The Key Strategies Of Behaviour Change - Dr Rangan Chatterjee (4K)

what's the problem with relian the problem with relian is that we are overly reliant on too many things in the outside world which we cannot control and those relian Chris are tying us down so as a medical doctor one of my main interests is how do you help people make changes that actually last not changes for two or 3 weeks in January or maybe January February March but actually long-term transformational changes and I realized that one of the reasons why people cannot or they struggle to make those long-term changes is because they're too reliant on too many things I give you an example right so many people feel that they can only feel good and live the life that they want when everything around them goes right okay there's no traffic the emails are okay the coffee is given to you by your bruer just the way you like it okay your boss treat you nicely there's no traffic on the way home from work if those conditions are met we can feel calm and satisfied and we can get on with our life and make the choices that we want to make but if those conditions are not met then actually we start to struggle we don't feel good in who we are and what I've realized Chris over 23 years now seeing patients is that usually the behaviors that we are trying to avoid or cut down on are there for a very good reason and they're usually there to help us neutralize the internal discomfort that we feel so the reason I think that most people cannot or struggle to make changes that last is because they're not understanding the role that those behaviors play in their life they're too focused on the behavior but I think we need to be focused on the energy behind the behavior how do you dig behind a behavior given that it's quite hard to we're not crystal balls to ourselves we don't know why we do the things we do all the time yeah it's not as hard as actually it's not as hard as we might think right because let's take something super uh common and something that people are trying to reset their relationship all the time let's say alcohol for example right so what I see a lot of in medicine is us trying to give Public Health advice to people saying look too much alcohol frankly a little bit of alcohol is probably helping you that much and the way we'll try and facilitate change is by giving people more knowledge and more information right you know too much alcohol will damage your liver it's not good for your weight it's not good for your sleep architecture whatever it might be and that can be helpful up to a point but I submit that most people who are trying to cut back on alcohol or cut it out completely and you could substitute alcohol for sugar or online pornography or gambling or whatever you want basically it's a behavior what a lot of people who are trying to do that they already know the damage that that is causing for them not everyone but a lot of them do what they're not understanding is why do they keep going to that behavior so instead of every January for example buying the new book on the Alcohol detox or the sugar detox anyone Chris can stop a behavior for three or 4 weeks and they think that they're getting somewhere but that often not getting somewhere because that behavior was there for a reason so very simply if you're drinking alcohol to manage the stress in your life which many people do then you can wh knuckle it for four weeks and quit but usually you'll end up back to where you were unless one of two things has happened either the stress in your life has to come down so you have less of a need therefore for the alcohol or you need to find alternative Behavior to alcohol to manage the stress when I put it like that it sounds really really simple and obvious but I genuinely believe that when we think about Behavior change too much of it is about more and more external knowledge right but I think what we all need is more internal knowledge and your first question to me was about relian right and I said about a lot of these everyday relian that people uh have which are tying them down in this new book what I've done is go through some bigger picture alliances right so chapter one I think it's one of the most important chapters I've ever written it's called trust yourself and I talk about this overreliance on Experts right so if I could just elaborate I think it's a really interesting point you and me Chris we both host podcasts right and we talk to a lot of experts right and they give their advice now I don't know if you found this Chris but what I would find and I do find on my podcast is one week I could talk to Let's say uh a medical doctor from Harvard Medical School right so people say you know you must get your advice from experts but here's the problem in the modern worlds one week let's say I talked to Chris Palmer from Harvard Medical School right which I have done Chris is great and he will show evidence that a ketogenic diet can be incredibly helpful for some people with bipolar and other mental health problems right he'll give you patient case studies and he'll give you published research to support what he's saying two months later I could talk to someone else let's say Professor Feliz Jacka from Australia right and we can talk about her trial that showed a Mediterranean diet is really good for reversing depression right and she'll present case studies and published research so what I would find often in my Instagram DMS is that my audience would say hey Dr Chassy I'm a little bit confused Chris Palmer said this Feliz Jacka said that they both sound really really convincing I don't know which expert to trust the Chris I believe in 2024 and 2025 that's the wrong question to be asking it's not which expert should I trust it's why do I no longer trust myself I think we have become overly reliant on external experts I'm not saying ignore external experts but somewhat over the last few years we've outsourced our inner EXP expertise to these external experts so what I would say to people and I've got 23 years of clinical experience behind me so this is real life experience with patients not just published research different things work for different people so I would say to people listen why don't you try what Chris Palmer is suggesting for example for four weeks and in those four weeks I want you to pay attention pay attention to your energy your sleep your relationship ships your focus your concentration your gut your bloating your bows pay attention right and then for the next four weeks try what the other experts saying and pay attention to those same things at the end of that 8we trial you will actually start to know which of these diets feels right for me does that make sense yeah it does I mean do you find it a difficult position to hold as a doctor writing a self-development book to say don't TR trust the experts I think actually in some ways it makes what I'm saying even more powerful because I am a so-called expert right so I'm a medical doctor I've done my specialist exams I've done my general practice exams I've got an Immunology degree I'm a professor at Chester medical school expertise I've got the expertise but I still would have to say Chris to you or any of your audience I simply cannot know exactly what is the right approach for you I can give you Frameworks and guidelines But ultimately you have to determine what is the right approach for you and yes we can help I'm not saying ignore experts Chris I'm saying I think the balance has shifted too far now and what's happened is is when we basically think that the expert has the answer and I'm following their advice and I'm not feeling better we never think they're the failure that's interesting we think we're the failure yep and we're struggling and actually we're not good enough and it and it makes us feel inferior and in that chapter there's a case study of you know real life case study of a patient who came to see me once she was very very interested at Health she would listen to health podcasts and read all the health books and she had heard a guts health expert say that you should aim to have 30 different plant Foods in a week because that will help you have a healthy gut microbiome okay right so she's trying to follow that in her life and she feels awful every time she tries to follow it okay and then she tries to go slowly and introduced really really gradually she's getting bloated she's getting constipated she can't sleep properly she comes in to see me and says Dr chassie I'm trying my best here right I know that I need to have these 30 different plant foods for a healthy gut microbiome but I just don't feel good and what I said to her chiss was listen I'm not criticizing the advice that you read online at all I'm simply saying that no one piece of Health advice holds true for every single person would you like me to help you figure out what is the right approach for you it only took us about six weeks and for her at that point in her life Chris she went on to a more low carb type of diet with five to 10 different plant Foods a week and she's rocking she's thriving she's got energy her sleep's good she's got a flat stomach she's not bloated that was the right approach of her and why I'm so passionate about this idea Chris is that we're now living in this era where we're drowning in information and for all the good intentions about putting this information out there that you have and that I have and many people have one of the things that we've neglected along the way I think is that an individual I think on a core level knows when they're on the right approach for them that's what I've seen in 23 years of seeing patience Chris I've seen that actually somewhere along the line the people who can make changes that truly last in the long term at some point they've tuned into themselves and going actually you know what dog I know you said that but actually I feel better when I'm meeting in this way there's this interesting Jeff Bezos quote where he says uh when the data doesn't agree with the anecdote I usually trust the anecdote the point being that I I I've had this in my mind for a while um if you can't explain the mechanism of how something works the fact that it works is uh derated quite quickly it's like look that's that's not the that's not the particular way that this thing is supposed to occur and you go that's fine but this person's outcome is exactly what they were looking for in life they lost weight or they improved their mood or they the lifts went up in the gym or whatever it might be that is the thing that you're trying to achieve I don't think we need to over complicate what the inputs are and we get so caught up on that it's interesting this sort of uh Trea yourself like an experiment approach you know holding the strategies that you use quite Loosely being prepared to move after you've had them either proven or disproven that seems like a good approach but yeah I mean you know Health advice is pretty confusing I think in the modern world more information than ever but even less Clarity well more health information than ever before and worsening health outcomes right when I was sitting down for the last two and a half years writing this book Chris I was thinking on one level it doesn't make sense more Health podcasts more Health books more Health blogs more online articles about health yet at the same time worse physical health outcomes worse mental health outcomes I thought what is this more knowledge everyone says knowledge is power we need more knowledge and the case I make in this book that I'm very passionate about that I don't believe has been made enough is that it's not just external knowledge we need we need more internal knowledge what is that internal knowledge is Insight it's