Do This Everyday In 2025! (Feel Energized, Focused & In Control) | Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:00 We are what we repeatedly do, therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit. So what daily habits do you have? Are those habits helping you or are they getting in your way? In this video, I'm gonna share with you five small daily habits that have worked for me, that have worked for my patients, and are gonna make you feel incredible if you can give them a go for the next 30 days. So the first habit is learn to say no. I think

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:30 this is a very important upstream habit, that if you can take care of this, you automatically take care of a lot of stress, overwhelm, and dare I say it, burnout. A lot of us are people pleasers, right? There's nothing wrong with pleasing other people, okay? It's nice to do things for others. But if we're regularly doing things for others at the expense of ourselves and we don't know how to say no, we don't know how to put up boundaries, that can be problematic. Now, something I've experienced myself, 'cause this used to be me, and something I've seen with patients, is that people who struggle to say no often start to resent the people around them without realizing that they're also contributing. Okay? It's a really important point to understand. If you can't say no and you're repeatedly effectively saying yes to people and doing things that you don't have the time for or the energy for, we often start to resent those people for making those requests. But the uncomfortable truth is that a lot of the time, because we never said no, because we couldn't say no, we're giving them the idea that we're okay doing that, right? So we are contributing in a significant way. Now, I don't think it's as hard as we think as it is to change it. A lot of these patterns, yes, they develop in childhood because of the way we're brought up. Often because of the way our parents were, we feel we had to say yes in order to be accepted and validated for who we are. I get that. And sure, unpicking all of that can take some time, but there are things that you can do right now that are gonna help you learn to say no more. Now, in order to get good at saying no, I think you have to get clear on what your values are. Who are you as a human being? What is important to you? Do you know? Have you ever spent time thinking about it or writing it down? See, a lot of us these days have heard about this idea of values. What are the things that are important to us? But we haven't taken the next step of writing down what our own values are. And I give many talks all around the UK and sometimes around the world, and a lot of the time I talk about values and people will nod their head. And then I'll often say, "Okay, how many of you know right now what your top three values are?" Loads of people keep their hands down because they like the idea, but they haven't applied the idea into their life. But ideas without application don't do anything, right? So I would encourage you right now to think about what are your values. At this stage in my life, my three top values are curiosity, compassion, and integrity. If I was to ask you what your three are, do you know? Could you write them in the comments right now? If you can't, I'd encourage you to spend some time doing that because it's very hard to say no if you don't know who you are and what you stand for. Now, one of the things I think that's helpful is to learn that everything has a cost, right? When you're saying yes to something, you're saying no to something else. Although not one of my top three values, something that's very important to me is my family, okay? I'm happily married and I have two young children. And over the last years I've realized that for me, if I say yes to, let's say a speaking invitation at the weekend, I'm also saying no to time playing football or netball with my children, or going for a walk as a family when the kids are off school. I know it sounds deceptively simple, but it really can be that simple for me, and I appreciate that not everyone is gonna be able to say no to every request. It depends on your life, what you're able to say yes and

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 4:33 no to. I do understand that, but I'm just trying to give you the principle, right? Once you understand the principle, you can take it and apply it in your life. So for me, in my life, I block off my weekends. I very rarely say yes to a speaking invitation because my kids are at school Monday to Friday, and I know my time to spend with them when we can really go and do some fun things together are at the weekends. So by and large, I don't say yes. Now that means I don't have to keep thinking every time a request comes in, "Oh, weigh up the pros and cons. Shall I do it? Are there benefits? Are there downsides?" Because I've made a one-time decision which works for me, right? So think about how that applies in your life, right? What things are you saying yes to when you really mean no? And could you writing down your values and maybe once a week reflecting on them, help you say no more often and more effectively? Now, another benefit of knowing your values, which basically means you know who you are and what's important to you, is that it also helps you say no without upsetting people. Now, this is a problem many people have, especially if they are people pleasers. They don't wanna say no because they're scared that people are gonna judge them and they won't like them if they say no. And we all wanna be liked by others. I get that. It's, it's totally human. To want other people to like us and feel that we're helpful and of value to them. But if we just use that example about weekends and the importance of my family to me, it helps me communicate that to anyone asking me to speak. 'Cause I say, "Listen, thank you so much for the invitation. I would have loved to have done it, but my family and time with my children is really important to me, so as a rule, I don't do any events at the weekend. If you have any weekday events in the future that you'd like me to speak at, please do get in touch. But unfortunately, because it's at a weekend, I have to say no." And again, having that clarity and communicating that calmly, it means that people accept it. Ever since I managed to do that, people totally understand. And often when we don't have that clarity, we kind of fudge an answer, we fumble an answer, we make up excuses that aren't real. People can tell that, right? They pick up on that. So knowing yourself, knowing your values, getting clear on them, is a necessary first step because without that, it's very hard to effectively say no. Often we fall into the trap of saying yes to things that are happening at some point in the future. We think, "Oh yeah, by then I'll sort out my workload and my life. It'll be okay to attend," or do that task, or go to that event, whatever it might be. And then how many times have you done that, and in the weeks leading up to it, the days leading up to it, it's there in the background, it's stressing you out? And it creates a lot of stress and tension because you say yes, it's not a wholehearted yes. You kind of know that you shouldn't have said it. And actually, by the time it comes around, you're thinking, "Man, I wish I'd never said yes in the first place." [laughs] I know I've done that many times in the past, but it's something that I've mostly managed to change. Now, the first thing to think about is if you're saying yes to something in the future, just imagine if it was happening right now this week. Would you have time for it? Would you have capacity for it? Would you be excited about it? If you wouldn't right now, it is very unlikely that you'd be happy, excited, inspired by it three months in the future. It's unlikely that your life is gonna have changed significantly in that time, where suddenly you've got the time and energy to do it. You might have done, but usually not. So that can be a helpful tool at reframing it, going, "Actually, you know what? Nothing's gonna be easier then. I should just say no now." Right? So it's really good to start practicing saying no. Start off with small things in your life, whatever they might be. Now, I have to say, what you say yes and no to is gonna be unique to you, okay? Only you know your life and what's important to you. But that really highlights the importance of knowing your values. Once you know what is important to you, you can start making better decisions, right? I'll give you another example from my life in case it helps, okay? I like to go to bed early, right? I really prioritize my sleep. I love to be in bed by 9:00, and I wake up at 5:00 AM. It's what works for me in the context of my life, okay? Doesn't mean it's gonna work for you. That's what works for me. So over the last years, I've realized that evenings out or going out for dinner just doesn't really work for me because then I come back a bit late, I go to bed late, and I feel groggy the next day. I'm not as productive. Now, I get it. Sometimes you may have to do that for certain reasons, maybe work obligations, right? But not always. And I've realized that by knowing that value for me, it's been much easier for me to actually say no to things, depending on who's making the request. It's like, "Hey, could we do lunch instead one day? I'd much prefer that to dinner." Again, that's unique to me. You have to find what works for you. But unless you know your values, you're gonna find it very hard to effectively say no. And remember, knowing your values means that not only can you say no, you are much more effective at doing so. People understand when you actually explain it to them in the context of your values. It could be a weekend away with friends, right? You feel the real pressure to go 'cause everyone's going, right? But you know at this moment in time you are slammed with work and family commitments, and you feel that you won't be accepted by your friends if you say no, so you end up going, regretting going, and spending all of the time not being present and doing your emails, right? This is pretty common, I think. And again, we have to balance this because you wanna spend time with your friends. That's really important. People are getting more lonely and more isolated and not having time for their friends. But once you go through this process, when you go, "Wow, I'm too busy to go and see my close friends for a weekend," that will also then encourage you to look at the state of your life. Why am I this busy? Why is it that I've got my life in such a way that something that's truly important, spending time with close friends, is something I can't fit in? That's something I've had to recognize in my own life over the last few years, that, wow, sometimes I was too busy and I thought wrongly. What kind of life is this when you're too busy to go and see your friends? So I've made some changes. But it all starts by knowing your values and by learning to say no. The second daily habit I want you to think about introducing is

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:40 some form of daily reflection. And why is that important? We all wanna feel as though we're making progress in our life, that we're getting better, that we're learning, that we're growing, right? But too often we're busy. We're so busy within our lives we can't step outside in order to reflect on the state of our lives. So a very helpful way that I do this, that I've been using with my patients for years, is to ask yourself two questions every evening, okay? What went well today, and what can I do differently tomorrow? And what I love about those questions is that they are self-reflective questions that help you make positive changes, but in a very compassionate way. Those questions aren't about beating yourself up or making yourself feel bad. Not at all. They're the absolute opposite of that. They very kindly encourage you to reflect on how your day went. Now, the first question I think is a lovely question, what went well today? Now, it doesn't matter how bad you think your day was today or on any given day, I'm pretty sure that for most of you, there was at least one thing that went well. Maybe on your way to work, and let's say you had a bad day at work, maybe the barista smiled at you and made you a really nice coffee and said something nice, and you thought, "Wow, that's a really good coffee." Right? Could be anything. Maybe someone helped you out on a work project even though you didn't meet your deadline and you were working till 7:00 PM, maybe someone did that for you. Or maybe it is that you're a busy parent, right? And you came home late and you were tired and stressed, you still found 20 minutes to make you and your children a healthy home-cooked meal, right? I think it's really important to celebrate these things and recognize what did go well because many people feel overwhelmed these days, right? We know from the increasing levels of burnout that many people are really, really struggling. So you could overly focus on the things that didn't go well, okay? I know the human brain has a negativity bias. We are wired to look at what's not good because over time, over thousands of years, that's what would have kept us alive, right? But today we need new skills. We need to focus on what went well. So that's why I like that first question, what went well today? It gives you a bit of confidence and it reminds you that something goes well every single day. Now, the second question really is the question that helps you implement change in your life. What can I do differently tomorrow? Now, I love that question. It's a very kind question, but it's, it's kindly and compassionately encouraging us to grow and become better, right? By learning from what didn't go so well. So it could be, for example, that today you've been craving sugar and caffeine all day because you were knackered, and maybe on reflection you realized that last night, because you had a stressful day at work, once your kids were in bed, you had a couple of glasses of wine and you stayed up late watching box sets, right? I get it. I understand. Many people do that. But because you'd drunk alcohol, because you went to bed at half past midnight, when your alarm went off at 6:30, you were a bit groggy, you were underslept. And because of what happened the night before, that's why you crave sugar and caffeine all day, and that's why you're a bit snappy with your kids. Okay. Right? We wanna be kind to ourselves. We don't wanna look back on the past with guilt or shame. It's never helpful. But this question doesn't ask you to do that. This question is very kind. It's asking you to go, "Well, why did that happen? How can I do this differently tomorrow?" So the learning there could be, even if today is really stressful, or even more so if today is stressful, I absolutely must not stay up even later to unwind. I must make sure that I get my rest and that I go to bed on time because if I get seven or eight hours sleep, I'm gonna crave less caffeine tomorrow, I'm gonna have more energy, I'm gonna crave less sugar, and I'm gonna be a nicer person to be around. Okay, two simple questions. What went well today? What can I do differently tomorrow? And I promise you, right? If you get in the habit

