Why The First 5 Minutes Of Your Day Are The Most Important with Dr Rangan Chatterjee

if you start taking five or 10 minutes a day to tune into yourself you will start to make better decisions in every single aspect of your life Dr wrong and chaty is one of the most influential doctors in the UK I would love to know the one thing people can make sure they're doing in order to drastically improve their health it would be easy to talk about diet or exercise but that's not what I'm going to say we are living such busy lives these days so many us wake up the first thing we do is look at our phone we've lost the opportunity to tune into ourselves your morning routine could be you press the snooze button and you spend 10 minutes in bed scrolling Instagram I didn't know there was CCTV in my room that is a routine every action we do has a consequence that's why you've got to be so careful about what you do first in the morning because we're not getting healthier as a society for all the technology for all the Innovation we are getting sicker happiness is a skill and the three components of core happiness are lots to do I've just been planning out my day however with revolute as my main account I've got one less thing to worry about money I know my money is safe with revolute so I can focus on other important matters like planning a wedding that is why I pay with revolute if revolute detects anything suspicious with your transfer you'll receive an inapp warning straight away and how cool is this you create a single single use card in the app with just one tap and then after the purchase is made your details disappear immediately so they cannot be reused now if you happen to lose or misplace your card which is never a fun time for anyone but a surprisingly regular occurrence for me you can freeze your card instantly through the revolute app and if there's anything I do need help with revolutes customer service team are on hand 24/7 via the inapp chat it is a huge reassurance for me and just one of the many reasons why revolute is the main account for all of my finances but don't just take my word for it over $ 35 million people around the world trust revolute with their money join us and create your account today now I think it probably goes without saying that Dr Rong and chaty has been on my dream guest list for this podcast for years he is one of the most influential doctors in the UK having practiced for over 20 years and dedicated his career to how we can improve our health and our happiness before we need to head to the doctor's surgery he's the author of five Sunday Times best-selling books about happiness and productivity and over a million people listen to his podcast every week I'll be honest going into this recording my aim was to get as much actionable advice for you as possible and he really was just full of wisdom so make sure you listen right to the end so that you don't miss anything I learned a lot and as always please do like and subscribe or go ahead and rate the podcast it really really helps us be able to get incredible guests like rongan so thank you so much for joining me Grace thank you for having me I'm very excited to get into this conversation um you have been one of my top top wishlist guest to get on this podcast I feel very flattered I hope I don't disappoint I'm sure you will not um I want to go straight into it um and what we always do at the beginning of every episode is get a little bit of a rundown of your career your background so that we can know a little bit more about how you got to where you are today but also the background that you come to today and your current point of view with so could you give me a little Whistle Stop tour of your career okay big picture I am a qualified medical doctor qualified for Med medical school in 2001 so I've been practicing and seeing patients for well over 20 years now so I've seen tens of thousands of patients I've always had a slight frustration within medicine if I look back especially in the early years because I felt a lot of the time we were just suppressing syp s and not helping people get to the root cause of what was going on and I only realized that discontent with hindsight so essentially a couple of things happened in my life quite pivotal which changed the way I practice medicine one was my father who was also a doctor he fell ill back in 1998 so we had to medically retire he had an autoimmune disease called lupus he had chronic um k failure he was on dialysis for 15 years and I moved back from University of Edinburgh to help my family look after my dad so I was a pretty full-on carer for a number of years for Dad until dad died in 2013 so that taught me a lot about what it's like to be on the other side you know not the doctor but the patient's family and what it's like when you're not getting the medical care perhaps that you want or you've got questions but also my son when he was sixth months old back in 2010 he had a convulsion um from which he nearly died and it was a very very scary time for my wife and I we were on holiday in France when it happened and essentially he nearly died from a fully preventable vitamin deficiency that's a long story but in essence modern medicine saved his life but then he was discharged and there was no help given there was no support given there was nothing to explain well what are the implications of this he basically had a severe vitamin D deficiency and then the calcium levels in his blood had fallen and essentially I was consumed with guilt I have perfectionist Tendencies myself for much of my life and I felt I'd let my son down and I remember we were discharged from the hospital and I made myself AOW that day that I'm going to get my son back to full health Health as if this had never happened so I became obsessed I would be reading every single day every night about vitamin D calcium the gut microbiome I'd go around the world I'd attend conferences and I basically learned that there's so much information out there that we don't learn at medical school that is highly relevant not only for my son but also my patients so basically what I learned in that journey to get my son better and to be really clear he is a happy thriving thir 18y old boy today okay what I learned on that journey I applied with myself I applied with my family and then I applied with my patients and what I learned is that I started to use less medication than I'd ever had to use in the past and I was getting patience much much better and so for me it was really quite transformative it was about how do you get to the root cause of a patient's problem rather than simply suppress their symptoms with medication please I don't want anyone to misunderstand and say I'm anti medication I'm not but I do think we overuse medication and I think there's many reasons for that so essentially as part of that journey in 2015 