Dr Rangan ChatterjeeWhy You Feel Exhausted All The Time (It’s Not What You Think) | Pippa Grange
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
85 min read · 16,948 words- 0:00 – 2:51
Burnout as a cultural problem: “overperforming” becomes the norm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Why is it, do you think, that so many people are struggling with burnout?
- PGPippa Grange
I think this is an absolutely collective problem. So many people are struggling, but that's not a sort of, a large number of individuals who've randomly got there. I think it's actually a cultural phenomena as well, and I think it's because we're overperforming in too many places and in too many ways in our lives. We are living in a way that no longer suits [laughs] a human being. It's too fast. It's too revved. It requires too much mental activity from us at all times. We've forgotten how to rest and renew our energy, to regenerate, and collectively, that's leading us to a place where we're, if not just strained, where we're on the precipice of burnout and, and crashing and burning.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. That term overperformance-
- PGPippa Grange
Mm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... is really the, I guess, the topic of the new book.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And as you just alluded to, this seems to be something that a lot of people struggle with these days-
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... this, this idea that they're, they can't quite get their head above water.
- PGPippa Grange
Right.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right? And you say this right at the start, "Are you addicted to pace and pressure? Do you regularly close off your feelings and ignore your body so that you can get more done? And is the internal narrator to your daily life critical of anything that doesn't add to your progress and betterment?"
- PGPippa Grange
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
That's a lot of people, isn't it?
- PGPippa Grange
That's a lot of people, yeah. This is what... That's what I'm saying. I think it's, it's not just you. [laughs] It's not just an individual phenomena for one person here. It's, it's something that's really prevalent among everybody. Our pace is too high, basically. I think we have a mismatch between the way we used to do it, um, where grit and discipline and, uh, performance methods used to fit the way that the world was, and now we're in a new moment in the world where, uh, there's more strain collectively. There's geopolitical strain, there's wars, there's climate change. There's all sorts of things that are pressing down on us collectively, and I don't think we have worked out how to change our methods, and that's what the whole book, Life Reclaimed, is about, is, is how do we change our methods for this moment now so that we can regenerate our energy, regenerate our performances, rather than feel like you either have to put tools down and quit-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- PGPippa Grange
... or, or just keep going until you crash.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
It's interesting you say there's a mismatch between-
- PGPippa Grange
Mm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... the way things currently are and I guess who we are as humans.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm.
- 2:51 – 3:42
Learning from nature: why wholeness beats productivity compartments
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yet you still, throughout your book and your, I would say beyond this book, your, the entirety of your work-
- PGPippa Grange
Mm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... you still look to nature-
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... for solutions, don't you?
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah. Well, we are nature. [laughs] You know, it's, it's, um, what, one of the first things I talk about in the book in, in the sort of, you know, how we learn who to be, um, is this idea that we, uh, have a view of ourselves as separate from everything out there, and when we can recognize that we are part of that web of life, and it is the most extreme and incredible form of intelligence that'll ever come our way to tap into that-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- PGPippa Grange
... all the lessons are already there about how to excel, how to perform, how to stay whole. You know, ecology is whole. Industry is not whole. It's compartments and efficiency and productivity and progress.
- 3:42 – 5:39
Ignoring signals: living “from the neck up” and overriding the body
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
This idea that we're not separate from our surroundings, I very much think like that. There's many people these days who think like that. But for someone who's pushing back against that, Pippa, who's going, "What, what do you mean? Like, I'm an individual. I've got to earn my money and pay my mortgage and feed my family," what is the relevance of this idea that we're not separate? How does that apply in that individual's life?
- PGPippa Grange
Mm. Mm-hmm. So the way I'm talking about it in the book is, um, when we see ourselves as separate from all else, we also have this idea that we can override all of the signals from the natural world-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- PGPippa Grange
... all of the signals from our own natural landscape in our bodies-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- PGPippa Grange
... in our minds. Our bodies constantly give us signals that maybe we're a little bit strained-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- PGPippa Grange
... or on the edge, and we ignore them. We presume that our mind, 'cause we live largely from the neck up [laughs]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm
- PGPippa Grange
... our mind i- as the control center is going to be able to push through all obstacles because we will it, rather than recognizing, no, you know, when it comes to, when it comes to performance, we have to listen to the whole, and that's what's happening out here, what's happening in here, inner and outer landscape matching. And I don't think we've... I think we've lost touch with how to do that.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- PGPippa Grange
Right? So it's not about whether you just need to go into the forest and, and, you know, find yourself again. It is genuinely how are you responding to all of the intelligence, all of the natural intelligence in your life, your, you know, in your body, in your world, in the environment and the culture around you, um, or are you separate and just living up here in your head, dictating terms and, and pressing override all the time?
