Dr Rangan Chatterjee: 3 Steps To "Core" Happiness | E129

i internalize this idea that unless i get a hundred percent unless i win i'm not good enough i'm not loved doctor and broadcaster doctor wrong and chatterjee your first book was a huge success my guest today is the perfect guest it's a really big honor to have you on my podcast my son janam getting sick at six months old changed the course of my career you see we need to evolve the way that we practice medicine sleep deprivation is associated with pretty much every single chronic disease we have compared to about 60 years ago we may have lost up to 25 of our sleep the way society is set up now is making us lonely we've moved away for work we've moved away from our families we don't have the tribes around us and it's very very damaging for our health it took me ages to figure this out the dots i think you can always make a change right you can use these moments of diversity in your life to teach you something it's the best journey you'll ever take but it's a journey it's not a one hit the first step in any change is so without further ado i'm stephen butler and this is the diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself [Music] dr rongan chatterjee i am i have to say i have to stop this conversation by saying it's a really big honor to have you on my podcast because you are someone when i started taking my podcast seriously who i looked up to and admired for so many reasons not because you are you've really kind of paved the way for these long-form conversations in the uk but because you have the same very similar subject matter and apparent interest in the conversations you have with your guests to the point that it inspired me in a really big way to start this platform and so when um when i found out that you were coming in today it felt like you know it felt like a bit of a felt like christmas day for me because the the conversations you have are the things that i would spend my spare time sort of um watering my brain with so thank you first and foremost for coming in today it's a huge huge privilege i receive and i appreciate you saying that and and likewise i feel really honoured and excited to come on your show because i think long-form conversation matters and i don't there's that many people in the uk doing it like you are like i am and um you know i think you're doing great things with your shows so i'm i'm i'm really excited just to have a long conversation with you i don't know where it's going to go but um yeah thanks for having me so take me back to the foundations who who were you so i grew up in the northwest of england and you know mum and dad were immigrants from india you know dad came over in 1962 for a better life to the uk mum came over in 1972 i grew up got an older brother and you know like many immigrant families education was king right it was about get good grades at school go to a good university get a good job right that was the kind of drive from home my experience was very much man the culture at school was really different from the culture at home and i didn't really think much of it at the time but you know now in my early 40s looking back and reflecting as i've done for this new book is that was incredibly problematic in many ways because you end up pretending to be somebody you're not in order to fit in and i can see now that's been a pattern for most of my life i've not been myself i've tried to be someone else i've i've tried to do things to get validation and love from other people and i've got to say it's only been in the last years where i've managed to kind of let that go another piece there which i think is really relevant to your question is because education was such a big thing you know because mum and dad dad in particular so much discrimination he faced right when he came here in his job he had to change career change speciality as a doctor because he just couldn't advance and so ultimately he ended up moving to a speciality he didn't like he didn't enjoy to give his family security so what do they want to do they want their children to not have to go through that so i grew up with this kind of idea that i'm only loved when i'm top of the class right i'd come home if i got 99 in an exam my mum would say why didn't you get 100. what if i came out uh with 19 out of 20 in a test okay what happened why didn't you get 20. now what's really interesting about that is i'm not criticizing my parents right i love my parents i think they've brought me up really well but it but it speaks to a situation there's different perceptions right so i spoke to mum recently i said hey mom why why did you ask me those questions you know why did you push me so hard and she said to me because i knew you were capable i wanted you to be the best that you could be so mom did it with me from a place of love right she wanted the best for me but walk around to the other side of that story i internalize this idea that unless i get 100 unless i win i'm not good enough i'm not loved and i can now see that drove me my entire life this need for external validation what are other people saying about you people say nice things you feel good people say nasty things you are literally broken inside so you know a lot there that i've come to terms with over the past few years but for me understanding that i can go back and rewrite those stories put a different perspective on all those events has given me this real sense of freedom calm contentness and ultimately you know it's resulted in me feeling really really happy one of the things you you've said is that you believe the purpose of life is really finding out who you are because once you find out who you are then you can go on the journey of finding out what is what it is you want so my question for you is what did you then pursue as a consequence of believing that external validation was true validation that was true truly your purpose what was your how were you misguided or led astray yeah so i went to university at edinburgh at edinburgh medical school you know left home having the time of my life partying you know whatever you know people when they they get that sort of sense of freedom for the first time a lot of my uni life was spent playing in bands right so music is a big part of who i am what i do um you know so i'd be practicing layers we'll be playing loads and loads of gigs and then it all changed i must have been 20 21. i think mum phoned me at like 10 30 at night and said hey look dad's in intensive care the doctors don't think he's gonna make it through the nights can you come back home and i remember seeing dads in the incentive care unit and you know he ended up surviving the nights his kidneys failed he went on kidney dialysis for the next 15 years but basically dad getting ill changed the trajectory of my adult life so yes i was in edinburgh i finished off i worked there for a couple of years but my mind was always back in the northwest and i moved back to the northwest which is one of the reasons i live there now to help my mum and my brother look after dad and it was incredibly stressful particularly in the last years before dad i had really really stressful and i would i would escape periodically so coming back to your question about how does that impacted me i wanted to do well like i got my specialist exams i uh want i got good jobs in prestigious hospitals right i got those things i thought that's what i'm doing i'm doing the right thing and then when dad died in 2013 march 2013 it was like there was a big hole in my life and so i would just go walking i was just trying to make sense of everything and the truth is the amount i learnt from dad's death was just profound i'm not sure i would have learned these things i was asking myself whose life are you really leading i don't regret any of it now that dad's not here i'm glad i spent so much time with him but i think it was a real cost to me my inner peace my inner well-being and dad's death here's the irony stephen the things that my dad would have been proudest of right indian immigrant to the uk his son with his own bbc one show in 2015 2016 right his son with four sunday times bestsellers dad would have literally been phoning all the relatives you know being the embarrassing dad telling everyone dad never got to see any of it but i know if that was still alive i'd be doing none of it why if i was still in the mindset that i was when my dad was sick i wouldn't have any time to engage in this stuff like life if there's anyone listening to this who's a carer for someone in their life they'll know what i'm talking about you you don't have time you don't have physical time you don't have mental space it just it encompasses the entirety of your life you're just trying to keep your head above water you're just trying to get through day to day you are fire fighting so i wouldn't have had the the physical time but also i think a lot of what i'm able to give to people these days through books through podcasts through you know one-on-one with patients is the learnings you know that the learnings i've acquired from going through dad's death from going through that pain from coming out the other side from going what can i learn from this so i'm not sure if what i would have had to offer people back then would have been as valuable as what i feel i have to offer them now why did you choose medicine was that again part of this broader thing of thinking that was success and that would be that would satisfy parents or you know society because again there's a bit of a stereotype isn't there there with a indian immigrant coming over and you know when i sit here with um people from that that background typically the narrative is and to be fair in my case as well as an african immigrant that successes doctor lawyer etc 100 you know it is a stereotype but but it's largely true for many families you know as an indian immigrants child in the uk the three careers that generally are available to you are dots a lawyer engineer that's what is valued of course just to be clear that's not every single family but just by and large i think that's true but i tell you this stephen i know loads of them who are so unhappy as doctors so unhappy they compensate for the tedium of their work right by getting smashed on a friday and saturday nights right and they wonder why they can't give up boozing or why they enjoy it so much well because that's a symptom it's not the drinking isn't the problem the drinking is a symptom you don't enjoy your job you've gone into the wrong career because you thought it was what you should do sometimes you're stuck now in your 30s you've got a mortgage you know you've got a lease on your car you feel trapped but you can free yourself from that trap you you absolutely can but you have to be honest you have to get to know who you currently are now before you've got any hope of becoming the person that you i didn't want to be it's so unbelievably true in every way i mean so much of that i can relate to for so many reasons and you know you were talking there about your your almost your parents missed place love what you've clearly managed to figure out later in your life is that actually came from a place of love yeah that's why i call it misplaced love because they were trying to protect you because they loved you but it turns out that that misplaced love what it's doing is it's stopping you from being your truest self and the long term consequences of that when you end up living someone else's life is what you've spoken to there the symptoms of addiction and drinking and impulsive behavior that we see in people so my overall conclusion there was this urgent need as soon as possible in your life to get in touch with exactly who you are and defend it at all costs at all if you can do it at 16 if you're 45 and listening to this now is the the second best time yeah i mean i've got so much to say on that um you're never too late to start on this journey but how does someone start on that journey right i think it comes down to values right values is what i think what sews it all up together right so you know for this new book i've created this new model of happiness i call core happiness so core happiness has three components alignment contentment and control we can talk about those if you want but one of those legs is alignment alignment is when your inner values and your external actions are the same when the person who you want to be inside and the person you are actually being in the world are one and the same that's one component it's not everything but it's one component so if someone has heard what we're talking about say okay i want to start i'm not living the life that i want to lead but i don't know where to start there's this exercise in the book called the identity menu and the goal is really that you go through and i picked number three because i think it's quite a um a realistic number for people out of the list of all these possible identities and values which three do you think feel kind of the most true to you and i've been doing this for a little while and the three that have been pretty static with me for the past few months now i'd say and they're right at the top of my instagram profile because i think this is what i want to give to the world and say let's lead with our values integrity curiosity and compassion so this is who i am right i'm not a doctor i'm not a father now i i really i think this is such an important point that i've been thinking a lot about the last few years i have a role as a doctor i have a role as a father but it's not who i am because when we cling too tightly to our identities we put ourselves in a very fragile position let's say you know i go over i'm the doctor you know i'm dr chatterjee you know when i i sort of