Dhru Purohit Show - The New Science of Mental Well-Being and Taking Control of Your Health and Happiness with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

Episode Date: June 30, 2022

This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and AquaTru. If you stopped and asked yourself whether you were living life according to your own core values or were instead trying to live up to someone else’s expectations, would you feel good about your answer? Far too often, we get caught up in all the “shoulds” of life—all the obligations and made-up stories of what qualifies as “success”—only to wake up one day and realize we really aren’t happy. Creating the life we want starts with taking the time to go inside, identify our deepest values, and create an intentional path forward.  Today, I’m excited to share an empowering conversation between me and my good friend Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. We take a deep dive into how we can live in line with what matters most to us, breaking down limiting narratives, finding true self-love, and so much more.  Dr. Chatterjee is regarded as one of the most influential doctors in the UK. A practicing GP for the last two decades, Dr. Chatterjee wants to inspire people to transform their health by making small, sustainable changes to their lifestyles. Dr. Chatterjee is the host of the #1 Apple podcast Feel Better, Live More, and presenter of BBC 1’s Doctor in the House. Dr. Chatterjee is the author of five Sunday Times bestselling books, and his latest book is Happy Mind, Happy Life. In this episode, we dive into: -The power of a morning routine (3:15) -Confusing success for happiness and chasing external validation (12:18) -How your inner voice is affecting your happiness and health (18:10) -Junk happiness habits (24:06) -The big missing piece in health (31:17) -Redefining success and writing your happy ending (42:27) -Social friction and how to reframe it (1:12:11)  -How too much choice affects our health (1:34:52)  -Dr. Chatterjee’s morning routine (1:56:50) -How happiness affects our health (1:58:29) For more on Dr. Chatterjee, follow him on Instagram @drchatterjee, Facebook @drchatterjee, Twitter @drchatterjeeuk, YouTube @drranganchatterjee, and through his website, drchatterjee.com. Get his book, Happy Mind, Happy Life, here. This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and AquaTru. ​​InsideTracker provides detailed nutrition and lifestyle guidance based on your individual needs. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 20% off. Just go to insidetracker.com/DHRU to get your discount and try it out for yourself. AquaTru is the primary water filter I use at home and in my office. Right now, they are offering my community an amazing deal. Get $150 off your filter at drhyman.com/filter today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many people are chasing and striving every day to achieve more, buy more. But I think for many of us, we don't understand that there is a massive difference between success and happiness. Welcome to the Drew Proit podcast. Each week, we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is my dear friend, Dr. Rungan Chatterjee. Dr. Rungan Chatterjee is regarded as one of the most influential doctors in the UK. He's a practicing physician now for over two decades, and his mission in life is to help people transform their health through making small, sustainable changes to their lifestyle. And that's what today's conversation is about.

Dr. Chatterjee has a new book out. It's called Happy Mind, Happy Life, the new science of mental well-being. And one of the core themes as part of Rungen's book is that it's okay to want to be happy. It's okay to seek out happiness. I think we all know, but we went through a phase over the last couple years where it was kind of considered a little bit taboo to tell people that you were going out and seeking out happiness. But there's nothing wrong with that.

And that's one central message in Rangan's book. Now, the question is, though, how do we actually do it? So Dr. Chatterjee has outlined these 10 tips and a framework for stepping into happiness, things that are evidence-based that have shown to significantly, improve how we think of ourselves and see the outside world. And we're going to explore those in today's episode, things like seeking out friction. You know, so many people think that we want to avoid friction or tough times in our life, but actually could seeking out tough things and doing tough things in our life actually

make us happier? Well, you're going to be surprised at some of the investigation that rung and found. Another aspect that we're going to be talking about today in this world of abundance is eliminating choice. What happens when we simplify our life and eliminate choice? How much better do we feel? And another theme that we're going to explore is how to align your day-to-day life with your life's mission and purpose. And we're going to use a little exercise that Rangan is going to take us through. It's called writing your happy ending. He actually takes me through it, but you're going to follow along on your end as well too and do the exercise. I'm so excited about today's episode. I think you're