- 5:39 – 8:17
Nature’s rhythm and the regenerative triangle: perform, rest, renew
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. As we have this conversation, spring has just sprung [laughs]
- PGPippa Grange
[laughs]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... i- in the UK, right?
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And I've had one of the best weekends of the year, frankly, and which we can maybe talk about a bit later, but one of the things I've been doing this weekend is read your book while sitting outside.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And it's interesting how a lot of the themes you talk about-They actually become really obvious at this time of year, this renewal, this regeneration
- PGPippa Grange
Mm. Mm-hmm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... this idea that actually the garden was, you know, quite damp and soggy, and there wasn't much color for the last few months.
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And suddenly in the last week, it's as if there's a different signal coming in from the universe around, right? The birds are tweeting and singing at 5:00 AM.
- PGPippa Grange
[laughs] Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
You're in bed. You can hear it outside. So this idea that there is this natural process, you know, you've got this regenerative triangle, don't you?
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
What is it? Performance-
- PGPippa Grange
Perform, rest, renew. Yeah
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... perform, rest, renew.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I kind of feel nature sort of has that, doesn't it, within it?
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah. It, it does. But, you know, if I take you back to that idea of, like, everything not having quite so much color in the, in the winter, and, you know, I think we had, like, 45 days of rain straight or something this year. It's, it's like y- you're pretty indoors psychologically when [laughs] that happens, not just physically, you know? But i- if you look to nature, it's, it's resting. It looks like it's resting. The leaves are off the trees, and you don't see as much animal life. You don't hear those birds tweeting as much. Um, but it's, it's doing something. It's just different. It's diverse, right? One of the things with us, our human nature, is that we expect the same homogenous pattern of life-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- PGPippa Grange
... from ourselves if we're not tuned in, and that, I think, is one of the problems that leads us to overperforming, right? So nature's, nature's not ... It might be at rest in some ways, but it's not inactive [laughs] through that whole time.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- PGPippa Grange
It's purposeful rest, you know, and then it comes to renewal. But you were tuned in enough to notice the difference in yourself and the difference in the world around you as it's starting to spring.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Just to finish off on this kind of idea that burnout is, you know, reaching epidemic [laughs] proportions these days, which, which really does say something about the state of society, right?
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah.
- 8:17 – 12:17
Why we overwork: lost community, “specialness,” and the fantasy finish line
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But when I think about why is it that so many of us are, let's say, overworking-
- PGPippa Grange
Right
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... I think there's many reasons. Yes, there's, there's cultural factors. There, there could be what our boss is expecting of us, and they're sort of responding to what other bosses are doing or what their boss thinks they should be delivering for them. I also think about our individualistic culture, that, you know, we've moved away, many of us, from tribe and community. And so in the past, we would've always known the value we offered to the people around us. It would've been quite obvious.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
You know, in the tribe, in the hunter-gatherer tribe, you know, if you had hunted and brought home some meat, you know, you would've been celebrated. You know, you would ... You know, people around you would celebrate you, and you would know, "Yeah, I brought this home today," or if you were digging the tubers up or you were guarding the, the camp, whatever it might be, your value was obvious to you.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And I wonder sometimes if some of this overperforming comes from the fact that we are living these separate lives now, so sometimes we don't know that we are being of value.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So maybe the compensation for that is to go to the place where we do see our value being celebrated, and maybe that's work.
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah. I totally agree with you. I, I think this happens outside of work as well. Like, it, you know, you could describe how this plays out in relationships or in parenting. Uh, same thing that's like how do you know when it's quite, when you're quite there, you know?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- PGPippa Grange
And I, I talk about those narratives that set us up for this kind of overperforming, um, and being sort of, um, uh, the story of us needing to be special at all times is part of that, right? When you talk about the hunter-gatherers, right, that, that person would not have gone out and brought meat home every day. [laughs]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- PGPippa Grange
Right? The tubers would've come only at certain times, uh, that people would've dug up and been celebrated. There was a rh- a na- a more natural rhythm to the things that we were doing. Now we expect, um, that kind of performance constantly. We expect it to be special, and we feel bad or guilty when we're not optimizing for performance at all times.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- PGPippa Grange
Right? And that's, for me, part of what I think drains the energy out of people and leaves them sort of feeling like, "Oh, where's the finish line?"
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. Th- this lack of rhythm-
- PGPippa Grange
Mm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... or the decimation or the, the erosion of rhythm from our lives, you see it everywhere, like you just mentioned. But it's also, you know, taking that analogy of the hunter-gatherer, you know, the tubers or, or hunting for meat, we're even used to having the same foods now 52 weeks a year.