absorb that and i think that's who i am then what happens if i get fired right what happens if i get sick and i can't work as a doctor what happens when i retire this this is real this happens to people they lose their sense of who they are what about my role as a father right to be really clear me bringing up my kids well is one of the most important things to me more important than my work 100 but being a good father is not who i am if i cling too tightly to that what happens when my kids are teenagers and they get annoyed and they call me a crap dad i've seen this happen i've had patients come in say oh they call me a crap mom but you know that's all i do i i do everything for them i've given everything up for them it's like wait a minute you are much more than your roles you know let's talk about cars right you said when you were 20 you wrote down what you wanted right there's nothing wrong with having a nice car the problem comes for your happiness at least when you identify with that car where that car says something about you and the problem is you drive around i don't mean you one drives around in their flash bmw let's say and they think you know that says something about me who i am what i'm saying if you lose your job what happens if you prang it what happens if you have a divorce and you can't afford it anymore you go from what i call core happiness to junk happiness junk happiness is what many of us think happiness is right we think it's that momentary hit of pleasure you know buying something online instagram uh chocolate bar uh hit of booze right these things can be pleasurable things they may have their role from time to time but don't mistake that for being real core happiness core happiness is i think what we are chasing but i think we misdefine it we think it's something it's not happiness it's not a destination that we one day get to right it's a direction that you can choose to take in life it's a choice right i heard your conversation with mo in the hotel room last night which was fantastic so good and i agree with what you and me was saying happiness is a choice when you understand what happiness really is what is it it's not a thing that you can get to it's not something that you can pursue directly it's something that ensues when you do the right things and the right things for me are when you focus on the three i call call happiness this three-legged stool alignment contentment control you can apply it to anything in life i i think that's what happiness is and i think we are pursuing it like people say we shouldn't be we shouldn't be going after happiness we should be going after meaning have you heard that yeah yeah all the time right i have a different perspective meaning and purpose is really important no question but i don't think that's happiness it's meaning right it's a necessary ingredient for happiness but it's not happiness in and of itself and i don't mean to be controversial but let's say um a soldier fighting in world war ii against the nazis right one might make the case that that has meaning it doesn't mean they're happy hundred percent right so meeting hummus is subtly different have you heard of the japanese concept of ikigai yes yeah yeah right i love ikigai this idea that um you know we should be looking we not should be but we could be looking for something in our life that we enjoy that we're good at that's what the world needs and what pays us money right the kind of holy grail does it were and i remember writing about this in my second book on stress i remember the book came out and i was in london i was giving a talk and at the end of the talk we were doing q and a i remember the back right of the hall this young lady had a hand up and she said dr shastaji i'm an 18 year old japanese student living in london i've grown up with the concept of ikigai my entire life and frankly i found it demoralizing demotivating too high a bar for me to get to and that stuck with me mate because i thought since then okay that's so interesting because i love this concept of icky guy she grows up with it and finds it off-putting i think the problem with these grand ideas of meaning purpose ikigai as much as i like them they're not for everyone someone someone might be hearing that in a call center right now they don't like their job they're doing it and they're like what icky guy you're kidding me mate i just want to get through and and pay the bills right so i think i bring it all back is this core happiness store that i've created is it applicable in all situations i think it is because if you look at it through the lens of what we're talking about this comes under alignment so that chat working in the call center they do the exercise and they figure out kindness is something that's really important to them then if on the way to work they stop in the coffee shop and they're kind to the barista they get on the bus to work and they're kind to the bus driver they go to the job they don't particularly like but they are kind to their colleagues and their boss they're living an aligned life they're living with meaning it doesn't mean that the job that they're in currently is the job that they love and they're going to be in forever but they're living in harmony with who they are and that's going to mean that meaning and purpose come naturally as a byproduct so i want people to really focus on alignment it's one pillar of happiness and i think your meaning and purpose will come can you talk to me about control as well i thought long and hard about this word control and i am denied was it the right word to use and i spoke to some of my patients i suspect some of my friends i don't really think it is when we understand it's about what are the things that i can do in my life that gives me a sense of control we know from the scientific research when you have a sense of control right you have better relationships you have longer relationships you're healthier you have lower stress levels you live longer so it's that sense of control and and that could mean many things to to different people you know for me i'm really big on morning routines right i know for me if i get up early if i have time to myself to have a little routine i've i've almost got this like resilient bubble around me doesn't matter what's going on in the world doesn't matter how bad work may or or may not get that day i've got an element of control because i've i've sort of nurtured that routine for myself so that's one that's one way that people can think about control and another way people might want to think about control is there's a and there's a chapter in the book called talk to strangers which is basically this idea that actually relationships are very important of course but there's kind of two different kinds of relationships that are the deep nurturing intimate relationships but there's also the there's also those kind of almost trivial interactions that we have day to day right so when you say hi to the barista or you know i said hi to your work colleagues when i got here those little things they are not trivial there's a network in your brain called the sociometer right it's constantly detecting your external world for threats and when it receives positive information like a smile like a you know a bit of a nod a handshake you know it it sort of relaxes you your stress levels go down you feel a sense of connection with the world around you coming back to control you feel that the external world is safe i've got degree of control there is order in the world let's focus on these simple things you can do each day if you say hi to the amazon delivery driver and smile at them say thank you to the barista and say a few nice words to them say hi to the bus driver and smile at them thank the postmen you are working on your happiness you know it seems trivial but it's not the research is so so clear right because it gives you a sense of control second pillar of the three and we've got to touch on the third pillar before i start getting into all of these topics because so it's so interesting that these are the things that you know we're talking about today because i think i spent all weekend um reading about studies on the importance of you call it the sociometer in the brain but just that that thing that connects you with your tribe but please do get into the third point which i think you said was contentment contentment yeah yeah contentment is about feeling calm and that sense of peace when you're at peace with your life and you're at peace with your decisions so what things in your life give you that sense of contentment and i really feel it's these three things when you put them all together the side effect of doing them is you're happy yeah right but but also happiness is not often what we think it is that that big billboard image of the the happy family on the beach with a smile on their face in the ocean behind them right that to me is not happiness that's a pleasurable experience yeah it can form part of a happy life but that's not happiness you can be sad and happy the way i look at happiness core happiness i was thinking about this last week i was chatting to someone who who was going through grief you know someone very close to them had died and you know we were having a really long deep conversation but they were present with their grief and they were able to share with me exactly how they were feeling no masks on at all in terms of these kind of metaphorical masks that we put on they were just being themselves that's called happiness because they're aligned right their inner thoughts are i feel sad upset frustrated for my loss and their external actions are completely aligned with that so i kind of feel really what happiness is about is living an intentional life it's about taking the time to understand who you are defining for yourself what happiness is or what success looks like not using society's definition you post a few days ago don't use society's definition of fun right that's a great post you know just because society says to have fun you need to go to a bar have loud music on and get drunk well if you like to sit at home in the bath reading a good book that that's great if you don't that's fine as well but it's got to be you it's your values so i can't tell someone what they need to necessarily do in all aspects of their life to be happy but be intentional about your life my girlfriend came upstairs yesterday when i was having a shower and she said to me that she tried the heel protein shake which lives on my fridge over there and she said it's amazing low calories you get your 20 odd grams of protein you get your 26 vitamins and minerals and it's nutritionally complete in the protein space there's lots of things but it's hard to find something that is nice especially when consumed just with water and that is nutritionally complete and that has about 100 calories in total while also giving you your 20 grams of protein if you haven't tried the cured protein product do give it a try the salted caramel one if you put some ice cubes in it and you put it in a blender and you try it is as good as pretty much any milkshake on the market just mixed with water it's been a game changer for me because i'm trying to drop my calorie intake and i'm trying to be a little bit more healthy with my diet so this is where heel fits in my life thank you for making a product that i actually like the salted caramel is my favorite i've got the banana one here which is the one my girlfriend likes but for me salted caramel is the one you know when people give um advice in their books and you know when i do it online with my content there's something which i realize has to be done first so as much as you could have told me to get into alignment the the counter force that was saying that was this deep sense of insecurity and that piece of work i had to do as you describe it to heal first before i could start looking with a clear view at um the way i was living my life because if you'd asked steve butler at 18 years old what his values were you know he would have said lamborghini next question he would have said money right i know there's not even values but that's what he would have said right so i'm interested to know how you think someone can go on the journey of healing um and understanding themselves in self-awareness which i think is the foundation and all the pillars you mentioned of happiness it's a great question um i don't think it's going to be you listen to this conversation you watch it on youtube you get the book whatever i don't think it's that you do that and then you're like oh i've got it i've figured it out now i know my values okay great no this is a journey it's the best journey you'll ever take but it's a journey it's not a one hit the first step in any change is awareness all behaviors serve and needs where every behavior we have is there for a reason you can't just i can't tell the patient you should drink less alcohol without helping them understand why do they need to be drinking that alcohol in the first place right it took me ages to to figure this out the dots i think why why why am i struggling why do they stop for two weeks then they they get back on the horse it's like oh we've not dealt with the underlying needs it's like new year's resolutions right no one has a problem going spinning four times a week for the first two weeks in january but third week fourth week when life gets busy and life gets stressed or they can give up booze for a couple of weeks and they just can't keep it going it's like you know i need it to unwind from my work day that's because your alcohol consumption is a symptom of the way you're living your life if you want to change that you can try and white knuckle it and reduce it sure you might be successful for