them definitely

needed to be there they had

mental illnesses that they definitely

needed you know proper care proper

medication

they were in the right place but many

many more

were there because they weren’t actually

mentally ill the mental illness was just

the surface symptoms of what actually

wasn’t a mental illness

it was an identity illness it made me

realize that the nhs system in the

mental health

world is actually in many areas

massively over medicalized

because actually the fundamental root

causes of why people like me end up in

mental health

situations is because we have lost or

forgotten or have never known

our true identity so i became an

innovator out of that

we we’ve redeveloped stuff we started

street triage and we start we’ve now got

an integrated mentoring program

that looks after the most chaotic and

most challenging and the most risky

patients that go around the 999 system

i am a resilient risky uh risky

resilient

rebellious and slightly risky um

innovator

these are three words that i’ve written

into my own cracks they’re not yours

they’re mine

they’re mine i hold on to them dearly so

i’m going to finish

with some reflections and to give this

back to you

if you are the vars are you broken

if some of you are thinking now i’m not

broken you’re either a liar or a

narcissist

or both

so what in the privacy of your own

thoughts if you are that

that that pot that vars and those are

your cracks

what words are currently in those cracks

are you dealing with those cracks

how wide are they how deep do they go

how close are you to breaking what words

are currently defining

how unperfect you are

but the most important thing is actually

if you’re going to break

break what words are you going to write

in there in their place like i did

what new words can you write not just

coping words what words can you write

that just are the most profoundly

opportunistic doorway

loving passionate creative

new words that you never thought you’d

ever be able to describe yourself with

those are the words that truly matter

ernest hemingway said this i’m just

paraphrasing massively but he said the

world is going to break

all all every one of you in this room it

will break you

but you only get stronger in the broken

places

so don’t be a perfectionist go for break

the nhs apparently is broken yes it’s

broken

why do i say that who wants to work in a

perfect forming nhs it’s just boring

right

a broken nhs organization is a perfect

landscape it’s a perfect

blank canvas for innovators and ideas

and new words to

be put onto the page you guys are the

gold and silver and the platinum i’ve

worked with you for four years

by default because you care because you

look after other people before

yourselves

for me you’re the top 1 of the british

population

you are incredible i love working with

you all

so go back into your organizations and

fix stuff with new words

final message from me whenever and

however you break

break well

but the most important thing and you

will be in my prayers tonight

is find the most amazing words for

yourself and you’ll live the most

amazing life

thank you for listening