The Colin Rooney Podcast

Why can an entire nation tear someone to pieces online in April, only to sob with national pride and wave flags for them in May?

In this episode of The Colin Rooney Podcast, Colin breaks down the historic and chaotic Eurovision 2026 victory of Bulgarian singer DARA with her track "Bangaranga." But this isn't a music review. It's a deep-dive look into a psychological horror show—and a masterclass on how to survive it.

We pull back the curtain on the hidden social machinery that governs our daily decisions, including:

• Social Proof (Robert Cialdini): Why crowds don't actually judge you—they just watch each other.

• Conformity (Solomon Asch): The terrifying 1950s experiment proving why 1/3 of us will deny our own eyes just to fit in.

• Preference Falsification (Timur Kuran): How a whole country can fake their public opinions overnight.

• The Bandwagon Trap in Business: Why copying your competitors sands off the only asset that makes your brand uncopyable: you.

The crowd will always try to write your ending. This episode is about how you take the pen back.

Pull up a chair. Let's talk.

Twenty years ago I read a book called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. I can't remember a single word that was in it — just the title. And it turns out the title was the whole book.

This episode is about fear. Not lions and heights — the quiet stuff that actually runs our lives. The fear of failing. The fear of what people think. And the fear of a future that hasn't happened and, it turns out, almost never does.

Recently something shifted for me, and it came in two parts. Part one: I finally got a hold on not caring what people think, and it felt brilliant. Part two — the honest bit nobody admits — I realised I do still care. Just differently. If 5 of 10 people in a room think I'm full of shit, fine, half don't. But if all 10 do? Then maybe I am. So it's not that I don't care what people think — I care what everyone thinks. And that's not weakness. The trouble is my anxious brain takes the one person who frowned and convinces me it's the whole room.

Gary Vee's right — most of the time nobody's even thinking about you. This is the layer underneath that.

No fluff. Just the research, an honest look at my own head, and a promise to report back.

Pull up a chair.

— What we get into — Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway — why the goal was never to be fearless The disaster films we direct in our own heads — and why 91% of them never get released Why we're terrible at predicting how bad the future will actually feel (the impact bias) Gary Vee was right: nobody's thinking about you nearly as much as you fear The liking gap: people actually like us more than we think The honest twist — I'm not a narcissist, I do care, and here's why that's healthy Why one frown beats nine smiles (negativity bias) — and how your brain turns one critic into the whole room What to actually do: name the trailer, count the room, remember the liking gap

— The research, the people, the receipts —

Susan Jeffers, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway https://www.amazon.com/Feel-Fear-Do-Anyway/dp/0345487427

Daniel Gilbert & Timothy Wilson — affective forecasting and the impact bias (we overestimate how bad the future will feel) https://dtg.sites.fas.harvard.edu/Wilson & Gilbert (Advances).pdf

"91.4% of worries never come true" — study on worry outcomes https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7233480/

Gary Vaynerchuk — "nobody gives a sh*t about you, they've got their own problems" https://www.facebook.com/gary/videos/once-you-realize-that-nobody-gives-a-sht-about-you-they-got-their-own-fcking-pro/828848769911349/

Erica Boothby, Gus Cooney, Gillian Sandstrom & Margaret Clark — the liking gap (people like us more than we think) https://clarkrelationshiplab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/BoothbyCooneySandstromClark2018.pdf

Roy Baumeister et al., "Bad Is Stronger Than Good" — the negativity bias https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71516.pdf

Solomon Asch — the conformity experiments (going along with the wrong consensus) https://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html

Why we're wired to care what others think — social rejection and survival (APA) https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/04/rejection

A few years ago I had one of the best jobs of my life — Head of F&B for Mad Monkey, running hospitality across 20-odd locations in 6 countries. And every Monday there was a group call with the founders and the senior team. The panic would start the night before. By the time it came round to me, my face was so hot you could've fried an egg on it. Pure panic. And it was never about being scared of them — it was the pressure I put on myself to be great, and that pressure is exactly what flattened me. Those calls played a real part in me walking away from a job I loved.

This episode is about that. Why it happens. Why trying harder makes it worse. And the fix — which it turns out a good mate handed me years ago on the back of a motorbike, and I never thought to use anywhere else.

It's not on a stage. It's the Monday call, the networking pitch, the conversation at the bar where nobody's even watching. If you freeze exactly when you most want to be good — this one's for you.

No fluff. Just the research, an honest experiment I'm running on my own life, and a promise to report back.

Pull up a chair.