a short period of time but you'll always go back unless you understand the behavior same thing kind of works for food cravings a lot of the time so someone's listening to this and they go okay i want to know what to do but even if they're starting to challenge themselves already and go you know i'm pretty interested what these two guys are saying you know i don't kind of know what my values are but i've got a feeling that i'm not living life in accordance with them like i think i'm chasing the wrong stuff but i don't quite know what to do about that even that awareness is progress right so i think it's really important we we can't always just find out get to the solution go and live happy lives it doesn't work like that so step one is awareness now if you have that awareness and you want to go further a simple thing you might want to do is what i call the identity menu in the book you might literally want to try and write down three values or even one value start with one right start with one right just write down one value and then in a week's time ask yourself how often in that week did you live in accordance with that how often in that week did you live in a way that was not in harmony with that okay it's not about beating yourself up it's not about holding yourself to this unattainable ideal it's just ask yourself the question just gently start compassionately probing what's going on right so i think that's a useful exercise and build up to three values if you can and you know these things need reassessing the other exercise i like which i think is really practical it's got two parts it's called define your happiness habits and write your happy ending right and if if you want we could try actually just do it if you're right for us so i would ask you stephen think of three things that really bring you a sense of happiness deep calm and contentment and make you really feel good um so i think one of them which i've actually read about in your book is about serving others and helping others it feels to me like a a happiness rush or a sense of fulfillment or contentment that i can't seem to get anywhere else the other one is like pursuing my artistic interests so things like when i can see my djing equipment over in the corner there when i do my djing or when i give give time to myself to write or create okay i call that like expression that's like yeah um and then i think the third one is is what i think you call in your book like movement so moving so um exercise when i go to the gym and i and i'm not sure why that is because this might fit into a number of categories because in in part it's like meditative when i'm on the running machine or on the peloton it's really meditative on the other part it's has there's obviously physiological impacts and biological impacts of the exercise and then on the third part it might just be because i'm giving time to myself so i'd say those are the three that came to mind straight away yeah okay so you've you've picked what i call three happiness habits yeah right so each week and please correct me if i've misinterpreted any of this um each week if you could do something that serves others if you could engage in your artistic um passions and you could do a form of movement you enjoy yeah there are three things that would give you you know real sense of happiness so i believe okay no no i i think they probably are and i'll share my name it's just second seconds let's get to the second part of the exercise okay it's called write your happy ending so imagine now you're on your deathbed yeah okay so at the end of this is it right look back on your life what are three things you will want to have done so that's really interesting because it's funny because the answers are different um one of them is definitely about connecting with others my friends so like my friends my family my niece that's like that's in fact so central to my happiness um the third is helping others that gives me a real sense of um that i spent my time in a worthwhile way and sorry the second and the third would be the third is a as a personal one it's the feeling that i've i've done my potential justice yeah lived up to your potential lived up to my potential done myself justice yeah yeah i love them i mean first of all thanks for sharing that um so what's really interesting when you do the second part now you can go back and redo the first one and what's really beautiful i think there's i think there's a real deceptive simplicity with this exercise it gives you the sort of granular day-to-day look at your life and happiness and it gives you the 30 000 foot kind of big picture view and you can see if they're aligned so if you do the three happiness habits each week doing something for someone else sorry serving others engaging creatively and um uh you know moving will that get you to your happy ending no so i was missing one you're missing one yeah the relationship piece yeah exactly yeah and so this is not about catching anyone out this is something i think we can all benefit from myself including on a regular basis it doesn't mean you can automatically change the entire trajectory of your life but it does mean this is about intention right it's like if that's what the goal is at the end well like for me i know three happiness habits for me are what number one spending undistracted time with my wife and my children each week that's really important number two doing something that helps improve the health and well-being of others really important number three having time to pursue things that i'm passionate about that's kind of my three i'm doing the the the final piece the 30 000 foot yeah so i know each week then for happiness habits if i have let's say five meals around the dinner table with my wife and kids that's where there's no phones and we're totally undistracted and in the moment right i know that i'm i'm doing that i know if i record an episode of my podcast each week i know that i'm doing something that's going to improve the lives of other people and if i have time to i don't know play guitar play snooker um you know whatever you know i've got all kinds of creative passions each week then i know that if i just consistently do that just a little bit each week i'm getting to the happy ending that i want and for that person who may be listening to this and struggling that may be something else that they can start doing you know and what's really interesting stephen is we think we think we're all quite different there was a study from last year which showed us that actually despite all our differences we feel as if we're being our true authentic selves when we're being kind compassionate doing things for others enthusiastic presence and in the moment right all of us and what i love about these exercises they really bring awareness and attention to your life you could say yeah i really value health i really value my health and well-being and then they can assess their life and go i do nothing each week to support that i say that's who i am but i'm not you can say as i did for many years i valued my friends you know what i got so busy with work i wasn't making time to see them and again it's not about beating yourself up this is really really important point this is about honesty and awareness right you're never going to become the person who you want to be until you know who is the person you are right now it's not about guilt it's not about shame it's about just transparency going okay all right i'm not aligned at the moment okay fine no problem i'm going to take one step this week i'm going to make an effort once a week i'm going to phone one of my best mates just for 10 minutes just to say hi even that is it's helping you become more aligned it's helping you get to that happy ending so you know maybe there's some useful stuff in there for people to kind of take and actually start applying it's so funny because when you said that exercise you know i could spend a lot of time as i think i have in the past trying to figure out who i was and the techniques are complicated and they're largely influenced by um who society thinks i should be and what my values are the minute i did that exercise it was so clear it was so unbelievably easy to do and so clear and then as you said when we zoomed out to my deathbed and said like what are the things in your last days that you're going to value to to see how obvious it was that i'd left out something so so so fundamentally important which is like my friends my family my relationships in my sort of you know the things that make me happy was like alarming to me it was like how are you not living in alignment mentally how how did you not know that that was so fundamental i think you just beautifully illustrate seeing that we can see it yeah brilliantly in other people oh hundred percent man i could see and you i could see it in my patients but you know what it's pretty hard sometimes to put the mirror up and see it in yourself do you know what i mean i think the other you know i think you you've asked a brilliant question what can that person do i think the other the other thing and probably arguably the biggest this is the biggest thing i think that's had the most impact on my happiness and wider health over the past years is this understanding of perspective that there are multiple perspectives on the same situation and i think it's a really important point for people to get so let's say someone's stuck in their life i think look i don't know what to do i'm trapped here right uh i i don't know i get up i go to work you know i try and look after my family you know i don't know this stuff about values and all that kind of stuff okay fine if you just forget all that stuff for a moment and go okay let me just see if i can start broadening my perspective because once you start broadening your perspective and start seeing things from somebody else's perspective it changes everything so one of the ways i do this is to understand that this phrase yeah i'll go as far as this this phrase has had the most impact on my health and happiness above anything else if i was the other person i would be doing exactly the same as them again a very simple phrase but when you really really get it you're basically saying if i was that person with their childhood their parents with their life experiences i would be acting in exactly the same way as them and if you think you wouldn't i would i would very gently invite you to consider that this may be your ego talking if they could act differently they would and what that does is it brings such a deep sense of compassion to every single day of your life you can start to have a perspective for them for example it could be maybe their daughter was sick last night and up and they didn't get much sleep maybe they think they're going to lose their job when they're they're late for work right whatever it is it doesn't matter the truth doesn't matter right for your happiness the truth i would say doesn't matter again i don't mean to be controversial but i think some people will take that i think that's quite controversial you're a football fan right there was a study done football match one incident right um two sets of fans they were interviewed about the incidents both of them had a completely different perspective on the same incident right you we all know that there's a foul or you know one team that's definitely foul that's a foul and a yellow card the other side that was nothing you didn't touch him he died we know that anyone who's got a partner right or had a partner you have a row you have a disagreement well depending on which side at the table you're sitting on you have a completely different perspective of the same situation right so i say in any situation choose a happiness story right i'll give you another example one of the most profound conversations i have ever had on my podcast was with this lady called edith eager when i spoke to her last year she was 93 years old at the age of 16 she was getting ready that evening she had a date with her boyfriends knock on the door her parents her and her sister get put on a train taken to auschwitz within a couple of hours of getting there edith's parents get murdered somehow she gets through the next few years she survives what she has taught me is that you can always create a different story on any single event she said when she was in auschwitz she was totally free the prisoners they were free they were the ones who won't be able to act and behave the way that they wanted to they were trapped in her mind she was free after her parents had died she had to dance for the guards right and she said the last thing my mom said to me was edith nobody can ever take away from you what you put inside your mind so she's dancing there she knows her parents are dead but in her mind she said wrong and i was dancing in budapest opera house there was a full orchestra there's full crowds i was dancing there right the other thing she said to me is i've been in auschwitz but i can tell you the greatest prison you will ever live in is the prison you create inside your minds so for people who are listening who struggle to forgive who struggle to see the other side who see someone put a tweet up and then spend an hour getting agitated and frustrated i humbly suggest to you if edith eager can write a different story in the hell of auschwitz i kind of feel we probably can as well it's so true that the greatest harm we cause to ourselves is is our own negative or illogical or self-harming stories as you were saying that i was thinking about even the stories i've i've told myself in the last 24 hours or the last week which have like tormented me mentally in the sense of they've just like bothered me unnecessarily and how much of a choice it was for