"Don't Learn It Too Late!" - How To Stop Wasting Time & Reinvent Yourself In 30 Days | Sadhguru

1. 0:00 – 3:52

   Sleep, Wakefulness and Renewal

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

      I thought we'd start off by talking about sleep. I've been a practicing medical doctor now for over two decades, and I would say that one of the commonest problems I've seen, and a problem that is rapidly increasing, is many people coming in saying, "I can't sleep. I can't sleep, Doctor, can you help me?" From your perspective, what do you think is going on?

   2. SASadhguru0:27

      My [laughs] my life and work is about, uh, how to make people more awake than they are right now. Now you're telling me people are having problem of sleep [laughs] to sleep. I think the biggest problem is most people are half asleep during the day when they're awake. To become more awake to life is more important. If you become more awake to life, sleeping when it's needed for the body, because sleeping is a downtime for the body to, uh, kind of undo itself and also do itself fresh. This is happening all the time. Probably, I don't know how, uh, I am not a medical practitioner, nor do I have any knowledge in that area. But from the yogic perspective, from the perspective of, you know, how my life happens, because you said you are two decades practicing medicine. I've been practicing life for six and a half decades. So from that [laughs] from that aspect, I'm saying that, uh, sleep is a kind of a downtime, both the hardware that we have and the software that we have. Hardware will go into a certain level of, uh, fatigue that it needs to recoup itself, and the software also goes into a different kind of fatigue where the software being more nebulous kind of, uh, substance can lose its form. So sleep is a time to recoup that, not necessarily making it the same form, but it can come out with a new form. Every day flower blossoms, no flower looks the same as its another flower. Even in the same plant, if the thousand flowers come out, no flower looks exactly the same. This is the nature of sleep. Every day when you sleep and wake up, you don't have to wake up as the same person. You don't have to wake up exactly same software. Unfortunately, pe- people are thinking that's a great virtue, that always I remain the same. No, you must blossom into fresh possibilities. Sleep could be used as a tool to rejuvenate yourself, to transform yourself, to become an absolutely new possibility. But right now it is, uh, you know, people, because they're in a state, a lot of people are in a state of lack of physical activity, and on the level of the mind, I'm sorry I'm using such a term, but, uh, it's a mental diarrhea through the day. So in the night, they can't stop it. See, if you have physical diarrhea, you can't stop it in the night. Even in the night, you will have to wake up. This is what mind is doing. What is important is peop- lot of people today, if they don't know any other more subtle way of doing things, the simple thing to do is increase the physical activity and reduce the mental activity. How do I reduce the mental activity? If you invest more in perception and less in expression, your mental activity will naturally come down. Right now, this generation of people are too much expression, hardly any perception.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:35

      When you say perception and expression, what exactly do you mean by that? Because I think there's something very interesting there for me that I've not heard about in the context of sleep before. So I wonder if you would mind expanding on that a little bit.

2. 3:52 – 9:24

   Perception vs. Expression and the 112 Ways

   1. SASadhguru3:52

      When we say perception, see right now the five instruments of perception for you right now is seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. It is through this that you know entire life. It is through this that you're a doctor. Yes or no?

   2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:07

      Yes.

   3. SASadhguru4:08

      Even now, if a patient comes to you, you touch him, you look at him, you feel him, and only through five senses you're perceiving life. There are other ways to perceive life, but let's not talk about that. But five senses are vital. If you want to survive on this planet, as instruments of survival, they are vital instruments. So when we talk about sleep, when we talk about food, when we talk about health, we're essentially talking about survival. So let's limit ourselves to five senses. So how you see, how you hear, how you smell, how you taste, how you touch is how you know the world. And whatever information came into you, how you process that depends on how you're identified. Let's say you're identified with a red flower. If you go out into the garden, you will see red will always look brighter than yellow, purple, this, that. There may be thousand other colors. But in your eyes, red will look brighter because somewhere you're little identified with that. So what you're identified with it will orient all the faculties that you have in that direction. So when perception means one thing is what information goes into you. You can also extend it to say how you process it is also perception, but it is not. Technically, it is not. It is the process. But because that is determined by certain identities that we have taken on, if your identity is just one thing, then your process becomes very simple in the, our fundamental. So when your process is very fundamental, you know, socially, we would say he's a fundamentalist.

   4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:54

      Yeah. It's so fascinating. You mentioned these five senses, and you hinted that we can go beyond that. I was recently reading a book where they were, you know, they were talking about some- I think some African tribes who consider themselves to have, I think, 9, 10, maybe 13 senses. Not one of those 13 senses were the same five as we consider to be the, you know, the, the, the five senses. Balance in mind, balance in body was one of the senses-

   5. SASadhguru6:25

      Uh, right now, right now I'm in United States, 13 is a bad number, okay?

   6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:29

      Okay.

   7. SASadhguru6:29

      [laughs] I'm saying we can come to conclusions and conclusions. We are always misunderstanding our conclusions as perception.

   8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:40

      Yeah.

   9. SASadhguru6:40

      Because socially, when you say, "This is my pers- perception," that's your perception. "This is my conclusion," and that's your conclusion. That's what we are saying. We're misunderstanding conclusions as perceptions. Perception is just what comes into you. So if somebody has 13 openings instead of five through which they are perceiving, fantastic. I won't limit the number.

   10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee7:05

       Yeah.

   11. SASadhguru7:06

       It was asked like this. When Adiyogi, the Shiva, was asked by his seven disciples, "How many ways can we attain to the highest possibility of being human?" He said, "112 ways only," because that is the number of possibilities that are there in the body. Then his wife, who did not, you know, she's a woman and she likes variety, she said, "Why only 112? Why can't there be more? Maybe you don't know." So he dismissed her. He said, "There are only 112." So she went into years of austerity and wanting to see if there are other ways to perceive. Then she came back. Uh, because the others, the disciples, are still there, she didn't want to admit that she lost or she could not find other ways, so she came and s- sat down one step below him to indicate to him that she, she's accepting defeat, that she could not find more. Then out of his love and compassion for her, he says, "Only if you're deeply rooted or identified with your body there are 112 ways only. But if your identity and your existence itself is not rooted in the body absolutely, that you're using the body but you're not become the body, if you keep yourself like that," he said, "there are as many atoms there are in the universe, that many doorways are there to perceive."

   12. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:39

       Yeah. Beautiful. Really beautiful. For those individuals who are struggling with as, as you call it, mental diarrhea, there's too much going on in their minds, they have disturbed minds for want of a better-

   13. SASadhguru8:53

       No, unfortunately not too much. Unfortunately, not enough going on in their head. Silly stuff is running compulsively, that's all. Not that they're coming up with some profound thought about the existence or the human wellbeing or the existence of life on this planet. Nothing like that. Just day-to-day things going on. What's on the Wha- WhatsApp messages is ruling their minds for the day. So don't use the word too much. Nothing much going on, but endlessly going on.

3. 9:24 – 16:47

   Technology, Survival and Social Media

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:24

      Why do you think this problem is getting worse, then? Do you think it's because we're moving more towards technology? Let's say 50, 100 years ago, people would be u- physically using their bodies in the day. They would be getting physically and mentally tired, which would help them in the evenings. Whereas now people can be looking at screens all day and having a lot of mental workouts as opposed to physical workouts. I mean, from your perspective, why is this a problem that seems to be on the rise, certainly here in the UK and in America?

   2. SASadhguru9:57

      All such people who are complaining about technology, I think we should, uh, remove machines from their life and ask them to dig the earth with their own hands. I think, uh, they will understand what it used to be [laughs] right? See, this is, uh, [laughs] I must tell you this. In the, before, before, uh, this pandemic, uh, I was in twe- uh, '17 and '18, 2017 and 2018, I was repeatedly invited for artificial intelligence, uh, conferences. I said, "Why are you guys inviting me for an artificial intelligence? I'm not a technology person, nor am I artificial. Why are you guys [laughs] inviting me for this?" Then they said, uh, "Our problem is," these were all academics, they said, "We're going to lose our jobs. If this AI comes, we're gonna lose our jobs." Then I told them an ex- uh, I know a situation from 1970s, I remember this so clearly, that in the Mazagon docks in, uh, Mumbai, uh, you know, the coolies or the labor there went on strike because they installed the first gantry. At that time, the largest ships that came into Mazagon docks were about, uh, 125,000 tons, and to unload that they would take 24 to 28 days physically unloading bag by bag or whatever. They inven- uh, they put the first gantry, and all these guys went on strike. "What are we s- supposed to do with our muscle?" [laughs] Because you've got a machine now. So today a quarter-million ton, uh, vessel gets unloaded in less than 24 hours.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:39

      Yeah.

   4. SASadhguru11:40

      So what are all those muscles doing? We don't know. Maybe they're working out in the gyms. [laughs] I don't know what they're doing. But the same problem with our brains. Technology has come. The idea of technology is, ultimate idea of technology is that none of us have to do any work. That is, we don't have to do anything for a living. I don't do anything for my living. Somebody takes care of me always. Because it's about life. It's not about making a living. Survival is not the goal of human existence. Survival has become a big thing because of made it a challenge. Otherwise, if, uh, you know, just look back when, uh... Don't look at Europe, just look back other parts of the world 500, 1,000 years ago. People just went about and picked up whatever they want, and they lived. Survival was not such a big challenge when the populations were low and nature was in abunda- abundance. People just survived without much effort. But survival became more and more challenge as we got more and more organized, and as a species we became more dominant than other species, not realizing that it's only in coherence with other species that we can exist here well. These things have become a challenge. Now we have raised survival to heaven. Even if we want to survive, we're calling God's help, because [laughs] to survive you need four limbs and a few brain cells which are working. This is all you need to survive. But we are making such a big deal about it, and now we are complaining technology is the problem. Technology has made our lives easy. See, you and me are talking. I'm in Tennessee, you're in London. Uh, you and me, will we ever complain about technology? [laughs]

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee13:28

      Yeah.

   6. SASadhguru13:28

      I'm saying technology is the greatest thing that's happened to us, and it has enabled humanity to do things that we could not imagine possible just a few years ago. So people are complaining because they're always complaining. People are always complaining about everything. As I said earlier, the problem is this: there has to be a certain amount of energy invested in perception, because perception or continued perception will make the experience of life profound. Right now, even a 12-year-old child is busy on social media expressing their emotions and their silly thoughts and whatever. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have used that word silly, because I'll get trolled. Oh, you think 12-year-old children are silly? They're not. They're childish, and it's okay. That's how they should be at that age. But that's not a time to express. That's a time to perceive and make the experience of life profound. Once your l- experience of life becomes profound, people will beg you to express. That's how it should be. Now, because there is technology and there are mediums, everybody is busy expressing nonstop, and where is the time for perception for them?

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee14:41

      Is this the difference between external and internal? When you say express, that's giving... That's putting things out, putting things out. It's the external world. Whereas when you say perception, what I'm hearing is it's we're turning that around onto ourselves, we're going inward.

   8. SASadhguru15:00

      It's like this. You said external and internal. Tell me in your mind, just point out one thing to me which is not external.

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee15:15

      I was going to say maybe-

   10. SASadhguru15:17

       No, no. The language that you're expressing is external. You picked it up from outside.

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee15:21

       Okay. [laughs]

   12. SASadhguru15:23

       [laughs] And tell me one thing in your body which is not external.

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee15:29

       Well, I can't tell you, but I can feel internally. I can feel, I can, I can-

   14. SASadhguru15:34

       No, no. Let, let's not go to the feelings, but in your body is there one cell of body which has come from somewhere else? No, it's come externally, whether for your... From your parents or from the world around you in the form of food, isn't it?

   15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee15:49

       Yeah.

