Reinvent Yourself In 2024 - 5 Steps To Have The Best Year Of Your Life | Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

I've been adult for over two decades what I see today are patients coming in complaining of stress overload burnout overstimulation they feel unmotivated they're procrastinating they feel lazy and they can't move forward in their life over the years I have discovered some really practical effective tools and in this video I want to share with you five strategies that I have seen transform the lives of my patients most of them have transformed my own life as well and I'm convinced that if you can start implementing them into your life it's going to help you with your health your happiness and the quality of your relationships one of the most transformative practices I've seen with patients and in my own life is to consciously think about death and before you switch off I want you to listen to this one of the reasons I think so many of us take life for granted is because we don't truly recognize that we are going to die the human life The Human Experience is finite and by knowing it's finite it gives you license to live what you truly understand that it frees you it liberates you so you can start living your life I see this all the time with patients let's say they get a cancer diagnosis and of course this can be really worrying really scary a lot of Heartache for all concerns but one thing I've often seen whether it's cancer or any other condition is that these serious diagnoses bring life into sharp Focus Focus suddenly people realize what really is important what do I want to spend my life doing I think half the problem particularly in countries like the UK or America is that we hide death away from us it's in our language you people rarely say that person died it's that person passed that person passed away I lost my father we hide it and I think that comes at a huge cost by hiding death we don't realize that it does apply to all of us until my dad died in 2013 I don't think I genuinely felt that death applied to me or my family it's the first time ever that I experienced death first time ever I really went through grief and I realized wow death really does happen people who you love are going to die this actually isn't morbid it's actually really really liberating you know I remember as a child growing up in the UK the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated and I can remember sitting around the television with my parents with my brother watching her funeral and I was still remember you could see the fire you could see the body burning it was there you knew what it was and I think societies who grow up with death seeing death I think it's really really powerful because I think it gives them license to really live in fact a practice that many Buddhist monks participate in is the practice of thinking about death every day they come to terms with the fact that yes death is real it's going to to happen I am mortal and if I'm being completely honest if I had heard someone say this to me 10 or 15 years ago particularly before my dad had died I'm not sure what I would have thought but as I get older as I develop more life experience as I go through more things I realize this is a very very powerful practice and I kind of think that these days there's a lot of talk about anti-aging you know can we reverse aging can we live to 120 can we live to 150 and I do wonder sometimes aren we missing something about the human experience that we're trying to deny that death is going to happen but I think we can use death as a way of teaching us as a way of giving us license to start living immediately and I get that some people in the anti-aging world are not talking about that they're simply trying to say look instead of being immobile and dependent in your old age can we do things right now in our 20s our 30s our 40s our 50s our 60s can we do things that mean that we're going to age better and I'm all for that but I do think we run the risk of becoming obsessed with anti-aging to the point where we stop actually living you know one of the most powerful conversations I've ever had on my podcast was with the paliative care nurse bronny where she wrote the book The Five regrets of the dying and her findings have really really moved me she basically said to me that people at the end of their lives when they're on their deathbeds they kind attend to say the same things I wish I'd work less I'd wish I spent more time with my friends and family I wish I'd lived my life and not the lies to other people expected of me I wish I'd allowed myself to be happy what's really interesting for me is that these are people who realize these regrets on their deathbeds but since reading that book since talking to bronny it's really changed how I approach every single day I realized that I don't want those regrets I want to do what's important right now and that's why so many patients end up coming in to see me it's because they're taking life for granted the truly important things in life are only getting fit in when everything else gets done but these days aut too lists are never done so I've created a very simple exercise I've done it many times myself I recommend it to many of my patients that is absolutely transformative and I call it right WR your own happy ending so I'd like you to try it right now imagine that you are on your Death Beds right now imagine look back on your life what are three things you will want to have done or what are three things you will want to have spent time on for me I know my answer because I ask myself this question very regularly for me I will want to have spent quality time with my wife and my children I will want to have done something that improves the lives of other people and I will want to have had time to pursue my own passions those are my three things relationships passions and doing things for other people the second part of this exercise is in the present day right now and it's about creating three weekly happiness habits you basically use those death bed thoughts to create three habits that if you did weekly will give you the happy ending that you've just defined you want well if I want those three things on my deathbed what do I have to do in the here and now to get them well one of my weekly happiness habits is I want to have five meals with my wife and children where I'm fully present that's what works for me it may not work for you this is a very personal individual exercise but for me in the context of my life I know if I have five meals each week with my wife and kids where I'm not distracted with work I'm not distracted with emails I'm going to be fostering a nurturing those relationships doesn't mean I won't do anything else right but I be very clear and I specify it and it's on my fridge on a sticky note the second one of my weekly happiness habits is about recording an episode of my podcast if I record an episode of my podcast each week and I publish it as I do and have been doing for over six years well I know that I'm doing something to improve the lives of others and the third thing for me is if I have time each week to either go for long walk in nature or play my guitar and write some songs then I know I'm finding time for my own passions this is a really powerful exercise do not underestimate how powerful it is because the questions are simple I challenge you do both parts of that exercise either right now or later on today maybe in encourage other people in your world your friends your family your partner to do it as well it brings a real intentionality to your everyday life and I have my three- weekly happiness habits written up on the wall doesn't mean I can't change them I can change them over time if I want to but it means I've got something to aim for each week I know if I do those three things even if I've got loads left to do I haven't got through all my emails I still got work to get through I know I'm still winning I'm still focusing on what's truly truly important that exercise has changed my own life and it's changed the lives of so many of my patients how much time do you spend on your screen each day how much time do you spend on your smartphone me so many of my patients come in and they are quite literally addicted to their screens and often they don't realize the impact those screens are having on their physical health and their mental well-being in fact some of the latest research I've seen suggests that actually adults are spending four to five hours a day on our screens and for teenagers it's even more and there was a study all the way back in 2014 saying that people in the UK back then touched their smartphone over 220 times on any given day that was almost 10 years ago it's no doubt going to be higher today but we kind of know that don't we we know we probably look at our screens too much of course sometimes for work we have to we have to be on a computer all day but what about when you're not at work what about when you are in the queue at the coffee shop what about in the evening when you're with your partner or your family what about right before bed do you have to also be on your screens then so what are the some of the problems with spending so long on our screens well there's a variety of ways you can look at this there's the impact on us as individuals what's it doing to us what's it doing to our physical health our mental health what's it doing to our sleep but we also have to ask ourselves what is it doing to the quality of our relationships with those people around us what's the opportunity