Life Is Short (How To Spend It Wisely Before It's Too Late) | Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:00 Would you say that you are living your best life? It's a big question, isn't it? But it's an important question. So many people at the end of their life say that they have huge regrets. People say things like, "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 the life that other people expected of me." If you kept doing what you're currently doing today month after month, year after year, where does that take you? I've seen so many patients, and I can tell you so many people get sick and then they reflect on their life. If you really are gonna change your life, transform your life, live that intentional, meaningful life that I'm pretty sure you want to live, you have to take action. In this video, I wanna share with you simple things that you can do immediately to start changing your life for the better.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10 Now, the first idea I wanna share with you is something that I call take a daily holiday. It's an idea that I've written about in many of my books. Now, just think about the last time you went on holiday. What is it you go on holiday for? Depending on where you live, it might be the sun, it might be the beach, it might be to get away from all the work stress in your life. But for me, one of the key benefits that people get when they go on holiday is they get perspective on their life. Right? If you fly somewhere to go on holiday... Certainly last time I flew to go on holiday, even as the plane is taking off, yes, literally I'm going in the air and I can look down on my life, but in my mind I really get this 30,000 foot view and I can see things for what they are and go, "Yeah, why am I wasting my time doing that? Why don't I spend more time doing this?" Right? So I think getting that sense of perspective is what people love, or one of the things people love. But my recommendation to you is that you don't actually have to wait for that one-week vacation once a year, right? Or that two-week vacation once or twice a year. You can take a holiday from your life every single day. All you have to do is bookmark 10 or 15 minutes where you step outside of your life so you can reflect on your life. Now, this could be meditation. It could be a walk around the block whilst not looking at your phone. It could be journaling. It could be breathwork. It could be sitting with a lovely cup of coffee in silence and thinking about your life. Because bringing this back to how we started this video, how on earth are you going to live that meaningful life that means you won't have regrets if you don't step outside of your life? We have to find time each day to reflect on our lives, otherwise we end up doing things that we don't want to be doing, and it's very hard to make meaningful change when you're caught up inside your life. Okay, so my first recommendation to you if you wanna live a more meaningful life is to take a daily holiday. What you do with that holiday is up to you. Okay, you are gonna have a different preference to me, and that's okay. I personally do this first thing in the morning. I have a little morning routine. I get up before my wife and my kids 'cause it's really, really important to me. So yes, I go to bed earlier to facilitate that for me, and in that time I get so many insights. Yes, I might do a little workout. I'll do some meditation. I might write in my journal with a cup of coffee. But that time is golden, and those 15 or 20 minutes makes the remainder of my day, the other 16 or 17 hours, go much more effectively. And here's the problem. If you think you don't have time for a daily holiday from your life, you're gonna find it hard to make meaningful change and make different decisions. You have to step outside. You have to be able to go, "Yeah, you know what? I'm working a bit too hard at the moment. Oh, I'm not spending enough time with my friends. I maybe haven't seen my partner as much as I might ideally want to." These things are not complicated, but if you're not stepping outside of your life to think about them, you almost start to erode them away. Well, that's why people come into my practice and have done for many years sick. Looking back, it's obvious. Oh, you worked into every evening. You worked every weekend. You didn't take your holiday. You didn't see your kids. You didn't spend time with your wife or your husband or your boyfriend or whatever. Of course that relationship got fractured. Of course you felt a lack of self-esteem. Of course you didn't feel motivated to, to do things and to make positive changes. But I promise you, if you just take a bit of time out each day, you start to catch things early. And, you know, two questions you might wanna ask yourself each day related to this is, "What went well today?" and "What can I do differently tomorrow?" Two very simple questions, but they're questions that have compassion at their heart. You're not beating yourself up. You're just going, "Oh, yeah, you know what? I did this well today. This I could change and make a better decision tomorrow." So please, you know, if