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah. Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And of course, because of, you know, the modern food system and the food supply, we can have bananas in December in the UK.
- PGPippa Grange
Right.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But you can't in nature.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And so I guess if we were living more in harmony with our natural rhythms, not only would the way we feel change, you know, spring versus winter, but also what we eat and how we eat would also change, wouldn't it?
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah. Absolutely. And I use this as a metaphor of not just our physiological, um, sense of self, but our psychological sense of self does better when it's not a monoculture. [laughs]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- PGPippa Grange
So when it's a monoculture of food or a monoculture of activity, um, we, we get dull. You know, our gut gets dull. Our, uh, sense of self gets dull, and it's just exactly the same with our mood and our psychology. It's kind of organic in the same way, you know, and we need diverse inputs. We need shifts, changes, different speeds, more rhythm, um, more, uh, adaptability, and I don't think we're very good at doing that just yet.
- 12:17 – 15:14
How to spot an overperformer: masking, urgency, side-thinking, scrolling
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
How might somebody know if they are an overperformer?
- PGPippa Grange
Well, some of the classic things people do when they're overperforming, um, they generally mask what they're feeling. Uh, they find it hard to say out loud that they, um, maybe are under strain or feel too tired or feel that, uh, uh, or might say ... keep saying yes when they actually mean categorically no-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- PGPippa Grange
... and do it anyway. Bend themselves out of shape a bit. Um, typically, they're always in urgency. Um, they, uh, are likely to be side thinking about, uh... have some other mental tabs open while they're doing something, find it h- really hard to be present.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- PGPippa Grange
They're likely to be psychologically scrolling, as I say, so they're in a conversation but looking around and thinking about who else is in the room that they need to, uh, have an outcome with in some way. Um, they're never quite able to be fully present and spacious. Um, and we... A lot of people are gonna recognize that, right? And the problem isn't that we do it, the problem is that we do it chronically for way too much of the time.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So it's okay to do it now and again-
- PGPippa Grange
Yes
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... as long as it's balanced.
- PGPippa Grange
Right. It's a... I think it's a very human thing to do that now and then. We all have periods of real stress and real strain. This isn't about being perfect. It's about recognizing that we've kind of slipped into this as a chronic way of being, and we don't... Sometimes now we l- we don't know how to not overperform. It's happening in so many places in our life. It's seeped into places it doesn't belong.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
H- how might this be relevant for you at this current moment in time, Pippa? So you've got this brand-new book out-
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... Life Reclaimed.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
As part of launching a book, I guess you will probably do an element of publicity around it to let people know.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So interviews and podcasts, those kinds of things.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
How does that or does it fit into your regenerative triangle?
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah, a- absolutely. I, I keep that regenerative triangle, um, right at the center of everything I do. For me, though, at the moment, this is where my energy is-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right
- PGPippa Grange
... in the book, and this is the stuff I'm loving, and I... if I listen to my energy, if I really tune in, I'm like, "Yes, please," for that. Uh, that's a yes feeling. Whereas when I have other requests for other things, maybe things that pull me back into a former version of myself, that I think, "Oh, I could do that," or, "That might be quite interesting," I have to really watch carefully for the no.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- PGPippa Grange
Because actually my body might be saying, "Mm, uh, I don't really want to, but I should or I could." And so, you know, I have to be quite specific about what I'm saying yes to, and that's about my own honesty with myself of like, "I don't really want to do it," instead of, "I could do it. I ought to do it."
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- PGPippa Grange
You know, not, not just saying yes because I can.
- 15:14 – 25:04
Permission to pause: reclaim what’s already right (not ‘fix’ what’s broken)
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
A big part of this book to me is about us getting to know ourselves better.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I, I mean, in so many ways it's very hard to turn the ship around, acknowledge that things aren't quite going the way you want them to go in your life if you don't know yourself, if you don't create space in your life to think.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And that space is what is missing from so many people's lives.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm. And I, I think you... Tell me, uh, what your experience is in relation to this, Rangan, but, um, I think that there's a lot of story out there about us needing to fix something when we feel off-kilter. Something has... Something's broken. Something's wrong. What I'm encouraging people to do in this book is to give themself permission to go back to reclaim what's already right. You know, sometimes we're just overrevving rather than broken.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. There's, there's so much I wanna talk to you about, Pippa. Just relating to what you just said there, in chapter six, which is called Coming Home, you wrote that, "The hardest part of shifting from overperformance to regenerative performance may well be giving yourself permission not to try and immediately diagnose, fix, and get back in the saddle."
- PGPippa Grange
Mm. Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I think that is so profound, this idea that you might recognize throughout this conversation that something's not quite right in your h- in your life. It may be that you're burnt out. It may be that you're unhappy or that things aren't quite right, and you know you need to change something.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But what it doesn't need is people to listen to this or read your book and suddenly go, "Right. That ain't working. I'm gonna do this."