get a lot of value from it. A little bit more about Dr. Rungen Chatterjee. He's the host of Apple's number one podcast, Feel Better, Live More, and the presenter of BBC One's Doctor in the House. He's also the author of five Sunday Times bestselling books. Maybe I think this is his sixth. And he did a TED Talk that has 4.8 million views. It's called How to Make Diseases Disappear. Rungan lives in Manchester with his wife and two children. And as I mentioned before, I'm honored to call him one of my best friends. I hope you enjoy today's conversation. Rangan, a pleasure to have you back on the podcast. We'd love to jump right in. And I want to pick up on this idea that you and I have talked about a little bit more, which is super

helpful to folks. And it's this idea of a morning routine. Now, I'm going to take a little twist. I want to ask you, how can we think about setting up our morning routine for success for the rest of the day, but specifically with your new book in mind, which I love, by the way, happy mind, happy life. How can we think about our morning routine and a few things that are practical that we can incorporate into our routine that set our rest of the day up for success with happiness specifically in mind? Yeah, Drew, look, morning routines are incredibly popular. Like there's lots of videos, lots of podcasts dedicated to the topic of morning routines. but usually they go through the lens of productivity.

If I have a morning routine, you know, you hear about the business CEO who gets up early, does his morning routine so that he can perform better in his life. Now, I understand that. I'm a fan of morning routines myself, but I think there's additional benefits that are often not spoken about because I genuinely believe a morning routine can be helpful for every single person, no matter what their job is, no matter what their goals are. And specifically through the lens of happiness, one of the biggest problems we have these days is that we don't know our own thoughts. So, you know, we get up, we look at our phone, we see the emails, we have our work coming in, we look at the news.

The news is full of negativity at the moment. Well, it pretty much always is, but certainly at the moment there's a lot of negativity there. And I think our thoughts, our mindset goes down a certain track. we start responding to the world around us. We start thinking the thoughts inside our head are our thoughts. Often they're actually the thoughts of other people. They're the thoughts of our friends, the newscasters, the podcast hosts, whatever it might be. And so for me, a key benefit of having some time to myself each morning is I get perspective on my life.

This is really, really important. I think one of the biggest problems these days is that people are consuming content all the time, even good content. And I say this true as a podcast host myself, right? I'm a fan of people listening to good quality podcasts like yours, hopefully mine. But I would say you need some time where you're not having other people's thoughts and conversations going through your ears. So in my new book, I have a chapter called Take a Day the Holiday, right? And what does that mean? Why would I, you know, ask people to take a daily holiday? Well, one of the key things that people get on holiday is perspective on their life, right? They step outside their life so they can look in

and all the small things that they're worried about, they're getting caught up in. They have this really nice big perspective. Drew, you may know that feeling. You get on a plane, right? As soon as a plane starts taking off, you literally get this 30,000 foot view on your life, which gives you some perspective. Now, I'm saying you don't need to wait for that one week's vacation a year to get that perspective. You can get that perspective every single day. All you have to do is find something each day where you step outside your life. It could be a walk, it could be some journaling, it could be some meditation, something which gives you perspective, right? And so for me, one of the ways in which I do that, and I recommend my patience do it as well, is with a more

routine. So I think they can be helpful for productivity, for reducing stress, for helping us reduce things like anxiety, but they can also contribute massively to our happiness. Yeah. Tell me an example from your own life of where you've seen that a thought, a drive for something that you thought was going to make you happy was actually not your own voice. It was the voice of someone else. I've experimented with every eating approach in the book. I'm talking about raw foodist, vegan, vegetarian, meat eater, you name it, I've tried it. And the truth is, at first, I felt pretty good on all of them until I didn't.