self-awareness it's tuning into yourself there you I'm sure you may have covered this before on your show interception you know the ability to sense your own body's signals right we know full well there's so many research papers now on interception it's almost like our sick sense there's a study uh that was done with autistic individuals who had anxiety and if they were trained to be able to sense their heartbeats and feel their heartbeats they could actually get remission from their anxiety more than people who couldn't people who've had substance abuse with drugs and alcohol if they have mindfulness training which allows them to feel their internal Sensations and their signals it reduces the rate of relapse reduces the rate of depression improves how they feel about themselves right so this is this I I I sometimes wonder Chris why I have this approach to health that I do because it's not similar to most doctors right I think the way I look at health and I think there's a few things that have influenced the way I see the world one is my upbringing you know I I'm the child of Indian immigrants to the UK so my dad came in 1962 to the UK in search of a better life and I grew up with this Clash of cultures right at home this Indian upbringing where we very much see food as medicine where if I have a cold or a sore throat Mom is putting extra turmeric in my food or making me hot Ginger and honey and turmeric and saying you have to drink that before you go to school and then at school I was getting this more you know Western uh mindset and I think that Clash really comes when you get to medical school where it is very much about what does the research trial show I'm not against science at all I think science is wonderful but what I've realized over the past years is actually what a lot of these traditional healing modalities like traditional Indian medicine iic medicine and traditional Chinese medicine had which we don't so much have in Western medicine is a real appreciation of the individual the individual every individual is different they all need a slightly different approach but the model we get taught Chris is what does the randomized control trial say okay so very simplistically let's give 100 people this treatment and 100 people don't get the treatment on average does it work or not and if enough people benefit we say yes on average this is a statistically significant finding this treatment works but the problem is if you go under the hood there you will find that even in the group where it wasn't statistically significant some people still got better right so it doesn't account for the individual and I think this is why I'm so passionate about this idea because science is great to help inform us right but you may not be the person who was in that randomized control trial and going back to what you said Chris it's about outcomes what are we looking for we're not you know one thing we do get taught very well at in Western Medical Schools is we're not treating biomarkers we're not treating blood levels we're treating a human being a patient right so going back to that patient I mentioned as you said what does she want she wants energy she wants Vitality she wants good sleep whether she's having five plant Foods a week or 30 plant Foods a week is actually Irrelevant in terms of the goals that she wants yeah Ry suland said yesterday to economists pric is a number but to customers pric is a feeling and it's basically the same thing with medicine right that you can show me where this appears show me the RCT on this show me the double blind whatever and you go don't have that but I do have I felt better when I did such and such and as a practicing doctor for so many years CHR I can tell you the only thing that has ever mattered to me is helping the person in front of me get better and often I've helped people get better not by using what the RCT said because for me medicine is an art and science right talk to me about the problems with perfectionism well it kind of plays in to what we're talking about actually in some ways so perfectionism is on the rise we know that from the 19 Maes a lot of us think it's from social media social media has definitely made it worse but we actually know it was happening before that this idea that actually we can be perfect right and I think it's because of all these cultural U myths that we have around us the billboard image what we might see on social media we think actually that attaining what we think these people have is possible but perfectionism is toxic it is literally one of the most toxic things that you can suffer from and I have had it for most of my life until very recently I would say I had quite serious perfectionist Tendencies which I think affected me in so many different ways we know that perfectionism is associated with all kinds of mental health problems including suicide right so this is this is a serious serious issue but perfectionism makes you feel less than right often we are comparing the worst version of ourselves with the best version of somebody else and when we feel less than we compensate with our behaviors right this is why this matters to me Chris so everything in make change at last is this idea that every single person is capable of making meaningful change in their life I know that to be true I have seen it time and time again I have seen patients in the darkest places with suicidal thoughts and I've helped them turn their life around so I know that it's possible for every single person but in order to do that we have to understand ourselves we have to understand that our behaviors follow our beliefs so if you have perfectionistic beliefs that it is possible to be perfect you will find that when you fall short as you inevitably will because none of us are perfect we don't feel good and that's what drives us to the pornography to the gambling to the sugar to the alcohol those things are a consequence they're not the cause of the issue they're a symptom of the problem so I think Perfection is massive and you know it's something I've heard you talk about before and I I write about at length is in Chapter 2 is which is the chapter title is called give up your Heroes I used to really put my heroes on a pedestal Chris I don't know if you did as a kid or not I certainly did and I don't know if one could admit this these days or not but you know I started that chapter saying that when I was 14 I can remember a group in the northwest of England on my wall I had a lifesized flag of John bonji okay yep okay I don't know what that means from your facial expression I I just wonder why you went so wrong okay well we can we can talk about musical taste uh maybe off the m not musical not musical taste just in the career choice you had to flourish you've got the hair you had a flourishing career as a Indian bonjovi and I look I look where I ended up I know write writing books and fixing People's Health but what why that's interesting why I chose to open that chapter with that story it's cuz I can see now very clearly how that kind of hero worship has been problematic for me right so I thought as a 14-year-old boy wow God if I could be John bonvi my life would be perfect right touring the world screaming fans writing killer album after killer album if you like that sort of thing at the time right whatever your choice might be but somewhere along the line I believe that it was possible and many of us believe that perfectionism is possible I think it's got so much worse now with social media where we see these avatars online they're not real Taylor Swift Our impression of Taylor Swift is not real yes she is real she exists but actually what we're shown about her is carefully curated by a marketing machine I'm not having a go at them for doing that it is a business right I'm not criticizing Taylor Swift if you love tor the Swift and You' like G to with concerts that is great but many of us are growing up with the belief that that is possible and it's not possible right if I've learned as an ad over the last years Chris I'm 47 now and I think wow if I was John bonjovi what would it have been genuinely like being on the road for 300 days a year what's it like for your wife what's it like for your children growing up what's it like sleeping on a tour bus with sweaty crew night after night like genuinely because I think I said to you just before we got on the mics Chris I'm in such a great place these days like like honestly I've never felt this good like I feel really I feel grounded I feel calm I feel that I've I've managed to come to a point where I I get what's truly important for me not for anyone else but for me what's changed what's changed is I've cut a lot of these relian that were tying me down that I that I talk about in this book right bit by bit I've gone through the process of cutting them this Reliance on Perfection realizing no perfect is a myth wrong and you cannot achieve perfect it's not possible right so get really clear on what your priorities are this week everything in life has a consequence right now this is this is something I truly get these days Chris in a way that I never got before we make choices in life and those choices have consequences too often we only think about the upside of our choices and not the downsides and so I think last time I came on your show a few years ago I mentioned this little happiness exercise that I've used with patience for years I use myself which is this very simple write your own happy ending exercise where you imagine yourself on your deathbed and you imagine looking back on your life what are the three things I will want to have done in my life and for me the last time I did that it was I want to have spent quality time with my friends and family I will want to have had time to um I will want to have had time to actually pursue my passions and thirdly I will want to have done something that has improved the lives of other people I genuinely think if I was on my deathbed now those are the three things I will want now I can't say that for sure cuz I'm not there but I'm imagining and then the second part of the exercise is you come back to the present where you then pick three happiness habits right so what are three things I would need to do each week my happiness habits that will guarantee or pretty much guarantee I get the happy ending that I just defined that I want so for me and I don't think it's changed in the last year and a half or so it's literally and I have it on my fridge at home because I want to be visually triggered by it every day so I don't get caught up in what I might be able to achieve and what I might be able to do I have I I put down on my list can I have five meals each week with my wife and kids where I'm fully present and not thinking about work okay it's an arbitary number that works for me it may not work for someone else but it works for me right secondly if I have time to play my guitar write a song or go for a long run each week then I know I found time to pursue my passions and thirdly if I release an episode of my podcast each week which I've been doing for seven years now I will be doing something each week to improve the lives of others it's such a simple exercise Chris but I tell you in a world where we have infinite things competing for our attention and we often think that we'll only do the important things when everything in our life is done and nothing in everything in our life is never done these days it forces me in a really beautiful way to focus on these are my top priorities for the last three years I've started every morning with element element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't each grabbing go stick contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium potassium