This is a new level for me.
I am trying to push the limits of what I'm comfortable with.
That's exciting, but it's also very stressful.
It's me screaming into a mirror, reminding myself of all of the that I need to keep an eye on.
It's exciting, but I'm feeling it.
I'm really feeling it.
Guess what?
Tour's back, baby.
I'm about to fly across the world, actually to go to three countries and play eight shows in three weeks.
So Australia, New Zealand, and Bali, I will soon be inside you.
Great North.
We made it.
Landed in Sydney.
Body clock has no idea what time it is.
Today's Sunday.
It's an Australian Sunday, but it's everybody else's Saturday, and the show's on Thursday.
So the plan between now and then is to just take care of myself acclimate, try and get my body clock in line.
Name of the game today is don't fall asleep.
That's it.
If I fall asleep, rest of the week's fuck.
Where am I?
Right, when in Australia, the last time I had some of these on, I was sat right there.
What do you think, Jimmy?
I'm watching the kit.
The kit?
Not the kit.
He's got to watch the kit.
Dad's looking after the kit.
We're going to have a dip and then we'll be back.
Yeah, Jimmy, just looking after your stuff.
Guys, don't worry, boys.
I'll keep it.
I was a belly flop in a hole.
Jimmy's late for his gig.
Jimmy's late for his gig because we haven't come back to get the fucking club.
Why did Jimmy Carr start so late at his gig?
Apparently James Smith and Chris Williamson's dickhead friends didn't get out of the sea for long enough.
Cheers, Dad.
Jetlag update.
I think i've completed it.
I think this crazy psyop inverted wake up first thing in the morning thing.
I think it's worked.
I went to bed at 11 o'clock and i woke up at 7 30 and i actually feel like a functioning human, but i'm not allowed to see sunlight yet, so i feel like uh, like a slightly mincy batman.
I keep the curtains drawn, put the glasses on, keep the lights low.
Today's gonna be fun because I'm going to get to run through the show with the boys because they haven't seen it yet.
Max, Dean, Alex, none of them have seen the show.
So the boys are going to come around today and we're going to have a look at everything that I want to do from a production standpoint, which is exciting.
It means that I can get creative with how we film it, how we make the socials off the back of it, how I want the lighting to be.
I think today will be fun, unless I crash at 3 p.m. in the middle of Sydney.
And that, the Darling Harbour Theatre.
Fucking cool.
Last time, we did smaller show, medium show, bigger show, on a show that I'd run 30 times before.
This time, more people, two and a half thousand people, for a show that I've never done before.
That's me.
Makes my butthole go like this.
The inner colonist in me wants to board these ships and retake this great land.
Don't be shy, darling.
We were friends once before.
I mean, by the way, I mean board the fucking wooden thing.
I don't mean the actual warship behind it that's got fucking modern weapons on it.
No, no.
I want me, my friends, and a cutlass.
Dude, imagine shooting cannons with the boys.
Give them the triple cannons!
The modern boys would never get to understand how good it is to go plundering with your mates on a weekend.
Plundering?
When was the last time you plundered?
You haven't plundered anything.
I couldn't tell you.
I haven't plundered in years.
You'd better not be out plundering again, Alex.
Oh, Mom!
What do I want?
Mom!
All my friends are plundering.
Big dog, how you doing?
How are you?
How are you?
Yeah, I'm good, man.
Hello.
Great to finally meet you.
How are you?
Is this where you did your coffee, like, competitions thing?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, like, yeah, this is where I trained to become a world-class barista.
I come bearing gifts.
Oh, amazing.
I was going to say, did you bring merch?
I did.
So, Sydney's going to be a big one.
Fucking two and a half thousand, yeah.
I feel okay.
It's 4pm.
Jet lag's a myth.
Jetlag's a myth.
It's been good.
Went for lunch with Ali Abdaal and Matt, surname I can't pronounce.
How do I pronounce it?
Matt D'Avella.
Matt D'Avella.
He fucking rules.
OG YouTuber now turned super dad.
Ali, OG YouTuber now turned super dad.
The show's in three days and I need to kill probably about half an hour of material.