The common denominator for all these diets is the fact that they're all made up of mostly whole foods and free from processed foods, which will do anybody good. But after some time has passed, I still didn't feel like I was thriving. I was dealing with some lingering gut issues, endotoxemia, and acne breakouts. Through a bunch of trial and error, I found that following one specific eating style wasn't the answer for me. And maybe it hasn't been the answer for you either. In my personal opinion, I think technology can be a critical part of the solution in helping us figure out what foods are best suited for our own unique genetic makeup. That's why I was super excited when I heard about Inside Tracker.

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Over the past few years on this podcast, I've had so many experts who emphasize the importance of clean water as a foundation for great health. And it makes total sense because our bodies are mostly made up of water. We all know that from elementary school growing up. So if we don't get enough, they literally can't function the way that they were designed to do. But here is the thing. The water coming out of our tap is really no longer an option. Consumer reports recently finished a nine-month survey of tap water from 100,000. and 20 different locations across the United States.

And what do they find? They found that 118 of them, that's more than 98%, had higher than recommended amounts of arsenic, along with detectable amounts of lead, which, by the way, is considered unsafe at any level, not to mention a harmful chemical compound, P-F-A-S. Google it.

CLC, it's all over our tapwater and the country. And tap water is also full of microbes and toxins and peasant, and pesticides and plastics and prescription medicines and medicine and chlorine and fluoride and medicines. Did I say medicine three times? I definitely did because there's a lot of it in the tap water. Many of these toxins have been shown and been linked with chronic health issues like cancer and even things like birth defects, cardiovascular problems, and even infertility. So when I learned how harmful our tap water can be, I started looking around for the best solution. My friend and business partner, Dr. Mark Hyman, turned me on.

to Aquatru and it's now the primary water filter I use at home and the office. Aquatrue is a countertop based reverse osmosis unit with a four-stage filtration system that removes 20 times more contaminants than the leading best-selling water filters out there and there's no installation. That's the best part about it. Plug in to the outlet and boom, it's ready to go. And it's made with BPA and BPS-free plastics. I've tried several different filters in the past, but Aquatru is by far the easiest to use without any installation. I said it again because it's that important and it produces the best tasting water. And you get a notification light when it's time to change your filter.

One of the biggest challenges with reverse osmosis, and I love general reverse osmosis and recommend it, is you don't get an alert when it's time to change the filter. So if you forget, you're using a toxic filter for a lot longer over time. but that's not a problem with Aquatrue. Right now, by the way, Aquatru is offering my community an amazing deal to get $150 off. Just go to Dr.heimen.com. That's DR.heiman.com slash filter. That's Dr.heimen.com slash filter to take advantage of this deal and to try Aquatru for yourself. I think at the moment, Drew, if I talk about a lot of the things that are going on in my mind at the moment, if we're constantly consuming from the outside and, you know, let's take social

media, I'm not going to bad mouth social media, I'm on it, you're on it, I guess a lot of people consume a lot of content on social media. But we get something called perfectionist presentation on social media where people put their best self forward. And I understand why. But subconsciously, we start to get this idea of what it means to be successful. So I would say something recently in my life, and I would say over the last few years really, has been trying to keep up with the Joneses maybe, trying to think you should do something because you see other people around you doing it. And as I get more and more focus with intentional solitude each day, and these days I probably

start my day 40, 45 minutes with no phone, where I have a lot of routine, which we may have covered on your show before, which we can maybe talk about later. But I find when I do that, I start to tap into how I'm really feeling. And recently, Drew, I'm just coming off three months of promoting the new book in the UK and a national tour. And I'm realizing more and more, I've had this deep realization, particularly in the past few weeks, that actually I crave time with my family, quality time with my family more than I crave success. Now, I know that sounds really obvious, Drew, but many people are chasing and striving every day to achieve more, to buy more, to acquire more, to earn more money, to get a promotion, to go on a nicer holiday,

to buy a better car, whatever it might be. And I understand that. But I think for many of us, we don't understand that there is a massive difference between success and happiness. They're not always the same things. They can be if you're intentional about it. But if you just go along with what people around you are saying and what they're thinking, actually a lot of people end up getting high degrees of success and realizing that they still have that hole in their heart inside. And so for me, the process of taking this perspective each day, having some downtime where