cost of being on those screens what might you be doing otherwise so you've probably heard before that modern technology is addictive smartphones are addictive but the truth is it's not your fault if you struggle to put your phone down it's not your fault these phones have been designed for that very purpose you know I often talk about Behavior change I say if you want to create a new healthy habit you've got to make the behavior easy to do make it easy you're going to do it make it hard you probably won't well all of these technology companies understand the prin princi of human behavior they know that if they make it easy you're going to do it right if you're watching Netflix why does one video go into the next video is it out of the goodness of Netflix's heart no they're doing what they need to do for their business they're making it much more likely that before you realize it's 11:00 p.m. and you've got to be up at 6:00 a.m. for work before you realize that you're already sucked into the next episode so you stay up for another hour watching it with a subsequent impact on your sleep and then your mood and then your performance the following day in fact the Netflix CEO said a few years ago that their biggest competitor was sleep just think about that for a minute their biggest competitor is sleep and it kind of makes sense I mean one of the reasons why sleep problems just weren't that much of an issue to the best of our knowledge 10,000 years ago or so is because when it was the end of the day when it got dark we might have a campfire we might switch off and relax talk exchange stories dance be creative but there wasn't that much else to do sleep wasn't competing with screen time so you were naturally feel tired and fall asleep naturally whereas actually today you have to actively make a decision a lot of us don't realize that the light from our screens is keeping us up we know that light is a very powerful modulator of what we call a body circadian rhythm think about it you wake up in the morning let's say in the summer you go outside there's Sun there there's light that sends a signal to all the cells in your body that it's daytime now it wakes your body up it helps to coordinate all of the different clocks in the different cells of your body but we also need that signal of Darkness at night so for many of us these screens are keeping us up later so instead of feeling tired we actually think no I'm not tired yet but it's the light from the those screens that is doing it but it's also the cognitive stimulation instead of winding down and exchanging stories and being with our loved ones we're often still working or we go on social media we read something negative and get into an argument with someone online of course we're going to have trouble sleeping what about if you watch the news right before bed if you're someone who struggles with your sleep and you watch the news before beds and you are ruminating in beds and worrying about the state of the world maybe watching the news lasting at night is not helping you why would you infuse that negativity into your brain before you go to sleep so the reality is for pretty much all of my patients reducing their screen time particularly in the evening has quite a transform perance of effect on their physical health and their mental well-being now we're living in a sleep deprivation epidemic no question about it scientists from Oxford University say that we are sleeping one to two hours less than 60 years ago we may have lost up to 25% of our sleep it's absolutely incredible and what happens when we don't sleep well what happens to you when you haven't slept well are you patient are you calm are you able to focus are you productive no you see when we don't sleep well so many systems in the body get affected we have a reduced ability to pay Attention our focus is down our concentration is down we show less empathy we're less creative we eat more yeah that's right we eat more the research shows us that if you're sleeping five 5 and 1 half hours a night compared to let's say 7 and a half or 8 hours a night on average you eat 22% more calories the following day so 5 days of sleep deprivation means that you could be eating a whole extra day worth of calories each week just from sleep deprivation and that's because of sleep deprivations effects on the hormones leptin and gin gin is a hunger hormone leptin is a satiety hormone so sens affect us in so many ways and I can say this to you you can hear it you can read a Blog you can read an article but the problem is because they're so prevalent and because they're so addictive so many of us don't make any changes so what's it going to take for you to start making some changes what steps are you going to put into place in your life which mean you're not on your screens as much particularly in the evenings because that's going to have a transformative effect on your health your happiness and the quality if you're Rel relationships now what about screen use in the day see one of the things I think that is affecting people the most these days is the fact that our downtime has been eroded out of our Lives we need downtime our brains love downtime have you ever taken a shower or we in the bath and come up with some of your best ideas have you ever gone for a walk and suddenly a problem that you were trying to solve you've suddenly managed to solve well that's because there's a part of your brain that we call the default mode Network or the dmn that kicks into gear when you're not focusing on a specific task and that part of the brain is responsible for all kinds of things two of those things are it helps you be more creative and it helps you solve problems so one of the big problems these days is because we're so focus on our screens all the time we take them everywhere with us we don't allow that part of the brain to kick in and that's why so many of us come up with our best ideas in the shower because it's one of the few spaces that are left available to us where we don't take our phones in so we allow that part of the brain to kick in in it helps you feel less stressed you're more productive you feel happier afterwards just think wherever you live imagine 30 years ago going into one of your local coffee shops what would be happening well you'd go in people would be chatting you might be waiting in a queue you be looking around you might bump into someone you know what happens today everyone's got their head down everyone's looking at their screens everyone's trying to take a quick moment get a few emails done have a cheeky check on social media I get it in isolation there's nothing wrong with those things but when you add it in everything that's going on in society and how much we're looking at our screens it starts to become really toxic because those are micro moments where you could be switching off off you could be allowing yourself to breathe your mind to breathe your brain's default mode Network to kick in but you got to give it that downtime so I think our overuse of screens is affecting our sleep which then is affecting our health and our relationships but it's also affecting the way our brains work it's also affecting the levels of stress we feel that's why I think so many of feel burnt out and overloaded and over stimulated because we're not having those little moments of downtime so how can you start to bring those things in look a few years ago I had a patient a 16-year-old chap called Devon who came in to see me and it was him and his mom saying listen the hospital has asked us to come in so you can prescribe an anti-depressant and it was really interesting to me because I knew this family pretty well I was totally shocked that this kid had ended up in the emergency room I to spent a lot of time with him that day I asked him to come back the next day so I could spend longer to really understand what was going on and of course I did all the checks that I have to do as a medical doctor but it was really clear to me that there were certain things going on in his life that could be affecting his mental well-being one of those things what's his screen use so I want to chat with him and I said look would you consider reducing how much time you're spending on your screens each day he goes well do you think it's going to make a difference I said it might do and so what we started off with was one hour before he went to bed in the evening I said I want you to go off your screen no social media nothing he said is that it I said yeah that's all I'll see you in seven days now 7even days later he comes back to see me and he's starting to feel the difference just that simple act alone meant that he was sleeping better and that's what he said he said look I'm sleeping better I've got more energy I generally feel better over the next few weeks I increased that to 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour in the evening and again he's starting to progressively feel better and better after four to six weeks I spoke to him about his diet and he was having a very modern processed junk food diet and I said you're having a lot of blood sugar ups and downs throughout the day when your blood sugar goes up and then crashes down that's not just a blood sugar and an energy problem that's a mood problem because when your blood sugar crashes that's a stress signal to the body that's an alarm sign that's not helping you by changing his diet to have more protein and more healthy fats so in the morning instead of a sugary cereal bowl he would have eggs and avocado he would have olives or nuts to snack on just by