you have a notepad with you, write those two questions down, and I challenge you at least for seven days in a row ask yourself those questions. What went well today? And what can I do differently tomorrow? Right? It won't take you more than a few minutes to answer those questions. But I pretty much guarantee that if you do that consistently, maybe after dinner each evening, maybe even in a journal before you go to bed, you will start to change the way you experience each day. And if you change the way you experience each day for the better, then at the end of your life [laughs] , you're much less likely to have all of those regrets, okay? So take a daily holiday in whichever way you want, walking, journaling, meditation, breathwork, yoga, whatever it is, 10, 50 minutes if you can, longer if you're able to, but if you can't, don't let that be an obstacle. Even five minutes, I promise you, will make a difference. I also want you to think about answering those two questions once a day if you can, ideally in the evening, "What went well today?" and, "What can I do differently tomorrow?" Okay.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:10 The second idea I want you to really think about is this idea of eliminating choice. Right. What do I mean by that? If you really are gonna change your life, you have to take action. You've gotta do something, right? It doesn't matter how small, but doing something small regularly each day, day after day, week after week, month after month, that's how you make progress. That's how you start to experience change. It's by taking action. Right? So when I talk about eliminating choice, it comes from this idea that so many people are... They're stuck in analysis paralysis. Okay? Oh, shall I do yoga? Shall I do Pilates? Shall I do meditation? Shall I do journaling? Oh, you know, that guy I follow online does that one. Uh, that influencer, uh, who I think is really good does, does the other one. Oh, I don't know which one to do. This is so common. I used to do this. I have seen patients over the years who do this. They would come in and say, "Dr. Chatterjee, look, I haven't made my mind up yet. I don't know whether I should be running or going to the gym or doing Pilates or doing yoga." Honestly, the truth is it doesn't matter. You've gotta do one of them, right? Pick one and do it. And here's the problem with choice, okay? Yes, it's nice to feel that we can choose what we're doing, but too much choice leads to procrastination. How many times... Let's say on a Saturday evening, I'm talking from firsthand experience here. When my kids were a bit younger, kids would be in bed. I'd be on the sofa with my wife, and we'd put on Netflix, right? Or some other streaming service. And we would try and choose what we're gonna watch. We're all excited. We're gonna watch something together. The kids have gone to bed. It would not be uncommon that 45 minutes later we still hadn't decided. There is so much choice to the point where our moods went a bit off and we just thought, "Forget it. We're not gonna watch anything," and we both go off and do our own thing. And there's so many couples who that happens to. It's because the choice is overwhelming. Okay? The choice on what health activities we can do is overwhelming. The choice of what we can watch online is overwhelming. And look, if we look at the research from business, there's some research I read a few years ago, really interesting, that if a food company offers a, a product and they offer 28 flavors, sales are much less compared to when they only offer three flavors, right? Just think about that. Why would that be? I mean, 28 is too hard. It's too hard to make a choice. Any choice you might make, you think, "Yeah, but, but maybe the other one was better." So you end up doing nothing. You end up not actually making that purchase. But let's think about not buying a food product that maybe isn't so good for us. Let's think about how we apply that idea in our own life. I mentioned in the previous point about taking a daily holiday that I have a little morning routine each day, and I made many videos on this channel before about my morning routine, which I'd encourage you to check out if you wanna see exactly what I do. But here's the point. I have it locked in. I know what I do. It consists of the three Ms, mindfulness, movement, and mindset. Okay? I do meditation and breathwork. I do a workout while my coffee's brewing, and then with my coffee, I do something for my mindset, which is usually journaling or reading an uplifting chapter of a book. Right? That's what I've got locked in to my mornings, and it's very rare that I miss a morning. I don't wake up in the morning at 5:00 and go, "Oh, what shall I do for my morning routine today?" and go through all the options, because what would that lead to? It would lead to procrastination, right? It would lead to me actually not doing anything. Let's use the example of, uh, brushing our teeth. Now, I hope, [laughs] I think that you probably brush your teeth for two minutes in the morning and two minutes in the evening, don't you? Right? Now, you didn't when you were two years old or three years