I created a prime time bbc1 series called doctor in the house where I went and lived alongside families who had been unwell for years and who were already under GPS and specialist but they couldn't get better I recorded two seasons of that 2015 and 2017 and I basically managed to help families in just 6 weeks either get significantly better or fully reverse their conditions whether it be type two diabetes panic attacks down by 70% in just 6 weeks I helped a lady who had fibromyalgia for 10 years become painfree in six weeks I helped another lady uh who had really bad hormonal symptoms menopausal symptoms that were scoring 15 out of 17 on the British menopause Al Society symptom questionnaire and in just 6 weeks without using hormones and I'm not against the use of hormones but with this lady without using hormones by helping her make changes to her lifestyle and the way she perceived stress we got her symptoms down to only scoring two out of 17 so for me it was a really massive um at that point the biggest achievement in my career no question was to show this to 5 million people each week on BBC 1 the power of lifestyle change if you know what you're doing and that Journey has led to me writing five books um I've been hosting my own podcast for the last six years which I'm very fortunate is the most listened to health podcast in Europe now and I just love what I get to do these days which is help inspire people help to empower people and basically say listen good health is not as hard as you think it is we've massively over complicated it and my goal with everything I do in public is to help simplify it I mean that's incredible first of all I think that it's a hugely important topic to talk about I think that as you you know Say rightly disclaimed by not wanting to talk down on medicine however I do completely see how that we had a physiologist on um the podcast a while ago right back at the beginning who talked really interestingly about the NHS in the way that it's obviously set up to fix things that are wrong rather than to make anything that's like okay get to Great which has really stuck with me it's always stuck with me about the fact that you know we do have this mentality of kind of fixing but we don't have this mentality of kind of prevention anywhere within our healthcare service and obviously part of that is because we have a fantastic free health care service that is you know hugely beneficial to a lot of people and it can't do everything however you know I I mean I've always been so surprised at the amount of times I've gone to the GP and been prescribed antibiotics just as like an instant well this will probably make you better when you know at the same time my fiance when he had sepsis antibiotics saved his life and had he been had too many antibiotics before that point they could have not worked I think it's always I I think about it a lot it takes up a lot of head space that kind of prevention versus cure in the youth UK Health Service whilst also you know obviously wanting to sing the Praises of all of this modern medicine that does save lives and I would love to know from you with all of this in mind what you think the one thing in terms of this kind of prevention that people can make sure they're doing in order to kind of drastically improve their health overall there's a couple ways of answering that just a quickly touch on what you just said Grace the NHS is a disease management system it's not a creation of Health System I didn't realize that when I qualified that's not necessarily A criticism that's just the way it is right the NHS was set up a long time ago and back in that era most of what doctors saw were what we call acute problems right you mentioned your fiance had sepsis that's an acute problem that's problem which needs a doctor and we need often mod medicine to come in and save someone the bulk of what people are going in to see doctors or other healthc Care Professionals within the NHS today are chronic conditions that are largely driven by our Collective Modern Life Styles now I need to be very careful how I say that I'm not putting blame on people Modern Life is tough it's really stressful people are feeling frantic they're burning out right they don't feel they've got enough time to do the things that they they want to do for their relationships for their health for their happiness but we have to understand that the way we're living collectively is making us sick and doctors really aren't trained on how to create Health we're trained on how to diagnose disease and treat it and it's two very different things so that's the first thing today the second thing which Mak a really important point it's not just prevention you can also use personalized lifestyle change to help treat things when you've got them and I you know I teach doctors and it's something I always try to get across them is look yes prevention is important clearly and we don't do enough on prevention but also when you've already got a condition let's say on doctor in the house I helped a lady put her T to diabetes into remission in 30 days basically reverse the condition in 30 days at that point in 2015 that had never been done before on ision anywhere in the world right the amount of push back I got then on social media was insane given how I'd helped that lady transform her life and feel better than she'd felt in years fast forward today 2024 so 9 years on it's now wellestablished in the medical literature that you can put type two diabetes into remission we can even read code that in your medical notes so back then that was really controversial and now it's established as mainstream so there's just two things I think for people to reflect on when we're thinking about our health in answer to your question what's the one thing people can do it would be easy to talk about diet or exercise or sleep and I'm super passionate about those things but that's not what I'm going to say we are living such busy lives these days so many of us wake up the first thing we do is look at our phone and we react to the world we react to Instagram posts to social media to negative news headlines whatever it might be and we've lost the opportunity to tune into ourselves I'm just in the process of finishing my next book at the moment and one of the key ideas for people is that knowledge is not enough what do I mean by that we can all know the right things to do but it doesn't mean we're going to do them right pretty much everyone listening to your podcast right now greater knows that too much sugar is probably not helping them yet many people are still doing that we know that actually staying up till midnight to binge watch on Netflix is probably not helping us but we still do it so knowledge I don't think is enough so going back to what I think is the one habit or behavior we should be doing every day is that we need a