making those changes his blood sugar became more stable these changes completely transformed his life I didn't see him for a little while after that and about 6 months after he first came in to see me I got a letter from his mother saying dear Dr Chachi I just want to say thank you Devon's like a different person he's happy he's engaged he's got friends he's doing things in his local community at weekends and it was all down to these changes that first change was changing his relationship with his screens I could give you countless stories of other teenagers other adults people in middle age who are also improving their lives when they reset their relationship with their screens so I'd really encourage you have a think where could you do this where can you start to make a change could you have some rules at home that over the dinner table you're never going to have any screens that's the rule I have in my house I'm married I've got two young children we have a rule breakfast lunch and dinner when we're eating them there are no screens or smartphones allowed at the table now if that sounds a bit Draconian think back to 20 years ago did you have screens at the Den table then no for the bulk of human history we didn't but somehow we've allowed this kind of sacred place the dinner table to be infiltrated with screen time so people have being distracted this is a massive massive issue for relationships I have seen so many patients over the years who tell me that their marriages are under strain and more times than I can remember the cause was screen time use in the evenings I remember one lady who said look I try and talk to my husband in the evening we're sitting in the kitchen after the children have gone to beds but I can't really he taught him because he keeps looking at his screen and he says I've got to do my work EMES but it means that they're physically in the same space together but emotionally men L they're a million miles away and actually really by them setting some ground rules in place no screens in the kitchen if her husband wanted to do some emails he would go into their study and do it at a laptop and at the weekend they went for one two hour walk together without their phones transformed their relationship there was no underlying problem it was the screen time that was distracting them from what was truly important another impactful change you can make is to not bring those screens into your bedroom look I get it's hard I get that it's tempting but you've got to understand that the brain is what we call an associative organ the brain Associates certain behaviors with certain locations so if for example you do work emails on your phone in beds your brain Associates your bedroom and your bed with your work which can make it harder to switch off not impossible some people manage but if you're struggling that could be one of the reasons taking notifications off all of your apps lifechanging I did that maybe five or six years ago I haven't looked back it means if I pick up my phone to make a phone call I don't know if I've got 20 emails or zero emails I don't know if I've got 20 Instagram notifications or zero notifications because I switched the notifications off and that allows me to be in control of my technology rather than the technology being in control of me on my podcast a couple of years ago I spoke to Professor lorri Santos from Yale she shared some research with me saying that deciding to stay off social media can have a bigger effect on your happiness than earning $100,000 a year or marrying the love of your life it's absolutely incredible and that's why I'm trying so hard to persuade you and hopefully inspire you to go you know what enough's enough I'm sick of the fact that these smartphones are infiltrating every single aspect of my life I'm going to make a change and hopefully some of these changes will help you do that and that's why I really want you to think about your own screen use is it affecting your health is it affecting your relationships there was actually a study that I read in America last year which showed that when kids went around a museum with their parents the experience was completely different when the parents didn't have a phone with them the parents enjoyed it more the children enjoyed it more and afterwards they felt there was a much more meaningful and deeper connection let's be honest the quality of our relationships determines in a huge part of the quality of our lives and screen time for many of us is absolutely guessing in the way so I hope this encourages you to think a little bit bit differently and think about what you can do to change that now if we think about screen time and computers and laptops it's all inward right we go in we look the opposite of that is outwardness expansiveness and that's what nature provides nature is the antidote we know that nature being in nature is very very good for us as humans there's many reasons for that there's a lot of research on something called fractals fractals are these geometric shapes that you only see in nature you don't get them in man-made buildings or materials you get them in rivers trees leaves coastlines bodies of water and scientific research shows us that when a human eye looks at a fractal levels of the stress hormone cortisol start to drop simply being in nature reduces your levels of stress just taking a quick break to give a shout out to Vivo barefoot shoes now I've been a huge fan of Vivo Barefoot for over 10 years now well before they started supporting my podcast they are the only shoes that I wear and they really have had a huge impact on my own life and the lives of many of my patients you see when people start wearing Minimalist Shoes like Vivo you can see improvements in things like back pain hip pain knee pain foot pain even things like plop fasciitis can often get better and scientific research shows us that just wearing Vios for about four months or so improves the strength in your feet by over 60% which is absolutely incredible one thing people don't realize about these shoes is just how flexible they are which allows your feet to do what your feet naturally want to do rather than the shoe dictating your foot's movement Vivo Barefoot are giving my audience a 15% off onetime codes when you make your first order and they make it really easy for you to give them a try they give a 100 day trial for new customers so if you don't like them you just send them back for a full refund I'm a huge fan I really hope you take advantage of this offer to get your 15% off codes all you need to do is go to Vivo barfoot.co.nz for/ live more or click on the link in the description box below there's also research showing that even if you can't get into nature simply looking at nature looking at a picture of nature will also lower your levels of cortisol maybe not to the same degree as actually being in nature but they will lower them nonetheless so how many doses of nature are you getting in your life and look I get it not everyone is lucky enough to live near really nice bits of nature some people live in very Urban environments in the middle of a city I get it if that's you have a think are there any green spaces near your house can you get out there for a walk even if you can't is there a tree outside your window I mentioned that just looking at a fractor can lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol so even if you just looked out and stared at a tree you're still going to get some benefits so really do think about reducing your screen time in whatever way you can put some rules into your life about when you are going to look when you're not going to look I mentioned before bed but also first thing in the morning can you can you do an hour without screen in the morning if not an hour can you do 5 minutes even just 5 minutes first thing in the morning without any technology just to be with yourself maybe you can read do some breath through it some meditation do some journaling whatever it might be less screen time more nature time and your health and happiness will immediately start to improve the next tip which I have seen be profoundly transformative for my patients and for myself is eliminating unnecessary choice in our Liv lives now this may sound a little bit counterintuitive why would you want to eliminate Choice isn't Choice a good thing isn't more Choice even better I get to choose what I want to do and first of all I want to just recognize here that some people are living lives where they have no control they have no autonomy they don't have enough choice I do understand that if that's you then this tip may not apply but if that's not you and you are feeling stressed out overwhelmed anxious you find that you're procrastinating you can't make decisions you can't move forward you feel stuck I bet that too much choice is playing a role we have to make decisions on everything these days study suggest that we're making over 35,000 choices a day other research says that we make over 220 choices a day on food alone it's overwhelming and one thing we really have to understand is that every time you're making a choice it's taking up some of your cognitive capacity you may have heard me talk in previous podcasts or in previous videos about something called micr stress doses right these are little hits of stress and isolation we can deal with just fine but when those doses go on top of one another they build up they mount up they get us closer to our own personal stress threshold and when we get to our threshold that's when things go wrong that's when we fall out with a