Dhru Purohit Show - How to Make 2025 Your Best Year by Breaking Free of Habits that Hold You Back with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

This episode is brought to you by Levels, Lifeforce, and Momentous. Stress, burnout, and procrastination are challenges many of us face, often without recognizing their roots or the ripple effects they have on our day. Today, Dr. Rangan Chatterjee joins us to explore the root causes of these struggles and how they hold us back from living our best lives. Today, on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee to explore the power of an intentional morning routine and the impact a lack of routine can have on our day. Dr. Chatterjee breaks down the three key factors of an optimal morning routine, explains why knowledge alone isn’t enough, and reveals the hidden forces that block lasting change. He also dives into the four key pillars of health, how to self-assess, and practical tips for creating lasting behavior change. Ready to supercharge 2025 and make lasting transformations? This episode is for you! Dr. Rangan Chatterjee is one of the most influential doctors in the UK. A practicing GP for over two decades, he is dedicated to inspiring people to transform their health through small, sustainable lifestyle changes. He is also the host of the #1 Apple podcast Feel Better, Live More and the author of five Sunday Times bestselling books. His TED talk, How to Make Diseases Disappear, has garnered over 4.8 million views. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Chatterjee dive into: The 3 M’s for an optimal morning routine (00:00:30) Turning knowledge into daily habits (10:14) Disruptive practices that derail morning routines (20:34) Hidden forces that prevent lasting change (30:57) Learning to trust yourself (38:42) Embracing discomfort and cultivating self-knowledge (45:54) Self-assessment and behavior change (59:03) Nine body signals for interoception (1:09:05) Feeling stuck, self-criticism, and regrets (1:18:26) Overcoming perfectionism as a barrier to progress (1:25:13) Four key pillars of health (1:29:36) Uncovering the “why” behind lasting change (1:41:47) Final thoughts (1:48:48) Also mentioned in this episode: Dr. Chatterjee’s new book, Make Changes That Last For more on Dr. Chatterjee, follow him on Instagram, X/Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Apple Podcast, and his Website. This episode is brought to you by Levels, Lifeforce, and Momentous. Right now, Levels is offering my listeners an additional 2 FREE months of the Levels annual Membership when you use my link, levels.link/DHRU. Make moves on your metabolic health with Levels today.  Right now, you can save $250 on your first diagnostic and get personalized suggestions. Optimize your longevity and track your progress; go to mylifeforce.com/dhru!  Optimize your energy and mental clarity with the Momentous Three: Protein, Omega-3s, and Creatine made by and used by the best. Go to livemomentous.com and enter promo code DHRU to get 20% off any order.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Rungan Chatterjee, welcome back to the podcast. You know, I want to talk about stress, burnout, procrastination. These are things that a lot of people are plagued with. And I know for my audience, they think about how they start the day and their morning specifically sets the tone for the rest of the day. I have a big question for you. But if you had an optimal morning routine to help tackle these things, stress, burnout, procrastination, what would that look like?

I think that morning routines are one of the most important things that we can do for our health and well-being to tackle stress, burnout, procrastination, but frankly, so many other things as well. But I think morning routines can become really confusing for people because they listen to different influencers, tell them about their morning routines. Sometimes they hear people say they have a one-hour morning routine and then they feel, how does that apply to me?

I'm a busy person. I've got lots of things to do. I don't have one hour in the morning. And I think everyone can create a morning routine that works for them. And here's the truth through that a lot of people don't realize, we've all got a morning routine. The question is, are we intentional about that routine? We all do certain things every day.

If you get up each morning and the first thing you do is look at your phone and read negative news headlines and do your work emails whilst you're still in bed, that's a routine. that's a behavior you're repeating that you maybe did the day before and the day before that. And that's going to have a downstream consequence later on in the day. In fact, your initial question said stress, burnout and procrastination. I hear those things and I want to go upstream and go, those are downstream symptoms of other things that we're going to talk about today. But the way I've helped my patients for many years craft a morning routine that works for them is by

something that I call the 3M framework. It's what I use myself and it's what I've taught thousands of patients over the years. Okay, so there's three M's mindfulness, movement and mindset. I'm a huge fan of people being able to personalize their health behaviors, their routines, based upon what works for them. Although I've been a doctor for 23 years and seen tens of thousands of patients true, I still can't tell every single one of your listeners what the perfect routine for them is because I don't know their life. I don't know the pressures on their life. I don't know how much time they've got. But I can provide them a framework so they can find within that framework what's going to work for them. Okay, so the first them is mindfulness. That can be any form of

mindfulness. It can be meditation. It could be breathwork. It could be sipping your cup of coffee in silence, paying attention to the taste, any practice of mindfulness. Okay? And if you're interested, I can explain what I do each morning because I use that 3M framework. The second M is movement, some form of movement. It could be strength training. It could be a walk around the block. It could be five minutes of yoga. It doesn't matter what it is, but a type of movement that works for you. And the third M and how I like to end off my own morning routine is with a practice that I call mindset, something to get me in a positive frame of mind for the day ahead. As I talk about mindset, Drew, I think to myself that when I look around me,

whether it's patience in the past, whether it's friends, whether it's wider society, people don't realize how much of how they feel is influenced by the content they're consuming. So many of our thoughts, our feelings, our behaviors are downstream from what we did first thing in the morning. Very simply, we can take two scenarios. One scenario where you wake up late, you're in bed, you keep pressing snooze, you're looking at negativity on social media, on news, on email, whatever it might be. Is it any wonder if 20 minutes later you're a bit reactive with your partner? You feel stressed. You feel as if you're burning out. You feel as if you're burning out. You feel as if if you're procrastinating. Is it any wonder? Why don't we contrast that to a morning,

let's say you only have 10 minutes, where you're not consuming from the outside. You're spending a bit of time on yourself, tuning into your body's own signals, putting positive things in your brain. Is it any wonder, would it really surprise people to think, yeah, you know what, if I start my day like that in a more of a calm state and more of a positive state, well, I'm probably going to be more present with my partner, less reactive with my children, more productive when I get to work. So I think it's really quite profound how we start each day. As you said in your question, much of your audience already know that. What you do first thing in the morning sets the tone for the rest of the day. You know, I'll pick it back off of that. And this is a big part of

today's conversation is that oftentimes we know things, but we're not always doing them. There's nobody here listening today that hasn't thought that or hasn't heard that a morning routine could be useful to them. That's personalized for their life and their situation. And yet sometimes, and I'm guilty of it too, we don't actually do what we know. Why is that? There are so many reasons, but I think this is arguably the most important issue in health and this health and wellness world in which we both operate. People think that more knowledge is the answer. But as you just pointing out, Drew, and as I write in the first chats in my new book, knowledge is not enough.

Right, let me explain what I mean by that. I'm imagining that most people who listen to your podcast through already know that excess sugar intake is going to have a negative impact on their health in some way. Most people who are consuming too much alcohol and listen to your show have probably heard previous guests talk about the impact of alcohol on our metabolic health, on our sleep, on our liver, whatever it might be. But the question then becomes, well, why are people not doing it? Right? They've got the knowledge, but they're not doing it. And I believe it's because they haven't taken the time to understand the root cause of what's coming on. Okay, so all too often,

we try and change our behaviours without understanding the role that they play in our life. So I give you an example. Let's take sugar and alcohol because, I think there are two common things that people are often trying to change their relationship with. So it's not uncommon in January. People will go 30 days with no sugar, 30 days with no alcohol. And you know what? They can do it. But often, by the middle of February, they're back to their previous intake. Why is that? They can do 30 days without. That's not a problem. I think we can all make short-term change. But most of us aren't looking for short-term change. We're looking for long-term change. We're looking for long-term, change. And to try and put it really simply for your audience, if stress is driving your alcohol

intake, sure, you can quit in January, but you'll always go back to where you were unless one of two things happens. Either you have to reduce the amount of stress in your life, so you'll naturally need less alcohol, or the stress stays the same, and you find an alternative behavior to manage the stress that's not alcohol. But we don't go upstream and look at these factors enough. Even within medicine, you know, my profession, we think that giving people more information is what we need. But we're drowning, Drew, in health information these days, right? With podcasts, with books, with blogs, with media. There's so much health information out there. Frankly, it gets confusing for people. They know what they should be doing.

but they're not able to do it. So that's one way of answering your question as to what's going on there. I think another element to that, though, is you said, well, why are people not doing morning routines when they know that they may get benefits? And there's a couple of ways to think about that, Drew. One reason is because they think it takes too long

and they say, I'm too busy. You, Dr. Chasty, talking about morning routines, you don't understand my life. Okay, you don't understand the pressures on that. me, that I've got three kids and that my husband leaves early for work and it's all on me. And they're right, I don't understand their lives. But I've seen many patients in that position over the course of my career. And there's one patient in particular, I remember, who was a single mum. I think she had two kids, maybe three kids, but I think it was two. And she was really

struggling with her skin, like really, really bad skinflare's exma was the cause, right? And her life felt out of control. She was always stressed. She felt close to burnout. And she would be interested in health, but she wasn't able to take action. And I spoke to her about a morning routine. And she almost laughed at me. He said, Dr. Chaschi, I don't sign for a morning routine. Okay, you don't get my life. I'm busy. And I said, okay, let's go through that. I said, do you have 10 minutes? She goes, no. I said, do you have five minutes? Well, yeah, I've probably got five minutes. I said, okay, would you be open to me helping you create a morning routine that only takes you five minutes? He said, okay, sure. So I use that 3M framework to help her create a morning routine that worked for her.

