You Won’t Start Living Until You Accept This...

1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

   One of the most transformative practices I've seen with patients and in my own life is to consciously think about death. And before you switch off, right, I want you to listen to this. One of the reasons I think so many of us take life for granted is because we don't truly recognize that we are going to die. The human life, the human experience is finite, and by knowing it's finite, it gives you license to live. Once you truly understand that, it frees you, it liberates you, so you can start living your life. I see this all the time with patients. Let's say they get a cancer diagnosis, and of course, this can be really worrying, really scary, a lot of heartache for all concerned. But one thing I've often seen, whether it's cancer or any other condition, is that these serious diagnoses bring life into sharp focus. Suddenly people realize what really is important. What do I want to spend my life doing? I think half the problem, particularly in countries like the UK or America, is that we hide death away from us. It's in our language. You know, people rarely say, "That person died." It's, "That person passed. That person passed away. I lost my father." We hide it, and I think that comes at a huge cost. By hiding death, we don't realize that it does apply to all of us. Until my dad died in twenty thirteen, I don't think I genuinely felt that death applied to me or my family. It was the first time ever that I experienced death, first time ever I really went through grief, and I realized, wow, death really does happen. People who you love are going to die. This actually isn't morbid. It's actually really, really liberating. You know, I remember as a child growing up in the UK, the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated. And I can remember sitting around the television with my parents, with my brother, watching her funeral, and I still remember you could see the fire. You could see the body burning. It was there. You knew what it was. And I think societies who grow up with death, seeing death, I think it's really, really powerful because I think it gives them license to really live. In fact, a practice that many Buddhist monks participate in is the practice of thinking about death every day. They come to terms with the fact that, yes, death is real. It's going to happen. I am mortal. And if I'm being completely honest, if I had heard someone say this to me ten or fifteen years ago, particularly before my dad had died, I'm not sure what I would have thought. But as I get older, as I develop more life experience, as I go through more things, I realize this is a very, very powerful practice. And I kind of think that these days there's a lot of talk about anti-aging. You know, can we reverse aging? Can we live to a hundred and twenty? Can we live to a hundred and fifty? And I do wonder sometimes, aren't we missing something about the human experience? That we're trying to deny that death is going to happen. But I think we can use death as a way of teaching us, as a way of giving us license to start living immediately. And I get that some people in the anti-aging world are not talking about that. They're simply trying to say, "Look, instead of being immobile and dependent in your old age, can we do things right now in our twenties, our thirties, our forties, our fifties, our sixties? Can we do things that mean that we're gonna age better?" And I'm all for that, but I do think we run the risk of becoming obsessed with anti-aging to the point where we stop actually living. You know, one of the most powerful conversations I've ever had on my podcast was with the palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware. She wrote the book The Five Regrets of the Dying, and her findings have really, really moved me. She basically said to me that people at the end of their lives, when they're on their deathbeds, they kind of tend to say the same things. "I wish I'd worked less. I'd wish I'd spent more time with my friends and family. I wish I'd lived my life and not the lives that other people expected of me. I wish I'd allowed myself to be happy." What's really interesting for me is that these are people who realize these regrets on their deathbeds. But since reading that book, since talking to Bronnie, it's really changed how I approach every single day. I realize that I don't want those regrets. I want to do what's important right now. And that's why so many patients end up coming in to see me is because they're taking life for granted. The truly important things in life are only getting fit in when everything else gets done. But these days, our to-do lists are never done. So I've created a very simple exerciseI've done it many times myself. I recommend it to many of my patients. That is absolutely transformative, and I call it Write Your Own Happy Ending. So I'd like you to try it right now. Imagine that you are on your deathbed right now. Imagine. Look back on your life. What are three things you will want to have done? Or what are three things you will want to have spent time on? For me, I know my answer because I ask myself this question very regularly. For me, I will want to have spent quality time with my wife and my children, I will want to have done something that improves the lives of other people, and I will want to have had time to pursue my own passions. Those are my three things, relationships, passions, and doing things for other people. The second part of this exercise is in the present day right now, and it's about creating three weekly happiness habits. You basically use those deathbed thoughts to create three habits that if you did weekly, will give you the happy ending that you've just defined you want. Well, if I want those three things on my deathbed, what do I have to do in the here and now to get them? Well, one of my weekly happiness habits is I want to have five meals with my wife and children where I'm fully present. That's what works for me. It may not work for you. This is a very personal, individual exercise. But for me, in the context of my life, I know if I have five meals each week with my wife and kids where I'm not distracted with work, I'm not distracted with emails, I'm going to be fostering and nurturing those relationships. Doesn't mean I won't do anything else, right? But I've been very clear, and I specify it, and it's on my fridge on a sticky note. The second one of my weekly happiness habits is about recording an episode of my podcast. If I record an episode of my podcast each week and I publish it, as I do and have been doing for over six years, well, I know that I'm doing something to improve the lives of others. And the third thing for me is if I have time each week to either go for a long walk in nature or play my guitar and write some songs, then I know I'm finding time for my own passions. This is a really powerful exercise. Do not underestimate how powerful it is because the questions are simple. I challenge you, do both parts of that exercise either right now or later on today. Maybe encourage other people in your world, your friends, your family, your partner to do it as well. It brings a real intentionality to your everyday life. And I have my three weekly happiness habits written up on the wall. Doesn't mean I can't change them. I can change them over time if I want to. But it means I've got something to aim for each week. I know if I do those three things, even if I've got loads left to do, I haven't got through all my emails, I've still got work to get through, I know I'm still winning. I'm still focusing on what's truly, truly important. That exercise has changed my own life, and it's changed the lives of so many of my patients. How much time do you spend on your screen each day? How much time do you spend on your smartphone? So many of my patients come in, and they are quite literally addicted to their screens, and often they don't realize the impact those screens are having on their physical health and their mental well-being. In fact, some of the latest research I've seen suggests that actually adults are spending four to five hours a day on our screens, and for teenagers, it's even more. And there was a study all the way back in 2014 saying that people in the UK back then touched their smartphone over two hundred and twenty times on any given day. That was almost ten years ago. It's no doubt gonna be higher today. But we kind of know that, don't we? We know we probably look at our screens too much. Of course, sometimes for work, we have to. We have to be on a computer all day. But