Five-time world champion triathlete and screenwriter of the Oscar-winning 2022 war epic “All Quiet on the Western Front” testifies to the power of perseverance, sharing inspiring insights she learned about pleasing people, adversity, and staying committed on her journey to the pinnacle of two very challenging industries.
“Tiger Therapy,” the acclaimed podcast from knowledge infrastructure solution Tigerhall, welcomes five-time world champion professional triathlete and BAFTA-winning screenwriter Lesley Paterson to share an inspiring story of the heights you can reach when you are willing to confront seemingly impossible obstacles.
Paterson enjoyed an illustrious sporting career during which she earned five world championship titles — the 2011, 2012, and 2018 XTERRA Triathlon World Championships and the 2012 and 2018 ITU Cross Triathlon World Championships. For many people, a list of accomplishments like this would be more than enough to justify a quiet retirement, but Paterson kept going, pursuing a film career that involved moving from her home in Scotland to Los Angeles. The decision eventually led to co-writing the screenplay for 2022’s Oscar-winning “All Quiet on the Western Front.”
“I just have this unrelenting drive,” Paterson said in the podcast. “My husband says that it’s exhausting to be around, so I try my best […] to temper that now and again, but I don’t know where it comes from. It’s just this fire in the belly to just keep going. I have so much passion to do so many things and it’s both gotten me into trouble, but at the same time it’s helped me be successful.”
The Tiger Therapy podcast is dedicated to identifying self-doubts and limiting beliefs, something Paterson was quick to admit she struggled with. As revealed in “The Brave Athlete: Calm the F Down and Rise to the Occasion,” which Paterson co-wrote with her husband Simon Marshall, she found herself carrying the burden of other people’s expectations. During her time on “Tiger Therapy,” she shares how she developed an alter ego to help her overcome the limitations that people pleasing brought to her life.
“What your alter ego allows you to do is kind of embody the traits of your ideal you, who you want to be, without having to necessarily go through all the therapy to try and fix yourself,” Paterson said. “I grew up very worried that I was pleasing people, worried what the expectations on me […] and it really weighed me down, right? So developing this alter ego allowed me to not only sort of throw those shackles off of me and sort of not [care], so to speak.”
“Tiger Therapy” also explores the powerful connection between Paterson’s experiences as an elite athlete and her eventual success in the film industry. As the podcast’s host Pippa Woodhouse points out, athletes often leverage the mindset required for excelling at their sport to catapult them to success in other careers. Paterson shares that the lessons athletics taught her helped her to overcome the challenges she faced in Hollywood.
“I dealt with failure from a very young age and had to wrestle with what did that mean and how could I learn from it,” Paterson said. “We know that the brain changes [due to] neuroplasticity, it actually physically changes when we deal with adversity, and nowhere are you going to deal with more adversity than sport on a minute-by-minute basis, literally […] I dealt with chronic Lyme disease and injuries and a whole host of other things, so I think I’m just a very resilient person […] In the film business, you need that because you’re gonna have so many no’s [and] criticism. And to find the bright spark in that, to find the positivity or the positive aspect in any situation is only gonna help you.”
The adversity Paterson faced in the film industry included more than a decade of writing, waiting, and believing in herself after optioning the rights to Erich Maria Remarque’s classic anti-war novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” in 2006. Paterson’s efforts to support the project, which included using her triathlon winnings for financing, paid off in 2022 when the film received four Oscars and seven BAFTAs, including a Best Adapted Screenplay BAFTA for Paterson.
Woodhouse asked Paterson about her brief acceptance speech at the BAFTAs, during which she remarked that she is “just a wee Scottish lassie that wanted to tell a story that mattered.”
“I want people out there to believe that they might just be a wee Scottish lassie but they can do it,” Paterson says. “I don’t see myself on a pedestal, so it’s not that I doubt myself or I see myself smaller than. I want people to relate to me […] because it is such an impenetrable business but you can fight through and win the day.”
“Tiger Therapy” features candid conversations with global speakers who have experienced success on their own terms, defied expectations, shattered ceilings, and conquered self-doubt. Self-doubt, or low self-esteem, is a common struggle faced by professionals in today’s workforce. It can also have a severe impact on people’s lives, leading to low achievement and even burnout. “Tiger Therapy” recognizes these challenges and seeks to provide a solution through conversation.
To listen to Paterson’s episode of “Tiger Therapy” and learn more about the podcast, visit https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tiger-therapy/id1713333944.
Lesley Paterson
Lesley Paterson is a Scottish world champion triathlete, author, and Oscar and BAFTA-winning screenwriter and film producer. As a triathlete, she won the 2011, 2012, and 2018 XTERRA Triathlon World Championships as well as the 2012 and 2018 editions of the World Triathlon Cross Championships. With Ian Stokell, she co-wrote a screenplay based on the anti-war novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque, and acquired an option on the film rights for the book in 2006, which was eventually produced as the 2022 epic film of the same name and distributed by Netflix. Paterson won the 2022 BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, sharing it with Stokell and director Edward Berger. The film won a total of seven BAFTAs and four Oscars.
Tigerhall
Tigerhall is a knowledge infrastructure solution where subscribers can access bite-sized business-related content from top experts in their fields. The platform contains over 1,300 pieces of content in the form of podcasts, live streams, courses, and more. Tigerhall’s goal is to make professional development and business education affordable, and level the playing field for people to succeed in business despite outside circumstances, background, or financial situations. In the midst of a recession, and on the back of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tigerhall is making business education affordable and easily accessible. They are pioneering social learning, and changing how businesses engage in professional development. Leading clients include Spotify, HP, and Cisco.
Pippa Woodhead
Pippa Woodhead, Head of Podcasts at Tigerhall, has had her fair share of imposter syndrome moments in her career. This struggle inspired her to create “Tiger Therapy.” Originally from the UK, Pippa has lived in India and Thailand, and now proudly calls Singapore her home. During her five years at Tigerhall, Pippa conducted over 800 interviews with exceptional figures in the business world, including Fortune 500 executives, workplace happiness experts, neuroscientists, and Olympic medalists. She discovered that great leaders are often highly self-aware, recognize their own limiting beliefs, and know when to heed self-doubt as a valuable message — and when to push past it. Through these insightful podcast conversations, Pippa learned a lot about herself, and the medium itself became her form of therapy. With “Tiger Therapy,” she aims to engage in meaningful conversations, explore people’s career journeys, discover more about herself, and share some laughs along the way.
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