daily practice of solitude a practice where we're not getting inputs in from the external world and we're allowing ourselves to listen to what's going on inside us now yes I happen to do that with journaling okay I love to journal in the morning well I to do quite a few things in the morning actually but one of them is journaling because it helps me to reflect on my life it allows me to step outside of my life so I can reflect and go you know how am I living at the moment you know am I taking enough time for myself am I spending enough time with my wife and my kids is work getting too much and so I don't mind how people do their daily Solitude I think there's a number of ways meditation mindfulness journaling or it could simply be you have your morning cup of coffee in silence right without scrolling Instagram without looking at the news and I honestly believe that that is a rootcause behavior if you start taking five or 10 minutes a day to tune into yourself you will start to make better decisions in every single aspect of your life health happiness and relationships so I want to jump on that because I think there I mean there's definitely this huge trend on social media about talking about morning routines talking about what people do either it seems to be one of the two sides either like self-care morning routine or this productivity morning routine rather than a kind of amalgamation of both and understanding that you probably need both to have successful Life as a whole as part of this morning routine what should people be doing to optimize their physical and mental health the first thing to say about morning routines is is that for some people they become a bit cliched right it's the sort of the successful CEO in New York who gets up at 4:30 a.m. to cold plunge and do whatever you know they win the day before everyone else has got up right I get that and I get the skepticism there but I think people need to understand they already have a morning routine they just may not be conscious of it your morning routine could be you press the snooze button and for the third time you pick it up and you spend 10 minutes in bed scrolling Instagram looking at the news getting yourself in a bad mood before you be got out I didn't know there was CCTV in my room that's so strange yeah well the thing is it's that's a routine right that is a routine and it's not about good or bad it's about understanding that every action we do has a consequence so people are entitled to start their day like that but it's unlikely to set them up for the most intentional and purposeful day it could do you know we're all different we all respond to these things differently but it's unlikely so I personally do have quite a specific morning routine that I've been working on for years now at this stage in my life it happens to be between 30 and 45 minutes now I fully appreciate that some people will go it's ridiculous I don't have time for that I'm going to explain that just a minute so it didn't used to be 30 to 45 minutes you know five six years ago it was 10 minutes but it made a massive difference to me so in terms of a practical recommendation for people I Tau to my patients about something called the three M's mindfulness movement and mindset now I think it's a really great framework to think about the kind of things you could be doing first in the morning to get you set up for the day whether it's about your health or it's about productivity so how does that look you know for any individual okay mindfulness some form of mindfulness practice that could be meditation it could be breath work um it could be you know a body scan anything that you're drawn to it could be going on a meditation app like calm or headspace or whatever just a small practice of mindfulness then it can move on to the second thing which is movement so some form of movement and the third part of it would be mindset so something to get your mind in the right place for your day so what I do is I do 10 minutes of meditation when I wake up first thing so I live in a house I go downstairs I'm in my pajamas I do 10 minutes of meditation I used to use apps I don't anymore like they were really good to help educate me on how you meditate but now I prefer to not have technology when I'm meditating it's only 10 minutes second thing I do is I go into my kitchen and I love to drink coffee so I'm very particular about my coffee I weigh out my coffee I put it in the French press and I put a timer on for five minutes in those five minutes I do a five minute strength workout okay so I'm in my pajamas I've not had to put my latest sports gear on or my trainers I literally while my coffee is brewing I do a f minute workout it could be press UPS I might pick up a kettle bell that I've got in the kitchen but I make it really really simple and then the third m is mindset so after my little workout I've got my nice cup of coffee exactly the way I like it and these days I Journal so I literally write in my journal I answer some questions each morning three particular questions that I ask myself every morning and I think about the answers and I write them down that's my morning routine okay now if I've got a bit extra time I'll then read something uplifting for 10 15 minutes before my wife and kids wake up okay that's what works for me at this point in my life now if anyone's pushing back and going okay all right for you mate but I don't have that sort of time because patients have said that to me before well there's a patient who how was she she was probably about 44 this is a few years ago who was a single parent she had I think two or three kids from recollection and she was really struggling with the skin complaints that was diagnosed as eczema and I strongly felt that chronic stress in her life was making her eczema worse and I talked to her about morning routine she said do I don't have time for that I said okay all right let's think about this I think this 3M routine would really suit you let's figure out a way to do it in five minutes I said you have five minutes goes yeah I've got five minutes I said okay great so I said okay I've got a a breath that I teach my Pati it's called the 3 four five breath where you breathe in for three you hold for four and you breathe out for five and I've taught so many patients how to use it especially people who suffer with anxiety it can be really really helpful so she would do one minute a 3 four five breathing that's it one minute okay then in terms of her movement she really like yoga I said okay let's find some of your favorite yoga moves I want you to do them for two minutes that's it not like a 20- minute practice two minutes so she found two or three moves that she liked that she'd done years ago in yoga classes and she she created a little sequence so she did two minutes of yoga then I said for the third M mindset I gave her some