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
We need to allow time to, to sit with the, I guess, discomfort, the uncertainty that maybe you don't know what's next. You know what's not working-
- PGPippa Grange
Mm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... but you don't quite know the solution. And I thought that was really quite evocative. It's something that I think, again, the cultural narrative doesn't teach us. It's like, you know, as you just said, "That's wrong. How do you fix it?"
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah. Yeah. And straight into fix too. And it, it's space, time is probably the number one thing that helps us really get to the nub of what's up and what we need to do next, but it's not always space and time. Sometimes you really know. Sometimes it's just removing that, um, sense that you ought to stick at it, that you should just grit it out a bit longer, and giving yourself permission, you know, to reclaiming your own permission to just notice and be honest about what you really feel. Um, and that's enough for you to make your next step. You know, it's not necessarily a new, a new something or other, a new direction, a new practice, a new method. A lot of the time it's dropping that and just saying, "What's here? What do I know about this?" [laughs]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
You have dealt and, and coached, you know, so many of the world's high performers, music, sports, business, over many years. Many people will know you as the psychologist for the England football team-
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... for a period of time. And I know you feel uncomfortable with some of the credit that's given to you, but you are widely regarded as someone who had a massively influential impact on changing the psyche and the mindset of the England football team. So you've, you've dealt with a lot of people who have performed at a high level. In your last book, you had this most beautiful concept about winning deep versus winning shallow.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
You know, how are you winning? Are you winning from a place of lack or from a place of fullness-
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... I guess is, is another way of looking at it. The topic of this new book, you know, Find Freedom From Chronic Overperformance, do you think it's more relevant to people at a certain stage in their life? Like, is this your classic midlife moment for people where, you know, they did things a certain way, they got the job that they thought they wanted to get, they've ... You know, maybe they followed their passion and they, they, they sort of, they worked in that passion and realized, "Well, maybe it isn't what I thought I wanted." Is it the sort of thing that people tend to come to in their 40s and 50s, or do you think it can also come at a different time in our lives?
- PGPippa Grange
I definitely think it can come at a different time in our lives, too. I, I particularly worry about young people, um, and thinking about how their ... You know, from this i- this concept of schoolishness, where right from being very young you're taught that being exceptional, optimizing every moment, not wasting a second, needing to be ever more is critical in becoming in life, in sort of growing up and becoming successful in life. That's an enormous amount of pressure.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- PGPippa Grange
You know? And I, and I think it actually leads to a, a, a great deal of loneliness in young people and older people. But your point is still valid because by the time we get to midlife, there's a lot of weight that we're carrying. And what I think the particular, um, thing that happens at midlife is that we feel like, "Oh, we can't put all this down now." There's a lot of sunk cost in there.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- PGPippa Grange
I talk about sunk cost mentality in the book, of, of like w- we've gone too far to stop now. And those old mentalities really can get in the way of us being honest because actually maybe it's burning you out, killing you, boring you, causing you a lot of strain and suffering. And it's ... And you know, as I say in the book, not all sunk cost is buried treasure. You know?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
[laughs]
- PGPippa Grange
Sometimes we actually need to, uh, have another look at that. And, and sometimes we actually have the opportunity to do that, but we don't.
- 25:04 – 30:39
Raising children without the overperformance script: presence, play, renewal
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. So you're talking about a, a cultural shift basically in how we think about our lives and work. And, you know, I've got a, a 15-year-old and a 13-year-old, and I think about the narratives I picked up at a young age, completely understandably from immigrant parents of the UK, and how on one hand they helped me, and on the other hands, you know, there, there was a hidden cost-
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... to me having my self-worth tied up with my success. And I'm really keen that my children don't develop those narratives.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So I guess my question to you would be: How would you suggest we encourage our children to think, to think differently about what their lives might be in the future?
- PGPippa Grange
Hmm. Well, I think there's so much that can happen there, um, in the home and in the conversation between parent and child. Even though this is a cultural phenomena, the change starts with us.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- PGPippa Grange
Y- it's your inner landscape that you can actually edit, not... And, and the collective editing of that is what will change the culture. So when you have a conversation with your kid about their worth being much broader than the results, that's, that's one step.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- PGPippa Grange
When you, uh, when you teach them that time together is present time together, as in you are both present for that time together-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm
- PGPippa Grange
... rather than you take them somewhere, you're on your phone, uh, or doing something else and, you know, multitasking and they're, they're at play.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- PGPippa Grange
You know, um, how are you actually relating and engaging with each other? Because w- when you do that, it's not just about you being a great parent, it's what you're showing them is normal-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- PGPippa Grange
... when you're with a person. Um, it's also encouraging them to, that it's totally natural to have periods of big intensity and big challenge and goals that they're chasing, and then periods of rest. The tri- back to the triangle, the pyramid, um, of kind of, you know, uh, there's renewal time, and renewal time is play, laughter, things where you're not performing at all and you let go to it, but they're creative and they renew your energy. Teach your kid that, that renewal is as important as couch time and rest, right? You pro- they probably have a bedtime.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hmm.