I'm allowed to think for myself. It really helps me, Drew. It's really helped me realize what's important in my life because I think for much of my life, I've chased external validation. I've done things because I thought other people would want me to do them and it made me feel good if other people said nice things. And I've realized more and more over the past years, it's a very dangerous place to be. And the more, the more quiet time I have, really, and this goes beyond the morning routine. You know, morning routine is great. It's a great way to start. But even periodically in the day, you know, can you go for a walk at lunchtime for 20 minutes just to clear your brain? Maybe without your earbuds in for once. You know, I, look, I love listening to podcasts or music when I'm walking

around. But at least twice a week, I will make sure I go for a walk with nothing in my ears to remind myself that I can do it without some external inputs, but also to get in tune with how I feel. So I think the insights, Drew, people will get are quite profound if they allow themselves to do that. And true, let me just say one more thing there, which I think is really important. As a doctor, medical doctor, right, for 21 years now I've been a medical doctor, I remember as a junior doctor, maybe one or two years fresh out of medical school. I was in which, which, working at Edinburgh, Scotland. And I remember one of the senior doctors coming in and saying to me, look, we can figure out who's going to need a high dependency bed or an intensive care bed in a few

hours if we take regular observations, if we do regular heart rates, regular blood pressure, regular oxygen saturations, regular breathing rates. And we watch them, we can start to see patterns and we can predict who's going to get sick. And by predicting we can take a different course of action to prevent them actually needing that intensive care beds. And I remember at the time, Drew, thinking, this is amazing, this is fantastic. We can actually predict what's going to happen

and make a change to stop it from happening. I see a morning routine. It's the same thing, Drew. It's our own early warning system, right? We can get caught up in life, in the rat race, in the thoughts of other people. I'll give you one very practical example. I now realize when my stress load is building drew because I notice in my upper right back, I start to feel a real tension. Now, I think I've had that for years, but I never noticed it because I was too busy.

I didn't have time to myself now because each morning I start the day doing some meditation and breath work, doing some movement, and reading something positive that uplifts me, I can now detect when that's coming on. And for me, it's my early warning sign. It helps me realize Ronkin, if you keep going like this, you're going to end up getting stressed, having a row with someone, feeling overloaded with work, you know, snap, you know, whatever it might be, that's going to happen. The same thing as that patient who might need that intensive care bed. But because I'm aware of it, I can then make a change, go, oh, maybe I need to cancel some work commitments. Maybe I need to go to bed earlier tonight.

Maybe I need to make sure I have a proper lunch break today and don't work through. Whatever it might be, I think it's a really good analogy for people. It becomes your own early warning system. Rangan, one of the first things you open up your new book with is, quote where you share, it's not possible to achieve long-term health or happiness if you hate yourself. And I know this is a funny thing to be asking about, but I actually think a lot of people aren't sure if they like themselves.

Now, would they say, do they hate themselves? Probably because if other people are listening, they would probably temper it down, even if they truly feel that way. But I would say that a lot of people don't like themselves. And there's another category of people that actually might hate themselves and have a constant conflict with them. himself and their thoughts. How is that mentality a huge source of our happiness or a lack,

therefore, of our happiness? I think this goes beyond happiness, true. I think if I reflect on my career as a doctor and I think about who are the patients who have really transformed their life for good, not just gone on the four week plan or made some changes to two or three months and felt good, but then ended up back where they started again. Who are those families, those individuals who have completely transformed themselves, their health, their well-being, and their happiness? And the commonality, Drew, is that somewhere along the way, they really started to like who they were. So what I'm talking about here is self-compassion. You know, how do you see yourself? How do you talk to yourself? How do you treat yourself?

