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OVIDcast by OVID Health, a global healthcare communications consultancy, explores current issues in the health and life sciences sector.
In each series, we explore a new topic, speaking to prominent figures within the healthcare landscape.
[00:00:08] Jenny Ousbey: Hello and welcome to the Health Change Maker podcast. I'm Jenny Ousbey, founder and CEO of OVID Health, a global healthcare communications consultancy, also known as the Health Change Makers. In this new series, I'll be interviewing experts from politicians and patients to tech founders and CEOs. All with a shared passion for improving the wellbeing of people and driving meaningful change. Join me as I meet incredible Change Makers and be inspired to become a Change Maker yourself.
So today I am delighted to be joined by Darren Harris. Darren is a double Paralympian, England's most capped blind footballer. He is on a mission to help ordinary people do extraordinary things. I'm sure we will have lots to talk about today, so I'm really looking forward to it. And, you know, really, these podcasts are all about how can we get under the skin of Change Makers? Can we discuss their failures, their successes, their learnings, and also, you know, who inspires them? So who inspires them to be Change Makers as well? So welcome Darren. Hopefully I've done a little bit of justice to all the things that you've achieved in your life, but if you could just give people a brief overview of you, what makes you tick and then we can go from there.
[00:01:34] Darren Harris: Well, I suppose for me the most obvious thing was I I was born with normal vision and when I was 15 months old I was diagnosed with cancer in both my eyes and my left eye was removed and my right eye was treated with radiotherapy and as I got older, my sight got gradually worse and worse because of the radiotherapy treatment I had and I guess my life was always going to be different from that point going forwards. But it wasn't kind of noticeable straight away. It was one of those things where you carry on as normal, kind of, I was in that state of denial, you might say but then there was that realisation that my sight really was getting worse and I suppose my focus at that point was always on getting my sight back. It was like I'd go to the hospital every single year and I'd see the doctor and he'd put this green ultrasound gel in my eye and he'd say, look up, look down, look left, look right and at the end of that consultation, he'd say, Darren, your sight's getting worse and there's nothing we can do about it and so I kind of came quite disengaged, dysfunctional, angry, all of those things and I needed to change my thinking. My sight was going to go and I was going to lose it all and I had to focus on something else and these days I call it "Unblinding Your Mind", but at the time I didn't really have a name for it, but I knew I had to focus on what I could do rather than what I couldn't do and what I had as opposed to what I didn't have and one of the things that I was really good at was sport. Sport was the thing that I did that made me feel good, made me happy, I enjoyed it and because of all of those things, I wanted to do more of it and the more I did, the better I got it and eventually, you know, I just kind of went through those stages of progression of you know, playing at school and then being invited to an England training camp and then playing for England and the rest is history. Went on to become England's most capped player, as you mentioned and went to two Paralympics as well, not just in football, but in judo as well. So that is a brief synopsis.
[00:03:30] Jenny Ousbey: Fantastic, thank you so much, Darren and if I can take you back to, you know, I've been really struck by when you talk about the early years of your story and one of the things that really stood out to me, listening to you speak previously is about those moments in the doctor's room where they were saying to you, there's nothing more we can do and actually the power of those words in that moment, you know, hope is a very powerful thing. So if you could talk a bit more about what those words felt like at the time and how you started to, I don't know, claw your way out the jungle, you know, in the sense of, you talked about unblinding your mind, you know, how are you getting out of it?