- PGPippa Grange
They probably have, um, you're probably aware of them, uh, going too hard and them needing a break from that.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- PGPippa Grange
But where is their playtime? Where is their renew time also? Can you build that in? Because this isn't about your kid not being successful, right? If I ask you for both of your children, you want them to be successful. It's about a different method or a set of different methods-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hmm
- PGPippa Grange
... to help them understand how to do that in a regenerative way that doesn't deplete them or extract all their joy.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. No, I love that. So far we've talked about why it is that so many people feel burnt out. You've also kind of gone through a list of what are some of those things that people might identify in themselves, right, which might indicate that they're overperforming.
- PGPippa Grange
Hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Y- you've got it here in the book as well. You've, you've mentioned self-sacrifice, masking, psychological scrolling, side thinking, having a fantasy finish line.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I really love that one, that, as you say in the book, assuming that everything about that over- overperformance will change once they have moved the needle far enough through their own efforts, attainment, or behavior. I definitely know what that-
- PGPippa Grange
[laughs]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... feels like from a former version of myself, I'm happy to say. Um, so let's say someone so far has identified, Pippa, that, yeah, you know what? I may not be burnt out, but life isn't quite going the way I want it to. Some of those symptoms, as it were, that you've just mentioned, I think I have some of them. If they're now thinking about what are the kinds of things they can do to start changing things, where would you have them start? Have you tried to meditate before? Perhaps you've heard about some of the benefits, like reducing stress and increased focus, and you've given it a go and thought it's not the practice for you. Well, I believe that may well be because you have not tried the right approach. THE WAY is the only meditation app with a single long-term pathway. You're not forced to make loads of choices each day. Instead, you're guided on an enjoyable and progressive journey that deepens your practice step by step. Since I partnered with THE WAY, I have had so much positive feedback. One listener said, "Dr. Chatterjee, I came to THE WAY through your podcast. I have tried other meditation apps in the past with limited success, and like the idea of following a single guided path. I'm nearly two months in now and loving it. Henry's gentle and concise approach is very calming, and THE WAY is now a part of my morning routine." You see, that's the sentiment that so many people report when they start meditating with THE WAY. For listeners of my show, THE WAY is offering 30 free sessions to help you establish your own meditation practice. All you have to do is click on the QR code on screen or go to thewayapp.com/livemore to get started.
- 30:39 – 35:19
Where to start: micro check-ins, Hara practice, and a midday status report
- PGPippa Grange
The first thing I would have them do is p- press pause for a second.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay.
- PGPippa Grange
Right? And that doesn't mean stop s- I'm, I'm, I'm talking about literally for a few minutes [laughs] and literally check in. There's a practice in the book that I talk about, um, the, uh, Japanese word for belly is Hara. The Japanese believe that that is the place in the body that makes meaning.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- PGPippa Grange
So they don't ask the head first, [laughs] they ask Hara. Um, and that sort of practice of h- like hand on heart, hand on belly, what do I feel? What do I need? And just, like it is literally a minute-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- PGPippa Grange
... and just coming back to yourself. Um, another thing I would suggest, you know, this is one that, um, I would love you to try out at some point, but, uh, uh, like asking your nervous system for a midday status report. [laughs]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hmm.
- PGPippa Grange
Sort of when you get to midday every day, just in the way that you have morning practices, and we might not check in again until the end of the day. But when y- if you can actually just ask your nervous system for a status report a- around the middle of the day, like how am I doing? You know, h- what's my physiology telling me right now? Am I... How much of my time have I been up here rather than whole?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- PGPippa Grange
And I think that's really, really valuable. Um, another thing is, uh, to, uh, stop allowing your mind to override the signals that your body is offering you.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- PGPippa Grange
So, you know, when you feel a bit parched or a bit flagging, we push through until the next break on the mechanical clock on the wall-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- PGPippa Grange
... not listening to your own body clock of like, "Oh, now I'm done. Actually, I need a moment." You know, how many times have you been in a m- a meeting and there might be five, six other people, the CO2 in the room's going up, and you just push through until the scheduled break-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hmm
- PGPippa Grange
... but actually you're flagging. Like can we just get a little bit more in tune with those things? That's where to start, because noticing is everything when it comes to this.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
One of the things I've changed in my life over the past few years is my mornings. So I've always had morning practices. That's always been quite important to me.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But what I used to do, because I had young children at the time, I would go to bed super early. I'd get up super early, have my time to myself, my morning practice, and then I would write-
- PGPippa Grange
Hmm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... for a couple of hours before my wife or my children got up, and I wrote many books doing that, and there's nothing wrong with that, and I've realized I don't wanna do that anymore.