And, you know, I remember writing that a little bit for the book, thinking this is pretty punchy. Is it too far? No, I don't think it is too far. I think many people actually do hate themselves because what do we mean by that, right? If you say to yourself, oh, God, you're such a loser, right? When something happens, you don't do something. This is very common, you know, for much of my life, I would have said that to myself. In fact, I'm happy to share that I think.

for much of my life, I don't think I really liked who I was. Now, I didn't know that consciously, right, but I would exhibit a lot of behaviors that aren't really consistent with someone who really likes themselves and wants to nourish themselves. In fact, a lot of the time, Drew, I know on your show, we talk about, and you talk about healthy lifestyle choices that people can make to improve the way that they feel. Now, what I found, Drew, is that that can be helpful for sure. you know, but it's not the whole story because actually why is it that some people can only do it for a short period of time, but after a while they start to beat themselves up again when they can't continue. It comes down to self-compassion. It comes down to how do you view yourself?

Because the uncomfortable truth, and I honestly say this with compassion, Drew, is that someone who really likes who they are honestly isn't genuinely the type of person in that moment who's going to get smashed on a bottle of wine or, you know, binge eat a load of ice cream. And I say this with compassion because I'm not having a go at people. But I know my own life truth has been certain behaviors that have come from a lack of self-compassion. Now, when we say, oh, you're such a loser, I can't believe you did that. We think that's neutral. It's not neutral. You are creating emotional stress and tension in your body. And that emotional stress and tension will have to be neutralized in some way. Usually it gets neutralized with some lifestyle behaviors that we're

trying to avoid, whether that be alcohol, more caffeine, sugar, ice cream, whatever it might be, right? So I think it's really important to understand that. And then if you look at the research, if you look at Professor Kristen Neff, right, one of the world's leading experts and self-compassion, she has shown, right, she's been researching this for over 20 years. She has shown that when we talk down to ourselves in our mind, you activate the stress hormone cortisol, right? Just wait a minute. We talk a lot about stress and cortisol going up. But when you call yourself a loser, when you call yourself an idiot, right, you are activating your own stress response. Right. So this stuff is not neutral. So I'd ask people who are listening or watching to ask themselves, how do you talk to yourself?

Do you ever call yourself a loser? Do you ever say negative things? things that I can't believe this sort of stuff always happens to me. It would only happen to me or whatever it might be because these things actually at their core often come from a lack of self-worth. Right. We genuinely wouldn't talk to our friends like that. We wouldn't talk to our children like that. But we think it's okay to talk to ourselves like that. And, you know, true, my own life, honestly, right? And I share a lot of this in that, in this particular chapter in the book. I remember at university. I was at Edinburgh University, Drew. And often after you'd been out on a Friday night, Saturday night, partying with your friends, on a Sunday afternoon, me and a couple of

buddies would go to the local pool hall and we'd just unwind playing some pool. Now, I remember Drew, if I was ever losing, I would go into the men's toilets. I would look at myself in the mirror and I'd give myself a talking to. I'd give myself a few slaps on the face. I'm being kind to myself here as I talk about this. I was pretty brutal, really. I'd come back out. 99% at the time I'd probably end up winning. It would motivate me and spurn me into action. But a few times it wouldn't. And you could say, oh, that's a good thing. You know, he wants to win. He's trying to motivate himself. Now what, what I've realized you in the last few years is I look back, I didn't enjoy winning. I just couldn't stand to lose. Losing was too painful for

me. I really felt it said something about who I was as an individual. I know where that comes from. It comes down to how I was brought up. But that isn't self-compassion, right? That is someone who really doesn't like themselves. And even if I did win, right, what would happen? You don't feel good. You're just happy that you haven't lost. So you end up chasing a lot of what I call junk happiness habits, which I talk about in the books. That could be sugar. It could be alcohol. It could be gambling, whatever it might be, they come on the back of people who don't really have that self-compassion for themselves. So I think this is really, really important. We don't speak about it enough in health. And I think self-compassion is the missing link for so many people who are struggling with their health

and their happiness. And, you know, it can take a while to get on top of, but it's not as hard as people think, do. I think the first step is just to be aware that actually, man, yeah, I don't really talk that nicely to myself. I'm probably treating other people much better than I treat myself. So that's why I dedicated a whole chapter to this entire topic. You know, one of the things that you've shared and written about before is that you maybe underestimated or weren't aware of how much some of these thoughts start off in our origin story as kids and the environment that we're brought up in. let's take that example, which I heard you share in a podcast, you know, the pool story of you slapping yourself on the space and, you know, not wanting to lose. And some of that talk that you