   16. SASadhguru15:51

       So there is nothing in your body or in your head which is internal. It's all external. This is what is happening. [laughs] I was, uh, just, you know, yes- yesterday I was just going through this. People are having fun asking questions about me to ChatGPT. [laughs] I can't believe this, what all it's saying. So it looks like it's a person talking, but everything is information, and even a person is just that. It's just that we attach so much emotion and consequence to it, we think it's something new. It is not new. What you have gathered is what you're saying. This is what I'm saying. What you perceive, you can process it in such a way that it becomes profound and valuable. Or you're just expressing in reflection of whatever you see, boom, boom, it's going out every day.

   17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee16:46

       Okay.

4. 16:47 – 22:07

   Evening Habits, Eating and How Much to Sleep

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee16:47

      So for that person then who is struggling with their sleep, and they're quite wired in their brain in the evening, I know that you have in previous conversations, interviews that I've seen you give, you have recommended things like, you know, eat three to four hours before bedtime, uh, shower in the evening, uh, maybe light a candle, maybe do some yoga or meditate. How did those practices, in your view, help people fall asleep when ult- ultimately, as you say, it's actually about expression versus perception? Where, where do those practices fit in?

   2. SASadhguru17:31

      See, these are like, uh, when somebody comes to you, you're a doctor. When somebody comes to you with some problem. Right now they got some pain, and they're in pain. What do you do? You give a painkiller. Is that a solution for life? No. At that moment it's a solution because somebody's in pain. So these are just like that. But the real thing is this. The important thing is, which is more important for you? How awake you are right now is more important for you, or how asleep you are is more important for you? Because between sleep and wakefulness, the difference is of life and death When you're asleep, you're dead, literally. Now people are struggling with sleep because they have been told there's a prescription, you must sleep for eight hours a day, otherwise you'll have heart attack. Something, something, all kinds of research around us. I know this is going to get me a massive amount of troll, but it's all right [laughs] because the important thing is people must understand what you call as life is far more profound than keyhole understanding of do this, do this, do this.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee18:42

      Yeah.

   4. SASadhguru18:42

      We can handle that. When you're not well, we can say, "Okay, please do this. Take this tablet. Do this. Do this." But why are you not well? Should you not look at it? Why is it that you don't sleep? Or why is it that you're not fully awake? It's very important to look at life more profoundly than to come to tidbits of do this, do this, and it'll be okay. Definitely, if you go to bed with a full stomach, you'll cause much damage to the system. You are a doctor. I am sure you have seen the innards of a human being, either dead or alive, you've seen them. So you know all the vital organs are in this region, thoracic region. None of them have been fitted with proper clamps and nuts and bolts. All of them are hanging in nets. Am I correct, sir?

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee19:29

      Yeah.

   6. SASadhguru19:30

      Doctor? They're all hanging in nets. Now, you fill one bag full of food, because most peop- see, there was a time when human beings could eat whatever they c- came in front of them fully, load it and push it and eat it, because their activity was at that level. This is how they used to eat. Even now, if you see the labor class, eats like that because they're physically working-

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee19:55

      Mm-hmm

   8. SASadhguru19:55

      ... eight, 10 hours a day. But today, everybody eats the same way, even though they're not doing that kind of work. Slowly awareness is coming, fortunately. Uh, otherwise we have to evolve as our activity evolves because of machines, once again. Uh, our food also has to evolve, how we consume, how much we consume, when we consume. So when we eat all kinds of food, particularly if you're eating, uh, meat in some way, you put this in your body and then try to sleep. Of course you will fall asleep because it'll create so much inertia. But now this huge heavy bag, you know metabolism drops in sleep. When metabolic activity drops, digestive process will not happen well. That is a known fact.

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee20:38

      Yeah.

   10. SASadhguru20:38

       Now, with this heavy bag lying on various other organs, as you roll this way, that way, it crushes your liver, it crushes your spleen. It does so many things. This heavy bag is a road roller in your body. If you sleep like this, it no ma- it depends on your constitution. If you're, uh, you know, if your parents have given a strong constitution, then, uh, it may take a few years before you get ill. If you are a little fragile constitution, within months you'll get there, every day if you do this. So minimum three to four hours space must be there, and above all, you must eat light in the night. Now the problem is, "But I woke up... I went to bed at 9:00. I woke up at 12:30." Well, that's perfect. So you must not go to bed at 9:00. You must go to bed at 12:00 and woke up a- wake up at 4:00 in the morning. That's how it should be. Now you're, somebody has told you you must sleep for eight hours. That somebody who told you you must sleep for eight hours obviously is eating wrong and living wrong. Now that's become the standard everywhere. There is no prescription for sleep. On a given day, this body may need five hours sleep. Another day it may need only two hours sleep, because it depends on the type of activity, what I have done on that day. You just, just go by the requirement of the body. Who is giving you moral values as to how to sleep?

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee22:01

       Yeah.

   12. SASadhguru22:01

       [laughs] Is it written in one of the commandments, "Thou shalt sleep eight hours"?

5. 22:07 – 27:25

   Information vs. Intelligence and Listening to Your Body

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee22:07

      Yeah. I, I really love that because one of the things I've honestly found in my entire career as a doctor, o- over the course of my career, is that, number one, different things work for different people. And one of the problems I see, Sadhguru, at the moment, and I wonder what your perspective is on this, given the position you have in society, given how many people look up to you for guidance, I strongly feel that we have given up our own inner expertise and knowing to outside experts. So one of the reasons I think people get confused, let's say they hear one interview with, uh, one expert saying, "You should eat X, Y, and Z." And then they hear an interview with another expert who says, "No, you should eat A, B, and C, and you shouldn't eat X, Y, and Z."

   2. SASadhguru23:00

      And the same expert also is changing his opinion every two years.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee23:03

      Exactly. And I think then people get really confused and say, "Well, I don't know which one to follow anymore." But I think that's the wrong question. It's the wrong approach. It's not which one of those should I follow, it's which is the right approach for me.

   4. SASadhguru23:19

      See, uh, because people are listening to internet, they're not listening to their own life, nor are they listening to any other life around them. This listening to life, this is why, this is what I meant by perception.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee23:32

      Yeah.

   6. SASadhguru23:33

      You listen to what your body is speaking. Whether I should eat today or not, your body will tell you. There's a h- there is a massive... I mean, you come from a, a Indian background, so I'm telling you. In India, there is a traditional understanding on which days you must eat, which days you should not eat. Moon is in a certain phase. On that day, we won't eat. We'll be just on fruit diet. If we can fast, we will fast. Otherwise, we are on fruit diet. Otherwise, essentially the idea is on that day you must be on light stomach because your digestive process is not the same on that day. These are things that will come to you by observation. There is no observation. Everything is gathered knowledge. See, we are misunderstanding information for intelligence. This is a serious mistake.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee24:22

      Yeah.

   8. SASadhguru24:22

      Information is not intelligence. Information is data, and the data for your... You're a medical professional, you know this very well. The data for your body and the data for my body will be entirely different on many levels. And, uh, you are the expert and you say, "This is it," and I am the expert, I say, "That is it." This is not the way. There is no, this is it, that is it.

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee24:46

      Yeah.

   10. SASadhguru24:46

       The only thing is you must become more awake, not asleep, because sleep is the problem right now. For me, getting people to a higher level of wakefulness is the problem. [laughs]

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee24:58

       Yeah.

   12. SASadhguru24:59

       If everybody is fully awake, they would realize what's happening in their system. Have they ever paid attention to what is happening? Whether the stomach is ready to take in food or not? Right now, we are still behaving like foraging animals. Whenever food comes in front of us, we must eat.

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee25:16

       Yeah.

   14. SASadhguru25:16

       So that has to go.

   15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee25:18

       Yeah.

   16. SASadhguru25:18

       It is not, you must eat this, you must not eat that. The important thing is you must just... This is a litmus test for people. If you eat food, immediately after food, you are... Right now, see, they have fixed this in America. When they serve you a platter of food, along with that, a bucket full of Coca-Cola or one of those brands, which is essentially Coke, will come. Otherwise, a bucket full of coffee will come. I'm saying a bucket because I don't see any tumblers and glasses, uh, cups in America. It's all buckets.

   17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee25:48

       Yeah.

   18. SASadhguru25:49

       You know what I'm saying? [laughs]

   19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee25:49

       I, I really do. Yeah. Yeah.

   20. SASadhguru25:52

       [laughs] So when this bucket comes and you drink this, if you don't drink that, most probably you'll fall asleep right there on the table-

   21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee26:01

       Yeah

   22. SASadhguru26:01

       ... because the food is so dull, so full of inertia. When I say so full of inertia, almost everything that... It is not only in a restaurant or something. Almost at homes also, the food that most people are eating, I'm talking about well-to-do people, I'm not talking about homeless people on the street. Well-to-do people are generally eating an average of 60 to 90 day, uh, 90-day-old food on a daily basis. In, in yo- in Southern India, even today, it's generally followed in yogic culture, any food that we cook, we must eat within one and a half hours. After that, we won't touch it because it will gather what is called as tamas. Tamas literally means inertia. Inertia, ultimate level of inertia in you is death. Partial inertia is coma or sleep. Is that what you want? You want aliveness. You want dynamism in every cell in your body. If that has to come, you eat food and just observe. No other stimulant. Just observe. If they don't drink a coffee or a Coke or light up a cigarette, they can't stay awake.

   23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee27:12

       Yeah.

   24. SASadhguru27:13

       You just sit there. If you feel drowsy, you have not eaten the wrong food. If you eat food and you feel very alive, that's the right food to eat.

6. 27:25 – 31:54

   Evening Showers and Water Cleansing

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee27:25

      You also recommend having a shower in the evening. Now conventionally, many people in Western countries will shower in the morning. But when I heard you speak about this, it was really fascinating to me because it, it, it implied, the way you were speaking implied that you were getting a physical cleansing and a kind of emotional cleansing if you take your shower in the evening. Could you just elaborate on that a little bit, please?

   2. SASadhguru27:54

      Uh, physical cleansing, for sure everybody understands the... Because today you're going out in the world, there's so much pollution, and what you eat and work and mix with people, you know? We are a heavily populated [laughs] uh, planet right now. Whether you're going to an office or you get into a bus or, uh, wherever, you're coming in contact with so many bodies. Maybe not directly, but in so many other ways. With their breath, with the atmosphere around you, automobiles of course, because they are part of, uh, they are living creatures who live with us.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee28:26

      Mm.

   4. SASadhguru28:26

      Without them, we can't exist. All these things together. So definitely a physical cleansing is there. I did not say emotional cleansing. See, over 70% of your body is water. If you just allow water, it has to be running water. If water runs over you... Today, running water mean, does not mean river. It means a shower. So I said shower [laughs] because everybody can't go to river, and river is not in a condition where you can even dip yourself anymore because, uh, they have become cesspools across the world. [laughs] So leaving that aside, if water runs over you... See, there is a process in when they build, uh, nuclear reactors and also other things which are related to that nuclear science. When they want to purify a metal, they will purify it in the normal chemical processes to a certain point, but still some micro amount of, uh, impurities remain in the metal. Part of metallurgical process. So what they do is, uh, let's say a copper rod, we want to purify this. Now, we put a copper ring around it which is not touching it, with a little space. But with electrical charge, move it up and down, up and down, and they find that is the best way to get it to 100% purity. So this is something that we exercise all the time, that one thing is let the water flow over you. The breeze. In certain seasons, we have what is called as wind wash. And, uh, you come from Bengal, so you know this maybe. I don't know. You grew up in UK probably.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee30:11

      Yeah.

   6. SASadhguru30:12

      So, uh, maybe if you've gone back home or to ancestral homes, you would see when somebody goes out and comes, especially children- Or anybody goes out with lots of people, and if they come back with a little shrunken face, immediately the ladies in the house will say, "Come and sit down here," and they'll do a fire wash. It's called klesha nashana. You know?