what about when you're not at work? What about when you are in the queue at the coffee shop? What about in the evening when you're with your partner or your family? What about right before bed? Do you have to also be on your screens then? So what are some of the problems with spending so long on our screens? Well, there's a variety of ways you can look at this. There's the impact on us as individuals. What's it doing to us? What's it doing to our physical health, our mental health? What's it doing to our sleep? But we also have to ask ourselves, what is it doing to the quality of our relationships with those people around us? What's the opportunity cost of being on those screens? What might you be doing otherwise? So you've probably heard before that modern technology is addictive. Smartphones are addictive.But the truth is, it's not your fault. If you struggle to put your phone down, it's not your fault. These phones have been designed for that very purpose. You know, I often talk about behavior change. I say if you wanna create a new healthy habit, you've gotta make the behavior easy to do. Make it easy, you're gonna do it. Make it hard, you probably won't. Well, all of these technology companies understand the principles of human behavior. They know that if they make it easy, you're gonna do it. Right? If you're watching Netflix, why does one video go into the next video? Is it out of the goodness of Netflix's heart? No, they're doing what they need to do for their business. They're making it much more likely that before you realize it's 11:00 PM and you've got to be up at 6:00 AM for work, before you realize that, you're already sucked into the next episode, so you stay up for another hour watching it with a subsequent impact on your sleep, and then your mood, and then your performance the following day. In fact, the Netflix CEO said a few years ago that their biggest competitor was sleep. Just think about that for a minute. Their biggest competitor is sleep, and it kind of makes sense. I mean, one of the reasons why sleep problems just weren't that much of an issue, to the best of our knowledge, ten thousand years ago or so, is because when it was the end of the day, when it got dark, we might have a campfire, we might switch off and relax, talk, exchange stories, dance, be creative, but there wasn't that much else to do. Sleep wasn't competing with screen time, so you would naturally feel tired and fall asleep, naturally. Whereas actually today, you have to actively make a decision. A lot of us don't realize that the light from our screens is keeping us up. We know that light is a very powerful modulator of what we call our body's circadian rhythm. Think about it. You wake up in the morning, let's say in the summer, you go outside, there's sun there, there's light. That sends a signal to all the cells in your body that it's daytime now. It wakes your body up. It helps to coordinate all of the different clocks in the different cells of your body. But we also need that signal of darkness at night. So for many of us, these screens are keeping us up later. So instead of feeling tired, we actually think, "No, I'm not tired yet." But it's the light from those screens that is doing it, but it's also the cognitive stimulation. Instead of winding down and exchanging stories and being with our loved ones, we're often still working, or we go on social media. We read something negative and get into an argument with someone online. Of course, we're gonna have trouble sleeping. What about if you watch the news right before bed? If you're someone who struggles with your sleep and you watch the news before bed, and you are ruminating in bed and worrying about the state of the world, maybe watching the news last thing at night is not helping you. Why would you infuse that negativity into your brain before you go to sleep? So the reality is, for pretty much all of my patients, reducing their screen time, particularly in the evening, has quite a transformative effect on their physical health and their mental well-being. And we're living in a sleep deprivation epidemic, no question about it. Scientists from Oxford University say that we are sleeping one to two hours less than sixty years ago. We may have lost up to twenty-five percent of our sleep. It's absolutely incredible. And what happens when we don't sleep well? What happens to you when you haven't slept well? Are you patient? Are you calm? Are you able to focus? Are you productive? No. You see, when we don't sleep well, so many systems in the body get affected. We have a reduced ability to pay attention. Our focus is down. Our concentration is down. We show less empathy. We're less creative. We eat more. Yeah, that's right. We eat more. The research shows us that if you're sleeping five, five and a half hours a night compared to, let's say, seven and a half or eight hours a night, on average, you eat twenty-two percent more calories the following day. So five days of sleep deprivation means that you could be eating a whole extra day's worth of calories each week just from sleep deprivation, and that's because of sleep deprivation's effects on the hormones leptin and ghrelin. Ghrelin is a hunger hormone. Leptin is a satiety hormone. So screens affect us in so many ways, and I can say this to you. You can hear it. You can read a blog. You can read an article. But the problem is, because they're so prevalent and because they're so addictive, so many of us don't make any changes.So what's it gonna take for you to start making some changes? What steps are you gonna put into place in your life which mean you're not on your screens as much, particularly in the evenings? Because that's gonna have a transformative effect on your health, your happiness, and the quality of your relationships. Now, what about screen use in the day? See, one of the things I think that is affecting people the most these days is the fact that our downtime has been eroded out of our lives. We need downtime. Our brains love downtime. Have you ever taken a shower or been in the bath and come up with some of your best ideas? Have you ever gone for a walk and suddenly a problem that you were trying to solve you've suddenly managed to solve? Well, that's because there's a part of your brain that we call the default mode network, or the DMN, that kicks into gear when you're not focusing on a specific task, and that part of the brain is responsible for all kinds of things. Two of those things are it helps you be more creative and it helps you solve problems. So one of the big problems these days is because we're so focused on our screens all the time, we take them everywhere with us, we don't allow that part of the brain to kick in. And that's why so many of us come up with our best ideas in the shower, because it's one of the few spaces that are left available to us where we don't take our phones in, so we allow that part of the brain to kick in. It helps you feel less stressed. You're more productive. You feel happier afterwards. Just think, wherever you live, imagine 30 years ago going into one of your local coffee shops. What would be happening? Well, you'd go in, people would be chatting. You might be waiting in a queue. You'd be looking around. You might bump into someone you know. What happens today? Everyone's got their head down. Everyone's looking at their screens. Everyone's trying to take a quick moment, get a few emails done, have a cheeky check on social media. I get it. In isolation, there's nothing wrong with those things, but when you add it in to everything that's going on in society and how much we're looking at our screens, it starts to become really toxic because those are micro moments where you could be switching off. You could be allowing yourself to breathe, your mind to breathe, your brain's default mode network to kick in. But you've gotta give it that downtime. So I think our overuse of screens is affecting our sleep, which then is affecting our health and our relationships, but it's also affecting the way our brains work. It's also affecting the levels of stress we feel. That's why I think so many of us feel burnt out and overloaded and overstimulated, because we're not having those little moments of downtime. So how can you start to bring those things in? Like a few years ago, I had a patient, a 16-year-old chap called Devon who came in to see me, and it was him and his mum saying, "Listen, the hospital has asked us to come in so you can prescribe an antidepressant." And it was really interesting to me because I knew this family pretty well. I was totally shocked that this kid had ended up in the emergency room. I'd