8 Powerful Ideas to Make 2022 Your Best Year Yet | Feel Better Live More

1. 0:00 – 7:39

   Rich Roll

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

      [upbeat music] When I think about life, when I think about health, when I think about what people are struggling with these days, and if someone was to ask me what I think the number one problem in society is, I think it's solitude. I think it's the fact that we, we have no downtime, we have no space. I think one of the negatives that technology has done, for all its positives, one of the negatives is-- I don't think the negative that's been spoken about enough, which is the fact that it, any bit of downtime we previously had has been stolen from us.

   2. RRRich Roll0:36

      I want you to think about this for a moment. I'm, I'm older than you, but I think one thing that we, we share in our general age bracket is that to the extent that we are the same [chuckles] general generation, we are the last crop of people who know what it's like to live in a pre-internet world and now live in a fully inter- you know, connected world. Our childhood was marked by periods of boredom where we had to go out of our way to figure out creative ways [chuckles] to entertain ourselves. Like, the amount of energy that you would have to exude with your imagination to figure out how to spend time was, you know, extraordinary. Fast-forward to, you know, the 12-year-old now or the 10-year-old or the eight-year-old, they have to exert even more energy to not be distracted, to find boredom, to find stillness. And I think it cannot be overstated how profound a change that is, and I'm not sure that we really appreciate the extent to which that's gonna change the course of, of humanity because what is that person gonna look like in 20 or 30 years when they're an adult? It's gonna be a very different type of being. And I think now, uh, more than ever, we're in a, uh, crisis of presence in that we never have to be by ourselves ever again, ever, ever. You have to go out of your way to find a moment of stillness. And who was it who said, you know, "All of s- all of man's suffering can be boiled down to his inability to spend, you know, time alone with himself"? I mean-

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:35

      That's it

   4. RRRich Roll2:35

      ... we don't ever have to be alone with ourselves. And I know that I've found myself struggling with this because of how different my life is now from when I wrote my first book. Now there's so many more things vying for my attention, and a lot of those are driven by technology, that you have to, you have to move heaven and earth to create boundaries around-

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:58

      Yeah

   6. RRRich Roll2:59

      ... that to carve out a few moments of quiet because you're expected to be, um, you know, accountable and in communication at every given moment of your waking day.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:13

      I agree that I don't think we recognize the gravity of this. I, I, I, I think when we-- You know, we're missing a lot of the big picture when we talk about even things like food and sugar, for example. As important as they are, when you understand where a lot of our behaviors come from, you know, we, we unpacked a bit of this when I came on your show, but this whole idea of these underlying stressors in our life and how we then use our certain behaviors to compensate for them, I think a lack of downtime is one of the biggest stressors because if you can't sit alone with your thoughts and you always need distraction, well, you're gonna use distraction, whether it's social media, whether it's Netflix, whether it's food, right? So how much of unhealthy food intake is driven by an inability to sit and be alone? I think a lot.

   8. RRRich Roll4:06

      Yeah, I mean, I think, I think emotional eating is, is a condition that's under- underappreciated. It's easy to dismiss that, like, "Oh, I'm addicted to whatever" kind of food. But, you know, I think most people's compulsive eating be- eating behaviors and patterns are a function of, of, of this unconscious drive to change their emotional state, like this reflexive, um, need to not feel whatever they're feeling, you know? And I think if you-- If somebody was to do a food journal and, or, or, or to posit the question like, "How come I always, like, you know, end up, you know, face-planting in the Häagen-Dazs, you know, three times a week at midnight or whatever?" Like, if you were to journal, like, what, what happened to you emotionally that day, like, there's triggers for these things. Like, something emotional, you're, you're feeling-- you're experiencing some kind of emotion that maybe you're not even consciously aware of or completely in touch with that is compelling you in an unconscious way to behave in a certain way to change that emotional state so that you can feel different. So whether it's drugs and alcohol or food or the phone or whatever it else, whatever else is, it's all the same thing. It's all the same thing.

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:22

      Yeah.