[00:04:19] Darren Harris: Yeah, I guess that, I mean, these days we have, so I'm a patron at the Childhood Eye Cancer Trust and we have family liaisons officers now who will be there in hospitals who can perhaps do the sort of the people side of health. I know doctors are very medical, very clinical, you know, they weren't telling me anything that wasn't true, to be honest, but it was blunt, it was brutal and I suppose it did take that kind of hope away and so yeah, I felt a little bit like a sort of a specimen in a petri dish, you know, you're poked and prodded, you turn up and you sort of sit there and you know, in a waiting room and then you're called in and then you're just sort of diagnostically tested in every element and it feels very clinical which is what it is. I mean I suppose my first experience of something different and I guess healthcare has probably changed since those initial days when I used to go in was perhaps back in 2011 when I went to have a genetic test to find out which form of retina blastoma I had. So there's a hereditary form and there's a non hereditary form and obviously if you're thinking of having a family then you kind of need to know which one you've got and so I spoke to this doctor and I mean Dr. Rossi, she was an incredible woman and she actually asked me, you know, how are you and how do you feel? And I'd never been asked that question by a doctor before. Not in all the times I'd been to the hospital, did anyone ever ask me that. You know, it was very much, let's get on with it, because you're in a waiting room, and it is, you know, 20, 30 other people and they've got a 2 hour open clinic and they've got to get through all those patients in all of that time and so there isn't really time for them to do that kind of personal stuff, I guess, you know, when I went to see the genetic counsellor, she, it was just me and her. So, you know, she did, I don't know how much time she had on her slot on her appointment to kind of be with me, but I guess a lot of it is about time, I don't think it's necessarily that doctors are heartless or evil or anything like that. I just think, you know, they've just got to get for everybody. But it certainly wasn't a positive experience and it didn't make me want to go back at the end of the day. If you're going to keep bringing me bad news, I'm not going to keep returning year after year. So I actually stopped going for those annual checkups for a good 10 years.
[00:06:47] Jenny Ousbey: Thank you for sharing that and I think that, doctor-patient interaction and those communications, almost like those soft skills, I think come up time and time again when we think about healthcare communications and the things that doctors do or don't say. As you say, it's often time pressures. Imagine if you were in charge of the health service, what do you think we could do to change that for people who are going through probably often, you know, the most profound thing in their life, whether it's being diagnosed with cancer or a rare condition or going through diabetes treatment, whatever it might be. What advice, what changes would you make to try and improve those interactions so that they were better for the patient when you walked out that room?
[00:07:34] Darren Harris: Well, I do think things are improving as I said, so maybe it's not being provided by the sort of medical services anymore, but I actually, I think, you know, with my experience of going to hospitals recently with other people, I could say that I think it is better now than when I was a kid. I'm old now, I'm 50 years old. So at the time I was going in for those appointments, this is sort of the eighties and I think we know a lot more about that sort of patient-doctor relationship than we did then. So I do think we've made great strides forwards and I think people are far more aware that what happens before the appointment and what happens after the appointment are also important in terms of people staying part of the process.
[00:08:19] Jenny Ousbey: What do you say, so in your role with the Childhood Eye Cancer Charity, I'm really interested, you know, because you're obviously talking to children from the generations after you who are experiencing what you experienced as a child. What are the most common questions that they ask and what's the kind of key pieces of advice that you're giving them as they go through those early stages of the journey.
[00:08:45] Darren Harris: I think our teenage years are generally challenging for everybody. So no matter, you know, what you've got going on, so I think their primary concerns are very much about those sort of social environments, how they interact with people, whether they're gonna be bullied or harassed, how their eye looks, how they make eye contact, how they navigate a sighted world and all of those, it's all of the things around that, which they tend to focus on and thinking back when I was at school, if someone wore glasses and stuff, they got teased just for wearing glasses, didn't they? So, you know, you were called all sorts of names just for just wearing glasses, so you can imagine if your eyes don't look normal or you have a squint or you're not looking where society tells you who makes it look then. People pick up on all of those things and then you become like, you know, people isolate you or tease you about it, etc. So most of it is sort of just dealing with those very everyday scenarios of being bullied and discriminated and harassed.
[00:09:48] Jenny Ousbey: And how did you handle that and how did you build up that armour or that resilience to deal with, you know, those kind of situations?