options and she said okay I actually want to do affirmations so she would write down or I think she would just say them I'm happy I'm calm I'm stress free I'm happy I'm calm I'm stress free her morning routine took her 5 minutes right she told me she had no time within days she felt like a different person she felt calmer she had more energy it kicked into effect what I call the ripple effect so at lunchtimes now she would start to go for a 10-minute walk around the block stuff that she wouldn't do before but that morning routine kickstarted things off for her helped to build momentum and then Inc incredibly within 3 or 4 weeks her symptoms of eczema had gone down by 50 to 60% right hadn't gone away but it was a lot more manageable the reason I share that Grace is because I believe morning routines are important you don't need to get sucked into the two-hour routine the New York CEO does if you can do that great but I appreciate most people can't even 5 minutes of intentional time each morning with your cup of tea maybe journaling whilst you have a cup of tea answering some important questions I think that will transform people's lives and I've seen it it's done it for me and it's done it for thousands of my patients it's so interesting because I always have this internal battle with myself about the fact that I know I will feel better if I spend some time in the morning not just getting up as close as possible to my to the time I need to leave rushing through everything and then leaving I know like I know that will make me feel better but at the same time I want to get as much sleep as possible and so I have this constant push and pull between me being like okay well I can get ready in half an hour and out the door within half an hour and I constantly push it closer and closer to that rather than the actual understanding that every time I have jet lag and it wakes me up at you know a few hours before I would need to get up I am so much calmer I have a better approach to everything I feel more in control I just it's it's this kind of cognitive that's really interesting I mean you you've shared some of at the end there I was going to ask you why is it you feel you should get up earlier what is it you think you're gain because the reality is if if our lives are going well we don't need to change anything right we don't need to just put in a routine for no reason if someone listening to this is already happy with their life and says yeah everything's rocking Health my relationships my work I've got no issues great you don't need to do you know don't change anything you you're you're smashing it already but you've just said that on funnily enough when you're jet lagged so you're you're sort of you're made to get up early you don't want to but you're made to get up early you find that calmness that sense of control that's why I have a morning routine ever since I had children my oldest is 13 now my daughter's 11 I realized that I'm a better human being in every aspect of my life when I've had time to myself each morning you know I'm calmer I'm more present with my kids I'm more present with my wife I'm a better doctor so I've now learned enough times I've assessed myself when I don't have a morning routine and when I do and I and I think I actually prefer the rongan who has half an hour to himself each morning but I appreciate not everyone does and so let me ask you this then Grace given that you know you're going to be calmer and More in control if you did get up let's say half an hour earlier why don't you sleep really like sleep I agree that there must be something there in order to mean that I continuously don't do that because I am the type of person who will I intend to optimize my life in every way like I'm pretty Shameless about the fact that I'm happy to you know I currently live a very selfish life that I would never be able to live once I have kids and I you know it is entirely based on how I work best and how I can get the absolute most out myself it's interesting cuz I wonder if it's different weightings in my mind in terms of what I find productive because interestingly I know I'm a far better manager far better person to work with etc etc when I give myself a few hours to not to myself in terms of mindset but to work so interestingly actually if I have a really busy day I will get in hours earlier not to get more done but because it gives me back control it gives me back control of the fact that okay well that meeting starts at 9: so that means that if I come in at 8:45 I'm going to be like going hell for leather through the day without actually being able to reather it so I wonder if it's that I value that higher because I value productivity and work higher than maybe my own mindset which is problematic well I don't know if it is I mean as you say you seem to have the awareness to to go if you at some point choose to have kids in the future which of course many people choose not to or and of course some people are unable to despite wanting to you have the self awareness to know wow it may change at that point and you know I've been a dad for many years now you know my life and what I'm able to do has changed significantly for the better since I've had kids but then we have to make choices perhaps and of course I don't know your life but perhaps you can get away without a morning routine because you have other maybe there's space in your life at other times to decompress you know you mentioned the word control that's really important important word right we know from the research that people who have a sense of control over their lives are healthier their mental resilience is better they're happier they do better at work they earn more money they have better social relationships and I kind of feel today more than ever with so much negativity going on in the world if you go online and look at the news and that sort of stuff right you may well feel pretty bad about the state of the world you feel out of control and what we all really need to do each day if we want to lead that intentional and purposeful life we need to give ourselves a sense of control in a world that is fundamentally uncontrollable that's why I think routines are so important because they give you that sense of control I also think further to that of course like the world is out of your control which can make you you know if that's a lot of your consumption then um it's not just what we're consuming in terms of food etc etc if you're constantly consuming this kind of 24-hour media cycle where things are pretty intense all the time you can find something that's going to make you feel terrible at any one time don't get me wrong we should obviously know and care about a lot of things but there is definitely a certain impact that has in terms of you falling out of control over your life and your mindset but I think further