   10. RRRich Roll5:22

       It is a, you know, addictive predisposition to alter your emotional state and avoid having to confront, um, uh, you know, a feeling or an emotion and an inability, because of the way we're hardwired, to understand that feelings are just that. They're feelings. Like, when a, when we have an uncomfortable feeling or a f- a fear impulse or something like that, you know, we're hardwired through our amygdala, which we talked about earlier, to think that we're, we're in peril. We're going to die, right? And we're gonna act accordingly to redress that. But the truth is, it's just an emotion. You're not gonna die. And if you can develop the wherewithal to sit with it, to be in that discomfort, you will come to understand one fundamental aspect of emotions, which is that they are constantly in flux, and they are not static, and it will change, and it will pass. But it is only through the willingness to weather through that discomfort that you can become connected to that. And I think we're in a culture right now where nobody wants to be uncomfortable for a minute, and everything about society, uh, is oriented around luxury and comfort and, [lip smacks] um, convenience. And the idea of having to tolerate even a moment of discomfort is considered, you know, something that we're trying to transcend. And yet, deep within us, we have a deep need to be in discomfort in order to grow. And I think that's why you're seeing, like, Spartan races and ultra-endurance r- like, there's a w- you know? Like, if it's all about luxury and comfort and, you know, a, a padded bank account, then why are all these people showing up to climb in the mud, you know, on a, on a, on a, on a, you know, cold Sunday morning? It's because as human beings, we're disconnected from that natural state. And I think the more that we're willing to be in discomfort, the more resilient we become, the more alive we feel, and the more connected to the planet, to ourselves, and to each other we learn to

2. 7:39 – 12:50

   Jay Shetty

   1. RRRich Roll7:39

      be.

   2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee7:41

      Jay, the, I think one of the first times I came across you was a few years back. I heard you on an interview. I remember l- being really impacted by what you said, and thinking, "Who is this guy? I mean, this is pretty incredible, what I heard." And it was, it wasn't one of your videos. Uh, you were talking a lot about, I think, identity. And I think it was something about-- It really got me thinking about, "What is my identity?" I guess I was on a journey then anyway, since I lost my father about, what, seven years ago now. I think that was the, one of the significant moments in my life that got me to start questioning everything, thinking about, "Well, who am I?" You know, "Am I living my life, or am I living somebody else's life?" I think you expressed it so beautifully, but then when I read your book, I think you start off very early on with identity. So I wonder if you could expand on identity. What is it, and why do you think many of us need to spend a bit of time thinking about it?

   3. JSJay Shetty8:43

      The monks start with identity and at the root of the issue, because a lot of what we experience in the world today, as you know, and, and I know how holistic you are in the way you advise your patients. When you were speaking on my podcast, I was so impressed by you, and how you're able to tie in so many psychological and natural practices and relational exercises that can improve people's health and wellbeing overall. I remember you talking about encouraging your clients to see more friends as a way of, uh, changing the way they feel. And I was thinking, "Wow, this person's got so many great ideas." And the reason is because, Rangan, you also have that monk mindset of you go to the root of the issue. It's really easy to just say, "Oh, well, just take two of these a day," or, "Try this," or, you know, "Maybe you need to do this." But when you think about it from the root perspective, where do our challenges arise? And our challenges arise by how we see ourself. And what I believe Rangan's referring to is there's this quote that I begin my book with, and that I've shared in interviews for the last few years, and it's from a writer named Charles Horton Cooley, who wrote this in the 1900s. And what he said is that-- Sorry, I think it's in the 1800s, at the end of the 1800s, towards the 1900s. And he said, and, and bear with me, and you've gotta really listen closely to this. So what he said that, "The challenge today is I'm not what I think I am. I'm not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am." Now, just let that blow your mind for a moment. I will explain it, I promise. "I'm not what I think I am. I'm not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am," which means we live in a perception of a perception of ourselves. So I'll break it down. If I think Rangan thinks I'm smart, I'll say I feel smart, but if I think Rangan thinks I'm not smart, then I'll say I'm not smart. And so the challenge is that we're basing how we feel about ourselves on what we think someone thinks of us. And, and the greatest challenge with that is, how do you have any idea if what you think someone thinks about you is even true, and whether that's even the best place to start? So that's where our identity struggles. We start pursuing things in life because we think other people value them. It's almost like, let's think of the most playground version of this. If-- I remember wearing Hi-Tec shoes from BHS to the playground, right?