and magnesium with no coloring no artificial ingredients or any other junk proper hydration isn't just about getting sufficient water in you it's about having the right number of electrolytes to use the fluids that are inside of your body you might not be tired you might not need more caffeine you might just be dehydrated and proper hydration requires electrolytes best of all they have a no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration so you can buy it and try it for as long as you want and if you do not like it for any reason they'll give you your money back and you don't even need to return the box that's how confident they are that you love it this thing tastes phenomenal it's like a sweet salty orangey nectar first thing in the morning and I love it and that's why I've used it for probably a thousand days now right now you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box by going to the link in the description below or head to drink LM nt.com slod wisdom that's drink LM nt.com modern wisdom just going back to the perfectionism thing regret obviously people are going to do things we get toward the end of our Lives we grow up we accumulate regret do you think regrets are a form of perfectionism in that way yeah if only I could have threaded the needle perfectly if only I could have danced through this Minefield without triggering one of them yeah this is one of my favorite sections in the book this is one of the latest additions before I submitted it is this idea that regret is a form of perfectionism right and I wanted to talk about this with you today because I've just seen your blog from Australia on YouTube right and you were on stage and I don't know if this a still your view or not but my recollection of what I saw was that you said on stage or certainly the bit in the Vlog was about this idea that we choose our regrets M so can I present my perspective which I I see it a little bit differently than that okay I think it is possible to live a life of no regrets I really do I don't think we necessarily have to choose our regrets the definition of regret is when we look back on something with sadness or disappointment this this idea that we could have done something differently I used to look back on many of my past experiences with guilt and shame and I think that's what regret can do because the reason I say that regret is a form of perfectionism is because at its core is this idea that I could have made perfect decisions it was possible and I'm a failure because I didn't the problem with that kind of thinking is that it keeps us trapped into the past and it leads to guilt and shame and in terms of making changes that last it won't allow you to do that because you keep beating yourself up in your mind over the things that you wish you'd done differently now you can live two regret you can live a life of No Regrets in two different ways right you can live it and I'm not suggesting people do this in a way where it's like you know Screw everyone else it's my life I'm going to be myself and do what I do and I'm going to put it with the consequences now when I say you can live a life of No Regrets I'm not talking about that I'm talking about it a slightly different way which is I can look back on my past and I can learn from past experiences I can choose to believe which I do it's a choice you don't have to believe this but I would argue that your life is much happier and calmer if you choose to believe this I choose to believe that I was always doing the best that I could based on the information I had at the time if I choose to adopt that belief then there's no room for regret I was making the best decision I could and now with hindsight I go yeah you know what if I'm faced with that situation again I can act differently and I will act differently because now I know better I will do better but I couldn't have done better back then and in terms of your question before Chris why is it that at this stage of my life I feel so good one of the reasons there's many one of the reasons is because I no longer have any regrets every single one of my past experiences has led to me being the person I am today without any of those experiences I wouldn't be the same person right I'm informed by all of those things so I very much do look at my past but I use it as a way of learning about myself I think the other way well I'll come to the other way in a minute what what's you said in that video that you think you have to choose your regrets I'm presenting a slightly different perspective I think what's your take on that yes I like the idea that it's very equanimous to think I did the best that I could with the information that was available at the time that I made that decision I can't go back and change it there's no there's no usefulness to me having that I think maybe regret this sort of sadness or wistfulness or Nostalgia wishing that things had been different perhaps that was a slightly imprecise bit of language that I used what I'm trying to refer to is that you will always have this open loop in the back of your mind that you wonder whether things could have been better whether or not you could have done something just a little bit better or whether that was the right decision new job or a relationship or go to the gym or go to the theme park or whatever it is that you should have done because opportunity cost demands that you do one thing to sacrifice another and because you don't get to run life back and split test it work out if the theme park was better than the gym or the gym was better than the theme park you're always going to have that whatif in the back of your mind so for me this was a way for people maybe to arrive at probably not too dissimilar of a situation as yourself which is look some degree of wistful uncertainty about the past is inevitable holding on to it is pointless because you don't get to do two of those you don't get to run it back again um and when you're faced with the decision when you think am I going to which route am I going to go down consider which regret you could bear living with as opposed to which one you couldn't bear which decision you couldn't bear living without yeah no I like that I really like that I think this is a really interesting topic the other way of looking at it Chris is you know at 47 now am I going to really regret things like I did in my 20s in the sense that I was a different person then but I'm a different person today than I was 12 months ago right so am I going to now judge my 20-year-old self through the lens of hopefully a wiser man who's become a father who has much more experience in the world it seems a little unfair to judge my younger the younger version of me through my current look at how lacking you are person that had two decades less of experience exactly so it's a choice I love the thought that the way we The Way We believe that the the beliefs we hold about the world Chris it is a choice right we can choose them like something I've been really playing around with recently in my head is this idea that life is a set of experiences and it's the story we put onto those experiences that ultimately determines the quality of our life and I didn't realize until a few years ago is that I get to choose that story that narrative that comes down to me and that was Tau to me on a very very deep level by an orwitz Survivor Edith eager who I think I've spoken to you about before this incredible lady who when I spoke to her at 93 years old and then again at 97 she was an Al when she was 16 and she says so many things to me Chris which I've shared before so I won't go through it all again but in essence she was able to reframe her whole experience in awit through the power of her mind so when she was dancing for the senior prison guards as a 16-year-old young lady after her parents were murdered she said to me I wasn't dancing in alwiz Dr chasi in my mind I was in budapest's Opera House dancing with a beautiful dress on in front of a full Orchestra she said whilst I was in alitz Dr chaty I started to see the prison guards as the Nur I was free in my mind they weren't living their life and the final words quy said which probably is one of the main reasons why I feel so content and Edith and her teachings are in this book like they were in my last one she said rongan listen I have lived in alitz and I can tell you the greatest prison you will ever live inside is the prison you create inside your own minds and I tell you Chris there are some conversations as you know as a podcast host where you're not the same person afterwards that was one of those for me where pre that conversation and post that conversation I wasn't the same person the penny dropped for me in that moment I was like oh my God I get it we're all putting ourselves in mental prison every day by the way we interact with the world people don't realize that let's make it really really granular let's take it away from out to something maybe a bit more relatable for someone people don't realize that you're driving to work in your car and someone cuts you up on the road you have a choice in how you respond you may not think you have a choice but you do if you decide to go as I used to do so I'm not judging but everything has a consequence if you decide to react like stupid driver they need to get their wives checked they shouldn't be on the roads they're a menace whatever it might be and you start screaming at them when they can't even hear you a you're not changing the situation but B what you have done and this really relates to the scene of making change at lasts you have generated emotional stress inside your body and again this again for me is one of the missing pieces in the health conversation online emotional stress is not neutral you have to neutralize it in some way or another now there are a variety of ways in which you can do that so you could neutralize that emotional stress with a workout in the gym or a walk around the block or or when you get to work you will neutralize it by going to the vending machine and pulling out a chocolate bar having another coffee with sugar in having an extra glass of wine or a beer at lunch whatever it might be those behaviors are there to neutralize the emotional stress that you generated by the way you interacted with that moment you can also and it's not that difficult it just takes a bit of practice you can also choose in that moment to not interact like that and go wow I can just let that go like I said before about regrets I choose to believe it's a choice that I've always done the best that I could with the information that was available to me and where I was in my life at that time I also choose to believe that about other people so therefore I've trained myself now it took me a few months and years now I do it in the moment it's default but it I had to conciously do it initially where it's like oh what's going on with that other person what what might be on with the other person oh well maybe it's a dad's whose daughter was sick last night and they were up all night and now they're rushing to work maybe it's a mother who's been late for work three times in the past two weeks and she's worried she's going to lose her job if she's late again the truth of the situation Chris for your well-being and your ability to make changes doesn't actually matter it's the way you frame the situation because in that moment then you're not generating the emotional stress you're feeling internally calm and therefore you have less of a need to engage in these unhelpful behaviors that were only there to neutralize the stress that you generated by the way you responded how do you ensure that you're not just telling yourself a pleasant just s story because it sounds all well if