old. That has been built into your life. I imagine it was your mother or your father or your primary caregivers who helped encourage you until it became a habit, right? But you know four minutes a day on your teeth is gonna keep them healthy for life. Yes, there's other factors as well, for sure, but y- you get my point. What you don't do is go, "Yeah, you know what? On Monday, come back from work-" Have my dinner, get ready for bed, and I brush my teeth for, for two minutes. Okay, great. You don't think on a Tuesday, [sighs] you know what? I did... I brushed my teeth yesterday. I'm gonna do something different. I'm just gonna rinse today. And then on Wednesday you don't go, "Yeah, well, I've already brushed my teeth. I r- I rinsed yesterday. I'm gonna floss today." I know it sounds ridiculous, but that's kind of what I have seen [laughs] so many people do over the years, right? There's this idea that we need to keep varying it up. No, you don't. Right? If you do something proactive... As I said, what do I do? These three Ms, right? I do the meditation and breathwork. It has phenomenal benefits. Are there other techniques out there that I could do? Yeah, there are, but this one works for me, and I've got it locked in, right? And that's why it happens. I do a strength workout every morning for five minutes in my pajamas while my coffee brews. I don't vary it up. Sure, are there benefits of other things? Yeah, I do those things at other times. That's not the point of my morning routine. The point is that I've eliminated choice. I start off the day positively nourishing my body, my mind, my heart, right? Just like toothbrushing. And so I'd really encourage you, where in your life can you eliminate choice? Because if you eliminate choice, I promise you, you're much more likely to take action.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:40 Right, other things you might wanna consider... I'm the host of a podcast, right? Feel Better, Live More. I love doing that podcast. I love listening to podcasts. But if you're someone who likes to consume content to grow and to learn about things, and I imagine you are 'cause you're watching this video right now, if you go onto your podcast app, right, how many choices are put before you? It's overwhelming, and loads of the choices sound really good. Like, oh, God, that sounds really good. That sounds really good. Oh, man, there are these five podcasts I really wanna listen to, but I only have time for one. And the problem with that is this. The problem is, is that you choose one, but you're always thinking in the back of your head, "Yeah, but that one might have been better. Maybe that one would've been a better choice." And there's this internal dissatisfaction, which I think leads to a lot of regret and a lot of unhappiness. So a rule you might wanna apply is I say if you like listening to podcasts, choose two or three that you like and just stick to them. Choose a host that you like. Choose a show that covers the kinds of topics that you like, right, and just subscribe to those shows. Yeah, are there other great shows out there? Yeah, there are. But you can't watch them all. You can't listen to them all, and if you try to, you're gonna feel overwhelmed. Right? So give that a go. That's what I do. There are two or three podcasts I subscribe to, and I listen to them, not all the time, but whenever I can, and they nourish me. And I've made peace with the fact that, yeah, there's plenty of great episodes on other people's shows that I won't get a chance to listen to, but you know what? It doesn't matter. So that's this idea of eliminating choice. Again, when I started this idea, I said that it's not just about having the knowledge, is it? It's about taking action, and I want you to take action whilst watching this video and after watching this video. I'm gonna ask you this directly now. Where do you think there's too much choice in your life? Where do you think that that choice leads to procrastination and inaction? And if you've got a second, if you could let me know in the comments, I'd really appreciate that because, A, I'd love to see it, but, B, what I'm trying to do on this channel is foster a real sense of community. I really wanna keep creating helpful, uplifting, hopefully inspiring content that helps you live a more meaningful life, a healthier life, a happier life. And so if you could share where you feel you're struggling, yes, it helps me make more videos. It helps me see what you're struggling with. But it also helps other people who follow this channel and are watching this video. It helps them go, "Yeah, you know, I'm also struggling with that." So if you can, let me know. But again, in eliminating choice, I mentioned the podcast. I mentioned the morning routine. Um, I've got here in one of my books, create a film shortlist. You know, I mentioned that example with Netflix, right, where I couldn't choose what to watch. So what do I do? Whenever any of my friends or online someone recommends a film that I think I'm gonna like, on my phone, which I don't have to hand here, on my phone, I open the Notes app, and I have it saying Films To Watch. That's the