- PGPippa Grange
Hmm. Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And so I don't.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I've... And I, and I think this goes back to what I was sort of getting at before, which is to, to really make these changes, you have to create space for solitudes, and the solitudes helps you get even more solitude, right?
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But when you're stuck in this constantly doing, you don't even know what it feels like to stop.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And I feel it, it's to do with, for me, I think this really relates to the content in, in your book, Pippa, is this idea of the nervous system. I want the first little period of my day to be running slowly.
- 35:19 – 51:38
Rest as a central practice: micro-stress doses, firebreaks, and wildfire metaphors
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I like the way you talk about rest in the book, and you share that in your own life, you say, "I have had to make rest a practice that is central in my life-"
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
"... not something I do after life happens that day."
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I love that. Can you, can you, can you speak a bit more about that?
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah. I am an generally optimistic, excitable person, and I can be... Like, ideas are pinging all the time. I can get really fast, [laughs] quite mercurial in the way that I'm processing things and engaging things, and I start things and, you know, sometimes if I don't actually check in, ooh, that pace is a bit high.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hmm.
- PGPippa Grange
You know, if I don't do that, then I'm, I actually am depleted by the time I even s- think about rest. So I n- a- and after my own burnout, that's particularly, uh, noticeable to me. So I actually have to design pause times. So like you, I have a morning routine, but I, I design pause times during the day, like my midday status report, you know, to actually go, "Okay, how's it going? How am I doing?" Just in the way that we would if we were thinking about how to help an elite athlete perform consistently. Where's the reflection point? We tend to do it at the bookend of the day or the week or, you know, the season. Um, and it's integrating it into the way-Uh, uh, uh, to the way that we're doing the day. So I actually have to put pause points in, and check in, and come back to my physical body-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- PGPippa Grange
... for the intelligence I need.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
One of the things I used to talk to patients a lot about was this thing, th- this idea about micro stress doses.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And a, and a micro stress dose is a little hit of stress that in isolation you can handle just fine. The problem is, is when those micro stress doses or MSDs mount up one on top of the other-
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... and get you closer and closer to your threshold.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm. Compound.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Exactly. And when you're close to your threshold, that's when the problems start to come in your life. That's when you snap at your partner, or your children, or you get irritated by an email from your colleague. It wasn't actually the thing that your partner said or the email your colleague sent to you. It was the fact that you were very, very close to your stress thresholds.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And when I hear you talk about these check-ins throughout the day, I, I love them, and I love this idea because I think also what it does for people is as they're accumulating stress in their day, which is normal, if you don't take that break at lunch and you work through, you just keep accumulating. You're getting closer and closer. But you take that 20-minute break and walk around the block without your phone, you've just lowered... You've got much more headroom-
- PGPippa Grange
Mm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... between you and your threshold.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right? So it actually is a preventative step [laughs] to stop things-
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... going wrong.
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But we don't do it. We think, "Oh, I'll, I'll, I'll chill out on Sunday."
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And Monday to Friday is like-
- PGPippa Grange
[laughs]
- 51:38 – 1:06:26
Coming home and getting honest: open heart, generosity, and community ripple effects
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. No, I love that. Going back to those chapters in the book where you've got an awareness that overperformance is happening, and now it's about how do you sort of almost re-edit that story, and you've got two chances there. One is coming home, and one is getting honest.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And I love every chapter in the book, Pippa, but those two in particular I thought would be quite fun to go into. Coming home to yourself-
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... I think a lot of people will not have a clue what that actually means.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So when you say coming home, what do you mean?
- PGPippa Grange
Can I ask you to share with me what you felt when you read that? Because I think you have a particular way of describing it that is probably pretty useful here.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay. So I've got a narrative in my head already going, "Pippa thinks I'm gonna say something. I don't know what she thinks I'm gonna say."
- PGPippa Grange
[laughs]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So let me just acknowledge that that was there. Okay. When I think of coming home, I just think of being present with myself.