were sharing with yourself, like get your shit together, Rangan, like, you know, you got to like pull this thing together and you got to do it and you got to like not lose. What do you think were some of the early factors in your life that our listeners can extrapolate and start to think about themes in their life. So what were some of the early factors in your life that started to build that thought pattern and that framework when it came to specifically like losing in this instance? I don't think these things just happen. They are an adaptation. They're a response to a whole variety of things that happened to us, especially in our childhood. And for me, you know, I grew up to Indian immigrant parents. So parents who grew up in India who moved to the UK in the

1960s and 1970s in search of a better life. Okay. So here's the thing. And, you know, one thing I want to say here is that there's always multiple perspectives in any given situation, right? So let's be really clear what I'm talking about here. I remember Drew, I'm maybe six or seven years old. If I came back from school and I had 19 out of 20 in an exam or a spelling test or whatever we were being examined in, the first thing my parents would say is, why didn't you get 20? What did you get wrong? If I came back with 99% it was again, well, why didn't you get 100? You know, who came top? You know, were your top of the class? All these kind of things are what my parents would say to me. Now at the time, I didn't think anything off it. That was just my reality.

right? That's how I grew up. That was how my parents were. It's certainly been in the last few years when pretty much since my dad died nine and a half years ago, as I've stopped looking for the answers in my life out there and start turning it around, looking inward to find out, you know, why do I act in certain ways in certain situations? Why do I get triggered in certain scenarios? You know, why do I feel this way about certain things? Is this me or is this something I've learned and developed? As I've gone down that path, I realized that there was a problematic other side. So let me say that again. I've realized that there's another perspective to that same situation.

Mum and dad are saying these things to drive me on, to do better, to succeed. But Little Rongan takes on the impression at a very young age that I'm only enough. I'm only worth something. I'm only worthy of love when I've got top marks, when I'm top of the class. Now, as I was writing this book, Drew, I went around to my mum's house and I said, Hey, Mom, can I ask you? Why did you and Dad say this stuff to me when I was little? And she was very master of facts.

She said, look, you know, we knew how capable you are. We wanted you to be the best that you could be. And I totally get that, Drew, because in their heads, they face a lot of discrimination, a lot struggle, they don't want their kids to face the same stuff as they went through. So in my mom and dad's head, the solution is get straight A's, come top of the class, go to a good university, get a great job like being a doctor and your life is sorted. You're not going to have any problems. So from that lens, I understand why they did it. The problem is, is that my entire life until I would say only a few years ago, Drew, my self-worth has been very much tied to external

validation. And that's a very lonely place to be, a very lonely place, because on the outside, it can look as though you have incredible amounts of success and achievements. But inside, you can feel quite empty and you can search to fill that void with all kinds of behavior. So what's really interesting, Drew, for me, and I hope this resonates with your audience. is that a lot of the behaviors that I would have tried to cut back on in the past, like sugar intake, or alcohol, or gambling, I still love gambling in my 20s, right? Love it, probably into my early 30s as well. Never to the point where you would say Rangan's got a gambling problem.

But if I look back now, I don't think my relationship with it was particularly healthy. Let's put it like that. What's really interesting for me, Drew, is that people can try and start. stop these behaviors, using willpower, using New Year in January, whatever they get a new book with a new plan. I understand all that. But often, those things are very short-lived because there's a reason you are engaging in those behaviors. As I have started to heal the heart, as I've started to heal that hole in my heart that I've had for much of my life, using a lot of the tools that I've share in this latest book, I no longer engage in those junk happiness habits, not because I've

tried to stop them, because I have no need for them anymore. I've really feel I've got to that root cause. That's one of the big reasons why I wrote this book. I kind of feel there's a big missing piece in health. It's not just about educating people on the right behaviors, right? It's also understanding why are they engaging in these behaviors in the first place. And I really do feel we're missing a big piece there. That's why I spent so long trying to go here. And also, you know, for me, Drew, a few years ago, I would never have shared this stuff about my own life. You know, the truth is I would have thought as a, you know, well-respected, well-known medical doctor, you know, I can't talk about gambling or this kind of stuff that I was doing.