me to focus on those stories if you know what i mean like as you say like someone tweeting something or leaving a comment and then that you then give 48 hours of your happiness to just this when you could as you've expressed so eloquently choose compassion for the person and you know you could you could choose to try and find the best intentions in any behavior right yeah the way i i put it in the book there's a little section called make everyone a hero i think it's such a great sentiment in life whenever something happens you don't like make them a hero make them a hero i challenge people try that for seven days if your life has not been improved in any way fine forget it say the guy was splashing nonsense i'm not interested i'm getting back to my cynical nature i'm gonna see the worst in everyone right fine it's up to people make them a hero the person who cuts you up find a way to make them a hero in your heads right march 2020 what happened everything's getting locked down toilet roll shortage on the shelves right so what do people do now i understand that was a very unique situation people are getting triggered people are getting scared i understand that but let's look at what was happening people were bad mouthing um who are these people who are taking all these toilet rolls it's so inconsiderate you know they shouldn't be doing that okay okay fine let's just see could we write a different story what might have happened well it could be that every shopper that day took one extra roll and so by the end of the day when the tv cameras came in no one actually did anything that bad they just took one extra roll and the supermarket stock was all planned around average shopping habits and behaviors okay um it could be that someone was really really scared and anxious and let's say they've got ulcerative colitis and they have to go to the toilet 20 times a day and they're petrified so maybe they did go and buy ten packs or maybe let's take it to another extreme maybe someone is skint right they've got no money they've got no prospects in life they thought you know what i can make a fortune here right so i'm gonna get them all i'm gonna sell them on ebay okay whatever you think of that if you can have compassion for that person and understand if i was them i'd be doing the same thing it changes everything it changes your physiology it changes your perspective and why i think that's so powerful particularly now more than ever stephen like we seemingly we're in a very divided and toxic world right seemingly what we need is more compassion right but how do you get compassion we can't just say you know i want to be more compassionate that can work for some people use this right make them a hero ask say to yourself if i were them i'd be doing the same thing you know it really helps humanity it helps you feel better individually but it will help connect you with people around you people who've got different views and perspectives it allows you to sit alongside them so this is probably one of the things that i use the most along with which sort of goes along with this um and this is sort of the big heading in chapter 5 of the book it's called seek out friction right look this is when you become a master of your own happiness right the whole goal of my work at the moment is to i don't want people to be dependent on the actions of other people for them to be happy right if you constantly getting triggered and and frustrated by the tone of your colleagues emails or the way that your partner is talking to you right if you're waiting for them to change in order for you to be happy well you could be waiting a long time if we go back to my core happiness stool you've lost control you have no control because you're dependent on other people so i talk about this as social friction right just as in in the gym you know you can do physical friction you can push up you can press up against your body and you get stronger i'm saying you can press up against other people and also get stronger so every time you get triggered i actually do this i do this every single day let's say let's say social media let's say you get a negative comment let's say i get negative comments in the past five years ago when i you know was first on bbc one about seven years ago now actually um i would have got triggered got so frustrated i would have felt really bad what's going on why is this happening you know all i'm trying to do is help people would have created this narrative now it's like ah why is this triggering me is there some truth to it that i can learn from or is it because the other person's having a bad day and they're taking it out on me and you become a master if you practice this every day right because what happens is that you take control over your inner thoughts you take control of your own happiness because it's like okay it doesn't matter you're being given opportunities every day to learn something for me i can i can speak but i know this to be true for most people it's because it's it's pressed on one of your insecurities right when you get truly secure in who you are what other people say it doesn't affect you like i've noticed this in my own life right we started off the conversation talking about external validation like the problem when you need external validation for your self-worth is that when you get it you feel great or you think you feel great it's a very fragile uh way of feeling great but when you get criticism you go to the other extreme where you feel worthless and you turn to whatever your junk happiness habit is instagram gambling drink porn whatever it is right you turn to that as a way of compensating but when you do the work when you look for social friction and you allow it to become your teacher you start to process your insecurities and then if people praise me now on social media say oh wrong in that podcast changed my life or you know your book has really had an impact on me and my mental well-being i like hearing that but it doesn't artificially elevate my ego like it might have done a few years ago but at the same time if i get criticism right if i get criticism it doesn't drag me down to those depths either i can i'm just a lot more level did that make sense 100 as you were saying that once again my mind sat there and thought how does he know all of this stuff and how has he gotten to a place where he can be so empathetic and he can understand others to the point that you can as you say make them a hero and practice that what seems like a pretty radical form of empathy in situations where others would resort to blame and um you know antagonism and attacking others and it appears to me that is because you've understood yourself and actually being able to see the you know what people might describe as the insecurities or the flaws in others or the triggers and others is only possible once you've understood yourself and it's funny because when i put certain things on instagram i know that i'm going to get backlash so if i say personal responsibility is really important you can choose for example in the case of what you've said there you can choose to make someone else a hero if someone cuts you off it's a choice um as to whether you're you're happy or you're triggered i know there's a small proportion of people who will slide into my dms and go you're wrong if they've cut me off that's forced me to be unhappy or i'm not at fault for being unhappy right and it tends to be the case that those that are able to make that person a hero or to practice empathy are those that have actually done the work to understand why they are triggered why they were insecure and why they react in the way they do so again it feels to me that this really underlying foundational piece of work that is the catalyst for being able to do all of these amazing things that you've written about and that you understand again is that like that awareness as you described it yeah i think he's spot on stephen it also comes from having lived through the mental turmoil of taking a different path of blaming others and seeing yourself as a victim and often we absorb these sort of patterns from our parents right i can see clearly now how mum and dad would react to the world and i could see how i absorbed a lot of that and i thought that's how you show up with the world but we can all choose to approach the world differently just because you have approached the world a certain way for all the years you've been on this planet let's say until this conversation right everyone listening or watching has a choice at the end of this conversation they can decide whether to act on something they've heard or not can i just press you on that one on that point there about your parents because i think it's it touched on something that i really relate to in my in one of my parents which is um and this might be an immigrant thing my mom was pretty badly racially abused for for you know living in plymouth she's a nigerian woman you know i really didn't see anyone else in my in my city that looked like her if i'm honest once upon a you know once in a while i might once a year but she was an anomaly in appearance she was a nigerian woman with long you know nigerian hair um and i grew up i have to say because she was often racially abused seeing a kind of bias in her towards thinking that the world was out to get her and um i don't think that served her if i'm gonna be completely honest if you know what i mean there that and you see in other people that kind of sense that they are a victim do i ever you know i would say this is how my mum very much has shown up with the world and similar stories you know there is all kinds of reasons for that and you absorb that you think that's the way you know that's what your parents how they react it's often what you absorb as a child you think that's the way so i can't believe they did that they they did that differently i would feel differently and it's really understanding that you have a choice in how you show the world you have a choice in how you feel about a situation you can choose a different story mum to be fair to my mum's now 81 she's pretty immobile uh me or my brother give her breakfast on most days um she is changing right she it's so wonderful to see sometimes it's like well done mum like you're not it's just so wonderful to see that any one of us can change at any age right we can make subtle choices small things that make a big difference you know i also grew up very protective you know you'd see things that weren't there you know man if someone cut me up in my 20s i'm not sure i should even say what went through my mind right you know i wasn't calm and content you know at all i'd get triggered i think they were you know whatever you know i may even shout in my car you know uh for the sake of my career should probably just not go any further but i'm just joking you know i'm saying i probably said things in my head or scream them out that i'm not particularly proud of now but i can see that i didn't have the emotional maturity and the emotional awareness to do anything different what is that what is that that vic is victimhood in your view often like an ill thought through form of self-defense that because i'm thinking about why say our per se our mothers who are subject to a lot of abuse or whatever why did they make the choice that the world was not on their side and how because that seems like maybe in the the short term it might help you so if something happens to you or you know you know you're unsuccessful in business um you can say well it was the bank they're racist um how how what is the cycle the psychology there and the human that's choosing to default to victimhood and you see it in a lot of my i see it a lot of my friends actually when they fail at something it appears that they use they use blame as a way to protect their self-esteem or i think you just nailed it that that's what it is it's protection it's it's to give you that feeling of safety that's what we're always craving we want to feel safe so it makes you feel safe actually it's not it's not me it's out there it's not in here it's out there that's the problem if that changed i think that's part of it so but is that because those people can't they could they can't deal with more that they're too they're too fragile that they can't deal with more what they perceive to be evidence of their inadequacy yeah absolutely and it also comes down to any trauma that they may be carrying from their childhoods this is the other thing i've learned stephen is that you know without going to details on mum and dads um that i don't have permission to share you know there were traumatic things that happened early on in mum's life and so now i can look at that with a deep level of compassion that oh that's why mum behaves the way she does because actually she got programmed at a young age that i have to be a certain way right and then you you pass it on and i think you said about your mum and my mum let me share something from from my life that maybe just fits in there a little bit which is we create these behavioral patterns usually in childhood right because we want the love and affection of our parents we want the validation because they're our caregivers right we need that to feel safe so touching what we said earlier i knew that if i came out with 100 there'd be smiles at home right everyone's happy wrong is done well right so i internalize that i think that's the way to be loved in life fast forward i'm at university and there's a passion here in all aspects of life um like whether i was seven and if i lost at ludo my mum says i would literally toss the board up and storm out the room like i was furious if i lost at ludo right and it sounds like a funny thing that your mum embarrasses you with