5 Minute Habits to Change Your Life | Rangan Chatterjee on Health Theory

knowledge is not enough to lead to action right it's not enough inspiration is not enough there has to be a structure there has to be a system you have to understand how to create new behaviors hey everybody welcome to another episode of health theory i am here with dr rangan chatterjee welcome to the show man thanks for having me tom thanks so much dude it is good to have you and right now i think this is a pretty interesting time to be talking about your book which the u.s title anyway is feel good in five the reason i think that it's so interesting is because of recording this in the middle of a pandemic certainly gives you a very clear perspective you break the book into three parts mind body and heart you said in the book and i've heard you say in other interviews that you think the heart of the mind body and heart that that one is the most important why is that yeah look the third and final section of the book is about hearts and when i say heart let me be really clear what i mean by that so when medical doctors talk about heart they're typically talking about the heart as a you know physical muscle that pumps blood and oxygen around your body that's certainly what i was taught in medical school but heart's got another meaning hasn't it you know artists poets songwriters they've been waxing lyrical about this idea of heart for many years for thousands of years and that's i think fundamentally what it means to be a human being which is to connect with other people on a superficial level we feel good when we're connected to a human being to another human being when we feel uh that we're heard or seen you've been listened to you know you've been connected with but if we look at hard science it's also there where we're now seeing a lot of scientific research showing that actually when we feel lonely that feeling of being lonely may be as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes a day people who feel lonely die 50 earlier than people who don't 30 more likely to have a heart attack or a stroke you know these are real real physical and biological problems when you're feeling lonely and not connected now this book came out in the uk before the pandemic and was having a huge impact already but as you said at the top of this conversation in many ways it has a heightened relevance in lockdown times in pandemic times where you know this connection that we would usually get let's say at the local cafe at starbucks or whatever when we're just you know passing by having a chat with a barista or at work or in a yoga class or at the gym those things have been taken away from us in different countries in differing amounts i accept that but it's a big issue but all i want people to think about is five minutes but it's really important to say one of the five-minute uh heart uh what i call health snacks is something called a tea ritual tom and i guess it has a lot of personal relevance for me and what is the tea ritual the sea ritual is really about that idea that we're so busy these days we're so distracted often that when we are with the people we love when we're with the people that mean the world to us we're distracted we're not really together with them we might be in the same room but we can be lost in our own worlds of instagram and netflix and youtube and so the tea ritual is this idea that for five minutes a day and typically because i've got two young children typically this will be after our kids have gone to bed my wife and i before we do anything else we make a pot of mint tea there's a bit of ritual around it there's a nice green pot that we think we bought in philadelphia the year after we got married and we sit there and the only requirement is for five minutes no phones no laptops we catch up with each other and ask um how we've got on right do you have like a standard opening question to that you know what we don't and i know some people like a structure for these things you know like you know three questions you may ask we actually don't we have found um that we respond better to a free-form conversation that where it's simply a case of hey babe how was your day today and then she starts and one of the jobs i have to do is to try and listen attentively not into her not give her my opinion on her day which i used to be very good at doing but actually you know actually listen to what she has to say uh and again if we want to dive into relationships it's kind of like i've had to learn through this process that she doesn't want me to fix her problems she wants me to hear them does that drive you crazy at all i was going to say that was a long pause there wrong i was going to say it used to but i think if i'm being honest it drives me less crazy than it used to you know we've been married i think what 12 13 years now it probably is only in the last year or two that i finally got the message hey she doesn't want me to fix it she wants me to listen now sometimes i i go back into old habits and i try and offer a solution it is difficult for me but this is what i think is is important about being an attentive listener and being switched on to the needs whether it's a partner or a friend or a work colleague it's really trying to understand what they need yeah it's interesting this is obviously one of the most sort of cliche differences between men and women is that just wanting to express wanting to have your feelings heard and what's interesting is so i went through the same thing with my wife and we finally just had to have a rule where it was like because there were times where she actually did want me to help her solve a problem and so i would like sketch out between which of these moments is this and so in conversations now we just say look are you just asking me to listen which goes to one of the most powerful parts of your book which is this notion of habits and so in the book you talk about aligning a new behavior that you want with