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee30:35

      Yeah.

   8. SASadhguru30:35

      Have you seen this?

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee30:35

      Yeah, yeah.

   10. SASadhguru30:37

       With fire wash. Because all the five elements can get affected one way or the other by constant transaction in the world. So when you come back, you may not be able to do all those things. At least water wash you can do, and water wash is important not only for washing your skin, but apart from that, just water flowing over your body, you will see there is a certain release in the system.

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee31:03

       I have found, and I don't know what your perspective might be on this, I have found that rituals and routines can be incredibly helpful for people. Now, of course, everyone has to find the right routine for them, but routines both in the evening and in the morning I have found myself, and with many of my patients, can be incredibly helpful for physical and mental wellbeing. To make sure you're taking action after watching this video, I've created a free breathing guide that's gonna help you reduce stress, calm your mind, and boost your energy. In this guide, I share with you six really simple breathing practices that work immediately. Even just one minute a day will start to make a big difference. To receive your free guide, all you have to do is click on the link in the description box below.

7. 31:54 – 37:43

   Rituals, Life Versus Death, and Staying Awake

   1. SASadhguru31:54

      So let me, let me be a little more not so complicated. Let me come down to the world. See, you're always shooting for the ideal, but how many people are willing to shoot for the ideal? When, uh, you know, I was talking to a, a group of people many years ago in Nashville, and I was saying, "See, if you really want to live an ideal life, this is the way you eat, this is what you do, this is the time you get up, this is what you do." So one guy go- stood up and said, "Sadhguru, if I, if I don't want to be really ideal, not don't want to be really top-notch, if I want to be number two or three kind of life, what should I do?" [laughs] So you're talking about that, so let me come to that. [laughs] My aspiration is always how to push people to the top-notch.

   2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee32:41

      Yeah.

   3. SASadhguru32:41

      But people always choose number two, three, number 13, you know, whatever, [laughs] because, uh, they think there is something more important in life than life itself. It's a serious mistake that human beings are making. They think their work or their office or their home or their anything is more important than life itself. This is life, all right? How this is is most important because what we do depends on how this is. Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, how this one is is what it will do. You cannot do anything that you are not. Do you agree with me, doctor?

   4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee33:26

      I, I completely agree, yeah.

   5. SASadhguru33:28

      You ca- you cannot do anything other than what you are. If you are a confusion, you will do confusion. Maybe with great conviction, that's the problem. This is why people believe something. This is why people adhere to philosophies. This is why people adhere to certain boom, boom, boom practices or rituals or habits, because you can beat the confusion with this. Otherwise, every day in the morning you have to get up and figure out, "Okay, what do I do today?" That's a fantastic way to be if you're not... If you don't have a mind which constantly threatens you with confusion, if you have cultured your mind to a certain level of discipline, then the best way to get up is without any ritual. But that percentage of population is very, very small. Super small.

   6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee34:21

      Yeah.

   7. SASadhguru34:21

      So for the rest of the people, the best thing is some kind of a ritual. Well, he- even here at the yoga center, morning wake-up time is whatever, 5:30. Everybody must assemble for sadhana. It starts with a certain ritual, then everybody has their specific... There are some common practices, then everybody has specific practices to do. Till 8:00 in the morning is completely spent in this and totally in silence. Everybody's doing their thing with some people do more with the body, some people with the mind, some people with energies according to their individual needs. But some basic practices which are common, and rest everybody's doing this. So without this ritual, there wouldn't be a yoga center. I'm not against the ritual. Fundamentally, I'm against it.

   8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee35:07

      Yeah.

   9. SASadhguru35:07

      But in practice, I am not against it. So in the morning, you get up and brush your teeth. You can either re- do it ritualistically or you see that there is a need. It has to be done. So there are two ways to do it. You can do it consciously or by habit. I would always prefer that you do it consciously. But most people, if you leave it to their consciousness, their consciousness will go back to sleep. Because their problem is they want to sleep better. [laughs] They don't want to be more awake. When I... I'm not against sleep. Why I'm saying this sleep is compared to your awake- wakefulness right now, your sleep is inertia, isn't it?

   10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee35:51

       Yeah.

   11. SASadhguru35:53

       Even though you're a doctor, when you're asleep, as far as you are concerned, maybe not medically, as far as you are concerned, you're in some kind of coma. Or we can say we are dead, actually. We're gone.

   12. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee36:06

       Yeah.

   13. SASadhguru36:07

       So in that sense, if you're sleeping eight hours a day, one-third of your life you will sleep it away. That means you won't live. There is lot of time to die, I'm saying, because [laughs] see, you are 45, am I correct?

   14. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee36:24

       You, you, you-

   15. SASadhguru36:25

       I'm sorry if I'm revealing this to all your people

   16. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee36:27

       No, you are correct

   17. SASadhguru36:27

       [laughs]

   18. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee36:27

       So I don't know how you knew that, but you, you're, you're absolutely correct.

   19. SASadhguru36:31

       So, uh, so you've f- 45 years ago you were born. Before that, how long were you dead?

   20. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee36:46

       An eternity.

   21. SASadhguru36:48

       Well, you don't know. Endless amount of time. Now I'll bless you with another 100 years. 100 years later, when you die... See, when I say death, I'm not wishing you death. All I'm saying is all of us, nobody is negotiating death. We're only negotiating time. I said 100 years more. Good enough, right?

   22. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee37:09

       Yeah. I'll take that. That's good. That's, uh-

   23. SASadhguru37:11

       [laughs] Okay

   24. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee37:11

       ... may- maybe, maybe a bit too long-

   25. SASadhguru37:13

       100 years-

   26. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee37:13

       ... but that's okay.

   27. SASadhguru37:14

       [laughs] 100 years later when you die, how long will you be dead?

   28. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee37:21

       An eternity again.

   29. SASadhguru37:22

       Ag- again, endless amount of time. So I'm saying we are dead for a very long time. We are alive for a very little time. In this time, please tell all your people not to focus on how to sleep, how to stay awake.

   30. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee37:38

       Yeah.
8. 37:43 – 40:46

   Sleeping Only Four Hours and Keeping the Body Alive

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee37:43

      My understanding from researching this conversation is that you only sleep maybe two to three hours, four hours a night, something like that.

   2. SASadhguru37:55

      Rest is the basis of activity. If you don't sleep well tonight, you won't live well tomorrow. It's very simple.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee38:02

      But I've heard you say that the human body actually has no requirement for sleep, it actually has a requirement for rest, and sleep is just one form of rest.

   4. SASadhguru38:11

      Almost 26, 27 years on an average, I slept only two and a half hours per day. Now I'm, uh, you know, I'm 60, nearly 66 now. I'm getting a little lazy, so I'm sleeping average four, four and a quarter, four and a half hours maybe. Uh, but, uh, that's more than enough for the body. It's not like I ever wake up with an alarm bell. I have never used alarm bells in my life. Uh, everybody, my, my daughter laughing at me, I don't know how to set an alarm on my phone. I just wake up. When body is done with sleep, it wakes up.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee38:51

      Yeah.

   6. SASadhguru38:51

      It's eager to wake up. So first of all, this is the important thing. Have you kept your life both within and around you in such a dynamic and interesting way that your, everything in you is eager to wake up? Or is, "Oh, one more day." [laughs]

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee39:14

      Yeah. Is it also that if, if really the body is asking for rest... I've been thinking a lot about this because I've been thinking, how come Sadhguru only sleeps two, three, now he's getting lazy, sleeping four hours a night, okay? Conventional medical wisdom would say that most humans need seven, eight, you know, at least six and a half hours, for example. Now, there's two things for me to say there. Like, firstly-

   8. SASadhguru39:42

      So the prescription [laughs]

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee39:43

      Uh-

   10. SASadhguru39:44

       So the prescription is one third of your life you must sleep it off.

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee39:47

       Yeah, I'm, I'm coming to that, but I, I accept what you're saying and it's clear to me that in your mid-60s, if I look at your skin, your energy levels, it, you know, your cognition, it's-

   12. SASadhguru39:57

       Where can you see my... This is my hair. You can't see much of my skin. [laughs]

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee40:00

       I can, I can see enough to know that there's real vitality and, um, and, and real health and v- you know, health, well-being, vitality there. What's interesting to me, two, two things. First thing, early on in this conversation you said, "Rangan, you've had two decades of clinical practice, but you've had 65 years or, you know, 60 plus years of life experience." Now, I'm actually a very open-minded medical doctor. I've always felt that lived experience is also very, very valid. The other thing I wanted to share there is that I remember-

   14. SASadhguru40:36

       No, I'm not, I'm not trying to depreciate the scientific, the value of scientific knowledge because, uh, it has done wonders to us. It has done miracles to us.

   15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee40:45

       I, I'm not either.

9. 40:46 – 52:35

   Science, Medicine and Chronic Disease

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee40:46

      I, I'm not either. I'm, I also, I'm... What I'm trying-

   2. SASadhguru40:48

      But the only problem with science is when it comes to life, we are putting everything under microscope and having a keyhole vision of pieces. The nature of life and the universe is such, if you start studying this by pieces and make, keep making conclusions, because nobody will fund your research if you don't tell them what is the conclusion. If you study for 10 years something, you study my little finger for 10 years, and i- if you don't say anything, nobody's going to fund you. No university is going to keep you. No government is going to support you. Everybody will say you're doing nothing.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee41:27

      Yeah.

   4. SASadhguru41:27

      If you say, "No, no, this is too complex, we have to study everything at once," nobody is going to support you. They want to know what all is happening in the little finger. But there's nothing happening in the little finger which is not instigated by the entire-

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee41:41

      Yeah

   6. SASadhguru41:42

      ... system. So I'm saying the problem is just this, the problem is of economics. The problem is of attitude. The problem is not of science, really. Science could bring so many things. It's already brought so many solutions and this thing. At the same time, it has also multiplied our problems-

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee42:00

      Yeah

   8. SASadhguru42:00

      ... made our problems far more complex than what it was. Why this has happened is simply because every keyhole vision that we have, immediately we have to publish it. We have to put it to use, otherwise nobody is going to support science.

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee42:16

      Yeah. I, I'm not also trying to denigrate science. I think what has happened in my profession is that there's been an- Over-focus on small reductionist areas of science, and we've not taken into consideration the whole. And I think a lot of the things you're talking about really speak to that for me. Like the human body, the way we function, physical body a- and mind, you can't reduce it down and, and, and still get a picture of the entire whole. And that's one of been... That has been one of my frustrations in medicine. And, and Sadhguru, let me just share with you that it's interesting for me. I've had a, a European, um, allopathic medical training, right? But at the same time, I've been brought up in an Indian family. So a lot of these, uh, principles that Ayurvedic medicine would be talking about for years have also been embedded in me by my family. And what I've always found fascinating, particularly over the last few years, is how many things that Ayurvedic medicine have spoken about for years... Fasting, circadian biology, food as medicine, getting natural light in the morning, are now finally being supported by modern science. And, you know, people are now encouraging people to do these things. Doctors are as well.

   10. SASadhguru43:38

       [laughs]

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee43:38

       Yet, you know, in India, they've been talking about this for thousands of years.