[00:09:59] Darren Harris: That's a really good question actually and I think, you know, when we talk about, and I guess I have a very different approach to a lot of other people, I think and I think there's so much focus on sort of taking away the aggressor or the perpetrator in all these situations and I actually kind of believe that discrimination is almost a very natural thing. We all pick up on difference and notice difference and I really focus on what we can do as individuals to deal with that, because that's the bit we're in control of. I'm really not in control of what other people say and I can hope that they don't say anything and we can encourage them not to say anything. But there'll be someone somewhere who will make a comment when I'm walking down the street and so I have to learn strategies within myself to deal with those situations. I mean the most obvious one is to ignore it and I do remember that from school, for example, when people did tease me about stuff and I noticed when I was able to ignore it, they soon got bored of it and they moved on. They moved on to someone else or they just kind of gave up entirely, so that's one tool. Another tool is around just disclosure, you know, having that confidence and the courage to just speak to people and say, do you realise that really does upset me and that's really offensive? And it would be really nice if you didn't say it. Having that conversation and there are parents out there with young children now that are getting their kids to kind of go into class and show the other kids what a glass eye looks like, for example and almost deal with all of those questions up front, because those questions are in their head, irrespective of whether we talk about them openly or not. You know, I can be walking down the street and I'll hear a child make a comment about, oh, why is he carrying a cane? Why is he this, that, and the other? And you hear parents come going, shh, kind of trying to quiet them down because they're kind of embarrassed or they think that's offensive. But actually that child is just really curious and wants to know and if we can be more open and have those conversations, and so I will, so I'll stop them and say, you know, sometimes I'll do that if I've got the time and said, Oh, you know, the reason why I use a cane is for this, and this is what it does and you know, do you want to hold it or whatever, you know, you engage with that child and you take away that stigma of, you know, that some strange person doing something really different to what I know to, Oh, now I get it.
[00:12:24] Jenny Ousbey: I think that's brilliant and I think that kids have, they're beautifully transparent, aren't they? In terms of how they think and I think that, as you say, often it's the adults that, feel like they need to be made comfortable with difference and I think kids are very matter of fact, aren't they? So I bet when you tell them, well, I use a cane because I, you know, I can't see, that they probably just go, oh, okay, and walk on. You know, I have a seven year old and I think when you treat their questions seriously and when you give them a matter of fact answer, I think often they just take it on board. You said those times where you've used the tool of explaining or confronting and saying, well, actually what you've just said really upsets me, what have people's reactions been when you've explained how it's made you feel when they've made comments?
[00:13:13] Darren Harris: Sometimes it's something that they go away and think about and reflect and you know often when I do confront people I know or challenge people, I will say listen you don't have to come up with an answer now I'm not expecting to say sorry or apologise for something that you may not even think you've done anything wrong. You know, just go away and have a think about it and sometimes I'm like that, you know, when I'm challenged about stuff, I feel if you put me on the spot and put me under pressure, I'm likely to kind of react negatively or aggressively, I'll want to fight back and defend my corner. But sometimes, you know, I go away and have a think about it and I'll come back a day later, a couple of days later, and said, you know what, you were right. But sometimes when you're in a school environment and you do something wrong and you know, you're forced to sort of say sorry now and it's like, you haven't processed at this point, you know, what you've done, you know, you don't feel you've done anything wrong, yet you've been told that you've got to say something in response and so it kind of becomes confrontational. So sometimes for some of us, you know, we need a bit of time and space to just process what we've heard and what we've seen.
[00:14:22] Jenny Ousbey: Yeah, absolutely and moving on to your sports career, I'm really interested for you to tell us more about how sport felt like it was an outlet. So it felt like, you know, it was something that you loved and something that you excelled at. So football obviously was your kind of first sporting career and then you made the switch to judo. So tell us a bit about what you got out of football and judo and why you made the switch.