like a an already existing habit what's the power of that and how do you actually make that work with something like trying to deepen the connection of your relationship yes so any behavior any behavior needs a trigger right so you talking to me now we had an appointment there would have been some trigger it could have been your memory it could have been a notification on your phone it could have been your pa phoning you it would have required a trigger of some sort now when it comes to triggers that's kind of three broad times right one is your memory right so your memory works like it could be oh i heard that podcast meditation is really important so you go the next day you think yeah i heard that on impact theory i need to meditate oh you're waiting for your memory to remind you now that may work if you remember every day you may end up meditating but it's very unreliable so the next best form of trigger is some kind of notification it could be notification on your phone it could be a post-it note on your refrigerator or on your laptop reminding you to do something that is better than memory but it's not as good as the final type of trigger which is when you stick on that new behavior onto an existing habit because that habit by definition means you're already doing it without thinking about it i'll give you an example that i do so i don't go to the gym i've not been to the gym probably for about two years but i stay fit right i do a workout every morning so what happens in the morning i do a couple of things as part of my routine but the second thing i do is i make coffee right so in the kitchen i'll weigh out the coffee beans i'll pour it into the french press and the timer goes on for four to five minutes during that time i don't go on instagram i don't go on email i don't make phone calls i do a workout in the kitchen in my pajamas right i've stuck it on to that behavior so every morning i'm gonna have coffee so every morning i work out i don't need to find time in my day to do it i'm not saying that's going to work for anyone else but it works for me and that's what people have to do they have to find what are those existing habits in their life that they can stick on new behaviors too so if we apply that to something like a tea ritual okay so i know that my wife and i we know that our relationship is better when we commit to that tea ritual every day and actually in during covert in the first few weeks of lockdown we actually stopped doing it our whole patterning had gone our rhythm had gone and we noticed a subsequent decline in the intimacy and the quality of our relationship so again i wouldn't call that failure i call that education it's not you know every time you stop doing something and you're in tune with the impact it's like ah you know what when we do those five minutes a day actually our relationship is much better we feel closer we feel connected and why is five minutes important right the five minutes it's not a gimmick right but the five minutes is the commitment we make to each other so why five minutes are so powerful is that it's small enough that even the busiest person feels that i can fit that into my day it's only five minutes but it's long enough that it's gonna have an impact right so it sounds too easy too simple so on some days we're still chatting 40 minutes later some days it's 5 minutes some days it's a real quick check-in hey babe how was your day yeah you know what i'm busy it was okay i'm a bit stressed out i do actually have some emails to get done tonight i'd love to um but i'm feeling really stressed and then i'll say hey cool you know what i'm feeling good at the moment i get it that that's on your mind so at the end of five minutes it's like yeah she goes off and does her emails so it's it's not that it has to be five minutes a day but the minimum requirements you know almost like minimum effective dose is five minutes because if we said tom we've got to do it for half an hour every evening which is what a lot of people do with their health habits they're trying to introduce i've got to meditate for half an hour a day i've got to work out for half an hour 45 minutes a day what happens then is that on that busy day where you don't have time that becomes an obstacle that becomes a reason why you won't do it so the five minutes means we always do it because we know there's no pressure to go beyond the five minutes does that answer your question yeah it does and i think that it's worth but i want to get back to the tea ritual itself but the um it's worth putting a really fine point so the whole thesis of the book using your language you want to set the bar low which not a lot of people are saying that myself included so you want to set the bar low to make sure that people do it but there tends to be sort of this knock-on effect why why is why is that so important that that's the title of the book it's the core thesis of the book and honestly if i were to shove you as a thinker into one box um the box i would put you in is simplicity why is simplicity so powerful simplicity is everything right it is it is the essence of actually being able to communicate with people getting people to do the things that you are hopefully inspiring them empowering them to do there's so much knowledge out there in the world there's podcasts there's social media there's you know people don't have a lack of information about how to improve their lives right that it's it's everywhere but why do so many people struggle knowledge is not enough to lead to action right it's not enough inspiration is not enough there has to be a structure there has to be a system you have to understand how to create new behaviors and so the challenge i set myself was how simple can you make this right let's say in my first two books if i had an idea to work out maybe it would take 11 or 12 pages to work up that idea in this book i challenge myself can you do the same thing in two pages what is the absolute essence of what