   12. SASadhguru43:44

       See, um, in, in the, in our centers, everybody eats at 10:00 in the morning and 7:00 in the evening. We are all physically very active. Only two meals, irrespective of your age. I generally eat only one meal if I'm at home. If I travel out, maybe I'll eat something in the morning. It depends because meals are not, uh... Food is not, you know, [laughs] doesn't come as I want. It'll come some way, in whatever form it comes. So to compensate for that, you may end up eating two, uh, two times a day, otherwise once a day. So now we've been saying this, and you should see the amount of argument we've had in the last 40 years of... with doctors and scientists telling us this will cause this problem, this will cause that problem, this will happen, that will happen. This is a diabetic person. How can he eat only twice? He must eat 10 times a day. Well, the thing is, whether diabetes is a commercial enterprise or is it a, a problem that needs to go away. Right now, I'm in United States. There's no single small village which can be without a, a fire station, you know. Always ready. Fire stations are ready, even the tiniest villages. And, uh, firemen are there. Apart from that, there are volunteers who train for this. Everybody is ready. So much investment in putting off fire, which is very nice, but there is not enough investment in s- in teaching our children how not to set fire to our homes. There's not enough investment in building homes which will not easily catch fire.

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee45:31

       Yeah.

   14. SASadhguru45:31

       So this whole, whatever you said, I don't want to go by geographical, uh, identities of being European or Indian or whatever. Uh, essentially, the modern medicine has been born out of terrible, uh, infectious diseases like-

   15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee45:49

       Mm

   16. SASadhguru45:49

       ... plague and malaria and whatever else. Not malaria, many other things. To handle this, they came up with some medical solutions, and even now, allopathy has the best solutions for infectious diseases-

   17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee46:01

       Yeah

   18. SASadhguru46:01

       ... because it's a chemical war. It's essentially a chemical war or a physical war because, uh, [laughs] I call surgery a physical war, medicine as chemical war. So chemical warfare or w- fighting with knives is, uh, two ways of doing this. When an enemy has entered, that's the only way to handle it. So in emergencies, there's nothing like allopathic system. All right?

   19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee46:26

       Yeah.

   20. SASadhguru46:27

       If you have had a serious injury or you've been infected with something, you run to the doctor. That's the best thing to do. That's what everybody should do. But allopathy is called medicine, not health. That's appropriate. I'm ve- I very deeply appreciate the honesty behind that. When you go to a college, you say, "I'm studying medicine." You're not studying health, you're studying medicine. Maybe you're understanding the biochemistry to some extent and how to manipulate it from outside. But I'm asking you a simple thing, both for physiological and psychological thing. This, this, uh, especially when I come to the psychological aspect, there's a massive... You must see the amount of trolls I get for this. But I'm insisting on this because I'm a living proof that I can put myself through any kind of situation. Any kind means just about any kind of situation, and still I'm intact. [laughs] Psychologically, emotionally, energy-wise, physically, I'm intact because there is a certain way to do it. You as a doctor, you know the most complex chemical factory on the planet is human system.

   21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee47:38

       Yeah.

   22. SASadhguru47:38

       No debate on that. So this chemical factory, who is running it is the question. If you're in a state of volatile reaction, compulsive, impulsive reactions, then just about anything runs this chemistry. But if you are a good CEO of this chemical factory, what kind of chemicals would you produce? Would you produce chemicals that'll create health, peace, joy, blissfulness, ecstasy, or would you create anxiety, stress, tension, nonsense, whatever else that makes you suffer? So for all infectious ailments, allopathy is a wonder.

   23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee48:21

       Yeah.

   24. SASadhguru48:22

       No question. But when we say chronic ailments, it essentially means that we are manufacturing the disease unconsciously You are not c- able to create the right kind of chemistry within yourself for some reason, whatever the reason-

   25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee48:38

       Mm

   26. SASadhguru48:38

       ... maybe. Sometimes it may have external stimuli, sometimes it may be completely internal, the way you think, the way you emote, the way you identified, the way you relate to everything around you. All this may be causing. There may be genetic factors also. But genetic factors usually make a certain organ susceptible. It doesn't necessarily cause the disease.

   27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee49:00

       Yeah.

   28. SASadhguru49:01

       [laughs] Because the... We have always looked at it this, your father has this problem, you must have this problem. There is no such thing. You can completely reverse this by changing your lifestyle, by changing your attitude, by changing the way you are. You can completely reverse that. It's possible. But for you it may take more effort than it takes for somebody else.

   29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee49:25

       Yeah.

   30. SASadhguru49:25

       The always argument is, "That guy is not doing anything right, but he's okay." All right, he's blessed with a certain level of stability in his system. You may have to work harder. But for everybody it is possible. If you are a good CEO, you would produce chemistry of blissfulness.
10. 52:35 – 59:03

    Living Without Stress: Inner Engineering and Yoga

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee52:35

       Okay.

    2. SASadhguru52:36

       [laughs]

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee52:37

       Okay. I love that. I love that. Hey, I, I, I, I like to push myself and go for things, and I, I love that. So are you then saying it is possible to live in a state of no stress?

    4. SASadhguru52:50

       Absolutely. See, you're looking at it, being a doctor, you're looking at it in terms of symptoms. If there is more stress, this, this, this, this will happen. This is the main problem with allopathy, that it's symptomatic. That, see, right now it's like this. Let's say you're driving on the London streets. The guy in front of you puts a blinker that he wants to turn right. Suppose we shoot the blinker off. Will he go straight?

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee53:27

       No.

    6. SASadhguru53:29

       So symptoms are just indicators. We are treating the whole symptom. Kill the symptom and everything is fine. No, if you kill the symptom, it'll become, the problem will become more complex-

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee53:41

       Yeah

    8. SASadhguru53:41

       ... and more complex. This is why with the advancement of medicine, we should have achieved fantastic sense of health.

    9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee53:47

       Mm-hmm.

    10. SASadhguru53:48

        Instead of that, we are complicating health. As I repeat, as I say this, when it comes to... There are two types of ailments that we can get. One is infection. Infection means an external organism has invaded us. This is a war. When it comes to war, everything is fair in [laughs] love and war, you know? You fight, you put chemicals, you nuclear bomb it, you radiate it, do whatever the hell. Somehow get rid of it. That's all. But we're talking about chronic ailments, which is over 70% of the human problem.

    11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee54:22

        Yeah.

    12. SASadhguru54:23

        This is self-created, self-manufactured from within, because we have not taken charge of the system.

    13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee54:31

        Yeah. I know you teach, uh, Inner Engineering, uh, around the world in your institutes, and I believe that one of the things within that course is meditative practices, things like yoga. And of course, we, we started off this conversation talking about sleep and rest. We mentioned showering in the evening. We mentioned, uh, eating three to four hours before bed. I presume you think that... Or, I shouldn't presume. Would you say that some form of yoga or meditative practice in the evening is a good thing to help people switch off from the day and to allow them to relax?

    14. SASadhguru55:11

        Uh, [laughs] when we say Inner Engineering... See right now, uh, when would you say something is well-engineered? Let's say a building or a machine or let's say an automobile. When would you say this automobile is well-engineered? When it does exactly what you want, when it fulfills the purpose for which you're driving it. The same goes for this. Right now, what is the problem? When you want to stay awake, you can't stay awake. When you want to sleep, you cannot sleep. This means this machine is not well-engineered. Fundamental design is fine, but still what we do inside and the software that we create on a daily basis is not well-engineered. So if you engineer this properly, you ask this question: is it possible to live stress-free? Of course, because well-engineered means you live here with least amount of friction in physical world. Physical world has friction. Can't help. Because any physical movement, even if you move your hand through the air, there is a certain amount of friction. All right? It may be negligible, but there is certain amount of friction. But why should there be friction in software? Hardware, there is friction. Why there is friction in software? That is simply self-created. Bad software. If your software is making noises with friction and it needs lubrication, it's badly, uh, set up software, isn't it? Hardware creaks a little bit. That needs to be managed. That needs to be lubricated. So the yoga, the other things that you're topic- talking about is about that, but there is something more profound than that. When you say yoga, I know you're thinking of physical postures. We must understand this. Yoga means union. Union means... There are many ways to see this. When you breathe, what you exhale, the trees are ins- inhaling. What the trees exhale, I'm inhaling. But today somebody may ask, "Where is the damn tree? I'm sitting in an air-conditioned room and breathing," all right? "Where is the tree?" Because [laughs] people don't bother to even look at that. So I'm saying this is just on one level. On every level, every cell in the body, every subatomic particle in the body is in constant interaction with everything. Otherwise, this cannot exist here for one moment. This life cannot exist here for one moment. This is yoga. When it comes to your living experience, that nobody, uh, has to tell you, "See what, uh, uh, tree is giving out oxygen, you are giving out carbon dioxide, exchange happening." Not like that. If you pay attention to your breath, really pay attention to your breath, you know this.

    15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee58:04

        Yeah.

    16. SASadhguru58:05

        You just know this by experience. When you know this, you're in yoga. It's not just about breath. In every aspect of your life. The food that you eat is yoga, isn't it? What was soil became food. What was food is sitting here as your body today, and one day this will be soil once again. So how come human beings don't know this? Everything has to be written in a book. Because, as I said in the beginning, no perception. Simply information. We are mis- misunderstanding information for perception and intelligence above all.

    17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee58:42

        Yeah.

    18. SASadhguru58:43

        Because right from the day you went to school, today everywhere in the world, the school has become largely European foundations, all right? So you're only rewarded for your memory. You're never rewarded for your attention.

    19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee58:56

        Yeah.

    20. SASadhguru58:56

        Please see this. This is a very wrong way to create a civilization.

11. 59:03 – 1:01:13

    Closing Message: Wake Up and Smile That You're Alive

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee59:03

       Sadhguru, it's been a real, uh, honor speaking to you today. You've certainly given me a lot of food for thought. I always love to finish off each conversation on my podcast with something practical, something inspirational for the many people around the world who are struggling with their physical and mental wellbeing. Just to finish off our first and hopefully not our last conversation together, do you have any final words for people to inspire them?

    2. SASadhguru59:31

       So instead of telling them how to sleep, let me tell them how to wake up. Tomorrow morning when they wake up, they must know that every day, so many people, a few hundred thousand people, don't wake up the next day. That is natural death, happens. So when you wake up in the morning, pinch yourself and see if you're genuinely alive. Give yourself a smile. Oh, what do I smile at? Okay, the ceiling is all right. [laughs] Your bedroom ceiling is good enough, but the important thing is you're alive. Because if you really look at it, you think you have a job, you think you have money, you think you have wealth, you think you have family. No. The only thing that you have is life. If this one thing is taken out of you, you have nothing. All right? So knowing this, and also I already told you, you've been dead for so long. You're just alive for a brief time, and again you'll be dead forever. So this brief time, if you're still alive today, just give yourself a smile And every time you look at your watch, "Oh, it's noontime. I'm still alive." How many died from 10:00 to noon? We don't know. I'm still alive. Smile. Hello? Because this is the greatest thing. The greatest phenomena happening here is life. You need to pay attention to that, and it's throbbing within you. It's not somewhere up there. It's throbbing within you. So, you focus more on how to come awake and become more and more awake. Sleep will take care of itself.

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:01:09

       Sadhguru, thank you for sharing your wisdom.