something bad happens and I say that didn't bother me and yet my heart rate's at 110 yeah that's a good point so when I talk spoke before about interception and the importance of trusting ourselves one thing I didn't say which I write about in that chapter right at the end is I say listen I believe that although most of us are different and we've got unique lives and we need slightly different approaches I believe that the most important daily practice that any one of us can do in the 21st century is a daily practice of solitude I want to say Solitude I'm simply talking about time with yourself but if you get up and the first thing you do is start consuming from the outside whether it's news whether it's social media even if it's good quality information you've lost an opportunity to listen to yourself right our body is always sending us signals and in this world of content and information I think many of us are never getting that time to listen to ourselves so the only way you get to know if telling yourself a nice story and and kidding yourself is by sitting with yourself every day only for 5 or 10 minutes and that's all you've got but that could be it could be meditation it could be breath work it could be some yoga moves it could literally be having a cup of coffee and not also scrolling Instagram and email at the same time it could be going to the toilet without taking a smartphone with you something that many people find revolutionary seriously but it is the truth is Chris it really is for people because these little micro moments where you allowed your own thoughts to come up are being eroded out of life so I'm not putting all the blame on smartphones right ultimately it's just a tool it's our relationship with the tool that determines the impact they have on us but if you practice sitting with yourself doesn't have to be in the morning I happen to think the morning is the best time for most people you will start to know when your heart rate's going up you will start to know when you're telling yourself hibs I mean one thing I do every morning Chris um well there's a couple of things I do one of the things I do is a breathhold work meditation practice that I learned from do you know the movat founder inwan Lor no natural movement guy he's been promoting natural movement for years about two years ago I did his new breath work course online and it was twice a week for four weeks and it was probably one of the life most life changing practices I've done for me personally and I remember because I was on a book tour as it happened at the time I just arrived in Stockholm and I got to my hotel room I was running a bit late for the course and I got there and it was online the first thing he asked us and there was maybe about 12 of us on this Zoom together said all right I want everyone to like take a full breath in as much as you can and then time how long you can hold it for and I did about 60 seconds something like that okay that was your benchmark just to be really clear this is nothing like uh whm Hoff and the hyperventilation before and there's nothing like that it's purely take a breath and hold there's nothing to prepare your body for within four weeks Chris I went from 1 minute to 4 minutes and 20 seconds and it's it's not like the Wim Hof where you hyperventilate to blow off carbon dioxide first which allows you to hold your breath for longer in fact aan would say that's a kin to doing cold emotion with a wet suit on that's his words not mine but it was really powerful Chris I'll tell you why it was so powerful because I learned that it was all to do with your mind my CO2 carbon dioxide tolerance did not change that much in four weeks to go from 1 minute to 4 minutes and 20 seconds my physiology did not change that quickly what that course taught me is that when you think you need to breathe so you're lying there in silence and your body is screaming for you to breathe if you can quieten your mind if you can quieten the thoughts which you can do you can go for another minute all of those thoughts all of those things that are going around your mind any tension you have in your body it's bleeding energy I think that that's the way that um divers yeah uh free divers often pass out under water it's they don't gasp and breathe there in they just are going and going and going and then lights out yeah so again I wasn't doing this near water he wasn't proposing anyone was doing it near water but why I shared that is because this is a practice that I do each morning right it's not about the breath hold it's about knowing when your body is literally screaming for you to take a breath which is probably one of the most Primal things your body can say to you in that moment I've learned I still got control over my mind and I can go longer which basically means most things in life become quite trivial in comparison trust really is everything when it comes to supplements a lot of Brands may say they're top quality but few can actually prove it which is why I partnered with momentus they make the highest quality supplements on the planet three of the products that I use to support my brain body and sleep every day are Omega-3s creatine and magnesium al38 honestly I try and limit the number of supplements I rely on but when I take these consistently they have a massive impact on my cognitive performance my strength and my sleep momentus are literally unparalleled when it comes to rigorous thirdparty testing what you read on the label is what's in the product and absolutely nothing else best of all they have a 30-day moneyb guarantee so you can buy it and try it for 29 days and if you do not love it they will give you your money back plus they ship internationally right now you can get 20% off everything sitewide plus that 30-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below are heading to Liv mous.com slod wisdom and using the code modern wisdom a checkout that's l i v m o ment us.com wisdom and modern wisdom a checkout you mentioned uh morning routines and stuff like that what is your perspective on non-negotiables now I don't believe in non-negotiables anymore you negotiated the non-negotiables away well I we've spoken about perfectionism right so let me try and draw a connection between this and perfectionism as a perfectionist in recovery I don't believe that this idea of non-negotiables is helpful to me because again a non-negotiable implies that I will not negotiate on this I will always do this for me there's hints of perfectionism there right because everything in life is negotiable Chris everything nothing is a non-negotiable so I could tell you for example that um I'm a calm peaceful person which I am and I will never be violent right that's a non-negotiable for me always going to be peaceful well hold on a minute what if I was out with my two children and someone was trying to attack them and threaten us my non-negotiable suddenly becomes negotiable I could quite easily believe in that moment I could become violent if it was to protect my two children who I love with all my heart yeah I probably would that may seem quite extreme but I love going through extremes Chris because I think it's in the extremes where you learn the veracity and the truth about a concept Edith eager and alitz at the extreme she was living in hell and even in hell she could reframe her experience using her mind I used that in my life to go hey rongan you're struggling to reframe what that driver did or that email that someone sent you you know what rongan Edith could reframe stuff in alwiz you can probably reframe this in your life right I use it as inspiration for me not to beat me up to inspire me and so why non-negotiables for me can be a problematic concept I think I I've also got to be clear Chris different concepts land for different people in a different way depending on where they are in life right so let's say you're struggling with your health and you're feeling lost you're feeling lonely you don't know how you're going to get any motivation to move forward in your life and non-negotiable might actually be really good for you where you go now actually every day I'm going to wake up I'm going to do that F minute workout and I'm going to go and have a cold shower for 30 seconds and by not missing for three months you literally change your identity and how you view yourself but I've been through that process I'm in a different stage in my life now where a non-negotiable to me ends up beating myself up in my head or giving an example of how that played out for me I actually find Behavior change quite easy these days and I believe believe that one of the central ideas in this book is that effortless change is possible when you get to the root but we're not getting to the root right so I can imagine four years ago on New Year's Day I would wake up and be like right that's it chaty you are nailing meditation this year right you've seen the studies lowest stress lowest anxiety uh can increase the matter in your brain the brain function right that is it this year it's happening and I would nail it 20 minutes a day first week second week I would miss a day let's say the third week of January oh my God Chris I would beat myself up in my heads oh you just couldn't do it could you this year stupid right you know it's important you couldn't do it that was my pattern right and so that was a non-negotiable for me which meant that when I missed it because I said it was a non-negotiable in my head I felt less than I felt bad I felt guilt I felt shame it plays into perfectionism which means I stopped doing it right I'm oh God I'll try again next year this All or Nothing type approach whereas now I have a much Kinder relationship with myself I don't have that negative inner voice anymore um unless I'm really really stressed and sleep deprived which again it's a signal for me to go oh wow and he stopped looking after myself whereas now I do meditate most morning things but if I miss I'm like oh kind I miss today I'm actually a better human being when I do meditate I'm more focused I'm more present with the people around me actually tomorrow I'm going to start meditating again it's a much healthier relationship with that behavior for me it's a balance between discipline and compassion and Chris another idea that I've been thinking a lot about um because I think a lot about Behavior change you know 80 to 90% of what doctors today see it's in some way related to our Collective modern Lifestyles I'm not putting blame on people Chris when I say that I'm just saying the way we live the food environments our sedentary jobs the chronic stress the rates of burnout the sleep deprivation the environmental toxins whatever it might be it's causing us to be sick and one thing I've realized Chris like I really think this holds true in every situation it's not the behavior it's the energy behind the behavor behavior and I actually genuinely believe that every single Behavior either comes from the energy of fear or the energy of Love Now that may sound really spiritual and I am becoming more spiritual as I get older but I think to you know although you're an American now although you live in America now you're still a Brit by birth right like me adopted right so this idea of love and that we can love ourselves is quite an alien concept I think in the UK we don't like to say that but I can on this mic in front of you today say although I still struggle to say it right I was going to I was going to initially say look I really quite like myself but dare I say I love myself not in a narcissistic way like I'm clear on what my values are my three core values are Integrity curiosity and compassion those are the three values I believe represent who I am and who I would like to be so I regularly