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:14 of asking yourself those two questions every single evening, before you know it, your life will be different. I know 'cause I've done it, and I've seen it with so many of my patients over the years. It's really, really simple to do. Now, with all habits, you need to think about where are you gonna put it into your life. If you just think it's gonna happen because you set the intention, I think it's unlikely. So if you think you wanna try those two questions every day, think about when you're gonna do it. Maybe it's straight after your kids go to bed if you have kids. Maybe it's when you get into your bed, maybe there's a journal next to your bed that you keep there, or a notebook and a pen, and when you go into bed, as part of your wind-down routine, it's like, "This went well. This is what I can do differently tomorrow." Or it could be at any time. You know, I don't know what's best in your life 'cause I don't know your life, right? But I do know that those questions work. They're very, very effective,

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:16 but you have to figure out when and where you're gonna answer them. The third daily habit that I know will transform your life is to walk every day. Now, I know this sounds simple, but walking really is a superpower, and it's a superpower that you probably didn't know you had. Right? To walk is to be human, right? We are uniquely designed to be able to walk and to be able to walk for some quite long distances, right? We know that across society we're not moving enough. We know that physical inactivity is one of the leading causes of early death across the world, increasing our risk of cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, strokes, dementia, type 2 diabetes, and the list goes on. But when we think about movement, we make it really, really difficult. We talk about running marathons and running 10Ks and getting to the gym four times a week for an hour. Hey, I've got nothing against those things, right? If you've got the inclination and the time and the motivation, those things for some people can be great. But- By putting our focus there, we forget one of the most effective forms of movement for us as humans is to walk. We spend so much energy when we're babies learning how to walk, right? Once you've got that skill, you don't wanna lose it. You wanna keep using it for as long as you can. Now, here's the thing people don't realize about walking, okay? Let's say you every lunchtime go for a 15-minute walk, okay? I think that's achievable for many people. What does that do? Walking helps to lower your stress levels and balance your nervous system, right? How many people these days are stressed and are frazzled with how much they have to do? Walking helps you lower that stress. Okay. There's many studies on this and what it will do to the state of what we call your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. So walking helps you reduce stress. Walking helps you be more creative and helps you focus better when you come back. It's a break, right? It's a break from your work where your mind can wander. And one of the things that happens when you walk, especially if you're not staring at your phone at the same time, is that a part of your brain called the DMN, the default mode network, kicks into action. That part of the brain does many things, but two of the things it does, right, it helps you be more creative and it helps you to solve problems. So imagine this scenario. You're at your desk at lunchtime and you've been working for hours. Sorry to interrupt. If you're enjoying this video and want to learn more, you can download my free special guide containing six simple breathing practices that will help you calm your mind, lower stress, and improve your energy. To get a hold of this guide, all you have to do is click on the link in the description box below. And you can't solve a problem, or you've got a deadline and you're trying to push through. A lot of us don't break. We keep going. We keep pushing away trying to solve that problem, thinking that somehow we're gonna manage it. Now, you may manage it, but a lot of the time if you just took a break, went for a 15-minute walk, your brain would solve the problem for you. When you're not focused on a task, your DMN kicks into gear and will start to try and solve problems for you. So it's really, really effective for that. Walking is also incredibly beneficial for your mental health, right? Walking for just 10 minutes a day lowers your risk of depression. That is remarkable. Mental health problems are on the rise, and even 10 minutes of walking can have a positive effect. Again, I wanna bring home this idea that we make things so difficult. Health and happiness is a lot simpler than we think, but it's about these small daily habits that we do consistently that over time determine the quality of our lives. And people who walk every day are happier and they're healthier. Now, there's other benefits for walking as well, right? A lot of us these days are sat down at desks or in cars, right? And our body is just not moving, but movement is not just about our physical health or our fitness. The organs in your body need walking to pump everything around, blood and lymph. In fact, I've got patients, right, who struggle with their gut and constipation, and I didn't need to change their diet. I just needed to encourage them to walk for 20 or 30 minutes every day, and their gut function will often improve. 'Cause when you walk, you know, your upper and your lower body rotate and you start to compress organs. That's how we're designed to be. We're not meant to be sedentary. Walking really is a uniquely human activity that has so many benefits. I really wanna encourage you to figure out how can you implement walking in your life for the next 30 days and take that as a challenge, right? If you are skeptical or you think walking doesn't count, well, I challenge you. Could you in your life right now find time for a walk every day for the next 30 days? Could you fit it in in the morning before breakfast, maybe at lunchtime, maybe when you come home? And if you don't believe me of the life-changing benefits of walking every day, I would say try it. Give me 30 days. Commit to it. Do it, and then at the end of those 30 days or throughout, ask yourself what difference are you feeling? Do you find yourself less stressed? Do you find yourself more creative? Do you find yourself calmer, more focused? Do you find that you're sleeping better, that you're

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:20 less constipated, that your gut function is improving? Make a note because when you start to draw those connections in your mind between your behaviors and how you feel, that's when you really start to lock it into your brain, and that's how you start to turn these new behaviors into automatic long-term habits. The next daily habit I want you to think about introducing into your life is all about connection. Can you make sure that you are connecting properly with another human being at least once a day? Now, this is really, really important for your happiness and your mental wellbeing, sure, but also for your physical health, right? We know that levels of loneliness are rising all across the world, and there's a certain irony, isn't there? With all this modern technology, with all the connection we can have online, many humans have never felt this isolated and alone. And we know from the scientific research that the feeling of being lonely may be as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes per day. Right? We know that people who feel lonely are more likely to die earlier than people who don't. In fact, I recently spoke to Vivek Murthy on my podcast, the surgeon general in America, the most senior medical doctor in the United States, and he shared with me that we need to start recognizing that loneliness has an impact on our health comparable to that of being obese. I mean, that's huge. So if I'm thinking about habits that are gonna help us all, I have to think about a habit that's gonna help us connect with others. It's far too easy these days to stay at home and do everything on Zoom, and do your shopping from your house, right? And not connect with another human being. But we are social animals. We need connection. It helps us with our physical health and our mental wellbeing. Okay, so how are we gonna do this? But when I think of connections, I think of those close, intimate connections we might have, and those connections in our community, maybe not as close, but also just as important. So if I take my life as an example, I'm married and I've got two kids. Let's talk about my marriage for a moment. Okay. Like many couples these days, we often find ourselves quite busy with work and with our children and after-school activities. So it is very, very easy for days to pass where you feel like passing ships, where sure, you lived in the same place, in the same house, but perhaps didn't see each other properly or as much as you would like to. And I know many, many parents face this. I've had so many patients over the years tell me, and this is often the cause of friction in relationships. So I have a very simple practice that I do with my wife on most evenings, not every evening, but it's called the five-minute tea ritual. It's dead easy. It basically means that once our kids have gone to bed, before we do anything else, emails, chill out, watching something, read, whatever we might wanna be doing, we come to our kitchen, we make some mint tea, and we sit there and chat. And the goal is just to catch up, find out about each other, how our days went. So that five-minute tea ritual is our safety net. It means that we both know, even if we're busy, that we're committing to five minutes each day. Now, sometimes those five minutes become 30 minutes, but on other days it is just five minutes. That's completely okay. But we've nourished ourselves with those five minutes. And again, I'm passionate about this and my third book was called Feel Better in 5. I wrote all about the power of five-minute habits, right? Five minutes can do a lot. Remember, you brush your teeth for four minutes a day, two minutes in the morning, two minutes in the evening. That's four minutes. You know that those four minutes each day look after your dental health for life. And I'm making the case that you can apply that principle to many other aspects of your life. And in this context, we're talking about relationships. Those five minutes that me and my wife commit to each day, they nourish our relationship. When we're doing it regularly, we're closer. We just feel more connected with each other. And when we let it slip, you can start to feel the distance start to build up. So again, a very simple thing. You can also apply that to your kids, right? I genuinely believe that when we think about time with our loved ones, we need to think about the quality of the time as opposed to the quantity. Now, sure, if you can have both, that's wonderful, quantity and quality. But if I was to choose, I would choose quality. 10 minutes of intentional time with my kids when they come home from school where they feel heard, they feel seen, I paid them attention, I listened and responded. Compare that to one hour of distracted time where you're sort of half checking your emails and social media whilst also chatting. I mean, this goes beyond kids. This happens in relationships as well. I really think that attention, that focus on quality is so, so important and perhaps that five-minute tea ritual or a, some sort of variation of that is something you can introduce into your own life. Now, as well as connection with the people close to us, let's not forget about connections with strangers as well, or people in our wider community. They're also very important. We know that these kind of simple interactions with the person at the supermarket who's serving us, or the barista at the coffee shop, or the Amazon delivery driver, those little interactions are also really, really important. They give you a little shot of connection at regular times in the day. And we know that there's a part of your brain called the sociometer. It's a network of systems that is constantly scanning the world around you for threat. And every time you get a positive social interaction, frankly with anyone, but also with strangers, right? A nod, a smile, um, a nice word, you basically tell the sociometer that the world around you is safe, and that really helps you with your self-esteem, your self-worth, and how you see the world around you. So talking with strangers is also very, very important, and there's a lot of scientific research to support this, right? So how can you do that? Well, maybe you consider yourself an introvert, somebody who finds it hard. Okay, that's fine. We, we know that it's still gonna help you, right? Maybe you go to a coffee shop each day and you don't say anything to the barista. You just take your coffee and quietly go off and sit and read or whatever you might do. Could you make eye contact? Right? Could you smile? Could you say, "Hey, thanks so much. That was a lovely coffee"? You start small. It's like with anything, like working out, you start small then build up, right? When the Amazon delivery driver comes round, could you just look them in the eye and say, "Hey, thanks so much"? Think about the impact that's gonna have on that driver. He's probably rushing around trying to meet his or her quotas, right? It has a positive impact on them, and it also has a positive impact on you. So this daily habit of connection is both about in your own home life and in your wider life with your community. In the past, when you were living in your hunter-gatherer tribe, you would've connected with others each day. You needed others to help you and be there for you, and you also needed to be there for them. It would've happened. But today it is possible to be so busy and distracted that you don't pay attention to the important things, right? If you go for a walk every day, if you take me up on that challenge, right? What about on that walk, and you pass people, can you look at them and smile? Can you say, "Hey, how you doing?" It's about those little social interactions that send your brain a very powerful signal that, "The world around me is safe. I'm okay." The fifth and final habit I want you to consider introducing