work colleague we have a around with our partner our back goes into spasm our neck starts to ache and we often think it was the last thing that we did that was the problem problem but it usually wasn't it was the buildup of these micro stress doses throughout the day every time you make a choice that doesn't matter that's a micro stress dose you're getting yourself closer and closer to that personal stress threshold where things start to go wrong and a simple way of keeping you away from that stress threshold is to make less choices especially on the things that don't matter you know President Barack Obama Mark Zuckerberg these guys are famous people who are well known for wearing the same thing every single day so they can save their cognitive capacity for decisions that matter eliminating Choice from your life will have so many benefits you make better decisions when you don't have to choose on everything there was some more research shown that for food companies if they offer 28 flavors of a food product compared to five or under sales go down when they offer just three four or five flavors sales go through the roof because if you got choice if you've got infinite Choice you're always is wondering did I make the right one would that other choice have been better and often you then procrastinate and end up doing nothing I mean I can't tell you the amount of times in the past when my wife and I on a Saturday evening once our children were in beds would sit down on the sofa put on Netflix with a view to watching something the amount of times an hour later we still can't decide because of all the choice on moods are a little bit off and we decide to forget it too much Choice especially today it is real I'm not saying never choose I'm saying choose when it matters look I'm a doctor so People's Health is something that's very very important to me now let's take something like I don't know exercise we know that moving our bodies more is better for us it's better for our physical health and many people now realize it's very good for our mental well-being as well but what often happens and I've seen this with so many patients over the years what often happens is this let's say people are online let's say they're on Instagram and they follow someone who says that yoga's amazing they follow someone else who say Pilates is amazing they follow someone else who says I run and do 5Ks each week someone else does strength training and it's overwhelming they're like yeah that yoga sounds good pilat sounds good running sounds good walking sounds good strength training sounds good which is the best one and they try and weigh up the decisions in the meantime they're not doing anything they're not moving their bodies the truth is they all have benefits if you do them most of us are better just picking one and doing it consistently regularly I honestly believe that variety is overrated you can simplify your life in so many different ways by eliminating choice in my patience one of the commonest sources of stress for people who are trying to be healthy is asking themselves what am I going to cook tonight in this world of endless Choice what I'm going to cook the family tonight well one way out of that is to have a meal planner have the same meal Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday have a different meal and just repeat it week after week you know what you're having you don't have to decide at your weekly shop it's simple you know what you need on which day again I want to emphasize that may not be something that's relevant in your life but I'm pretty sure that too much choice is adding to your stress load in some way so some simple things you can think about are yeah write a meal planner wear the same clothes every day if you listen to podcast as I do if you go on a podcast app now right and try and decide what to listen to you've got Limitless choice there's something like two or three million podcasts there how on Earth are you meant to choose it's actually quite stressful to look at them and go what am I going to listen to I've been in that boat before some of my favorite podcasts oh that episode looks good that one looks good which one am I going to do and even if you choose a good one you still feel like you're missing out so what I do now I have three podcasts that I subscribe to just listen to them I don't look at anything else I've got three podcasts I subscrib to which give me the content the quality and the variety that I want and I just stick to them they are good enough of course there are other great podcasts out there but those three work for me if you're someone who also can't decide what film to watch on a Saturday evening well one thing I've started doing over the last years is when I get a recommendation from someone whether it was on a podcast or a friend I open up my notes app and I make a list so if I'm ever sitting down in front of the television with time with my wife I have a readymade list of films that I want to watch now these things they sound really really simple but they are very very effective they simplify your life in so many different ways I promise if you start eliminating Choice unnecessary Choice from your life it's going to improve things but if you're someone who likes to go out and eat in restaurants do you have a favorite restaurant that you go to I do there's a cafe in my local town that I like going to you know what there's one meal there I really really like I just have it every time I go now you may be someone who really values Variety in your food okay fine that may not be the right choice for you but for me it is for me I don't even look I go there I say hi to the staff I say just the usual please if you're someone who drinks wine let's say and you go to a restaurant do you spend ages trying to decide which one of these wines shall I have well if you're a wine coniss and that matters to you that may be a choice that matters if you're not and you just like the odd glass of red wine maybe you make a rule I always choose the second cheapest bottle on the menu whatever it might be you've got to find what works for you and we're now living in an era where there is infinite Choice wherever we go and it's causing us huge problems the next tip that I want to share with you is truly lifechanging arguably this is the tip that's had the most impact on me over the past few years the most impact on my health and also my happiness and the tip is this seek out friction what does that mean friction is something we usually want to avoid we want a calm nice relaxed life without any friction the friction can be your most powerful teacher and I'm talking about social friction how we interact with others plays a huge role in our health and our well-being and a lot of the time we allow our interactions with others which don't go the way in which we want we allow it to affect us overly affect us if someone says something to us that we don't like it then ruins our day we take it personally we generate emotional stress and then we engage in behaviors like sugar or alcohol or Doom scrolling that really we're doing to neutralize the emotional stress that we created but there is another way you can use every moment of social friction to learn something about yourself you can use every bit of social friction you come across as a teacher and when you do you will feel empowered you will feel in control of life rather than life being in control of you now one of the tips I have for you to do this is to think about making everyone a hero what does that mean it means when something happens let's say you're driving to work and someone driving another car cuts you you up in traffic now you could react negatively you could get annoyed and start going wow that person shouldn't have a license I can't believe they did that whatever it might be whatever narrative you want to create but how is that narrative helping you it's not it's generating emotional stress you by the way in which you are reacting are generating emotional stress and you realize that that is a choice you're empowered to change it and that's where make everyone a hero comes in What story do you need to create in your mind to make that person a hero what could be going on in their life maybe there're were dads whose child was up last night with a cough or with earache and they're exhausted and they're just trying to get to work and they're worried that they're running late and if they get to work late they're going to lose their job and so they then can't feed their family maybe they were just being unmindful they didn't sleep well they're worried maybe their parents are sick if you were that person you'd probably be doing the same thing but you have a choice and when you exercise the power off that choice regularly you get better at it f years ago I would have struggled with this I would have felt that the way I feel is because that person behaved in that way but I've learned since then that my response is down to me I can change my response and by practicing every day by let's say in the evening you reflect on your day and you think about a bit of social friction what happened today where I got a bit annoyed what might have been going on in their life how might I be able to make that person a hero it sounds simple but it's very very effective if you think it's going to be hard try it it's honestly not as hard as you think sure in the moment you may find it difficult you may be in your car getting frustrated fine we're all human but maybe later that day maybe in the evening maybe at the weekend on a Sunday let's say