spent a lot of time with him that day. I asked him to come back the next day so I could spend longer to really understand what was going on. And of course I did all the checks that I have to do as a medical doctor, but it was really clear to me that there were certain things going on in his life that could be affecting his mental wellbeing. One of those things was his screen use. So I had a chat with him and I said, "Look, would you consider reducing how much time you're spending on your screens each day?" And he goes, "Well, do you think it's gonna make a difference?" I said, "It might do." And so what we started off with was one hour before he went to bed in the evening I said, "I want you to go off your screen. No social media, nothing." He said, "Is that it?" I said, "Yeah, that's all. I'll see you in seven days." Now, seven days later he comes back to see me and he's starting to feel a difference. Just that simple act alone meant that he was sleeping better, and that's what he said. He said, "Look, I'm sleeping better. I've got more energy. I generally feel better." Over the next few weeks I increased that to one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening and, again, he's starting to progressively feel better and better. After four to six weeks I spoke to him about his diet, and he was having a very modern, processed junk food diet, and I said, "You're having a lot of blood sugar ups and downs throughout the day. When your blood sugar goes up and then crashes down, that's not just a blood sugar and an energy problem, that's a mood problem because when your blood sugar crashes, that's a stress signal to the body. That's an alarm sign. That's not helping you." By changing his diet to have more protein and more healthy fats, so in the morning instead of a sugary cereal bowl he would have eggs and avocado, he would have olives or nuts to snack on...Just by making those changes, his blood sugar became more stable. These changes completely transformed his life. I didn't see him for a little while after that, and about six months after he first came in to see me, I got a letter from his mother saying, "Dear Dr. Chatterjee, I just wanna say thank you. Devon's like a different person. He's happy, he's engaged, he's got friends, he's doing things in his local community at weekends." And it was all down to these changes. That first change was changing his relationship with his screens. Now, I could give you countless stories of other teenagers, other adults, people in middle age, who are also improving their lives when they reset their relationship with their screens. So I'd really encourage you, have a think. Where could you do this? Where can you start to make a change? Could you have some rules at home that over the dinner table you're never gonna have any screens? That's the rule I have in my house. I'm married. I've got two young children. We have a rule, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, when we're eating them, there are no screens or smartphones allowed at the table. Now, if that sounds a bit draconian, think back to 20 years ago. Did you have screens at the dinner table then? No. For the bulk of human history, we didn't. But somehow we've allowed this kind of sacred place, the dinner table, to be infiltrated with screen time so people are being distracted. This is a massive, massive issue for relationships. I have seen so many patients over the years who tell me that their marriages are under strain, and more times than I can remember, the cause was screen time use in the evenings. I remember one lady who said, "Look, I try and talk to my husband in the evening. We're sitting in the kitchen after the children have gone to beds, but I can't really talk to him 'cause he keeps looking at his screen, and he says, 'I've got to do my work emails.'" But it means that they're physically in the same space together, but emotionally, mentally, they're a million miles away. And actually, really, by them setting some ground rules in place, no screens in the kitchen, if her husband wanted to do some emails, he would go into their study and do it at a laptop, and at the weekends they went for one two-hour walk together without their phones, transformed their relationship. There was no underlying problem. It was the screen time that was distracting them from what was truly important. Another impactful change you can make is to not bring those screens into your bedroom. Look, I get it's hard. I get that it's tempting. But you've gotta understand that the brain is what we call an associative organ. The brain associates certain behaviors with certain locations. So if, for example, you do work emails on your phone in bed, your brain associates your bedroom and your bed with your work, which can make it harder to switch off. Not impossible. Some people manage. But if you're struggling, that could be one of the reasons. Taking notifications off all of your apps, life-changing. I did that maybe five or six years ago. I haven't looked back. It means if I pick up my phone to make a phone call, I don't know if I've got 20 emails or zero emails. I don't know if I've got 20 Instagram notifications or zero notifications because I've switched the notifications off, and that allows me to be in control of my technology rather than the technology being in control of me. On my podcast a couple of years ago, I spoke to Professor Laurie Santos from Yale. She shared some research with me saying that deciding to stay off social media can have a bigger effect on your happiness than earning $100,000 a year or marrying the love of your life. It's absolutely incredible, and that's why I'm trying so hard to persuade you and hopefully inspire you to go, "You know what? Enough's enough. I'm sick of the fact that these smartphones are infiltrating every single aspect of my life. I'm going to make a change." And hopefully some of these changes will help you do that. And that's why I really want you to think about your own screen use. Is it affecting your health? Is it affecting your relationships? There was actually a study that I read in America last year which showed that when kids went round a museum with their parents, the experience was completely different when the parents didn't have a phone with them. The parents enjoyed it more, the children enjoyed it more, and afterwards they felt there was a much more meaningful and deeper connection. Let's be honest, the quality of our relationships determines, in a huge part, the quality of our lives, and screen time, for many of us, is absolutely getting in the way. I'm delighted to announce that AG1, the daily health drink that has been in my own life for over six years now, have updated and improved their formulation based upon the latest science, and to celebrate by giving my audience a very special summer offer. 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To get 10 free travel packs instead of the usual five and an awesome welcome kit containing your shaker, scoop, and canister with your first subscription, go to drinkag1.com/livemore. So I hope this encourages you to think a little bit differently and think about what you can do to change that. Now, if we think about screen time and computers and laptops, it's all inward, right? We go in and we look. The opposite of that is outwardness, expansiveness, and that's what nature provides. Nature is the antidote. We know that nature, being in nature is very, very good for us as humans. There's many reasons for that. There's a lot of research on something called fractals. Fractals are these geometric shapes that you only see in nature. You don't get them in man-made buildings or materials. You get them in rivers, trees, leaves, coastlines, bodies of water. And scientific research shows us that when a human eye looks at a fractal, levels of the stress hormone cortisol start to drop. Simply being in nature reduces your levels of stress. There's also research showing that even if you can't get into nature, simply looking at nature, looking at a picture of nature will also lower your levels of cortisol. Maybe not to the same degree as actually being in nature, but they will lower them nonetheless. So how many doses of nature are you getting in your life? And look, I get it. Not everyone is lucky enough to live near really nice bits of nature. Some people live in very urban environments in the middle of a city. I get it. If that's you, have a think. Are there any green spaces near your house? Can you get out there for a walk? Even if you can't, is there a tree outside your window? I mentioned that just looking at a fractal can lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol. So