title of it. And I've got a list. So it means if ever I have time on a Saturday or on a train or when- whenever it might be, I don't have to think now and go, "Oh, what am I gonna watch?" I go straight to my Notes app. I go, yeah, here are the five films or the two films that are on my list, and I just go through that list. Again, if you're someone who likes to cook whole foods and nourishes themself with healthy foods, right? You know, my wife will say one of the hardest things is to decide what to cook. You know, I'm the same. You know, it's hard to know, well, what shall I cook? So many people like to have a meal planner, and on that meal planner it goes on a Monday have this, on a Tuesday have this, on a Wednesday have this. It may sound boring, but it ain't boring, right? Every time you're making a choice, you're using cognitive load. You're using up brainpower. So I say let's save your brainpower for decisions and choices that really do matter. A lot of the things I'm talking about, they just don't matter. And we waste so much time and energy trying to choose the optimum exercise. You know, which one of these 100 films should I watch? Which one of the two million podcasts should I listen to today? It's too much. So I want you to really commit to eliminating choice wherever you can in your life. And if, like me, you believe in the power of morning routines, and they don't have to be fifteen, twenty minutes, they can be just five minutes, right? Again, if you've watched my previous videos, you will know about this idea that I've spoken about, that I've written about. Commit. Share with me below. What are you gonna do for the next seven days? What can you do for five minutes every morning? Because it's that consistency that breeds self-esteem, that changes how you view yourself. You feel like you're making progress. And if you're someone who struggles with your mood, like what's really, really important is that we all as humans have a need to feel as if we're making progress. And one of the best ways of doing that is to say, right, you know, every single day for five minutes, not for ten, not for fifteen, not for twenty, that can feel too hard. But for five minutes, I'm gonna do something proactive for myself. And I guarantee you, if you can commit right now for the next seven days to doing that, five minutes of journaling, five minutes of skipping, five minutes of meditation, you will start to change the way you feel about yourself. And over time, that will change how you experience life. Okay? So try and eliminate choice wherever you can. Okay.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:45 The third idea I wanna share with you is about busyness. I've seen so many patients, and I can tell you so many people over the years thought they could keep pushing, keep working into evenings and weekends and into holidays until they got sick. What is one of the top regrets that people have at the end of their life? "I wish I had worked less." Now, look, I get it. We all live different lives. We all have different pressures. Right? YouTube is a global platform. I don't know what country you are living in right now and what the pressures are for you. I don't. That is the truth. But sometimes we work harder than we need to. Sometimes we've already got enough. We've got enough to feed our family, to put the heating on, to have a roof over our heads. But we keep pushing for a little bit more, a bit more money, a promotion, a nicer office, whatever it might be. These things are almost-- they've almost become clichés now, but it's true. Th-this really, really means a lot to me because I've seen it time and time again. People thought they could keep pushing until it was too late. Right? One of my very, very favorite quotes is from the Tao Te Ching. The, the native language of the text is not English, but in the translation I have, it says, "True wealth is knowing what is enough." And I think about that all the time. What is enough? I think the biggest disease in society is the disease of more. More money, more status, more things, more cars, whatever it might be, is gonna make us happier. It's a con. It's a complete inside job, right? Happiness, inner peace, contentment. It does not come from those external factors as much as we think it does, as much as we've been conditioned by our schools, by society to think that it does. It really doesn't. Sure, we need money. We need things to be able to live. I understand that, right? I'm not denying that. But that true happiness and contentment does not come from those external metrics. And so I want you to ask yourself that question. What is enough for you? Do you have enough? Maybe you don't, or maybe you do. Maybe if you look back and go, "Wow," if the you of ten years ago could see you today, maybe you're already achieving more than you ever dreamt of, but you're still bringing that same energy that, "I don't have enough. I need to keep pushing. I need to keep pushing. I need to keep striving. I need to keep hustling." You gotta change it at some point, 'cause if you keep doing that forever, there will be a price to pay. I have seen it over and over again. So do not confuse