you're trying to say and i've been practicing as an md now tom for almost 20 years right and i have seen by and large what works and what doesn't work now of course i know that some people can make overnight change they can completely transform their lives but typically there has to be a big pain point there has to have been uh really bad health issues you know bad depression bad anxiety uh chronic pain low energy all that has to be in some sort of significant life issue a bereavement a divorce losing their job right sure people can often turn their lives around overnight when something that big happens but for the rest of us who don't have that big pain point what i see over and over again is people trying to make change they think motivation is going to be enough the motivation carries them through for one week for two weeks for three weeks then when the motivation goes down health plan goes down as well um you know 42 year old chap i saw in my in my practice a few years ago maybe six or seven years ago right this is a classic case which probably illustrates this 42-year old chap a little bit overweight a little bit of a low mood and struggling with energy okay come to see me we have a chat it's very clear to me that his lifestyle by and large is contributing to the way that he's feeling so we went through a number of options and the one that lit his eyes up that he was like yeah i want it was was strength training he said dark yes strength training what strength is gonna help my mood it's gonna help me lose weight it's gonna help my physique i used to do as a teenager i've not done any years i want to do it i said okay great he says to me so watch what i do doc 40 minutes three times a week i said yeah that'd be amazing can you manage that because yeah yeah no problem he walks out of my surgery door big smile on his face he's got motivation he knows what he's gonna do right and i make an appointment to follow up with me four weeks later four weeks later he comes in his shoulder slumped over he looks a bit sheepish i say hey look how you getting on how was the gym what's that you know what how are you finding it you know what he said to me he said dr you know what i've hardly been um work's been really busy i'm stressed out at work the gym's quite far it's not really on my commute i don't always have time and energy to get there i've not really done much right he feels like a failure i i didn't think why has he not done what i've asked him to do i thought rongan you have clearly not given him advice that he feels is relevant to him in the context of his life so i took my jacket off and i said hey look right i'm going to teach you right now a five minute body weight workout are you in he goes yeah sure so i told him five exercises i modified them for his ability level and i said do you think you can manage that he goes yeah that's fine easy i said i want you to do this for five minutes twice a week at home and he laughed at me he said what 10 minutes a week is that it i said yeah can you do that because yeah of course i said okay that's all i wanted to do do 10 minutes a week i'll see you in four weeks okay so he goes out four weeks later tom he walks in body language completely different this time he walks in chest is puffed out he's got a smile on his face i said how are you doing he said doc you said just to do five minutes twice a week but i found it so easy it made me feel good i started doing it for 10 minutes every evening before i had dinner right so what's that now the now the guy's doing 70 minutes of strength training a week when he couldn't do 40 minutes three times a week he's now doing 70 minutes a week and then what happens right there's a ripple effect that i've written about it knocks on into other aspects of his life right he was doing that for at least five years right some days it would be 10 minutes some days it will be 20 minutes but it was consistent and then now he gets them in the morning he does uh breathing and meditation for five ten minutes he goes for a one-hour walk every lunch time he eats better he sleeps better so for him it all started with that change and i have seen that over and over again and this is what the research backs up tom let's let's go to business for a second tom right business amazon understand behavior change so the rumors are that five years ago also when they moved to one click ordering estimates say that their profits went up by 300 million dollars a year so why is that well in the past what did you have to do you have to um you know you have to click on your on your basket go to the next screen confirm go to the next screen put in your card details you know there's three or four steps you have to take before you place your order every time you take a step that's a reason to procrastinate that's a reason to back out of actually doing the behavior amazon have figured out if they make it easy so that before you blinked you've got something arriving the next day people do the behavior youtube netflix do the same thing why does one video go into the next video it's so before you've realized it's midnight i'm tired i should go to bed i have work tomorrow morning the next episode has started right so these companies and i i'm not criticizing these companies they understand behavior change so they implement it so that you buy more or you spend more time on their platform i'm saying when it comes to health why do we think we can ignore those rules why do we think health has to be about deprivation and about punishments why can't we apply those same rules and go oh if it's easy i do it so all the five minute workouts in my book don't require equipment they don't require you to join a gym they don't require you to get changed and i i honestly think tom this is one of the problems these days you can go and read a million health blogs a million different health podcasts and you can think you know yoga is great meditation is great strength training is great keto's great um breath