   4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:14

      [laughs]

   5. JSJay Shetty11:15

      I remember my mom-- 'cause my parents didn't buy me Nike, uh, trainers, uh, or Adidas trainers, which I always wanted. You know, we didn't come from that background. I d- I couldn't, couldn't afford them, and my parents didn't want t-me to have them. So I'd walk in with my Hi-Tec trainers from BHS. They were about 10 quid or whatever they were.

   6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:30

      [laughs]

   7. JSJay Shetty11:31

      And, and, and you know, to me, it didn't make a difference. I didn't really know at that time whether Hi-Tec was good or bad. They were just trainers that my parents bought me. Now, everyone, the cool kid at school, had the latest Nike trainers. All of a sudden, I start thinking that he's now surrounded by everyone. Everyone's talking about his trainers. Everyone's giving him adoration. Everyone's giving him respect. Everyone's talking about his trainers. So now I think that if I want to have that same experience and love from people, that I need to get that. not realizing that I may be able to get deeper love from people by being kind and compassionate, that I may actually be able to build a real relationship with people if I'm loving and, and considerate and empathetic. And it's so crazy how your life can become about pursuing something, and that's why Jim Carrey puts it best, and I'm paraphrasing. He says, "You know, everyone in the world should achieve everything they've ever wanted and accomplish everything they've ever pursued just to realize that it's not the point." Now, that doesn't mean the monk mindset is not about not pursuing your goals. It's actually about pursuing your truest goals, your truest self, and your most authentic aligned goals. So it's not about not having goals. It's about making sure that your goals are actually yours.

3. 12:50 – 17:39

   Tom Bilyeu

   1. TBTom Bilyeu12:53

      People have... They have created an identity without realizing that they've created an identity. So when you, if you're going to recognize that your identity in and of itself is a construction and then ask yourself, "Okay, well what would be the ideal identity to construct?" The answer is to be that of the learner. If you have a fixed mindset and your identity is something that is anything other than being a learner, it, it is very fragile. So to use Nassim Taleb's language, you need to build an identity that is anti-fragile. Because if you don't, when someone attacks you, what happens? You feel badly about yourself, right? It's very easy to get under somebody's skin because you've triggered their insecurities. When you trigger their insecurities, the psychological immune system kicks in and it says, "No, no, no, Rangan, you're not bad. They're bad. They're dumb. They don't know what they're talking about. They're an idiot. Only a fool would not be keto or not be a vegan or whatever their identity is wrapped around." And so they go on the offensive and they never stop to think, hey, when... Like, I'll give everyone listening, lean in. I want you to hear this part. When somebody tries to hurt you, they will almost always start with something real. So they're going to come at you with the thing that they know you're most insecure about. And so why do people, when somebody, um, people are always like, "Oh, if they come after you for your looks, it's because they've lost." No, they, they're coming after you for something they know will hurt you. So people are coming after you at a place where they are most likely to trigger you. The triggering is the psychological immune system, which is beneficial because people with the highest levels of self-delusion also report the highest levels of happiness. So that's incredible, right? That's super powerful. I'm so grateful for the psychological immune system. I can only imagine the number of times it's saved me from spiraling into despair because I see myself a little too accurately. So I get its use. But if you flip your mentality and say, "My identity is not as a entrepreneur, it's not as a vegan, it's not as a doctor or a podcaster. My identity is that of the learner. That's it. The only thing that I value myself for is my willingness to admit when I'm wrong and to learn." Now, the, the secret power there is one, it's anti-fragile, so the more you attack somebody for being stupid, if they're a learner, I, I am literally asking one question when somebody says I'm doing something wrong or I'm dumb. What am I doing wrong? In what way am I dumb? Because if you give me that piece of information, I grow more powerful. So I'm always looking at the hilarious secret about wanting people to criticize you is like the more you try to hurt me with something real, I have the chills. The more you try to hurt me with something real, the more powerful I'm gonna grow because I'm actually going to open myself up. Even though you're, you're saying it to hurt me, you are actively trying to tear me down, you're probably gonna hit me with something that I can learn from. And so what I always tell people is when people are chucking rocks at your head, think of them as actually being gold nuggets or bricks or whatever, and you can take that gold to the bank, you can take that brick and build a house. Like, however you want to think of it, but you have to let it hit you. You can't deflect it and send it flying off in another direction. You've got to take it. It's gonna sting a little, but then you're gonna have that material with which you can do something. And so if you build your identity around being the learner and you're constantly growing, over time you grow more powerful. But you have to lower the psychological immune system, or you can tweak it. Much like you can go in and edit a virus to deploy something in the human body, you can edit the psychological immune system to say the only thing you can protect me with is that I'm the learner.

