Ted Audio Collective You're listening to Ted Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day.
I'm your host, Elise Heu.
I have met today's speaker, Gess Warland.
He is tremendously charismatic and an energetic guy, but that joy is hard won.
In his archive talk from 2023, he shares what feeling deep and profound grief led him to learn about all of us and our need to show up for one another, even when our loved ones tell you everything is fine.
His moving talk is coming up after the break.
And now our TED Talk of the Day.
I want to talk about my mentor.
I want to talk about the day that I got a phone call saying that he had died.
And I want to talk about the moments later in the same phone call that I'd heard that he'd actually taken his own life.
And I'm saying this because I want you to listen and also think about all the people that you love and adore and you cannot imagine living without in your life as you're listening to me talk.
My friend, my mentor, my father figure, Angus.
I truly loved him. My father had left the family home when I was quite young and he took on the mantle to look after me.
I'd known him from a very young age.
He taught me how to swim.
He was my cousin's boyfriend and my cousin's husband.
And he was just my go to guy when I was starting to date girls and I wasn't sure what to do.
I'd bring him up and I'd ask him, hey, what do you think?
What's going on? How should I perhaps do this?
When I ended up working for him years and years later in a big multi corporate, I'd always go to him for work arounds.
How can I get this deal done?
He always seemed to be that guy that I could turn to and he'd always give me the right answer.
Not only me, I remember walking around the corner at work one day and there's always someone in his office.
There was always someone waiting for him.
If you rang him up, he was always on the phone.
He'd ring you back.
He always seemed to be that guy that had people.
Going to him asking for help, asking for favors, asking for support.
He was good looking, beautiful wife, my cousin, three beautiful children.
Why would someone like that take their own life?
Why would they? Makes no sense to me.
And at the funeral, and talking to people after the funeral, just the frustration, did you know, did you know, did you know?
Did anyone know? Did you get a clue?
And of course everyone's saying no.
I didn't have a clue.
In fact, he was just like you're saying, he was my go to guy.
He seemed to tick all the boxes.
He seemed to just know what to say at the right time and he seemed to be able to work his way both personally and with work to get life done.
He was successful. I told that story on a breakfast show that I was on called the Grill Team in Sydney, Australia.
I was on there for 11 years.
And one morning I decided to be vulnerable.
One morning I said, you know what?
I'm going to talk about my friend because we were six years into that 11 -year stint and I'd never really spoken much about myself.
We spoke about sport.
We spoke about telling jokes.
We did things like ticket giveaways and concert giveaways and fun stuff.
We wanted to get people driving to work or listening to us having fun.
We didn't want to sort of drag them down with personal stuff or being vulnerable.
But one morning, 4 .30 in the morning, sitting around the production table with the producers and my co -hosts, I said, I'm going to be vulnerable today.
I'm going to talk about something that I haven't spoken about before and it's been eating away at me and I want to do it.
And they supported me.
We'd been on for a long time.
We were like brothers.
We said, you know what, mate?
Whatever you want to do, let's go for it.
So 8 .05, just after the 8 o 'clock news, a Hollywood hour in radio land, we flipped on the mics and I told the story that I just told you guys.
It was hard. I was getting support from my co -hosts.
I got the words out eventually, a bit like I am today, emotional stuff.
Certain things trigger you.
But what was truly happening behind me was all the phone lines into the radio station were flashing, which means people were phoning in.
Normally those lines would be for you to ring up, to be part of the show, to tell a joke, to win a concert ticket, to win a movie ticket.
All of a sudden, all those lines were flashing.
Didn't quite realise why.
The producer comes in and says, we've got all these people that want to thank you for telling your story.
I thought, that's nice.
I've put myself out there.
It is nice to get a little bit of love like that.
So we started putting a few calls through.
Not only were they telling me, thank you for telling that story, more importantly, it was like we'd given them a green light.
We'd given them permission to talk about the stuff that they wanted to talk about.
All of a sudden in a safe place, like a radio station where they'd normally laugh their way to work, we'd given them a little opportunity to talk about the stuff that's truly important to them.
The stuff that they had in their bellies, the stuff banging around in their heads, that they never thought they would get a chance to talk about.
So what we did for the next 90 minutes was just the most beautiful radio that I've ever been involved in.
We took no traffic reports, no news reports.
We played no music.
We just had 90 minutes of people bumbling and fumbling and getting their way through a conversation of gravity with us in the radio studio.
There was moments. Thank you.
It was impressive. So many people went, you know what?
I'm diving in here.
I'm talking about my stuff now because he spoke about that.
All strangers listening to each other on the radio all gave each other permission to have a chat.