assess in the evenings maybe on a Sunday you know how much of this week wrong and were you in alignment with your values when did you behave when did you not behave for example and when you get to that point you find that everything within you is quite aligned so Behavior change becomes quite easy because when I used to struggle with behavior change it was because the behaviors were coming from an energy of fear so what does that mean guilt shame I'm not good enough what do most people do in January or whenever they're trying to make change they're trying to overcome the person who they think that they are right A lot of the time in January they're beating themselves up Chris they're like I'm not good enough my stomach's not flat enough I'm not enough let me beat myself up with my behaviors to overcome that that works for a few weeks it might work for a few months but in my clinical experience it never works in the long term at some point that energy has to change where you actually quite like yourself you're doing it not because you're trying to avoid something but because you're trying to get towards something actually I want to have a stronger body I want to have a clearer mind I feel that it's the way I can become a better human I can be a better father when I look after myself and again going back to your earlier question Chris what is it about me now at 47 where I I feel the sense of calm I think for me becoming a father has been a huge part of that you know my son is 14 so I've been a a dad now for you know almost 15 years and again I I want to acknowledge not everyone needs to have a child to see this a lot of people are choosing not to have children for a variety reasons hey I'm okay with all of that for me personally it's been transformative you know some having kids you just can't be as me focused anymore you realize there's more to you than just you and your experience there's other people who depend on you so going back to perfectionism now let me let me sort of connect the kids and me as a dad to my perfectionist Tendencies we look at these people these Heroes we put them on pedestals you all have people Chris in your audience who are putting you on pedestals who who are putting you on a pedestal they're like oh my God Chris is an amazing podcast host which they're too smart to put me on a pedestal but I reckon some will be mate right and the reason why I think this is problematic and I I suspect you would agree with this is because they're seeing one aspect of your life they're seeing you on the mic they're seeing your Vlog when you're crushing it in Australia unless you're showing this and maybe I haven't seen this on your platforms they're not seeing the mornings when you wake up absolutely shattered when you're you think I've got 12 podcasts to do in five days in London why did I sign up for so many what is the consequence on you your well-being your relationships from doing that now I'm not here criticizing or judging I'm just simply saying if people want to be you they can't have one aspect of you they need the whole aspect you can't just be 1% Chris Williamson you have to be 100% Chris Williamson no one wants to be that never go full Chris Williamson one uh do you get what I'm saying I do I do I it's something that I've I've spoken about for a long time the fact that you don't get to pick parts of people's lives you have to take the whole uh George Mack has this great idea the the difference between Call of Duty and War says you look at a lot of people's lives and you assume that that's what you get to do but you're just watching them in the lobby of Call of Beauty [ __ ] about then they actually you get and see their life and it's IEDs and it's dust and it's re like reloading weapons and it's like it's War it's not fun and um for the most part I think yeah we try to curate what we put out because we don't want to be a buzz kill because we don't want to come across as somebody that isn't uh enjoying their lives um but yeah I think you know we spoke about this last time I'm kind of interested in this line that you've hinted at a couple of times which is sort of between busyness and success uh the sort of lineage between the two and um this sort of need that we have to feel important and how a busy calendar can sort of be a hedge against existential loneliness what have you come to believe about business and success let me just respond to what you just said and I will come to that I promise MH you can't just take that one aspect like I mentioned about John bonji like you've just mentioned right you can't be Tiger Woods and just take the 15 Majors without the painkiller addiction without the public humiliation right you can't you can't take the 28 Olympic gold medals that Michael Phelps has without the depression and the suicide attempts you can't take Johnny Wilkinson's World Cup medal without the 10 years of pain that followed that right so many of these Heroes have paid a huge cost to get where they are are huge cost and we often just look at the upside and not the downside and that's where that write your own happy ending exercise I think can be so useful it sounds simple oh just a little what a little three question exercise yeah just a little three question exercise these things can help us reframe our lives in quite a huge way now you mentioned busyness right and chapter 8 is all about business and this idea that business is success and the Reliance because everything in this book is about a Reliance we have right so I believe busyness comes from our Reliance on feeling important so both you and I have spoken to will store before on our podcast author of many great books but the status game it's a really good book that will wrotes and in that book he makes the case that status is a universal driver in all humans but status is not the amount of YouTube followers you've got the amounts of Instagram followers you've got your celebity status will makes the case of status actually is that feeling that we are of value to other people right and I think it is what drives us all now I think many of us now in the 21st century are living these disconnected lives we've moved away from our communities our tribes the people that know us the people that knew us and we might have moved away for work opportunity right which is fantastic but there's a consequence sometimes we we just don't feel a value and in the old Hunter gather of tribes you would know your value you were either you know you were the forager you were the hunter there was something that you were providing to the people around you this is probably one of the main reasons why people who follow religious practices not are religious but people who follow religious practices are happier and healthier than those who don't because a lot of those religious practices depending on which religion you're talking about are about doing things for others showing you to be of value to others but I think we have a value deficiency in the modern world where we don't know that we're a value to other so some of the way we get that is by overworking and pushing ourselves really really hard because then you can say yeah I am important you know I have this Reliance on feeling important and now I think that Reliance that over Reliance I should say is pushing many people beyond what they can cope with and it's making them sick this is why this matters so much to me Chris I have seen time and time again over the years in clinical practice people who thought they could keep pushing nothing will happens them they can keep pushing they're the superheroes right until they get hit with the autoimmune illness and they wish man I didn't need to do this I wish I'd stopped earlier I wish why do do autoimmune illnesses come for people that push themselves too much okay well there's many theories on autoimmune illness the theory that makes the most sense to me is from Dr aelio Fano from Harvard and basically he says there are three criteria that someone needs to get an autoimmune illness genetic susceptibility increased intestinal permeability and an environmental stressor right I'll explain what that means so you need to have the gene if you don't have the genes for ulness you're not going to get it okay but that's not enough you need it but it's not sufficient in and of itself you also need something that's called increase intestinal permeability colloquially is called leaky guts basically when you know our guts are all a bit leaky but when it actually becomes problematic okay in essence it's a simplified way of saying that but even with those two things according to his theory you won't get it you need a third thing an environmental stress so for someone with CC disease for example which is a allergy to gluten that would be consuming gluten that would be the environmental stressor but a very common one for many people is stress right I would see in my practice for many years Chris auto mean illness I used to really enjoy seeing when I say Enjoy as a as a doctor I was fascinated by the development of s human and what you could do with your lifestyle to alleviate things right so I would see a lot of it in my practice I would say in over 95% of cases in the six months preceding the diagnosis there was heavy heavy stress in that person's life work stress bereavement losing your house losing your job something which might have been the final trigger and there's loads of case studies in the book where I share people who already had enough St and they pushed past it for more I genuinely believe that the biggest disease in society these days Chris is is the disease of more more money more followers more downloads more more more is going to make us happy and the phrase that I think about a lot is from the da of Ching it's my one of my favorite quotes that I reflect on a lot of the time I was on the train down from the Northwest this morning I'm thinking about it true wealth is knowing what is enough I think that's the million dooll question for so many of us Chris what is enough like at what point do you have enough why I feel so happy in consent these days it's because I have got very clear that I have enough I really do right so I've got a wife who loves me right I've just passed 17 years of marriage last week and we're as happy as we've ever been I've got two kids who I love and who love me and want to spend time with me right I've got a job that I love that provides me and my family a great quality of life I'm winning right and this may interest you Chris two years ago my son at the time was 12 and I can't remember it was a weekend I was maybe uploading something to YouTube or looking at something related to my podcast right and I don't know how we got onto this topic but I remember saying to him something like I said oh son you know what I've heard from people if I go to two episodes a week you forx the show right or something to maybe it was three years ago and You released two episodes a week you know what three episodes a week so you know what I'm talking about right so he said well Daddy why don't you do that you know you sure be even bigger and more successful than it already is and I said hey son listen if I go from one episode to two episodes a week you know there's weekends where we play in the garden or we go for a walk or we sit and play cards or we go on bike rides together I probably won't be around to do those things because I'll be in the studio recording intros recording outros whatever it might be right so I've had to get real Clarity because as you remember from last time we spoke Chris you may remember I used to be very competitive but that came from a feeling of lack because as a kid as I explained to you last time I took on the belief that I was only loved when I was top of the