- PGPippa Grange
Right.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
That feeling when all the external stories, and conditioning, and expectation stops, and when I'm, I'm literally with myself and I know exactly what I'm feeling. So I said before to you that I had a phenomenal weekend. I was reading your book in the sun with a coffee, took my son to Parkrun, played with the kids in the garden, played paddle at lunchtime, and one of my best mates from school who I haven't seen in ages came and joined us impromptu. He came round for lunch afterwards. No plan at all. We just laughed for three hours. I would say this weekend in many ways was coming home.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I didn't feel I had to perform or be anyone else. I was just totally me. And in, in those morning moments of solitude, I felt I got a lot of insight into my life. So that's what I think currently-
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... when you ask me that question.
- PGPippa Grange
That's... It's beautiful. That's it. It's like beyond labels, beyond tasks, beyond the to-do list. Um, you know, and I'm not talking about being on holiday for a couple of weeks. I'm talking about when you can just drop everything else and just like, "Oh, yeah, just me, you know, just here." Um, and, and that is what coming home to yourself is, and there's, like, various elements and aspects of it. But essentially, it is when you can put down the massive weight of your own expectations of what you're supposed to be doing, and where you're supposed to be, and how you're supposed to be, and just actually be for a minute. And that, it, you know, it involves so much of that presence, um, not as a practice, not as just a meditation or a, um, you know, something that resets you. It's t- it's letting go. It's just allowing yourself to just be you without the judgment.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
For someone who's stuck in do, do, do the whole time, right? Someone who may be currently suffering from burnout or close to burnout-
- PGPippa Grange
Right
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
This idea of coming home to themselves could seem quite distant-
- PGPippa Grange
Mm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... and unattainable.
- PGPippa Grange
Oh, for sure.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Like, if you think about the nervous system, let, let's, let's think about it like a car, you know, with like a five-speed gearbox. Let's say your nervous system has five gears, and let's say you're used to running your life at gear four and gear five.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Coming home is probably more a gear one, gear two, I, I guess.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
That's not easy if you're used to being at high speed all the time, is it?
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah. That's why coming home and honesty go together, right, in, in this. But if you're, if you're burnt out, um, or if you're on the precipice of burnout, or even if you're just under a lot of strain right now, when you can ask, "What's here? How do I actually feel?" You know, and, and just let your mind, body, and life answer that for you, um, rather than automatically rev into fifth gear. That's, that's coming home. That's being able to sort of say, "Oh, this is how it is right now," and then, then think about what next.
- 1:06:26 – 1:22:50
Honesty as an energy practice: the hidden cost of white lies and overexplaining
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
The chapter on getting honest is quite an interesting one, because when you say getting honest, you talk about not lying. But it, it's not only not lying, which I found really interesting, right? So not lying is, you know, you don't tell a lie. You don't tell a white lie. You don't tell a straight out lie. I wanna ask you why you think that's important, but it was also about when we leave out important things.
- PGPippa Grange
Not hiding. Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. So ... 'Cause that's not actually ... I guess it's not directly a lie, but I guess it's almost misleading. Because I guess when relevant, if we don't bring something up, we may not be lying, but we're also withholding.
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Why, why is this so important?
- PGPippa Grange
I'm, I'm not talking about this here from an ethical or moral perspective. I'm talking about what it creates for you, the individual who is, um, letting out that little white lie or omitting or withholding or masking or-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah
- PGPippa Grange
... covering up something. Because for me, what happens is a small ripple of inauthenticity in your energy. It- it's part of the deadwood that builds up, right? Because you're not quite being true to yourself. And the example I would give you is, let's say somebody calls you and says, "Hey, Rangan, um, can you come and do this thing for me next week?" And you kind of think, "Uh, that guy did something for me. Maybe I should help him out," but you don't really want to, and y- maybe you feel l- next week is a bit crammed already for you. You know, if you were, um, i- if we looked at it from the lying perspective, you would make an excuse and say, "No, sorry, I can't mate, because, you know, I've got something else on at the same time." If you were, um, going to do it more honestly, you would be able to say, [laughs] "I feel too cramped next week," or, "Actually, I just don't feel a, a degree of motivation to do that right now. Perhaps I can help you out next time." Right? But as soon as we hear that, we go-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- PGPippa Grange
... " [gasps] Oh my God, there would be [laughs] so many consequences to me." When you don't do that, the cost is yours. So you've made the path easier to m- make an excuse to somebody else, but you've been inauthentic to yourself.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm.
- PGPippa Grange
And you get further and further and further f- away from what's actually true for you. And you know, the, the question for me is, like, why can't we actually say, "I'm too tired. I'm too strained," you know, "I feel a bit stressed," or, "I'm... Th- that's not really where I'm at right now, you know, perhaps I can help you on the next project"? It's, you know, it's, it... That is really hard to do in our culture.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- PGPippa Grange
So we... And the problem is we bend, and then we bend ourselves out of shape because we're, we don't want to have the friction or discomfort that goes with telling the truth, and then we f- as, as that sort of cascades, then we start masking a little bit. That like, "Oh, I'm, I, I'm not gonna share all the strain I've, I'm feeling because, you know, this, I've got really... It's really normalized for me to not tell the truth about myself."