[00:14:49] Darren Harris: Ah, well, sometimes I, say that football is the best teacher I've ever had and I've had some wonderful teachers by the way, so that's not a diss to the teachers, but it teaches you everything about life. It teaches you how to deal with pressure, communication, teamwork, you know, when you're not performing, you know, what is it that affects your confidence, your motivation, all of those aspects, dealing with adversity, resilience. So sport literally taught me all of the tools that I need for life, no doubt about it and because I started so young, I think, you know, I've developed a lot of those coping mechanisms, which have just helped me in every walk of life that I've been in and so yeah, sport, it's a, it is a microcosm of life, you know, when you go away on tournaments, you're put in a melting pot of, you don't necessarily get on with all your teammates, people could be in a work environment where they don't get on with their colleagues, but you've still got a collective goal and you've got to achieve that outcome and if you don't like some of the people on your team and we share rooms with people, hopefully you share a room with someone that you do get on with, but it's quite a close relationship, isn't it? You know, lots of people don't share rooms with, you know, strangers really and sort of thrown into that environment and you're just away from all of your creature comforts when you're abroad, you're on a camp and the food's different, you know, the bed's different, there is no real point where you can kind of go and relax and kind of be yourself. So it just puts you in this environment which is really alien and the more you're there the more you get used to that and then you kind of, you're just able to deal with things that others can't because you're put in these challenging situations every single time you pull on a shirt.
[00:16:39] Jenny Ousbey: That's quite interesting. So how did you manage the transition from going from that team sport to judo? Now I'm no judo aficionado, but I do know that it's not a team sport. I imagine you have people around you and you have fellow competitors. So that's quite interesting because you clearly got a lot of energy and growth from being around a team, so tell me about that.
[00:17:02] Darren Harris: Well, I actually think that's, an incorrect distinction and so judo is perceived, I suppose, as an individual sport. But really I, once I was doing it for a while, I realised it was as much a team sport as anything else actually, you are so reliant on your teammates that you train with every single day. Those are the people, if you haven't got the right training partners to push you and to challenge you and to give you, you know, the sorts of problems that your opponents are going to give you, then you're just not going to be able to improve and so I know I remember moving from one training group to another training group purely because I thought the opportunities to improve would be better. So theoretically, that shouldn't really matter if it's an individual sport and it didn't matter what anyone else was doing and so, yeah, absolutely, you've got a team of people helping you and supporting you. Whether it's coaches, physios or doctors or whether it's the guys you train with every day or whether it's your family that you've got at home actually, everything we do in life relies on other people and so, I don't make that distinction between sort of team and individual sports anymore, although that was one of the reasons why I essentially went to judo from football because I kind of thought it was more in my own control, I didn't have to rely on other people, but actually I discovered that I relied on people just as much in judo as I did when I was playing football.
[00:18:28] Jenny Ousbey: Interesting. That's really interesting and I will have to brush up on my judo knowledge and learn more about how you can, yeah, interact with your fellow training mates.
[00:18:37] Darren Harris: We'll find a club near you! No problem!
[00:18:39] Jenny Ousbey: I'm sure we can find one. There's somewhere in West London, I'm sure. One of the things that I'm really interested in is about when we think about Change Makers, it's thinking about what has made somebody a change maker in the first place? And one of the things that I heard in one of your previous interviews was you were talking, you took a moment and you were talking about your dad and correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand his nickname was Pele and he also played football and I heard you talking about he refused to cut his dreadlocks off when he was playing and it just sparked to me something about, I wonder whether, again, making presumptions. I wonder whether some of Darren's kind of change making philosophy comes from his dad. That sounded like your dad was, you know, he wanted to change the world in his way as well, so tell me about that.