And each word that I get rid of makes me hurt inside.
It pains my heart, but I can't do a two and a half hour show.
That would be insane.
There's no interval either.
No one's got a bladder that big.
The next two days are just going to be dedicated to trying to get the show completely dialed, which basically means killing all of the bits that I can't use anymore.
I say that's the next two days.
Tomorrow morning, I'm doing Australian morning TV.
And then tomorrow evening, I'm going for dinner with Tony Abbott.
I think was the ex-president, prime minister, something.
He's important.
Most important thing is that jet lag's a myth.
And I vow, I vow, I vow, I vow, I vow, I vow, I vow, I vow, I vow, I vow, I vow, I vow.
I've out-alphed it.
Are you communicating Irish?
I think so.
Is he here for St Patrick's Day?
He's our leprechaun.
What the fuck do you mean?
Are you ready?
How long do you need the green ones?
Fucking prick.
I thought I looked alright.
Well this is a professional.
A professional?
This is a professional.
And I asked, do I look ready?
And you said gorgeous.
This is the sort of gorgeous, this is the sort of gassing up that i need.
Welcome back.
He's gone from reality tv star to global podcasting powerhouse.
Across 1000 episodes, chris williamson's modern wisdom series has started conversations, changing the way people think, feel and look at life.
Over a billion downloads, billion with a B.
So you've obviously inspired and motivated a lot of people, a lot of the listeners.
But what have you taken from the people that you've interviewed?
One of the lessons, especially given that I reinvented myself at 30, 32 and then moved to America at 33, was it's never too late to reinvent yourself, because people have got short memories.
And most importantly, they just don't care.
So whatever it is, they're not thinking about you.
And one other one is that adversity is a terrible gift to waste.
That most of the growth that you have in life comes from your lowest moments.
So you know, in the mid 90s, there was a woman who was living in Edinburgh in quiet poverty.
She was married in a relationship that she called a abusive.
She fled to Portugal with her daughter and this manuscript of a book that she was working on.
Her husband tried to stop her from leaving by hiding the manuscript.
She said she was clinically depressed and suicidal.
She used to walk her daughter to a cafe because she couldn't afford to heat her apartment so that she could be warm while she wrote this book.
She got rejected by 12 different publishers.
That's 12 different people saying that she wasn't good enough, right?
This rejection wasn't just a small thing.
It was an existential crisis.
And each rejection further emboldened her to go and work harder to get this thing done.
So clinically depressed suicidal, abusive relationship got this daughter doesn't have a heated home.
JK Rowling went on to sell 500 million copies in the Harry Potter franchise and became richer than the Queen.
Adversity is a terrible thing to waste.
So that's your podcast.
What about this live tour?
That's what you're here for.
Tell us, what do people get in your live presentation?
It's a solo show of me on stage.
It's kind of like a TED Talk with a ton of jokes in it.
It is in Sydney this Thursday at the Darling Harbour, then Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane.
Perth and Brisbane are already sold out.
And it'll make you feel less alone and help you understand yourself more.
That's what I'm here to try and do.
I suspect it was all those years as a nightclub manager that set you up for this like an understanding of people.
A little bit, yeah.
Human nature is that it's most transparent when people are five drinks deep.
Yes.
We hear that a lot in television.
It's quite extraordinary what you've been able to achieve.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
I think what's most extraordinary is I managed to tell J.K.
Rowling's origin story in 30 seconds.
I wasn't able to.
The girl with the dog just walked past but looking in, smiling like, And then she came back the other way doing the exact same thing.
Just Don't be obvious, don't be obvious.
He was charming.
We double as Chris's bodyguards.
Alright, I'm sure we'll do this.
Day three in Australia.
Thank you for getting us all here safely.
Thank you for helping us thread the needle of jet lag.
What an unbelievable fluke that is that I actually feel human.
I think the boys do too, and we've only been here for three days.
Got one more day to relax and get ready before chaos and war zone begins.
Keep us calm and regulated.
Let us do the work that helps make the world a better place, where the very least fulfills us.
Amen, most secular grace of all time, which actually becomes a bit of a wish list after a while.