class and I got full marks that was nobody's fault I'm not blaming anyone my parents were immigrants to the UK their way of having their kids not face the problems they had was by pushing you to be a straight A student and become a doctor because then you won't have any problems in life I took on the belief as a young boy that I'm only loved when I'm Top Dog right but then you go into the world where you're now competing with 8 billion people that's a very toxic belief system right and I'm no longer competitive cuz being competitive Chris was was not who I was it was who I became in response to my upbringing and now that I understand that and I've done the work and there's loads of practices in this book that will help people with that I'm not competitive anymore and never was who I was so I can for example look at my life and okay hey wrong you know what I'm doing great right if you had told me 10 years ago that ronga you're going to have five Sunday TI bestsellers you're going to be happily married you're going to have two kids that love you you're going to have a top 10 podcast in the UK the most listen to health podcasts in Europe right if you're going to have those things I wouldn't have believed you Chris but I have all those things and it's very easy I could look at you I could look at other people who are who you know and I'm not saying this in a bad way I'm saying it genuinely in an honest way and go oh you know it' be good to do that or go to two a week or go to three a week and I'm like oh wait a minute it's the unmeasurable in life where is where the gold is it's the unmeasurable Chris I've really really got that in my heads the most important things in life I don't believe can be measured by society's metrics so I can't give you a number I can't give you a an official measurement of how happy my wife and I are I can't give you a um a number like I can with my Instagram followers or podcast downloads that tells you what Joy I get from my children and the the reason why I keep coming back to the DA Jin quotes true wealth is knowing what is enough is the reason we keep pushing is that so many people and I've had patients who already had enough and they keep thinking that more is what they need hey we're all individuals we've all got to find this truth on our own on our own path but I have pushed really hard in the past and I don't want to do it anymore like I feel like I'm winning I've got a job that I love I've got a family that I love I'm in great health like do do you know what I mean Chris yeah I mean you know the sacrifices that you make in order to get to the place that you want to be is is and it's an interesting one to think about what you need to do in the beginning you're right if somebody has £200 to lose having some non-negotiables might not be too bad of an idea but if you're a little bit further down your journey you're still whipping yourself into submission even though you're already performing at a pretty high level why did you put all of that work in in the first place was it not so that you could actually enjoy this a little bit was it not so that you could be happy and I think that you know maybe this is part of the sort of phases of of podcasting generally or whatever you want to call it personal development information on the internet that lots of people were probably first introduced to this type of content about 10 years ago Within sort of 5 to 10 years ago and there's this huge big generation of people that have moved through it and I do get the sense that the work until your eyes bleed optimize every second of your life thing is getting a little old now I've certainly found for myself that I I'm less sort of compelled by that I'm much more compelled by trying to find balance by trying to find enjoyment in the things that I do by optimizing for fun as opposed to just success this episode is brought to you by function I partnered with function because I wanted a smarter more comprehensive way to understand what's happening inside of my body twice a year they run lab tests that monitor over a 100 biomarkers and their team of expert Physicians will analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health and lifespan if you've been feeling a bit sluggish your testosterone levels might be a problem they play a massive role in your energy and performance and being able to see them charted over the course of a year with actionable insights to actually improve them gives you a clear path to making your life better Dr Andrew hubman is the scientific adviser and Dr Mark Hyman is the chief medical officer so you can trust that the data and insights you receive are as scientifically sound as they are actionable getting these lab tests done would usually cost thousands but with function it is only $500 right now you can get function's expert blood work analysis and bypass the 300,000 person weight list by going to the link in the description below or heading to function health.com slod wisdom that's function health.com slod wisdom how how do you find balance Chris because from from where I'm sitting here and you know that I think you're a wonderful full podcast it's not you need that validation from me right but I do I I I you know I think I think the way you conduct your shows is full of integrity and I really like the presence that you bring to these conversations but from the outside I'm like you're doing a lot right I've sent it this year yeah that's one way to put it uh look I but you may be aware that you're making a tradeoff at the moment I I certainly am and uh you know at the moment no family no kids Etc uh that's not always going to be the case uh so I have in many ways a competitive advantage and other people do too uh that if you don't have that many responsibilities then perhaps you can we had a lot of questions at the q&as the live shows I did in Australia and some in London as well you know I'm 22 and I really want to achieve a lot in the world but I also know that sort of life balance and all the rest I'm like bro you can aim for life balance when you like in your 30s just [ __ ] end some worlds for a decade like go and see how much chaos you can create and and see how fast you can grow and see how much stuff you can do and maybe not everybody is built for that maybe you could say well you could frontload all of the enjoyment early on I don't know but for me uh I am actively prioritizing trying to make life more enjoyable I'm trying to have as much fun as I can as consistently as I can at the moment uh trying to find ways to swim Downstream instead of Upstream the the dangerous Chris not not for you I would say not because you're not asking me for advice and I don't give unsolicited advice I certainly try not not to these days um the danger what I see and I've seen impatience is that we think this is just for a short period of time right so back in my 20s uh a friend of my friends was a banker in London he goes I'm just going to crush it in my 20s I'm going to go and hit it hard do what I need to do make enough money where I can then chill out in my 30s and 40s and 50s but he's still there now at 47 you know overworking he's got loads of money but his relationship with his wife is on the Rocks his kids don't want to spend time with him it's a cliche but why do people not let go why well I think it's for a couple of reasons I think this uh overreliance on feeling importance if you if you get that value only from your work and you've neglected the other things in your life whether consciously or unconsciously that will keep pulling you right cuz you want to feel we all want to feel that we're value to people I think sometimes we don't take stock of our life you know I think you know there's a strategy in your 20s that may work but that may not work in your 30s and you have to constantly re-evaluate and go is the strategy that I was using still working for me that's what I do regularly you know that write your own happy ending exercise the three deathbed questions the three current present day questions that's a regular reflection activity te um another question I ask myself every morning I do three questions each morning with my morning coffee um what is one thing I deeply appreciate about my life very simple question of gratitude which has a lot of science to back it up okay so takes me a minute to answer that but the question I really like is the second one what is the most important thing I have to do today and that question it helps you cut through all the noise of your to-do list and it makes you choose what is the most important thing I have to do today and it's such a deceptively powerful question because like I said before Chris so often we only do the important things in life when everything else is done but everything else is never done so that question makes you choose one priority right I don't know if you know this I think Greg mccuan told me this for the F first time that when the word priority came into the English language in the 1500s it was only singular yeah priorities didn't exist didn't exist but now we've we've got I've got 20 priorities today well that's probably why you're overly stressed and busy you know a standard week for me like the week before I went to America I went recently um I remember the week before then on the Monday CU my flight I think was on the Thursday on the Monday I put down because this book is coming out I had I had an article to to submit to penguin so that morning it was the most important thing I have to do is complete that article and send it to penguin it doesn't mean my relationship with my wife and my children wasn't important that day or my other work commitments but I decided in the morning that's a win today if I get that done today's a win Tuesday was you know what I'm going to be away for two weeks my wife was just away at the weekend when the kids were in bed tonight the most important thing I do is spend some quality time with my wife okay on the Wednesday I remember very clearly what I put down because I'm going away only because I'm going away but what I felt like putting down there was I'm working from home today when my children come in at 4:30 from school today the most important thing I have to do today is make sure my laptop is closed and my phone is in another room so that I'm fully present to what they have to tell me now Chris these things may sound really simple I can guarantee to anyone who's listening or watching right now if all you do is answer that question each day for the next seven days I guarantee your experience of life will change for the better in the next s days do it for 30 days your life will feel different because that will be you specifying 30 important things and doing those 30 important things and the sense of achievement and inner well-being and self-esteem that you build from doing stuff like that is so powerful cuz we have a negativity bias so our brain is always drawn to what we didn't do I didn't get that email done I didn't prepare properly for that podcast guest who's coming tomorrow whatever it might be this goes no no this is the most important thing and I'm going to make sure I get this done today again I love simple things that don't cost any money because I've worked Chris for years in all kinds of practice I've worked in affluent areas but I've also worked in very socially deprived areas and I hand on heart I believe that every single person should have access to quality information that helps them and so where possible you know because I'm I I live in this online health and wellness space and people will say all this health and wellness world it's for the middle classes it's for who can afford all the fancy stuff right I was just in LA in Austin and La must be like and of course it was because