Not for me, that worked for her. The first M is mindfulness. What does she do? One minute of breathing. So I have a breath that I call the 3, 4, 5 breath that's very calming and relaxing. As I think you've covered previously on your show, Drew, any time that our out breath is longer than our in breath, we have to switch off the stress part of our nervous system and promote the relaxation part of our nervous system. Okay? So the three, four, five breath is really simple. Breathing for three, hold for four, breathe out for five. One of those breaths takes 12 seconds. Five of them take one minute. Okay, so for one minute, she would do three, four, five breathing. Then for two minutes, she would do the second end, which is movement. So with her, I discovered what she liked, and she used to do yoga and she quite liked, you know, her yoga practice, but she hadn't done it in years. I said, do you have a few favorite moves? So yeah, there's two or three

things I really like doing. I said, okay, why don't we put that together in a little two-minute sequence for you? And then the final M mindset, for her, we chose to do affirmations, these short positive statements to kind of imprint positivity into your mind. And I can't quite remember now what it was, but I think it was for her. For two minutes, she would literally say, I'm happy, I'm calm, I'm stress-free. I'm happy, I'm calm, I'm stress-free. Now, here's what happened. This is a lady whose life felt out of control.

She was really struggling with the pressure in her life and her skin. She started doing that five-minute morning routine, and things significantly started to change very quickly. She started to feel more in control of her life. Within a week or two, she started to go for a 30-minute walk at lunchtime. There was what I call the ripple effect. I've written about that in many of my books, this idea that one small change done consistently

starts to build momentum. You change the way that you view yourself. You start to make other positive changes later on throughout the day, throughout the week, whatever it might be. And I think two to three weeks later, she came back to see me and her skin was over 50% better.

Right? I hadn't reversed her condition, but stress was driving and exacerbating her skin conditions. By helping her create a five-minute morning routine that worked for her, it led to so many other positive effects. Yes, her skin, but she also told me that she had more energy. She was more present with her children,

and generally her life felt more in control. So I'm a huge fan of morning routines, and the key lesson there for me is that we've all got time for some kind of morning routine, even one minute. It will make a difference because there's the intention that you're saying, no, I'm not going to be a victim to the world. And all the noise around me, I'm going to take at least one minute today to intentionally start my day. Actually, one thing I've realized over the years, and a lot of it sort of underpins,

these ideas underpin what I've been writing about for the past two and a half years in my new book, right? One of the most toxic things I believe that we can do for ourselves is say we're going to do something and not do it. We say, I'm going to meditate this year. But we do don't do it. And I'll tell you why it's so toxic because we feel as if we're failing. We, I think, have both spoken on our podcast in the past to Vanessa Van Edwards, the body language experts. And I remember, Drew, when I spoke to her, she said, Rangan, whenever we're meeting another human being for the first time, we're asking ourselves two questions. Can I trust them? Can I rely on them? But Drew, we're also asking ourselves those same two questions every day. Can I trust

myself? Can I rely on myself? When we say we're going to do something and we don't do it, we basically tell our subconscious minds, I can't trust myself, I can't rely on myself. And so what I've often said to my patience for years is make one small promise to yourself each day and keep it. And we can put a morning routine into that framework. I do a five-minute strength workout every single morning and I've rarely missed a day in five years. Okay, keep it really easy. Five minutes while my coffee is brewing. I think I've spoken about that on your show before. Even if I get really, really busy and I can't do all three M's of my morning routine, I still do that middle M, the movement. And yes, I think it keeps me in decent shape and it

helps me look after myself. But it does something much more powerful than that true. And I think this is what everyone who's interested in improving their health, their happiness, their longevity, really needs to understand. If you make one small promise to yourself each day and you do it, you show yourself with real world evidence that no matter how busy my life is, no matter what my partner needs me to do, what my children need me to do, no matter how many emails I have to answer, I still found five minutes in that day to do something for me. And I think that's one of the most important things we can do. I think one of the most powerful things you've shared. There's a lot of things that you've shared

is that we all have routines, whether we realize it or not. You have a morning routine. You have an evening routine. The only question is, is it intentional or is it not intentional? Are you letting sort of life hijack you? Or are you taking control and shaping your own destiny? Just because I like to provide that contrast. So you shared your 3M, 5 minute morning routine.

Give us a contrast. when you were looking at this patient that you were helping that had eczema, for example, what are examples of how she had a routine, but she didn't realize it? What was she prioritizing? What was she doing in terms of letting the day kind of take hold? And it was not to blame her or anybody else that's listening. It's just that that was the de facto routine. She didn't choose it on purpose, but that was the way her life was set up or anybody else

who's listening. What are some of the top destructive sort of ways that people start the day that you see, and even you and I have been guilty of these things before. Again, you're right. It's not about guilt. It's not about blame. No one's doing this to themselves. Us having this conversation is trying to raise awareness for people so they can go, oh, actually, you know what? That's kind of me. Now, that particular patient, it was quite a few years ago now. I can't remember what she was doing exactly in contrast, but it would be typically things that I see, such as get up a bit late, feel like you're rushing

from the first minute of the day, doing a few emails and tasks in bed just to get ahead straight away, feel like you're rushing around trying to get the kids ready, shouting at them because they're not quite ready for school on time and you have to go to work, this kind of constant stress and rush. Another way, I guess I can frame this to people, which I think may land, it's around the concept of what I call micro-stress doses or MSDs. I think this is one of the concepts that patients love the most because it really helps them see their life. And I think this might be a nice way of answering your question. The typical morning for many people these days goes something like this, a version of this. We're living these stressed out lives, right? So let's say

someone's got a job. They don't like it. They're stressed out. They come back late. They stay up a bit late, trying to de-stress, and they start binge watching something on Netflix. It helps them numb out and it helps them switch off. And they stay up a bit later than they want to. So let's say they go to bed at midnight. Okay, here's how the morning often goes. Their alarm goes off at 6am to wake them up for work. Let me just explain what I call a micro-stress dose, an MSD. A micro-stress dose is a little dose of stress that in isolation, we can handle just fine. The problem isn't the micro-stress dose, it's the fact that they accumulate one after the other. And so when we accumulate all these micro-stress doses, we get closer to what I call our own personal stress threshold. And when we

get to our personal stress threshold, that's when things go wrong. That's when we overreact to an email that our colleague sends us. That's when we have a row with our partner or snap at our children. That's when our neck goes into spasm or our backache starts. It's because we've crossed our own personal stress threshold. Okay, so let's go back to that scenario where someone stayed up late the night before. They're in a deep sleep. They're tired. And the alarm goes off on their phone, which is typically nets of their bed. Okay, the alarm goes off. That's micro-stress dose number one, because it's jolted you out of your deep sleep. You look at the phone and go, I can do five more minutes. You press snooze, you doze off again. Six minutes later,

the alarm goes off again, micro-stress dose number two. Then you pick up the phone, whilst you're still in bed, you go to your email inbox. Oh man, there's three work emails I didn't do yesterday. I'm going to have to do that. Micro-stress dose number three. Then you go to one of your favorite social media channels and you see that someone's been mean to you on your last post. Microstress dose number four. Then you go to the news and you see that there's war somewhere or there's been an explosion somewhere. You get this blast of negativity about an event that's happening maybe 10,000 miles away. Okay? Micro-stress test number five. Then you realize, oh man, I'm late. I've been messing around on my phone for 20 minutes, I need to get in the shower.

The point I'm trying to make true is often, even before we've left our bed in the morning, we've accumulated 10 micro-stress doses. I once tried to do an experiment with my patients a few years ago, and many of them, before they left their house in the morning, have accumulated 20 micro-stress doses. What's the impact? If you've accumulated 20 micro-stress doses, it means you're very near your stress threshold. you don't have much resilience or much headroom left,

which means it will take very few doses of stress in the day to tip you over. So what people often don't realize is when they're getting annoyed at 3pm by the email they're received from their colleague, they think that email was the problem. That email wasn't the problem. The problem is that they've been accumulating MSDs all days, these micro-stress doses, they're near their threshold, they're stressed out, so they're interpreting that email as a threat.

What they don't realize is if they could reduce the amount of micro-stress doses that they're exposed to, they will be so far away from their stress threshold that that same email coming in at 3pm no longer bothers you. That wasn't the problem. It was your accumulation of micro-stress doses through the day. That was the problem. Let's bring that back to morning routines now. What I'm trying to say, therefore, is that if you are intentional about the first 10 minutes, 20 minutes, like half an hour, look, the truth is, these days, I kind of have a 40, 45 minute morning routine. But I sometimes hesitate to say that true because I don't want to put people off. I didn't have a 45 minute morning routine 10 years ago.

Back then, it was a few minutes. I have gradually increased it over the years. Why? And this really goes to the heart of your question, which is, why do we not do morning routines, even though we might know they're good for us, it's because we don't pay attention. I have paid attention. I have realized that when I do a little morning routine,

I'm a better human being in every single way. I'm a better father. I'm a better husband. I'm a better doctor. I'm kinder. I'm more patient. I'm more present. And on the days, I think I don't have time.

I'm too busy today. I've got loads of emails to do. I always feel it later. I'm more reactive. I get frustrated at work earlier. I'm not as calm and as present. So over the years of doing it, not doing it again, I used to beat myself up, Drew. You know, I've got perfectionist tendencies. I certainly did have. I would have guilt. I would have shame. I don't have those things anymore, at least not to the same degree. So for me, when I used to fall off track, I would no longer beat myself up. I'd go, wow, that's interesting. Why have you?

fall and off track. When you do your morning routine, you feel really good. Then every other part of your life is good. So why are you not doing it now? And then I'd go deeper and try and understand where did that come from. So yes, these days, I do about 40, 45 minutes when I'm at home. I do 10 minutes of this kind of breath hold work meditation. I have a workout in my kitchen for maybe five or even 10 minutes. And then I'll do things for my mindset. I'll write in my journal. I've got these three questions I ask myself every day in the morning. I answer those three questions. I read a few pages of an uplifting book.