to that there's this element of the way that social media gains our concentration now so for example Tik Tok that I don't think we have the ability to be in control of you find yourself say you're you're scrolling with the best intentions this kind of like lab rat dopamine hit Behavior where you're constantly being brought back and back and back and kind of over and over and over having these artificial dopamine hits we don't have the equipment to always gain back control and say no I've done 10 minutes now I'm going to stop or whatever it might be it's almost like a drug and I know that sounds so dramatic but that's genuine that's why I don't let myself scroll Tik Tok during the week because I have no control over it more so than if I like drink a glass of alcohol I'm likely to stop Tik Tok I am not and it's not it's not a personal failing of yours right none of us can resist these things are engineered for the weak spots in our psychology you know there's a thing on social media that's called perfectionist presentation right so with the best will in the world most people share the highlights of their life they don't tend to share the you know the plates that are piling up in the sink or the dirty laundry you know and it's not because they're being dishonest they're just why would you share that right you can know with your rational brain that I'm seeing the highlight real of someone's life but your subconscious brain doesn't know that right your subconscious picks up the idea constantly when you're scrolling that other people have got a better life than me and it ain't real and I've realized you know I'm at a different stage in life to you in terms of age and maybe where I'm at with my family for example but I've just realized the more time I spend on social media the less happy I am with my life right it's simple so the for the last four weeks I'm trying something new this might seem quite revolutionary to some people but I am switching my phone off my smartphone at 6:30 pm. am stop yeah I'm switching up now let me be really clear here I do happen to have a landline as well right so I appreciate some people don't and why have I kept a landline because I for me being able to separate all the noise on my phone yet still being available for the people who need me like I help to care for my elderly mom who lives 5 minutes away right my brother lives nearby all kinds of you know they've all got my landline number but only my close family and my really good friends have my landline number right no work contact has my landline number so it means if the phone rings after 6:30 p.m. it's someone actually it's not related to work and honestly it's changed my life do you know what's so funny is that I've been pitching over the past few weeks about how we should bring back the landline for precisely this reason I find Al very helpful to know if someone's home generally when you need to reach someone but actually we have this it's currently we have an option between like a barrage of information and contact and like social but quite intense like you get it when you switch on your phone whether you want to or not whether it's BBC notifications whether it's whatsapps whether it's social media as we say the Temptation is there we often don't have control over it these things are engineered to get our attention but even if you just want to respond to your friends I find myself not responding to my friends for weeks and I find myself scrolling every day and that to me is very confusing because I would actually like to be social with my friends and I don't care about what's on my feed whereas I genuinely believe that we should bring back landlines because there's this idea that contact now with people is also associated with this constant cycle of the rest of it you know the rest of the stuff that's on the feed the rest of the news the rest of all of that and actually we need to be able to separate those as well because we need to be able to as you say contact and be in contact with people who need us without like I shut myself out from technically from all of my friends despite the fact that I do see them but I won't be responding purely because in the evenings I do not want a single other piece of information in my head so there's this kind of it's one or the other it's this black and white decision yeah it goes back to the question you asked me before Grace what's the most important habits what's the most important Behavior I honestly believe in this crazy busy 21st century you know urban life that many of us live within I'm not sure there's a greater practice for your physical health and mental well-being than daily Solitude and if you don't take active steps to create space for it it ain't going to happen if I take my phone into my bedroom at night right and human right like I'm doing this at the moment it's a trial I like it but it doesn't mean I'll never do that again I can't resist looking at it in the morning if it's in my bedroom I cannot resist or wake up it's your alarm clock yeah I mean what you just can't if it's there we know from scientific research that even having your phone present you're using cognitive willpower to not look at it right you're using up your cognitive reserve and so that's why I I'm always trying with patience and with myself looking for what's the what's the onetime behavior what's the what's the root cause habit that if I can do that it naturally causes all these other great behaviors to happen right me putting my phone up at 6:30 at night and leaving in my kitchen the knock on effects of that are huge right it means I'm not looking at nonsense every evening right I spend more intentional time with my wife once the kids have gone to bed I'm reading in bed with a dim light you know it's much more relaxed you're not just seeing a 100 posts a minute of of nonsense half the time right you're nourishing yourself I sleep better I'm waking up feeling more refreshed I'm waking up feeling calmer because the phone ain't there I'm not naturally going on to Instagram and seeing what's going on in the world and I I'm I'm as fallible as anyone else if my phone was that I would be so for me I've created something in my life which means it's much easier for me to engage in behaviors I want to now that may not work for everyone someone may go I can't do that I need to be in contact my children need to get me or whatever it might be hey I get it we've we've all got to find what works for us I'm only sharing this not to say someone else should do that I would never be arrogant enough to think I know what's better for someone else in the context of their life but I think the principle is what is it you want more of in your life where are you struggling what are one or two beh behaviors you might be able to bring into your life that will help them and in order to think about that you need time