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:54 into your life is to have a strength workout every day. Now, this doesn't need to be complicated, okay? You don't need to go to a gym. You don't need to join a gym. You don't even need to spend any money, right? This is what I do in my life every day, and I've been doing it for years, and it keeps me really fit and strong. Now, you've got to understand that once you hit 30, you start to lose muscle mass every year unless you're doing something about it, right? So it's important that you do something about it because your lean muscle mass, how much muscle you have on your body, is one of the most important predictors of how well you're going to be as you age. We lose muscle mass as we age, but the more we can hold onto, the better we're going to be. So it's really, really important. And as I've just said, it starts quite early. At the age of 30 it starts happening. Now, a lot of people get put off. They think they have to join gyms. And I'm not against joining a gym or getting a personal trainer if you have access to one and can afford it, but you don't need to. There's so much you can do yourself if you know what to do, right? So how I do it, and I'm gonna share this with you in case it gives you ideas for your life, but this is also the method I've taught to many of my patients over the years, right? Is in the morning, or frankly at any time in the day, but for me, it works in the morning, what existing habit do you have in your life where you can stick on a strength workout to? That's quite important, right? Whenever you wanna bring in a new behavior into your life and turn it into a long-term habit, you've got to follow a few rules, right, that make it easier for you. And one of the rules you wanna follow is you wanna stick on that behavior onto an existing habit. So an existing habit is something you do automatically without giving it any thought. So for me, one of my habits is I make coffee in the morning, right? I don't need a reminder. Now I'm gonna make it. It's a habit. Therefore, I have an opportunity. If I stick my strength workout on there, it's much more likely it's gonna happen. So in the morning, pretty shortly after I've woken up, I do a few things as part of my morning routine, right? But one of the things is I put the coffee on, I put a timer for five minutes, and in those five minutes, whilst I'm in my pajamas, I do a strength workout. Now, that's changed over the years. It used to be just body weights, some press-ups, some lunges, some calf raises, some tricep dips. Okay? Some very simple body weight exercises. But these days I also have a kettlebell in my kitchen. I have a dumbbell in my kitchen. So sometimes I'll vary it up. But the point is, whilst my coffee brews, I do some form of strength training for five minutes. I don't look at email. I don't go on Instagram. I get my workout done, right? Now, why is that so important? Well, it's important for this reason. It means that every day I'm showing myself that I'm important, right? That I show myself that no matter how busy I got, I still found five minutes to work on my strength, which is good for my body and my mind. Now, it's not 10 minutes or 15 minutes or 20 minutes. Nothing wrong with that. If you've got time to do that, that's great. But the problem is, for many people, it's too much, and then we start to make excuses. We say, "I didn't have time. I didn't have 20 minutes, so I did nothing." I take a slightly different approach. I say make it small, both with myself and with my patients. Make it small, and if you have extra time, do more. But the minimum requirement is five minutes. And I tell you, it's changed my life. It's just a part of my life as brushing my teeth is. I don't have to think about it. It's just what I do. It's become a habit, an unconscious habit, because I've done it so often at the same time in my day. What you actually choose to do in those five minutes is not really the most important thing. The most important thing is that you do something, right? What are your favorite strength moves? Have you been to classes in the past? Yoga, Pilates, gym, right? It could be something like skipping if you prefer, right? Skipping ropes are pretty cheap. Most of us know how to skip, or we certainly did when we were at school. It's great for your cardiovascular fitness, for your muscles, for your tendons. It could be that you do skipping. It's not about what you do. It's about doing something, right? And I've done this with so many patients, patients who told me they couldn't afford a gym, they didn't have time to work out, and I help them by- Choose five exercises that would only take them five minutes, and they did it in their kitchen, often in their pajamas. Now, why am I mentioning pajamas so much? Because I make it easy. That's why I do it. If I had to get changed, put on my outfit, put on my shoes, right? It's another obstacle in the way. It might mean I say, "Oh, I don't have time today." But because I do it in my pajamas, I made it easy. I can never say I don't have time. So I really want you to think about that. I think it's one of the most life-changing things I do in my own life for my strength, for my physical fitness, for my mood, for my brain health, but most importantly, for how I feel about myself, and that's the gold here. When you start doing these things daily, when you do a strength workout every day, right, you're showing up for yourself. You're saying to yourself, "I can rely on you. I can trust you," because you're always making time. Right? So give that a go. And honestly, if you think five minutes is too much, do one minute. One minute of skipping for the next 30 days, right, at the same time every day. I guarantee you're gonna feel differently about your life, and you're gonna be healthier. See, so many of us think that happiness is something that just happens to

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:01 us, when everything in our life just happens to be right, when it's sunny, when our email inbox happens to be manageable, when our boss treats us nicely, when there's no queue at the coffee shop, right? All these things are nice, no doubt, but I don't think they're ultimately what happiness truly is. And it's a very vulnerable position to be in if you think that you can only be happy when things in your external environment go the way in which you want them to. And how often are things always gonna go the way you want them to? They're not. This, for me, is one of the biggest misunderstandings about happiness. It's an inside job. It's something that we can cultivate within ourselves to some degree irrespective of external circumstances. And when you truly understand that and you know what to work on, you will start to be happier. Now, in my previous book, Happy Minds, Happy Life, I outlined a model of happiness that I call the core happiness stool, and it's a three-legged stool, okay? And each of the legs is a critical ingredient for happiness. Now, each of the ingredients in and of themselves are not enough, right? You need all three of them worked on so that stool is stable and not unbalanced. And what I've seen time and time again is that you don't directly work on your happiness. You work on those three ingredients, and the side effect is that you're happier more often. So what are these crucial ingredients for happiness? Well, there's three of them; alignment, contentment, and control. Okay. I'm gonna explain what each of those are and what they mean. Alignment is basically when the person who you are on the inside and the person who you are being on the outside are one and the same. Hey, guys. I really hope you're finding this useful. If you are and you want more content like it, please do check out my book, Make Change That Lasts: Nine Simple Ways to Break Free from the Habits That Are Holding You Back. It's in all the usual places as a paperback, e-book, and as an audiobook, which I'm narrating. Now, back to the video. Okay. That's alignment, when your inner values and your external actions start to match up. Okay. So that's alignment. The second leg on this three-legged stool is contentment. What are those things that I can do in life that help me feel calm, peaceful, and give me that sense of contentment? Okay, that's the second leg. And the third leg, and one of the legs which I think these days is probably one of the most important, is control. Now, I'm not talking about controlling the world. The world is fundamentally uncontrollable, but I'm talking about a sense of control. What are those things that you can do in your life each day, if possible, that give you a sense of control? Because we know from the scientific research that people who have a sense of control over their lives, they're healthier, they have better relationships, they earn more money, but they're also happier. So that sense of control is really, really important. So happiness is a skill that we can all get better at if we know what to work on. And so far, I mentioned that there are three key ingredients, alignment, contentment, and control. Okay? You don't work on happiness. You work on alignment, on contentment, and on control. And in this video, I'm gonna share how exactly you can do that. And the side effect, the consequence of working on those three things, is that you're gonna be happier more often. I do it myself, right? And at this stage in my life, I've never felt so good. Genuinely, I feel happy. I feel calm. I have this sense of inner peace that I haven't had before, and it feels absolutely amazing. But I've also shared these tips with so many people and many of my patients over the years, and it's really helped them. And my honest hope is that these tips also help you. Now, I mentioned that term the core happiness stool. Why did I do that? Well, because I contrast two different forms of happiness, right? There's core happiness, C-O-R-E, core happiness... And I contrast that with something called junk happiness. So what's junk happiness? Well, junk happiness are those, those habits, those behaviors that we can engage with that we think make us happy. It could be chocolate, ice cream, shopping, whatever it might be. Okay? And there's nothing inherently wrong with them. The problem is if we engage in them too often and for too long, and we make the big mistake of thinking they're gonna bring us that true inner, what I call core happiness, and they're not. Okay, so what is core happiness? Core happiness is the happiness that I think we're all wanting. I think when we think about what it means to live a happy life, we're talking about core happiness, that, that deep sense of peace and calm and contentment that we can go about the world with, knowing that some days are gonna be better than others. Sometimes bad things are gonna happen, but that's okay because we've got the tools and resources to handle them. When I say core happiness, I'm not talking about waking up with a smile on your face every day. For me, that's not what happiness is. Right? It really isn't. Happiness is something much deeper than that, something much more long-lasting than that. Let me give you an example. Right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:05 I mentioned those three ingredients, alignment, contentment, and control. Right? Alignment is when you are being in the outside world, the person who you really are on the inside. Okay, let's take something that many people, most people, maybe all people find distressing, the death of a loved one. Now, I've experienced that. My dad died 11 years ago. I know what that feels like. It was like, I'm sure you can imagine, maybe you've been through it yourself, a really difficult experience, but nonetheless, an experience I've learnt a lot from. If we just take that alignment leg off that three-legged stool, alignment is when you are being out there in the world, the person who you really