Yeah, that works for me. I appreciate it may not work for everyone. But that's the beauty of a morning routine. We can all find one that works for us in the concepts of our lives. You know, whether it's a morning routine, whether it's some sort of thing you want to incorporate more regularly in your life, like strain training or some goal, whatever it is. It could even be you want to volunteer.

volunteer more. There's all these ambitions that we have, I have them, you have them, the people that are listening to, they have them. And we want to incorporate these changes into our life, but most importantly, we all want these changes to last because we want the reward that comes along with them. We want the rewards that come along with being regular with movement in our life and feeling good in our body, feeling healthy. And this brings up the question, that you really tackle as part of the new book, which is titled Make Changes That Last, which is what are these hidden forces that are out there

that often prevent us from actually being able to take a temporary change, which most people can. You know, the crazy thing about let's take something like weight loss, which a lot of people are thinking about this time of year, the data and the study show that most people who will go on a diet will end up losing weight. The problem is, 90 plus percent of them will regain it back and many of them often more.

So the question always is, how do we not only make a change, which any of us can do, but how do we make it last? So help us understand. Give us your framework that you put into this book of why is it that we can't make changes that last? The title of the book, I think, says it all, doesn't it? Make change that lasts, inferred in that title, as you have just explained, that we struggle to make long-lasting change. We can all do short-term change. There's two ways of

looking at it, right? The superficial way is about habit formation, right? How do we create healthy habits? And there's been elements of that in the conversation so far. I mentioned this five-minute strength workout that I do each morning. And it follows two of the key principles of behavior change. One, make it easy. Why do you make it easy? Because motivation goes up and motivation goes down. If you make something difficult, you will do it when your motivation's high, but you won't do it when your motivation's low. So you plan for that and go, if I make it easy, I'll do it both when my motivation's high and my motivation's low. That's the first rule. The second rule of habit formation, for me at least, is where do we put that new behavior into our lives?

And every behavior we do needs a trigger. There's all kinds of triggers. There's your memory. which works, it's just very unreliable. There's Google calendar notifications, there's post-it notes on the fridge. These are all triggers to do a behaviour, but the very best trigger, as evidenced by the research, is when we stick on that behaviour onto an existing habit. So why have I rarely missed a day of a five-minute strength workout in over five years now? Because I follow those two rules. It only takes five minutes, and I do it whilst my coffee brews. Okay, so my coffee brews. Okay, so my coffee making in the morning is a habit. I don't need a reminder. It's an automatic behavior that I do without any conscious thought. I know how I like my coffee. I time it to brew

for five minutes. In those five minutes, I don't go on email, Instagram, YouTube, whatever. I do a workout in my pajamas. I've made it easy and I stick on the new behavior onto an existing habit. So that's one reason why we struggle is because we don't follow these basic principles. But I still think that's a superficial answer. And the reason I spent two and a half years, Drew, diving deep and writing, what I consider to be my most impactful book to date, is because I was trying to solve this problem. I was looking around and going, we're living in a world

where we've never had more access to more health information. Right? We've got more health podcasts, more health books, more blogs. It's all out there. And it's all free. yet our physical health is getting worse, our mental health is getting worse. I thought, what's going on here? More information, despite the increased information, we're getting sicker, what's going on?

And then I reflected back on my practice. And I thought about the patients who truly were able to make changes that last, versus the people who could make changes for a few weeks, maybe a few months, sometimes even a year. But often they would flip back. And we like to say that knowledge is power. We need more knowledge. But as I make the case in the opening intro to this book, and I share, like I share, I think what's a very powerful story here, an old colleague of mine, a GP. She was so knowledgeable about type 2 diabetes. She's a real expert. She'd always

email me, some of the latest studies. She'd put her commentary on the email. She knew everything. And one day she was in clinic with a gentleman who was overweight, who had type of diabetes, and she was explaining to this patient all the negatives of too much sugar and too many ultra-processed foods. And she was giving her in all the science. And he just said at one point, why should I listen to you? You're fatter than I am. Right. So she called me, she was upset. She wanted to talk. And when we got together, she said, hey, the thing is, Rangan, my patient was right. My patient was absolutely right. Here I am lecturing him about the problems with excess sugar intake, and in my drawer, I have all these packets of Cadbury's giant buttons, right? Very British

of her. Yeah, but knowledge is not enough. You need knowledge. You're in the game of knowledge. You have a great podcast. You share knowledge each week. I try and share knowledge each week, but we think we need more external knowledge. I would argue that most people don't. Some people do. Some people don't know the basics of good health, right? That is true. They need knowledge, for sure. But if you've already got the knowledge, but you're not doing the behavior, you've got to ask yourself why. And that's what I tackle, right? And so let's go into what are those things? I think we're not going upstream enough. I think a lot of us don't realize that our daily behaviors, let's talk about our food intake, how much we move, whether we prioritize sleep or not. These things, you can call them habits, but I like to call them symptoms.

Their symptoms are further upstream problems. And I think what a lot of us don't realize is the way we interact with the world, the way we deal with conflict, the beliefs we hold about the world absolutely influence and impact our behaviours. In fact, the more I think about human behavior, the more I believe that our beliefs drive our behaviours. So if you don't go upstream to question your beliefs and alter those beliefs because you can. You don't come out the womb with those beliefs. You've absorbed those beliefs from your parents, from culture, from society. And so there's nine chapters in the book. I call them

reliances, right? What I say in the book, and I really believe this, is that many of us are overly reliant on things in our external world going a certain way. in order to feel good. We need that to be no traffic. We need our boss to be nice to us. We need our kids to put their shoes away and got ready for school on time. We need the barista to smile at us and not ignore us when we get our coffee. If everything goes well, we're well. But when those things don't go the way we want, we don't feel good. And that not feeling good leads to these poor behaviors. So we're trying to change the behaviors without realizing our approach with the world is what causing those behaviors in the first place. That's why people can listen to as many podcasts as they

want, read as many books as they want, but unless they do the inner work of understanding where does my belief system come from, I think they're really going to struggle in the long term. So I mentioned some of these reliances in the external world, right, these little things that we want, no traffic, our boss to be nice to us. And I get why you might want those things to happen. But if you're reliant on the external world being a certain way in order for you to feel good, you're basically like a puppet. You can only feel good when things line up perfectly in your outside world, and they're never going to.

They might do now and again, but they're not going to do consistently. So you're putting your inner well-being in forces and events that you cannot control. So I say in the book that what we're looking for is a state of what I call minimal reliance. So at the moment, we're maximally reliant on certain things and certain beliefs. I'm not saying go to zero reliance, I'll explain why later on, but we need minimal reliance. We need to be less reliant on certain things outside ourselves. And so in the book, I go through nine reliances, big reliances that I think are holding people back. I'll give you an example.

Chapter 1 is called Trust Yourself. And that is all about our over-reliance on experts. Okay, now look, I'm sitting before you drew as someone who's a medical doctor and has been for 23 years. So I am considered a so-called expert. I don't know if you face this with your audience, Drew, and I know you're a great host and you try and interrogate, not interrogate, you try and dive deep with your guests. What I would often find on my podcast, right, is one week you would talk to a guest, like a well-credentialed guest. Let's say a medical doctor from Harvard. he or she may have a certain view on a certain diet that's best for human health.

And they will present evidence to support that diet. And maybe two months later, you'll have a different expert on from a really well-reputable, esteemed institution who actually has a different opinion, but also has evidence to back up their opinion. And so there's two different diets being promoted. And what I'd often find is that my audience would contact me, let's see on Instagram, on a DM and say, hey, Dostacea, I'm really confused.

This expert said this diet is best. This other expert said this diet is best. I don't know which expert to trust. And I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, too, and I think that's the wrong question. The question shouldn't be, which expert should I trust? I think the more powerful, and dare I say, the more helpful question is, why do I no longer trust myself? I feel that we've outsourced our own inner expertise and knowledge to external experts.

And I'm saying this as an expert myself. No expert out there knows exactly what the right approach for you is. They don't. I'm not saying ignore experts, to be really clear. I'm a big fan of science and research. But what I'm saying is that not every approach works for every approach. single person. Let's look, let's make it really practical.

I think you might have had these two people on your show as well. So I think maybe to bring this to life for people, let's talk about diet and mental health. Okay, maybe 20 years ago in the mainstream medical profession, there was no recognition at all that diets can have an influence on mental health, whereas clearly it can, and there's more and more research now supporting that idea that many practitioners have known for decades, but has not really gained, like, credibility in modern medicine until recently. Professor Felice Jacker from New Zealand, I think. She published the first randomized control trial in 2017. It was a small trial, well, there are these 67 people, how diet can in some

individuals put their depression into remission? I don't know if you remember this trial or not, but it was, it was groundbreaking because we never seen it in a randomized controlled trial. these were people who already had a diagnosis of depression. They were already on some form of treatments, and they were split up into two groups. One group were put on a modified Mediterranean diets with dietitian support for 12 weeks. The other group, the control group,

were put in a social support group, and they followed them for 12 weeks. And after 12 weeks, I haven't looked at the study for a few years, so I may be slightly off with the stats, but I'm pretty sure I'm remembering this correctly. 32% of the group who changed their diet had put their depression into remission

compared to 8% in the control group. So the conclusion of that study was it was a statistically significant improvement. This is groundbreaking. It was called a modified Mediterranean diet, but it included whole grains, legumes, lean meats, fatty fish, lots of different colours and seeds and nuts.