works great this is what it's like oh my god it's overwhelming do i spend my whole day just doing one after the other if i want to optimize my well-being so what i try to do is i try to flip and go how simple can you make this and i think that's one of the reasons this book has been the most successful book i've written so far is i think because i have made it simple so people can actually do the behaviors all right so let's say that people buy into that notion let's get into the weeds so give us a thumbnail sketch of somebody who's doing a great job they're keeping it simple so they're not doing everything in the book you talk about you know pick one of the health snacks from each of those items and do that but give us a couple examples from each of the three pillars so people understand exactly um you know what they should do sure so there's about maybe 40 or 50 different five-minute recommendations in the book all you need to do is choose three one from the mind section one from the body section one from the heart section okay so the mind do and do it every day so i say when you're starting choose one and do the same one every day at the same time so like people get it when you talk about tooth brushing right so we we don't think with our you know our dental health example we don't think hey you know what i'm not going to worry about it in the week but you know on a sunday i'm going to give it a big one hour deep clean in my teeth we don't do that right but we sort of think we can do that with other aspects of our health physical mental and emotional health and i'm saying no the reason four minutes a day on your dental health looks after your teeth over time is because it becomes a habit and it's a small thing done regularly that adds up we just don't think about good habits in the same way as bad habits so tom framework is mind body hearts mind is mental health body is moving your body for your physical health and heart is the whole connection piece so in mind there are five minute breath exercises you know breathing exercises so one is a zen practice called breath counting that i was doing this for a good few months and i really found it not only helped me feel less stressed but it helped my focus and concentration in the day and it's really simple you just sit down you shut your eyes you breathe in on the out breath you count one in your heads breathe in again on the out breath you count two and you do that up to five when you get to five you just start to get it one and go to five now here's the thing tom once i did it i ended up at 30 before i'd even realized that my mind had wandered so what it does it trains concentration attention and focus so that's one uh there's also journaling exercises so i really feel that journaling is one of the most powerful things we can do especially first thing in the morning often we've got anxieties and worries whirring round our brains and we do nothing to process them so that then impacts the interactions we have in the day it impacts how stressed we feel it impacts the decisions we make but five minutes of journaling first thing in the morning and how do people journal like what what do they do stream of consciousness make a list well i give people two options i one is a free form one where i say literally write down anything that comes into your mind anything for five minutes just write anything even if it feels like complete garbage unrelated thoughts this is not a book manuscript this is not a letter to your boss this is just you're trying to clear out the junk in your brain now it's really interesting i've done this with patients but when the book came out in the uk in january i got so many messages on instagram a few weeks later from people saying wrong and it's really interesting i didn't realize i was anxious about things but when i started to do this four or five things each day started to come out in my writings that i was really worried about so this is how good we are as humans about burying um into our subconscious you know things we're worried about one option for journaling and i've called it downloading in the book it's like a it's like a brain dump the morning download is free form the other option is an exercise i've created called the five step release this is brilliant for people who've got anxiety and you literally have these five questions to answer and it frankly it takes two or three minutes it doesn't even take five minutes you answer these five questions what is one thing i'm worried about today okay so you write that down what's one thing i can do to prepare about it number three what's one reason it won't be as bad it probably won't be as bad as i think it's gonna be four what's one reason i know i can probably handle it and five what's one upside of the situation simple exercise very easy to do but very effective this and i guarantee that for the vast majority of people they will feel better they will feel less anxious less stressed because it's these small things done consistently that add up so i've given you a breath work example in mind i've given you a couple of journaling examples in mind um you know there's five minutes of flow so i know you've spoken about flow state on many of your shows before um flow state is an incredible state where you know we're doing something that's challenging enough to keep us interested but it's not so challenging that we switch off it's when time sort of stands still and that could be anything it could be playing your piano guitar it could be playing chess it could be doing a puzzle uh 42 year old lady i saw migraines she's got three kids husband's got a busy job i felt stress was driving her migraines a lot and she said i don't have time for this stuff she tried yoga she tried meditation says doc i'm busy i don't have time for this stuff it turns out she loved coloring books super easy to do if you do it's like all these things they're great if you actually go and do it so she was struggling right so i said to