are. So there's a lot of talk these days about something called toxic positivity, right? So let's say someone close to you has died or is really sick. It's okay to feel bad about that. It's okay to feel upset. That's completely fine. And if you can express that to your friend, if you're lucky enough to have a friend, say, "Hey, yeah, you know, I'm feeling really bad about things. You know, I really miss that person," whatever it might be, you are working on your core happiness. You're not denying your reality and trying to be something you're not. You're not saying, "Oh, you know, it's fine. These things happen." No, you're actually, you're actually at one with your inner feelings and expressing them to the people around you. That's alignment. That's one component of alignment that's really, really important. Like, and, and this I think is one of the big problems with happiness. We've been sold this idea that happiness is waking up with a smile on your face every morning. There are these cultural ideas out there that really get in the way of our ability to actually be happy. I mean, we see that billboard image, don't we, of the good-looking couple with their two beautiful children on the sandy beach with the ocean behind them with the sun just coming down. You know, and we're sold that idea that that's happiness, right? Now, don't get me wrong. If you're able to experience that, I'm sure that is part of a happy life, no question. That sounds like a very pleasant experience, being with your family on a beach with a sea, with the sun setting behind you. But that's not what real happiness is about. It can be a component of it, but if we think we have to achieve that in order to be happy, we're gonna be very disappointed, which is why I feel so many people are struggling these days. They feel lost. They feel empty. They don't have any motivation, and they feel that happiness is out of reach, but it really isn't. Happiness is a skill that you can get better at no matter where you are in life right now, if you know what to work on. Okay? So I spoke there about these cultural ideas of happiness which get in the way. I think one of the big ones for me is we confuse happiness with success. Do you think you've ever confused happiness with success? I mean, this is very, very common. I have seen so many patients over the years who work themselves into the ground, who kept working evenings, weekends, not taking holidays, pushing, pushing, pushing. They already had enough. They already had a house. They could feed their kids. They could go on a holiday once a year or twice a year, but they kept pushing, right? They wanted more because in their head, in some level, they thought that more would lead to happiness, but it doesn't. Right? It really doesn't. And that's an idea that really messes with our heads and gets in the way of that inner contentment and peace that we all want. Now, it's a very idea to get seduced by, that more money, a better holiday, a nicer car is gonna make you happier. But there's many reasons why that doesn't work. First of all, there's something called hedonic adaptation. So basically, we very quickly adapt to our new set of circumstances, and you'll probably have experienced that in your own life, right? Do you remember a time where you really wanted something, a new phone, a new car, a new pair of shoes? Okay. And you get it. Let's say you save up, and it comes, and you get it. You open the box. Amazing. How long does it last? I think we've all experienced- Getting what we want and then realizing within a few days or weeks we don't feel it anymore. That's hedonic adaptation. We've adapted to our new normal. So that can't be the thing that we rely on to make us happy. See, there's a part of your brain that scientists call the system of desire, and it runs on mid-brain dopamine circuits, and basically it's a relic from, you know, older parts of our evolution when we were in hunter-gatherer tribes where maybe resources were scarce. And it basically convinces you that you have to compete and get what's yours. Right? It's very powerful. It's there in your brain. But we know from modern scientific research that it doesn't make you happy. There's been all kinds of studies where they phone people up at random times of the day and then ask them how they feel. And here's the thing, the consistent but surprising result is that activities our brain sells us as fun, such as eating chocolate, watching television, or just walking around the shops, actually leave us feeling less motivated, less confident, and more depressed. I call that part of the brain the wants brain, the part of your brain that makes you keep wanting more and more and more, and it's a big problem. Right? So the first thing you have to understand is that those things will not make

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:11 you happy in the long term. I'm not saying there's necessarily anything wrong with them. Remember what I said about junk happiness before v core happiness. Nothing wrong with the junk happiness habits now and again. The mistake is if you're engaging in them too often and/or you believe that they're gonna bring you true contentment in the long term, because they ain't. Okay. So I've got a really practical exercise for you that I want you to do. It's an exercise that's changed my life, and it really speaks to this idea where we confuse success with happiness, and I call it Write Your Own Happy Ending. Okay. I've done this on many occasions. I continue to do it. It's a simple exercise, but I pretty much guarantee if you do it, it will change how you feel, and it will make you happier. Okay, so the exercise is in two parts. The first part requires you to fast forward into your future. Okay, you ready? I want you to imagine now that you are on your deathbed. This is the last day of this life. You're lying there, and you're reflecting. What are three things you will want to have done in your life? Do you know what they are? Does anything come to mind? You know, I really encourage you to sit with that thought now or later on in a journal, and if you feel able to, I'd love you to share some of your thoughts in the comments below. It's helpful for me to see. It's also helpful for the people in this community where they can also see what other people are saying. 'Cause the truth is we kind of know what most people are gonna say because palliative care nurses tell us. They sit with people at the end of their life. I spoke to this wonderful palliative care nurse, former palliative care nurse called Bronnie Ware on my podcast a couple of years ago. She wrote the book The Five Regrets of the Dying. And she says most people have the same regrets. "I wish I'd worked less. I wish I'd spent more time with my friends and family. I wish I'd allow myself to be happy. I wish I'd lived my life and not the life that other people expected of me." But we kind of know what people are gonna say. I suspect that when you first thought about that question, I would imagine, although I could be wrong, that relationships came to mind. Maybe your children, maybe your partner, maybe your family, right? So you write down what are those three things that you want to have done in your life on your deathbed. For me, I, I'm happy to share with you when I last did it what I put down. I wrote down I want to have spent quality time with my friends and family. Two, I will want to have had time to engage in my own passions, and three, I will want to have done something that leaves a positive impact on the people around me and the wider world. Okay, so that's the first part of the exercise. You write down on your deathbed three things you will want to have done. Now, the second part of the exercise is when you go from the future and you come right back to now, the present day, your life right now. Okay? And now I want you to write down what I call three happiness habits. What are three things that you could do each week that guarantee that when you get to your final day, you will get the happy ending that you just decided that you want? You've just said what you want. You know what you're gonna want, right? So what are three things you could do each week that make sure you're gonna get that? For me, it makes my three happiness habits, my three weekly ones, very easy. I write down I want to have five undistracted meals with my wife and children where I'm not thinking about work or emails or something else, where I'm fully present and enjoying the moment with them. It's just something that works for me. You have to find out what works for you. For me, I've realized over time that that's quite a good number. It's achievable for me, and I know if I'm doing that, I am fostering these connections. I'm nurturing those relationships that are really the most important thing in my life. Okay? So that's the first thing I put down. Second thing I put down is if I have time to play my guitar... Write some songs, go for a long walk in nature each week. Then I'm finding time for my passions, the things that nourish me. And the third thing for me on my happiness habit list is releasing a weekly podcast. If I put a podcast out into the world every Wednesday, as I have done pretty much every week for the last seven years, then I know I'm doing something each week that I hope is having a positive impact on the world around me. I know it sounds so simple, but it can be that simple. It doesn't mean that my life doesn't get busy at times or there aren't other things to do, but it gives me a sharp focus about what's really important. Okay? So you think about your deathbed, think about now, and I really want you to do that exercise. You can even pause the video right now and do it in a journal or write it in the comments because you, you don't wanna just think about these things and not take action. Because ideas and inspiration without actual action will not lead to change. Now, it's not about being perfect either, but I have those happiness habits written down in my kitchen. They're pinned with a bit of Blu Tack on the wall. Old school, okay? No technology, no iPad, nothing. Bit of paper, Blu Tack. I've handwritten it, and it means I'm visually being triggered whenever I pass it. These things are important. These things are important. These things are important. Now look, next week I'm traveling for work. I'm not gonna be at home. I'm actually going to America to do interviews for my upcoming book, Make Change That Lasts, so I won't be able to do it next week. But it doesn't mean I have to beat myself up. By having it there, I know when I get back, "Hey, Rangan, make sure you focus on those relationships. You've been away with work. Make sure you come back and put extra time into those relationships," 'cause those relationships are ultimately the most important thing in my life. And ultimately bringing it back to happiness, relationships are gonna make you happier. The, the research on that is overwhelming. But put the research to the side for a minute. You already know that. You already know when you spend quality time with people you like and love, that you feel better. Life feels more meaningful, more upbeat. You're more content. And let's say I wasn't traveling, and let's say I had a busy week at work and I only managed to do three meals with my wife and kids. That's okay. I'm like, "Okay, cool. Too short this week. I mustn't let this go on for too long." That's the key, right? Life does get busy sometimes. It is easy to get distracted, but if you make these things a priority, you do the action, you do the exercise that takes you minutes to do, you'll be constantly reminding yourself of what's important. So that's a really practical exercise that I know has helped me, and I'm pretty sure it's gonna help you. Now let's relate that back to the core happiness stool that I've already told you about. Alignment, contentment, and control. What does that exercise do? Well, actually, it's one of those exercises that does all three of those legs. But to make it really clear for you... Because look, I, I've expanded on these ideas a lot in Happy Mind, Happy Life, which you can get all over the world, right? But for the purposes of this video, I wanna make things really simple. I want you to be able to take action right now irrespective whether you get this book or not, so that you can start to feel happier. And I would say for the purpose of this video, think about that exercise as helping you with the alignment leg of the stool. Why? Because you're really asking yourself about your values. What is important to you? You know, at the end of your life on your deathbed, that's when you're really gonna know what's important to you, when you know that's it. It's over now, right? That tells you about what do you really value in life. So think about that exercise as helping you with your alignment. Okay, so let's move to another leg of the stool. Remember what I said at the start. Happiness is a skill. It's a skill that everyone can get better at. You can get better at happiness. Just as if you go to a gym and start l- doing bicep curls and lifting weights, you're gonna get stronger. In the same way, if you work at the components of happiness, you're gonna get happier, right? It's no different. And we're not taught about happiness at school or by our parents, or maybe you were. I wasn't. I fell into the cultural trap of confusing success and happiness, right? I've had many signs of societal success over the past few years, lots of, you know, success in my career, but it didn't make me happy. It really didn't. In some ways I, I feel I had to get that success to realize, oh- Sorry to interrupt. If you're enjoying this video and want to dive deeper into the topic of nutrition, I have created a free special guide which contains the five most important changes I think we all need to make when it comes to our diet. If you wanna get hold of this free guide, all you have to do is click on the link in the description box below If you've got a hole inside yourself, that hole's still there. It's not gonna come from external achievements. It's gonna come from inner work. And you know that exercise I've shared with you already? How simple is that? Doesn't cost any money. You don't have to buy anything. It's not fancy. But it helps you understand what's important. I believe we can all be happier. I really do, okay? And I wanna share these tools with you. Okay, so let's get onto a different leg of the stool.