[00:19:34] Darren Harris: A rebel, a disruptor, whatever you want, yeah, absolutely, yeah. That's right, yeah, his nickname was Pele. He was a brilliant footballer and he'll still talk about it now, how he felt like, you know, he never got the opportunity to showcase, you know, his best self in essence and hopefully I've done some of that for him and he's really proud of what I've achieved. I guess, yeah, I've always been controversial, challenging, disruptive, I've always questioned authority. I've always questioned why things are the way they are and just because something's been done a particular way for 5 years, 50 years, 500 years, that doesn't mean it's the best way. I don't know if that's a genetic thing or an environmental thing, I'm not really sure, but I guess I was always in these kind of quite restrictive environments. You know, I went to a grammar school, but I also went to a boarding school and you know, it was full of rules and regulations and I just didn't do too well with all of those things and so yeah, I was constantly fighting the system, you know, physically, emotionally, mentally. I do remember having a conversation with my performance director, so this is a guy at the FA who was our performance director who had kind of led the program for years and I'd always argued with him, like pretty much every time I saw him about the way things were and what we needed to do to improve and there's this question by Jeff Bezos which says, you know, ask people what they say about you when you're not in the room and so, when he left and I went through the process of asking lots and lots of people, him and my coach and actually lots of people I'd fallen out with over the years, you know, what they thought about me, you know, what did they say about me when I'm not in the room and almost to a man, they all said that I was right, you know, they can reflect on what I said, you know, with the benefit of hindsight and can see that where I came from was from the heart, you know, I was doing it out of good, like, I wasn't doing it just to be difficult, this is what I truly believed was the best way for us to proceed and just because someone's in an elevated position, you know, you're a CEO of an organisation and so at the end of the day, you're the decision maker, you have the final say on something and sometimes when we have an environment, which is very sort of vertical, where you know, the coach is the person who's the decision maker, it's like, you can feel as a person beneath that you don't have a say and that you see things and you think that's not right and it takes a very strong leader, I think, to acknowledge that someone else actually might have a better suggestion than yourself and to be honest, most of them didn't. They just weren't that forward thinking.
[00:22:32] Jenny Ousbey: And that's really interesting about the people who you'd fallen out with, who then came back subsequently and said that you were right. So I've got a couple of questions on that because I feel like firstly, is there anything that you learned about yourself? So that in the... if you'd have done anything differently, could you have got them to agree with you in the room? I think that's the first question. I suppose the second one is how did that make you feel when they said, oh, actually you were right, because I think that sometimes people fall in two camps, don't they, often. It's people who feel like they can't speak truth to power in the room and they regret it afterwards and then sometimes there are people who do speak truth to power, but sometimes do it in a way where they can't get everyone on board. So, really interested to hear about what you've learned about yourself in those situations.
[00:23:24] Darren Harris: Oh, I guess the biggest learning I took from all of that is that it's about the method of delivery and so I guess nobody really wants to be shown up. I'll give you an example of this. So someone wrote on Facebook the other day that they were unhappy that people were plagiarising other people's content and he wanted to kind of fall them out and name and shame them, so to speak and I said, can you have a quiet word with him rather than name and shame him? Because if you attack me, I'm going to attack you back, that's just, that's how I am, that's my DNA, I don't really have like a backwards step. So if someone really wants to get in my face and they want to make it a war, then that's what it's going to be and so probably what I learned from these experiences was that, actually, I did that to them and they fought back, so they had to show that they're the boss and so, when I was kicked out the team, when I was, you know, when I was dropped, all of those things, when they tried to make an example of me, that was their way of asserting their authority and for some of those people, perhaps if I'd approached it differently and just, you know, had a quiet word of them, didn't try and embarrass them in front of other people, then they may well have responded to it differently.
[00:24:44] Jenny Ousbey: I think we've all gone through what you've gone through Darren and I've certainly learned lessons about how to do that in the right way and bring people on the journey and you know, that's why we work in communications. You were talking about being disruptive, being change making. So if you had to pick, what would you say is the most disruptive thing you've done in your life?