So a very diverse Mediterranean diet. So that's interesting. That's very powerful to show us the possibility here. And yes, we want to see bigger studies and larger studies, but it was still very, very promising. Let's contrast that with Dr. Chris Palmer, brilliant psychiatrist from Harvard, who has also shown through his case studies, but also through his research, that a ketogenic diet can for some patients, like let's say with bipolar disease, for example, put some of them into remission. Absolutely remarkable what Chris Palmer is showing and what he's written about in his book. So the natural conclusion then with much of the public or people who follow these health podcasts is, well, which one's right? Is it a modified

Mediterranean diet or is it a ketogenic diet? Oh, he's talking rubbish because Felice showed this. Oh, Felice is talking rubbish because Chris Palmer has shown this. But we're making it. at black and white. Like maybe they're both right. They're both right for different people, right? Some people are going to thrive on Chris's approach. Some people are going to thrive on Professor Felice Jack's approach. And I think this is where my experience as a practicing clinician for so many years comes in true. Research is really useful, right? I like reading research. But the truth is it doesn't always help me with a patient in front of me. Because that pay. is not on average. These research studies, they try and go, what on balance, on average,

is the right approach? So I think there are some principles of a healthy diet, right? Adequate protein intake, whole food as much as possible. Can we have, let's say, 12 hours and every 24 hours where we're not consuming food at giving our body a bit of a break? These are these core principles, which I think we should all be experimenting with and trying to follow. But once you've got those call principles in place, we need to experiment ourselves. Like if you're getting confused with dietary advice, my humble suggestion to you would be, well, if there's two people who you like and you respect and you think that what they say makes sense, why don't you for four weeks try one of their approaches and pay attention to how you feel, what's your energy like, your vitality, your sleep, your performance in the gym?

and then for another four weeks, try the other diet. And again, pay attention to what's going on, how you're feeling. You will know what the best diet is for you once you start to pay attention. If I could build on that, you know, there's a section inside of the book. I'm jumping around a little bit where you talk about the power of embracing discomfort. And, you know, having been friends with you for so many years, I know you have this approach too. And I have this approach, even though we're in this space and actually, you know, you have a medical background. and I don't, is that we are still sometimes, even after trying things, we're still sometimes

confused about stuff. And that's okay. I think sometimes confusion can actually be a good thing. If we're open to it, and it goes into this section that you talk about in chapter four, which is embracing discomfort. Who says that somebody should have it all neatly and packaged up and tell us exactly what we need to do in any aspect of life. Like, in one sense, you found a diet that works well for you.

At this moment in your life. And there's probably still some layers where you were like, hey, we were actually talking about it yesterday. We were talking about certain diets that make you feel really good. But then what is the long-term impact of having a high APOB or an LDL? And what parts of that do we know? Do we not know? And where we're even ourselves having access to all this information confused, but not

in a way where we're like, oh my God, I need to go and figure this out right now. It's more like, hey, okay, great. Like, here's two truths that I'm holding together. It's not exactly clear. I don't need to have it be clear right now, but I'm going to continue to be open to this being there. To me, I know this goes deeper than this conversation, but it's like you're being comfortable with the uncomfortable. You want to know, but you don't know. And it's like, okay, great. This is like a puzzle that's going to reveal itself over a period of time. Yeah, and Andrew, it's such a great point because it's kind of like that discomfort of not knowing, but still experimenting and paying attention,

that's where the gold is. That's where you're going to learn about yourself. Once you get that self-knowledge and you have started to pay attention, you become less dependent on all these external experts telling you what you need to do because you know, you're like, no, no, I tried that. Maybe you didn't try it the right way. Maybe you can change it a little bit for sure. But that's where the gold is, the most progression.

I've made in my life has come from these moments of discomfort, from what I don't know, but I still pay attention on I do them. It reminds me actually of when I went into general practice, I was initially doing my training to be a kidney specialist, and I did all my exams, this is many years ago now. And when I moved into general practice or primary care, compared to being a specialist, you have to, certainly in the UK, you have to get good with not knowing, right? Because in the UK healthcare system, the way it was back then, in the National health service, is that if you were in a hospital, you had access to all the tests, you'd get the scans done, you get the fancy bloods done, you could do the x-ray, whatever you need to do,

and get the result. Oh, right, and no, oh, it's not this, it's this. In primary care, you wouldn't have long with your patients, you don't have access to all the tests. So very quickly, I learned that the really good GPs were the ones who were okay with uncertainty. We couldn't get all the answers. So you had to be able to sit with that uncertainty, whereas the specialists, I realize a lot of the time kind of struggle with that because they were used to having all the tests available. And if let's say the scanner wasn't working or something, you know, they were reliant using the term of reliance on having all those tests available. So when they're not or something's not working or there's a delay, it was a struggle to kind of handle that.

But what you say about discomfort, I think it's a really important point there, Drew. And let's remember that I'm talking about this idea that we are overly reliant on certain things. And if we become minimally reliant on them, we're going to feel better. We're going to be healthier. We're going to be happier. And we're going to make changes that actually last. Okay. So I mentioned one of these reliances in chapter one, which is this over reliance on experts. I want people to become less reliance on experts. I'm not saying ignore experts. Listen to them, but put it through your own filter and figure out what works best for you. Now let's jump to another. reliance, the one in Chats of Four, are reliance on comfort. Now, humans are hardwired to want comfort.

That's what has driven all of this evolution. You know, we now live in temperature-controlled houses where we don't have to go anywhere on our phone. We can order in the most beautiful home-cooked meal, well, not home-cooked, but, you know, a beautiful meal that comes delivered to your house. You don't have to do anything. This is very different to how we've evolved. And you can, make the case through, as I tried to do in that chapter, that all the diseases that are now afflicting us and most of the symptoms, you can look at through the lens of discomfort. These are diseases of comfort. Take type 2 diabetes, for example. There's many examples I could choose, but let's take the example of type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes simply does not exist in traditional

societies to anywhere near the same degree, and in many of them not at all, and they don't exist in societies where daily life is a little bit uncomfortable. Right? So if you have an uncomfortable existence in a traditional society, you can't sit at home and expect to be fed. You and your tribe, you have to go out. You have to go and get your food. You have to bring it back.

You have to cook the food. There's effort involved. There's a little bit of discomfort there. Our desire for comfort as humans has been fantastic. It has led to all the great stuff that we have today. But I would say around 50 years ago or so, the balance shifted, whereas this quest for comfort is now killing us, like literally killing us. I'll give you an example that your audience will be able to resonate. We know that physical inactivity is one of the leading causes of premature death globally. We know that children today, I mean, this is where the alarm is apparent true, I think this study was done on, I think it was 25 million.

in children in different countries. And on average, a child today runs a mile, 90 seconds slower than 25 years ago. That's a lot. That is a lot. So we are getting weaker as a society. Our children are getting weaker. And this reliance on comfort, this over reliance on comfort, is something that we really need to tackle. So I'm not suggesting we go back to our hunter-gatherer lives. I'm not saying that at all. I like air conditioning. I like heating in the British winter, right? I really do. But I think what we have to do is introduce intentional discomfort to our lives, ideally every day in some sort of small way. And there's many ways in which you can do this, right? You can think about psychological discomfort. You can talk about

physical discomfort. At the end of that chat, there's this practical table of what I call discomfort rules. And I say, hey, listen, these may work for you. They may not, but try and find one that does work for you. Now, why I like the term rules, and I know some people don't like the term rules, I do because if you make a rule and you sort of embody it and internalize it and you make this kind of internal rule, what you do is that you're changing your default behavior. So instead of having to constantly make decisions in the moment, you go, no, no, this is what I do. So I'll give you an example. I would guess about five or six years ago, I decided one day that I'm never going to take the stairs, sorry, I'm always going to take the stairs and never take an

escalator or an elevator unless absolutely necessary. That has such a profound impact in my life, true. I can't tell you. It means that whenever I'm faced with an option, my default now is become I take the stairs. I flew to LA a few days ago. I remember coming off the plane, long flight, like I was traveling for like 14 hours, and you come off, and I think there's, you'll know this because you travel a lot, but there's these two escalators and this one long set of stairs. It is so normal for me now. I didn't even consider the escalator. I go straight to the stairs. And I think I was the only person I saw after that flight take the stairs and not the escalators. Now, don't get me wrong. I understand that some people have got physical disabilities and they can't do

that. I'm not talking about that. I'm not saying that that is the approach that works for everyone. But for me, that one rule has had a profound impact. Yes, on my physical health, my strength, my endurance, but I think the benefits of intentionally embracing discomfort are not about the physicality. I think the benefits are psychological. You are basically telling yourself that in a world of endless comfort, I'm choosing to do something uncomfortable even when I don't have to. And that's where the gold is. You know, I'm here in LA and this is the wellness capital of the world and this is where, you know, the whole Cold Plunch trend in terms of this modern trends probably blew up like many things here, right? And I know that people talk about some of the

benefits of cold plunge, the physical benefits, in terms of dopamine and ore adrenaline and brown fat and all these kind of things, right? And I've seen those studies and, you know, some are more convincing than others. But here's the reality. I think if you are someone who enjoys that as a practice, and not everyone does, and I don't think it is for everyone, if you do, I think the benefits, the primary benefits are psychological and not physical. You're doing something that is hard when you don't need to. And I think that is such a powerful psychological message to your subconscious that it helps you make changes at last. When you're drowning in comfort and everything's easy. Drew, it's not who we are as human beings. Like life has never been this way.

I don't want people to feel guilty, though, because you've got to understand that we are hardwired for comfort to crave comfort. We want that comfort. But modern society, and dare I say, modern businesses have kind of turned us into kids, right? And children, now we're dependent on this modern technology. I give you another example, which I laugh about when I hear and I write about it. It's about a year ago, true. I was on the train. from the northwest of England to London. This beautiful modern high-speed train gets to London in an hour and 40 minutes

with only two stops. I was sitting with a friend. And they were trying to use this new app where a drink from the cafe on the train gets delivered to their seat. And the app wasn't working. And they were getting so pissed off and frustrated. They're like, man, I can't believe this thing doesn't work. They were generating all of this internal

stress. And I took a step back and we had a laugh. I said, hey man, this is, this is amazing, isn't it? You're traveling at 200 miles an hour to one of the great cities in the world. And because an app that didn't even exist three years ago is not working, you'd generate all this emotional stress because it's a bit uncomfortable for you to get up and walk for one minute to the cafe and get you this drink. And I'm not, you know, we laughed about it because I think all All of us have become a little bit dependent on these things working. I have patients who literally, they go for walks with the headphones on, and one patient came in one day, it's about three years ago.

And I could tell that she was struggling to make changes. A lot of it came down to her mindset, she would get so annoyed, true. If on occasion her Bluetooth and her headphones didn't connect to her phone, like she'd get really annoyed. Man, I can't listen to that musical podcast. And I get it, it's not ideal. but we've become so dependent on uber comfort that I think many of us struggle with discomforts. Does that all make sense?