you're having a slow relaxed day reflects and go wow okay I did react I did generate emotional stress I did have an extra glass of wine that evening because of that how might I change that how might I make that person a hero you can do it I've done it whereas now usually my default is to do it in the moment and it's very very empowering you know one of the most powerful conversations I've ever had in my life was with a lady called Edith eager when I spoke to her on my podcast two or three years ago now she was 93 years old when she was 16 she was getting on with her life she was at home with her parents and her sister she grew up in Eastern Europe they got a knock on the door and they would put on a train to aitz concentration camp within two hours of guessing there both of her parents were murdered and later that day because she was a dancer she was asked to dance for the senior prison guards now there's so many things about that conversation I remember but the first thing was that she said to me Dr chasi I never forgot the last thing my mother said to me she said Edie nobody can ever take from you the contents that you put inside your mind so she said to me when I was dancing in alitz I wasn't in alitz in my mind I was in Budapest opera house had a beautiful dress on there was an orchestra playing there was a full house in the hell of aitz she managed to reframe things in her mind she chose a story that empowered her now that's pretty incredible when she said that to me I had heard anything like that then she said to me when I was in asit Dr chassi I started to see the prison officers as the prisoners they weren't living their life in their minds they weren't free in my mind I was free it was really really powerful and one of the final things she said to me I have never forgotten I pretty much think about it every single day she said Dr chasi I have lived in now schwitz and I can tell you the greatest prison you will ever live inside is the prison you create inside your own mind that's what we all do we go around the world we get on with our lives and someone maybe at the coffee shop steps in front of us in the queue they probably had never even seen us it was an accident but we create a mental narrative that they were being inconsiderate and they should have known we generate emotional stress within ourselves we do it everywhere what about an email from your boss that you don't like you get frustrated my boss should know better I've worked for this company for years they should know better than to email me like that I know what I'm doing whatever it is you are generating emotional stress and you can actually reframe that situation with practice now I want to make something really clear I'm not saying that you should put up with poor behavior I'm not saying that I'm saying if you can develop the skill of staying emotionally neutral and really understanding that your response comes from within you you will start to change your life let's say you don't react to that email let's say that email comes and you take a a beat and you go wow isn't that interesting my boss doesn't normally send me an email like that wonder what's going on in their life I wonder if any of their relationships are underst strain I wonder if my boss's boss is putting pressure on them if you approach it with curiosity as to what might be going on how can I reframe this to tell myself a happiness story rather than a story that causes me harm you're going to be better emotionally regulated your lifestyle behaviors are going to be much better and you're going to be better able to change things you're going to be better able to not send a rash email back that you then regret and the following day you're going to be able to go out to your boss perhaps and say Hey listen you know yesterday you you sent me an email is everything okay like it came across as quite rushed and as though you didn't value me I don't know if that's just what you me your boss may say hey look I'm really sorry I was in such a mad rush I didn't mean any of it I just fired it out quickly before a meeting I'm so sorry or it may be that your boss really did behave poorly but you can then say listen I think I work hards I don't think that that was called for whatever it might be but the key point I'm trying to get across and why this has transformed my life and the lives of many of my patients is because because so often we feel as though we're a victim to life we think that the way we feel is down to other people and when other people start behaving better I'm going to be okay but the problem is if you're waiting for the world around you to behave in a certain way in order for you to feel good you could be waiting a very long time and I know this may sound scary it may sound challenging I promise you if regularly you ask yourself what bit of social friction came up in my life that I reacted to how might I react differently over time you will start to change things and really what has helped me the most is that conversation with the Edith e if ever I'm stewing over something in my own life If Ever I think no I can't reframe that that was really bad they shouldn't have done that you know what I think about Edith and alitz and I think rongan if she could reframe things in alwiz you can probably reframe this in your own life so I've used that as inspiration now just a quick note I understand that many people have got really tough lives and there's a lot of toxic Behavior out there this whole idea about reframing things to help you I'm not really talking about serious traumatic events such as domestic violence I just want to make that really really clear I'm generally talking about the things that come up in day-to-day life that we allow to affect our inner well-being in our emotional states and if you can Master this even if you get 10% better at this than you currently are you will start to feel much more in control off your life that in turn is going to help your health and your happiness the final tip I want to share is talk to strangers we know that the quality of our relationships is important with our friends with our family with our loved ones those close Intimate Relationships yes are a very very important predictor for our health and our well-being but it's not just the relationship we have with the people close to us it's also the relationship we have with that wider social World we're all part of this big broad Human family and sometimes we forget that psychologists have found that we have a network within our brain called the sociometer and what's the job of the sociometer is to constantly scan our social world for threats so if we're not getting positive social feedback from our social worlds we can feel anxious we can feel afraid our self-esteem starts to go down but when we get positive social feedback from the world around us a smile from the person we walk past a thank you from the Barista in the coffee shop a nice word you exchange with the supermarket attendant whatever it might be when you get those positive signals in your social environment that sends a message to your Soom in your brain that everything's okay you feel content and in control there was this really great study I remember reading in 2021 by the psychologists Paul Van Lang and Simon Columbus and they found that positive interactions with strangers help us serve basic needs such as feeling connected appreciated along perhaps with the realization of personal growth in ourselves and their advice was for people to initiate brief interactions even a smile to Strange es because doing so supplies us with a critically important social nutrient that they call Vitamin s but isn't that great we often talk about taking our vitamins for our physical health but this is about vitamin s the social vitamin because that's who we are we're social animals many of us are realizing more and more in our modern world we're becoming more and more isolated I mentioned before about being in a coffee shop and not looking around looking at your screen yeah I mentioned the default mode Network the impact of screens on our sleep what about the impact on loneliness and isolation what happens when these micr moment opportunities for connection are being lost the more you can interact with strangers and I'm not talking about a deep and meaningful chat I'm simply talking about looking at people looking them in the eye smiling at them sure if you're an extrovert like me it's going to feel easier but the research shows us that even for introverts if you can talk to strangers or interact with strangers in some way you're going to feel better in a coffee shop can you start saying hi if you feel service can you smile at the BR and say thanks it gets easier the more you do it but what's really interesting is how our brains work against us social interaction whether it be with close friends and colleagues and family or whether it be with strangers is very powerful but often our brain is trying to talk us out of it there are some great research on in Chicago by Professor Nick Epley where he studied commuters and he B basically took these commuters into three groups one group were told to keep themselves for themselves not interact with others one group was asked to do what they would usually do and the third group was asked to do something quite shocking and radical these days reach out to someone say hello and start a conversation now before the test began he asked all of the participants how they would feel if they were asked to do the third option to reach out and say hello and strike of a conversation and they