her what'd you do in the morning she said i have a cup of tea you know the kids are causing mayhem and chaos but i will go and make a cup of tea i said perfect that is a habit that we can stick this onto i said do you need a notification in your phone to remind you to have a cup of tea she said of course not no i have a morning cup of tea i said okay perfect so what i want you to do before you go to bed in the evening i want you to make sure you've got a coloring book and your crayons next to your kettle and it sounds so simple it sounds like we are children but you know what when you make something easy to do people do it so she comes down she puts on the kettle she sees her coloring book on the crayons that if something is missing if the coloring book is upstairs if her kids have taken the crayons in another room she may not do the behavior it's like oh i need to go upstairs i need to get that i'll forget i haven't got time today no she started doing it within about a week her migraines had gone down by about 50 percent she was still getting them they were just a lot better three to four weeks later she was hardly guessing them apart from on stress on really stressful days now it doesn't always happen that easily and that quickly tom but i used that example because it was so powerful again people may be skeptical listening five minutes what difference will it really make well that lady sort out her migraines the patient i told you about at the start that helped him lose weight improve his mood get more energy these five-minute interventions do work because if five minutes didn't work then why are we wasting our time brushing our teeth to four minutes a day right yeah of how people can buy into it with bad habits like oh if i smash myself in the hand with a hammer for five minutes i know that it would be problematic this is you know one of my core theses is that people don't recognize they're having a biological experience and so getting a coloring book and doing something that is essentially meditative right you're finding a way where you're totally absorbed in something and thusly your mind can't allocate resources to worrying about a problem the thoughts that you think are obviously going to color your emotions no pun intended and so if your mind is worrying to use your word around these negative thoughts then your emotions are going to be negative but if on the other hand you're coloring you slide into neutral and so if you're in a mental situation where you're never clicking into neutral and you're always worrying around these negative ideas you're you're never actually getting out of those negative emotions and it can be very simple a coloring book watching a comedy um forcing yourself to laugh out loud i mean whatever that thing is but doing something that shifts what zone your brain is in can be extraordinarily powerful um so yeah that makes a lot of sense to me and look you do we made it simple now why again simplicity is important because otherwise tom people go okay i get it right i need to get into that zone they may then make the next leap which is i need to learn meditation i need to sign up for this class i need to do one hour a day i'm not saying those things can't work right of course they can work but more often than not that is the obstacle which means they do it for two weeks then they stop when life gets in the way and that's because a couple of things motivation right motivation doesn't last we think it lasts but it doesn't right there's something called the motivation wave and behavioral change science now bj fought professor bj from stanford he coined it the motivation wave so motivation goes up motivation goes down most of us make our health plans or our new year's resolutions at the peak of the motivation way we go yeah this is going to be my year i'm going to lose weight i'm going to meditate and you know what for the first two weeks in january or the first two weeks of september after the summer they are in but then you know what life gets in the way they're busy they're stressed out oh man i don't have time to go spinning four times a week i don't have time to meditate for half an hour a day so they go from everything to zero whereas if you understand that motivation goes up when it comes down the clever thing to do is to you make your plan for the trough for the lowest point and the most facial wave you you plan for low motivation and that's why you got to make things easy because if you make things easy even when your motivation is down you will still do it so when i say as you sort of said at the start set the bar low it's not that i only want people to do five minutes right and i'm not being deceptive either i'm saying if you set the bar low and you do it consistently you know what some days you will just do five minutes some days you'll do 20 minutes somebody should do half an hour but five minutes is your base because then each day you're ticking it off so i think motivation is worth understanding but then something i thought would be really worth exploring with utah and i wonder what you think about this i think strongly if we think if we're thinking about values if we think about our identity what my book does what this plan does whoever you are right is this helps you shape your identity through action you start changing your identity so if you remember that 42 year old chap i mentioned at the start he initially had the identity of someone who can't look after himself i can't stick to a health plan they're all too difficult but when i made it easy for him and he does it he starts to feel good i helped him feel successful i helped him feel good and so his identity starts to change he starts to now become not someone who fails every health plan he's someone who's a success and you know i've been thinking about this idea recently that often the identity we have is an identity that we wish to have right and our actions on a daily basis are not consistent with that so that in that gap there's