outside your life to really reflect and develop that self-awareness yeah no I do think it's so interesting because you know it's one of those things that you come back to again and again and again when you're looking at how to improve your life it's all around things like Diet alcohol sleep exercise phones all of this and it feels like we're so far from it in this modern day kind of the the cycle we have and the access we have to all of this news it feels like we're naturally so far from it and it also feels like we need to consciously retract ourselves from the norm and from society's General behavior in order to be able to as you say you know be happier or more in control or whatever it might be so it does feel very hard to action it is it it is you know if you do what everyone else is doing you know you you're going to be the norm you mentioned that word Norm the norm in society today is not healthy you know we have but you know many experts will say we have a mental health epidemic right we're not getting healthier as a society for all the technology for all the Innovation we are getting sicker you know more and more people are struggling with their physical health with their mental well-being with their emotional health you mentioned before about um sugar and alcohol and how often we talking about those things right rather than creating mental space this is an idea I'm writing about at the moment because it's it goes back to this idea that knowledge is not enough right if you go onto the news first thing in the morning right this is what happens for a lot of us you see the negativity that's happening in the world that creates emotional stress and internal tension within you right because you don't like it it doesn't feel good that emotional stress is not neutral you will have to engage in some behaviors to neutralize that and we often go to Sugar caffeine alcohol those things are symptoms of the problem so too often we're trying to say I need to reduce my sugar intake but we don't understand or we don't think about the fact that every single behavior in our life plays a role too often we try and change the behavior without understanding the role that plays in our life so if for example the way you cope with stress is to eat sugar you can do as many 30-day sugar detoxes as you want you ain't going to change anything because that's a that's your way of coping with stress so you either need to address the stress in your life or you need a different way of managing that stress and you want something grace which may it I think if what I'm going to say is going to sound controversial to you or not we need to know what's going on in the world and what to care about I've really been thinking about this over the last 12 months so I don't watch the news I haven't watched the news in about five years now apart from yesterday when I was at my months and the News was on I was like oh my God this is so negative right that doesn't mean I don't know what's going on in the world I pick it up on social media but I don't actively watch the news if you think about how we've evolved as humans we haven't evolved to know what's going on 3,000 miles away in another tribe in across an ocean somewhere right so the question we have to ask ourselves is what is our responsibility in the modern world you know how much do we need to be informed about one of the phrases I live by is attributed to Gandhi which is be the change you want to see in the world I live my life by this because I honestly believe the way to change the world is to be what you want the world to be so I try my best to behave and act with compassion I try not to judge people I try and be patient because when I can do that that ripples to the people around me and that then ripples to the people around them whereas if I see what's going on in a different part of the world and I get frustrated and that paralyzes me and I get in a bad mood and then I'm off with my wife and my kids and I drink sugar sorry I eat too much sugar or drink too much alcohol I don't know how that's actually helping the world so I'm not pushing back on what you're saying I'm just trying to explore that as an idea how much do we need to be informed about no I do think that is a fair point I think that there's two different aspects to it because I do think that we are enormously privileged certain people obviously more than others you know we haven't evolved to deal with this 24-hour news cycle we were never designed to be that way and now now even more so than that 24-hour news cycle is this 24-hour news cycle about every single person we both know and don't know and kind of semi know through a parasocial relationship and like all of these different elements that it is it is very complex and there has to be some give in that there has to be some element of okay it is better if I know what's going on in this this and this place so that I can care for it so that I can advocate for change so that I can write to my mp whatever it might be for sure but I do agree that there is a certain aspect of it whereby you know usually the people who spend more of the time reading the news are also more inclined to care more about what those various things might be and therefore it just gets into this cycle of kind of negative mental space yeah I think you you ra some really really great points and I think again I think it all comes back to self-awareness we need to assess how we are so for example I never I never like telling anyone what to do with their life I've never told a patient what to do with their life I try and share information that if people want to experiment with it and see for themselves if it works I think that's the best way so if someone's listening and they think you know what that could be me I think I'm over consuming negative content online okay do a challenge for seven days right delete all those apps see if you can not look at the news or social media for seven days and each morning spend five minutes just writing down how you feel just see are you calmer are your Intimate Relationships better are you more productive right do that and then spend seven days doing it the way you're currently doing and then you start to build up the most powerful thing of all which is not consuming information from experts it's becoming your own expert and then you can go oh wow this is what I used to do when patients came in um let's say alcohol they had a they had um they were drinking too much for example I never really wanted to I I never thought it was my job to tell them what to do but the way I would always approach it would be for example okay you're making a decision on a Friday when you go and have you know spend four hours in the pub with your mates getting smashed that that's worth doing great got no problem with that okay so what's the consequence on a Saturday oh well on a Saturday