from thailand no actually now that i've unpicked it it's actually very serious i remember i was at uni maybe second third fourth year at uni can't remember on a sunday often after the passing of the friday and saturday night we'd end up in diane's pool hall in edinburgh i go with one of my mates and i'm a pretty decent pool sneaker player right if i was ever losing i'd go into the toilets and look at myself in the mirror give myself a talking to you i'll tell these guys have a little slap on the face come back out more often than not i would go on and then win the match and i thought i just liked winning and i was competitive that was all the story complete nonsense it wasn't that i liked winning it was that the pain of losing was too great because it it reminds me on a deep primal level i'm not loved when i lose when i'm not the best right so it's that feeling of safety and here's the other thing if i did win i wasn't happy that one i was just happy that i didn't lose right and then you compensate you don't realize it it might be a bit more sugar that evening a few extra beers that night a little cheeky trip to the casino on the way back because you've got this discomfort in your body in your soul right that you need something you need a junk happiness habit to deal with it we're all going through that my parents your parents right they've they've also had childhood programming that they're playing at and i think when we really get that we can be compassionate i have to say that was just outstandingly beautiful the way you've articulated all of that and it really did bring me back to this sense of empathy which links to something you said earlier which is if i'd gone through what my mum had gone through coming from africa to the uk you know god knows what age she did i think maybe 17 having left school and then having to fight for survival in the way that my mum did and i what you know my mum is the single hardest working person i've ever met my entire life i would have behaved in the exact same way yeah and that really it does a remarkable thing for your perspective on them how you know how you view their struggle and how you view their current behavior which i think is actually a really good pathway to engaging with them and then being able to have conversations and that's it is such a beautiful sentence that one of had i been through what they've been through i would have behaved in the exact same way and that is completely true of my mother i did not i did not have to struggle in the way she did because of her struggle it's true for all of us actually i think we can all apply that to every single interaction in our life and in fact my challenge would be try it suck it and see see what life feels like see what your experience of life physically viscerally emotionally see what it feels like when you start to show up like that day to day right if you're skeptical okay i hate your skepticism my challenge to you if you're skeptical is try for three days just try it because i'm not here to try and convince people i'm not here to tell people what to do i know this has literally transformed the way i show up with the worlds and try it with your enemies right yeah sure try it with your parents who hopefully you love trap with your enemies try it with that person at work you don't like try it with that boss who really pisses you off and riles you up every time try it maybe you can't do that straight away maybe we have to work up to that this is a skill right happiness is a skill you can get better at it but how would you know how to get better at it when did you get taught the skill of happiness i didn't get taught it right i don't teach it at school i didn't teach at university i didn't learn it from my parents i didn't learn it from society in fact the lessons i learned from society were that you need to earn more money you need to get a better job you need to get a nicer car nicer holiday those things are signs of success and therefore happiness and it's a myth i think that's the biggest myth we fall for we think that's what happiness says success is success happiness is happiness they can sometimes coincide but they don't always but they can do if you back up if you take a pause you start to do some of the things that we're talking about you start to have a bit of time to reflect you know solitude stephen is so important right every bit of our free time now is sucked up like i went to this gorgeous coffee shop next to your studio just before i came in right now i imagine 15 years ago you go into any coffee shop in london you'd be standing in the queue you'd be waiting you know there might be five people in front of you fine you'll be looking around you'll be you might bump into someone you know you might be daydreaming now what happens if you go into any coffee shop everyone's head down stuck in their phone right you're looking you're trying to catch up with your emails just have a quick cheeky look on instagram i'm not criticizing anyone for doing that but that comes at a cost it means these little micro moments of downtime where your brain is trying to solve problems for you and process life they're being lost if you're constantly consuming right if you're constantly consuming content from outside whatever it is even good content right even nourishing content if you're constantly consuming you're not allowing your own thoughts and emotions to come up you know every summer now i take a social media break i tried it two years ago for the first i think three years ago for the first time i took a few days to really get into it then after two weeks i didn't want to go back on now i'm not anti-social media right i can see the value that it has i use it to try and spread helpful messaging as you do but i felt really good and what what i really experienced even as i allowed these deep innermost feelings to come out i started to figure out what i think what i think not what the world thinks because that's half the problem going back to what you said that person who's confused right it doesn't know where to start here's another tip for them see if you can have 10 minutes a day without your phone without music on right without an app that you're looking at without distraction just sit maybe with a journal if you want but just see what comes up because often we're so scared of what's going to come up we distract and i would say you know for me a daily practice of solitude for me typically it's first thing in the morning is so needed right the way i describe it to people it's like an early warning system right so when i was a junior doctor in edinburgh i remember being taught when you're looking after sick patients if you do regular what we call obs so heart rate respiratory rates um you know temperature depending on what parameters they fit into we could detect several hours beforehand who was going to end up needing high dependency beds or intensive care it was like it was really simple concept that by doing these regular checks we can then take a verse of action and make sure that person doesn't end up going downhill and i see my daily practice of solitude as my early warning system like it allows me to see what's coming up right i know for years stephen i say i know i know now but i didn't know then when my stress load was going up work family pressure i'd feel this real tightness to my right upper back but i was so busy i didn't even notice it now i notice i know if in the morning when i'm doing my solitude practice i feel that i'm like oh okay there's stuff going on right what is there is it work is it emotional and it allows me to intentionally say okay do i need to cut out some commitments i've got do i need to have a conversation with my wife about something that's been bothering me and i haven't said anything yet everything i recommend steven is simple i don't think anything i've suggested so far costs any money at all none of them actually take that much time i'm really really passionate about making sure this information is accessible to everyone i've worked in affluent areas i've worked in some very very deprived areas right and actually we're all of course there are different pressures but actually we're all having the same universal human experience the same ingredients are there in all of us that when we apply them they make our lives better no matter where we are right someone when i was working in order right an area of low socioeconomic status a lot of my patients want benefits very poor income levels you know you would say a very you know struggling area financially i can't take away their poverty and their stress from life but if i can help them have 10 minutes of themselves each morning and do some breathing practices or even write in a journal what they're feeling that is going to lower their stress load and that means they're going to be better able to show up in their life and deal with their stresses right so when people say oh health happiness it's the preserve of the middle classes and the wealthy i disagree i absolutely disagree and i'm so passionate to get that message across health and happiness can be accessible to everyone yes it can be challenging for some people no question there could be lots that you want to change there'll be lots that you ideally would wish it wasn't the way it is but you can choose your response to every single one of those things you absolutely can and when you learn to do that that's freedom you know what's the victor frankel quote in between stimulus and response is a space in that space lies your power to choose your response and with your response lies your growth and your freedom one of the things you touched on there which was really is really foundational to everything you went on to say was this idea of a morning routine and um you know when i do q and a's and stuff like that on social media people will always ask me steve what's your morning routine my morning routine is pretty shitty i'll be completely honest i would never lie to anybody about that it's really really shitty and it's inconsistent and it's quite it's unthinking so it's kind of being dragged into the day um you describe these the 3ms of a really good morning routine what are those three m's of a good morning routine what can i do today how long is it going to take me and what do you believe a good morning routine contains yeah it's a big picture of you here i have a bias towards morning routines because i have found in my own life they've really really helped me so let me just talk about stress for a moment because this really plays into why i think morning routines are so important i've got this concept of micro stress doses and stress thresholds so every one of us have got our own unique personal stress threshold right that depends on your life how you deal with things and what's going on and what we get to that threshold that's when things start to go wrong that's when we um we snap at someone we have a fight with our partner our net goes or our back goes into spasm right that's when you're at your threshold right so i'm saying to people and i've i've really found this to be true for pretty much everyone let's say you wake up and you are far away from your threshold you've had a good night's sleep right so you're feeling you've been good what's the average morning for a lot of people these days okay let's say the alarm goes off at 6 30 right so they're in a deep sleep alarm goes off jolts them out of that sleep they have to get it okay that's micro stress dose or msd number one okay pick up the phone oh man i'm just gonna put it on snooze you know i need a bit more snooze put it back six minutes later it goes on again msd number two you need pick up your phone you get i'm quick you're gonna check email oh man there were these three emails i didn't get back to yesterday oh man i need to do that msd number three um have a quick look on instagram someone's left you a snarky comment msd number four then you realize oh man i've been in bed for 10 minutes i have to get up get ready i've got a guest coming to shoot a podcast with i'm not talking about your life i'm just saying anyone's life you are talking about mine right and so here's the point at me ronan each one of those things right is a micro stress dose and each one of those is getting you closer and closer to that stress threshold the mistake we make is that when something happens at three o'clock in the afternoon right when that email from your colleague frustrates you you think it was that email but it wasn't the email it was the fact that you've already acquired 20 micro stress doses you're right at your threshold you've got no capacity to deal with it so that email now bothers you so what i suggest to people is many people leave the house in the morning having already accumulated about 15 micro stress doses so they're already a lot closer to their threshold than they would have otherwise mean which means they've got less resilience they won't take much for them to get triggered right so why i think morning routines can be so valuable is they can reduce how many micro stress doses you're exposed to first thing in the morning so you are going into your day with much more headroom and much more resilience but i think they're also useful if you're feeling quite stressed when you wake up and anxious i think they help almost undo the damage of microstrategies and bring you back to baseline was that clear perfectly clear so that's my kind of overarching view on why they're so important so for me i know if i do that morning routine yes it gives me perspective on my life it allows me to reflect but it also um feeds the control leg of the core happiness stool but it also means that i'm not exposing myself to micro stressors in fact i'm getting back to baseline or i'm going into