It's like and i want, i want my knee pain to go away and i i, i would like uh, uh bluzzer with mostly hand movement, and i would like Spent the last 24 hours sleeping, eating and preparing.
I didn't have my set completely finished because I had to rush from the last work in progress in Austin last Monday.
I just rushed out here.
So it's been a bit of a sprint finish to get the show done and that's exciting, but it's also very stressful because the first show is the biggest show of the entire run and the time when I've got the least experience of doing this set, this brand new show.
I'm doing some things tomorrow that I've never seen done live.
I'm not doing fucking back handsprings and stuff.
There's not going to be a breakdance number or a fucking musical.
But I am trying to push the limits of what I'm comfortable with.
And I'm doing some things that are very revealing.
And push the audience to reflect.
There's way more audience involvement.
It's adventurous and kind of feels dangerous and that's what's cool.
It feels like a high wire act that could sort of go wrong.
So there's there's stakes and it's exciting, but it i'm fucking feeling it.
I'm really feeling it and i just want to enjoy it.
I really think i'm going to enjoy it.
But the reason I'm going to enjoy it is because of how terrifying it is.
This is a new level for me.
It is the first show of the Aussie New Zealand Bali tour.
This is big boy.
This is two and a half thousand people.
This is the second biggest show I've ever done. and the first time I've ever done this set live.
You just don't know exactly where it's going to head.
You're not sure of the direction.
Everyone's still a little bit unsure of what works, what doesn't work, and you can only really gauge that with an audience.
And also coming to a venue like this because it's so schmick, so professional.
There's so many different options that we've got.
Sometimes, when you have too many options, you can fade a little.
So yeah, some of the things that we're dialing in for vision getting the timing right for vision, getting the timing right for lighting, getting the timing right for walk-on tracks, all the audio cues, the switches between some of the different lighting scenes and the different phrasing that we're using make sure we can hear what's going on out the crowd.
Then you've got the lights.
Also, communications between the tech team that have literally only just seen the show during soundcheck, and then having to communicate that there's a lot of those little moving parts to go on.
Some people could think that because i used to be the headline, i'd be better.
I'll tell you the truth.
I actually prefer, i prefer being the number two way less pressure.
Yeah, Real change is very difficult.
This was something I talked about in the last show.
People will lose five pounds.
They'll move companies.
But how many people do you know that have lost 50 or 100 pounds or have changed careers or moved to a different country?
And most people only get to deep, deep change when they're in deep pain.
Like all of your biggest points of growth in your life have germinated from your lowest moments.
So that line that JK Rowling had, a rock bottom is a very firm foundation to build from.
You want to try and do it before you get there, but change is very individual.
So It's difficult for me to say without going, so what is it you want to achieve?
And what are the obstacles in the way?
And what are the specific fears?
Gentleman there, yes.
What does fulfillment look like for me?
At the moment, it's just enjoying each day.
Like, especially for the last couple of years, I've achieved so much objectively.
Like, one of the big takeaways from tonight, which hopefully it'll help the boys, is...
Why is it that we feel like we've achieved a lot objectively, but it hasn't touched us subjectively?
And there's all of these different stories and lessons and things that I try to bring in.
I think it's a much more difficult show.
The first one was getting from zero to one.
You need to get your life together.
And as you change, people are going to go, wow, you're different.
And that's hard, right?
That's the lonely chapter stuff.
This one is about the problems and the challenges that people make.
Intelligent people make whilst doing everything right.
Why is it that I feel deeper than most, work harder than most, achieve more than most, and yet I still feel existentially empty?
What the fuck is like this bottomless pit?
Like going to a buffet and never getting full.
I've spent a long time sacrificing the way that I feel for something that I want to achieve.
And now I'm significantly more happy to sacrifice things that I want to achieve for the way that I feel.
Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Williamson, overcoming burnout, you are speaking to patient fucking zero here.
My friend, obviously spaciousness, you need a little bit of time.
The problem is how much of our sense of self-worth is taken from how hard we can push ourselves.
We will just keep on going nose against grindstone, because that's where we get our sense of self-worth and belonging, that's where the world has started to give us a degree of love and acceptance and praise.
And now we matter.