    4. SASadhguru1:01:11

       Namaskaram. Thank you very much. [laughs]

12. 1:01:13 – 1:26:11

    Success vs. Happiness and the Core Happiness Stool

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:01:13

       Namaste. If you enjoyed that conversation, keep watching for more practical tips on how finding purpose and happiness can transform your life. I understand that you feel lost, that some days you wake up, you don't wanna get out of bed. Some days you don't have the motivation to do the things that you know you want to do, the things that you said you were going to do. I get it. You know, I have days like that. Many of my patients have days like that. But even though you may feel like that at the moment, that's not the way it has to stay. Right? It's not that hard to change it once you identify what's driving it. Now, for many of us, what is often behind it is that we're not truly living our life. We're trying to live somebody else's life, and so we end up chasing the wrong things. We end up chasing our dreams, only to realize that [laughs] actually our dreams don't make us happy. Now, I know that sounds a bit cynical, but for many of us it's absolutely true. Well, I saw this patient a few years ago. From the outside, it looked as though he was crushing it. He had a nice car. He ran his own business. He was making good money. He also felt lazy, unmotivated, indifferent to life. I mean, he thought he had depression. And when I spoke to him, when I got to know him, it was so clear he didn't need an antidepressant. He needed to spend time with his friends, and that was the prescription I gave him. I said, "Listen, every week, once a week, see one of your friends in person, and when you're with them, don't look at your phone." Six weeks later, completely transformed. Different energy, big smile, motivation back, energy back, right? Completely different. He didn't need an antidepressant. He needed time with his friends. And what about you? How often do you spend time nourishing the important relationships in your life? I mean, who are those people? Partner, children, childhood friends, work colleagues? Like, who it's gonna be for you is gonna be different for me. But we know that relationships are really, really important. They're the number-one factor for our health and our happiness, yet many of us, we're so busy trying to get more, do more, acquire more, that we forget about what's really important. I mean, let me ask you this. Imagine you're on your deathbed. Look back over your life. What are three things you'll want to have done? Three things you will want to have achieved? Go on, do it now. Ask yourself. Well, sure, you're unique. You've got your own desires. You've got your own preferences. But we're not as unique as we think. We know with a high degree of certainty what you are going to say on your deathbed. How do I know that? Because palliative care nurses have told us. They've spent years caring for people at the end of their lives, and they all say the same things. "I wish I'd worked less. I wish I'd spent more time with my friends and family. I wish I'd allowed myself to be happy. I wish I'd lived my life and not somebody else's." See, that's the big problem. That's what I did for much of my life. I thought that acquiring more, doing more, getting more, getting a promotion, right, was gonna make me happy. But I got all those things, and it didn't. So what are you chasing? Are you chasing your dreams? Are you chasing what is truly gonna make you happy, or do you think that getting a better job, getting more money, having a nicer phone, do you think those things are gonna make you happy? For most of us, honestly, they don't. One of the biggest problems across society is that we confuse success and happiness. We think they're the same thing, but for most of us they're not. Now, they can overlap. Sure, they can overlap. But for most of us they don't. For most of us, they're two completely separate things, and therefore we need to spend a bit of time asking ourselves, "What is it that success really means for me?" You know? "What is a successful life for me? What does a successful life look like?" And it's only by spending a bit of time thinking about it, defining it for you, not for your friends, not for your mate at work, not for me. This is for you. Right? Define what it means for you. So try this right now. On one sheet of paper, write down three things that you could do this week that truly make you happy. Well, I would say pause the video; do it right now. What are three things? And ask yourself, could you do those three things every week? Right, the second part of this exercise is called Write Your Own Happy Ending. Right, I've already said to you, imagine you're on your deathbed. Well, write down now, on your deathbed, looking back at your life, what are those three things that you will want to have done? Right, so now you should have two sheets of paper. Now bring them close together. And now ask yourself, if you do those three weekly happiness habits, will you get that happy ending that you've just defined that you want for yourself? If you do those three happiness habits every week, week after week, month after month, will you get that happy ending that you've just defined for yourself? You see, this is an exercise that's not about beating yourself up, make yourself feel guilty or ashamed. It's nothing like that. It's about awareness, right? It's simply about saying, "Well, if at the end of my life I say I wanna have spent time with my friends and family," which is pretty much what we all say and what we're all going to say, and you look at your weekly life and go, "I'm so busy with work or commitments, with what I have to do, that I don't have time to nurture my friends and family," well, that's okay. Right? But at least now you know. Right? Can you make one small shift? Can you go, "Well, this week, actually, you know what? Yeah, work is busy, but can I carve out half an hour this week to see one of my friends?" Or go round and spend time with your mom. You know, whatever it is for you. So it's a, it's a very simple exercise, but it's deceptively simple, and it's one you can do regularly. Right? You can keep tweaking this, as I do. I know at the end of my life I'll have wanted to have spent quality time with my friends and family. I'll want to have done something that contributes to the wellbeing of other people. I'll also want to have had time to engage in things that I'm passionate about. Right? Those are my three things. So I know each week if I can go for a long walk with my wife and kids at the weekends, if I can be present for five meals to sit with them undistracted, then I know week after week I'm gonna have nourished those important relationships. If I record an episode of my podcast every week, week after week, month after month, I know at the end of my life I'll have ticked that second box. I will have done something that's contributed to the wellbeing of other people. And if I have time each week to go for a walk or play my guitar or practice playing snooker, right? If I get two or three episodes a week where I can do that, I know I'm having time to nourish my passions, so I'll get that happy ending that I want at the end of my life. I guess what we're talking about is an intentional life. It's about a life where you have specified what you want out of it, and then you've gone to go and get that. But for many of us, we chase the dreams of other people. We chase the idea that society has given to us. Right? That's the big problem. That's what happened to my dad. My dad worked so hard that he literally killed himself working. Right. Now, Dad was an immigrant to the UK from India in the 1960s. Right? He came over with nothing. His goal was to give himself, his family, certainly his kids and his wife in the UK, but also his family back home, a better life. And you know what? By certain definitions, Dad did that. Now, I love my dad. I'm so proud and glad what he did for me and my brother a- and our family, but he killed himself working. Right? Because he fell for the myth that many people fall for, that getting more is gonna lead to happiness. But the price we often pay for getting more kills us or makes us sick. Right? There's a part of our brain called the want brain, right? And it's basically this, this part of the brain that makes us think that getting more, getting a promotion, you know, getting more resources for us and our family, getting another slab of chocolate, another glass of wine, is gonna truly make us happy. Now, that part of your brain is a relic from the olden days, where actually we probably did need to compete for resources, and actually those things did help us. But for many of us, now, I know not all of us, but for many of us these days, that's not the world in which we live. Right? Trying to acquire more at the expense of other people, it's not gonna make us happy. In fact, it just makes us feel empty and discontent. Now, Dad's desire for success was so great that he did more than his body could stand. It literally killed him. Dad was a consultant doctor in Manchester Royal Infirmary, and Dad would come home from his day job at around, I don't know, 5:30 or 6:00 PM in the evening. He'd have dinner, then he'd go upstairs, he'd shave, come downstairs. A car would pick him up at 7:00 PM. Right? Dad'd go out all night, do GP house calls, seeing patients, and he'd arrive back in a car at 7:00 AM. He'd come back in again. He'd have breakfast that Mom had made for him. He'd go upstairs and shave, and then he would drive maybe 30 or 40 minutes into central Manchester to do his day job. Now, Dad did that for 30 years. He only slept three nights a week for 30 years, which is why, no doubt in my mind, in his late 50s he gets really sick with lupus, which is an autoimmune disease, and kidney failure. It was overwork. Now, look, I get it. Dad did what he felt he had to do. Right? He didn't have connections in the UK. He didn't... He came here with nothing in terms of money. I understand that, but it came at a cost. You know, as a kid, I hardly saw my dad. Dad was doing what he felt he had to do, and I thank him for that. But I don't wanna make the same choices that Dad made. Right? I don't wanna have that life. I don't need to. And you could argue that because of the sacrifices he made, maybe I don't need to, and that's true. I don't need to in the same way that he felt he had to. But here's the thing. Many of us are doing the same thing. We may have different pressures, we may have different motivations, but many of us are chasing more. We think it's gonna bring happiness, but it doesn't. You know, I've done the same thing. I took on the idea as a child that I was only of value when I achieved something or succeeded. Now, every situation in life has got multiple perspectives, and actually, being able to choose the perspective that works for you is a really important skill for our happiness, for our health, for our wellbeing. I'm gonna teach you some things on that in just a moment. But when it comes to perspective, let me share with you an incident from my childhood which really demonstrates how every situation has got multiple perspectives. So if I came back from school with 19 out of 20 in a test, my parents would ask me, "Why didn't you get 20?" If I came back with 99%, they'd ask me, "Why didn't you get 100%?" If I came second in the class, they'd say, "Well, who came top? Why didn't you come top?" Now, I asked my mum just the other day why did she and Dad do that when I was a kid. Well, they did it from a place of love. They, like many immigrants, faced struggle, faced discrimination, right? They had a hard life, and they want to avoid their children having to do that. So in their eyes, if we prioritize academic excellence, if my son does really well at school, he goes to a good university, gets a good job, right, then he's not gonna have the same problems that we had. Now, I understand that. I love that. I love that place of love and desire that the children are gonna have a better life. But what did I take on as a little boy? I took on the idea that I'm only worthy of love, worthy of praise, worthy of anything if I'm top of the class, if I get full marks. Same situation, two different perspectives. So how does that play out for me? It means that actually, I don't feel good in who I am unless I'm top dog, unless I have succeeded. And then, yeah, it can drive you on to huge levels of what society calls success. A good job, right? A nice promotion, a, a nice salary. But if the drive for those things is because you don't feel enough and you think those things are gonna complete you and make you feel enough, well, you may be in for a rude awakening like I was. Like, you get those things, and you realize there's still a deep hole in your heart that those things didn't fill. Now, that's going on all over the world these days. That may be going on in your life. What's your drive? Why are you pushing so hard to get the things that you think are gonna make you happy? Is it coming from a place of lack, or is it coming from a place of love? 'Cause that's the key question. That really is the number one question. Where's your drive coming from? You see, if it's coming from a place of lack, if you think that, "When I achieve this, I'm gonna show them. I'm gonna prove to those people that I could do it," well, what you might find is that when you get those things, and you may well do, you may find that there's no pot of gold there, just emptiness. A few weeks ago, I spoke to Jonny Wilkinson on my podcast. Now, everyone in the UK knows who Jonny Wilkinson is, but if you don't, Jonny Wilkinson is probably one of the world's most famous rugby players. Now, what's really incredible about his story is that at the age of 24, he'd achieved all of his dreams. Right? So as a little kid, he writes down on a piece of paper, "I wanna play for England, and I wanna win the World Cup." At the age of 24, that's exactly what he's done. Not only has he won the World Cup with England, he does it in the most fairy tale of settings. In the final minute of the game, he kicks the winning goal that helps his country lift the World Cup. All sounds great, doesn't it? He's got his dreams. Well, here's the problem. Those dreams didn't make him happy. He felt empty afterwards, lonely, a feeling of discontent. He talks about the following morning, he woke up feeling nothing. What's next? You know, all the focus was on the goal, right? So you get the goal, but then what happens? Many of us are chasing that same fallacy. We think when we get our dream, it's gonna make us happy. But if that drive comes from that place of lack rather than a place of love and fullness, you're gonna have a problem. I've had that problem. Jonny Wilkinson's had that problem. We see that all over the world. So many people who you may look up to, right, they tell you the same story. Their dreams didn't make them happy. So what's the solution? You gotta define what the right dream is for you. Then you start chasing the stuff that's gonna make you happy in your life. Right? It's, it's not that hard. That exercise I just mentioned, do it. Do it regularly. Write the three happiness habits down that you can do each week that you feel are truly gonna make you happy. Write down the three things that you're gonna say on your deathbed, and bring those two things into alignment. So maybe not this week, right? Maybe it'll take you a month or two to really get there. Maybe it'll take a bit longer. That's okay. It's a journey. Many of us are blind to this, though. Many of us feel we're chasing the stuff that's gonna make us happy. Many of us feel if we work harder, we get a promotion, we get a better car, we get a nicer job, it's gonna do it for us, but it doesn't. And that's the reason why so many of us are feeling lazy, we're feeling unmotivated, we don't feel we've got energy. It's 'cause our life is not aligned with who we really are. Success, happiness, you know, we confuse the two. But what is happiness, right? Because you could say that term happiness to 10 different people, and they'll come up with 10 different interpretations of what that means. You know, what do you think of when you hear the word happiness? Do you think it's a smile on your face every day, seven days a week, you know, 52 weeks a year? Is that what you think happiness is? Do you think happiness is basically that feeling you're gonna get one day when everything in life goes perfectly? There's no more struggle, there's no more obstacles. The world is the way you would like it to be. Well, if you think that's what happiness is, you could be waiting a very long time, because happiness is an inside job, right? So when I say happiness, I tell you what I mean. I have this term that I call core happiness, and core happiness, I want you to think of like a three-legged stool, right? Each of the three legs is separate, but it's essential. If any one of those legs starts to fall down, your feelings of happiness will probably start to collapse. So what are those three legs? Well, the three legs are alignment, contentment, and control. Right, so what's alignment? Alignment is when the person who you really are inside and the person who you are actually being out there in the world are one and the same. That's alignment, right? That's basically when your inner values and your external actions start to match up, right? That's what alignment is. So how aligned are you in your life at the moment? The second leg is contentment. Now, contentment is that feeling of peace with your life and your decisions. It's that feeling you get when you do certain things, and you get that, that feeling of calm, right? That's contentment. And then the third leg is control. Now, control is a really important one. It's not about controlling the world around you or other people. Now, that's impossible, right? We see that all the time. Like, the world is inherently uncontrollable. It's not about that. It's about a sense of control. What are the things that you can do regularly, ideally on a daily basis, that give you a sense of control over your life? Because we know that people with a better sense of control, they have more motivation. They have higher levels of success. They earn more money. They're happier. They're healthier. They live longer, right? So alignment, contentment, and control, these are the three core legs of the core happiness stool. Now, what I love about them, and the reason I designed this model of happiness, is to make it a really practical model, right? 'Cause otherwise, happiness feels like this impossible destination that one day we're just gonna stumble across when everything just happens to go right, but that's very disempowering. Happiness is a skill. It's a skill that you can practice, you can develop, you can get better at once you know what to work on, right? But do you know what to work on? Did someone teach you the skill of happiness? But no one taught me the skill of happiness. As a child, my parents didn't teach me. School didn't teach me. The world around me certainly did not teach me. As I've already mentioned, the world around me gave me the wrong idea. The world around me taught me that more stuff, more things, more money, more status is gonna make me happy, but it doesn't, and that's why I'm so keen to help you understand that happiness is a skill that you can work on. And what's great about this three-legged stool is that each of those legs, you can work on it in your daily life, and as you work on them, the side effect is gonna be that you feel happier more often. So you're not directly working on happiness. You're working on the things that breed happiness, right? And the things that I'm talking about are actually things that you can work on, and actually, most of these things, they don't cost any money. They just require a commitment from you to go, "Yeah, you know what? I actually want to feel better than I currently do. I want a bit more happiness in my life." Happiness is not about saying everything's gonna go perfect in your life. Obstacles, problems are an inevitable part of life. But once you understand that actually your inner happiness and your inner wellbeing is largely under your control irrespective of how people are treating you, irrespective of what's going on in the world around you, that is a huge realization. Right, and I, I'm so passionate about this because until about five or six years ago, I honestly felt that my happiness was dependent on the world around me. If the world goes a certain way, I'm gonna be happy. If people treat me a certain way, I'm gonna be happy. But that's a very disempowering place to be, because that effectively means that your happiness is dependent on other people. It's dependent on external things. Is that the place you wanna be in? No. I don't wanna be in that place. I'm not in that place, right? I am no longer in that place. I now know, because I've worked on it, because I've practiced it, I know that my inner wellbeing is kind of up to me. Sure, there may be things going on in the world that I would prefer were different to the way they are, but I still know that even in the face of that, I still have the inner resources and tools to make myself happy, and it's all to do with this core happiness tool.