friction in our lives there's this kind of constant friction whereby our actions are not matching up to this identity that we perceive ourselves to have and what i'm trying to do with this book is to help people align those things together so that they can show themselves every single day i am someone who prioritizes myself ah my relationship is worth it my health is worth it and another way to do this and this is another part of behavior change is you've got to celebrate each success right we often don't take time for this so we get it with bad habits so the example i often use is if you feel low and you feel down and you buy a chocolate bar often you will feel good for a few minutes or maybe 10 or 15 minutes you'll feel good right so you've wired in this idea of a very powerful emotional response which is i feel low i eat chocolate i feel good that is very very powerful and actually it's not repetition that creates habits it's emotions that creates habits so you really want after a positive about let's say you've done a five minute workout let's say it's five minutes of skipping or five minutes of dancing you want to almost luxuriate in that feeling of well-being how how how do you do that well okay so bj will say you should say something like i am awesome out loud now out loud he says say it feel it absorb it i am awesome but he gets up every day and he says today is gonna be a great day and he says it and absorbs that would make me feel like a total doofus i would never do that right as a brit there is no way in hell that people in england are gonna say i am awesome after doing a workout we're too reserved for that right so there are many ways you can do it a simple uh kind of very non-tech way to do this have a tick chart right tip charts work so i have a chart like i am literally what 10 yards from my kitchen in there next to the fridge i my wife and my two children we have our own charts with our mind snack our body snack and our heart snack and every day once we've done them we tick them because it feels good we tick them and have a little smile to ourselves right so even if my day has been bad or my week has been bad i can look at the fridge and i go i can see 21 times this week i have prioritized myself and done something proactive my mental physical and emotional well-being this works right tick charts work it works beautifully well for children a lot of parents contact me say oh this is great but can i do this with my children you can you allow them to pick i didn't prescribe which one to do why didn't say you've got to do this one hey look pick the ones that you want to do and then you're going to do them right so it sounds i love that but i i'm i we we still have two more to go here and i don't want to run out of time so um we got mine we rocked that we know how to celebrate it i'm with it um now we're we want to go body our heart next okay let's go body right body we all know i i you know movement is important working out our body super important but why does so many of us struggle to do that like the patient i mentioned he couldn't get to the gym you've got to make it easy so there are i don't know how many maybe 10 different five-minute workouts there's strength workouts there's interval workouts there's skipping workouts there's yoga flows there's whatever you want but as i say all of them you don't need to buy equipment you don't need to join a gym you don't need to get changed talk to me about the classic five the classic five is one of my favorite ones right it is i think it's the five most high impact body weight exercises that you can do and that's the key right body weight look you can easily bring in things that require equipment but i discipline myself to say wrong no equipment a lab because equipment means it's an excuse for somebody not to do it oh i don't have it i'm not gonna do it it's simple right it's a press up um it's uh squats you know it's lunges it's reverse flies which you can do with your arms and the glute bridge you know the bridge when you're lying and you sort of lift up your hips lying on your back you're lying on your back with your sort of feet on the floor with your knees at a slight angle yep and your arms flat on the ground and you lift up uh your your bum and your hips while contracting your glutes so again it's just trying to give people a balanced workouts so that's one there are interval workouts if people want something super simple there's one in there that i call simple sweat you pick a whole body exercise that you like let's say um jumping jacks or whole body exercise put a timer on for 30 seconds do jumping jacks for 30 seconds rest repeat five times you've just done yourself an interval workout right it is simple you do that every day you will feel a difference you will see changes in your physique you will feel better with your mood and again i'm not here to uh tell people not to join gems or not to work out more than that sure do more i often do more but this is the base framework i may go for a run these days i may go for a long walk i may do some pull-ups when i'm on my walk in the in the kids play park i may stop and do pull-ups and dips on the gym there right i may do that but i still don't that's not a replacement for this this becomes a part of my day so even if i do that i'm still doing my five minute body weight in the morning you know so now heart part i think is going to be the most troubling for people given the sort of remote nature of things um what what so we talked about the tea ceremony taking five minutes to reconnect what are some things that people can do if they're living alone how can they um tap into the hard stuff yeah so connection um it's really interesting a connection is not always to another human being connection can also be connection to yourself professor john capiocho who i think he unfortunately died last year he is probably the guy who's researched the most on loneliness so what is lowness right is is human connection about