even if you just looked out and stared at a tree, you're still gonna get some benefits. So really do think about reducing your screen time in whatever way you can. Put some rules into your life about when you are gonna look, when you're not gonna look. I mentioned before bed, but also first thing in the morning. Can you, can you do an hour without a screen in the morning? If not an hour, can you do five minutes? Even just five minutes first thing in the morning without any technology just to be with yourself. Maybe you can read, do some breathwork, some meditation, do some journaling, whatever it might be. Less screen time, more nature time, and your health and happiness will immediately start to improve. The next tip, which I have seen be profoundly transformative for my patients and for myself, is eliminating unnecessary choice in our lives. Now, this may sound a little bit counterintuitive. Why would you want to eliminate choice? Isn't choice a good thing? Isn't more choice even better? I get to choose what I want to do. And first of all, I want to just recognize here that some people are living lives where they have no control, they have no autonomy, they don't have enough choice. I do understand that. If that's you, then this tip may not apply. But if that's not you and you are feeling stressed out, overwhelmed, anxious, you find that you're procrastinating, you can't make decisions, you can't move forward, you feel stuck, I bet that too much choice is playing a role. We have to make decisions on everything these days. Studies suggest that we're making over 35,000 choices a day. Other research says that we make over 220 choices a day on food alone. It's overwhelming. And one thing we really have to understand is that every time you're making a choice, it's taking up some of your cognitive capacity. You may have heard me talk in previous podcasts or in previous videos about something called micro stress doses, right? These are little hits of stress in isolation we can deal with just fine. But when those doses go on top of one another, they build up, they mount up, they get us closer to our own personal stress threshold. And when we get to our threshold, that's when things go wrong. That's when we fall out with a work colleague. We have a row with our partner. Our back goes into spasm. Our neck starts to ache.And we often think it was the last thing that we did that was the problem, but it usually wasn't. It was the build-up of these micro stress doses throughout the day. Every time you make a choice that doesn't matter, that's a micro stress dose. You're getting yourself closer and closer to that personal stress threshold where things start to go wrong. And a simple way of keeping you away from that stress threshold is to make less choices, especially on the things that don't matter. You know, President Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, these guys are famous people who are well known for wearing the same thing every single day so they can save their cognitive capacity for decisions that matter. Eliminating choice from your life will have so many benefits. You make better decisions when you don't have to choose on everything. There was some more research showing that for food companies, if they offer twenty-eight flavors of a food product compared to five or under, sales go down. When they offer just three, four or five flavors, sales go through the roof. Because if you've got choice, if you've got infinite choice, you're always wondering, did I make the right one? Would that other choice have been better? And often you then procrastinate and end up doing nothing. I mean, I can't tell you the amount of times in the past when my wife and I, on a Saturday evening, once our children were in beds, would sit down on the sofa, put on Netflix with a view to watching something. The amount of times an hour later we still can't decide because of all the choice. Our moods are a little bit off and we decide to forget it. Too much choice, especially today, it is real. I'm not saying never choose. I'm saying choose when it matters. Look, I'm a doctor, so people's health is something that's very, very important to me. Now, let's take something like, I don't know, exercise. We know that moving our bodies more is better for us, it's better for our physical health and many people now realize it's very good for our mental well-being as well. But what often happens, and I've seen this with so many patients over the years, what often happens is this. Let's say people are online, let's say they're on Instagram and they follow someone who says that yoga is amazing. They follow someone else who say Pilates is amazing. They follow someone else who says, "I run, I do five Ks each week." Someone else does strength training and it's overwhelming. They're like, "Yeah, God, that yoga sounds good, Pilates sounds good, running sounds good, walking sounds good, strength training sounds good. Which is the best one?" And they try and weigh up the decisions. In the meantime, they're not doing anything. They're not moving their bodies. The truth is, they all have benefits if you do them. Most of us are better just picking one and doing it consistently, regularly. I honestly believe that variety is overrated. You can simplify your life in so many different ways by eliminating choice. In my patients, one of the commonest sources of stress for people who are trying to be healthy is asking themselves, "What am I going to cook tonight?" In this world of endless choice, what I'm gonna cook the family tonight? Well, one way out of that is to have a meal planner. Have the same meal Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Have a different meal and just repeat it week after week. You know what you're having. You don't have to decide at your weekly shop. It's simple. You know what you need on which day. Again, I want to emphasize that may not be something that's relevant in your life, but I'm pretty sure that too much choice is adding to your stress load in some way. So some simple things you can think about are, yeah, write a meal planner. Wear the same clothes every day. If you listen to podcasts as I do, if you go on a podcast app now, right, and try and decide what to listen to, you've got limitless choice. There's something like two or three million podcasts there. How on earth are you meant to choose? It's actually quite stressful to look at them and go, "What am I gonna listen to?" I've been in that boat before. Some of my favorite podcasts are, "Oh, that episode looks good. That one looks good. Which one am I gonna do?" And even if you choose a good one, you still feel like you're missing out. So what I do now, I have three podcasts that I subscribe to. Just listen to them. I don't look at anything else. I've got three podcasts I subscribe to which give me the content, the quality and the variety that I want, and I just stick to them. They are good enough. Of course, there are other great podcasts out there, but those three work for me. If you're someone who also can't decide what film to watch on a Saturday evening, well, one thing I've started doing over the last years is when I get a recommendation from someone, whether it's on a podcast or a friend, I open up my Notes app and I make a list. So if I'm ever sitting down in front of the television with time with my wife, I have a ready-made list of films that I want to watch. Now, these things, they sound really, really simple, but they are very, very effective. They simplify your lifeIn so many different ways. I promise if you start eliminating choice, unnecessary choice from your life, it's gonna improve things. But if you're someone who likes to go out and eat in restaurants, do you have a favorite restaurant that you go to? I do. There's a cafe in my local town that I like going to. You know what? There's one meal there I really, really like. I just have it every time I go. Now, you may be someone who really values variety in your food. Okay, fine. That may not be the right choice for you, but for me it is. For me, I don't even look. I go there, I say hi to the staff. I say, "Just the usual, please." If you're somebody who drinks wine, let's say, and you go to a restaurant, do you spend ages trying to decide which one of these wines shall I have? Well, if you're a wine connoisseur and that matters to you, that may be a choice that matters. If you're not, and you just like the odd glass of red wine, maybe you make a rule, "I always choose the second cheapest bottle on the menu." Whatever it might be, you've gotta find what works for you, and we're now living in an era where