[00:25:07] Darren Harris: I suppose, yeah, not drinking actually is quite a big thing. It seems to be so normalised in society that the idea that you don't drink is this alien to almost everyone I meet. To the extent that when you make healthy choices for yourself that you're called a freak, you're called a health freak just because you want to do stuff that's going to make you feel better for a longer life, you know, maintain your brain cells, all of the things that we know. We saw this during lockdown that, you know, it was easy to close the schools and it was to close the pubs and it just baffles me and to a certain degree it was cultural that, you know, I didn't come from a family of drinkers, you know, I didn't grow up in a household where there was alcohol on show all the time, you know, I didn't have a mother who had a glass of wine with her dinner or anything like that, so it wasn't something I was brought up with. But then I went to university, and that's all I did for three years was drink. I was out six days a week, you know, my first, in fact, but I didn't intend to, you know, peer pressure. So I always remember my first night I drank orange juice, my second night I drank beer and the third night I threw up. It was like, well if I don't drink, I'm not actually going to see any of my friends, you know, or I'd have to hang out with boring people, the do gooders or whatever, so we've come to associate alcohol and drinking with having fun and that's what cool people do and so even though I made that step away from it for sporting reasons, ultimately I stopped drinking. So I wanted to give myself the very best chance of qualifying for the games and I knew it wasn't really gonna help my performance. And now I can kind of go home and go out and you know, say come home and have a clear head, you know, get up at dawn or whatever the following day and be good to go and so, but I still find it interesting how people find it so difficult to break that habit.
[00:27:07] Jenny Ousbey: Well, I think breaking any habit, particularly as you say, when it's woven into the cultural fabric of, you know, where we live, I think is really challenging. We talked about, you know, in different ways, how you've been a Change Maker. Is there anybody that you look up to who you feel like, wow, you know, they really inspire me or have inspired you at different points in your journey because they are trying to make change happen?
[00:27:31] Darren Harris: Yeah. So I think it's, really important, you know, when I speak now and I feel it's important that I keep challenging myself to remember what it's like to almost go through that journey. So, cause even though, it could be, so for me talking about exercise, for example, because I've done it for so long, it's so ingrained in me that I don't necessarily need to think about it. But for someone else making that journey, it's going to be really difficult. So then I have to try and find that equivalent thing for me that reminds me of what that might be like and so last year I did a triathlon and it involved this open water swim and for me that was like, my big challenge, it like, it freaked me out. It was one of those things where, you know, it's not like swimming in the pool where you've got a lane rope and it's only six feet deep and there's a lifeguard, you know, 20 meters away and the water's a nice temperature, you're just out in the open exposed and I was just really pleased that someone suggested it to me and got me on board and said, you know, come and join our team and do this triathlon and so I'm always looking at what other people are doing to sort of step out their comfort zone and do these and I'm not going to use the word crazy to be honest, because I just think inspiring things, because it can be so easy when someone says they, they want to run a marathon or they want to do an ultra or they want to, I've got a friend at the moment who is planning to swim the Atlantic.
[00:29:04] Jenny Ousbey: Wow.
[00:29:05] Darren Harris: Just seems out of this world and I'm just like, yeah, once you surround yourself with those sorts of people, then it, for me I just find it like, okay well, if they can do it, I can do it and it might not be a challenge of the same magnitude, but it's like, how can I get out of my comfort zone as well?
[00:29:26] Jenny Ousbey: So what's the next getting out of your comfort zone plan?
[00:29:31] Darren Harris: Nothing at the moment, any suggestions, anyone who watches this back, send me some suggestions. I did try and qualify for Paris actually, so last summer...
[00:29:45] Jenny Ousbey: Fantastic!
[00:29:45] Darren Harris: I was part of the World Games. We had the World Games in Birmingham, which was a qualification event for some of the events this year and I was watching the judo and they had like a new category which is, we call it the J1 category. So if you're totally blind, there's now a category for the J1s. But when I competed in judo, we were all in one category. So the party side guys and the totally blind guys were all in one category, which was definitely a disadvantage and so I thought to myself, well, A, if that had been around when I was competing, I would have definitely medalled at the games, no doubt about it. But B, maybe I can make it. So I actually had to go and I hadn't done judo for like 12 years and so I actually did try and qualify for Paris. Unfortunately, I didn't make it. So that was a minor disappointment, but I was so proud of myself for actually having to go and yeah, so, but I'm always looking for, new challenges, so if anyone's got one for me, let me know.
