Sir John Key was one of the guests on this season of Ask Me Anything. File photo / Greg Bowker
Sir John Key was one of the guests on this season of Ask Me Anything. File photo / Greg Bowker
Another season of the NZ Herald podcast, Ask Me Anything, hosted by former deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett, has drawn to a close. While you wait for the next season out later this year, enjoy some of the best advice from our guests on the most recent season.
Sir John Key on how to be ambitious and find success
“Mum was a massive driver on the education side. I remember when I came home, like all children do when I was 15 and 16, and said, ‘Right, I’m gonna leave school and do something else’, which in this case was train horses. That was crazy. Anyway, she said no, and I said, well, let’s have a discussion about it. She went, no. That was it. There was no discussion and it wasn’t just, I was going to university, I was gonna go to university do accounting and economics. They were the only topics allowed. Like it was unbelievable.
“But on the other side of the coin, she’d come out - Austria invaded by the Nazis, ended up in the UK, ended up with a husband that died when I was five or six, and so had seen her life completely ripped into pieces and had realized that in life they can almost take anything away from you, particularly coming from a Jewish family in Austria - but the one thing they can’t take away from you is education.”
Dr Lucy Hone, author of Resilient Grieving. Photo / Supplied
Dr Lucy Hone on how to grieve
“Tom Attig, who is one of the earlier researchers in bereavement once said to me, there’s a difference between your grief reaction, which is just all of those visceral things that you feel in the immediate, and you can’t control those, and then there is your grief response, which is how you choose to respond to what has happened to you.
“And there is so much choice in that, and you have to choose life, and hope is such a powerful force, you know, it’s such a tiny little word.
“And in Resilient Grieving, I talk about Chris Feudtner, he was the pediatric oncologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and he came to talk to us about hope. And I remember thinking, seriously, what hope can there be in your job? And he told us about when he has to give parents that awful diagnosis that their child is going to die, he then spends time with them and eventually in that conversation he arrives at a point where he says to them, given all hope feels lost, what are you hoping for now? Mm. And this unearths the fact that we don’t just have one singular hope in life. And so what, what are you hoping for now?
And I remember thinking after Abby died, what am I hoping for now? And I’m hoping that I can keep our family together, that we will go on and live happy, engaged, meaningful lives together. And so it sort of switches your true north.”
Broadcaster Paul Henry believes Scott Watson's conviction is a miscarriage of justice. Photo / Michael Craig
Paul Henry on how to live authentically
“I’ve always been able to think about what’s the worst that can happen. And when you’re being bullied at school, and I was bullied quite a lot, cause I looked weird, I was the kid in the school in the middle of winter in England that came from the mother who was working travel shifts in a plastic bag factory, couldn’t afford shoes, so I had an old pair of sandals.
“I’d walk through the snow to school in an old pair of sandals, and they called me Jesus Boots. And I was persecuted bitterly, and I can remember walking in there and thinking, ‘Oh, here we go again, Jesus Boots is about to arrive at school’, and, and I used to think, but what’s the worst that can happen? I mean, I might even be beaten up today, but actually, you know, it’s only for a few more years.
“People used to say, when I started out in television, ‘Are you nervous?’, And I used to say no, because I know nerves won’t help me. You know, there aren’t 400 people sitting behind me who will die if I make a mistake. It’s not brain surgery.”
Te Kahukura on how to be financially independent
“I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad when I was eight. After I read that, I called my nan up and I was like, ‘Nan, I need to have an important conversation with you. I need to check that you are maximising your accounts for compound interest’, and she’s like, ‘Kahu, what are you doing? Aren’t you supposed to be at school or something?’
“But it was conversations like that I was having as a young person to actually learn about this, and then I continued to do it. I watched heaps of YouTube videos about money and investing.”
Psychologist Nigel Latta is fronting a new TVNZ series called You've Been Scammed. Photo / Supplied
“I would never, and I’m not giving financial advice, I’m just saying as a personal choice, I would never invest any money with anyone where I couldn’t go into a brick and mortar place and sit down in an office of a place that’s been there for a while and talk to an actual human.
I think it’s different for platforms like Sharesies and those kinds of things because that has its own stuff around it, but I would never Google something, go to a website and invest money in anything unless I could actually physically go to a building and sit down and talk to.”
“Most people are good and most things are fine. But I was always kind of quite vigilant. I’m super vigilant now.”
Reality TV producer Dame Julie Christie. Photo / Supplied
Dame Julie Christie on how to have a good work ethic
”The best thing at all of all you can do is absolutely do something you love. So it took me till I was 27 to find something I was really good at, and if your job can be your passion, then you know that makes your great work ethic.
“My first job was actually working in the hospital laundry just before I went off to Polytechs, so I’ve done all sorts of jobs. But I think that if you can take pride in it or you can be the best at it. I imagine if you’re a housemaid in a hotel room, you can still be really great at your job because you just do the best. So the best that you can be, I think is the great work ethic. And don’t blame Your work unhappiness on everybody else. What I can control is what I can make better. So I always tried to make better the things I could control - the things I couldn’t control, what can you do about it?”
“A 30-year goal is definitely the key to breaking away from the pack. You see, very, very few people have a clear direction for 30 years. It’s amazing when I give speeches even to 1000, 2000 people, and I ask people to put their hands up if they have a clear 30-year direction, and honestly, I’d be lucky if there’s one or two.
“So if one can plan sufficiently. And I’ll tell you how to do that. It is possible to move so quickly ahead of everybody else because you know clearly where you’re going. A lot of people have one-year goals, two-year goals, maybe five-year goals, but if you have a long one, it gets you moving.”
New Zealand drag queen Anita Wigl'it. Photo / Supplied
Anita Wigl’it on how to live positively
“I have an older brother and myself and he kind of dealt with things quite negatively and always saw the bad side of things, and I kind of went the other way and saw the good things and everything. And I think that that’s just stuck with me - rightly or wrongly, I’ve always kind of chosen the positive outlooks.
“And it doesn’t mean to say that I don’t see the negatives too, it’s just, I think in life we’ve almost got options. As much as we react to things, we have our reaction first of all.”