there is infinite choice wherever we go, and it's causing us huge problems. The next tip that I wanna share with you is truly life-changing. Arguably, this is the tip that's had the most impact on me over the past few years, the most impact on my health and also my happiness, and the tip is this: seek out friction. And what does that mean? Friction is something we usually want to avoid. We want a calm, nice, relaxed life without any friction, but friction can be your most powerful teacher, and I'm talking about social friction. How we interact with others plays a huge role in our health and our wellbeing, and a lot of the time we allow our interactions with others which don't go the way in which we want, we allow it to affect us, overly affect us. If someone says something to us that we don't like, it then ruins our day. We take it personally. We generate emotional stress, and then we engage in behaviors like sugar or alcohol or doom scrolling that really we're doing to neutralize the emotional stress that we created. But there is another way. You can use every moment of social friction to learn something about yourself. You can use every bit of social friction you come across as a teacher, and when you do, you will feel empowered. You will feel in control of life rather than life being in control of you. Now, one of the tips I have for you to do this is to think about making everyone a hero. What does that mean? It means when something happens... Let's say you're driving to work, and someone driving another car cuts you up in traffic. Now, you could react negatively. You could get annoyed and start going, "Wow, that person shouldn't have a license. I can't believe they did that." Whatever it might be, whatever narrative you want to create. But how is that narrative helping you? It's not. It's generating emotional stress. You, by the way in which you are reacting, are generating emotional stress. And once you realize that that is a choice, you're empowered to change it, and that's where make everyone a hero comes in. What story do you need to create in your mind to make that person a hero? What could be going on in their life? Maybe they're a dad whose child was up last night with a cough or with earache, and they're exhausted, and they're just trying to get to work, and they're worried that they're running late, and if they get to work late, they're gonna lose their job, and so they then can't feed their family. Maybe they were just being unmindful. They didn't sleep well. They're worried. Maybe their parents are sick. If you were that person, you'd probably be doing the same thing. But you have a choice, and when you exercise the power of that choice regularly, you get better at it. Five, six years ago, I would've struggled with this. I would've felt that the way I feel is because that person behaved in that way. But I've learned since then that my response is down to me. I can change my response, and by practicing every day, by, let's say in the evening you reflect on your day and you think about a bit of social friction, "What happened today where I got a bit annoyed? What might have been going on in their life? How might I be able to make that person a hero?" It sounds simple, but it's very, very effective. If you think it's gonna be hard, try it. It's honestly not as hard as you think. Sure, in the moment you may find it difficult. You may be in your car getting frustrated. Fine. We're all human. But maybe later that day, maybe in the evening, maybe at the weekend on a Sunday, let's say you're having a slow, relaxed day, reflect and go, "Wow. Okay, I did react."I did generate emotional stress. I did have an extra glass of wine that evening because of that. How might I change that? How might I make that person a hero? You can do it. I've done it. Whereas now, usually my default is to do it in the moment, and it's very, very empowering. You know, one of the most powerful conversations I've ever had in my life was with a lady called Edith Eger. When I spoke to her on my podcast two or three years ago now, she was ninety-three years old. When she was sixteen, she was getting on with her life. She was at home with her parents and her sister. She grew up in Eastern Europe. They got a knock on the door, and they were put on a train to Auschwitz concentration camp. Within two hours of getting there, both of her parents were murdered. And later that day, because she was a dancer, she was asked to dance for the senior prison guards. Now, there's so many things about that conversation I remember, but the first thing was that she said to me, "Dr. Chatterjee, I never forgot the last thing my mother said to me. She said, 'Edie, nobody can ever take from you the contents that you put inside your mind.'" So she said to me, "When I was dancing in Auschwitz, I wasn't in Auschwitz. In my mind, I was in Budapest Opera House. I had a beautiful dress on. There was an orchestra playing. There was a full house." In the hell of Auschwitz, she managed to reframe things in her mind. She chose a story that empowered her. Now, that's pretty incredible. When she said that to me, I hadn't heard anything like that. Then she said to me, "When I was in Auschwitz, Dr. Chatterjee, I started to see the prison officers as the prisoners. They weren't living their life. In their minds, they weren't free. In my mind, I was free." It was really, really powerful. And one of the final things she said to me I have never forgotten, I pretty much think about it every single day. She said, "Dr. Chatterjee, I have lived in Auschwitz, and I can tell you the greatest prison you will ever live inside is the prison you create inside your own mind." That's what we all do. We go around the world, we get on with our lives, and someone maybe at the coffee shop steps in front of us in the queue. They probably had never even seen us. It was an accident. But we create a mental narrative that they were being inconsiderate and they should have known. Now, I'm a huge fan of VIVOBAREFOOT shoes. I've been wearing them for about twelve years now, and one of the main reasons I love them is because when I'm wearing Vivos, I feel fully connected to the ground beneath my feet. What do we want? We want feet that move naturally. And because Vivos are wide, thin, and flexible, your foot can move in the way that it's meant to. A lot of modern shoes are stiff, they're narrow. They start to manipulate the way your foot functions. Whereas in Vivos, your feet can do what they're meant to do, and that means they help your feet become stronger. There was this trial that showed within four months of wearing Vivos, your feet are around sixty percent stronger. Your feet are your foundation, and when you've got problems in your feet, it goes all the way up the chain. It can go to your ankle, to your knee, to your hip, to your back, and even to your shoulder and neck. And as a doctor, I have seen back pain, hip pain, and knee pain actually start to get better when people start to wear barefoot shoes. To get twenty percent off your first order, go to vivobarefoot.com/livemore. We generate emotional stress within ourselves. We do it everywhere. What about an email from your boss that you don't like? You get frustrated. "My boss should know better. I've worked at this company for years. They should know better than to email me like that. I know what I'm doing." Whatever it is, you are generating emotional stress, and you can actually reframe that situation with practice. Now, I want to make something really clear. I'm not saying that you should put up with poor behavior. I'm not saying that. I'm saying if you can develop the skill of staying emotionally neutral and really understanding that your response comes from within you, you will start to change your life. Let's say you don't react to that email. Let's say that email comes, and you take a, a beat and you go, "Wow, isn't that interesting? My boss doesn't normally send me an email like that. I wonder what's going on in their life. I wonder if any of their relationships are under strain. I wonder if my boss's boss is putting pressure on them." If you approach it with curiosity as to what might be going on, how can I reframe this to tell myself a happiness story rather than a story that causes me harm? You're gonna be better emotionally regulated, your lifestyle behaviors are gonna be much better, and you're gonna be better able to change things. You're gonna be better able to not send a rash email back that you then regret, and the following day you're gonna be able to go up to your boss perhaps and say, "Hey, listen, you know, yesterday you, you sent me an email. Is everything