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:53 Let's talk about contentment, okay? So what's something you can do? Well, I always think about doing something where time stands still What do I mean by that? Well, time is really just an external metric. It's a human construct, time, because the way we experience time can be very different depending on what we're doing, right? So one hour where you are in deep conversation with one of your closest friends or your partner, right? It's gonna feel very different from one hour watching the paint dry on a wall. Still one hour, still 60 minutes, and however many seconds that is, right? It's gonna feel very different. In fact, if you're watching paint dry for an hour, you're probably gonna be looking at your watch every few minutes wondering, "Oh, when is this gonna end? Man, I can't believe I have to do this." When you're with your best mate chatting, before you know it, the hour's gone. You're like, "Oh my God, is that... Do we, do we not have more time?" Right? So our experience of time is different. So there are activities that you can do where time stands still, and usually time stands still because you've hit something that's called flow state. And we know that people who experience flow state regularly are happier and they're healthier, right? Now, psychologists tell us that flow has six core components, okay? Number one, complete concentration on the task in hand. Our thoughts and actions become one. Number two, the sense of self decreases, the ego is quietened. Number three, our perception of time changes. Exactly what I've been talking about. Number four, the sense of anxious struggle disappears. Number five, our sense of control increases. Again, control is a different leg of the stool, but you're also feeding that leg with flow state. And number six, the task becomes a pleasurable experience in and of itself. Flow is fun, and the professor who coined the term, who actually died a few years ago, is called Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and his research has shown us that the more often people experience flow state, the greater their sense of wellbeing and life satisfaction. In fact, flow state has been shown to make people up to 500% more productive, 600% more creative, and increase their thinking power so much that it can cut learning times in half, right? That's incredible. So many benefits to flow state, but let's bring it back to happiness. We're talking about the happiness stool, and I'm saying that if you work on the three components of the stool, you're gonna be happier more often. I want you to think about the activities that you do or you could do where time stands still, and usually they'll be things that are fun, right? Maybe they were things that you used to do as a kid. For me, I mean, there's many that come to mind. The two that I think of straight away are playing my guitar. When I'm playing my guitar and singing or writing a song, I'm just lost in the moment, okay? I'm just lost. I'm so present with what I'm doing, and it's nourishing me. The other thing I love to do is in my house I've got a little snooker table, um, and I love playing with my son. Sometimes after a busy day, we'll spend 10, 15 minutes just shooting balls together. Other, other times the kids are in bed and I can, for 10 minutes or 15 minutes or 20 minutes, I can just be playing. I find it hypnotic trying to put different spins on the ball, different angles, different bits of backspin or sidespin, seeing how the ball comes off the cushion. That engages me. It doesn't mean it's gonna engage you, but you will have activities in your life where you can access flow and time stands still. Now, a few little tips for you. You generally wanna be doing something that is a little bit challenging, right? If it's really, really easy, you kind of switch off, your mind can wander. You're not fully aligned, right? You're not in the moment. And if it's too hard, then you also switch off 'cause it just feels unattainable. So you wanna do something that's a little bit harder than your current skill level. That tends to be where we access flow states. But again, if you wanna be happier, you've gotta work on that contentment leg and

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:26 finding flow state. Doing activities that you really enjoy is one way that you can do that. Now let's move to the other leg, the third leg of the stool, control. Okay. Remember what I said. It's not about controlling the world. The world is fundamentally uncontrollable. It's about what we can do that gives us a sense of control, and that's the key difference. What can you do that gives you a sense of control over your life? There's so many things I could talk about here, and I've gone through so many practical things in my book, Happy Mind, Happy Life, which if you're interested, you can take a look at. It's available all over the world. But in terms of this video, I wanna share with you something that I think you can apply straight away. I want you to talk to strangers. Now, why do I say that? Okay. We, we kind of know that humans are social animals, right? We know that. That's who we are. That's one of our superpowers as a species, the way we can get together and work together and cooperate, right? But when we think about connections and relationships, we're often talking about our, our deep relationships. You know, earlier on in this video I mentioned family, our partners, our children. Of course, those relationships are very important, but other relationships are important as well with our wider community. There's a network in our brain that scientists say acts as a sociometer. Basically, it's scanning the world around us for threats. Now, the job of the sociometer is to constantly scan our social world. If it detects that you are not securely connected- Your self-esteem plummets and your stress response is triggered. Basically, you become anxious and unhappy and at greater risk of becoming physically and mentally unwell. Right? The sociometer is really, really important. So what does that mean for you in your life? Okay. If you're going around town, let's say you, you order yourself a coffee in your favorite coffee shop and you smile at the barista say, "Hey, thanks. I really... That was a great coffee you made me." And they smile back, go, "Oh, I'm glad you like it." That may seem like something really, really trivial, but it's not. When you go for a walk, if you say good morning to someone or smile at them and say, "Hey, how you doing?" And they say, "Hey, how you doing?" back. These things may not be the deepest of connections where you're sharing your life history with someone, but they're actually very, very important. They're a constant signal to your sociometer in your brain that says, "Hey, the external world around me is safe. I'm not under threat. My life feels in control." Right? That's that third leg of the stool, control. You have to do things that give you a sense of control. Now, we know that people who struggle with happiness, right? People who are, let's say, struggling with depression, one of the things they often do is they stay insular. They stay at home by themselves. They don't want to go out, they don't wanna mix with people. But ironically, it's the mixing with other people that's gonna actually help them. So I've had many patients over the years like this who I've had to find ways to encourage them to get out. "Okay, you, you're gonna work on your laptop at home. Could you go to your local coffee shop and work in that coffee shop and maybe just say hi to a couple of people when you're there?" You know, whatever it is that I felt would help that particular patient. But the take home for all of us is that we're all humans, which means we are a social species, which means we need that social connection. And you may recall back in 2020 when many countries around the world were, uh, locking down their citizens. At the start, how many times did we see on social media and in the press people go, "Oh, I'm an introvert. I've been waiting for this moment my entire life." And then a few weeks later, those same people were saying, "Oh yeah, I'm an introvert, but I didn't realize how often I, for example, went to my local coffee shop and worked because I'd get a bit of interaction with the world around me." This matters for introverts and extroverts, and there's so much science on this. Professor Nick Epley has done some great studies in the University of Chicago about talking to commuters on trains who you don't know versus not talking to them. In essence, when you talk to strangers on a train on the way to work, you're happier straight afterwards and you're happier for the rest of the day. Absolutely remarkable. And in his research, he's shown that people beforehand think that it's not gonna make them happier. Our brains are tricking us, saying that we don't wanna be around other people. We do. Again, I'm not talking about deep, meaningful conversations, but those little micro connections are so, so important. Now, I know I mentioned a little bit earlier that arguably control is one of the legs of the core happiness stool that we need, really need to pay attention to, especially today. Now look, they're all important and the reason why I came up with this analogy of the stool is that if you only work on one and not the other two, your stool's gonna topple over. It's not gonna be balanced, right? So you want all three being worked on. I know I've just mentioned something that's gonna help you with that sense of control, which is finding flow state, doing things where time stands still. I just briefly wanna mention one more thing, because we're living in a time where many people are worried about the state of the world, right? The world literally feels out of control for so many people. The economic situation, wars all around the world, conflict, the way people are acting with each other online. You know, it, it's easy to get caught up in that and feel that actually things are going downhill. The world is uncontrollable. That's why giving yourself a sense of control in this uncontrollable world is so, so important. It's not more important than the other two, right? Than alignment and contentment, but I really think we need to pay attention to this today because many of us are being dragged into this sense of not having any control because of how we perceive the world around us, and that's why I think routines and rituals are so, so important. If you subscribe to this channel, you will probably have seen me share in the past about morning routines, rituals, routines. I'm very passionate about these ideas. There's many videos on my channel talking about them. But there's something very powerful that a morning routine, for example, does, even a five-minute morning routine. Well, let's say you sit with a cup of coffee and write in your journal, or you do a five or 10-minute workout first thing in the morning. What those little routines do, especially if they're done every day, is that they ground you and they give you a sense of control. It doesn't change what's on the news or what's happening around the world, but it changes your perception of the world because you've done something that gives you that sense of control, and that's why I'm so passionate about little five or 10-minute routines each day. I think they're important for your happiness, they're important for your health, and as I've just mentioned, they really help feed that control leg of the stool, which is so, so important. So remember, happiness is a skill. That we can all get better at if we know what to work on. You now know what to work on, alignment, contentment, and control. I've shared with you all kinds of exercises that you can consider doing and introducing into your life. Okay, for alignment, I shared that write your own happy ending exercise. I shared that you don't wanna confuse success with happiness, and how that exercise will help you with that. Then we spoke about contentment, and I spoke about flow state and doing something where time stands still. I shared it was snooker and guitar for me. What is it gonna be for you? Then I mentioned the importance of having a sense of control. That can be from talking to strangers, smiling, nodding, handshake, a thank you. It can also be with routine and ritual. But the key point I wanna leave you with is that these tips work, right? They really do. It doesn't matter where you are in your life right now, how happy you perceive yourself to be. If you start working on these things, I promise you will get happier. You just need to start. Habit number three, some form of daily breathing