basically thought they wouldn't like it they'd feel less content and less happy interestingly enough afterwards every single person in that group who did reach out they felt better they felt happier afterwards and that happiness lasted for the duration of the day but also really interestingly they were asked how many of the people that we reach out to are going to enjoy being reached out to and they predicted that only 40% would actually enjoy it afterwards when asked it was 100% of them people liked reaching out and talking to others and the people who were spoken to enjoyed the fact that that had happened now that was just one study in Chicago but it's been replicated in many different cities around the world including in London no I get it you got to be respectful some people will not want to be Disturbed some people will be using their time on their commute to catch up with some work or listen to some music but we can start to read these social signals the point I'm trying to make is as we're becoming more and more isolated more and more insul we go outside we put our headphones on we don't look at others we don't interact with others and we wonder why so many of us are struggling with anxiety and depression and low moods we're social animals right we need to interact with other people of course in a safe fashion I'm not saying go up in a dark Street someone you don't know and make conversation with them but then at a coffee shop on a train at work when you're out for a walk these are opportunities where you can practice interacting with strangers so really I want you to consider taking this seriously I know you may feel a little bit scared a little bit apprehensive but like with anything you can start small it could be the later on today or tomorrow if you go to a cafe to buy a coffee if you feel nervous could you just look at the Barista in the eye and smile could you just say a thank you when you're in a queue in a cafe instead of getting frustrated that you have to wait could you reframe it and go wow this is an opportunity for me now to practice a bit of positive social feedback it's it's an opportunity for me to send my brain my sociometer a powerful signal I mean some of the things I've shared today are a little bit counterintuitive you may not be expecting them especially from a doctor but I found these tips are incredibly powerful I figured out over two decades of medical practice that these are the tips and techniques that really move the needle these are the bits of advice that help people feel better about themselves and then help them make better decisions which in turn improves their health and happiness is it really possible to isolate five minutes and and H and for happiness and health yeah it 100% look it sounds a bit like a gimmick doesn't it five minutes but if I think about my own life and how I've managed to look after my brain my body my heart whilst being you know married two young children busy job as well as my job as a medical doctor you know I write a book a year I I host a podcast I also for many years have cared for my elderly parents right so I get what it feels like to be busy but I've always found a way to look after myself through that business and one of the things I always found with patience is that it will always say to me wrong and I I I don't have time you know I I want to be healthy but I don't have time and I thought it's really interesting because let's take toothbrushing as an example we kind of know that if we brush our teeth for 2 minutes in the morning and 2 minutes in the evening which hopefully everyone listen to the show right now does yes please do that we know that 4 minutes a day of toothbrushing generally speaking is going to look after our dental hygiene for life sure you're going to have a checkup and you may need some polishing and cleaning what whatever but by and large what we don't do is go oh I'm I'm too busy on Monday you know I don't have time for my rushing work's busy I've got to take pick the kids up right Tuesday Wednesday we don't do that and then go oh at the weekend on Sunday I'm going to do a 1H hour deep clean on my teeth we don't do that we you know anyone listening now knows that that sounds ridiculous yet when it comes to behavior change for our health for our brains right we make it too difficult we make it really hard people think that five minutes is not enough so they stop doing anything that's going to help them and this is why they try and go for like a 1H hour walk at the weekend or a 1 hour yoga session nothing wrong with that but in my view not a substitute for daily practices that can help you and these practices don't need to take long just like toothbrushing can take 4 minutes a day I do a workout a strength workout account every single day I haven't missed a day for maybe three or four years now wow and I would say I would argue it has nothing to do with motivation it's because I've applied the principles of behavior change into my life right and and a lot of the time we don't follow those principles those rules when it comes to ourselves right so I'll explain the behavior first right how do I do this well I have a morning routine which we can maybe get into if you want to but one component of that morning routine is a five minute strength workout right so how do I do that well there's two rules of behavior change I mean in the book there's my six rules right but the two rules I think I I'd love to share with people are number one you got to make it easy yeah right so why do you have to make it easy uh you know you and me are both good friends with Professor BJ fog you know World leading experts and behavior change from stanfords uh we had a great chat a few years ago because because what was really great about our conversation was that the things I had figured out through seeing patients he figured out through research so our our conversations together was a beautiful kind of meeting of clinical experience from me and scientific research from BJ and we basically came to the same conclusion that these small habits done consistently are how most people make changes right so the reason I do my workout every day it's because it's not a 1H hour workout it's not a 30 minute workout it's 5 minutes even on my busiest days I can't say I don't have time right I do have five minutes so what do I do one of the things I do in my morning routine is I come into my kitchen and I make coffee now I'm very particular with how I make coffee I I I like the ritual around it I I like a specific type of coffee right so I get out my French Press I weigh out my coffee pour in the water and I put a timer on my phone for 5 minutes because that's how long I like it to brew for now in those 5 minutes Jim I don't go on email I don't go on Instagram I don't scroll the news right in the five minutes whilst I'm waiting for the coffee I do a strength workout in my pajamas right now this is really important why do I do it in my pajamas well I've made it about as easy as possible right I'm in my kitchen I've just I've come down I'm in my pajamas I've got a dumbbell and a kettle bell sitting in my kitchen mhm now sometimes it's body weight sometimes I just do some few exercises with the kettle bell but before you know it five minutes is up then I put them down and I'm rewarded with my beautiful hot cup of coffee right so why does that work well number one I've made it easy now you got to make it easy because you know one of the problems and I've seen this with patients over and over again we overly rely on motivation right and motivation is important and I know in your book Limitless you talk about motivation it's one of your M right so I get that but I think we overly rely on motivation and the scientific research shows us that motivation never stays up forever right that you know BJ calls it the motivation wave right motivation comes up motivation goes down so here's the reality that most people I don't think are applying in their life if you make something difficult to do you will do it when your motivation is high okay what's the example of this new year right people wake up on Year's Day and they decide this year's going to be different this year I'm going to go spinning four times a week and they do it for two weeks or three weeks they they actually get it done but then three weeks in something happens work's busy you know in the UK it's raining or it's cold it's dark and you just can't be bothered because it's an hour spinning class so before you know it the start of February it's something you used to do to make sure you're taking action after watching this video I've created a free guide to help you build healthy habits we can all make short-term change but can those changes become a fundamental part of our life often they don't and that's why in this free guide I share with you the six crucial steps you need to take they're really really effective if you want to get hold of that free guide right now all you have to do is click the link in the description box below so the problem is is that you do the behavior when motivation high but when motivation low if the behavior is difficult you don't end up doing it but if you make the behavior easy to do you'll do it when your motivation high you'll also do it when your motivation low so the reason I do a f minute workout is because I can never say to myself wronging you don't have time you don't have time for 5 minutes so that's why that's one of the reasons that habit has stuck now for almost four years I've made it easy so that's rule number one rule number two is where do you put