   2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee16:40

      Love it. I mean, I love that. I love this idea of being anti-fragile.

   3. TBTom Bilyeu16:44

      Mm.

   4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee16:44

      What a-

   5. TBTom Bilyeu16:45

      That's Nassim Taleb for you.

   6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee16:46

      Yeah, what a beautiful concept. What a powerful idea, particularly these days, right, where we're all getting offended at every little thing. We can't put anything out without getting offended by someone.

   7. TBTom Bilyeu16:58

      Mm-hmm.

   8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee16:58

      But what does that tell you? You know, a- as we discussed, Tom, I mean, I love... These days I'm in a really good place where I feel I can... Any, any friction in my life, anything that starts to bother me, for me, that's an opportunity to learn. That's an opportunity. Why is that bothering me? Why is that triggering me? Is there an element of truth behind this, or do I disagree? I don't think I'm as anti-fragile as I would like to be. In fact, I know I'm not, because I'm, you know, I'm constantly trying to grow at this stuff. But it is even just that flip in mindset whereby instead of looking at who's posted the comment and looking them up and thinking-

   9. TBTom Bilyeu17:34

      [laughs]

   10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee17:34

       ... what do they know, right? That sort of thing. It's like, hold on a minute. Is there an element of truth

4. 17:39 – 22:01

   Pippa Grange

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee17:39

      to this?

   2. PGPippa Grange17:41

      There's a poverty in uniformity. So when we try and make everybody, um, cookie cutter the same, when we have this sort of central idea of what good looks like or what enough looks like, and everybody's moving to that middle ground, I think it's just, it strips us of the richness of, of our humanness, of, uh, of everything that we are, of the um, the spirit in a way. You know, and for me, when we just try and conform to one archetype, one way of being, what a loss, because we have to trim off all these slightly untidy edges that are where all the gorgeousness is-

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee18:20

      Yeah

   4. PGPippa Grange18:21

      ... in people. And, and I think that's such a shame. Why do people wear suits and ties? You know, to-- why do we still do that? What is it about moving to that sort of central model of how you're supposed to be, whether you're a child or an, an adult, you know, working in a, in a bank kind of thing? You're, you're still doing that same thing, that there is this way of being that shuts down so much of ourselves, and I think it's a shame. But, you know, um, the-- there are probably-- th- that's a-- it's like a tr- you know, it's one of the trappings of how we show ourselves as good enough or the same or proper or professional or, you know, all, all these ways of showing ourselves as enough and fitting in and conforming. But I think m- maybe more importantly is, um, how free we feel to share opinions, to, um, put our views out there, to, um, express what we care about and not have to trim it, tidy it up, hold back so much. That's really where the pain is for-- and the loneliness, I think, for a lot of people. Because the more you hold back from what you really feel, the more you're performing your life, not living it, and that's a problem.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee19:36

      But I, I could feel shivers as you said that. You're performing in your life, not living it.

   6. PGPippa Grange19:42

      Yeah.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee19:42

      I hope-- That is so powerful, Pippa, because, you know, I see that with society, I see it with people around me, I see it with my friends. I've, I've seen it with myself.

   8. PGPippa Grange19:51

      Yeah.

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee19:52

      You know?

   10. PGPippa Grange19:53

       I personally think that we're performing a lot of the time, and we're performing because we need to feel that we're seen in a particular way so that we're good enough.

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee20:03

       Yeah.