busyness with success. Dare I say it, and I say this with an open heart and with compassion, that sometimes busyness is actually a form of laziness. I said sometimes. I, I do understand that there are pressures out there, that some people are having to work multiple jobs to make ends meet. I, I honestly, I get that. I've seen it for years in patients and beyond my practice. But often, for many of us, busyness or excessive busyness is because we've not prioritized the important things in our life. We've not taken that daily holiday and actually thought, "You know what? What is important?" So a useful way to think about this is if we think about buckets, and this is an idea I've been writing about in Make Change That Lasts, that a successful life, I think, for any human being is a broad life rather than a narrow life. And I think there are five buckets that we ideally want to keep topped up. Okay. There's work, there's family, there's friendships, there's our health, and there's our passions. Okay, these are the five buckets. So let's go through those buckets, and I want you on each one of those to ask yourself, how are you doing? They're all important. To make sure you're taking action after watching this video, I've created a free guide to help you build healthy habits. We can all make short-term change, but can those changes become a fundamental part of our life? Often they don't, and that's why in this free guide, I share with you the six crucial steps you need to take. They're really, really effective. If you wanna get hold of that free guide right now, all you have to do is click the link in the description box below.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:53 Now, I think for many of us in this modern world in which we live, it's pretty hard to keep all of those five buckets topped up at all times. You know, maybe in our 20s, yeah, we do wanna make it in our career, so maybe we have to sacrifice our passions while we're working hard to impress our boss and move forward. I get that. It's okay to not have them all topped up at the same time, but if it goes on for too long, that's where the problems lie. That's when you end up on your deathbed at the end of your life. It's when they've gone on for too long, right? So work, if I was to ask you now, how is that bucket doing? Do you do meaningful work? Do you enjoy it? Do you think it gives you what you want it to give you, or do you think you're in the wrong job? Do you think you're working too hard? You know, there's statistics in the UK saying that 88% of UK workers have experienced some degree of burnout in the past two years. I mean, it's a staggering statistic. So ask yourself. That's one bucket, work. Next bucket, family. You know, if you're lucky enough to be in touch with your family and have a family, you know, how are your relationships doing there? Are your parents alive? If they are, do you see them regularly? Do you call them regularly? The amount of people these days who get busy with work and life, and then the parents get old, the parents die, and they realize, "Oh man, I didn't spend enough time with my mom when she was alive, with my dad when he was alive," whatever it might be. So ask yourself. What about your immediate family? Maybe you have a partner. Maybe you've got children. Are you spending enough time with them, okay? Again, there's no right or wrong here. You ultimately know what's best for you. I'm just trying to shine a light on some important areas. So we've got work. We've got family. Friendship, right? Many of us are blessed to have good friends. Not everyone, but many of us are, but we're just too busy to spend time with them. We know that this is a real problem, particularly for men. It's well known that many men are struggling with friendships. They're so busy with work and mortgages and life and, you know, for a variety of reasons which maybe go beyond this video, they're not really hanging out with their friends in the way that they might have done 20 or 30 years ago. This is having huge negative consequences, including being a contributory factor to the growing rates of male suicide. But ask yourself about your friendships. How are they? Are you nourishing them enough? If you're not, that's okay. Maybe, you know, write this down. Write down those five things and give them a score. How am I doing in each one of these? Where do I need to make changes? Okay, then the fourth one would be your health, the fourth bucket. How are you doing with your health? Is it where you want it to be? Are there things that you know would be helpful but you've not managed to do them? Okay, fine. That's okay. But if you're recognizing it... Again, what did I say at the start? Take a holiday every day. This is you taking that holiday, reflecting on your life, going, "Yeah, you know what? I've been saying for the last few years I wanna, I don't know, do a 5K," or take up yoga or whatever it might be, whatever appeals to you. But you still haven't done it. Why? Why haven't you? What's gonna change? How are you going to live that meaningful life that means you don't have those regrets if you don't make changes, if you don't make