— What we get into — Why it's not "too much passion" — it's social perfectionism and self-focus (you're watching yourself instead of being there) Anticipatory anxiety — why the night before is worse than the moment itself The white bear: why "don't freeze" guarantees you freeze "We steer where we stare" — the proven law that your body goes where your eyes go Daryl, the motorbike, and a question I can't stop turning over Why trying harder jams the system (and what happened to Simone Biles) The quiet eye — and the good news that calm is a trainable skill Three things you can actually do: look at them not you, swap "don't" for "do", and stop telling yourself to calm down

— The research, the people, the receipts —

Ellen Hendriksen — social anxiety, perfectionism, self-focus (How to Be Yourself) https://www.ellenhendriksen.com/

Anticipatory anxiety — "bleeding before you are cut," ADAA https://adaa.org/learn-from-us/from-the-experts/blog-posts/consumer/anticipatory-anxiety-bleeding-you-are-cut-0

Daniel Wegner et al. (1987), "Paradoxical effects of thought suppression" (the white bear), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology https://dtg.sites.fas.harvard.edu/DANWEGNER/pub/ECS.pdf

"We steer where we stare" — driver gaze and steering, ScienceDirect (2024) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590198224000782

Keith Code — "look where you want to go," motorcycle riding (A Twist of the Wrist) https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/one-tip-look-where-you-want-to-go

Sian Beilock — choking under pressure and working memory (explicit monitoring) https://news.uchicago.edu/story/psychologist-shows-why-we-choke-under-pressure-and-how-avoid-it

Gabriele Wulf — external vs internal focus of attention (constrained action hypothesis) https://gwulf.faculty.unlv.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Chua_EF_meta-analyses_PB_2021.pdf

Simone Biles & "the twisties" — what it is, Cleveland Clinic via TIME https://time.com/7004666/what-are-the-twisties-gymnastics-cause-treatments-simone-biles-condition/

Joan Vickers — the "quiet eye" research https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3111367/

Martin Oscarsson et al. (2020), approach vs avoidance goals (58.9% vs 47.1%), PLOS ONE https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0234097

Alison Wood Brooks (2014), "Get Excited: Reappraising pre-performance anxiety as excitement," JEP: General https://www.hbs.edu/ris/download.aspx?name=xge-a0035325 (2).pdf

This one was supposed to be about marketing. It's not. I went down a hole researching fear, came out the other side with something better, and I'm doing the whole episode backwards — giving you the answer first, then spending the rest proving I'm not mad.

The answer: my mentor is me. Not me now. Future me. The man I want to become. I've made him real, and now when I'm scared, or bored, or stuck, I ask him what to do.

I take Simon Sinek's "Start With Why" and flip it to "Start With Me." I dig into the science of why the future versions of us run the show whether we build them on purpose or not. I steal a one-question decision filter off a Formula One legend. I'm honest about exactly where the proven science stops and where I start making it up. And I give my own eulogy, out loud, which was harder than I expected.

No fluff. No hacks. Just the research, an honest experiment I'm running on my own life, and a promise to report back on whether it actually works.

This is me learning in real time. If you get one thing out of it, that's the win.

Pull up a chair.

— What we cover — Simon Sinek and the Golden Circle (and why I'm flipping it) "Possible Selves" — the 40-year-old science of your future self Why the gap between who you are and who you want to be is the fuel, not the problem How you act your way into an identity, not think your way into it Frank Williams' one-question filter: "Will it make the car go faster?" Where the real science stops and Colin starts guessing Your own eulogy — the Michael Gerber exercise, flipped Four things you can actually do Monday morning

— The research, the people, the receipts —

Simon Sinek, Start With Why / The Golden Circle https://simonsinek.com/golden-circle

Markus, H. & Nurius, P. (1986), "Possible Selves," American Psychologist https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0003-066X.41.9.954

Higgins, E. T. (1987), Self-Discrepancy Theory https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1987-34444-001

Daryl Bem, Self-Perception Theory https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/psychology/self-perception-theory

James Clear, Atomic Habits — Identity-Based Habits https://jamesclear.com/identity-based-habits

Frank Williams, "Will it make the car go faster?" — from Performance at the Limit (Jenkins, Pasternak & West) https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/performance-at-the-limit/enabling-leadership/39CD695E0D36DCE344869A7C077397D2

Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited — the funeral / Primary Aim exercise https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/79122-the-e-myth-revisited-why-most-small-businesses-don-t-work-and-what-to-d

Benjamin Hardy, Be Your Future Self Now (the closest thing to what I'm doing) https://www.amazon.com/Your-Future-Self-Now-Transformation/dp/1401967574

Three thousand years ago, the wisest man who ever lived had seven hundred wives. And three hundred concubines on top of that. The man wrote the book on wisdom and couldn't apply a word of it to himself.