   12. PGPippa Grange20:03

       So if, if we could unpack some more of that, I think the mental freedom is on the other side of it. You know, or more mental freedom is on the other side of it. It's the performative nature of us showing up and with all our... What's that beautiful quote? And I, I don't remember who said it, but, you know, I'm, uh, personally I'm just a, a bunch of flaws stitched together with good intentions.

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee20:25

       Yeah. [laughs]

   14. PGPippa Grange20:25

       And it's, it's, you know, it's perfect because it's not about accept- it's not about sort of a resignation or presuming you won't try and find your very best potential or express your talent as best you can, but it's the idea that if you don't do it a particular way, you're not worthy and good enough as a human being and, and therefore everything else is, is sort of anchored into that.

   15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee20:49

       Yeah. I, I c- I, I'll be honest with you, I can't shake this, this, this idea that you mentioned. Are you performing at life or are you living life? I think, I think it's so powerful. I, I th- I, I, again, I can't imagine that won't have an impact on every single person listening or watching this right now. I'd ask everyone to just ask themselves, are you performing at life or are you living your life?

   16. PGPippa Grange21:12

       Mm-hmm.

   17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee21:13

       It's so simple, yet so profound.

   18. PGPippa Grange21:16

       A- and I would want to just add to that, that it's not another area to lay blame on yourself.

   19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee21:23

       Yeah. [laughs]

   20. PGPippa Grange21:24

       [laughs] You know, because we all do it. Um, it's a, w- um, the whole conversation, the whole compassionate conversation I'm hoping to have is, like, okay, where's the dial down button? How do I turn this down? We all do it. It springs up. How do I turn it down again, you know? And how do I let go? Sometimes we feel like we've got to add something. Most of the time this stuff is just letting go.

   21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee21:47

       Yeah.

   22. PGPippa Grange21:47

       It's like uncurling your hands-

   23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee21:49

       Yeah

   24. PGPippa Grange21:49

       ... um, and letting go of some stuff, trusting yourself a bit more, um, being brave in that way rather than, um, a- another level of perfectionism that you have to achieve.

5. 22:01 – 26:26

   Brian MacKenzie

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee22:02

      A lot of people these days are suffering with the effects of stress, the consequences of being chronically, chronically stressed and not actually adequately recuperating from that, and, you know, everyone's looking for the hack. You know, what can I do to keep my life super, super busy, but what can I do that's gonna somehow magically de-stress me?

   2. BMBrian MacKenzie22:21

      Mm.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee22:22

      And it's fascinating for me that breathing could well be, um, one of the simplest and one of the most accessible things to all of us, yet it's something that very few of us are actively looking at and actively practicing.

   4. BMBrian MacKenzie22:36

      Yeah.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee22:37

      Why do you think that is?

   6. BMBrian MacKenzie22:38

      I think we've moved ourselves far enough away from inside-out understanding that outside in has become our go-to default. I look at my phone for an answer to something, right? Um, I'm on social media for things, for answers to things. I look at heart rate monitors for things. I look... You know, it, it, it continues to add up on the outside in, trying... So we're missing the, the-- there's a big variant in that. Like, there's a big variation in that because y- to understand how you feel, you have to go in. You have to go to the base layer of what's going on. And, and at the fundamental layer of all of this is breathing. And so actually taking the time to actually reorganize and feel things, you know, people are so stressed out and it's like that, that's all just a, a conceptualization. That's just story. That's just a narrative. We are designed to handle stress at very high output. It, it... And, and maybe, and then I'm s- I'm stealing this from a, a, a friend of ours, David Bidler, but maybe it's not that we have a disorder. Maybe it's not that, you know, anxiety and all this stress is, is actually a disor- maybe this is just a natural reaction to the amount of stimulus, to the stimulus that we're taking in from the outside and not paying attention to things from the inside. Because when... I, I, I've met and worked with a lot of high-level people, whether athletes, executives, um, it, it, whoever, right? The people that are functioning the highest are shutting out everything else. They're in their environment and what they're in. Like the conversation you and I are having right now, I'm not thinking about the drive that I've gotta go do except right now when I say that, right? Now I'm [laughs] distracting-