There was moments of true silence, and silence in radio is not a good thing.
However, when you have silence, when you can sort of hear the tears, you can try to just hear them gathering the guts and determination to say the next word, or you can basically hear the snot running out of the nose and the tears running out of the eyes.
That's when you know people are being fed ink, and that's when you know that they're being real.
So fantastic. And it made me think, I wonder how many other people are worrying alone.
If we just open it up on this radio show on this morning and I tell my story, then we have 90 minutes of people going, me too, me too, me too.
I wonder how many people are out there feeling exactly the same way.
So that day changed my life.
I decided to commit myself to being more honest, to being more vulnerable, but even more importantly, let's get suicide prevention down to zero.
A huge call I know, and I said it in the Australian press, and everyone gave it to me, but I don't care.
I'm going to focus on making sure that no one goes through the type of stuff that my mate went through.
And how do we do that?
How do we do that? That's the trick.
And now back to the episode.
So for the last six years, I've been running a foundation called Gotcha for Life.
I want everyone in the world to find someone who has gotcha for life.
Someone you can talk to, warts and all, without any fear of judgment about the truly important stuff.
Why do we keep celebrating with lots of people in parties, but we don't celebrate the stuff that's a little bit harder, the stuff that's not so good?
Why is that the case?
So that's been the focus.
I don't know if you know the stats around suicide.
In Australia, seven men every day, two women, nine Australians, that wake up this morning won't wake up tomorrow morning.
65 ,000 people in Australia try to take their own life every single year.
The number one way to die if you're a young Australian male is suicide.
Now according to the World Health Organisation who, they tell me that over 1 ,900 people that wake up this morning won't wake up tomorrow morning, they would have taken their own life.
On top of that 38 ,000, nearly 40 ,000 people will try to take their own life today.
1 ,900 people today, 38 ,000 will attempt today round the world.
So this is not what we're going to accept.
This is line in the sand time to go, no, no more.
But what can you do?
If you look at the world as this huge big place, it might be too big a task for you to deal with.
It might be too big in your own country, it might be too big in your own city.
But what if we just started looking after your own village?
What if we just say I'm just going to look after my own people, the people that I love and adore and I cannot imagine living without?
Just imagine that. In the last few years, I've been so lucky to talk to people that have tried to take their life, but they're still with us.
Now those conversations are hard.
I feel extremely blessed to be able to be in those one -on -one conversations.
You know what comes out of those conversations?
Three things. One, they didn't want to die.
They tried to take their own life, but they didn't want to die.
That gave me great hope.
The other thing is that they were tired and they were in pain.
So if you combine tired and pain together, you make a shit decision.
We all know this. If you are not rested and you're in pain, you make bad calls.
So if we know that they don't want to die, but they've tried to take their life, that's the hope that we need to hold onto.
That means if we can get to people before they get to an eight, nine out of ten in terms of how they feel, we can actually stop them making that permanent decision based on a temporary situation.
And that's what it's all about.
And that's what I want to do with you guys now, if I possibly can.
I want you to think of someone that you love and adore, and you cannot imagine living without.
Have you got that person's face in your head?
Do you know what that person's name is and have you got them locked in?
After three, I want you to shout that person's name out.
One, two, three. One, two, three.
Okay, this is the bit.
You need to do something for me to that person that you just shouted out.
I need you to send them a text message.
Simple as that. Having these face -to -face conversations, I understand, is hard.
But when we're building our mental fitness, we have to start slowly.
So I want you to walk up to the mental fitness gym for me, and just open up those doors and I want you to send a text.
But the words to the text are this, I love you, I miss you, see you soon.
Kiss, hug, kiss, hug.
What do I do is send that text message, and let's just see what responses we get.
It's all about connection.
It's all about making sure that you look after the people that are most important to you.
Work can wait. It'll always be there.
They'll always replace you.
But not these people.
I would give anything to have a cup of tea, a beer, go to a footy match with my man who took his own life.
I'll never be able to do that.
Let's make sure that we look after our village.
Make sure we look after the people that are most important to you.
That is absolutely key.
The text message gets sent out, someone goes, what the ...
Or, are you drunk? Or, if a man sends it to a man, there'll be a phone call within 30 seconds guaranteed.
Or, the worst case scenario, what's this all about?
Well, you can then say to them, well, I was asked to think of someone that I love and adore and can't imagine living without.
I thought of you. It's a pretty cool way to connect yourself up with the people that are most important to you.
Thanks so much for listening, guys.
I appreciate it. I'm Elise Hugh.
I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.
Thanks for listening.