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. It's such a great point. It is so, so common. I don't think it is in every culture. You know, I, I remember from when I did a couple of ski seasons in Chamonix, um, and i- in the, uh, certainly in the winter, maybe 30, 40% of the population are Swedes.
- PGPippa Grange
[laughs]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And again, just my perception was that the Swedish culture is a lot more direct.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
And actually, when you're not used to that, it's uncomfortable, but that discomfort only is because you're not used to it.
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But actually, I've come to really value directness because it's like, "Oh, great. I know how you feel."
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right? There's no... I guess, you know, born and brought up in the UK, I think both of us, there's a thing here about being polite.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right? You say the right thing.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
But that does come at a huge cost 'cause half the time no one actually knows what you really think.
- PGPippa Grange
Exactly that.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
You know, and I, I did spend much of my [laughs] life being like that, but, but I have really changed that over the last few years. I mean, literally last week, an example was someone contacted me to ask me to... They, you know, they said, "Rangan, I love your work. I think you're really gonna like my new book. I'd love you to read it and consider endorsing it." And I'm sure it will be and is a wonderful book, and I don't have time.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- 1:22:50 – 1:34:38
The core four principles of regenerative performance + closing reflections
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. Let's finish off talking about these core four principles-
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... of regenerative performance.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
'Cause ultimately, that is where you want us to get to.
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Away from overperformance and all the way over to regenerative performance.
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah. So the first one is coming to presence, um, which, you know, your podcast, your work-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
[laughs]
- PGPippa Grange
... has talked about lots and lots, and, um, we all know that it's really, really important, but it's hard to actually remember to do. So, you know, the, the moment of pause. A, a girlfriend sent me a ... When I, after I'd burnt out, a girlfriend sent me a, a mug, and it just says, "Pause" on the front of it. [laughs] And that's ... Every time I go and make myself a drink during the day, I use that mug, and it's like, "Oh, yeah, that ... Oh, yeah, pause, right." You know, so it's like, um, give yourself behavioral prompts that allow yourself to just come to presence and pause for a second. Um, and that beautiful practice I spoke about before of hand on heart, hand on belly. What do I want?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- PGPippa Grange
Uh, what do I feel? What do I need? Um, and just allow yourself a moment to listen and listen wholly, not just what your head has to say. So coming to presence is, is a really important first one. Um, the second one is about diversifying your, um, modes of operation-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm
- PGPippa Grange
... and your speed. So a lot of people are in, stuck in one gear, and that gear is usually pretty fast. [laughs]
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- PGPippa Grange
They're doing a lot there. Um, it's always intense. There's a sense of constant scale and intensity that means that we're just hanging on for the weekend, right? Um, in ecology, and actually in real elite performance, especially in sport, you really have periods where it's intense but also periods where it's slow. You have periods where it's, um, fast and shallow and periods where it's deep, uh, work that you're doing. You have periods of renewal and periods of performance, periods of rest, periods of performance. And so actually properly diversifying your modes of operation and your speed is really essential. I have a client who wrote a diversity matrix for her working month where she would, uh, uh ... She started with a week, and she would ... She just had all the things that she might like to do across a month, across a week, um, and, um, what pace and whatMode she would be-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm
- PGPippa Grange
... need to be in to do that, and she scheduled it.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Right.
- PGPippa Grange
And so she had to schedule it in her diary for the first little while until she got used to it, and it completely radically changed the way that she operates at work, and she felt like she had so much more mental bandwidth at the end of the week to be able to do that.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Because she'd planned for the different speeds.
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So sometimes she's in, you know, there was a lot of it where she was gonna have to be responsive, so she didn't... It wasn't like between 9 and 11 I will do deep work and between... But it, it was across a week, so it was like, "I need at least four hours of deep time, deep work time. I need at least, um, you know, six hours of communication," 'cause she was work- running a project team. So, uh, and some of the things that were in every day were how often she would go outside the office and get fresh air, for example.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Uh, and I guess it's gonna be, it's gonna be different for everyone in whatever profession they're in.
- PGPippa Grange
Right.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So it could be, I don't know, a teacher, for example.
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
It could be that their holidays or their summer holidays-
- PGPippa Grange
Yeah
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... or the Easter holidays, or maybe the summer holidays after the exams, maybe that's a time where they really try and switch off and go, "You know, it's been a fast-paced year, but now I'm gonna rest and renew."
- PGPippa Grange
Mm-hmm.
Episode duration: 1:34:38
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