negative i'm actually giving myself a lot more resilience and capability to face the day so i was trying to simplify things to people so i think a complete morning route scene for me has got these three m's mindfulness movement mindset and that's how i orientate my own morning routine so i started with mindfulness now i've been doing this for a few years right and currently my morning routine is about 30 minutes but that's because i've created a life where i can do that and it works for me and i get up silly early that's also because my kids have always been early wises and i know if i don't get that time to myself i'm just not as good a dad and i'm not as good a husband so my bedtime has got earlier and earlier so i can get up earlier and earlier before my kids do right so i start with mindfulness which at the moment is a practice of breath work and then meditation then what i do i go to my kitchen and i put coffee on now very particular with how i do my coffee i weigh out 15 grams in the french press i pour 250 grams of water and i put a timer on for five minutes why is that important it's not it's the way i like my coffee but the point is i know for five minutes my coffee's gonna brew so in those five minutes i don't go on instagram i don't check my email i do a workout in my kitchen in my pajamas right i'm in my pajamas i'm not to put on any fancy gear i might do a bodyweight workout i might have a kettlebell kicking around whatever i feel like i will do and then i get the gorgeous rewards of a hot fresh cup of organic coffee that i like and i sit there and i'll read something um positive like i've got a few books kicking around in my living room i'll just pick one that i'm drawn to i'd probably read for about 10 minutes while sipping coffee something that's not negative that's uplifting right so that's what it looks like for me now sometimes my daughter is currently nine she's got a sixth sense that daddy's up and she creeps in with me if she gets in with me what two things i want to say about that the old wrong good from a few years ago we got frustrated man i kind of need i want my own space you know why yeah you know i should have got up earlier i don't do that anymore i'm a lot more compassionate to myself i use that i go okay great okay great she's here okay okay darling just sit here daddy's just finishing off my meditation and she said i think okay this is cool like i don't need to look at it as a problem this is life right if we think life is gonna be great when everything goes our way we're gonna be waiting a long time so i embrace it now go fantastic and then i also think as a dad what she's also now seeing daddy prioritizes his health he thinks it's important to look after his mental well-being every day i'm hoping that she also absorbs some of these ideas as she grows up but the mindset piece i don't sit there and read if my daughter said we instead do affirmations together so there's really good research on affirmations in terms of what they do for us just short positive powerful statement so the one we do together is we just say i'm happy i'm calm i'm stress free right so the two of us sit there we hold hands and we say that for a minute at the end of it i feel brilliant she feels amazing no i get it some people hear that okay that is cheesy as anything and maybe it is but you know what there's good research on it undergraduate students who did affirmations before their exam perform better right you know how you program your mind matters so that's what mine looks like right it used to be about five ten minutes now yeah i can do half an hour right but i've also become aligned i've now i go to bed earlier right and let's not forget stephen you're at a different stage in life to me right i'm in my early 40s i'm happily married i've got two young kids right you're in your late 20s right was i doing morning routines when i was 29 no i wasn't it's like clue that i text you at 2 a.m last night isn't it yeah well i woke up i was like oh man like i'm getting up to do my routine and steve has just gone to bed but but let me tell you about a patient who i saw many years ago i can't remember how old she was she's probably around 42 really bad skin and i strongly felt that stress was exacerbating and really aggravating her skin and she said that's actually i don't have time for any of this stuff right i'm busy i've got two kids i've got to get out to work and we try and make various things but i managed to persuade her and inspire her to try a five minute routine and this is what she did she did the three m's in five minutes it's just one minute of what i call three four five breathing right so you breathe in for three you hold for four and you breathe out for five any time your out breath is longer than your in-breath you help to lower your body's stress response and activate its relaxation response okay there's many ways you can do that but i like this breath that i call the three four five breaths so she did one minute three four five breathing she did two minutes of yoga right she had some of her favorite sequencing two minutes of yoga and then she did two minutes of affirmations that's it and she got on with the day she came to see me a few weeks later and she thought she actually i just feel so much better and her skin complaints had gone down by over 50 and over the course of the next few months she was hardly getting any flare-ups at all because it was a ripple effect it wasn't just that but by doing that and giving her that little bubble of resilience first thing in the morning she would then go out for a walk at lunch time instead of just sitting in the canteen on her phone she'd go i'm gonna go for ten minute walk around the block you know it so for me it's just you showing yourself right at the start of the day you know what i'm worth it i'm worth spending a bit of time on today and for me i'm a i've got a bias there because if i don't do stuff like that in the morning i don't do it once the day starts forget it and it's something that might have value for your audience steven and i you know i guess i'm coming and thinking steven bartlett successful businessman loads of entrepreneurs listening um thinking about you know business and stuff and i'm i you know i i kind of want to help people and let's let's zoom into the middle and movement why is it that i'm able to do a five minute workout every day like i've really missed a day for three years that's not because i've got more motivation than anyone else it's because i understand the science of behavior change right i think it's gonna i hope it's gonna have value for people there's two big rules i've learned about human behavior number one is if you make something easy you will do it so what's that got to do with my morning routine well i made it so easy for me to do right i don't need to buy any equipment everything's there i don't need to get changed i don't need to look up a workout i don't need to do it's it literally happens because i don't have to think i've made it really easy and to zoom this out to business for a moment it's reported that when amazon went to one click ordering it's reported their profits went up by 300 million dollars a year right so let's rewind 10 years when they didn't have it what did you have to do put in your order go to the next screen you know type in your card deals go to the next screen confirm audit right every single step is a reason to procrastinate pull out and not make the purchase so what do they do one click ordering boom before you blinked something's coming that evening right so they're doing what i think they should do for their business why do netflix roll one video or one show into the next one it's not out of the goodness of their own hearts to go oh you know let's help people no they're using the science of human behavior before you realize it's 12 30 at night i need to go to bed i've got to get it for work you are straight into another episode so you don't stop that's why youtube roll and see the next video right so these guys understand human behavior when we as humans try and apply it to our own health we throw it out the window we think it's got to be hard it's got to be really tough i've got to go running one hour four times a week and we we again first two weeks in january we managed to do it then we fall off the wagon because we think motivation is going to last forever and it doesn't and the science is called the motivation wave motivation comes up motivation goes down plan your behaviors for when your motivation is down not when it's up then you will still do it so number one is you make it easy i've made it easy number two which is just as important as where are you gonna put this behavior you can't just think about it oh i'm gonna i'm gonna meditate i'm gonna move no you need to be very intentional now every single behavior we do needs a trigger right so a trigger could be oh i remember to do it sure that works it's just the most unreliable trigger that exists the next best trigger is like um a notification like uh you know oh you've got to be here to record a podcast with stephen okay great i know i've got to do that or you put a post-it note on your fridge that's great but the very best trigger as evidenced by the research and a lot of this comes from professor bj fogg at stanford instagram was literally invented in his class as an assignment essentially he has shown that if you stick on your new behavior onto an existing habit it's much more likely to happen like the coffee like the coffee i don't need my pa to phone me at five in the morning say hey rongan listen uh you must remember to make your coffee i don't need my google calendar notification to pop say hey wrong don't don't forget to make your coffee i'm gonna do that it's locked in as a habit i don't have to give it any conscience but it's going to happen so therefore if i stick my workout on there i vastly increase the likelihood then it's going to happen add on to the fact that i keep kettlebells and dumbbells in my kitchen my wife used to say can we not just put these away in the cupboard and i said listen babe here's the thing and i've seen this with patients if you put this stuff out of the way so that the kitchen looks nice right i'm never gonna lift up that weight out of sight out of mind we need to constantly trigger so the kitchen's not a mess it's just in the corner there's a kettlebell so as i'm making the coffee i can see it it's looking at me even if all i do is pick it up to move it i've picked it up and what it does steven is that on a very on a very base primal level it shows me each morning that i have value that i'm worth treating with respect you know chapter three the book is all about treat yourself with respect many of us um as i've done for much of my life don't we struggle with compassion for ourselves we struggle to be kind to ourselves right but the research is really clear people who are more compassionate to themselves they're healthier they're happier they're more successful at work we think we think we've got to beat ourselves up inside to do stuff right it's a myth it's a short term when it's a long-term fail and there are simple things that we can do quick one as we all know energy independence and living a little greener has never been more important for a better future it's a journey i've been on over the last couple of years that i've shared with you sporadically ever since i sold my range over sport and bought an electric bicycle and there's a lot of people out there that listen to this podcast that are looking to make that sustainable switch in the things that run their daily life whether it's their home their car their vehicles whatever it might be so when a good friend of mine at a company called my energy called jordan told me she was interested in sponsoring this podcast i jumped at the opportunity so for those of you that don't know my energy are a uk renewable energy brand whose mission is to increase the usage of green energy helping people like you and i to save time and money when it comes to making sustainable switches in our lives so if this resonates with you and you're the type of person that's been looking or thinking about going on your own sustainability journey i highly recommend checking them out at my myenergy.com a lot of people when they talk about health and happiness in those topics you know they tend to focus on things like what we eat you know that seems to be a really big um factor in health one of the things we've talked about there that i also read about in your in your work is you would actually suggest that maybe the most foundational thing to all of our lives and it's kind of clearly one of the things that i've i've not been so consistent with is sleep so why is sleep so foundational and so so important i actually read that you said if there was one sort of health recommendation you would make to everybody it would be to try and get more sleep why do you prioritize that so highly why is that so important i think the reason why sleep is so important for society at the moment is because of how much we've lost so depending on which study you read you'll have a slightly different results but essentially compared to about 60 years ago you know we may have lost up to 25 of our sleep right so on an eight hour sleep cycle we may have lost you know two hours of sleep right now when you think about what sleep does for the body and the brain and the mind you'd be like well actually that is gonna have a consequence so in the short term we all know what does that feel like when we haven't slept well okay do we feel like our best selves no we're a bit irritable we're a bit moody what are we like with those close to us when we haven't slept well are we patient and calm are we a bit ratty a bit angsty what do