[00:30:51] Jenny Ousbey: We'll have a think, we'll make a list. I think we can, what, an ultra marathon, we could do some rally driving, we could do the next Olympics, what about taking up a completely different sport and then trying to qualify for the next Paralympics? There you go, that's my long term getting out of your comfort zone challenge for you, Darren.
[00:31:09] Darren Harris: Maybe archery.
[00:31:10] Jenny Ousbey: Oh, yeah, I think, yeah.
[00:31:12] Darren Harris: Something that doesn't involve running.
[00:31:14] Jenny Ousbey: What about, didn't they, isn't breakdancing an Olympic sport this year for Paris? I want to say that is, I'm pretty certain it is.
[00:31:24] Darren Harris: I am actually learning to dance at the moment. Yeah, actually. I mean...
so There you go.
I don't know if breakdancing is the next step for me, but yeah, watch this space.
[00:31:34] Jenny Ousbey: There you go, fantastic. Now, I think I'm right in saying you're a dad. So I really want to know, what do you think, because, you know, the next generation holds a lot of hope and promise and excitement in their hands. So I suppose, do you think that your children's generation will have the same or different opportunities to change the world or make a difference.
[00:32:01] Darren Harris: Yeah, I mean, every generation just faces different challenges. I don't think they're greater or less, but they're definitely different and the impact of technology is incredible actually. You know, one of the things I noticed so much working with young people is their inability to communicate with people outside their peer group. I now understand why that's the case and I think it's not their fault to a certain degree, you know, when we were kids, if I wanted, you know, you to come out and play, I had to knock on your door and speak to an adult and say, you know, can Jenny come out to play, please? And now you bypass all of that because you just send the text and say, I'm outside and so that opportunity to speak to people outside their peer group is actually gone away and so they've lost that skill. So they're becoming unskilled in certain areas and they're becoming upskilled in other areas, you know, cause the way they use technology and the speed that they do things is phenomenal. When we try and do things, it can take all day or it just doesn't happen at all and they just go, it's done. So there is certain areas where they're excelling, but there's other areas where they're really struggling and it's about us recognising those gaps for them, potentially and saying, okay, these are some of the deficiencies that, you know, technology is giving you and so you still need to be able to work on those areas so that you're still capable and competent in that area and communication is definitely that face to face communication. We've all got used to being on these calls now and I do remember like post lockdown going back into a conference and there was like 500 people in this room and I'm quite a social person but I did feel like I was being assaulted by just the noise and just being hit by this sound, these sound waves like buffeted, and I felt like I needed to go outside and have a little break. So I do get it, why some people are struggling in those environments, but the solution to me isn't, you know, staying away from those, because that really can't be the future.
[00:34:15] Jenny Ousbey: Absolutely and I think, you know, we've already talked about resilience, haven't we as well. So I think resilience combined with, you know, those different ways of communicating and connecting with, as you say, different generations. It's just so important in terms of how they take on the next challenges and opportunities, I think that technology and the rest of the world gives them. What about, I know that you quite often go into schools and you talk to school children about your journey. What do you notice, if anything, in terms of the questions that you're asked in schools and how that's helped you learn or grow as a person?