of the people I was hanging out with and the podcast I was going on but you know if you live in LA or certainly where I was it it feels like SAA and cold plunge and red light is the norm but it's not the norm for most people around the world nothing wrong with those things at all they can be absolutely very beneficial but I'm always thinking great for people who can no problem but how do you give health information to people who don't have the means who maybe can't afford those things or don't have a coal Plunge in their back Garden right I also really really want to help them and I'm one of the proudest things that I have for this book Chris is that every single thing I I've recommended is free of charge right so it means everyone can basically apply no matter who they are or where they live can you talk to me about this relationship between taking offense and our health man it's my probably my favorite chapter after chapter one is chapter 5 which is called take less offense right I'll tell you the opening story in there because I think it really illustrates this concept well I remember when the news of the George Floyd death went around the world okay and I was in the UK it was in the middle of a psychologically taxing lockdown whatever people's views are on lockdowns no matter what your view is these were challenging times for people right and everyone's feeling quite stressed because of the state of the world and everything's shut and everything's closed down and I'm very clear that I have a public profile to help people with their health happiness and their well-being so I don't comment on certain things in general people want you to comment on everything but I'm very clear on what my public profile is about I try and talk about things I have expertise and experience in and I try not to talk about things that I don't right revolutionary revolutionary but that did really affect me for viive reasons and I spent two or three days thinking about it I accept I'm not an American so I don't I didn't grow up with this history of the race issues that have been there in America right I'm putting that all out on the table but I am from an immigrant family and you know there's been elements of discrimination that my family have faced in the past so I put out a post on Instagram carefully thought out post where I I explained that the Imp you know I explained you know some of my thoughts but then I explained the impact that racism can have right and I shared an example when my wife said my wife is born and brought up in the UK like me but of an Indian background like me I shared an experience that she had as a kid where she was living in North Manchester and basically one afternoon at the weekend the BMP the British national party threw a brick through their window so she's a young girl watching telly and a brick comes through the window that is a traumatic experience right and I shared that that was interesting is that most people were very supportive of the post and were um were happy that I had added my voice to what seemed like a very important cultural conversation at the time but there was quite a few Chris who took offense to what I had written and they were saying you know shame on me this is not an Asian issue Dr chashi this is a black issue you have no right to comment or explain this at this time and initially I was like have I done something wrong here you know what it's like now with the the piece state of the world have I have I have I done something wrong and then I thought about it I thought this is ridiculous I haven't signed up to any code of conducts anywhere that determines how I should or should not respond to the killing of a man by a police officer 3,000 mil away I'm fully entitled to respond how I see fit in a way that is compassionate that is kind that is full of Integrity I'm fully entitled to but a few people quite a few people took a to what I had written I thought this is really interesting really really interesting people are taking offense and I think this problem is just out of control now Chris people are walking around taking offense to everything that they see online and it's a problem right it's a real problem and I'm going to explain the relationship to our health and our behaviors when you take offense to something usually you are generating that emotion stress inside you I can't believe they posted that they were so out of order for posting that you're working yourself up right so you're no longer calm inside you've elevated your sympathetic nervous system you've elevated the levels of stress and emotional stress in your body and you will need to neutralize that emotional stress in some way you will have to it doesn't just dissipate right and you can do it in helpful ways you can do it in unhelpful ways so for many people the way that they do it as I've already mentioned is alcohol sugar pornography gambling three hours Doom scrolling right this is why this sort of stuff matters to me I want to help people change their behaviors yes we can talk to them about sugar and alcohol but what I think makes this book I think quite unique is this more philosophical approach to health and behaviors than we typically get if you're someone who is regularly taking offense you are generating unnecessary emotional stress in yourself I did this for years Chris so I I I I I can I'm not judging I know what that feels like but when you don't right because there's a certain amount of arrogance that is needed to take offense and I'll tell you what I mean by that right if you're taking offense to certain things on some level you're saying that person should think the same as me right they have no right to think differently to me and in a world of 8 billion people how can it possibly be Chris that everyone is going to agree with you they are not and a point which I think a lot of people don't realize is that nothing is inherently offensive it cannot be why not if the thing was inherently offensive it means every single person interacting with the thing would take offense but if they don't it means it's not the thing that is offensive it's something within you that's being lit by that thing once you get that you get life because you understand that instead of blaming other people for our internal responses you own it you go actually no no this is something why does that comment bother me so much what is it inside of me that is being lit by that you can apply the same thing to criticism Chris right it's hard for me to get out podcast host uh mode because I really want to ask you questions even though it's your show right so I I do want to I'd love to know your relationship with criticism um that whenever you face it on YouTube or on Instagram or wherever because you can't have a successful show like this and not get criticism it's simply not possible what I've learned over the years people used to say to me when I first started in the public eye in like 10 years ago oh you need to just grow a thick skin I don't necessarily agree with that I don't think it's about a thick skin I think criticism can be really really powerful if you use it in the right way now criticism can be a tool for learning you can go wow yeah they've got a point there if you're not getting triggered and you get caught up in the emotions and you can step back and go is there any truth to this person's criticism like I've had that before I put out a post on Instagram and maybe there's been a criticism and sometimes I'm like actually you know what they've got a point next time I bring up that topic I could maybe take a little bit more care and caveat that a bit better than I did right so you can learn something or you can go actually no I'm I'm okay with what I did this says more about them and their state of mind I would say the big thing Chris that I've learned is that criticism only bothers us to the extent we believe it about ourselves we'll get back to talking to rangan in one minute but first I need to tell you about Shopify Shopify owers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States they're the driving force behind gym shark skims aloe and neonic which is why I've partnered with them because when it comes to converting browsers into buyers they are Best in Class their checkout is 36% better on average compared to other leading Commerce platforms and with shop pay can boost conversions up to 50% best of all they've got award-winning support which is there to help you every step of the way look you're not going into business to learn how to code or build a website or do backend Inventory management Shopify takes all of that off your hands and allows you to focus on the job you came here to do which is designing and selling an awesome product upgrade your business and get the same checkout that we use at newtonic with Shopify right now you can sign up for a $ per month trial period by going to the link in the description below or heading to shopify.com sodern wisdom or lowercase that's shopify.com wisdom to upgrade your selling today in some ways I would say that we're social creatures and a lot of what we're doing is image management Optics management reputation management and and that means that a untrue and knowingly untrue and knowingly untrue to you accusation from somebody that you fear could be believed by other people I think that's a Salient thing to get angry about even if you don't believe it yourself got it so that's that's I think that's a that's a great point so I'm not saying uh when I say take less offense when I say the criticism only bothers you to the extent with which you believe it about yourself which I I do believe to be true generally I'm not saying that that makes what the other person said or did okay right someone can say something horrible right I don't need to take offense to it so let's say let's use the example you just mentioned someone has gone on your wall let's say and says something that is completely untrue about you that can damage your reputation I would submit that by you not taking offense by learning to keep your emotional cool you're going to be much better able to handle that situation and deal with it that's the key it's a difference it doesn't mean you don't want to get that comment removed perhaps it doesn't mean let's let's take it away from a high profile influencer like you that people may or may not be able to relate to right let's say you got an email from your boss at 400 p.m. that has really pissed you off right how dare my boss write to me like that you know and undervalue the work that I've done now first of all first thing you have to understand is that you will see the world through the state of your nervous system so had you got that email at 9:00 a.m. you may not have interpreted in the same way as at 400 p.m. it's so same email but you are different your nervous system is different you may be tired maybe you didn't take a lunch break so you may start to interpret threat there where there was no threat right but let's assume it wasn't a nice email if you train yourself to not get offended by that and just take a breath and go okay that's interesting I wonder why my boss sent that wonder what's going on for them that's really unusual like I'm so valued normally by this company what on Earth is going on if you start to interact with the situation like that rather than thinking I have every right to be pissed off and annoyed and have another Coke now and phone my friends to moan about it I've been there I've done all that I'm simply saying look people can act in the way that they want I'm just another human being trying to share my experience of the world right if people want to act like that they can I'm just saying in my experience there's a consequence of doing that you are not going to