Katie Piper: Nine things we learned when she chatted to Joe Wicks

1. Affirmations are for everybody

Joe and Katie discuss her latest book, A Little Bit of Hope, which is all about affirmations. Katie says she knows some people are cynical about affirmations, the act of saying something out loud to help it come true, but she believes we’re all using them, whether we know it or not. “Everyone affirms every single day,” she says. “Some people use negative affirmations – ‘Today is going to be really bad’, ‘I’m fat’, ‘I’m stupid’… A positive affirmation is affirming who you are and what you want back from the world.” Katie suggests people be less British about them. “It may sound not very British. It may sound arrogant. Almost quite American. But you set yourself up for the results you want.”

2. The worst things that happen can be good for us

More than most, Katie has had to deal with very tough times. Her mindset is that there will always be a positive outcome. She partly puts this down to her parents, who she says have always given her consistency and love through everything she’s been through. “Some of the hardest things that happen to us turn out to be the best things that have happened to us,” she says. “Sometimes you don’t welcome change in your life, because change is scary and uncomfortable. Sometimes change has to be forced on you, but it can be a real catalyst for good.”

3. Success is not loving everything you do

Katie loves her work now, but there have been times in the past when work was unfulfilling. She trained as a beauty therapist, which she found boring. She has no problem with times when she doesn’t enjoy work. “There’s a weird thing in our society where we’re told we should love every path that we take,” she says. “We must love every job that we do. What that causes us to do is constantly seek distractions in tough times. It could be drugs, alcohol, sex, whatever. Or we seek new paths. We give up on everything because it’s too difficult or not working… We never lean into the learning process… The result is we never progress. We never find out what we love… It’s a cheesy thing to say, but the climb can be agonising, but the view is always worth the suffering.”

4. You should never take your body for granted

The 2008 acid attack left Katie blind in one eye and with significant injuries. Her long recovery completely changed her relationship with her body. “[Before], I always went to the gym and to be honest, it was all about just being slim,” she says. “When I got burned, I woke up from a coma and I had muscle deterioration in my legs and was unable to walk.” She spent a long time learning to walk again. “I made a promise to myself in intensive care that if I was going to get through this, I was never going to take my body for granted again.”

5. You can book time for nothing

Katie Piper and Gorka Marquez on Strictly Come Dancing in 2018

With eleven books under her belt, a busy media career and two kids, Katie doesn’t have a lot of downtime. She says she now schedules downtime in her diary. “I’ve learned to tap into myself and sometimes… I’ll book out two hours where I can just catch up on… nothing. Admin, Life. Walking. That really helps calm me down, because I can be quite hectic and highly strung.”

6. Confidence doesn’t mean always feeling amazing

Katie says her relationship with confidence has changed over the years. “To me, it’s authenticity,” she says. She wants to be the same person online or on TV as she is in real life. And she won’t change that to make people like her. “I’ve practiced acceptance, that I’m not going to be for everybody. And that’s okay. Trying to make everybody like you is exhausting… To me, confidence is not ‘they will like me’, confidence is ‘I’ll be fine if they don’t’.”

7. You should write yourself a fan letter

Katie advises that everyone write themselves a nice email. “It was advice that someone else gave me,” she says. “It’s really easy to be kind to friends and family, but we’re often our own harshest critics.” She says that whenever you’re feeling low or trying to solve a problem, “write yourself an email in the way you’d reply to a friend, because it will be with compassion. You’d never reply to a friend harshly… It would be solutions, it would be options… Read it out loud and speak those words of kindness to yourself.”

8. The placebo effect can be a good thing

Joe and Katie discuss supplements, which Katie is a big believer in. She thinks taking them helps her body but she’s aware that it may just be her perception. She doesn’t think that matters. The helpful thing for her is finding something that makes her get her day off to a positive start. “Even if it’s placebo, that placebo still works for me, because the night before, I get organised and put all my supplements out on the side… If I do all that right, then I want to have a good breakfast. Then I want to go for a run. So all the good stuff follows from that. It kind of sets me up to have a domino effect for a good day.”

9. Rejection is redirection

Katie says her career has been full of great opportunities but also things that haven’t gone her way. She chooses not to take rejection personally. “Rejection is just redirection and sometimes taking you to better things,” she says. She’s found herself in a place where she loves her work and the opportunities it brings to help people. Katie now champions a number of charitable causes, including working with women who’ve left violent relationships. “I think even if I wasn’t doing what I do publicly, with a platform, I would do it privately.” She’s learned to be extremely grateful that she loves what she does, even if it’s not always easy. “I’m passionate about what I’m doing and that is a great way to live. I’ve learned the hard way the fragility of life and how it can change in an instant. You best be doing something you really believe in because one day we’re all gone.”