His name was Solomon. And he's the reason this episode exists.

This one is the most personal one I've done yet. It's about the gap between giving advice and taking it. Between knowing what to do and actually doing it. I'm brilliant at giving advice. Properly. The kind that, if you took it, would change your business and your life. But me taking my own advice? I'm fucking terrible at it. And I wanted to know why.

Some of what's in this episode:

Why the wisest man in the Bible had a train-wreck personal life, and what that tells us about all of us.

Why Steve Jobs refused life-saving surgery for nine months and tried fruit juice cleanses instead. The man who built the most rational company on earth couldn't make a rational decision about his own body.

The intention-behaviour gap. The actual data on how often we do the thing we genuinely intended to do. Spoiler, it's a lot lower than you think.

Why marriage counsellors have one of the highest divorce rates of any profession.

The five real reasons we do this, including the dark one nobody wants to admit. That giving advice itself gives us a dopamine hit, and we get the emotional payoff of progress without ever having to do the thing.

My own confession. The advice I give people every day that I don't take myself. Including the fact that episode one of this podcast was me hiding behind an AI voice while preaching the importance of being vulnerable.

And three actual fixes that work, according to the research. The Batman Effect. Implementation intentions. And the one nobody wants to hear about because it sounds soft, but the data is undeniable.

If you've ever felt like a hypocrite for giving brilliant advice you don't follow yourself, this one's for you. You're not a fraud. You're human. And there might just be a way out.

Pull up a chair. Pour yourself something. This one's a long one and it's a personal one.

Research Links & References (paste at the bottom of the same description box, leave a blank line first):

• Igor Grossmann – Solomon's Paradox research, University of Waterloo: https://uwaterloo.ca/wisdom-and-culture-lab/
• Grossmann & Kross, 2014 – Original Solomon's Paradox study in Psychological Science: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797614535400
• University of Michigan – How to give ourselves advice as good as we give others: https://news.umich.edu/how-to-give-ourselves-advice-as-good-as-we-give-others/
• M.D. Faries, 2016 – The Intention-Behaviour Gap meta-analysis (NIH): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6125069/
• The Decision Lab – Intention-Action Gap explained: https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/psychology/intention-action-gap
• Walter Isaacson – Steve Jobs biography (the cancer treatment chapter): https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Steve-Jobs/Walter-Isaacson/9781451648539
• Forbes – Steve Jobs' cancer treatment regrets: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/10/24/steve-jobs-cancer-treatment-regrets/
• The Guardian – Steve Jobs regretted delaying cancer surgery: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/oct/21/steve-jobs-cancer-surgery-regret
• Jeffrey Pfeffer & Robert Sutton – The Knowing-Doing Gap (Stanford Graduate School of Business): https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/knowing-doing-gap
• Lauren Eskreis-Winkler – University of Chicago research on giving advice and motivation: https://news.uchicago.edu/story/unmotivated-people-benefit-more-giving-advice-receiving-it
• Roy Baumeister – Ego depletion and willpower research: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39278166/
• American Psychological Association – The power of self-control: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/01/self-control

• Peter Gollwitzer – Implementation Intentions ("if-then" planning) research: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10463283.2020.1808936

I owe you an apology.

Episode one was me hiding behind an AI voice. Eleven Labs, recreating my voice, because I was too scared to sit down and record myself. Funny reasons aside, the real reason was fear. So this time I thought, fuck it, this is me. Like me or not. Here we go.

This episode is about procrastination. And I'm qualified to talk about it because I've been one of the worst procrastinators you'll ever meet. Two reasons. One — when I was in heavy depression, which I'll get into properly in a future episode on how I beat it. And two — I get bored. I chase the shiny fun stuff and spend hours putting off the boring shit that actually needs doing.

I went deep on the research for this one. Real-world stuff, fun stuff, the science only where it earned its place. What I found surprised me.

Some of what I get into:

• Why procrastination has nothing to do with time management — and what it's actually about (the experts have been getting this wrong for decades)
• Tim Pychyl and Fuschia Sirois on why we delay things to dodge feelings, not work
• Adam Grant from Wharton on why moderate procrastination might actually make you more creative (with examples like Da Vinci taking sixteen years on the Mona Lisa)
• John Perry's "structured procrastination" — the Stanford professor who built a career out of putting things off
• Why your brain literally sees your future self as a stranger — and why that's the real reason you skip the gym
• The doom-scroll problem and how TikTok is basically a one-armed bandit you carry in your pocket
• Why men procrastinate more than women but report being happier about it
• Why beating yourself up makes it worse, not better
• 
  
• Notable procrastinators throughout history — Leonardo, Victor Hugo, Margaret Atwood, Mozart, Frank Lloyd Wright — and what they teach us
• The Harvard study on how toxic procrastination links to depression, anxiety, and cardiovascular disease
• Why ADHD procrastination is a different beast entirely (and shouldn't be lumped in with the rest)

If you've ever stared at a to-do list and somehow ended up reorganising your sock drawer instead — this one's for you.