It all makes sense. And in fact, I want to read to you this quote and share it with the audience from your book that I feel like is so in alignment with this. And the quote from your book, you wrote it so you know it, when we're minimally reliant, we're maximally in control of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It's almost like when the opposite is true, when we're maximally reliant on our Bluetooth, When we're maximally reliant on the expectations of modern life that this should work, this should

come on time, this should happen exactly this way, we end up putting ourselves in a position where we become a victim of our circumstances. And when we're a victim in our circumstances, we haven't stepped into something that I call the law of responsibility. The law of responsibility says, if we played a part in this, even if that part is that we had high expectations, if we played a part in it, we can change it, we can influence it. But if it's not our fault at all, if it's somebody else's fault, if somebody should have had it right, if somebody should have done it, they should have made it more clear. They should have been on time. They should have fixed the Bluetooth, whatever it is. If it's not our fault, then the problem with that is that we can't change things. Exactly. And we become unhappy. And unfortunately, we live in a society that encourages that behavior. Nobody woke up today and said, I'm going to choose unhappiness. But. What often happens is that we internalize without being conscious of it, these expectations of how things should go.

Exactly. And we set ourselves up in this position where we become incredibly reliant on all these categories that you've listed out in the book, which I find super helpful. And now we have the opposite of the title of the book. We have changes that don't last. And we feel what's wrong with me? I got the short end of the stick. everybody's against me, nothing works out for me. And maybe you're not saying that out loud to yourself.

But I know a lot of people that are listening today that have felt that in the background. They feel that life is not working for them. And that's the perfect opportunity to actually use the discomfort of that to step into a different way of experiencing this world. One way people can self-assess, right? It's an exercise in chapter 5, which is called Take Less Offense, a reliance on being right. And it's one of my favorite exercises. And I think anyone listening to this podcast, if they resonate with what you just said, Drew, in any shape or form,

and they go, is that me? Do I have these kind of unrealistic expectations of the world? Do an experiment for seven days and catch yourself and see how often do you complain? It's one of the best things you can do. Because if you're complaining, it generally means you're not happy with the way things are. There's a reason why you're complaining. Now, I'm not saying that no one else is ever at fault. and that, you know, you should never complain about anything.

But if we think about and break down what actually to complain means, on one level, we can interpret it as we have an expectation of how things should be. Our expectation is not being met, therefore we complain. And, you know, Drew as I've shared with you over the last few days. Why I'm more passionate about this book than any other book that I've written? It's because I truly believe that everyone can live a happy, healthy life. I really do believe that. I believe we've overcomplicated this.

We're looking for more external knowledge. And we're not doing the most important thing, which is take responsibility for how we are interacting with the world. Right? It's so important. As I've gone down this inner growth journey, basically since my dad died in 2013. So it's almost 12 years now,

which is kind of remarkable to think it's only been 12 years since dad was here. But that journey has taught me so much. I'm now about as calm and about as present as I've ever been before. And when you can cultivate this inner calm by excavating your past, seeing what triggers you, seeing how much you complain, and then changing it, I don't think people realize how much their experience of day-to-day life changes. you just interact with the world differently.

I very rarely complain now. And there's an exercise in the book, which is basically every time you complain, do one or two things. Either turn that complaint into an action or turn that complaint into a moment of gratitude. It's a very, very powerful exercise and it will start to change your relationship with complaining.

I also believe that people don't realize that behavior change actually can be very simple. You can get to a point in life where change starts to feel effortless. I know people don't, many people don't believe that. They don't think it's possible.

But the reason I wrote this book, is because I think people are going about change, as I did before, in the wrong way. They're trying to make changes in their life that are in direct contrast to who they are as a person and how they see themselves. If you're constantly complaining,

and we all know people who are constantly complaining. And I probably was one of those people as well. So I'm not judging anyone here. I'm trying to say to people that it is possible to change. You don't realize that when you have an unweiless expectation of the world and you think everything should go the way that you want it to go and if it's not going that way, you're going to complain. Oh my God, the traffic should be better.

Oh, my God, they shouldn't have sent me an email like that. Oh, my God, how dare my boss ask me to do this or whatever it might be. I'm not excusing people's behavior. I'm not saying that it's okay. I'm saying if you complain regularly, you make yourself a victim to the world. And here's the point for people that I really want to land with them.

You generate emotional stress. Emotional stress is not neutral. You have to neutralize it in some way or another. Well, let's make it really practical true. Let's say you're someone who you drive to work each day into your office. And on the way to work, another driver cuts you up in the road. Ever happens to you do?

Yeah, for sure. Okay. Now, from what I know, if you, you're a very calm and chilled out guy, okay, but not everyone is. If you're a person who, when that happens, starts to generate all this noise, oh, my God, driver, you're shouting at them through your screen, they shouldn't have a license, they need their eyes checked, or whatever it might be, you're entitled to have that response, okay? Every human beings is hard to respond how they want, but there is a consequence of that response. The consequence of that is that you are generating all this tension and stress in your body,

and you will neutralize that in some way. Now, there are healthy ways to neutralize it, a walk around the block, go and work it off in the gym. Or more commonly, when we get to the office, it's an extra coffee, it's a chocolate bar from the machine, it's an extra glass of wine after work, or whatever it might be, these behaviors are downstream. Had you never generated that emotional stress in the first place, you wouldn't need the sugar. You wouldn't need the alcohol because it's there to neutralize the emotional stress that you have generated

by the way you chose to respond to that situation. Now, a lot of people don't realize that they have a choice in how they respond. Just because someone cuts you up, it doesn't mean you have to get annoyed. Now, I used to get annoyed, but once you start many of the practices that I talk about, once you start having a bit of solitude each morning with a morning routine,

you start to pay attention to yourself, once you realize that between that stimulus of the driver cutting you up and your response of reacting and shouting, there is a gap there. And the more you practice to go, oh, there is a gap there, I get to choose my response. I could either shout to them, or I could go, hmm, I wonder why that guy's driving like that.

I wonder what might be going on in their life. Or maybe that's a father whose baby girl was up all night with earache, and now they're rushing and they didn't see me. Maybe that's a mother who was late for her job last week two times, and if she's late one more time, the boss has said she's getting fired, and that's how she feeds her family. Maybe there's another reason that you have no idea about.

And here's what I learned a few years ago, Drew. For my happiness and my well-being, the truth doesn't matter. What matters is the story I put on that situation. If I can put an empowering story on, I'm calm. I go on up with my day. I'm present. I make good choices. If I choose to make myself a victim to life and say that, no, I'm entitled,

to be annoyed and angry and stress that because that driver shouldn't have done that. Hey, I get it. It would be ideal if that driver didn't do that. But that's completely out of your control. And let's bring that to health and wellness. Why I think this is, I think quite a fresh book in the health and wellness space, is because I think so many of the books, and I've written these before in the past as well, are about more knowledge, right? You know, this is what sugar does.

This is what ultra-processed food does. This is how much you should be moving. this is how much proteins you should be having. Hey, great, I'm all for that. But it's not equating to widespread a science or change. People are still sick. Now, there are systemic reasons for that. The food environment is toxic. It's hard for people to make the right choices. Yes, I accept all of those things. But at the same time, that's another powerful reason that I simply do not think people in this space are talking about enough. It's what is the root. cause of those behaviors. If you don't go to the root, you're never going to change the behavior

in the long term. You know, the through line of this book is really awareness. And if we develop and practice growing our awareness, we can understand the hidden forces that are out there that continuously hijack our life. When you go upstream and you find those hidden forces, you don't have to work as hard for long-lasting change. That's it. That's it. Right? You don't have to work That's what I've gotten from the book is that it's actually easier. It's a more easier and direct path, even though it seems quote unquote longer because you're not using willpower, using awareness. Now, a key part of awareness that you talk about in the book is that many people, because of our modern life and the way that technology is, and the way that ultra-processed foods are designed, and the way that our schedules are overpacked and busy, and how we're sort of living in a way that's distant from nature and our environment. is that a lot of people don't have good interoception.

They actually don't know in any given moment that they're starting to bubble up because of these micro-stressers or things that are going on in their life. And then they get in their car and they get cut off and it turns into, this is an extreme example, but we've all seen those videos

where it turns into an extreme road rage incident off of something to... Now, maybe you haven't been in a road rage incident. I hope you haven't been. But we've all had this moment where we've freaked out on our partner, our employee, our kid, and we've overreacted to a situation. And it wasn't about that situation. We had been bubbling up for a while.

And one of my favorite parts of your book is where you go into this section and you talk about the nine different sort of body signals that our body is actually constantly trying to communicate to us and tell us that something is off. and for most of us, we don't notice it strongly enough or we ignore it completely. I think it'd be worthwhile to just talk about a few of these. Can I just list a couple of them off for you? And you can talk about them either individually or as a whole. I found this very helpful because I have a friend who feels like they don't have good interoception

and they're very reactive. And part of my discussion with them the other day was that it's actually kind of catching yourself bubbling up in that moment to that point that you. end up reacting to in this particular instance, they always notice when they get on the phone with their mom, they end up having this sort of very reactive type of conversation that's there. So I'm going to list a couple of these out. I'll list out like the first three. And if you want to chat about them, then you can talk about them.

If you want to talk about body signals as a whole, that's fine too. So the first one is physical discomfort. The next one you had was heart rate changes. Then you had breathing patterns. And the fourth one was gut reactions. I'm not going to list them all, but anything you want to say about one of those or all of those when it comes to interoception? Yeah.

I mean, let's start with big picture here. And I think this really relates to many of the themes that we've covered already, Drew, that if you're going to make these changes long term, you have to pay attention. You have to start listening to your body, your body. We mentioned diet before. Instead of getting confused by all the conflicting advice that's out there, what are the commonalities, what are the core principles? and then you experiment for a few weeks with each of these diets and pay attention. You know, how are you feeling? Right?