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee24:30

      Yeah

   8. BMBrian MacKenzie24:30

      ... myself. And so this is where the context of things starts to happen, and then I start to overload more because I'm in an environment I should be paying attention to, and I'm not feeling what's going on with that and, and present in that situation. And so breathing is that thing that I can go [inhales] [exhales] and bring myself right back and stottle... stop a lot of the physiological ramifications of that stuff. If we are still out there, meaning still out in nature, still trying to survive, right? Like, like cave people, right? Like, we wouldn't even need to be worrying about breathing because we'd be existing in a natural environment, responding to that natural environment in the way that it, it... that we should have, right? Versus b- putting ourselves into places where comfort and convenience and the illusion of safety becomes this very, um... It, it, it, it encompasses our entire life.

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee25:31

      A lot of people listening to this will probably be thinking, "Well, you know, it's all very well moving out to nature, but I don't have access to that." And so why the breath really fascinates me, because I've worked in, in many different areas. I've, I've looked after affluent patients. I've also looked after very deprived patients.

   10. BMBrian MacKenzie25:45

       Mm-hmm.

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee25:46

       And I guess breathing is free.

   12. BMBrian MacKenzie25:49

       Mm.

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee25:49

       Breathing is accessible to everybody.

   14. BMBrian MacKenzie25:53

       Mm.

   15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee25:53

       And then what that naturally lends itself to is if you have control over your breath, even if you are living in an inner city where there is a lot of noise around you and there's a lot of inputs that you are constantly having to fight off, well, at least you have a tool, like a shield where you can use for your body to help you, to help you survive in that environment.

   16. BMBrian MacKenzie26:16

       This is where that hack world has to come in if we're existing in these places, right? Is we have to actually start to hack things, and breathing is one of those

6. 26:26 – 31:25

   James Nestor

   1. BMBrian MacKenzie26:26

      hacks.

   2. JNJames Nestor26:28

      By changing the way in which you breathe, you can actually change how your mind is processing thoughts and feelings and emotions.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee26:38

      We can almost induce a feeling of anxiety and panic by [laughs] changing the way that we breathe.

   4. JNJames Nestor26:46

      Of course we can, and if anyone wants to do that, you can start breathing in this very unhealthy way right now. [panting] You will stimulate a sympathetic response, and that's easily measured. So, uh, I thought this was interesting as well. Um, at UCSF, which is very close to my house, University of California San Francisco, Dr. Margaret Chesney had worked for, for decades on National Institutes of Health research looking into something called continuous partial awareness, also known as email apnea. And what she had found was that when we sit down at our desks in the morning, [smacks lips] one estimate says that 80% of office workers do this. We open up our email, got Zoom on, got Twitter on. Say, "Oh my God, I have 60 emails." We stop breathing. We just stop breathing, and then we go [inhales] [exhales] [inhales] [exhales] [inhales] So she called it email apnea because we're so distracted and stressed out by what's going on. If you think about [smacks lips] when you're extremely... Let's say there's a tiger coming around the corner here of my house. What am I gonna do? [gasps] I'm gonna be silent because that is a reflex reaction to be, to be very scared, to be silent so you don't become prey. And once it's on, once the fight is on, [panting] I'm gonna breathe a ton, um, to, to get more ox- to get more energy, um, to my body, to feed more energy to my brain and heart and other essential muscles to get me out of that situation or to fight off that thing. But we do the same thing unconsciously at work. Uh, even though there's no tiger around, even though there's nothing threatening us, our sense of threat has become so sensitized that so many of us will stop breathing or start breathing completely dysfunctional. And she's found that if you do this for long enough, it can have some of the same effects on us as sleep apnea. By that, I mean neurological disorders, physical problems. Just, again, spiking blood glucose, adrenaline. Um, and it's just something so few of us are aware of. And I was wearing a, a pulse ox and all these different... measuring what happened. [smacks lips] Every morning I'd put this stuff on and sit down. My breathing would go to hell every single morning. Um, and I realized that, you know, that's probably a reason why around 11:30 I'd get... I used to get this slight headache. Used to feel kind of fatigued. It was still morning time, and I wasn't full of energy. And so by just switching your breathing, again, you can allow your body to work so much more efficiently.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee29:28

      As a society, we're probably over-breathing. Okay? Can we individually practice a little bit every day where we sort of slow that down?