okay?"Like, it came across as quite rushed and as though you didn't value me. I don't know if that's just what you meant." Your boss may say, "Hey, look, I'm really sorry. I was in such a mad rush. I didn't mean any of it. I just fired it out quickly before a meeting. I'm so sorry." Or it may be that your boss really did behave poorly, but you can then say, "Listen, I think I work hard. I don't think that that was called for." Whatever it might be, but the key point I'm trying to get across and why this has transformed my life and the lives of many of my patients is because so often we feel as though we're a victim to life. We think that the way we feel is down to other people, and when other people start behaving better, I'm gonna be okay. But the problem is if you're waiting for the world around you to behave in a certain way in order for you to feel good, you could be waiting a very long time. Now, I know this may sound scary, it may sound challenging. I promise you, if regularly you ask yourself, "What bit of social friction came up in my life that I reacted to? How might I react differently?" Over time, you will start to change things. And really, what has helped me the most is that conversation with Edith Eger. If ever I'm stewing over something in my own life, if ever I think, "No, I can't reframe that. That was really bad. They shouldn't have done that," you know what? I think about Edith in Auschwitz, and I think, "Rangan, if she could reframe things in Auschwitz, you can probably reframe this in your own life." So I've used that as inspiration. Now, just a quick note. I understand that many people have got really tough lives, and there's a lot of toxic behavior out there. This whole idea about reframing things to help you, I'm not really talking about serious traumatic events such as domestic violence. I just wanna make that really, really clear. I'm generally talking about the things that come up in day-to-day life that we allow to affect our inner wellbeing and our emotional states. And if you can master this, even if you get 10% better at this than you currently are, you will start to feel much more in control of your life. That, in turn, is gonna help your health and your happiness. The final tip I wanna share is talk to strangers. We know that the quality of our relationships is important, with our friends, with our family, with our loved ones. Those close, intimate relationships, yes, are a very, very important predictor for our health and our wellbeing. But it's not just the relationship we have with the people close to us. It's also the relationship we have with that wider social world. We're all part of this big, broad human family, and sometimes we forget that. Psychologists have found that we have a network within our brain called the sociometer. And what's the job of the sociometer? It's to constantly scan our social world for threats. So if we're not getting positive social feedback from our social world, we can feel anxious, we can feel afraid. Our self-esteem starts to go down. But when we get positive social feedback from the world around us, a smile from the person we walk past, a thank you from the barista in the coffee shop, a nice word you exchange with the supermarket attendant, whatever it might be, when you get those positive signals in your social environment, that sends a message to your sociometer in your brain that everything's okay. You feel content and in control. There was this really great study I remember reading in 2021 by the psychologists Paul Van Lange and Simon Columbus, and they found that positive interactions with strangers help us serve basic needs, such as feeling connected, appreciated, along perhaps with the realization of personal growth in ourselves. And their advice was for people to initiate brief interactions, even a smile to strangers, because doing so supplies us with a critically important social nutrient that they call vitamin S. I mean, isn't that great? We often talk about taking our vitamins for our physical health, but this is about vitamin S, the social vitamin, because that's who we are. We're social animals. Many of us are realizing more and more in our modern world we're becoming more and more isolated. I mentioned before about being in a coffee shop and not looking around, looking at your screen. Yeah, I mentioned the default mode network, the impact of screens on our sleep. But what about the impact on loneliness and isolation? What happens when these micro-moment opportunities for connection are being lost? The more you can interact with strangers... And I'm not talking about a deep and meaningful chat. I'm simply talking about looking at people, looking them in the eye, smiling at them. Sure, if you're an extrovert like me, it's gonna feel easier. But the research shows us that even for introverts, if you can talk to strangers or interact with strangers in some way, you're going to feel better. In a coffee shop, can you start saying hi?If you feel nervous, can you smile at the barista, say thanks? It gets easier the more you do it. But what's really interesting is how our brains work against us. Social interaction, whether it be with close friends and colleagues and family, or whether it be with strangers, is very powerful. But often our brain is trying to talk us out of it. There was some great research done in Chicago by Professor Nick Epley, where he studied commuters. And he basically took these commuters into three groups. One group were told to keep themselves to themselves, not interact with others. One group was asked to do what they would usually do. And the third group was asked to do something quite shocking and radical these days; reach out to someone, say hello, and start a conversation. Now, before the test began, he asked all of the participants how they would feel if they were asked to do the third option, to reach out, say hello, and strike up a conversation, and they basically thought they wouldn't like it. They'd feel less content and less happy. Interestingly enough, afterwards, every single person in that group who did reach out, they felt better, they felt happier afterwards, and that happiness lasted for the duration of the day. But also really interestingly, they were asked how many of the people that we reach out to are going to enjoy being reached out to. And they predicted that only 40% would actually enjoy it. Afterwards, when asked, it was 100% of them. People liked reaching out and talking to others, and the people who were spoken to enjoyed the fact that that had happened. Now, that was just one study in Chicago, but it's been replicated in many different cities around the world, including in London. Now, I get it. You've got to be respectful. Some people will not want to be disturbed. Some people will be using their time on their commute to catch up with some work or listen to some music. But we can start to read these social signals. The point I'm trying to make is, as we're becoming more and more isolated, more and more insular, we go outside, we put our headphones on, we don't look at others, we don't interact with others, and we wonder why so many of us are struggling with anxiety and depression and low moods. We're social animals, right? We need to interact with other people, of course, in a safe fashion. I'm not saying go up in a dark street to someone you don't know and make conversation with them. But in a coffee shop, on a train, at work, when you're out for a walk, these are opportunities where you can practice interacting with strangers. So really, I want you to consider taking this seriously. I know you may feel a little bit scared, a little bit apprehensive, but like with anything, you can start small. It could be that later on today or tomorrow, if you go to a cafe to buy a coffee, if you feel nervous, could you just look at the barista in the eye and smile? Could you just say a thank you? When you're in a queue in a cafe, instead of getting frustrated that you have to wait, could you reframe it and go, "Wow, this is an opportunity for me now to practice a bit of positive social feedback. It's an opportunity for me to send my brain, my sociometer, a powerful signal." I mean, some of the things I've shared today are a little bit counterintuitive. You may not be expecting them, especially from a doctor. But I found these tips are incredibly powerful. I figured out over two decades of medical practice that these are the tips and techniques that really move the needle. These are the bits of advice that help people feel better about themselves and then help them make better decisions, which in turn improves their health and happiness.