How is your digestion? How are your bowels? How is your sleep? Whatever it might be. And then it kind of doesn't matter what the expert says because you've figured out what works for you. Interception is really about this awareness of your inner sensations, what's going on. As you say, your breathing rate, your heart rates, all kinds of.

kinds of things. And you know, you will know there are many examples of yogis over the years who can actually pay attention to things like their gut and actually get them moving faster and moving slower. Things that most of us, I can't do that. You know, I haven't spent years cultivating that inner awareness. But the point here is, really for me, is that interception, this ability to read your body's own signals is a critical skill to develop. And it's a skill we can all develop. That's in that section I write about, this thing I read about that this American research ended up going to study an indigenous tribe. I can't remember which country now. And the tribe was shocked when this guy from America said that, oh, we in America think with our

heads. What you think with your head? We think with our abdomens. And we in Western culture talk about five senses. In many indigenous tribes, they talk about 12 senses. And not one of them are the same as our five senses. There's things like balance, awareness, all kinds of other things, like different people see the world in different ways. I feel, because of this modern technological world where we're constantly consuming from the outside,

we've lost touch with basic stuff that we always known before. What are our body saying to us? When do we feel good? When do we not feel good? When have we got tension? When do we not have tension? In my view, Drew, and this kind of relates to morning routines, but let's take it beyond morning routines.

I believe, based upon my own lived experience, and 23 years have seen tens of thousands of patients, whilst every single person is unique and needs their own approach, I honestly believe that the most important practice that any one of us can do each day is a practice of solitude. Solitude is just time for you. yourself. Time to hear what your body's saying. It can be meditation. It can be breathwork. It can be a cup of coffee in silence. It can be sitting there and going through your body. You know,

where do I feel attention? Like a body scan that many modalities like yoga have been talking about for years. Some practice where you start to pay attention. Now here's the thing, Drew, for some people this is going to sound quite scary. But it's only scary because they spent the whole whole life's not paying attention. If you spent your whole life not listening to your body and listening to external signals and experts and trying to get information from outside yourself, yeah, it's going to take a bit of time. But it's just a skill. And like any skill, the more you practice it, the better you get. I realized Drew a few years ago that when my stress load is rising, my upper right back gets tight. But here's the thing, for years that would have been happening, and I was so busy, I was so in my head,

I was so out there, I never would have realized that. Once I started practicing through my morning routine, because my first M is mindfulness, I started to notice, oh man, it's feeling a bit tight today. That was a signal for me to pay attention and go, I wonder why, ah, I've taken on too much at work. I don't have a break at lunch today. I've been going to bed a bit late. It is an early warning. a sign for me to take aversive action. Ah, I need to make some changes now. Your initial question to me was about stress, burner and procrastination. If people paid attention to themselves each day and started to notice in their body when things were going off, for some people it'll be constipation, right? Because they're so tight. They've got so much going and they can't go to

the toilet. Sure, that can have other reasons, diet, intolerance, all kinds of things. But sometimes some people notice that first. Oh, there's something off today. And through that process of daily self-awareness, and even five minutes will do, you'll start to make little tweets to your life regularly. Little tweets. And that stops the stress building up. That stops the burnout building up. That stops the procrastination happening because you're starting to become aware in the moment.

You can start to take aversive action regularly. To add to that as well is that it's not that you'll never deal with those things. moving forward. I'm sure there's times where you notice yourself, just like I do, where I still procrastinate sometimes. But that gap between procrastination and then being able to move forward, it's like a smaller moment, right? I let myself feel that moment of procrastination. I can feel annoyed that I have to do something. For example, like, you know, these podcasts, your podcast, my podcast, one of the reasons that they're free is that we have sponsors. And one of the things that I regularly procrastinate about that my sisters know because they help me with this podcast

is I regularly procrastinate reading ads. They'll put it on my calendar. I'll shift it. I'll push it to later. I'll do anything else that's there. And I'm like, oh, man, like, I love the sponsors that are there. I believe in the products. But it's just sitting down and, like, reading ads, it feels like it takes a lot of effort into energy and I procrastinate on it. But I'll have a moment. I'll sit there. And then I'll like say, okay, I've moved it around a few times. Let me just get it done because I know I'll feel good getting it done. And I know I'll feel good having my, you know, having that to do checked off my sister's list. Because my older sister Herschel, shout out to her.

She helps me with my podcast and with the ads and everything. So I'll still feel these moments that are there, but they're moments. When I was younger, I would have procrastination that would be so debilitating. I would not take major risks in life. I would literally not pursue a dream because I was afraid of something not working out. What if it doesn't work out? What if I'm not good enough?

And I would procrastinate weeks, months, if not years on a major initiative. I'm sure you can relate to that as well. I do want to share with the audience, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this. It's not that I never feel procrastination. It's not that I've never felt burnout. It just takes a lot longer.

and then when it happens, I just move through it so much more quicker. And the big thing is, because of some of these themes that you talk about in your book that I 100% try to practice in my own life is that I don't stay there because I'm not addicted to beating myself up, right? I'm not addicted to making myself wrong. I see myself as, okay, great, I'm a human being. Sometimes I'm going to have moments of procrastination. I'm not going to beat myself up.

I'm going to let go of that. I'm going to have forgiveness for myself. know that I did my best and now I don't stay there. So many people stay there and my heart goes out to them. If somebody's listening today and they feel like, but Rangan, I get stuck there. I beat myself up. Is there any lesson in your book out of the nine that are there

that you feel would be timely to bring up as a part of this conversation right now? I mean, first of all, Drew, thank you for sharing that. I think that's a very common universal experience. I think there's many lessons that I can apply to that. But the one that comes to mind from this new book is chapter two, which is called Give Up Your Heroes, a Reliance on Perfection. Many of us have perfectionist tendencies.

I have had perfectionist tendencies for much of my life. I would say I've only managed to break free from that in the last few years. And it's really debilitating. And perfectionism we know has been going up in modern society since the 1980. There's a tendency to say it's because of social media. Social media has definitely contributed with these kind of false beliefs and expectations that we have of ourselves based upon this perfectionist presentation that we see online. Okay?

But growing rates of perfectionism are associated with quite severe mental health issues, including suicide. If we have a belief that we are perfect and can be perfect, that is paralyzing because then, when we make a mistake, as we all do, it leads to this stuckness, this guilt, this shame. Because the underlying belief is, I had the potential to be perfect. But by me not doing this means that I'm not perfect. Again, it's that expectation that we have of ourselves, these internal beliefs, and then we don't meet that expectation, we're disappointed. We feel bad

about ourselves. We feel guilty. We feel shame. So dealing with perfectionism, I think is really, really important. And I think we can all do that in a variety of different ways. What do you think about the word regret? Like what's my relationship with the word? Yeah. I don't really feel a lot of regret in my life. I generally feel like there are times where I maybe made a mistake, mishandled a relationship, done this, but I generally see as like I did the best that I knew at that time and I tend to not linger on it. So in one way, I'm obsessed with the word regret because I'm trying to, a big positive fuel in my life is thinking about what will I regret if I don't pursue? And another aspect is looking backwards, I actually don't use regret a lot to look at how things

have gone. Does that make any sense? It's a good positive motivator, but I actually don't look back on things that have happened in my life with any sense of regret. Yeah, I love that answer. And I would say I have quite a similar relationship. I'm going to relate this back to perfectionism and the question you asked me in just a moment. But if you could allow me just to sort of have a slight digression on regrets, because I think it can be quite telling for people, as it was for me. So what do I like about the word regret? Why do I talk about the regrets of the dying so much on my podcast? Because I do. Have you heard of Brony Wear? Yeah, love her work. So Brony, wrote the book, The Five Regrets of the Dying. She was a palliative care nurse for I think seven or eight

years and she would see that on people's deathbeds, they would commonly say the same things. And she put it all together in a blog that led to a book. And I find and I think about those regrets often because the regrets that people have on their deathbeds have directly help me start to make changes in my present so that I hope that. I hope that. I hope that. I'm not someone who on their deathbed has the same regrets. She says that on their deathbed, they would all say things like, I wish I'd work less, I'd wish I'd spent more time on my friends and family, I wish I'd allowed myself to be happy,

I wish I'd lived my life and not the life that other people expected of me. They're really, really powerful. In people's final hours, that's what they're thinking about, right? So those regrets have hugely positively influenced my life, and I've made changes on the back of those. But what I realized over the last years, and I wrote a section on this in Make Change at last, is that I've come to believe that regret is a form of perfectionism.

If you are consumed with regret, oh man, I did that on my 20s. I shouldn't have done that. I regret it, right? I respect everyone has their right to have their own relationship with regrets. I personally have zero regrets in my life, but you can have zero regrets in two different ways. You can have zero regrets and be like, hey, I'm just going to live my life. It doesn't matter who I bother or offend or whatever.

No regrets, man. I'm just living my life. I don't mean that. I think regret is tinged with disappointment. To me, the word is tinged with, I could have done better, right? I used to be consumed with regret. Oh man, I shouldn't have done that. I could have behaved differently.

But as I've unwound my relationship with perfectionism over the last few years, through journaling, through meditation, through awareness and paying attention to when I get triggered and trying to understand where that comes from, I realize that I have nothing to regret in my life. Things happen and there are a consequence of those things happening. I can learn from those things and I can choose different choices in the future. but I choose to believe true that everyone, myself included, I'm always doing the best I can based upon what I know and the pressures and stresses in my life. That is not taking me off the hook. I can look back on my life now, and like you, there are things that I have done or been involved with,

which if I was faced with those situations today, I would out very differently. I can learn from past experiences, but I don't regret them. And I think that you can relate this to perfectionism. If you could have done better, you would have. But the fact that you didn't means that you didn't. You couldn't have done better. You did what you did.

The question is, can you learn from that? I believe you can learn from past experiences and use the learnings to change your decision making in the present and in the future. But I no longer have any regrets in life. But when I was a raging perfectionist, I was consumed with regrets. I'd love to get your thoughts on this. You know, Tony Robbins has this kind of quote, and I'm paraphrasing here.