You need to learn that after a while, working harder is not going to fix your problems.
There are very few problems in life that working harder won't make better, but there is a certain category of them that working harder will make them worse.
And burnout for me, this happened every October.
So freshers week, when university students come back, was the middle of September until the start of October in the UK.
The second week of October for a decade, I got depression.
I couldn't get out of bed for about five days.
And it took me nearly ten years to realize I hadn't slept for more than four hours, like three weeks.
I'd worked every single night at a club night, and I'd been out drinking for half of them, and I'd got up and just checked my, I hadn't trained, I hadn't seen sunlight, I hadn't eaten correctly, what's last night's Domino's and a beer?
Oh, that's burnout.
And you can do that.
You can just basically go as hard as possible, blow your engine, and then go again.
But in my experience, after a while, it's unsustainable.
I can't do it anymore.
Oh dude, I love the show.
So good.
Second time seeing Chris.
You think you've already soaked it all in because you've heard all the podcasts, but it's a very different experience, especially in person.
To be honest, just how relevant it was for me.
I recently started back at therapy, and so much of the conversation today actually mirrored a lot of the conversation I had this morning with my therapist.
We were talking a lot about overachieving and It didn't necessarily surprise me because I kind of expected him to go there, but just how relevant it was and how much it kind of like hit for me during the entire shows.
It surprised me with the breathing exercises and the groundedness.
I think like as a whole that was really beautiful.
It was good just to when Chris was getting the crowd to take a deep breath and actually sit in the emotions and the feelings and then have everyone grounded.
I loved how together the audience felt and he made everyone feel super comfortable.
The meditation task actually.
Oh yeah, i found it very interesting how he did a lot more interactive content.
You know, three times he did crowd work and every time he managed to, his tonality was just right and you went to speed up and you went to slow down.
Take it in, because if you've got high standards, you look past the moment.
They're like always looking over the shoulder of the present moment for what's coming next.
Bro, you nailed it with the thing where it's like you're a high performer and your standard is to always succeed.
Curse of competence.
Chris's show was like this unique thing where you can actually get immersed and feel like you're connected to it.
There's portions when you can chat comment, have instant feedback and then points where you get real deep.
If I could take something away it would be to really dig deep into your purpose and why.
Instead of searching for something on the surface, search with him being all peace of mind, giving myself time to really just know that you know i'm enough and he can really just make that impact or make you just crystal clear.
Know that it was amazing, life-changing me.
That's hard to do.
Really decided to put the difficulty level up by it's twice as hard as the last one.
Oh, i mean, it's good, it's very exciting.
It's very, very nerve-wracking to do that, super nerve-wracking to do this show.
So much that can go wrong.
There's so many moments where someone in the audience can do something or say something.
We got the tech wrong tonight.
The lights were up too long.
The song came on at the wrong point.
It was fun.
It was exciting.
It was really exciting.
I'm glad that I did something that wasn't safe, that didn't just run the old show back.
And I really hope it landed.
I need to go to bed.
Adios.
All right.
Melbourne tomorrow.
Chris Williamson live at the Palais Theatre in Melbourne.
Is he mostly wise?
That would share.
The thing is about the Australian accent.
They always go up at the end of the sentence until they finish talking and then they go down.
You see what I mean?
Mostly wise.
Excuse me.
Excuse me.
Excuse me.
Fuck, don't get in there.
I don't think Wendy knows.
I can't.
I think it's a bit too tasteless.
I was just saying to Chris.
Then I was like the thing that was weird is we started with the biggest show first.
So I said, he will give that the most importance.
So he'll go, Sydney's the Catalina wine mix up.
Then he'll also forget it's the first time he's ever done that live event.
And he'll go, was it perfect?
No, equals failing.
Strange downtime before a show.
You know, there's no loud music, James is fucked off, he's on stage.
I'm just...
Waiting.
Thinking.
Tonight I really want to connect with the audience as much as I can.
Last night was completely road testing everything.
I think I've got a good idea about what it is I should focus on.
So I just want to enjoy it.
I'm here to have fun.
Been here before.
Done this before.
Sold out. beautiful Friday evening in Melbourne.