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:59 practice or a breathwork practice. Now, this partially relates to habit number two, which is a bit of time to yourself each day, okay? So you could definitely use breathwork as one of those practices. But I'm gonna explain to you why I think this is one of the most important habits you can engage with, and I have seen it time and time again change people's lives. The way you breathe is information for your body and brain. Okay, let me explain what I mean by that. If you start to breathe fast, you send messages up to your brain that the world around you is not safe, that you're a bit stressed, okay? Your brain then responds and sends stress signals back down to your body, which starts off this vicious cycle. Now, you can actually hack that whole system. I do believe the word hack is overused these days, but I've got to be completely honest, I think it totally applies here. Because if you can consciously slow down your breath, you can then send calm signals up to your brain, and your brain then responds by sending calm signals back down to your body. Okay, so I think all of us need to have a few breathwork practices at our fingertips that, yes, we practice each day, but also we have in our back pocket in case things are happening in our life where we're getting stressed or we're feeling reactive or overwhelmed, because it can very, very quickly change your state. Now, there was a study a few years ago, I think it was done in UCLA, that showed 80% of office workers change the way that they breathe when they're answering their emails, right? So I don't know whether you're in that 80% or not, but the chances are you are, right? But here's the important thing. When we change our breathing patterns, we're not aware usually that we're doing it. So you're at work, you're at your emails trying to get your work done. 80% of us change the way we breathe, so what happens? Well, three things happen. We start to breathe a bit more quickly, we start to breathe more from our chest than our abdomen, and our breathing starts to become a bit more shallow. These are very, very subtle things, but they are sending signals to your brain, and your brain is responding by sending signals back down to your body. So it's really important that we start to pick this up. Conversely, if you were to do the opposite of those three things, right? So you could slow your breathing down, breathe more deeply, and breathe more from your abdomen than your chest. You immediately start to change the signals that your brain is getting, and you immediately start to change your state and how you feel. Now, there's all kinds of breathwork practices out there that you can use. A lot of people procrastinate these days, like I've already mentioned, and that's because we have too much information. And the truth is, for most of us, it kind of doesn't matter which practice we do. What matters is we actually do one of those practices, and we have one that we can take around with us in our lives, right? So I'm gonna share two breathing techniques right now which I've seen be helpful for a whole variety of different people. Okay, one is what I call the three, four, five breath. It's dead easy, okay? You breathe in for three, you hold for four, and you breathe out for five. Now, one three, four, five breath will take you about 12 seconds. Five of them will take you a minute. If you do that for a minute, I promise you it will change how you feel. And if you don't believe me, do it right now. Press pause on this video. Just for the next minute, do that three, four, five breath, and then pay attention to how you feel. Usually, people will say a few things. They'll say, "Wow, I feel so much calmer. I feel so much more grounded." And often people say, "Wow, I started to yawn. I feel really, really tired." Now, it's not that the breath has made you tired. It's just that the breath has forced you just to stop and pause, and the fatigue that was already there has actually come to the surface. That's all that's happened. And why the three, four, five breath is so powerful is because whenever your out breath, basically when you're breathing out, whenever that's longer than your in breath, when you're breathing in, in effect, you start to switch off the stress part of your nervous system, and you help to promote the relaxation part of your nervous system. So it's a very powerful way of promoting relaxation and switching off stress. Now, if the three, four, five is too difficult for you, try two, three, four or one, two, three. It doesn't really matter. The point is, is that the out breath is longer than your in breath. I use that myself. I often do it in the morning. I'll often do it before I eat my meals to really calm everything down, and I've taught so many patients over the years to use that in stressful situations, including children who feel anxious before exams. So if you have children or you know people in your life who suffer with stress and then their brain starts to freeze and they can't control their emotions, please do teach them that breath. It's really effective and it's completely free to do it. The other breathwork practice I wanna share with you is something that I first heard about from the doctor Andrew Weil. It's the 4-7-8 breath, and again, there's a similar principle there. But in essence, you breathe in for four, you hold for seven, and you breathe out for eight. Again, play around with both of them. See which one you prefer. You know, the 4-7-8, you know, some people struggle to do that initially. It takes them a bit of time to build up with that. If neither of one of those suit you, that's okay. There are many others out there. There's something called box breathing, which the US Navy Seals use, and it's really easy. It's basically... Look, I'll show you with this box. You breathe in for four, you hold for four, you breathe out for four, and again, you hold for four, and you just repeat that. If four is too much, do it for three or do it for two, right? But it's just a simple way of getting you to focus on your breath. But one of the reasons why I think a breathwork practice is so important is because the way we see the world depends on the state of our nervous system. And this is something I've really been thinking a lot about over the past few years. Okay? The way we see the world is through the lens of our nervous system. Now, much of the time, our nervous system is on, it's alerted. Now, if you're in highly activated nervous system mode, basically in a stress state, you literally see the world differently. You perceive threat where there is no threat. 'Cause let's think about what the stress response is there to do. It's there when there really is danger. So a few hundred thousand years ago in our hunter-gatherer tribes, a wild predator is approaching. Okay? We activate our stress response system because we know we need to do something. We need to take action. We need to hide. We need to run. We need to do something so that we don't die. So what happens? Well, many things happen in the body, but one of the key things is that our focus becomes narrow. We're not thinking about cooperation and what we have to do for the group. We're trying to keep ourselves safe, right? Lots of things in our body start to change, clotting factors, blood sugar, blood pressure, but our brain starts to change. Our amygdala, the reactive part of our brain, the emotional part of our brain, goes onto high alert. So we're hypervigilant for everything around us, right? These things are really good and necessary if there's a real threat. But if you're getting stressed out each day by your work, by your email inbox, by things that you've read on social media, by news headlines, for most of us, there's no actual real physical threat. The threat is psychological in our brains, right? But our body responds in a very similar way. So when I say we see the world through the lens of our nervous system, what I mean is this. Let's say we could score the state of your nervous system from zero to five, right? Let's say zero is totally chilled and calm and relaxed, and you're present. You wanna bring people together. You feel compassionate. Let's compare that with when you're really, really amped up when there really is a threat. Your nervous system is at five. At that point, you're not cooperative. You don't care about the people around you. You're out for yourself. You see threat, okay? You see danger. Your brain is wired to see danger. So many people struggle with social interaction these days because they're interacting with their nervous systems on high alert. The reason for many people why that 4:00 PM email from our boss bothers us so much is because we've been building up stress all day. So by the time we get that email at the end of the day, our nervous system is four out of five. We're seeing threat where no threat actually exists, whereas if you had read that same email at 9:00 in the morning where perhaps you're feeling calmer, you would've interpreted it completely differently. This has implications for your work. It has implications for your relationships, how you interact with your partner, with your children. And one of the fastest ways to either upregulate or, more importantly in this context, downregulate your nervous system is by a breathing practice. That 3-4-5 breath or the 4-7-8 breath or the box breathing technique will very quickly, within minutes, sometimes within seconds, start to change your state and start to reduce how activated your nervous system is. So I have seen time and time again with my patients, and with friends of mine frankly, that if you have a regular breathwork practice, and I'm talking a few minutes each day, you start to understand the state of your nervous system. And when you are feeling stressed in life, you can often take a pause and go, "No, no, let me just, let me just do one minute of breathing and then see how I'm viewing the situation." So give one of those breathwork practices a try. Doesn't matter which one. 3-4-5 breath, 4-7-8, box breathing, whatever- ... speaks to you, give it a go and see how you feel after doing it. And if you've got your own favorite practice that's not on that list, I'd love to know what it is, so let me know in the comments. And if you've also tried practices before that you haven't found so helpful, I'd also love you to share that with me below because it's helpful for me to see it, and for this community here on YouTube, it's also, I think, really helpful for them to read your comments as well. Habit number four, lift something heavy every single day. Okay. Why am I so passionate about this as a habit? Well, for many reasons. Number one, I do it myself and have been doing it every day for about five years. Number two, I've been recommending this to patients for years, and I have seen the transformative benefits time and time again. Okay. So most of us know, or many of us know, that strength training is really important. As we get older, we start to lose our lean muscle mass. If you're interested in health and you consume content online, or you listen to my podcast each week, you'll probably know this already. But often what happens is that we take that advice and we go, "Right, I need to get to the gym maybe once a week or twice a week." Hey, nothing wrong with that. If you are motivated enough and you're able to get to the gym two times a week for 40 minutes strength training, fantastic. But I know many people struggle to do that. So the way I try and approach this in my own life is I do some heavy lifting every day. I'm gonna explain how I do it and how I'd recommend you do it if you don't think that you're lifting enough heavy things in your life. As I've already mentioned, above the age of 30, we start to lose muscle mass every year unless we're actively doing something about it. And the amount of muscle mass, the amount of lean muscle mass we have, it's one of the most important predictors of how we're going to be as we age. So many of the problems that come as we get older come from frailty, come from the fact that we have stopped doing the things that we did when we were younger, that we've actually lost a lot of our strength and power, right? So it's really, really important. Now, I want you to think about toothbrushing as your model for lifting something heavy. What do I mean by that? Okay. I'm guessing that you brush your teeth twice a day, hopefully two minutes in the morning, two minutes in the evening, so four minutes every day. What you don't do, I think, I hope, is say on Monday, "Oh, I was so busy today, I don't have time to brush my teeth." Or on Tuesday go, " [sighs] You know what? I don't have time. Work's too much. I can't get my toothbrushing done. And so on a Sunday, let me see if I can motivate myself for a big one-hour deep clean of my teeth." You don't do that, do you? No. In fact, it feels laughable to even say that. But that's the approach we often take to other helpful behaviors in our life. We know that a little bit each day of toothbrushing, generally speaking, keeps our teeth in good health for life. Yes, there's other things as well, like flossing and dental checkups. I get all that, but I think you get the point that I'm trying to make. Now, what if we applied that approach to lifting something heavy? And I actually do adopt that approach. So you may, if you are a subscriber to this channel or you listen to my podcast, you may have heard me say this before. But even if you have, I'm gonna repeat it because it's so important, and I think this piece of advice is so impactful for so many people. As part of my morning routine, when I'm making coffee in my kitchen in the morning in my pajamas, I put my coffee to brew for five minutes. Whilst it's brewing for five minutes, I do a strength workout in my kitchen, right? Sometimes it's body weight. I do have a dumbbell and a kettlebell in my kitchen. And look, I'll be honest. A few years ago, my wife said to me, "Rangan, are you gonna keep these things in the kitchen?" I said, "Yeah, I absolutely am," because if they go in the cupboard or the garage, they're never going to get used. But the fact that they're here means I'm visually being triggered by them every single day. Out of sight, out of mind. And I bet some of you have got some gym equipment at home or some weights. They're in a different room or in the garage or packed away in the attic. In fact, let me know if you actually have gym equipment at home but you're not using it. You see, we can make this really easy. Why is it that you toothbrush every day at the same time? Well, a