I'm knackered I've got a headache I can't interrupting my children my wife thinks I'm being a bit lazy whatever it might be okay fine no worries okay uh and let's try a few Fridays where you don't have that or you reduce how much how does that then feel on a Saturday oh God you know when I only have one beer instead of five beers I'm got I'm I'm ready to take the kids out I can interact with my wife you know we got a better relationship I said okay cool you you you can now see the difference you can make that decision now because you're empowered I think no one ever changes cuz someone else has told them to they might for a week or two but in the long term they never do it has to become your idea so I say to people use yourself as dating experiment you know if you think yeah my job is to be informed about everything that's going on in the world today the wars the conflict whatever it might be because that makes me an informed citizen of the world great see that for seven days and see how it impacts your life then try with out and then you can find where's the sweet spot for you I think that's what we miss these days there's so much expertise out there and I say this as you know an expert online right a medical expt as it were I don't want people to just to take my advice and you know say yeah that's definitely right for me no try it for yourself does it work for you if it doesn't or it doesn't resonate with you it's probably not the advice for you yeah no I do think that's a really really good peace of advice more advice yeah should means again no but I do think so because I think that like being someone who's very much grown up with social media and always tries to you know be the best version of themselves and doesn't necessarily think that that means that I'm also going to be necessarily like the healthiest version of myself or whatever it might be like there are different balances elsewhere I do think that it's so easy to get sucked into a lot of things that say okay well you're going to be more mindful if you do this this and this and you're going to be more this if you do this this and this and you know I for one realized that like one of the things that makes me really really happy is like work does make me happy and I think working against it for so long to be like no I need to stop doing this much here I need to stop this much here it's like yes absolutely I need boundaries but I also need to know that maybe like maybe that's just something that I particularly enjoy and maybe I'm like hugely lucky to be in a situation where I can spend time doing something that I enjoy that much and listening to a lot of advice that's like no you should only do this you should only let this bleed into like hit this here and if you do more than that you're going to live a bad life I also feel like is counterproductive if anyone's feeling um sort of confused they're not sure where to start you know one thing i' I'd really recommend and say listen okay you don't know what to do with news and social media uh all the negativity that's out there in the world the first thing i' say is that understands that we think from the research that humans take in nine bits of negative information for every bit of positive right for every one bit of positive information right so we have a negativity bias that is is what has kept us alive right 100 thousand years ago you had to know whether that noise in the bushes was a predator or the wind and you were rewarded if you overreacted right if you thought it was a predator it was just the wind no problem you survive if you got it wrong you didn't right so it's hard wide within us to be more sensitive to look out for negative information that's why you've got to be so careful about what you do first in the morning because your thoughts your feelings your behaviors for the rest of the day are often Downstream of the content consuming if you feed your brain with negativity first in the morning is it any wonder your mood might be slightly off later or you might feel slightly out of control when you put it like that it's not so the three questions I ask myself every morning yes it's in my journal but people don't need to get the journal they can just do this you know on a piece of paper and I think you know from the people who do this every morning they say it totally transforms their days right the first thing what's one thing I deeply appreciate about my life simple question right we know from the scientific research that a regular practice of gratitude can help improve your moods it can improve your decision making it can reduce anxiety it can reduce depression it can help you sleep better the lists are endless answering that question will take you 30 seconds a minute maximum what's one thing I deeply appreciate about my life second question what's the most important thing I have to do today it's one of my favorite questions it's the anti-business question because Mo for most of us our to-do lists are never done that's an endless list even if you think you've done everything your focus is going to be what did you not do what is the most important thing I have to do today forces you to make a decision and when you start off you're often like well there's an important thing at work there's an important thing in my home life you know fine start off with two but over time you realize that actually is only one most important thing and the point is it doesn't matter what you put down what matters is that you put something down and then if you do that thing it means that that day was a win right so some days for me it's like I must go for a 20-minute War today okay some days it's like when the kids come home from school I need to shut my laptop and make sure I'm fully present with them and listen to what they have to tell me other days is I must make sure after the kids have gone to bed I spend some intentional time with my wife by answering those questions it doesn't mean that nothing else in my life is important by saying I want to spend time with my wife doesn't mean that time with my kids is not important but it helps direct the focus each day and if that's all people ask themselves each day it is inconceivable that your life won't change because if you do that seven days a week then that means you're doing seven important things each week you're doing 28 important things every four weeks your life is going to start to change and the third question question is what quality do I want to showcase to the world today again I love this question Grace because so much of who we are is reactive right we think that we have to be the person who work about the wrong side of of bed on a particular day but we don't right we've got a lot more um agency over how we show up in the world so for example you can write down I want to show the world the quality of patience today or compassion today