   6. JNJames Nestor29:37

      So we, we know that this, this slower breathing, we know how it affects us, and we know that most of us are breathing too much and too often. Dr. Patricia Gerbarg and Dr. Richard Brown, who's at Columbia, have used this for people with anxiety and depression, even bulimia and anorexia. All of these different maladies that you would think wouldn't have anything to do with breathing, but these populations traditionally breathe way more than they should. They're constantly stressed out. And it's completely touching to see these people be reacquainted with their breath 'cause they've completely lost control of it. over decades. And just to take a slow and steady breath in, a lot of them instantly freak out 'cause it's way too slow to them. They associate that with an attack. But once they acclimate to it, this might take a session or two to really get this down, you watch this transformation occurring. You just watch the stress just lift from their faces. You can adopt healthy breathing practices anywhere. And we know that there's a solid foundation of science between all of these things. We have seen people absolutely transform by adopting simple breathing habits. This is not a placebo effect, it's absolutely real, and I'm convinced. I've experienced this myself. I've talked to dozens and dozens of people who have also experienced it. I've talked to the leaders in the field who have introduced me to all of their data, and I- I find that this is an underappreciated and under acknowledged aspect of our health, but that's starting to change, and it couldn't happen sooner, especially right now w- in the midst of a pandemic. Focusing on your breathing can really have some transformative effects.

7. 31:25 – 35:51

   Julia Samuel

   1. JSJulia Samuel31:27

      I think busyness is an anesthetic. So w- it stops us feeling. When you're busy, you- you go to your kind of, um, thinking part of the brain, and your capacity to really feel and emote kind of lowers. So that when you're busy, you're kind of on all the time. And for change, to process change, we need space so that you can feel, because oxytocin is the kind of feeling safe hormone in our bodies that tells us that we're safe, and through that oxytocin, that allows us to feel safe, to think, to reflect, adapt, change, and thrive. When we're very busy, we can go at different gears. So I mean, if you're really in trauma and terrified, you're in sort of fourth gear, and you don't change at all. You're just on alert, as you know very well, fight or flight or freeze.

   2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee32:23

      Yeah.

   3. JSJulia Samuel32:24

      And you're not able to think. But you can have lots of... There's a spectrum of it. But at a sort of, say, second gear, you feel enough to kind of be able to function, but you don't, um, adapt or process or make sense, and you don't feel very much because it... you're distracted the whole time.

   4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee32:41

      Distraction, I think, is... I think it's something that we all do. I think it's, uh... You know, i- in some ways, I, I sort of feel, Julia, that it's never been easier than now to distract ourselves. So we've got this real conflict, haven't we, where we've all been put under, you know, pressure in a way that we've possibly never felt before. Um, certainly I know in my lifetime I've never experienced anything like this. And actually, what we want to do on one level is kind of sit with those feelings, see what's coming up, and processing them. Yet the flip side to that is we've got endless ways now to distract ourselves, whether it's Instagram, YouTube, Netflix, books, podcasts, what- whatever it is. Is this something that you think is problematic for society as a whole at the moment?

   5. JSJulia Samuel33:40

      I think it's whether you do it in awareness or out of awareness. So listening to podcasts, scrolling through Instagram, when you're choosing to do that is a perfectly fine pastime. I think what I'm talking about is that, yes, you're right, we all do want agency. We do n- some people have more sense of their own agency than others, but I think we all want to feel that we can affect change in our own life and affect the life that we want, to kind of h- have a goal that we're heading for, and that we can make the choices and, from informed information, to get there. But also, we don't like discomfort. So my kind of big message is that pain is the agent of change, and that's through grief, when you're grieving someone that has died, or a living loss, which a lot of the pandemic has been. So there's been obviously 45,000 deaths from the pandemic, so that is grief from death, but there's been multiple living losses. Loss of structure, loss of jobs, loss of trust in tomorrow's gonna be the same as today, tr- loss in health. Many, many aspects of our kind of trust in the world have been turned upside down.

   6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee34:57

      Yeah.