positive changes? You can change any time you like. It's never too late, I promise you. I've seen patients before at 75 who've realized actually their whole life they never allowed themselves to be an artist. I can remember one patient in particular said, "I used to love drawing at school. Then I got busy with work. I've never done it since." And spent the next 10 years getting back into art, right? That was their passion. Not their health. That's that fifth bucket, passion, right? So it's never too late to make a change. But I wanted to share those five buckets because I think they're a simple way for you to assess your life. And again, this video is about how do you spend your time wisely. How do you recognize that life is short and that it won't go on forever, that if you don't start making changes now, well, when are you gonna make those changes? How are you gonna stop being that person who has those big regrets on their deathbed? I think it's totally possible to live a meaningful life and not have regrets on your deathbed. Okay, so hopefully that concept of buckets is gonna be helpful.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:43 Also, in this idea of busyness and not confusing busyness with success, there's a question that I ask myself every single morning that in many ways you can consider the anti-busyness question. And I do it whilst I'm drinking coffee. I do it in my journal. And the question is this" "What is the most important thing I have to do today?" If I was to ask you that right now, do you know what you'd write down? Or does your mind go to about 20 different things? Oh, I need to do this, I need to do this, I need to do this. What's so powerful about this question is that it forces you to make a decision. There's no such thing as a perfect decision, okay? If you say that spending time with your wife today is the most important thing that you have to do, it doesn't mean that your work's not important. It doesn't mean that your relationship with your children is not important, or with your friends. It doesn't mean that. It's just saying that today, in the context of everything else that's been going on in my life, the most important thing is spending time with my wife. Great. Tomorrow it might be something else. You know, for me yesterday it was when my kids come home from school, right? Because I was working from home yesterday. When my children come home from school, I'm gonna make sure that my laptop's down, and I'm gonna come through the door, that I am present and attentive to them so that I can hear what they have to say to me, okay? Every day it's gonna be different, and that's okay. But here's the thing, and why that question is so, so powerful is if you every single morning ask yourself that question and you say, "This is the most important thing I have to do today," and you make a decision... And if you've got four things that you can't decide, just choose one. It's about making a decision. And then you ensure that you do that thing every day. Do that for 30 days. So 30 days you've specified in the morning the most important thing that you're gonna do, right? You do that thing for 30 days. Each day it could be different. It is inconceivable that your life will not change. Inconceivable because you would have done 30 things that you have identified are important. That's a life well spent, right? It doesn't mean your to-do list is gonna vanish, but that's the thing about life today. Our to-do lists are never done. Never. You could get down to inbox zero. I don't know anyone who's ever done that. But in theory [laughs] , you could clear all your emails and go into the kitchen and make yourself a cup of tea. In those 10 minutes, you could have got another 10 emails. There's nothing you can do about it. So you now have to take control and specify what is important for me, and that's why I love that question. Honestly, I love it. I think it's one of the best questions you can ask yourself every day. What is the most important thing I have to do today? So again, that's my challenge to you, right? So in this idea of busyness... And let's not confuse busyness with success, because it ain't, right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:03 No one at the end of their life goes, "You know, I was so busy. It was fantastic. Never had a minute to sit down. Never had a minute. I just kept going." I mean, just think about it another way. If you're driving on the motorway, or in America you'd call it the highway, and you're going at 70 miles an hour, and you look around you, how able are you to take things in? You're not. Everything's whizzing past you, right? But if you're driving at, let's say, 40 miles an hour... And this is maybe not the perfect example because of course we're not gonna be driving at that speed on a motorway, but just, you know, try and get the point of what I'm trying to say. If you're going slowly, you can see it all. You can take it in. You can see the trees. Yeah. You could see who's in the other cars or whatever it might be. Well, that's a great metaphor for life. If you're constantly rushing around through life, you're not taking in life. You can't experience