being with somebody else physically no because you could be in the middle of times square and surrounded by you know thousands of people back in the day when you could do that and still feel lonely connection is about a shared experience so ironically tom in this current pandemic we're at a time where in many ways we've got a leg up in terms of connecting people because we're all in some way sharing a similar experience of the lives that we've lost of the grief that we may be going through for what we're now missing out on so you can connect let's say you're living by yourself it is not the same as human connection i know on our last conversation i spoke about human touch and how important that is and that is something many people are being starved off at the moment with dire consequences but you could call a friend each day right you could um you know call a friend and go hey how was your day today you know lockdown is really bothering me now three months i was okay but now into the fourth and fifth month i find it really hard if your friend goes yeah me too i'm really struggling that is connection right you don't have to physically be with someone to connect is it the same probably not but it can go a long way so that is one thing i tell people to do one thing i was doing in lockdown a lot was in a whatsapp group uh between my friends by my really good college friends we would get together at the same time every day for 10 minutes we'd say okay at 8 30 we're all jumping on and for those 10 minutes we'd all just banter around we'd have a laugh with each other you know what it feels good it feels really really good and one of the one of the recommendations of the book is send a random text of kindness each day so you literally go through your contact list pick someone at random and send them a coin says hey you know what i was thinking of you today i remember when you helped me move my sofa 10 years ago just wanted to say thank you kindness is contagious kindness helps to reduce stress levels makes you happier makes you feel better there's some studies showing kindness can even help reduce aging right it's absolutely amazing so being kind to another person doing something for another individual connects you to that person it connects you to something greater than yourself which again i think is a really important part of well-being so you know there are so many options what i'm asking people to do is just choose one of those heart interventions um you know i do the tea ritual the other one i do is a gratitude game that i don't know if i spoke to you about before or not but it's something that's part of our family life which is because of lockdown i am at home every evening so my wife me and my two kids we have dinner together every single evening and as part of dinner we go round the table this is a game that charles poliquin actually taught me many years ago uh the strength coach uh you asked three questions what have i done today to make somebody else happy what has somebody else done today to make me happy and what have i learned today and i tell you it's one of the most powerful things we do it connects us we hear things about each other that we wouldn't hear about if we had superficial level uh conversation and this reminds me of that first question about the t ritual tom you know my wife and i we don't have a structure when we do our tea ritual but you know what this grassroot game is a beautiful structure these three questions but some people like to free form it as well so yeah so i'm just i i just know because i've seen it for 20 years that this sort of plan works i've seen it since the book came out but of course i would just ask people to trust it listen to what they've heard in this conversation pick one thing if three habits a day is too much you know what fine start with one start with one you know i kind of like this idea of a keystone habit like what is that one keystone habit that when you do it keeps everything else going online and for me it's very much my morning routine on the days that i do my morning routine if i start with breath work and meditation you know what it knocks on to everything else i do that day but on those days where i miss it i notice that it's just not quite the same uh i'm not as productive i'm not as calm i'm not as grounded so really the book is and this approach is about how do you take action and how do you really change your identity as well as your health through taking these small steps each day dude that that is the perfect place to wrap it up man uh i hope that people dive in and use the book which as you said is all that really matters so make sure you use it where can people find you find the book all that good stuff well look the book is available all over the place you know amazon in your bookstores you can you can pick up feel better in five there i have a weekly podcast called feel better live more people want to hear more about this kind of stuff you know audio and on youtube our best social media platform is probably instagram at dr chatterjee that's d-r-c-h-a-t-t-e-r-j-e love it alright guys if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this community if you haven't already be sure to subscribe you're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset cultivating grit and unlocking your full potential

Channel: Tom Bilyeu

Views: 115,616

Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, ImpactTheory, TomBilyeu, Inside Quest, InsideQuest, Tom Bilyou, Theory Impact, motivation, inspiration, talk show, interview, motivational speech, Rangan Chatterjee, Health Theory, HT, health, habits, health advice, Feel Better, Live More, Feel Better in 5, power of 5, 5 minute habits, 5 minute workouts, five-minute workouts, heart, tea ritual, power of listening, habit building, power of five minutes, keeping things simple, simplicity, health made simple

Id: QUPGDThiRM0

Length: 41min 45sec (2505 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 08 2020