13. 1:26:11 – 1:45:54

    Alignment, Values and the Daily Holiday

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:26:11

       So let me talk about alignment, right? Because being the person out there in the world who you really are inside is really, really important, but many of us are not doing that. We're performing at life. We're trying to be someone who we are not in order to fit in. And sure, that may have served you as a child. You may have needed to do that depending on your upbringing, you know, how you were parented, what was going on at your school. I understand that. But just because that worked for you as a child, it doesn't mean that same strategy is gonna work for you now as an adult. In fact, for many of us, for most of us, for all of us, I think a key step that we take in life to move towards being that happier, calmer, more contented person is understanding those childhood strategies for what they were. I mentioned that I took on the belief that I'm only loved and worthy when I get top marks or I'm a success. That may have served me for some part of my life. Yeah, we can debate that. But I tell you what, now, at this stage of my life [laughs] as a husband, as a father, that was not serving me at all. It was making me feel very, very lonely inside. And often when we've got this discontentment with who we are and how we're acting, we fill that gap with what I call junk happiness habits. Right? We've all got a junk happiness habit. Many of us have got several. It could be sugar. It could be alcohol. It could be gambling. It could be three or four hours on Instagram. It could be online shopping. Right? There's nothing necessarily wrong with these habits. The problem is, is if we engage in them too often or we make the mistake, we, we kid ourselves that those things are truly making us happy, and for most of us, they're simply not. They're a distraction. We go to them because we, we feel there's a void inside who we are, and we look to fill that void with those habits. And I tell you, as you work on the skill of happiness, you will find, as I have, that you engage in those junk happiness habits less and less. Because what we all need to understand is that all of our behaviors are there for a reason. They all serve a need in our life. And often we try and change the behavior without understanding what's driving it, which is why, you know, in the new year, people can give up sugar for three weeks. They can do a workout regime for three or four weeks. But almost always they revert back, because the underlying drive that led to that behavior has not changed. Now, I've seen this firsthand with patients. I've seen it firsthand with myself. You will experience this as well. When you work on these three legs of the core happiness stool, you will find that a lot of the behaviors that you may well have tried to stop yourself using willpower and motivation, potentially unsuccessfully, you'll find it gets so much easier. And effortlessly, a lot of them will fall by the wayside. So how do you live an aligned life, right? 'Cause it's easy to say that, "Live in alignment with who you are," but what does that mean? Well, a really simple way to start figuring that out is to ask yourself, ask yourself right now, what are your values? What are the things that really encompass... You know, what's important to you? What is important to you? Is it kindness? Compassion? Family? Nature? The environment? Being curious? Having time by yourself? Spending time engaging in passions? Being enthusiastic? You know, what is it? Can you pick three things? In fact, if three's too hard, can you pick one? Was there one thing I said that you thought, "Yeah, that's kind of a value for me." Okay. Write it down. Right? If that's a value that sits well with you right now, then you write that down, and then you ask yourself, "Am I living by that value in every aspects of my life, in my personal life, in my professional life, in my social life?" Again, if you're not, that's okay, but you're bringing a bit of awareness now and intention to what's going on. Right? You're like, "Ah. I value kindness." But actually, you know what? At work, I don't like one of my colleagues, so I was a bit underhand to get a leg up on him in my office. Okay. I understand. I understand you may have done that. But here's the thing, right? You can't hide from yourself. In those moments in bed at night when you're lying there, you know what you've done, right? So if kindness is something that you truly value and you're not showcasing that in every aspects of your life, well, that's an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to go, "No, actually, that's not who I am. That's not really who I am." And as you do that, you close that gap. You're living a more aligned life. Then you engage in less junk happiness habits. Now, what does meaning and purpose fit in here, right? 'Cause we're hearing that a lot, aren't we? That it's not about happiness, it's about meaning. Well, I think meaning and purpose are important things, but I don't think they're the same thing as happiness. If you're enjoying this video, I think you are really going to enjoy my new book, Happy Minds Happy Life: The New Science of Mental Wellbeing. I've been a practicing doctor for over 20 years now, and I can tell you there's a very strong link between happiness and health. Happier people are healthier, and they live longer. Now, happiness is actually a trainable skill that all of us can get better at once we know what to work on, and that's what my book is about. All the simple, free tools that you can use in your life to help you feel calmer, more content, more in control. Yes, happier, but also healthier. You can order the book right now. All you have to do is click the link in the description box below. I think meaning and purpose are important things. I think they're necessary ingredients for happiness, but they're not happiness in and of themselves. And if you look at my core happiness stool with the three legs, alignment, contentment, and control, this fits under alignment, right? Because something that gives you meaning or gives you a sense of purpose is ultimately when you feel and are acting in alignment. That's what it is by definition. And if you're struggling with all the kind of information out there on meaning and purpose and you're putting pressure on yourself to go, "Man, I need a life of meaning and purpose, and I don't have one. I work in a call center. I don't enjoy it, but actually it pays the bills," that's okay, right? Take the pressure off yourself and let's go back to values. If one of your values is kindness, right? And you don't like your job, but you need to do that job at the moment to pay your bills, well, go back to that value. If on your way to work in the morning you stop off at a coffee shop and you're kind to the barista, if on the bus on the way to the call center you're kind to the bus driver, if in the call center you're kind to your work colleagues, you know, when you come home, you're living a life of meaning, right? You're living in accordance with your values. One of your core values is kindness. You are living in accordance with that. And I promise you, 'cause I've experienced it myself, I've seen it with my patients, when you start to act more in alignment with who you really are, you will find that actually you will change that job. Other opportunities will come into your life. You'll actually start to figure out what it truly is that you wanna do in life, accepting that at the moment you may not be able to make that change. That's okay. These things are not all or nothing, right? I'm passionate about making health and happiness as accessible to as many people as possible, and all of us, no matter who we are, benefit from understanding what our values are. So start with one. See if you can get to three. My three values today are integrity, curiosity, and compassion. Every week, at least once, I'll reassess, are these still the values that sit right to me? How much of my life am I living in accordance with that? And it, it's really helpful because, you know, even if I've had a tough week at work or there's problems with the health of one of my family members, let's say, I can come back to those values and go, even in the midst of all these problems, did I act with integrity, curiosity, and compassion? In my job as a doctor, did I do that? In my role as a father with my children, did I do that? In my role as a husband, did I do that? In my role as a podcast host, did I do that with my guest? And it's just a very simple way of bringing us into alignment. So what do you value in life? Do you know? Have you ever thought about it? Can you write down three values? Can you write down one? Well, look, let me share some common values with you and just see if any of these connects with you, right? There's, uh, curiosity, integrity, compassion, family, creativity, honesty, the climate, solitude, conscientiousness, wisdom, nature, standing up for other people, humility, loyalty, self-respect, intimacy, time for friends and family, empathy, being a good listener. Right? That's not an exhaustive list. It's just some ideas to get you going and started. You know, was there one in that list that connected with you? Fine, start there. Was it kindness? Right. Write that down, and then ask yourself, "Am I showcasing kindness in every aspects of my life, or are there parts of my life where I'm not able to do that?" Now, a big part- If what I'm talking about at the moment is getting to know yourself, right? Spending a bit of time analyzing what's going on, who you really are, who do you really want to be out there. And I think one of the big reasons why you might feel stuck, why so many of us feel stuck in our lives, is we don't have any time to ourselves, right? We're constantly consuming information, even good information, right? Many of us wake up. Like, do you wake up, and it's the first thing you do, you pick up your phone and you look at your email and then you go to Instagram, and then you go to the news? And, you know, is that your whole day, right? And you get to work, and you're still looking at screens, and you're consuming, consuming, consuming. If we are constantly consuming, even if it's great content, well, we're never having any time where we're allowing our innermost thoughts and emotions to come up. A little while ago, one of my friends said to me that his old boss had a counter on his desk, and he would literally say things like, "Only 66 days to go till I'm in Florida on that beach." And it really got me thinking. That guy, like so many of us, like maybe you, is literally counting down until that one week when you're on holiday, when life is gonna be good, when you're on the beach, you've got the sun, you've got time. And it really made me think, well, what is a holiday? Right? What is it that so many people love about a holiday? Now, of course, there's many things, right? Time away from work. It could be the sun. It could be, you know, nice food, whatever. I think one of the big things holidays give us is perspective. You know that feeling when you're on a plane and literally as you start to take off, you start to get this 30,000-foot view on the state of your life? All those little things that you were worried about, they just seem trivial. You get that kind of real big-picture perspective on your life. And I've come to the conclusion that we don't need to wait for that one week a year for our holiday. We can all take a daily holiday from our lives. Every day we need to take a holiday, something that gives us that perspective on our life. Because without that perspective, how are you ever gonna find time to figure out what you're feeling? You know, are you living an authentic life? What your values are? How will you know if you're constantly consuming? So what does a daily holiday look like? It could be anything. Could be a walk. It could be a jog. It could be journaling. It could be meditation. It could be breathwork. It could be, I don't know, painting. Whatever you like. Something that is done by yourself, for yourself, right? This is a practice of solitude, basically. Intentional solitude. Not loneliness, right? Loneliness is different. This is intentional solitude to allow your innermost thoughts and emotions to come up. You know, my brother, he, each day, will either go for a walk or a run. And I spoke to him, and he says, yeah, when he comes back, he's got a different perspective on all the kind of little problems in his life. Many of my patients tell me the same thing. So what is it gonna be for you? Do you take a daily holiday from your life? Maybe you used to. Maybe you go for a walk now and again, and you've never thought about it through this lens of it being a daily holiday. But that's exactly what it is. So many of these breaks, we think about calories or energy consumption, what it's gonna do for our physical health, but I want to reframe that for you. The reason so many of us are feeling lazy, unmotivated, struggling, you know, what many of us are feeling lost, is because we don't know how we truly feel. We're never giving ourselves time to understand that. You know, for me, I have to have... I say I have to have. I don't have to have it. I choose to have every morning at least 20 or 30 minutes to myself. Because I know when I do that, I'm able to take the pulse on the state of my life. I'm able to make changes. I'm able to feel when I'm stressed or when my workload's building up. Without that, if I went straight on Instagram and email, I wouldn't know that, and you end up blowing up later. You end up falling out with someone later because you weren't paying attention. Now, when I was a junior doctor in Edinburgh, I wanna guess, maybe 20 years ago, right? I remember being taught about something called early warning systems, right? It was great. I was so mesmerized by this as a young doctor. And I remember the, the, the consultant saying, "We can predict who's gonna end up needing a high dependency bed or an intensive care unit bed three or four hours before they end up there." Because if we take regular what we call observations, so pulse, respiratory rates, oxygen saturations, and if we start to see them moving in a certain direction, we can predict with a high degree of certainty who's gonna need more serious care. And because we can do that, we can take preemptive action to stop that patient needing to go to high dependency or intensive care. And I see this daily holiday as the same thing. It allows you to take aversive action. It allows you to understand, "Oh, man. Yeah, you know what? Life isn't good at the moment. I'm struggling. Like, uh, maybe I'm working too hard. I'm not prioritizing my sleep enough," right? Are you sleeping enough? You know, are you going to bed early enough? Whatever it might be, it allows you to start paying attention. Paying attention to the message that our body is always trying to give us. Since I started taking a daily holiday, I've realized that when my workload or stress load is building, I start to feel a tightness in the upper part of my right back. Now, that was probably going on for years, but I never would've known because I never spent time paying attention. These days, and it happened just a few weeks ago, in my morning routine, in my practice of solitude, I could feel it, and for me, it was like, ah, okay, cool. There's a lot going on at the moment. You need to make sure tonight you go to bed early, or you need to reduce how many commitments you've got today. Because actually, if you don't, you're gonna struggle to get motivated. You're gonna struggle. You're gonna feel lost, like many people do. A lot of the time, that comes down to our, the fact that we're not paying attention, right? So I really, really want you to think about this. What do you do on a daily basis that allows you to pay attention to the signals that your body is trying to give you? It doesn't need to be hard. It doesn't need to cost money. It could literally be you have your morning cup of tea or coffee, and you just sit in silence whilst you're drinking it instead of looking at your emails or YouTube or whatever at the same time. Embrace the silence. Now, I understand if you're not used to doing that, you may find it tricky at first, right? Many of us are so used to distracting ourselves from our lives that we don't know what to do when we don't have that distraction. So go easy. Start with five minutes. You don't have to suddenly go from nothing to 30 minutes meditation. Start with five minutes. If five minutes is too much, start with one minute. But I promise you, once you start to spend a bit of time with yourself, not with a screen, not with another person, not with information coming in from outside, you will start to understand what is going on in your body. That's gonna enable you to make better decisions, and if we look at it through the lens of that core happiness stool, a daily practice of solitude, right, you taking a holiday from your life every day, will strengthen all three legs of that core happiness stool. Afterwards, you feel more content. You definitely feel a sense of control over your life, and because of the learnings you get, you're much more likely to act in alignment. So it's one of those magic practices that works on all three legs of the stool.