right and you set the intention this is how I want to behave and if you have time you can think about that okay that means when I get into work I'm going to smile at my colleagues if someone barges in front of me to get on at the tube I'm not going to get annoyed I'm just going to smile go maybe they're in a rush honestly just spending a few minutes each morning answering these three questions will absolutely change the trajectory of your life and if you do it every day the same questions you start to build up such a phenomenal self-awareness about yourself and you start to live more intentionally so that's what I do each morning it's the final part of my morning routine with a cup of coffee but I honestly think if people do that you know in fact I would say to people don't just believe me right don't just believe what I've said try it for seven days if at the end of those seven days you go that's a complete waste of time I don't feel any different great stop doing it maybe not for you but if after there seven days you go wow I like how this makes me feel and I'm 99% certain that for most people they'll go wow I had no idea that just answering those three questions would transform my life like this so I just say give it a go yeah no I think that's hugely useful advice and I think that as a whole in terms of like so much of that comes back to intentionality um and you know as you said that is also that time that you're spending alone it's that solitude it's also so it's also that control element so do you think then because so much of what you've said has come back to those three things do you think those three things are the most important when it comes to living a happy life intentionality control having some time for Solitude would you add anything to that I think those are three very important ingredients if I zoom out even further Upstream in my last book on happiness I created a model for happiness called core happiness as opposed to junk happiness and core happiness was created as a it's a skill that you can get better at happiness is a skill you can develop it and cultivate it if you know what to work on and the three components of core happiness are alignment contentment and control so we mentioned control right doing something each day that gives you a sense of control in a world that is fundamentally uncontrollable is important that could be a routine for example like we've already discussed the second leg of that core happiness tool this contentment it's about doing things regularly that give you that sense of calm and peace and I think Solitude absolutely does that the third component to call happiness is alignment so when I say alignment what do I mean I mean when the person who you really are inside and the person who you are being out there in the world are one and the same basically when your values and actions start to line up more and more now journaling or Solitude is actually a practice that hits all three components of Happiness alignment contentment and control normally you feel quite content and calm when you're having that practice of solitude it's giving you that sense of control and it also helps you act in a much more aligned fashion for example that final question in the morning what is the quality I want to showcase to the world today that's alignment that's basically saying this is the person who I want to be right now just by putting that down in the morning on your Journal doesn't mean you're going to be that person every day but by asking yourself that question every day you're gently nudging yourself you're not beating yourself up in a compassionate way you're going you know what I put patience down yesterday but you know what when my colleague sent me that email at 4 p.m. I got really pissed off and I sent a bit of a ratty email back that isn't how I want to really be out there in the world cool I can't change yesterday but I can try in that moment today if I get another email from that same colleague or another colleague I can try and react differently and that's what living an intentional life is all about none of us are perfect you know we all have days where we haven't slept or we've allowed our stresses to mount up and we have been a bit off with people or we've sent an email that we regret one hour later right or left a message or whatever it might be but why I'm such a fan of solitude each day is you're never going to change that behavior unless you can reflect on that behavior think about the world's best athletes right they all have coaches right they all have coaches because they can't see all the time what they're doing wrong right let's say you're a tennis player the tennis coach can say Hey listen whenever you get under pressure in the final part of a match your back swing gets a bit shorter that's why your shots go out it's very hard in the moment to know that yourself and so they can work on that and next time that player is in the final set of a big match oh yeah I remember I always get short no I'll make sure I don't get short and I go for a nice long back swing or whatever it might be well a daily practice of solitude allows us to be our own coach right we can reflect on our own life we can go wow I didn't behave the way I wanted to yesterday that's not the best version of me I'm going to try harder today and that's why I'm a big fan of these practices because Hey listen Grace I've written books full of information on sugar and alcohol and stuff and that's useful but knowledge is not enough in and off itself if you don't have Insight if you don't have self-awareness if you don't know that alcohol is your way of dealing with the conflicts in your relationships doesn't matter you're never going to change your relationship with alcohol because it's a symptom of another problem and I think you know this daily practice of solitude helps you understand that does that all make sense that makes so much sense and I think that is the perfect place to end because I think that you have dra I I don't even know what more to ask because there is so much gold dust in there um so thank you so much for sharing your wisdom I feel like a lot of people will find this incredibly helpful um and I always just feel like these types of ations are so helpful in just reentering and being able to as you say like come back to being your own coach a little bit revisiting what you might have misaligned recently um so thank you so much my pleasure Grace thank you for having me on your show [Music]

Channel: Grace Beverley

Views: 112,905

Keywords: gracefituk, flexible dieting, bbg, new makeup, must haves, intermittent fasting, vegan, weight loss, how to, grace fit uk, what i eat in a day, full day of eating, oxford university, entrepreneur, sophia cinzia, flossie, olivia neill

Id: syTbFIb-BVU

Length: 57min 0sec (3420 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2024