   7. JSJulia Samuel34:58

      And my kind of message is that we can't fight those feelings. You know, 'cause if you squash them, they come out sideways. They come out in a different way, and they tend to come out in our relationships or in our bodies. You know, our mind and our body are completely connected.

   8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee35:16

      Yeah.

   9. JSJulia Samuel35:17

      So that if we give ourselves time and opportunities to find out what we feel and find ways to reflect and feel it, sort of loss orientation, if you like, then we can have restoration orientation where we watch Netflix, we have fun, we drink, we do the other stuff that's engaging and not such emotional intensity, or it might be emotional intensity if that's what we want, but you allow space for both.

   10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee35:44

       Yeah.

   11. JSJulia Samuel35:44

       And one doesn't knock the other out, but you hold both side by side and mo- oscillate between them.

8. 35:51 – 39:38

   Peter Crone

   1. JNJames Nestor35:53

      Slow down. Everyone's in a hurry to get to a future where one day they don't have to be in a hurry [laughs] . You know?

   2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee36:00

      Yeah.

   3. JNJames Nestor36:00

      If you just look at that, right? [laughs] It's like people are working in jobs they don't enjoy, you know, to hopefully have sufficient money one day so that they can relax and have fun. But, you know, to what degree could we incorporate some of that now and actually take a breath? Like, quite literally-

   4. PCPeter Crone36:16

      Just stop and breathe for a minute because it is so conditioned within us to survive. So your points about the hurry, the urgency, this competitive nature of society, it's, it's a survival paradigm. And to me, real success is where I can be at peace in the midst of chaos. And that's got nothing to do with my bank account. It's got nothing to do with, you know, whoever's on my arm as a beautiful man or a beautiful woman or the title on my business card. It's can I be comfortable in my own skin regardless of what's going on around me? And that to me is a human being who's found the true definition of success. Because I'm blessed to work with people who have more money than time, and they would traditionally be seen as the most successful because of their net worth. Yet, if you were to understand the inner mechanics of their feelings and their thoughts and their relationships, you would see somebody who's quite broken and who's very upset and is on all sorts of medication and doesn't know how to feel compassion for their partner and certainly doesn't feel loved by anybody. So is that really success, or is that just somebody who's got a lot of cash? [laughs] So I think it's the opportunity to redefine what does it mean to be a successful human being, and this is why I talk about this work because it's not this linear track of one-day future scenarios of when I have, right? Fill in the blank. Enough money, the best body, the right partner, the bigger home, the best job, the blah, blah, blah. That, that is this perpetual waiting game which is saying that my happiness, my freedom, and my peace are perennially ahead of me. But if you just understand that, then you have to be. You have to be at some state in a mild o- uh, in a mild state of dis-ease or frustration or lack of contentment because the way your brain is conditioning a relationship to life is that what I want is in the future. So that speaks to my lack of c- contentment today. And what I'm inviting people to consider is that you're always where you are. You're never in your future. I'm not saying don't have goals and aspirations. I have many, but I have an intimate relationship with life and the way it is right now, and I'm fully content with the way things are whilst still being committed to things that I'm excited to create. True happiness is the absence of the search for happiness, and that gives an entirely different relationship to time, that I'm here right now with you in this conversation and there's nothing, quote-unquote, "wrong" in my life. I'm not worried about where do I have to be next or what am I going to or what are people gonna think about what I'm saying. Then I wouldn't be in the moment with you.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee38:45

      Yeah.

   6. PCPeter Crone38:45

      I would be in my own mind, and I feel that is something that people lack. If they could just slow down enough to go, "Wait a minute. Is my life truly in danger, or is that just my perception? Is it really a life-threatening situation, or is it just the way it feels? And could I just for a minute sit quietly, take a few deep breaths, listen to the person I'm with," who invariably is gonna be a loved one of some form, "and actually not feel the need to react or control or manipulate or get somewhere?" That, that's, that's real relief for people. [upbeat music]

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee39:20

      Press Subscribe to get more inspiration and ideas on how to feel better so you can get more out of life. And if you have a moment, why not check out this conversation that I've picked out as a perfect follow-up? Remember, lifestyle change is always worth it because when you feel better, you live more.

Episode duration: 39:40