2. SPSpeaker1:05:11

   Is it really possible to, to isolate five minutes and, and h- and for happiness and health?

3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:05:17

   Yeah, i- i- 100%. Look, it sounds a bit like a gimmick, doesn't it? Five minutes. But if I think about my own life and how I've managed to look after my brain, my body, my heart, whilst being, you know, married, two young children, busy job, as well as my job as a medical doctor. You know, I write a book a year. I, I host a podcast. I also for many years have cared for my elderly parents.

4. SPSpeaker1:05:43

   Mm-hmm.

5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:05:44

   Right? So I get what it feels like to be busy, but I've always found a way to look after myself through that busyness, and one of the things I always found with patients is they will always say to me, "Rangan, I d- I d- I d- I don't have time. You know, I, I want to be healthy, but I don't have time."

6. SPSpeaker1:06:03

   Mm.

7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:06:04

   I thought this was really interesting because let's take toothbrushing as an example. We kinda know that if we brush our teeth for two minutes in the morning and two minutes in the evening, which hopefully everyone listening to the show right now does-

8. SPSpeaker1:06:16

   Yes, please do that

9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:06:17

   ... we know that four minutes a day of toothbrushing, generally speaking, is gonna look after our dental hygiene for life. Sure, you're gonna have a checkup, and you may need some polishing and cleaning, whatever. But by and large, what we don't do is go, "Oh, I'm, I'm too busy on Monday. You know, I don't have time for my brushing. Work's busy. I've got to take p- the kids up," right? Tuesday, Wednesday. We don't do that and then go, "Oh, the weekend on Sunday, I'm gonna do a one-hour deep clean on my teeth."

10. SPSpeaker1:06:49

    Mm.