number of reasons. Number one, it's really easy. It only takes you two minutes. And number two, when you get into your bathroom, everything you need is there. You don't have to go to the garage to find your toothbrush and your toothpaste, do you? No, it's all there. Because it's easy, you do the behavior. Because the weights are there, and because I've stuck on the lifting something heavy habit onto an existing habit, which is my morning coffee, it happens every day. Now, the reason I always talk about this example is because I think it's one of the most important things you can do. I do five minutes of weight training every day, which means I do 35 minutes a week. Now, that may not sound like much. It doesn't mean I never, ever go to the gym. It doesn't mean I don't ever do other stuff, no. But I'm not confusing the two. I know that strength training is important for me, so I do five minutes every day. It happens, and here's the magic. I've already mentioned momentum a couple of times. This is a habit that builds momentum quicker than almost anything else I've seen. Why? Because when you lift something heavy each day- It does wonders for your self-esteem. You feel strong. You feel powerful, okay? And by doing that every morning, I'm much more likely to engage in physical activity at other times in my day. I actually am in my podcast studio right now, and just outside it are some kettlebells. So whenever I'm going out to make a coffee or use the bathroom or whatever it might be, I'm passing some kettlebells, and often I'll just pick them up, right? So that morning habit leads to me also lifting heavy at other times in the day. And I think this is one of the big things we get wrong about behavior change. Again, nothing wrong with going to the gym twice a week for a 40-minute strength training session. I think that's fantastic if you can do it. I often don't find time to go to the gym. But by doing that morning habit... And it doesn't have to be in the morning. You can do it when you come home from work or at lunchtime. But I would say find something heavy that you like to lift, right? And what you regard as heavy and what I regard as heavy is gonna be different, right? So you're gonna have to use your own judgment there. Remember what I said in habit number two, you need to start becoming your own expert, right? We need to stop outsourcing what we need to to other people. Well, what feels reasonable to you, right? What feels like a good weight where you're pushing yourself a little bit but not too much where you might risk injury? If you need help with that, there are all kinds of YouTube channels that will help you with that. If you have someone in your life, a friend, a work colleague, a family member who knows how to lift weights and you don't, maybe ask them if they can help you. Most people who do this kind of stuff love to share their knowledge to help other people, right? But that's the fourth habit, lift something heavy every single day. And habit number five is to connect with another human being every single day. And it kind of relates to the last thing I said in habit number four about asking someone in your life to help you if you don't know what to do about lifting something heavy. Humans are social animals. We really are. We do not thrive well in isolation. Yet unfortunately, loneliness is increasing massively all over the world. And there's a certain irony, isn't there, that we're supposedly living in this hyper-connected world, yet we're lonelier than ever before. And that's because a lot of this digital connection is not the same as real life, face-to-face if you can, but not always, that real human connection. Now, I know you can get it online in some places, okay? But I think many of us, we kind of think we're connected because we're on social media and we're interacting with people in the online world, but how many of those people that you're interacting with do you know, like, really well, where you feel you can share who you really are? We know from the data that loneliness in some studies seems to have a similar impact on our health comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. That's remarkable, right? Other studies have shown that the feeling of being lonely leads to premature death, increased risk of heart attacks, increased risk of strokes. I can tell you one thing for sure. If you feel lonely and isolated, you are much more likely to engage in behaviors like too much sugar or too much alcohol. So when we don't feel good in ourselves, we need to neutralize how we're feeling and that emotional stress in some way, and often we turn to things like sugar, time online, pornography, all kinds of things, right? So loneliness has a huge impact. In fact, in my book, Make Change That Lasts, I deal with a lot of the root causes of why we struggle to make meaningful change. And there's one chapter in there on human connection. It's chapter nine, and why it's so important on so many different levels. But what I want you to think about... And remember, this video is about helping you take action and move forward in your life. I don't want you feeling stuck and unmotivated. I want you to go, "Wow, even if my life feels tough, there are some small things I can do each day that will start to make a difference." Connecting with another human being is one of those small things. It could be that you phone up your mom or your dad. It could be that you phone up a college friend, you know, a work colleague. If you don't have friends, and I recognize that many people struggle with this, but maybe you like drinking coffee. Well, go to your local coffee shop and sit there and drink a coffee and say hi to the barista. Maybe read a book or do some of your work emails at the coffee shop. Even if you hear the hub drum of humanity and other people talking, that still does something really, really powerful. We know that. There's so much data on this. In fact, you may have heard me talk in another video about the importance of talking to strangers. Okay? It's great to have deep connections with our family, with our partners, with our close friends, but also there's value in just simply saying hi to a stranger and they say hi back. We know there's a part of your brain, there's a network of systems that acts as a sociometer, and it's basically scanning the outside world for threats. When you go to your local coffee shop and you order your latte and the barista makes it for you, you say, "Hey, thanks so much. The latte you made for me yesterday was wonderful. I really appreciate that." And they smile back at you and say, "Hey, thanks. No worries. My pleasure." That sends a powerful signal to your sociometer that the world around you is safe. That makes you feel good. It makes you feel that things are under control. So when we talk about health- We're often talking about what are we eating, how much we're moving, how much we're sleeping. Hey, these things are important. I've written loads of books about that stuff. I get that that stuff is important. But some of the ideas I've tried to introduce to you in this video are things that I think we're not speaking about enough. How can we reflect each day by starting off each day with three questions? How can we start to trust ourselves more and listen to external experts less? How can we start to change the state of our nervous system through breathwork, which will mean we naturally make better food choices, right? Something I've not really mentioned, how often do we use sugar in our lives to help reduce stress? It's a lot more common than many of us think. Sugar is one of the main ways that humans try and manage their stress. So if you can use breathwork as a way of managing your stress levels or lowering how on your nervous system is, you're naturally gonna consume less. Yes, I mentioned lifting something heavy each day. I think that's a physical health thing that's really important, that has powerful benefits for your brain and your mental well-being as well. Remember what I said. It helps build up a bit of confidence, self-esteem. It helps build momentum. But this final point of connecting with another human being in some way each day, I think is one of the most undervalued daily health habits that we have. And some of you will naturally do that, but some of you won't. And for some of you, I really hope this is a bit of a nudge to say, "No, this is really important." If you feel a bit scared, if you've got social anxiety, I get it, but please try and get outside your comfort zone a little bit and start interacting with other humans. A successful life, I think, for any human being is a broad life rather than a narrow life. And I think there are five buckets that we ideally want to keep topped up. Okay. There's work, there's family, there's friendships, there's our health, and there's our passions. Okay? These are the five buckets. So let's go through those buckets, and I want you on each one of those to ask yourself how are you doing. They're all important. Now, I think for many of us in this modern world in which we live, it's pretty hard to keep all of those five buckets topped up at all times. You know, maybe in our 20s, yeah, we do wanna make it in our career, so maybe we have to sacrifice our passions while we're working hard to impress our boss and move forward. I get that. It's okay to not have them all topped up at the same time. But if it goes on for too long, that's where the problems lie. That's when you end up on your deathbed at the end of your life. It's when they've gone on for too long, right? So work, if I was to ask you now, how is that bucket doing? Do you do meaningful work? Do you enjoy it? Do you think it gives you what you want it to give you, or do you think you're in the wrong job? Do you think you're working too hard? You know, there's statistics in the UK saying that 88% of UK workers have experienced some degree of burnout in the past two years. I mean, it's a staggering statistic. So ask yourself. That's one bucket, work. Next bucket, family. You know, if you're lucky enough to be in touch with your family and have a family, you know, how are your relationships doing there? Are your parents alive? If they are, do you see them regularly? Do you call them regularly? The amount of people these days who get busy with work and life, and then the parents get old, the parents die, and they realize, "Oh man, I didn't spend enough time with my mom when she was alive, with my dad when he was alive," whatever it might be. So ask yourself. What about your immediate family? Maybe you have a partner. Maybe you've got children. Are you spending enough time with them, okay? Again, there's no right or wrong here. You ultimately know what's best for you. I'm just trying to shine a light on some important areas. So we've got work, we've got family. Friendship, right? Many of us are blessed to have good friends. Not everyone, but many of us are, but we're just too busy to spend time with them. We know that this is a real problem, particularly for men. It's well known that many men are struggling with friendships. They're so busy with work and mortgages and life and, you know, for a variety of reasons which maybe go beyond this video, they're not really hanging out with their friends in the way that they might have done 20 or 30 years ago. This is having huge negative consequences, including being a contributory factor to the growing rates of male suicide. But ask yourself about your friendships. How are they? Are you nourishing them enough? If you're not, that's okay. Maybe, you know, write this down. Write down those five things and give them a score. How am I doing in each one of these? Where do I need to make changes? Okay, then the fourth one would be your health, the fourth bucket. How are you doing with your health? Is it where you want it to be? Are there things that you know would be helpful but you've not managed to do them? Okay, fine. That's okay. But if you're recognizing it... Again, what did I say at the start? Take a holiday every day. This is you taking that holiday, reflecting on your life, going, "Yeah, you know what? I've been saying for the last few years I wanna, I don't know, do a 5K," or take up yoga or whatever it might be, whatever appeals to you. But you still haven't done it. Why? Why haven't you? What's gonna change? How are you going to live that meaningful life that means you don't have those regrets if you don't make changes, if you don't make positive changes? You can change any time you like. It's never too late, I promise you. I've seen patients before at 75 who've realized actually their whole life they never allowed themselves to be an artist. I can remember one patient in particular said, "I used to love drawing at school, but I got busy with work. I've never done it since." And spent the next 10 years getting back into art, right? That was their passion, not their health. That's that fifth bucket, the passion, right? So it's never too late to make a change. But I wanted to share those five buckets because I think they're a simple way for you to assess your life. And again, this video is about how do you spend your time wisely? How do you recognize that life is short and that it won't go on forever? That if you don't start making changes now, well, when are you gonna make those changes? How are you gonna stop being that person who has those big regrets on their deathbed? I think it's totally possible to live a meaningful life and not have regrets on your deathbed. Okay. So hopefully that concept of buckets is gonna be helpful. Also, in this idea of busyness and not confusing busyness with success, there's a question that I ask myself every single morning that in many ways you can consider the anti-busyness question. And I do it whilst I'm drinking coffee. I do it in my journal, and the question is this. What is the most important thing I have to do today? If I was to ask you that right now, do you know what you'd write down? Or does your mind go to about 20 different things? Oh, I need to do this, I need to do this, I need to do this. What's so powerful about this question is that it forces you to make a decision. There's no such thing as a perfect decision, okay? If you say that spending time with your wife today is the most important thing that you have to do, it doesn't mean that your work's not important. It doesn't mean that your relationship with your children is not important or with your friends. Right? It doesn't mean that. It's just saying that today, in the context of everything else that's been going on in my life, the most important thing is spending time with my wife. Great. Tomorrow it might be something else. You know, for me yesterday it was when my kids come home from school, right? 