“I’m building the plane as I fly it” – a curious few words Dr Tharaka Gunarathne said to me on more than one occasion during my sit down with him.
Better known simply as Dr T, the TV doctor and psychiatrist is living a unique life that’s taken him from clinician work in Aberdeen to the bright lights of the BBC, ITV and Channel 4…and that’s just the last three years.
“Some of these things you plan and some of these things you have to colour in as you go and for me it was a bit of a mix,” he said.
Pre-pandemic, Tharaka had been a full-time consultant psychiatrist at NHS Grampian.
It was nearly ten years ago, in 2016, when his first real break came after delivering his first Ted Talk.
“That opened the door to the world outside of tradition medicine,” he said.
By his own admission, Dr T spent a number of years living a “double life”.
“It was at that time when I was doing television and traditional medicine when I thought that now could be the time to risk taking the jump, that’s what I did, and the rest is history in the making.”
His work as an events speaker was perhaps the most natural transition from clinical psychiatry.
He seen the move as “scaling up”.
“As I was working as a doctor, a big part of that is education of medical students and other doctors. I was doing that month-in, month-out and loved it.
“In a clinic I reach one person per hour but maybe through a live keynote it’s thousands and through television it’s millions. The idea of scaling up was really appealing.
“I feel like the greatest distance between people is misunderstanding. If you can close the misunderstanding gap by making something that’s very complex very simple, then people can do something with that.
“That’s what I want for people, it’s not just information, it’s transformation. I want to give someone something that’s factual, that’s insightful, that then they can apply and then have a better life.
“We can talk about neuroscience in a complicated way, or I could talk about the hippocampus in your brain and how that’s like hippos, in a university campus, memorising stuff. When people get that, then they can do something with it and that’s the goal.”
Removing the scientific language is key to almost everything Tharaka has ever done.
The second Ted Talk he delivered proved to be fruitful.
“I was headhunted by television as a memory coach for celebrities,” he said.
“Interestingly, the offer for the programme came from another source a couple of years beforehand and it went nowhere.
“I was door knocked through email and I said yes but it didn’t really go anywhere and then a couple of years later the offer came back.
“I jumped on a video call and they said: ‘wow, we’re interested, we’ll fly you down to London, have another conversation with producers’.
“All of this was new to me, I had no idea what I was doing, didn’t have an agent at the time, didn’t have anyone in entertainment, so I was just building the plane as I fly it.”
One of Tharaka’s earliest TV appearances was in Channel 4’s Can I Improve My Memory?
hosted by Sandi Toksvig.
During it, Dr T was tasked with improving the memories of a number of celebrities, ranging from former boxer Chris Eubank to Love Island winner Amber Gill.
“I was in the law library in London, training celebrities to improve their memory and the very next day I’d be in the clinic in Aberdeen doing a consultation and treatment on depression.
He added: “In the meantime, I was doing live on-stage speaking in the corporate sector for businesses helping them with mindset. I was doing a lot of live psychological education that’s practically applicable for people’s lives, mainly in the workplace.
“That was happening in my time outside of my more-than-full-time job in the hospital. I was doing more than 40-hours a week as a doctor, but I’d get up early and go to business breakfasts and speak there. As many speakers have to do you speak for free for ages.”
Having only spent a short period of time in Tharaka’s company, it’s hard to imagine him anywhere other than on TV, or performing on stage, or speaking at events.
One of his most recent TV appearances came on the BBC’s Morning Live, not long after he appeared on Big Brother Late and Live.
“I love being on set. What goes on behind the scenes, and the teams of people that had to pull together to make what you seen on television work.
“We have to do a like a hundred hours of filming for just one episode. I love that whole story and mystery and the teamwork behind it. I felt like there’s so much I could learn from media and take into the corporate world as well.”
Despite a love and passion for the cameras, a place he thrives, the corporate world is very much Dr T’s bread and butter.
But his energy and enthusiasm when speaking to me, or 1,300 at the Music Hall, or the whole country on the BBC, never wavers.
I asked him how he maintains it.
His reply: “I don’t even feel like I go to work anymore, I feel like it’s a joy.
“You often hear people say: ‘you’ve got to find what your passionate about in order to pursue that’. And there’s brain science behind that.
“When you’re at work and work gets busy and all you can think about is the next box to check off, the next email to clear. That uses certain types of thinking, certain brainwave activity.
“If you are cognisant of what motivates and what fascinates you, why you do what you do, what you love, it lights up certain areas of your brain that improve goal attainment probability.
“That means if I’m powered by passion, the chances of me achieving the goals that I set – and this applies not just for individual goals but for teams and organisations as well – is increased.”
Much of what Dr T teaches reverts back to the blue print he created: mind, action, profit.
“The word profit really just means progress and you can profit in so many different ways.
“Really what I’m talking about is progress-growth. Everyone says yes to growth.
“This blueprint I’ve created really just verifies that if you want to shape progress intentionally and improve it there’s a connection with what goes on in the brain.”
Dr T was keen to talk about how unlocking creative thinking can not only have a material impact on individuals, but Aberdeen as a city.
“Even for us in Aberdeen we would like to see the city profit.
“But it’s going to come from how we think and take action together,” he added.
“Szent-Györgyi, who discovered vitamin C, defined innovation as this: ‘I’m seeing what everyone is seeing but I’m thinking what no one else has thought’.”
It sounds easy in theory but is difficult in practice.
I asked the psychiatrist how to best unlock our creative minds.
“Our ability to generate ideas can vary dependent on how stressed we are, how much of a break we take, what we’re doing,” he said.
“Do you get your best ideas when someone is telling you off and shouting? No, it’s probably on a walk, or in the shower when you’re relaxed.
“If we are stressed, worried about everything that’s going wrong, if we’re having meeting after meeting back-to-back with no break, we aren’t going to create the ideas that we need.
“If we aren’t disciplined enough to rest, if we aren’t disciplined enough to agree with how our biology works, then we will never get those results.
“If we want to be more creative, we have got to create time to be creative.”
Perhaps appropriately, we ended our chat talking about the importance of mental health.
Simply put, Dr T said: “The healthier you are mentally, the more money you will make.
“That’s mind, action, profit.”
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