that behavior that you want into your life a lot of people don't give this much thought they just say I want to work out I want to meditate okay great there's a great intention there's all kinds of benefits for our brains when we do that but they don't think specifically about where am I going to put this in my life now any Behavior we do needs a trigger right any Behavior needs a trigger so a trigger could be on memory right I could remember hey you know I I had a message with Jim a few weeks ago we said on this day we were going to get together and record right memory works it just happens to be the most unreliable trigger that there is so I don't rely on my memory for important things like meeting you in my podcast Studio most people listen listening don't they have their Google Calendar or or it will be written down scheduled the important things in their life right so memories are triggered just very unreliable so what's a better trigger than memory a better trigger would be some sort of Post-It note like a Post-It note on your fridge or a notification on your phone saying hey in an hour's time you got to meet Jim right that also works but the very best trigger for a behavior as evidenced by the scientific research on Behavior change is when you stick that new behavior on to an existing habit right so your audience may have heard you talk about this before because it works right an existing habit is something you are automatically doing without much conscious thoughts like making coffee like making coffee right so in the morning I don't need a notification to remind me to make coffee I don't need my assistant to phone me at 5:30 or 6: a.m. say hey rongan don't forget to make your coffee I don't need my wife to remind me no it's a habit I'm going to do that so therefore not only am I going to do it I'm going to enjoy it right so therefore by sticking my workout onto my coffee habit it happens that's why it happens Monday to Sunday because I don't miss a day on drinking my coffee it's part of my morning routine I love the ritual around it it's quite a time for me so I've made it easy again I don't have to wear any special sports gear I don't need to put on my running shorts I do it in my pajamas what else have I done to make it easy I've I've set my environment up to help me so I used to do just body weight but then a few years ago I put a kettle bell and a dumbbell in the kitchen and I remember my wife and I had a conversation she said are you going to leave this stuff out in the kitchen can't we just put it in the cupboard or put it in the garage and we actually had a conversation I said hey babe listen if I put that in the cupboard or put it in the garage I'm not going to use it but if it's in the kitchen I'm going to use it all the time and again it's one of those things out of sight is out of mind even if I pick up the weight just to move it out the way so I can get to my coffee by having it there I'm also visually triggering myself each morning to not forget to do it so it's very simple but let's be really clear about this how many people listening to your show Jim know that moving their bodies doing some sort of strength training is going to help their brain it's going to improve blood flow it's going to improve circulation it's going to enhance the release of bdnf brain derived neurotrophic fats I know you've spoken about that many times in the past right yes I hope all of our listeners know all that already right so they know that yeah but some of them despite knowing that won't be moving as much as they want they'll think a man I I didn't get my movement in today right I I want to oh I I hear yeah I've just heard the latest research we start losing muscle mass as soon as we hit 30 our muscle mass starts to go down each year we know that the amount of lean muscle mass we have is one of the main predictors of our longevity right and our health as we get older yet despite knowing that they still think about strength training is something they're going to do in the future when the time is right when they've got time you know when when somehow miraculously things change when the kids are always on time the email inbox is not going to overflow you know it ain't going to happen right so going back to your original question is it realistic to change your life in 5 minutes well I would say yes because I've done this thousands of times with my patients what I've seen what works and what doesn't work you know it's over two decades now that I've been in practice so I've seen tens of thousands of patients and I've seen very few people in my experience managed to turn their lives around completely overnight like very few completely do an overhaul where I'm going to go an hours jogging every day 20 minutes of meditation every day I I've rarely seen it happen the only time I've seen it happen Jim is when there's been a significant life experience you know something like a job loss or there's been a death yeah or someone's girlfriend or boyfriend has split up with them you know something really big and emotional that has caused them to change everything sure you can change your life overnight when that happens but apart from that I just haven't seen it that much I've seen that these small changes yeah actually the ones that add up so in my life as a busy doctor as a busy father as a busy son right as a busy husband I haven't missed a 5 minute strength workout a day so that means what does that mean that means in a week I'm doing minimum 35 minutes of strength training right and multiply that over four years that's a a lot of strength training right but I don't need motivation I've set up a system whereby it happens now the beautiful thing about 5 minutes is that you know sure some days it'll be 4 minutes right but on some days I'll have time I'll be feeling good it will be 10 minutes right but the requirement to myself is that I at least do something whilst my coffee is brewing and then you know BJ talks about rewarding yourself for these behaviors well I get the beel reward of a hot cup of coffee the way I want it and then I continue my morning routine but just one more thing Jim on that which I really want people to understand is business big business understand the rules of behavior change right they understand it and they apply it so when Amazon went to oneclick ordering right and I think that was about 10 years ago now estimates say their profits went up by $300 million a year right now why is that well think back to before oneclick ordering what did you have to do you you scanned you you chose what you wanted then you have to go to a next screen and in the next screen you have to you know confirm a few more things then the next one you type in your card details and the next one you finally place order right three or four steps that you have to take before you can place the order each step is an opportunity to pull out or to procrastinate and not make that order make that P they make it easy before you've blinked now before you can click you've got something arriving that evening yes right so Amazon use it I'm not having a go at them right they're a business they're doing what they need to do to maximize profits right Netflix and YouTube why does one video or one episode go into the next episode they understand Behavior change they understand that if at the end of that episode if before you've decided it's midnight I need to go to bed now you know I've got work tomorrow morning I need to get my sleep it's good for my brain If whilst you're trying to make that decision they have sucked you into the next one they know you're going to stay watching so the point I'm trying to make is business knows how to use these rules to get you to buy more or consume more but humans when it comes to making positive lifestyle Behavior choices for ourselves we don't apply those rules we think it's got to be a 30-minute meditation session it's got to be 1 hour of yoga we think 5 minutes can't make a difference but it absolutely can and hopefully that's just one of many examples I love it and that's a mindset shift as well you know that belief it's a lie that change can't happen or consistent can't happen in just a handful of minutes you know I I do believe that if they they're using willpower and they're persistent maybe they could achieve it but if they're consistent then they get to keep it yeah and and the thing is it's not that that's the only thing I do M sometimes I will have a a longer workout later on in the day or go for a run but for me those are optional extras yeah these five minute habits just like brushing my teeth it's not optional it happens 7 days a week that strength workout happens seven days a week and I know whoever's listening to this and they feel they're too busy to workouts right I have adopted this approach with hundreds if not thousands of my patients and I've seen over and over again for the busiest people this works really really well so it's not like I'm not saying don't do anything else anything else is you know it's it's an optional extra but just like I brush my teeth every day I do a strength workout every day now there's two other things I do as part of my morning routine now why do I do in the morning I share the philosophy that you share I think which is the start of the day and the end of the day are really really important if we start the day allowing the world to dictate what we think what we do then I think it's no wonder that we end up in a reactive State it's no wonder we end up doing things that we never wanted to do yeah we we don't realize I think many of us