But actually what I've realized more and more is that, no, no, we've. all got insecurities. We've all got things that we perceive that we failed at. And it's really powerful, I think, when people, especially people who I think we look up to, when they start to share things, I think it makes us all realize, oh, wow, we're all kind of the same. We're all struggling along, trying to do the best that we can. Even that person I watch on YouTube or I listen to their podcast, oh, they're also struggling. They also feel insecure. So for me, it was a big thing to share as much as I've shared in this book. I think it's the most personal book I've written for that reason. There's so much more of me in this book than there was in the

last four. But I think that's one of the reasons why it's resonating with so many people here in the UK. I would agree. And it made me think of a gentleman that both you and I have had on the podcast before, Gabor Mate, and his quote, you know, don't ask why the addiction, ask why the pain. And you were saying that since you as a man, you know, in your own right, like, it's interesting that you even shared that. You know, I'm not sure if you have ever come across this book by David Data. I think it's called The Way of the Spiritual Man. It's a lot of different ideas inside of there.

But one of the core chapters inside of there is that a man must live as if his father was dead, as if his father had died. And the idea behind that specific chapter and why I thought about it is that this feeling that, again, you know, you had a great dad who was just trying to show up for you in the way that only he knew, and he was also a byproduct of his stories, his components, his environments that are there,

and for you to step into your purpose and to do all the things that you needed to do, what is not the physical presence, of your father, but the physical presence of those thoughts that come along with it, that it embodies, whether your dad was doing it on, you know, he's not doing it on purpose, as you acknowledged earlier, your dad and your mom are just trying to be there and support you based on the circumstances of there. But this idea that for you to fully step into your purpose in life, you know, we have to live

life as if our father or whatever equivalent, even if people don't have a father, that sort of person above us, that patriarch above us is not present so our own ideas can come and flourish and be brought to the world. Now, obviously, in the context of this all, you know, me and you have talked about your father and the role that he played in your life and how much you were involved in his care and other things. So it's not to bring anything of this up, you know, with the, you know, just it's a tragedy that somebody would lose their father, especially as in early age, so I want to acknowledge that. I know how much he meant to you, but I did want to bring up that duality of that concept and quote, which is that in a way, you got to really keep alive

everything by living this non-conventional life and seeing you as a friend from the outside, it's more you've kept alive for your father's mission than if you would have just followed that traditional path than maybe that he or other people had set up for you in this world. Yeah, so much coming into my mind as you shared that true. That's a very powerful quote. Really, really powerful. I'll be honest, the first thing that came into my mind was as a father myself. I was thinking about my son and thinking, oh, wow, you know, does he need to wait for me to die in order to step into his purpose? And I know that really isn't the point of the quotes, but it certainly made me feel, you know, what is it? Is there anything I'm doing in his life or try to shape him in any

particular way, which I try not to as much as possible. I really try and step back and allow him to step into who he is. But I think that may be, maybe challenging potentially because I am quite a strong character. I guess I do a lot in public. He sees all that. I do sometimes, I wouldn't say worry, but I do think about it. sometimes, do. I think about what is the impact on him? What's that going to mean? Will he want to just, you know, rebel and go the other way and sort of go, no, I'm, I'm my own man and I'm doing thing, nothing to do with my dad. You know, who knows? So that's me being completely honest. One of the things that came into my mind was, you know, my own son and how that may apply to

him. How it applies to me? Well, quite literally, I did need that to happen. That's the truth. I don't feel I started to live my own life until my dad died. Again, I'm not putting blame on my dad or my mum. I think they've been fantastic parents. I think they brought me and my brother up pretty well to be decent human beings who are caring and compassionate to other people. But I don't think I'd be doing what I'm doing today if my dad was still alive. I really don't.