He says, you're not a perfectionist. You're just afraid. And sometimes we use this idea of perfectionism to actually prevent us from doing the things in our life. That, oh, I can't put out this book that I've been working on for a while because it's not perfect. Well, is it that you're waiting for it to be perfect? or are you just simply afraid of what it looks like to put yourself out there? And whether somebody wants to write a book, start a new venture, be involved, speak up in a conversation. I don't have this perfectly written out. I don't know the perfect way to say it

to somebody else. Is there really a perfect or is it okay to say, you know what? I'm afraid. Yeah. And that's fine to be afraid. But that's not a reason not to move forward. Yeah. I love that framing. I love that framing. I think that massively speaks to procrastination. One of the reasons people procrastinate is because of fear, because of what happens if this isn't good enough? Like, what will people say about this? You see this in health and wellness a lot. It's a byproduct of sort of where the industry is, is that I can't start on these changes because I don't know the perfect answer for that. I don't have the perfect supplement routine or the this, so I'm not going to do it because it's not all put together.

What would you say to somebody who feels that? I've seen this in hundreds of patients over the years. Like literally hundreds. I can remember cases of people coming in. There was this one guy. I think I wrote about him in the book, Brian, who he was like, I think in his 50s. And we'd address that he had to make some lifestyle changes because of his heart. He'd go away and he'd keep coming back in and he'd say, hey, Doc, I still haven't got my

exercised regime going yet. I can't decide. I think running's good. I think yoga's good. I think strength training is good. I just can't decide which one to do. This is what you see in health and wellness. Like even beyond the practice, I get DMs from people saying, like I follow this person, they do yoga. This other one does Pilates. This one does martial arts. They all sound good. I don't know which one to do. So I end up doing nothing. And the truth is, in a lot of these things,

it doesn't matter which one you do. All of them are going to have benefits. Pick one, do it regularly, and you're going to start to experience those benefits. So the advice I give that, patients, it's quite similar to the advice I gave right at the start of this podcast, true. Make one small promise to yourself each day and keep it. Why I'm so passionate about sharing that five-minute strength workout that I do for five minutes every morning while my coffee brews, it's because that takes you out of procrastination. That is you taking action. And by taking small actions every day, you build momentum. It's that consistency. You change the way you view yourself. you're no longer that person who can never stick to a plan,

who keeps saying they're going to do something and can't do it. You become someone who like, hey man, yeah, I said I was going to do it and I did it. You've got to take action. I think Tony Romans is on something there with that. It is that fear of failure. It's what if it isn't the perfect thing? What if I don't get it quite right? I get asked through a lot by authors because I've written so many books.

A lot of them comes to me for advice. And there's many things I say to them, but one of the key things I tell every new author. And again, even two weeks ago, I was in my local coffee shop and the north of England. I dropped the kids at the bus stop for school. I was doing some work. And there was someone next to me who was writing her book. And she was like, man, I'm really struggling.

My deadlines are coming up. Because she asked me for advice. It wasn't unsolicited advice. I said, one thing I've learned in writing books is that the perfect book doesn't exist. It's simply not possible. If I had endless time to keep tweaking up my books, I'd still be writing my first book now. still trying to tweak it and make changes. I said to her, when you have your deadline, when that book goes to print, all it can ever be is the best that you were capable of at that moment in time.

When it's at the printer's getting printed, it doesn't mean that your brain stop. It doesn't mean that you stop thinking about the ideas. Now, if you had an extra week, you'd make more changes. If you had an extra two months, you'd make more changes. But at some point, you've got to say, no, that's as good as I can do at the moment. That's good enough. And I would, would even argue for me that writing books has actually helped me deal with perfectionism because I've had to go, no, this is the best I can do at this moment. I'd love to get your perspective on this other aspect. You know, one of the lessons that I talk about for my audience, based on my own experience, as not in subject matter expertise, but somebody who's just trying to

figure out his own health routine and gets a chance to interview incredible people like yourself and other great guests in this podcast, I've seen that one of the biggest stressors in my life has been when I try to do too many things at the same time. As you know, and you hinted earlier, every time somebody listens to a new episode of your podcast, there's an unlimited list of things that they could be doing. And sometimes guests will even come in. You're really good about sort of toning this down, but guests come in because they believe their particular worldview. And that could turns into a should. You should be doing this. And if we ask, up all the things that we come across in the week, from people that we love and trust.

People listen to you. They love and trust you and other people like yourself. If you add up the list of things that you could be doing or things that people say you should be doing, there's just way too much on our plates. And in fact, sometimes my favorite thing is to hear really great piece of advice from somebody to think about it for a second and say, that's great maybe one day that'll be something that I decide to tackle but it's not the right priority for me right now because I'm giving love and attention to this one aspect and this goes

back to this idea in your book of trusting yourself one of the things that I know is that when I am trying to make major progress on more than one or maybe maximum two areas of my health and ideally those are the foundational basics, if I'm trying to work on more than one of those at the same time, I'm most likely not going to make significant progress. Yeah. So how much do you feel that so much of what's happening for people right now

is there's not that sort of trust in themselves and it's that, oh, this person out there said that these are things that I should be doing. And so now they have a whole laundry list and they feel bad every day when they think about all the things that they're not doing. They feel bad every day. This is so common. It relates to perfectionism that this belief that we can do everything, that we can be perfect when we can't.

You can almost argue this is one of the toxic side effects of this kind of self-help, health and wellness world. Unwittingly, like I'm not saying anyone's intentionally doing this. Like, I believe that it's all good natured. I genuinely believe that people are trying to help each other and trying to share our information that's worked for them or that their research has shown, and they want to say, hey, listen, I think this is going to really help you. The problem is, if we're saying that society has a problem with perfectionism

and the data all supports that it does, so that's the foundation of how society looks at themselves, and then we're constantly hearing different bits of health and wellness information, you can do this, you can do that, you can do this. To do all of it, you would need a full-time job. that would be all you could do full time, right? You wouldn't be able to work and pay for any of it because you'd be doing your yoga routine

and your morning routine and you'd be strength training and you'd be like whatever it might be getting your nature and all these things they feel too much and the problem is, is depending on the relationship we have with perfectionism, we can constantly feel like a failure. We can feel that we're not doing them. Even if we are doing enough and we're getting changes in our life,

we focus on what we're not doing. boy, that lands with me because that was me for many years. I'm doing all these things, but yeah, but I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. You can't do it all. In terms of a practical piece of advice for people, I've got two pieces of practical advice for your audience. One is big picture, all the way back in my first book at the end of 2017,

which was called the four-pillar plan and in the US was called How to Make Diseases Disappear. Much punchier US title. I set out this framework that I still believe in, which is these four key pillars of health, food, movement, sleep and relaxation. And really, for this conversation, in terms of what you've just asked me, Drew, and what we're talking about,

I would love all of your listeners to ask themselves one question. Which one of those four pillars do I need? the most work in? I think we all intuitively know. I think we all know which one do we need the most help with. And I would say, put your attention there. Think about one thing you can change in that pillar. Because the problem I've found for many years with patients, Drew, is this. People have a favorite pillar. And they like to make more and more changes in their favorite pillar. So I'll give me an example. Let's say you're really into nutrition. You like cooking. You'll listen to health podcast, and your diet might be, let's call it, 85% good.

That's really good compared to the population. You're spending all your time and energy trying to take it from 85 to 90%. But you're neglecting the fact that you're only sleeping five hours a night. You're worried about that little pastry you have on a Sunday morning out on a cafe with your friends. If you cut that out when your diet's already really, really good, that's going to somehow change the quality of your life, without realizing that you're only as good as your weakest pillar. A really piece of practical advice for people to try and simplify health and well-being for them is look at those four pillars. What is your weak spot? Instead of trying to get your strong pillar

even better, I would say just raise up your weak pillar a little bit. Let's say you're struggling with sleep and you're only sleeping five hours a night. And you hear a sleep ex who would say we should be sleeping eight hours a night, for example. Don't let that put you off. Even if you take your seat from five hours a night to five hours and 20 minutes a night, you are going to physiologically be different the following morning. You're going to get changes even, like positive changes, even from an extra 20 minutes. So one way of answering that query, Drew, is to simplify things down to this four pillar frame because they choose your weakest pillar and make once more change there. But the other way I'd like to help your audience is to offer them a question that they could ask themselves every single day.

It's one of the three questions I ask myself every single morning. And it's a question that I write about in Chapter 7 of this book, which is a reliance on busyness. This idea, this cultural idea, particularly here in America, that business equals success. That's the idea that we absorb. And there's many ways you can tackle our over-reliance on busy. because the truth is that many people don't want to hear Drew is that often, not always, but often, busyness is a sign of laziness. I understand that many people have stressful lives, they've got a lot of conflicts in their lives, maybe you're a single parent, you're struggling to

pay the bills, I get it. You're probably going to be really busy trying to do that. And I have compassion and sympathy for anyone in that predicaments. But there's many people who are not in that scenario. There's many people who use busyness as an excuse. Business is basically because they haven't done the inner work of identifying what is truly important in their lives. So I ask myself every morning, this comes under the third end mindset. So I'm often sitting with my coffee. Now I've done my meditation. I've done my workouts. And now I'm on the final part of my morning routine. and I ask myself, what is the most important thing I have to do today? It is such a powerful question, Drew, because it forces you to decide.

It forces you to make a decision. And, you know, when you first are answering this question, sometimes you think, there's many important things I have to do. Well, how can he ask me to just write one thing down? There's important things at work. There's important things at home. But I don't know if you know this or not, But when the word priority came into the English language in the 1500s, it came in as a singular word.