don't realize how important those opening minutes of the day are again for people who say they're busy right I'll maybe share a story in a minute about one of my patients who was a single mother I think she had two kids from recollection she would always be rushing around but I helped her create a 5 minute morning routine that worked for her that really helped lower her stress levels and then reduced how many skin outbreaks she was getting because I strongly felt that stress was driving a lot of her skin problems and so I have this little framework for a morning routine that maybe I'll share with your audience and let's do it again you know maybe it sounds ironic as a doctor I don't like giving set Pres descriptions to people because I understand we're all different we all have different preferences we all have had different experiences with different lifestyle behaviors we all have different cultural backgrounds so I like to create Frameworks that people can then personalize for themselves so the framework I use to create my morning routine that I use with my patients to help them create theirs is what I call the three M's okay the first m is mindfulness the second m is movement and the third m is mindset right so let's start with the first M mindfulness some form of activity that you enjoy that's going to help you be more mindful okay so it could be meditation it could be breath work it could be journaling if you want like something some form of mindful practice now for me at the moment it's breath work right so I'll get up now I'm early to bed and early to RSE that's a choice I've made particularly since I've had children because I realized uh very early on into my career as a father that I'm a better human being I'm a better dad I'm a better husband I'm a better doctor when I've had time to myself each morning before the family are up and about you know I think there's some self-awareness there that I've learned that I function better when I get up early and have time to myself so I always get up early these days it's about 4:30 or 5: again I'm not saying people have to do this I don't use an alarm clock I naturally wake up then and so I'll come downstairs and I'll do some breath work now I I'm at a point in my life where I do have a bit more time so it is more than 5 minutes now for me but it wasn't for many years it was just 5 minutes and I want to make sure people understand that because you can get benefit in probably less than 5 minutes even so let's say it was 5 minutes of breath work okay and there's many practices out there the breathing practice I love is something that I call the 34 five breath where you breathe in for three you hold for four and you breathe out for five okay the 3 four five breath anytime that your out breath is longer than your in breath you help to switch off the sympathetic part of the nervous system the the kind of stress State and you help to promote the parasympathetic State the relaxation States right there's a million breath practices out there you don't have to do this one but for many years this is what I did okay people should find the ones that they enjoy that work for them so the first m is mindfulness right so you choose a practice the second m is movement right so I just shared already my five minute movement practice whilst my coffee is brewing right so I've done my breath work in the living room I come to the kitchen make my coffee do my workout whilst the coffee is brewing and then that leads me nicely on to the third mend which is mindset all mindset means for me you could do affirmations if you want but what I like doing I like you I'm a big fan of reading I like to read a positive or an uplifting or a thought-provoking book first thing in the morning so I've I've got the reward of my nice cup of black coffee that I've made the way I like it I've always got three or four books kicking around my kitchen and my living room because I don't want procrastination I don't want to come down in the morning and go oh where are the books oh which one shall I read today you know like I said with Amazon and the order every decision you have to make right it's a reason to procrastinates a reason to pull out so I've made the choice um to read something and this happens every day this happens seven days a week right again I've automated it I've automated it so I don't need to think and that's why it happens every day so again I I'd encourage people to if they find it useful and of course some people it's not going to resonate with them but for people who do give it a try try that 3m. practice in the morning see if you can personalize it for yourself and just to close the loop on that 42 I think she was 42y old single mother who said she didn't have time I Tau her the 3M and you know what she did she did 1 minute a 3 four five breathing so that was for her for her mind she did 2 minutes of yoga she just chose some of her favorite moves 2 minutes of yoga and then for the final L mindset she did 2 minutes of affirmations that was it 5 minutes total 5 minutes total right and what that did is it showed her how she could feel she she never knew she didn't experience that feeling of calm and control and she did that first thing in the morning 5 minutes skin got better stress started going down and a few months later she then expanded that into I think 20 minutes 25 minutes so the reason five minutes are so powerful a it works in and of itself but once you realize how good you can feel with five minute practices very quickly you want more right so you naturally start to do more so yeah I I you know coming back to your first question can you change your life in five minutes absolutely yeah you're that's positive proof of it well let's you want to challenge people who are listening or watching this right now what what can they do what what do you want to challenge them and they'll maybe make a post they could uh tag you they could tag me in it and share what they yeah you know the first thing to reflect on is gu what people who listen to your show Jim are going to be very motivated in general I would say they they're wanting to make changes positive changes in their life right so I want everyone listening to think back now and go what was the behavior I tried to bring into my life that I wasn't able to make make stick mhm and then think about those two rules that I've just outlined number one you got to make it easy number two you got to stick onto an existing habit I bet that the majority of people who weren't able to make that behavior stick were not following at least one of those rules of course not in every case but in most cases I found they made the behavior too hard or they hadn't been intentional about where to put it so first of all reflect on that and then I guess the challenge would be you know what's one thing right let's not make it difficult yeah right there's all kinds of Lifestyle behaviors you're going to hear about on this podcast on Instagram on social media the problem is we've got too much information these days it's like oh I need to do yoga and pilates and martial arts and this you can't do it all right pick one thing and apply those two rules break it down to something really really simple and intentionally stick it onto an existing habit maybe borrow my 5 minute kitchen workout if you want right if you want to it's there's a you want to see what I do there's a video on YouTube called five minute kitchen workout right but it doesn't matter what you do do your favorite moves whatever it is it doesn't matter and then you know maybe tag you and me on social media let us know what you're doing I love it that's all you have to do and just one more thing J I just want to say for people who are skeptical about five minutes I spoke to an amazing psychotherapist on my show called Julia Samuel once and she said to me wrong and your book feel better 5 actually saved one of my patients lives I said what do you mean Julia she said I had a patient who was really bad suicidal in a really really dark place everything felt too much for that individual and I gave them your book and I said just pick one thing and she said it was unbelievable because actually by making it so simple he actually started to do them right he started off with with 5 minutes and you know bit by bit he made other changes and now now is doing very well yeah right but that was really profound for me cuz I knew five minutes worked because I've seen it over and over again with myself and with my patients but when Julia told me that about one of her suicidal patients I just want to share that cuz I know someone listening will know someone who is not doing well so please do share those techniques and principles with them it it really doesn't need to be hard if you found those tips useful I think you are really going to enjoy this video All About burnout what causes it and what you can do about it one of the worst things in life is when you've got no energy every day Feels Like You on a treadmill I've been a medical doctor now for over 21 years and this is one of the commonest complaints I see

Channel: Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Views: 354,915

Keywords: the4pillarplan, thestresssolution, feelbetterin5, wellness, drchatterjee, feelbetterlivemore, ranganchatterjee, 4pillars, drchatterjee podcast, health tips, nutrition tips, health hacks, live longer, age in reverse, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, motivation, inspiration, health interview

Id: De6UKctqMmo

Length: 91min 39sec (5499 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 15 2023