14. 1:45:54 – 2:15:19

    Choosing Your Perspective and Self-Compassion

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:45:54

       Now, I mentioned before that perspective is a key skill for happiness. Well, I think it's, I think it's arguably the most important thing, that ability, that knowledge that actually I get to choose my response in any situation. It's liberating. It's freeing. It's empowering. But many of us, and for much of my life I was in this boat, we don't get that. We're programmed, we're conditioned to react a certain way. We think that if people around us acted in a different way, we'd be happier. It's not a great place to be because you're dependent on the world around you and people around you to be a certain way in order for you to be happy, and if that's what you're waiting for, you could be waiting a long time. Is that you? Do you allow the thoughts and actions of others to really affect how you feel? Can someone cut you up in the road with their car and it can ruin your day? Are you the type of person when that happens, you get frustrated? "I can't believe that person did that. They shouldn't be driving." Um, you know, "They need a new driving test. They should be prosecuted." Well, what does that do for you? Do you feel good afterwards? You know, are you calm? You engaged in what you're doing? Or do you feel an emotional tension that you then have to somehow neutralize using whatever, sugar, online scrolling, you know, an extra beer after work, whatever it might be. That emotional tension is real, and that's something we don't realize. I don't think society realizes this. I don't think much of the medical profession have typically realized this, that emotional stress that we, we create. I get that's hard to get your head around, or it may be hard for you to get your head around, but that person has just cut you up in the road. That happened. But they didn't cause you to get stressed. At its core, you chose. Now, I know I say that with compassion. I honestly do. Like, if someone had told me this 10 years ago, I would've been like, "Well, what do you mean? Had that person not done that, I wouldn't feel like this." I mean, how empowering is that? [laughs] That I can only feel good when other people act a certain way. Now, you can train yourself to choose a different response, to choose what I call a happiness story in every situation. So that driver, for example, it could be maybe that driver is late for his job, and he's on his last warning, and that job is really important 'cause that's how he feeds his wife and his children. Maybe that driver, maybe their child was up with earache last night, so they're knackered, and they're being really unmindful, but maybe you might do the same thing in that situation. Right? There's all kinds of scenarios that you could come up with, and you can choose that perspective if you want, and when you choose a happiness perspective, you completely change how you feel in your body. We don't bring in that emotional stress, which leads to all kinds of compensatory behaviors. You feel calmer, you feel more content, you feel more in control of the world. And you can train yourself to do this. So on a daily basis, I train myself. I call it working out in the social gym, right? I look for bits of friction and resistance in my daily life, and I use it as an opportunity to try and reframe things. Now look, let's just think about this for a minute. Right, what is truth? 'Cause I think this is a really interesting question to ponder. Right, so let's say a couple are having a disagreement or a fight, argument, whatever. What really happened? Well, I think it kind of depends on who you ask. Right? If you ask one partner, they will give you a report about the incident. And you ask the other partner, you walk around to the other side of the table, ask the other person, they're likely to give you a completely different report of the same incident. I mean, have you ever been in that situation? Has that happened with your partner or a friend or a work colleague? I know for me it has. So that's really interesting, isn't it? One scenario, but two different perspectives. There was this great study that I, I loved reading about by these psychologists. They took football fans or soccer fans and they showed them an incident that happened. Same incident. They asked them, "Tell me what happened." Two completely different stories of the same situation. What does that teach us? It teaches us that there are multiple perspectives, and we can choose a perspective that makes us happy. You can train yourself to do this. I literally do this on a daily basis, and that's why I'm at the stage now where it happens automatically most of the time. I'm not perfect. Sometimes I'm unable to do it, but I have an awareness now. I go, "Oh, wow. Hey, Rangan, you could have chosen a different perspective there." Now, one of the things that's really helped me is this idea that if I was that other person, I'd be doing exactly the same as them. Now just think about that for a moment. What that phrase means is if I was that person with their upbringing, with their childhood, with their bullying experiences, with their toxic first boss when they were 17 years old, I'd probably have the same worldview and programming as them. I'd probably be acting in exactly the same way. Now, you may go, "Well, that's not true," you know? "I'd act differently." I sort of invite you to consider [laughs] that there's a different perspective there, that if that person could have acted differently, they would have. But based upon their programming and their view of the world, that's why they acted like that. Now, you don't have to take this perspective. You could choose to judge them and think if you were them, you'd act differently. That's fine. It's your life. You're entitled to do and choose the perspective that you want to. But what's that doing for you? What's that judgment doing for you? What, what... How does it feel when you think that you're better than someone else and you would act differently than them? See, I know from my own life, from seeing tens of thousands of patients over the last 20 years, that that's never helpful. It keeps you locked in a cycle which leads to people feeling unmotivated, lazy, and lost, right? You can train yourself to choose a different perspective. I've come to the conclusion that when it comes to your happiness, the truth doesn't matter. Your perspective on the situation is what determines how you feel about it. Now, that doesn't mean you should put up with stuff, right? You can still prefer things to be different than they are. But when you start to choose a happiness response in every situation, you make better decisions. Right, so let's say your boss sends you an email that you don't like, right? Let's say you think it was short, it was rude, it was curt. You thought things like, "I can't believe he sent that email to me like that. Does he not know I've worked the last three weekends? He should know I know how to do my job. I don't need to be told that." Pick a story. It doesn't matter. All of those are disempowering. Now, here's the benefit of choosing a happiness story, right? If you can go, "Okay, well, what else could have been going on here? Maybe my boss is under pressure from his or her boss. Maybe there's real financial pressure in the company and they're taking that out on me. Maybe my boss is having a problem in his relationship or her relationship at the moment." Right? It doesn't really matter, but it just leads to compassion. You start to look at the world through different eyes, right? And then what happens is if you can do that, you're less triggered, you're less emotionally worked up, and that then allows you, if you want to, to say to your boss, "Hey, listen, um, hey, have you got 10 minutes on Friday? Just a couple things I'd love to talk to you about." Right? And you can then go into a meeting in a non-triggered and non-emotional way and probably engage collaboratively about making changes. But if you approach your boss with that feeling of, "You shouldn't have done that. I'm feeling triggered. You know, I, I feel undervalued," and you bring that in with that emotional tension, how well is that gonna go? I mean, think about your own life and maybe a relationship you have at the moment or in the past. If you were feeling angry and triggered when you try to address something, how well did it go? Or did it just add more fuel into the fire, then the other partner responds with more fuel, and before you know it, there's an inferno blazing. I think we all know that. Right, so this is a very, very important skill for your emotional regulation. Yes, it will help your motivation. Yes, it will help you with your happiness. Yes, it will help you with your health. But it will also help you get more out of life, help you to change things that you don't like. It's a key skill to learn. Now, if you're thinking, "You know what? I like that in theory, but I can't do that. There are some situations in life where it's just not possible to do that." I understand that. That's what I used to think, and I get there are some situations in life that are really, really tricky to apply this in. But I want to tell you about one of the most powerful conversations I've had in my entire life on my podcast with this wonderful lady called Dr. Edith Eger. Now, I spoke to Dr. Eger, I don't know, almost two years ago, and I think about that conversation every day. When I spoke to her, she was 93 years old. Right. When she was 16 years old, she grew up in Eastern Europe. I think she had a date with her boyfriend that night. She was thinking about what dress she was gonna wear. Her family got a knock on the door, and essentially her, her sister, and her parents got put on a train to Auschwitz concentration camp. Now, within a couple of hours of getting there, her parents were murdered, and later that day, Edith, Dr. Eger, was asked to dance for some of the senior prison guards. And she said to me, she said, "Rangan, listen, I never forgot the last thing that my mum said to me," and she said, "Edie, always remember nobody can take from you the contents that you put inside your mind." So she said, "When I was dancing in Auschwitz, I wasn't dancing in Auschwitz. In my mind, I was dancing in Budapest Opera House. I was wearing this beautiful dress. Um, there was an orchestra playing. There was a full house in the audience." I thought, "That's pretty incredible." Then she said to me, while she was in Auschwitz, she started to see the prison guards as the prisoners. I was like, "What do you mean?" She said, "No. Well, in my mind, they weren't free. They weren't living the life that they wanted to. In my mind, I was free." I thought [scoffs] , "I mean, this is pretty incredible." In the absolute hell of a concentration camp, she was reframing some, some pretty [scoffs] ... I was gonna say pretty difficult. I mean, that's an understatement. Some horrendous situations she was reframing. And one of the last things she said to me was, "Rangan, look, I've lived in Auschwitz, and I can tell you this, the greatest prison you will ever live inside is the prison you create inside your mind." That's the phrase I think about every day. When I think I can't reframe a situation, I think back to Edith Eger. I think, "Well, Rangan, if she could do that in Auschwitz, you can probably do that for this kind of small incident in your own life." And it's been transformative. I promise you, there is no greater skill I've learnt over the last five or six years than this. And the thing is, it's like any skill, the more you do it, the better you get. So if every day, or even once a week, but ideally I'd say every day, in the evening, reflect on your day. Reflect on one moment in your day when you got triggered, when you were feeling frustrated by the actions of somebody else, and just practice rewriting that story. Put a different slant on it. Put a different perspective on it. Now, try that. Try that for seven days and just see how you feel. If you don't feel any different, fine. Say, "You know what? I'm gonna ignore that Dr. Chatterjee. I'm not gonna listen to what he has to say." Fine. I'm not trying to convince you, right? I'm trying to inspire you and empower you. I would humbly suggest that you give this a go, right, and see what difference it makes, because I'm almost certain that you will experience such big changes in how you feel, in your motivation, in your energy, in the way you see the world. It's very hard for me to make the case. You actually have