11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:06:49

    We don't do that. We... You know, anyone listening now knows that that sounds ridiculous. Yet when it comes to behavior change for our health, for our brains, right?We make it too difficult. We make it really hard. People think that five minutes is not enough, so they stop doing anything that's gonna help them, and this is why they try and go for, like, a one-hour walk at the weekend or a one-hour yoga session. Nothing wrong with that, but in my view, not a substitute for daily practices that can help you. And these practices don't need to take long, just like toothbrushing can take four minutes a day. I do a workout, a strength workout every single day. I haven't missed a day for maybe three or four years now. Wow. And I would say, I would argue it has nothing to do with motivation. It's because I've applied the principles of behavior change into my life, right? And, and a lot of the time we don't follow those principles, those rules when it comes to ourselves, right? So I'll explain the behavior first, right? Mm-hmm. How do I do this? Well, I have a morning routine, which we can maybe get into if you want to, but one component of that morning routine is a five-minute strength workout, right? So how do I do that? Well, there's two rules of behavior change. I mean, in the book there's my six rules, right? But the two rules I think I, I'd love to share with people are, number one, you've gotta make it easy. Yeah. Right? So why do you have to make it easy? Uh, you know, you and me are both good friends with Professor BJ Fogg, you know, world-leading expert in behavior change from Stanford. Uh, we had a great chat a few years ago, because what was really great about our conversation was that the things that I had figured out through seeing patients, he figured out through research. So our, our conversations together was a beautiful kind of meeting of clinical experience from me and scientific research from BJ, and we basically came to the same conclusion, that these small habits done consistently are how most people make changes, right? So the reason I do my workout every day is because it's not a one-hour workout, it's not a 30-minute workout, it's five minutes. Hmm. Even on my busiest days, I can't say I don't have time, right? I do have five minutes. So what do I do? One of the things I do in my morning routine is I come into my kitchen and I make coffee. Now, I'm very particular with how I make coffee. I, I, I like the ritual around it. I, I like a specific type of coffee, right? So I get out my French press, I weigh out my coffee, I pour in the water, and I put a timer on my phone for five minutes, because that's how long I like it to brew for. Now, in those five minutes, Jim, I don't go on email, I don't go on Instagram. Mm-hmm. I don't scroll the news, right? In the five minutes whilst I'm waiting for the coffee, I do a strength workout in my pajamas. Right. Now, this is really important. Why do I do it in my pajamas? Well, I've made it about as easy as possible, right? I'm in my kitchen. I've just- I've come down. I'm in my pajamas. I've got a dumbbell and a kettlebell sitting in my kitchen. Mm-hmm. Now, sometimes it's body weight, sometimes I just do some... a few exercises with a kettlebell. But before you know it, five minutes is up, then I put them down, and I'm rewarded with my beautiful hot cup of coffee. Hmm. Right? So why does that work? Well, number one, I've made it easy. Now, you've gotta make it easy because, you know, one, one of the problems, and I've seen this with patients over and over again, we overly rely on motivation, right? Now, motivation's important, and I know in your book Limitless, you talk about motivation. It's one of your Ms, right? So I get that. But I think we overly rely on motivation, and the scientific research shows us that motivation never stays up forever, right? That, you know, BJ calls it the motivation wave, right? Motivation comes up, motivation goes down. So here's the reality that most people I don't think are applying in their life: if you make something difficult to do, you will do it when your motivation is high, okay? What's the example of this? New Year, right? People wake up on New Year's Day, and they decide, "This year's gonna be different. This year I'm gonna go spinning four times a week." Hmm. Right? And they do it for two weeks or three weeks. They, they actually get it done. But then three weeks in, something happens. Work's busy. You know, in the UK it's raining or it's cold, it's dark, and you just can't be bothered 'cause it's an hour spinning class. So before you know it, the start of February, it's something you used to do. So the problem is, is that you do the behavior when motivation's high, but when motivation's low, if the behavior is difficult, you don't end up doing it. But if you make the behavior easy to do, you'll do it when your motivation's high, you'll also do it when your motivation's low. So the reason I do a five-minute workout is because I can never say to myself, "Rangan, you don't have time. You don't have time for five minutes." So that's why... that's one of the reasons that habit has stuck now for almost four years. I've made it easy. So that's rule number one. Rule number two is, where do you put that behavior that you want into your life? A lot of people don't give this m- much thought. They just say, "I want, wanna work out. I wanna meditate." Okay, great. That's a great intention. There's all kinds of benefits for our brains when we do that. But they don't think specifically about, "Where am I going to put this in my life?" Now, any behavior we do needs a trigger, right? Any behavior needs a trigger. So a trigger could be our memory, right? I could remember, "Hey, you know, I, I had a message with Jim a few weeks ago. We said on this day we were gonna get together and record," right? Memory works, it just happens to be the most unreliable trigger that there is. So I don't rely on my memory for important things like meeting you in my podcast studio. Most people listening don't. They have their Google Calendar or, or it will be written down, scheduled, the important things in their life.Right? So memory is a trigger, just very unreliable. So what's a better trigger than memory? A better trigger would be some sort of Post-It note, like a Post-It note on your fridge or a notification on your phone saying, "Hey, in an hour's time, you gotta meet Jim." Right? That also works, but the very best trigger for a behavior, as evidenced by the scientific research on behavior change, is when you stick that new behavior on to an existing habit. Right? So your audience may have heard you talk about this before because it works.

12. SPSpeaker1:13:38

    Mm-hmm.

13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:13:39

    Right? An existing habit is something you are automatically doing without much conscious thoughts.

14. SPSpeaker1:13:43

    Like making coffee.

15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:13:44

    Like making coffee, right? So in the morning, I don't need a notification to remind me to make coffee. I don't need my assistant to phone me at 5:30 or 6:00 AM, say, "Hey, Rangan, don't forget to make your coffee." I don't need my wife to remind me. No, it's a habit. I'm gonna do that. So therefore, not only am I gonna do it, I'm gonna enjoy it, right? So therefore, by sticking my workout onto my coffee habit, it happens. That's why it happens Monday to Sunday, because I don't miss a day on drinking my coffee. It's part of my morning routine. I love the ritual around it. It's quiet time for me. So I've made it easy. Again, I don't have to wear any special sports gear.

16. SPSpeaker1:14:29

    Mm-hmm.

17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:14:29

    I don't need to put on my running shorts. I do it in my pajamas. What else have I done to make it easy? I've, I've set my environment up to help me. So I used to do just body weight, but then a few years ago, I put a kettlebell and a dumbbell in the kitchen. And I remember my wife and I had a conversation. She said, "Are you gonna leave this stuff out in the kitchen? Can't we just put it in the cupboard or put it in the garage?"

18. SPSpeaker1:14:50

    Mm-hmm.

19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:14:51

    And we actually had a conversation. I said, "Hey, babe, listen, if I put that in the cupboard or put it in the garage, I'm not gonna use it. But if it's in the kitchen, I'm gonna use it all the time." And again, it's one of those things, out of sight is out of mind. Even if I pick up the weight just to move it out the way so I can get to my coffee-

20. SPSpeaker1:15:11

    Mm-hmm

21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:15:12

    ... by having it there, I'm also visually triggering myself each morning to not forget to do it. So it's very simple, but let's be really clear about this. How many people listening to your show, Jim, know that moving their bodies, doing some sort of strength training is gonna help their brain? It's gonna improve blood flow, it's gonna improve circulation, it's gonna enhance the release of BDNF-

22. SPSpeaker1:15:37

    Mm

23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:15:37

    ... brain-derived neurotrophic fats. I know you've spoken about that many times in the past, right?

24. SPSpeaker1:15:41

    Yes. I hope all of our listeners know all of that already.

25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:15:43

    Right. So they know that.

26. SPSpeaker1:15:44

    Yeah.

27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:15:44

    But some of them, despite knowing that, won't be moving as much as they want. They'll think, "Oh, man, I, I didn't get my movement in today." Right?

28. SPSpeaker1:15:54

    Mm-hmm.

29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:15:54

    "I, I want to. Oh, I, I hear... Yeah, I've just heard the latest research." We start losing muscle mass. As soon as we hit 30, our muscle mass starts to go down each year, and we know that the amount of lean muscle mass we have is one of the main predictors of our longevity-

30. SPSpeaker1:16:12

    Mm-hmm

Episode duration: 1:31:43