you crave when you haven't slept well you don't crave fruit and vegetables and whole foods you crave sugar and cakes and candy right because your hormones change when you haven't slept properly right you're less able to resist temptation when you haven't slept right you're much more likely to get emotionally triggered when you haven't slept so sleep is really really important in the short term but in the long term sleep deprivation is associated with pretty much every single chronic disease we have heart disease alzheimer's um autoimmune disease all these things now we're pretty sure are directly not just associated with sleep deprivation is thought to be causative right so this is why we think i'm just going to crush it in my 20s 30s you know i'll sleep when i'm dead i'll sleep later i get there are phases in our life where we have to probably work harder than we would ideally do we we get opportunities we have to take it we feel we have to take advantage of them fine i get that i'm not saying you're gonna sleep seven to eight hours every single night i don't manage to and i do prioritize my sleep but by and large the biggest problem we have with sleep is that we don't prioritize it we've never lived in a society where there are this many distractions from sleep a million years ago you didn't have you know what you do it gets dark you have a campfire you sit around and chat and then yeah you could go off to bed aren't you it's so true we live as if sleep is the the only optional thing it's the thing that can we could do one hour two hours three hours but we then over prioritize but i can't miss that appointment i can't miss that work commitment but the sleep can come and go it's optional yeah and it's and i get the temptation there's always something you could do you could watch a youtube video you could watch a new boss series you know i understand that there are distractions i totally get that but if you are struggling in life if you can't focus as much as you want to at work if you've tried going on diets before and you can't stick to eating the right kinds of foods that you're trying to choose you may be better off focusing on your sleep i've helped people lose weight i've helped people improve so many aspects of their health by not changing their diet and i'm a big proponent of whole food-based diets right but i've gone what's the lever i need to turn here not what can i lecture the patient about what is the lever i need to turn here so i talk about these four pillars of health certainly for physical health food movement sleep and relaxation and when my first book came out talking about this about five years ago people say doctor where should i start and i said well look we're all different ask yourself this question ask yourself which of these four pillars do i need the most help with because we all kind of intuitively know for me it's probably stress like my diet movement's pretty good i'm pretty good in my sleep but if i could do more to manage stress that would have a huge impact on my health but we don't do that we go to our favorite bit right so people who've already pretty good with their diet they try and make it five percent better negating the fact that they're only sleeping four and a half hours every night but go to your weakest link make a small change there i'm not talking about seven eight hours if you can even sleep for 15 minutes more a night you will have a noticeable and measurable impact on your physiology and the way that you feel and the other thing we're now learning about um sleep particularly i think it's the rem the rem phase of sleep is this what sleep researchers are calling emotional first aid why it allows you to process and you know kind of regulate emotions and memories so we are living in this time of the mental health epidemic i'm very concerned over what the impact of the last couple years is going to have on people's mental well-being but a lot of people don't realize that sleep when you sleep more when you sleep of better quality you actually do emotional first aid you actually are better at processing emotions your relationships will be better your mood will be better when you slept more so the number one thing we don't do is prioritize it so for most people if all they do is prioritize it that would be a big start and then i always think i need to say when i'm talking about sleep i don't want to stress people out because some people may hear that stephen and go um i know i'm stressed out right i've heard what you just said sleep's gonna do or i've got a young child i can't sleep through the night that's okay we all have phases like that this is day in day out over a period of years i'm talking about it as a chronic disease but there are small things that you can do right getting outside in the morning for even 10 minutes and seeing natural light that will help you sleep better at night that is free it is accessible to everyone right why if you think about what i said about a million years ago we've we have evolved as humans to have a big differential between our maximum light exposure and our minimum light exposure right so typically in the day we'd be outside and at night time would be completely dark right so so light is measured in a unit of light called lux right completely dark room zero lux if you go outside on a cloudy day in the uk overcast cloudy day for 10 or 15 minutes you're going to get about 10 000 looks through your eyes go back on a sunny day you're going to get about 20 or 30 000 likes through your eyes go into the most brightly lit office building in the uk you're probably going to get between 500 and 700 lux it's not much even on a cloudy day you're getting so much more than you would get inside so for some people all they have to do is get outside in the morning for 10 minutes or even at lunch time go for a walk outside for 10 minutes that will help set what's called your circadian rhythm which helps you sleep better at night so that's a simple one caffeine's a big one right you know i love coffee but i don't drink it after midday right i'll drink it in the morning i won't drink it after midday there are genetic differences between different people and how we process it for sure but you know by and large half life is six hours so that means if you have a large coffee at midday at 6 p.m half of that caffeine is going around your brain and it could be at midnight a quarter could still be going around your brain so this is not about lecturing this is about hopefully empowering people to go oh maybe that 3pm coffee i take to get me through the afternoon oh maybe that's why i can't sleep well and then i'm even more tired the next day and i'm stuck in this vicious cycle where i need the caffeine to keep getting me through and again if someone's listening to this and they're not sure i would say okay why not try for seven days only having caffeine in the morning and just see what happens observe do you feel better does it help do you have more energy great and if you think you're somewhere and you really think it's a problem you might want to wean down and try seven days without i never tell my patient to stop drinking coffee or to stop drinking alcohol i want to help show them the impact it's having right so let's say a patient's um drinking too much alcohol for their health i want to help persuade them to go for seven days without and see how they feel right if they can experience how they feel differently and then they go yeah i love it but you know what the amount of fun i get on a friday night hanging out with my mates having a few beers it's worth the hangover and the fatigue and the irritability on saturday if they say that they're happy with that trade-off okay fine but a lot of people are not aware of the trade-off like with coffee a lot we are drinking so much we are a nation of caffeine addicts we're a world of caffeine addicts frankly it's a psychoactive stimulants it's a beautiful one but it's a psychoactive stimulant so i'm all i'm saying is if you're struggling with your sleep you know you might want to reduce it you might want to knock it back a bit and there's plenty more we could talk about with sleep but all i want to say to people is small changes to your sleep make a difference don't set the goal that's going to be eight hours a night sure if you can do that wonderful but even 15 minutes more a day will absolutely make a difference one of the moments in your book that you describe as being really pivotal and you've referenced early as being pivotal to your life was the moment your child got ill um your six month old child became unwell and the kind of that became a catalyst in your life for i guess many things can you talk to me about why that was so um pivotal and and and why when your child became ill you you know that was in part what i understand is part of the inspiration behind many of the thoughts in the book my son jainam um getting sick at six months old literally changed the course of my career but i wouldn't be doing what i'm doing today had that not happened so rewind 2010 i become a father for the first time right super excited right it's amazing we're new parents everything's going well bloody blahdy blah and that december um the end of december we were we decided to go on holiday for a week in france i've got friends out there one of them's got a house out there we were going to go and stay there and we flew out just after christmas my wife myself and my son and we got to my friend's house they weren't going to be there on the next day and we meant to sleep downstairs there that was the room that we'd been allocated at my friend's place and normally my wife would have probably gone and put him to sleep but she said she didn't feel she wanted to he was a bit sniffly he wasn't um [Music] you know she mother's intuition called whatever you will she didn't do it anyway we're we're upstairs in this kind of open plank kitchen i think i'm doing some washing up and then she calls out to me he says wrong and he's not moving i drop everything turn around see him and um i think he's probably choking because he's had a lot of phlegm all day so i take him turn him over i try and clear his airway nothing's happening uh i probably froze i can't quite remember now with clarity but my said look we just got to get into the hospital so we got to the hospital which is two minutes away we got in and you could see how scared the uh medics were because it's not uncommon for children at the age of six months to have a convulsion it's something we call a febrile convulsion there's a fever that causes the convulsion but he had no fever they were like well why on earth is a six-month-old kid just stopped moving and had a convulsion so he got blue lighted down there because it was a little mountain resort down to the valley my wife's going in the ambulance i'm like following in the car thing what on earth is happening we get there you know he's motionless we're super scared we thought we might lose him that night he had two lumbar punctures he had all kinds of blood tests then it turns out later that he had very low levels of calcium in his blood which is why he had a convulsion like well why has that happened and i said look we're still waiting for more tests a few hours later it comes back he's got no vitamin d in his body well very low levels of vitamin d that's why his calcium drops thankfully he got a calcium infusion he got vitamin d five days later you know we get discharged but why did that have such a big impact on me well hey of course i nearly my son nearly died but i thought i'd let him down that's the truth demon i thought my my son has nearly died from a preventable vitamin deficiency i've gone to one of europe's most prestigious medical schools edinburgh i've got an immunology degree i've done my specialist exams done my general practice exams with all my so-called qualifications i was unable to prevent my son from getting sick so i took it personally as if i had messed up and actually weirdly enough a few weeks before that i'd become aware of vitamin d i'd gone i remember thinking shouldn't my son be on vitamin d this was years ago i remember phoning my wife from work said hey can you go and take him to the doctor we're told as doctors not to make medical decisions for our own family it's not deemed good practice i sent her a protocol to just show that to the doctor say your husband's a gp you know he's just thinking about about this and the gp just laughed her out said you could have just printed you could just type this up on word this is nonsense he doesn't need anything anyway two weeks later he's in france convulsion nearly dies why does that have such a big impact on me why has it had such a big impact on me because i thought i'd failed right my whole identity is is around being perfect at that point so i want perfection in every aspect of my life oh i wanted perfectionary aspects of my life and of course my darling son i thought so guilty stephen i became obsessed right modern medicine saved his life but that's it modern medicine often stops at that point i i was asking him well what happens if he's not had victim and d in a system for the last few months which he didn't vitamin d is critical for our immune system it's critical could this be why he's got eczema could this be contributing fast there's a look he's he's fine now and i thought this is not good enough for me so i made it my mission i said to myself internally i don't think i ever verbalized it out i said i am going to get my son back to full health as if this had never happened i became obsessed i'd read up about vitamin d that led me to the gut microbiome that led me to all kinds of stuff that i never learned at medical school that i've used to help him he is a thriving happy healthy strong 11 year