If you had your life over again what would you change?
If I had my life over again what would I change?
Jesus Christ.
I'd fear less.
I think a lot of what I've done, a lot of what's driven me to get to where I am has been fearing.
Not doing it right, not getting it right, not being enough, not something.
I don't know who the not enough is for.
I don't know what the fear is of, but It's been one of the things that's pushed me.
This entire show is a thinly veiled autobiography.
It's me screaming into a mirror, reminding myself of all of the shit that I need to keep an eye on and that running away from a life that you want, running toward a life that you fear, thing.
I don't think that you need to do it to improve your performance.
I think that you can get to where you need to go without hating yourself in the moment.
I don't think you need to use self-rejection as the fuel that pushes you there.
What do you bench?
What do I bench?
That's a good question.
My best bench was 140.
James has got four-figure testosterone.
The last time that we were on tour in Australia, him pointing at me in the gym as we were training.
And then the same thing around North America to then come in with.
He's brought fucking hypodermic needles with him on tour.
Mate, it's my peptides.
No, it's not, James.
It's your testosterone.
Yeah.
Awful.
This is fucking unbelievable.
And I'm not allowed to throw my undies on stage at Chris.
So this is a modern wisdom version of throwing your undies.
I think the way that it was structured was just awesome.
The way that it got the crowd involved, coming together of human beings, campfire, factory reset, you know, you stare into the flames.
It's awesome.
I felt like the room was one.
It was really nice.
To get 2,000 people in the same moment was very special.
He makes you feel like you know him.
He breaks that barrier of you being the crowd and him speaking.
It was super special.
It was a reflecting point.
By the end of it, I think I got a couple of things to think about.
I'm trying to be a better dad.
Try, and you know, take life not too seriously.
Reflect, enjoy the journey, not just about what's at the end of the rainbow.
I think too much into the future, but I forget to live.
I think that was the biggest thing for me that resonated.
He makes a... I guess deep questions sometimes seem so simple.
The answer... can be so simple.
It doesn't have to be as complicated as we make things out to be.
Do you want a hug?
I'll make a little rabbit.
It's the day after the Melbourne show and we're still here, but Zach is playing a festival today.
So we're going to go watch him.
It's pretty fucking retarded that we're across the planet doing different things in the same cities at the same time.
But it wasn't planned.
It was going to be in Australia one way or another.
He was only going to be playing for himself or playing for me.
That was it.
Step back to the left, right back where I started.
Can't believe that I'm sorry.
I'm sorry I missed you.
It is so much more fun to do this with my boys.
The fact that I get to travel across the planet.
See friends that I'm not with.
Hang with friends that I am with.
It's it.
It's unreal.
I'm just enjoying it.
It feels like high pressure because this show is so fucking new, like changing 20 of the show every night, which is kind of terrifying.
But also I guess this is where reps and improving the skillset of doing the live thing come from.
And the whole point of this is to push the limits, to try and do different things, to try and be adventurous, to build the skill of doing this live.
It's kind of weird, man.
You know, tour's awesome.
It fucking rules.
But it is very insulated, like you're kind of kept in this weird bubble and then just deposited in a new place and deposited in a new place.
What it sounds like is, oh, you get to travel and then do a bit of work, but it's not.
You do work and the whole world moves around you and the work stays the same.
So I guess that's a skill as well, enjoying tour.
Living tour outside of the bubble is a skill that we need to do.
This we need to say, instead of going back right now so that we can get food, so that we can go to bed or so that we can go to dinner and do the next sound check or whatever like, maybe we can just find 15 minutes so i can actually have a memory of being in melbourne, in st kilda, and actually know what it feels like.
So not only am i learning the skill of being on stage, i'm learning the skill of being on tour, and those are two very different things learning to enjoy it, learning to relax, learning to make memories with the boys, learning to not take it too seriously but then not take it so relaxed that you're not improving and constantly iterating.
So i guess this is the end of the first leg, but it actually just feels like the start of tour, because i've got cities coming up that i've never been to before, shows coming up that i've never been to before, the countries that i've never been to before.
I'm gonna have some adventures with the boys, so Stay tuned.