the joy that is already there. Even if your life is busy and stressful, I'm sure there are good things going on every day. But you often don't notice them because you're so busy, and that's why a practice of gratitude is so useful. And again, if you're interested in that, I've covered that in many of my other videos on this channel. But yeah, so think about that. Are you too busy? Are you neglecting some of those important things in life? And maybe those five buckets, if you score each one of those, you'll get an idea of where you could start making changes. And also ask yourself that question each day. What is the most important thing I have to do today? Ask yourself that question, and then do it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:46 Now, the final point I want to make about a life well spent, and it kind of relates to some of the buckets that I've just outlined. It's when you think about your relationships. Life is made up of its relationships. What are those things people say on their deathbed, right? Can you remember what I said right at the start of this video? Now, one of them is, "I wish I'd worked less," but what do they also say? "I wish I'd spent more time with my family and friends." Relationships are the fabric of life. You know that intuitively. But often we get caught up in busyness and cultural ideas of success. Yes, we may be crushing it at work, but at the expense of what? Our relationships, our children, our friends, our partners, our parents. That's what life's about. And what does the scientific research say? Well, there's so many different studies which tell us that the number one factor for a happy and long life, it's not your diet, it's not how much you move, it's not how well you sleep. These things are all important, believe you me. I know how important they are. I talk about them all the time. I write about them all the time. But the number one factor is the quality of your relationships. Now, listen, we all kind of know that. But we often don't act as if they are the most important thing, do we? And that's why the things I've already shared in this video are already gonna help you with that. If you take a daily holiday and reflect on your life... You're very quickly gonna understand if you are properly nourishing your relationships or not. If you do that five bucket exercise and go through them all, you're very quickly gonna go, "Ah, [lips smacking] my friendships, my family, I could spend more time with them." You know, I've had to do this in my own life. Like many people, I got super busy for a few years. Yes, with work, but also with caring for my elderly parents. When my dad was alive, you know, hardly had any time to see my friends 'cause I was helping my mom and my brother care for him. My dad had lupus. He was on kidney dialysis. I helped care for him for 15 years, so I know what that's like. My mother these days, she's, you know, 84. She needs a lot of help, and I live very nearby to her, so I can be there and help. That's a choice that I have made, but it also means that I have probably neglected some of my friendships at the same time. Look, I'm lucky. I do have some amazing friends, but doing these exercises, they remind me, "Hey, Rangan, you know what? Yeah, you can love your mom and care for her, but you can also find time maybe once a month." You know, my best friends live hundreds of miles away from me, so maybe two or three times a year we can get together for a weekend, and we do. And that's the power of these exercises. It's not about beating yourself up and going, "You shouldn't be working so hard. You've neglected your relationships." Guilt, shame doesn't help anyone. It doesn't help you make change, I promise you. It may help you make change for a few weeks. In fact, this is what we often see in January. People wake up on New Year's Day full of guilt and shame. They wake up with a hangover and think, "Right, that's it. I'm sick of this being my life. I'm gonna lose weight this year. I'm gonna go spending four times a week. I'm gonna eat well." Right? But it's guilt and shame that drives that behavior. That's why four weeks later, 80% or so of New Year's resolutions have fallen by the wayside. That's one of the reasons at least, because the energy behind that behavior was toxic. So these exercises that I'm sharing are not about guilt or shame. They're not about beating yourself up. They're simply about understanding what is the state of your life. If you don't know where you are currently at, you're never gonna get to where you wanna be. But you have to be honest with yourself and go, "Yeah, these areas need a bit of work." So, right, this final idea is about making time for your relationships, okay? And how you can... how are you gonna do that? Of course, it's gonna be different for different people.