[00:34:54] Darren Harris: The number one question I'm guaranteed to be asked is, why do I wear glasses? That comes up every single time, definitely in primary schools and even sometimes in secondary schools. It's like, well, you know, if you can't see, why do you need to wear glasses? Or, you know, et cetera, et cetera and so, what I've learned from that, and again, you know, we were talking earlier about how adults react to that situation. So I know I've heard teachers kind of try and steer them away from that question because they know the answer, but the kids don't know the answer, so that's why they've asked and so I can use that as an opportunity to talk about all sorts of things. So I tell them a couple of stories, like one that it stops my eyes from getting dry. So obviously, when I had radiotherapy, it destroyed my tear ducts and I don't produce tears in my eyes. So I have to use eye drops, but wearing glasses actually stops my eyes drying out. But the other reason is because when I was a kid, my little cousin saw my eye and she was really scared by it and you know, she went and hid in the corner and was sort of screaming and crying and I tell them this story about, you know, how everybody went to come for her and nobody came to me and then I showed her my eye. You know, those who want to see it, and I always give them a choice, I said, you know, if you don't want to see it, then obviously look away or keep your eyes closed, but those who do want to see it, because actually they do and then it becomes a vehicle to talk about how we treat other people who look different from ourselves, you know, the sorts of things that we bully people about, or tease people about, and also a bit of perspective on maybe some of our own imperfections, you know, that maybe we've got a spot on our face or we've got a mark on our jumper or something like that and you can go, you know, is it really that big a thing? But it then becomes this vehicle for them to open up. So often after those sessions, I get kids coming up to me and you know, now opening up, sometimes the first time about stuff that's going on in their own lives. So it just becomes this really powerful way of connecting with people and sometimes we have to lead by example, you know, if we want other people to share stuff, then we have to share stuff first, and we have to be vulnerable first before you know, by that gives them permission then to open up.
[00:37:07] Jenny Ousbey: I think that's such a beautiful example of the power of storytelling as well, you know, you telling that story of a moment of profound trauma and vulnerability and I think that's sparking them to tell you their stories and I think that's ultimately for me about why I work in healthcare communications for example, because I believe that if you tell the stories of people, then we will help improve everybody's health. It will help, you know, make sure that we can enhance the lives of everybody's wellbeing. So yeah, I think, you know, we've been telling stories since the dawn of time and there's a reason for it, you know. Is there anything that you wanted to say or that we haven't covered in the questions or the conversations that you want to get across?
[00:37:55] Darren Harris: I suppose for me it's everybody looking for their why, I guess, of why they need to be healthier, engage in that process, because there's no doubt about it that it's very difficult to live a healthy life, you know, there were so many distractions, whether it's cost, whether it's time, whatever it is and for me, knowing that I've got bilateral retinoblastoma, knowing that I've got a genetic form of cancer, knowing that I've got this defective RB1 gene in every cell of my body means that I'm at a higher risk of a second cancer and so those lifestyle choices for me, you know, of not drinking, of not eating sugar, of exercising, you know, every day if I can, are driven by that desire to make sure that I not only live a long life, but a healthy life as well and I guess for all of us, there has to be a why, because I think everybody knows the how, everyone knows, everybody knows how to run, at the end of the day, you don't need to be taught how to do it, but what you need to find is the motivation to do it and that's the why and so yeah, everybody needs to really sort of look in the mirror and find their reason why.
[00:39:05] Jenny Ousbey: And what's your why?
[00:39:06] Darren Harris: Yeah, I want to be around for my kids, you know, my eldest son asks, you know, when you can come running with me, because he sees me going for a run. But I don't want to be at a point when he's old enough to come running with me that I can't actually run with him. So that's kind of motivating me to kind of keep at it is, you know, because you can be that parent who sort of sits on the park bench and you know, you play fetch with the dog and you sort of chuck the ball and the kid comes running after it. But I still want to be able to engage and take part and, you know, fight and wrestle with my boys and stuff, you know, for as long as possible.
[00:39:42] Jenny Ousbey: Well, I want to be able to hear about a father son ultramarathon when he's old enough to do it. Then I look forward to that being a challenge that you take on together and final question from me, what does being a Change Maker mean to you? So people define change making in different ways. How would you define it?
[00:40:01] Darren Harris: For me, I think you've got to practice what you preach. You've got to live by example. No one wants to be in a situation where you're telling people how to live their lives when you're not doing it yourself, that's just for me being authentic, so that's my method.
[00:40:17] Jenny Ousbey: Thank you so much, Darren. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today.
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