You could only have one priority. It didn't exist. You couldn't have multiple priorities. This is a modern kind of evolution of the word where we think everything's important, but not everything in our life is equally important. And why I love that question is because we're living in a time true where many people feel, stressed out, burnt out, overloaded, they think that I'll focus on the important things when my to-do list is done. But our to-do lists are never done. There's always things piling up on that to-do list. You could today, Drew, completely clear your email inbox. In theory, it's possible. And then you could shut your laptop, put the kettle on, make yourself a cup of have a little break. In that time, you might have received 20 emails. There's nothing you can do

about that. That may happen. That's out of your control. Anyone who has access to your email address can send you an email at any time of the day from any part of the world. That's out of your control. So you could come back and go, oh, I can't now spend time on my wife or go for my run or go to the gym. I've got more emails to do. And we're looking at this the wrong way. I'm saying that, yes, there are many things in your life that you have to do. But if in the morning you identify, fight the most important thing, and then you do it. And my challenge to your audience, do is for seven days, ask yourself that question, what is the most important thing? You have to do that day. Make sure you do it. In seven days, your life will feel completely different, because you

will have not procrastinated. You will have taken action on what you have defined the most important thing is. Now, I ask myself that every day true, some days when I'm at home, Obviously, I'm here in America at the moment. I'm doing interviews to try and promote the ideas in this new book. But when I'm at home, like, let's take a typical, like, week. You know, I'm married, I've got a 14-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl. On some days, it will be a work deadline that I have that will go down. By writing that work deadline down, it doesn't mean that my wife's not important

or my kids are not important. It just means on that day, I need to make sure my focus is on getting that work task done. The next day it might be the most important thing I have to do today is go for a 20 minute walk at lunchtime because I'm not moving my body enough at the moment. Doesn't mean my work's not important or spending time when my family is not important. But on that day, it's a focus to go, yeah, you're letting that part of your life go. Make sure you go for a walk at lunchtime today. Often, on a Wednesday when I'm typically working at home, what do I put down?

At 4 p.m. When your kids walk through the door, make sure your laptop is down, that your phone is away, so that you are fully present to listen to what your kids have to tell you. It's a simple question, Drew, but it is life-changing. In this world of competing priorities, it forces you to make a decision. And I'm so passionate about this, Drew, if everyone commits to this, and they ask themselves that question each day and they act on it, if in seven days you're not feeling better about your life,

You know what? Ignore me. Think that guy's talking nonsense. I'm going to ignore everything he says. It doesn't work. I'm okay with that because I want people to develop their own self-knowledge. I can't say I know what's best for everyone. I don't. But in my experience, I have not met anyone yet who asks themselves that question each day and acts on it and doesn't feel better about themselves and their life. You know, Rangan, as we're winding down this interview and you've given us so many gems that are helping us think about, like, what does it really take to go upstream, increase awareness, and through that vehicle of awareness, we end up making changes that last. The question that I'd like to ask you is zooming out even a little bit bigger than that, is that what's the why behind this, right? It sounds so simple, but it's a good reminder, especially for the end of the interview, view of like, sometimes we can forget when we're so in the thick of it, like, why are we doing

this all? You know, why are we doing all these habits, changes, prioritizing our health? You know, what do you want to remind people about the why of like what is possible for them when they actually step into the place in their life when they can make changes that last? It's a big question, Drew. And it's a question that frankly transcends health. Why are we here? Like, why are we here on earth? What is the point of our existence? These are big, deep spiritual questions. And I think they're important questions because if we're stuck in our life and we're stressing over the small things and we're constantly stressed and we're stuck and we don't know why we're making changes, let's think about those deathbed regrets. I think they're a beautiful

way of teaching us what's important in life. What is more powerful than hearing what people at the end of their lives say about their life experience. For me, those deathbed regrets have changed how I lived my life in very tangible, significant ways. They really have. Because at the end of our life, when we know that's it, these are people with cancer that Brony Ware wrote about, right? These are people who knew they were going to die. This was it. These were their final hours on earth. That's when the stark reality of their existence comes into focus. I wish I'd wish I'd work less. I wish I spent more time with my friends and family. I wish I'd allowed myself to be happy. The one that gets me every time, Drew, I wish I'd lived my life and not the life that other people

expected of me. Chapter 2 in this book is all about the reliance on being liked by others. Sorry, chapter 3, the reliance that other people are going to like us. And I'm very openly share about my people-pleasing tendencies previously. I've changed a lot of them. In the time that you've known me, I imagine you've even seen those changes from like 10 years ago and how I would interact. And, you know, I was a real people pleaser back then. Excessive people pleaser. And I feel it's not that I don't care about people today. Yeah, I do care about people.

But I don't need to excessively people please anymore because my inner well-being and how I view myself is not as dependent anymore on what other people think of me. It used to be. but what can we learn from those regrets and what we're talking about here at the end of this conversation? The quality of our life, Drew, comes down to the quality of our relationships. And the reason I feel that these concepts are so important is because many of us are struggling with our relationships, because we're struggling with our health and we're struggling with our inner world. So those struggles not only play out in our behaviors like sugar and alcohol.

They play out in how we interact with our loved ones, our partner, our children, our siblings. We take out that inner stress on the people closest to us. You mentioned before about a friend of yours who tells you that when they're talking to their mother, they feel reactive. They, you know, they're not the person who they want to be. And there's this great quote by some spiritual massacromo, who it is now. What is it? It's like if you think you're enlightened, go and spend a weekend with your family. Yeah, Rambas.

Rambas, right? It's hardest with the people that we've known the longest. But why should it be that the people closest to us get the worst of us? Because I bet you there's people listening to this right now, Drew, who go, yeah, that is me. My husband gets the worst of me sometimes. My children get the worst to me sometimes. And maybe I'd been in that position before, right? And even sometimes people feel like I get the worst of me.

People are harder on themselves than they are anybody else that's out there. And they beat themselves up. Yeah. So the reason this matters, Drew, is because until you stop looking outside for answers, and start turning it around and going inwards, you'll always be a victim to the world and external circumstances. all of us true want to be calm and kind and compassionate. We do.

There's research on this. There was a paper in 2021 by some psychologists, and they showed that despite all of us actually being different and individual, when we behave in a way that's kind and patient and compassionate, we all feel better. We all feel as if we're actually living in alignment with who we are as human. everything in life, Drew, comes either from the energy of love or the energy of fear. Like all our behaviours are either driven from love or from fear.

I can really believe that. Why this matters is once you start, in a very kind and compassionate way, start looking inwards, start examining your beliefs, start asking yourself, well, why is it that when I know sugar's not good for me? I keep ending up on the sofa with half a tub of Ben and Jerry's. And then I beat myself up the next day. You can either pretend that's not happening and try and get more external knowledge, or you go, you know what, I deserve better than this. My children deserve better than this.

I'm now going to take ownership of my life and find out why, despite the knowledge I keep engaging in that behaviour. I think this matters because it's our relationships, ultimately, that determine the quality of our life. If we think true that the answers to our lives and why we can't make changes lie out there, what happens is that we do stay stuck. We're not able to move forward and move on. We can't do those things.

But once you realize that the answers that you're looking for, the things that are truly going to help you make sustainable, transformative change in your lives are inside. And you start looking, you start developing that insight. you start developing that self-awareness. Once you realize that and you start taking action there, the way you interact with life starts to change, you feel light, you feel free, you feel calm. Your partner is going to start getting the best of you. Your children are going to see a calm, non-reactive parent. You're going to have a really healthy relationship with yourself.

And all of these things together, yes, they make you happy. They make you consent, but they also make you healthier because they help you make changes that actually last. You know, we were chatting beforehand. I honestly think this conversation right now is the most timely conversation that needs to happen. You were mentioning like, this is completely different than your previous books. Yeah. And it's for good reason because you're not telling people what to do. Not that your previous books were like, do this, don't do that.

But you're teaching people how to trust them. themselves, how to go inward, because that's where all the answers are. And especially around this time of year, where everybody has all the priorities of the things that they should be doing with their health, I think this is the perfect opportunity to take a step back and to actually say, what do I really want? What is actually working for me? What's not working for me? And if I'm not heading in the direction that I want to head in, is there a different path that's out there? And I really truly feel that this book lays out a possible path, a framework that you can personalize and make your own. And honestly, it's my favorite book that you've written so far. So I just want

to thank you so much for this podcast, for your friendship, but also putting this incredible work out there. The book is out there. People can pre-order it. It's out in the UK and the US. Everywhere books are sold. Make change that last. Any final words, Rungin? Before we take us out? No, Drew, I think you summarized it really, really well. We need to look at the big picture. We need to step outside and go, why does this matter? Why are we living the lives that we're living? How could my life be different? How can I live in a way where I don't have those regrets on my deathbeds? What is going to make this year different from every other year previously? People wake up, Drew, on New Year's Day, and they think that willpower is enough. They think that, right,

this is the year. This is the year where I make changes where somehow it's going to end up differently from the last 10 New Year's days when I said the same thing. Why? How is it going to be any different if you take the same approach? I've spent two and a half years writing this book, Drew, because I believe in everyone's ability to change. I have seen people come into my practice over the years in really dark and dire situations. And I have seen people make the most transformative change. Yes, sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it takes longer than others. But I believe in people's ability to change. I've done it myself and I've seen it with people. And really, my sort of final thought is if your life isn't where you want it to be right now, if you want it to change, you've got to ask yourself

why. And hopefully there's going to be something in the conversation we've had today, Drew, that lands with someone that just gives them a spark, just a glimmer to go, yeah, I think that was relevant for me. I think there's something in that. Pause, rewind. Sure, if you want to get the book, right? If you don't go back to that part of the conversation, listen to it again and go, there's something there. Instead of looking to me as the expert or you drew as the host and another experts, look inwards to yourself because that's what all the answers are. Well, said, brother. Well, Rangan, I want to thank you for coming on the podcast again and sharing this important message. I couldn't think of a more important and timely conversation for our audience to tune

into. Thank you so much for being back on here. That's having me, Drew. Hi, everyone, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend, share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter. And it's called Try This.

Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love. can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset, to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for whole body health and optimization,

click the link in the show notes that's called Try This or just go to Drew Perot.com. That's D-H-R-U-P-U-H-I-T-com and click on the tab that says, try this.