see the situation clearly for what it is you're going to be less able to change it whereas if at 400 p.m. you can have that that com this is really unusual what's going on are they sick are they under pressure from their boss you're better able to send a calm email back that evening or the following morning say Hey listen can we have a meeting at the meeting you can say Hey listen you know that email felt really rushed you know it's it it when I when I read it I actually felt as though um I was undervalued at the company I'm not sure that was your intention or not you're going to have a much more productive uh relationship with that situation if you don't walk around getting triggered by everything does that make sense Chris cuz that's the point I'm trying to make there's a subtle difference there I'm not saying we're saying that that behavior is okay I'm saying if you want to change that behavior you're going to be much better at changing that behavior if you can stay internally calm and all you have to do is practice I believe that yeah I like that it's interesting the the line between taking offense and complaining in life uh the Great British Pastime that it is and um I I love an Insight from you which is complaining indicates that you're surprised at sort of the natural order of life I've got this uh Thomas Soul quote like [ __ ] tattooed on the inside of my eyelids at the moment there are no Solutions only trade-offs and um yeah the fact that a complaint for the most part is you railing against the fact that you haven't been able to fully optimize like life and that you didn't expect it to be smooth sailing there are inevitably going to be obstacles and and things for you to navigate around and issues that is the natural order of your day-to-day experience your complaint is you just saying look life again yeah I yeah I'm really glad you picked that out of the book because it's one of my it's one of my favorite I'm saying they're all my favorite there such a personal book like it's it's literally my template of how I got to this place and why I feel so passionate about these ideas and one of the chapters is literally about this you know it's called expect adversity and the Reliance is a Reliance on things never going wrong and I think many of us subconsciously hold that we're surprised when one day there's traffic well if you driving up there's going to be traffic right we're surprised if you're a parent and I know you're not yet but many parents or some parents will sometimes on the way to picking up their kids will nip into the supermarket to get food for dinner on the way well you know what sometimes there is going to be an elderly lady having a NATA with the checkout assistant that is going to happen but if you in that moment get really frustrated and annoyed you are rebelling against the natural order of life now there are things you can do about this and I want to share an excise in a minut that I do that's been really helpful but another way to look at this I mean I don't know if this is an extreme example it's an example I use in the book right but I I think it's quite powerful current statistics say that a UK doctor will be sued on average four times over the course of a 40-year career right it doesn't matter how good you are if you see enough patience you are going to get sued if you drive enough times you're going to be involved in a crash right it's going to happen it's not a matter of if it's when so a really close friend of mine a few years ago this is quite an extreme situation but I think it illustrates the point there was a missed case of a cancer diagnosis that had nothing to do with my friends but she got dragged into this complaint and of course the family have every right to make a complain right because it's it's a very emotive issue it has serious consequences she got dragged in and for two years her life was hell she was drinking to excess most night was getting smashed at the weekends she was really really struggling now it's always going to be hard to deal with a complaint like that but if you look at it another way it was going to happen at one point and you can train yourself to expect adversity that that is quite a hard situation to do it in I acknowledge but if you look at the stats it is going to happen look at it through the lens of business right I don't have you heard of the term shrinkage yeah so my understanding of the term shrinkage from business is that it's it's kind of when businesses account for the stuff that's going to happen that they don't want but they know it's going to happen so for example a supermarket knows that with their best intentions people are going to shoplift and some food is going to go off that's factored into their business model and I think from from memory that UK businesses last year factored in shrinkage to the level of 11 billion p right it's a big thing shrinkage but you know the UK supermarkets and the US ones are not surprised when it happens they know it's going to happen so they Factor it in you are going to have Adverse Events in your life so you got to factor in you've got to be not be surprised when it happens now there's an exercise you can do that I write about which I I talk about complaining right ask yourself and it's a really great thing for people to do you know ask yourself how many times in a day you complain right because a complaint is in essence you getting surprised by the natural order of life things are going to happen that you don't want right so you can do two things there and this is what one thing I did for many years Chris you turn the complaint into an action if you can do something about it and if you can't you turn it into a moment of gratitude right so turning it into an action means you stop acting like a victim and turning it into a moment of gratitude stops you thinking like like a victim you go okay this is going to happen this is how I'm going to handle it and I tell you something that happened to me about 6 months ago Chris right so I still live in the town where I grew up in the northwest of England and for much of my ult life I've had elderly parent caring responsibilities my mom now isn't so well uh she has care every day and I live 5 minutes away now Mom for many years has had an emergency uh alarm around her neck for if she was to fall and a few years ago no this is actually this was last year was it last year or the year before it was in the last 6 to 18 months right this happened I was asleep at night in my house and the phone rang picked it up and it was um the emergency lady saying hey look your mom's pulled her trigger she's on the floor she can't get up can you go around and help her so I'm half asleep I'm in my pajamas I go into my car drive around to moms who's 5 minutes away I go into the house can't remember what time it is but it's maybe 10: 10:30 p.m. something like that and I help m i check she's okay I get her back into bed I get her settled when I'm happy that things are settled and that she's safe at home I think okay all right mom I'll come and check on you in the morning I go into Mom's Drive I get in my car I reverse out straight into the car that was parked um in the street opposite mom's drive just straight into it the older version of rongan who hadn't been practicing these Concepts the older version of rongan who didn't expect adversity would have done this and I submit Chris that many people listening there are saying most people listening un let's say your enlightened audience who know not to do these things would have gone something like this oh my God typical I've got all this stuff to deal with words crazy at the moment I've had to go and sort this out with Mom and now I've got a phone at the insurance and get all this stuff sorted right that is a very common response but that response has a consequence Chris the consequence of that is that you feel pissed off you feel annoyed you're likely to consume more rubbish the next day you really are I've seen this with patience over and over again because that's a consequence it's a downstream Behavior based upon your emotional states what I did in the moment and I was really proud of myself thought wow ronga maybe this stuff is working with you cuz I did it in the moment I was like oh well wrong and if you're going to keep coming around half asleep to pick Mom up off the floor it was bound to happen at some point no one's hurt you're not hurt and I've got insurance that one way that I reacted with the same incident has multiple knock on effects right I'm not trying to compensate anymore with my behaviors I'm not putting the guilt and the self-pity oh poor me I've got all this to do every decision you make every thought you have it has a consequence and these ideas that I'm trying to put forward in this book I really believe Chris will be lifechanging for people because they don't realize so many people you can train this stuff out of yourself you don't have to keep reacting like this for the rest of your life and going back to Edith eager for a moment the reason why Edith had such a profound impact on me Chris I've already mentioned some of the reasons but what the a practice that I would do for years I don't do it anymore because I don't need to but I did need to right in the evening it was when my kids were in bed I'd sit down in my kitchen and I'd go okay Rong where did you get emotionally triggered today and instead of putting the blame on the other person who I could say has triggered me I could own it and go no no no someone else might have done something but you chose to get triggered when I say chose it was you it's something within you that was lit up by that what was it oh it's because it reminded me of something that my parents said when I was a kid oh this kind of hit on a little insecurity I have about myself or whatever it might be I would argue that that is the most important and Powerful exercise I've ever done because what happens is you become a black belt in yourself Chris instead of blaming the world around you these dependencies relian instead of being reliant on everyone around you being a certain way and acting a certain way so that I can feel good I thought no I don't want to be a puppet on a string where people around me and and things that I've got no control of can blow me around no I'm GNA own it right now people will bring up trauma here right Chris we will say yeah what about people who been heavily traumatized don't they need therapy sometimes it's a trauma response yes I agree trauma uh therapy can be really really helpful but the reality is a lot of people cannot access trauma for a variety of reasons availability cost access these are very common reasons why people cannot access therapy and again I want to empower people instead of going oh well there's nothing I can do because I can't get it I'm like wait a minute yes you've been traumatized yes that was a horrible experience but these practices are still going to help you they're still going to help you Dr rongan strategy ladies and gentlemen rongan I appreciate the hack out of you where should people go don't want keep up to date with everything that you're doing well the new book's called mate change that lasts uh available in all the usual places there's a paperback ebook and I'm nasing the audio book if people can put up with this voice anymore they can hear the whole thing on an Audi book but I also direct them to my podcast uh feel better live more it's been going for seven years now and like you Chris I try and have meaningful authentic conversations so people like my Apple Spotify YouTube all the usual places heck yeah thank you man thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode you will love my fulllength conversation with Dr Andrew hubman right here