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:11 One of my favorite tips that I use myself and I've used with many patients over the years is something that I call the tea ritual, and something that I've used with my wife, right? I've got a great relationship with my wife. We're happily married. We've got two kids. But, you know, in term time, if there's a lot going on at work and with the children at school and with our families, you know, you, you can sometimes feel as though you're passing ships, where you reside in the same house, you're seeing each other, but not properly connecting with each other. So the tea ritual for us, and again, I appreciate your life is different, but perhaps there's an element here that's gonna work for you, is when our kids go to bed, we come down to the kitchen, we put the kettle on, we make a pot of mint tea, and we sit in the kitchen, and the commitment is for five minutes we're just gonna spend time with each other and ask each other how our days were, how things are going. Now, it sounds so simple, doesn't it? But I can tell you it's transformative. When we do that tea ritual regularly, the closeness, the intimacy, the connectedness that we feel with each other is on a different scale because this is what I've learnt over the years about relationships. I passionately believe that quality is more important than quantity. Don't get me wrong, quantity's great, right? [laughs] But you can spend an hour with someone and be completely distracted, or you can spend 15 minutes where you give them the... your full presence and attention, and I think you know the difference in outcome between those two. So this five-minute tea ritual is very, very effective, and it doesn't mean it's always five minutes, right? Some days it ends up being half an hour. But the commitment is for five minutes because that means that even if we're busy, we can never say we don't have five minutes. Sometimes it will be, "Hey, babe, listen, um, I've got loads of work to do at the moment, loads of emails, so, you know, after five minutes I'm gonna get back to that." That's completely fine 'cause it keeps the habit going. It keeps the momentum there, right? But some days, yeah, it'll be half an hour, it'll be an hour. And I think these days, particularly with technology and phones, it's so easy for you to get on your device and your partner to get on their device and you're lost in your own worlds. Yeah, you're in the same room. You're physically in the same space. But emotionally, you're millions of miles away. It's a massive problem, and I honestly would say that that five-minute tea ritual, I can think of at least five couples in my practice over the years who came back to me and said that has probably saved their marriage. So that five-minute tea ritual can be really, really effective, and you can apply that with friends, with your partner. You can even apply it with your children. I really hope you found

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:14 those ideas useful. Like, genuinely, I'm not here to tell you how to live your life, right? I don't think it's my job. I think you, deep within you, you know what's important in your life. And my hope is that this idea has simply shone a light on the things that you already know. You already know the importance of relationships. You know how important it is to step outside of your life to reflect on your life. You know that you feel better when you're actually doing things each day for your health and your happiness and your wellbeing instead of thinking about them. You know all that. But please don't just watch this video and then go back to doing what you were doing before. I don't want you to be that person who on their deathbed says, "Yeah, I wish I'd done things differently." It doesn't matter what's happened up to this point. You can change any time you want. You just have to commit. You have to with your mind, body, and soul, bring them all together and make that decision, "I want a different life. I want a more meaningful life, a more purposeful life where I'm doing the things that I want to do." Sure, there might be things in your life that you have to do that you don't wanna do. That's okay. We all have to do that. I'm not promising you that's gonna vanish from your life. It probably isn't. But if you focus on these few things... And I'm not saying do them all. But even if there were two or three ideas that really connected with you, write them down. Say to yourself, "I'm gonna do this." And I would love to know, like genuinely for me but also for this community here on my channel, please let me know what you're gonna commit to in the comments below. 'Cause I honestly, I believe in you. I know you can do this. I have seen tens of thousands of patients over the course of my career. I've seen people come in all kinds of different states, and I believe that anybody can make change when they get their mindset right. And I'm convinced that the tools I've shared with you today, I know that if you commit to even just one or two of them, your life is gonna change. You're gonna spend your time in a much more meaningful way. And over time you're gonna go, "Yeah, you know what? I am living my best life. I can do this." If you enjoyed that video, I think you are really going to enjoy this one where I outline five powerful ideas that will improve your life immediately. I figured out over two decades of medical practice that these are the tips and techniques that really move the needle