to do it yourself to experience it. But I got to tell you, it's ... It becomes almost addictive, because every day becomes a school day. Every day, instead of waiting for people around you to act differently, you're kind of taking control. And then before you know it, if you do this every day or even once or twice a week, within a few weeks, you'll be like a different person. Within a few months, you'll be completely transformed, and that will impact your health, your happiness, your relationships, your productivity. It will all get better on the back of that. One of the most powerful things about learning to reframe every bit of social friction in your life is that you start to view the world with a more compassionate lens, right? You start to lead with compassion in your interactions with others, which is always a good place to be, right? It feels good. I promise you, it will feel good for you. But there's another beautiful side effect, which is- When we can train ourselves to be more compassionate to other people, often we find it easier to be compassionate to ourselves. Now, it doesn't always translate, but it can definitely help because, you know, if you can learn to put a different perspective on other people's lives, then you can sort of then take that next step of applying it to yourself. Now, one of the big reasons why many of us struggle with our health or our happiness is 'cause we don't treat ourselves very well. We treat other people much better than we treat ourselves. Now, the way many of us talk to ourselves in our heads, sometimes out loud, we'd never in a million years say that to our friend or our partner or our child, but we say it to ourselves. And again, we don't think it matters, but this emotional stress is real. It leads to physical health problems. It's one of the big things that I don't think we're talking about enough in health. Professor Kristin Neff, one of the leading experts in the world on self-compassion, has shown with her research that people who are compassionate to themselves, right, they have more motivation. They do better in their work. Their immune system functions better. They have slower aging, right? They're happier. All kinds of things happen when we're compassionate to ourselves, and her research has also shown when we talk negatively to ourselves in our heads, when you call yourself a loser or talk down to yourself, you're activating your body's stress response. Stress hormones like cortisol start to go up. This is real, and it has a really negative impact on our health and our happiness, right? So self-compassion is the practice of being as kind to yourself, if not more, than you would be to your friends and family, and negative self-talk is a big part of that. Now, this is something I work on a lot with my patients. It's something I've had to work on with myself because the truth is this. It is simply not possible to be healthy or happy if you hate yourself, and many of us do. We try and kid ourselves that we don't, but the way we act to ourselves, the way we self-sabotage, the way we talk to ourselves, it's not compassionate. Right? I, I had this patient, a 48-year-old lady who'd been seeing many doctors for a few years. She had some quite vague symptoms. She had some upper abdominal pain. She had some upper arm pain. She tried various medications. She wasn't getting better. She was very, very frustrated. She changed her lifestyle. She had a really good diet, really good movement. She was sleeping well, but she was kind of still struggling, and she ended up coming to see me. And as I got to know her, I noticed a pattern in her wider life, which was that she would always end up in relationships with men who were significantly older than her, and they were always married, and they'd treat her really badly. And we spent a bit of time talking about this stuff, and it was really clear where this came from in her childhoods. She always felt that her older sister had got more attention than her. She'd basically learnt to accept having less attention than she ideally would want or ideally deserved, right? That was a childhood strategy for coping that was no longer serving her in adulthood. So we tried a few things. I shared with her a few self-compassion exercises, right? And it took a while. This wasn't an overnight fix. But bit by bit, she started to do these exercises where she was learning to be kind to herself, and it took many months, but after doing them consistently, after changing the relationship she had with herself, she ended up in a relationship with a guy of the same age who treated her really well, and a few months after that, her symptoms pretty much disappeared. Right? Emotional health, the way we feel about ourselves, the way we talk to ourselves is real. It makes a difference to our biology. It can make a difference to our physical health. And for many of us who are struggling in life and feel lost, one of the big things we have to learn to do is treat ourselves with respect, not talk down to ourselves. So what can you do? Well, there's all kinds of exercises you can do, right? A really simple one that I did with that patient that I, that I think is really useful is to try and write down five things that you like about yourself. Now, I used to say five things you love about yourself, but for many people, that, they find that really off-putting. "I can't, I can't write things I love about myself." But that's essentially what I'm asking you to do. Can you do that? Do you think you could do that right now? Pause this video and write down five qualities that you have that you really like. Now, look, if five feels tough, can you do one? If you are struggling with this, this is a very, very good sign that this is something you really need to work on, right? This really makes a difference. There was this great study in America that showed that people who can write themselves a self-compassionate letter every day for seven days, so a whole letter being compassionate to themselves, are happier three months later. Three months later. This stuff is real. So how do you talk to yourself? It doesn't matter if you don't talk to yourself well at the moment. That's okay. But once you know, once you have that awareness, we can now start to make a change. There's another exercise I love called the mirror exercise. Can you go to a mirror in your house or your apartment? Can you look at yourself and stay looking? Or do you have to turn away? Do you have to look away, it's too painful? Now, I understand these things can be tricky and difficult, but if they are, it's a good sign that you need to work on them. You know? You can get better. And I understand for some people there is deep trauma and past experience associated and linked to the way we feel here. And of course, seeing a healthcare professional or a therapist can be really, really useful. I understand that. But I also understand that not everyone has access to that. So go easy, you know? Maybe it's something you wanna aspire to, you wanna look into options around you to help you with that. But in the meantime, let's get started. Write down a few things you like about yourself. Do it every day. Do it for seven days, and just watch how this starts to change. The other thing that happens as you start to do this, you'll start to catch yourself when you say things like, "Oh, I'm such a loser." I used to say that to myself if things went wrong. I don't anymore. I don't think I've said that to myself, I don't know, three, four, maybe even five years. It's just not who I am anymore. It was a strategy that potentially served me in my childhood, but it was no longer serving me. And if you're a parent or if you're around kids, maybe this will motivate you to really take action here. If you talk to yourself negatively out loud, what message do you think your kids are taking on? If you call yourself a loser, what do you think your kids are gonna learn to do to themselves? Yeah, I've got to be honest, since I became a dad just over 11 years ago, that's been a big drive for me to make a lot of these changes, because I know the best way that I can be a good parent for my children is to sort all this kind of internal stuff out inside me. Because as I feel happier and calmer and more content, and I'm living more aligned, as I really feel I am these days, I'm a much better parent. I'm a kinder, calmer, more compassionate parent. Right? So I don't know what your motivation's gonna be for making these changes, but if you're a parent, do think about that. Now, if we bring this back to that core happiness stool, right, that I've been talking about throughout this video, again, treating yourself with kindness and respect, again, is one of those magic interventions that literally hits every leg of the stool. Right? When you talk to yourself negatively, what does that do to your contentment? Well, you feel less content. You feel out of control, and you're definitely not acting in alignment, so you basically are weakening all three legs of this core happiness stool, which is why you feel discontent. You feel lazy and unmotivated. But once you start to talk to yourself with respect, with kindness, with compassion, that will start to change. You start to strengthen all three of those legs, which in turn means you are going to feel more and more happy, and you're gonna feel happier more often. And that's kinda what we all want. So one of the big reasons why so many of us are feeling lost is 'cause we don't feel truly happy. We don't have that core happiness that all of us deep down really want. And remember that core happiness, in fact, happiness, is a trainable skill. It's a skill that you can work on. You can practice every single day, and actually, pretty much everything I've spoken about in this video is free of charge. You don't have to buy anything. Right? It doesn't cost any money. It takes a bit of time. So it's a commitment from you that actually, I don't wanna feel this way anymore. I wanna get more out of my life. These principles work, whether you, you know, whether you feel really overloaded, stressed out, or close to burnout, these principles and tools work. And even if you just feel, you know what, life's okay, but I think there could be something more I could be getting out of life, these same principles are gonna work. They're gonna help you build and strengthen core happiness, and that's gonna mean you engage in less junk happiness habits, and it means you're gonna get more out of your life. You're not gonna feel lost anymore. You're gonna have a clear direction and a path to follow and work on. But ideas, inspiration without action leads to nothing. Right? So think about some of the principles. Think about some of the tools that I've outlined. Even if you just think of one of them and go, "You know what? I like some of these ideas. That one really resonated with me. I'm gonna bring that one into my life," start there. That's completely fine. You don't have to do them all. In fact, I'd say don't do them all. It's too much. Pick one thing, see how you go, bring it into your life for a week or two, then come back to the video. Pick another one. Right? Slow but steady, that's always the best way for pretty much everyone. Right? So pick one. You know? Define what happiness looks like for you. Write down those three core values. Make sure you take a holiday each day from your life. Work on the skill of taking a different perspective, on choosing a happiness story in every situation, or at least in as many situations as you can. Remember, it gets better. It gets easier with practice. And finally, think about how you talk to yourself, how you treat yourself. Right? Maybe some of those self-compassion exercises. Write down five qualities you like about yourself. Maybe you need to start there. I promise you, it's not as hard as you think to make a change. I know that you feel lost from time to time and you struggle with motivation, but these practices will really make a difference as long as you start implementing them. We all struggle from time to time and feel lost and need a bit of help. These tools absolutely work. I've used them on myself, I've used them with my patients, and I know for you they will make a difference as long as you start to practice them. To dive deeper into your health and well-being, check out this masterclass on why so many of us feel tired all of the time and what we can do to change it. When you feel tired all the time, it affects three key components of your life: your health, your happiness, but also your relationships

Episode duration: 2:15:19