'Cause I was working from home yesterday. When my children come home from school, I'm gonna make sure that my laptop's down and when they come through the door that I am present and attentive to them so that I can hear what they have to say to me. Okay? Every day it's gonna be different, and that's okay. But here's the thing and why that question is so, so powerful is if you every single morning ask yourself that question and you say, "This is the most important thing I have to do today," and you make a decision, and if you've got four things that you can't decide, just choose one. It's about making a decision, and then you ensure that you do that thing every day. Do that for 30 days. So 30 days you've specified in the morning the most important thing that you're gonna do, right? You do that thing for 30 days. Each day it could be different. It is inconceivable that your life will not change. Inconceivable 'cause you would've done 30 things that you have identified are important. That's a life well spent, right? It doesn't mean your to-do list is gonna vanish, but that's the thing about life today. Our to-do lists are never done. Never. You could get down to inbox zero. I don't know anyone who's ever done that, but in theory [laughs] you could clear all your emails and go into the kitchen and make yourself a cup of tea. In those 10 minutes, you could've got another 10 emails. There's nothing you can do about it. So you now have to take control and specify what is important for me, and that's why I love that question. Honestly, I love that. I think it's one of the best questions you can ask yourself every day. What is the most important thing I have to do today? So again, that's my challenge to you, right? So in this idea of busyness, and let's not confuse busyness with success 'cause it ain't, right? No one at the end of their life goes, "Yeah, I was so busy. It was fantastic. Never had a minute to sit down. Never had a minute. I just kept going." I mean, just think about it another way. If you're driving on the motorway or in America you'd call it the highway, and you're going at 70 miles an hour and you look around you, how able are you to take things in? You're not. Everything's whizzing past you, right? But if you're driving at, let's say, 40 miles an hour... And this is maybe not the perfect example 'cause of course we're not gonna be driving at that speed on a motorway, but just, you know, try and get the point of what I'm trying to say. If you're going slowly, you can see it all. You can take it in. You can see the trees. Yeah. You could see who's in the other cars or whatever it might be. Well, that's a great metaphor for life. If you're constantly rushing around through life, you're not taking in life. You can't experience the joy that is already there. Even if your life is busy and stressful, I'm sure there are good things going on every day, but you often don't notice them because you're so busy. And that's why a practice of gratitude is so useful. And again, if you're interested in that, I've covered that in many of my other videos on this channel. But yeah, so think about that. Are you too busy? Are you neglecting

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:00 some of those important things in life? And maybe those five buckets, if you score each one of those, you'll get an idea of where you could start making changes. And also ask yourself that question each day. What is the most important thing I have to do today? Ask yourself that question and then do it. Now, the final point I wanna make about a life well spent, and it kind of relates to some of the buckets that I've just outlined, is I want you to think about your relationships. Life is made up of its relationships. What are those things people say on their deathbed, right? Can you remember what I said right at the start of this video? Now, one of them is, "I wish I'd worked less," but what do they also say? "I wish I'd spent more time with my family and friends." Relationships are the fabric of life. You know that intuitively. But often we get caught up in busyness and cultural ideas of success. Yes, we may be crushing it at work, but at the expense of what? Our relationships, our children, our friends, our partners, our parents. That's what life's about. And what does the scientific research say? Well, there's so many different studies which tell us that the number one factor for a happy and long life, it's not your diet, it's not how much you move, it's not how well you sleep. These things are all important. Believe you me, I know how important they are. I talk about them all the time. I write about them all the time. But the number one factor is the quality of your relationships. Now, listen, we all kind of know that, but we often don't act as if they are the most important thing, do we? And that's why the things I've already shared in this video are already gonna help you with that. If you take a daily holiday and reflect on your life, you're very quickly gonna understand if you are properly nourishing your relationships or not. If you do that five bucket exercise and go through them all, you're very quickly gonna go, "Ah, [lip smacks] my friendships, my family, I could spend more time with them." You know, I've had to do this in my own life. Like many people, I got super busy for a few years. Yes, with work, but also with caring for my elderly parents. When my dad was alive, you know, I hardly had any time to see my friends 'cause I was helping my mum and my brother care for him. My dad had lupus. He was on kidney dialysis. I helped care for him for 15 years. I know what that's like. My mother these days, she's, you know, 84. She needs a lot of help, and I live very nearby to her so I can be there and help. That's a choice that I have made. But it also means that I have probably neglected some of my friendships at the same time. Look, I'm lucky. I do have some amazing friends. But doing these exercises, they remind me, "Hey, Rangan, you know what? Yeah, you can love your mum and care for her, but you can also find time maybe once a month." You know, my best friends live hundreds of miles away from me, so maybe two or three times a year we can get together for a weekend, and we do. And that's the power of these exercises. It's not about beating yourself up and going, "You shouldn't be working so hard. You've neglected your relationships." Guilt, shame doesn't help anyone. It doesn't help you make change, I promise you. It may help you make change for a few weeks. In fact, this is what we often see in January. People wake up on New Year's Day full of guilt and shame. They wake up with a hangover and think, "Right. That's it. I'm sick of this being my life. I'm gonna lose weight this year. I'm gonna go spending four times a week. I'm gonna eat well." Right? But it's guilt and shame that drives that behavior. That's why four weeks later, 80% or so of New Year's resolutions have fallen by the wayside. That's one of the reasons at least, because the energy behind that behavior was toxic. So these exercises that I'm sharing are not about guilt or shame. They're not about beating yourself up. They're simply about understanding what is the state of your life. If you don't know where you are currently at, you're never gonna get to where you wanna be. But you have to be honest with yourself and go, "Yeah, these areas need a bit of work." So, right, this final idea is about making time for your relationships, okay? And how you can-- how are you gonna do that? Of course it's gonna be different for different people. One of my favorite tips that I use myself and I've used with many patients over the years is something that I call the tea ritual, and something that I've used with my wife, right? I've got a great relationship with my wife. We're happily married. We've got two kids. But, you know, in term time if there's a lot going on at work and with the children at school and with our families, you know, you, you can sometimes feel as though you're passing ships where you reside in the same house, you're seeing each other, but not properly connecting with each other. So the tea ritual for us... And again, I appreciate your life is different, but perhaps there's an element here that's gonna work for you, is when our kids go to bed, we come down to the kitchen, we put the kettle on, we make a pot of mint tea, and we sit in the kitchen and the commitment is for five minutes we're just gonna spend time with each other and ask each other how our days were, how things are going. Now, it sounds so simple, doesn't it? But I can tell you it's transformative. When we do that tea ritual regularly, the closeness, the intimacy, the connectedness that we feel with each other is on a different scale. Because this is what I've learned over the years about relationships. I passionately believe that quality is more important than quantity. Don't get me wrong, quantity's great, right? [chuckles] But you can spend an hour with someone and be completely distracted, or you can spend 15 minutes where you give them the-- your full presence and attention, and I think you know the difference. An outcome between those two. So this five-minute tea ritual is very, very effective, and it doesn't mean it's always five minutes, right? Some days it ends up being half an hour, but the commitment is for five minutes because that means that even if we're busy, we can never say we don't have five minutes. Sometimes it will be, "Hey, babe, listen, um, I've got loads of work to do at the moment, loads of emails. So, you know, after five minutes, I'm gonna get back to that." That's completely fine 'cause it keeps the habit going. It keeps the momentum there, right? But some days, yeah, it'll be half an hour, it'll be an hour. And I think these days, particularly with technology and phones, it's so easy for you to get on your device and your partner to get on their device, and you're lost in your own worlds. Yeah, you're in the same room. You're physically in the same space, but emotionally you're millions of miles away. It's a massive problem, and I honestly would say that that five-minute tea ritual... I can think of at least five couples in my practice over the years who came back to me and said that has probably saved their marriage. So that five-minute tea ritual can be really, really effective, and you can apply that with friends, with your partner. You can even apply it with your children. I really hope you found those ideas useful. Like, genuinely, I'm not here to tell you how to live your life, right? I don't think it's my job. I think you, deep within you, you know what's important in your life, and my hope is that this idea has simply shone a light on the things that you already know. You already know the importance of relationships. You know how important it is to step outside of your life to reflect on your life. You know that you feel better when you're actually doing things each day for your health and your happiness and your wellbeing instead of thinking about them. You know all that. But please don't just watch this video and then go back to doing what you were doing before. I don't want you to be that person who on their deathbed says, "Yeah, I wish I'd done things differently." It doesn't matter what's happened up to this point. You can change any time you want. You just have to commit. You have to with your mind, body, and soul, bring them all together and make that decision, "I want a different life. I want a more meaningful life, a more purposeful life. What I'm doing the things that I want to do." Sure, there might be things in your life that you have to do that you don't wanna do. That's okay. We all have to do that. I'm not promising you that's gonna vanish from your life. It probably isn't. But if you focus on these few things... And I'm not saying do them all. But even if there were two or three ideas that really connected with you, write them down. Say to yourself, "I'm gonna do this." And I would love to know, like genuinely for me but also for this community here on my channel, please let me know what you're gonna commit to in the comments below because I... honestly, I believe in you. I know you can do this. I have seen tens of thousands of patients over the course of my career. I've seen people come in all kinds of different states, and I believe that anybody can make change when they get their mindset right. And I'm convinced that the tools I've shared with you today, I know that if you commit to even just one or two of them, your life is gonna change. You're gonna spend your time in a much more meaningful way, and over time you're gonna go, "Yeah, you know what? I am living my best life. I can do this." If you found that content useful, I think you are really going to enjoy this video where I outline a simple framework for a morning routine that can immediately improve your health and your happiness. You've actually made yourself more resilient. You've actually lengthened the distance between where you currently are and your stress threshold and where you're gonna be after that morning routine.