Pull up a chair. Grab a coffee. Or don't. Do it tomorrow. I'm not your dad.

Research Links & References (paste at the bottom of the same description box, leave a blank line first):

• Tim Pychyl – Carleton University research on procrastination as emotion regulation: https://carleton.ca/psychology/people/tim-pychyl/
• Fuschia Sirois – Durham University, meta-analysis on procrastination and health: https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/fuschia-sirois/
• BBC Worklife – The real reasons you procrastinate: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200121-why-procrastination-is-about-managing-emotions-not-time
• Dr. Joseph Ferrari – Procrastination research, DePaul University: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dont-delay
• Adam Grant – NYT Op-Ed, Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/opinion/sunday/why-i-taught-myself-to-procrastinate.html
• John Perry – Structured Procrastination (Stanford): http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/
• Hal Hershfield – UCLA research on the future self as stranger: https://www.halhershfield.com/
• Piers Steel – The Procrastination Equation: https://www.procrastinus.com/
• Erhan Genç – Brain structure of chronic procrastinators (Ruhr University): https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180827180917.htm
• Gordon Flett & Paul Hewitt – Perfectionism and procrastination research: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167212445599
• Baylor University 2025 – TikTok and dopamine: https://news.web.baylor.edu/
• Jud Brewer – ADHD and procrastination: https://drjud.com/
• Solving Procrastination – Famous procrastinators through history: https://solvingprocrastination.com/famous-procrastinators/
• NIH – Sirois & Pychyl meta-analysis on procrastination and well-being: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

First episode. Here we go.

This one's about the gap between being a boss and being a leader — and why most of us, myself included, have been the wrong one at some point without realising it.

I talk about where our management style actually comes from (spoiler: usually the boss we hated ten years ago, or a parent), why accountability is the hardest skill nobody teaches you, and what the research actually says about toxic workers, psychological safety, and the cost of bad management.

Some of the stuff I get into:

• Why 89% of new hires fail — and it's almost never about skills
• The Alan Mulally story at Ford and the red slide that changed everything
• What Google's Project Aristotle found out about high-performing teams
• The Harvard study that put a number on what a toxic employee actually costs you
• Satya Nadella, Doug Conant, and the quiet power of humility
• The Ted Lasso line that sums up the whole episode in five words

If you've ever been given a title and quietly wondered whether you deserve it — this one's for you.

Pull up a chair. Grab a coffee. Let's get into it.

Research & references mentioned in this episode:

Leadership IQ — Why New Hires Fail: https://www.leadershipiq.com/blogs/leadershipiq/35354241-why-new-hires-fail-emotional-intelligence-vs-skills

Gallup — State of the American Manager: https://www.gallup.com/services/182138/state-american-manager.aspx

Gallup — Onboarding & Retention: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/235121/why-onboarding-experience-key-retention.aspx

Harvard Business School — Toxic Workers study (Housman & Minor): https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication Files/16-057_d45c0b4f-fa19-49de-8f1b-4b12fe054fea.pdf

NPR — Coverage of the Toxic Workers study: https://www.npr.org/2015/12/16/460024322/harvard-business-school-study-highlights-costs-of-toxic-workers

Google re:Work — Project Aristotle: https://rework.withgoogle.com/intl/en/guides/understand-team-effectiveness

Alan Mulally at Ford — Harvard Business School case: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=59955

Satya Nadella & Microsoft's growth mindset — Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanderark/2018/04/18/hit-refresh-how-a-growth-mindset-culture-tripled-microsofts-value/

Doug Conant — 30,000 handwritten notes (Forbes): https://www.forbes.com/sites/rodgerdeanduncan/2018/04/06/close-encounters-leadership-and-handwritten-notes/

Gallup — Cost of poor mental health at work ($47.6B): https://www.gallup.com/workplace/404174/economic-cost-poor-employee-mental-health.aspx

Bandura's Social Learning Theory — Simply Psychology: https://www.simplypsychology.org/bandura.html

Simon Sinek — Leaders Eat Last / Circle of Safety: https://simonsinek.com/stories/the-circle-of-safety

Amy Edmondson — The Fearless Organization: https://fearlessorganizationscan.com/the-fearless-organization