old boy okay the principles and the tools that i've learned are what i've been using with my patients for years it's what i used on doctor in the house on bbc one to show people all around the country and it's gone to 70 countries around the world that all kinds of conditions type 2 diabetes fibromyalgia panic attacks anxiety irritable bowel syndrome can all be either reversed or significantly improved by making small changes to our lifestyle that moment drove me to learn all this stuff which i now share and help you know arguing millions of people now and for years i wished it didn't happen but i've i've changed my view for two reasons one reason was that guilt i felt stephen i carried in as a dad he doesn't need his dad feeling guilty that doesn't make me a calm present attentive father that brings baggage into the relationship and i i could see that well i i'd like to think particularly these days i've got a high degree of self-awareness i could see that see wrong this is guilt it's not his fault he doesn't need a guilty dad so that was a stimulus to go inward and figure some of this stuff out to figure out where does this come from but it all plays in stephen or you know as we talk you can see the theme in the start of our conversation in the middle now talking about my son i have expected perfection of myself in everything i've ever done right that's been my identity with my son i felt as though i let him down now i've let go of pretty much all of that it i say pretty much because it still pops in so in my role as a father i think i do a good job they're kind considerate kids they're happy but could i do a better job probably i'm not going to beat myself up on that anymore but i want to work on that so now i look back and i've now told myself a different story right this is true you can tell me if you think it's true i now think that was meant to happen that happened so that daddy could learn all of the um tools that i've learned to help him and now help thousands of people hundreds of thousands you know as i say arguing millions i wouldn't have had those learnings had it not happen now when i started thinking like that i would think yeah but why did he have to go through that in order for me to learn this but again that's me putting a story what do you mean go through it maybe he doesn't know he's been through anything maybe that's his life journey maybe he's going to learn loads from that experience do you know what i mean and that's the perspective choice i guess you you talked about earlier it's almost like making an incident a negative incident the hero of your own life as opposed to be you know shrouding it with guilt and blame and resentment so yeah it's choosing a happiness story about it because ultimately i can't change the reality of what happened whether i wanted it to or not of course at that moment would i want it to happen no of course not but now given that it can't be changed given that it is has happened and is now in the past how now to show up in my everyday life and be happy be content help people serve people serve my children as a good father well it's to let go of that and move on choose a happiness story we can all do it it's hard sometimes but it doesn't mean it's not possible and what is your mission now as you look ahead to the future you've achieved so much across such a diverse a range of pursuits you know everything from your tv to podcast to books and everything in between your work as a gp your medical practice everything what is your mission now as you look ahead to your future the mission that i have stated publicly for the last few years has been over the course of my career i want to help 100 million people live better lives i want to help them with their health and their happiness but you know over the last few months that's not been sitting that well with me anymore i mean i'm really good friends with my videographer gareth who films every podcast that i do and we've been chatting a lot about it and you know when i first stated that publicly for the first time i was so scared well people think he's got a big ego you know i did i didn't i didn't want partly didn't want to share that i thought what will people think of me right why that's been so good for me is it's helped me make decisions as you know the amount of incoming into our inboxes and what we could be doing is vast so the hundred millifigure allows me to think okay is this going to get me closer to 100 million or not so i think it's served a really good role i think missions can do at particular moments in life but we don't need to be stuck to them forever so you know that figure you know i thought well five million people each week are watching doctor in the house in bbc one okay that means if only one percent of people watch that and make a change in their life that's a lot of people right and now that's gone to 70 countries around the world i'm like okay so this is how you can use the media to amplify your message and help people with hopefully a strong simple message all over the world right now i think and and that's helped me do things like you know i'll be honest like when i started my podcast it was just a bit of fun right i didn't have a name i didn't have a logo um i just thought okay this would be cool i didn't know what the name was when i was interviewing people like the first six interviews but it's evolved into you know like your show i guess like a juggernaut show which has a huge following that impacts the lives of hundreds of thousands of people each week right so the mission served me but it's not sure like i don't have a new replacement one at the moment but i almost think 100 million is limiting well why why a hundred million right that's not said with any level of arrogance it's just like well every human has unlimited potential you know this is what i always try and do i want every person who reads my books or listens to my podcast to feel that they can be the architect of their own health and happiness that's not me diminishing the fact that your environment that society plays a role no but even if it does i still want that person to feel that they have agency and they've got an element of control so if i think about short-term goals you know i very much want this book to be a success not so that it can feed my ego but because i genuinely think the 10 chapters the 10 life lessons are universal so whoever you are wherever you are in life i think these 10 chapters these 10 lessons hold true for everyone if anyone disagrees i'd welcome a conversation about it but i really think they do and i think they're sort of things that people can revisit they use them then in a few months when life goes off track they can come back that's one immediate goal but i think going beyond that the mission's about conversation right conversation matters long-form conversation like what you do on this show like what i do on my show that matters we need that now more than ever everything is reduced down to that that that smallest sound bite that we can get out there the problem is that comes at a cost because we lose perspective it doesn't make us compassionate it makes us angry right people are isolated there's a lack of community people feel lonely it's driving them to junk happiness habits i've got so many young men who've come to see me who've got pornography addiction right they can't even look me in the eye when they tell me they're that ashamed and embarrassed they've not told anyone they've not taught their friends they've not told their parents there will be someone stephen listening to this right now who's got an issue with pornography and they don't know where to turn picking up on that point of loneliness i think in our society we view loneliness as a sad thing in the sense that when someone's lonely it almost feels like it's a sign of their inadequacy or they're like lack of attraction or then they're not a compelling human being they weren't able to forge interactions so although i i've now come to learn that it's in fact a signal to get back to our tribes we have we don't treat it like other signals we don't treat it like thirst we don't treat it like hunger we will say if we're thirsty or we're hungry but we won't say if we're lonely because it's stigmatized right um i came to learn from the research i've done and i saw similar stats which were terrifying in your work is that loneliness isn't a sad thing it's actually a really dangerous thing so can you speak to the the negative consequence of loneliness the way society is set up now is making us lonely we've moved away from work we've moved away from our families we don't have the tribes around us and it's very very damaging for our health right some research suggests that the feeling of being lonely is as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes per day one five right increases our risk of heart disease strokes you're more likely to die earlier if you feel lonely why is that right think about it a million years ago you're with your tribe you're with your community right if a wild predator is approaching the tribe your stress response kicks into gear that's a good thing it's going to help you take action to keep you safe brilliant all kinds of things happen in the body when that happens loneliness is also a signal think back a million years ago if you were out by yourself you don't have your tribe around you your body is clever your body knows you are at risk you are vulnerable to attack so it activates your stress response your blood sugar goes up your blood pressure goes up your blood becomes more prone to clotting right you're amygdala your emotional brain goes on to high alert so you're hyper vigilant you become anxious right all these things happen when you feel lonely right you have physical changes in your body now loneliness is hard if people are suffering i understand right i really understand but small things make a difference you can start off by saying hi to the barista at the coffee shop right but maybe you've got a friend you haven't spoken to in a while maybe you've got busy with your life they've got busy with their life give them a call right that's all it takes it's a ripple effect start small and i promise you will start to feel the difference dr ronan i i have to i couldn't thank you enough for the wisdom and for the time that you've given me today it's really really really special i sit here sometimes with guests and i think um you know i think you know they've written a book and it's very nice and everything but having experienced the way that you've um done the self-work and having had a taste of the way that you have empathy in your approach to causing behavioral and lifestyle change to people i i feel like this book is just critically important you know it's funny because i was thinking i'm going to end this podcast by giving the book a compliment but i don't think i have to i think if people see who you are today the wisdom the empathy the experience the vulnerability i think any person that is sound of mind and that wants to improve their life will know that this book is critically important to them that it is inclusive that is that is relatable and that it will hold their hand through change in a in a way which is empathetic and that's that those are my favorite books and i was sat here and i'm going to be completely honest because i don't people i just don't say things i don't believe them i was sat here thinking steve because i've only been i've only i was only given a small taste of the book by your publisher i need to read this book and if that's the impact you've had on me i know it's going to be the impact you've had on my my listeners so thank you because you know that really really is you know understanding where we are in the world in culture we need more books like this we have a tradition on this podcast which is the last guest writes a question for the next guest and i don't actually get to read on my mother's life i don't read it until i open the book so i've just opened the book and seen what our last guest has written so my last guest wrote the question and i've not read it yet so here we go but he's got great handwriting so what is something that people value that you no longer value an attachment to truth i no longer value being right i no longer value having to know the right answer i no longer value thinking this is the truth and i'm gonna hold on to this at all costs and i think many people do i now value curiosity and being the learner i just want to learn i want to explore i'm happy for pre-existing assumptions i've had in my life to be shown to be incorrect i'm not attached to being right i'm not attached to being wrong what i am attached to is learning and that's working for me at the moment dr rongan thank you you are simply amazing and you are really the gift that keeps on giving so i can't wait to read the book in its entirety happy mind happy life 10 simple ways to feel great every day thanks for having me thanks i can't wait wait to read the book in its entirety happy mind happy life 10 simple ways to feel great every day thanks for having me [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Diary Of A CEO

Views: 191,736

Keywords: The Diary Of A CEO, the diary of a CEO podcast, dr rangan chatterjee, rangan chatterjee, rangan chatterjee diet, rangan chatterjee podcast, rangan chatterjee doctor in the house, rangan chatterjee breathing, how to be happy and healthy, How To Improve Your Health and Happiness, health tips, drchatterjee podcast, self help, self improvement, health interview, personal development, self improvement tips, self improvement journey, health tips for women, health tips for men

Id: VYta88JUbBs

Length: 118min 45sec (7125 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 28 2022