Now, I think there's one big reason for that, which is anyone who is a carer for someone or who has been a carer knows how all-consuming it is. If my dad was still alive, if my dad was still alive, I'd be busy. You know, I'd be too busy looking after him as I was for many, many years. But I wonder if dad's, you know, I often wonder what would dad think about what I'm doing these days because it's so almost rebelling against what I perceive was quite conservative. You know, dad was following the straight and narrow when he was following his path. But then true, he wasn't, right?

Because he left where he grew up, right? He left his parents, his friends, his family. He left, flew 3,000 miles away to the UK with nothing, doesn't know anyone, and builds a new life in the face of a lot of discreet. discrimination and heartache. And so actually, it's funny, isn't it? Because to me, it can seem quite conservative, but it wasn't. He was like throwing out the rulebook, really, and traveling halfway across the world to find

something new. And so I guess in some ways, maybe I'm doing the same thing. I'm not traveling halfway across the world, but I'm also, I'm not following the path that was kind of laid out for me by my upbringing, by my school. I feel the things that I'm proud of us off in my professional life, the things that that I really enjoy the most are actually the things where I've gone, no, not for me. I'm actually taking a different path here. And, you know, it makes me think about this idea.

And it's funny that you brought that up about your dad is that so many, if there are, you know, people from an immigrant background. And even if you're not from an immigrant background, everybody can relate is that your parents took a risk in some sense, right? At some point in time, your parents took a risk and often because they were trying to provide a better life for you. And nationally, because people who have taken a risk know that it's risky. It could either work out or it could not work out.

And if you're not aware of it, you may try to prevent your kids from taking that risk that they need to do to decide what life they need to step into. So it's not so much that kids don't want to live the life that their parents set up. It's more that kids have the right to choose any life that they want to. And going back to your son, Rungen, and, you know, I've gotten a chance to get to know him a little bit over the years. And even parents who fully show up and do their best, their kids, and I hope to experience this firsthand one day in the future when I'm a dad, their kids will also develop their own complex. It could be even implicit. It could be, you know, it doesn't have to be an explicit expectation.

It could be an implicit expectation. Wow, everybody gives accolades to my father for being different. I need to be different. I need to do something different. I need to put myself out there when maybe that may or may not be his personality. So there's always going to be those implicit drivers that are there that even the best of us. And that's part of the human narrative, right? We all have that as part of our origin story.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just fascinating. It's fascinating. you know, I've been a parent now for 12 years. And of course, the more you learn about this, the more you process your own childhoods and move through it. Of course, you don't want to put any stuff on your kids that they're then going to have to process. But I've realized, I'm not sure that's possible. I just think it is, as you say, the human experience. What do

I do? Like, sometimes I wonder, I think as a parent, you sometimes almost rebel, go to the other extreme of what you had as a kid. So because of what I've shared in terms of my upbringing and how I got my sense of self-worth, one of the key things I do with my own kids is make sure that they know I love them, irrespective of their achievements or what happens at school. We've literally just gone through this with my son's end of school year exams. You know, he's in his high school now. I put zero pressure. I said, look, I don't care. You know, just, just do your best. Doesn't matter to me. You know, I love you for who you are. And you think, am I doing the right thing here? Am I doing the right thing? You know, it's not that I don't care. It's just, number one, I think there's too much pressure being put on kids at too young and age. I really do. I can't see how that's helpful for anyone. But B, I'm conscious that I'm actually trying to,

to correct what I think had a negative impact on me. But of course, by doing that, I may be introducing something else there that I'm not aware of. And, you know, all parents are doing the best that they can based upon what they know. I know that true. I completely get that. It's still hard when it's your own kids because you really don't want to put stuff on them that they can have the process, but I'm pretty sure I have whether I wanted to or not. Well, this goes back to one of the central lessons that's part of the book in these 10 lessons that are there. And I think that part of it is beginning with the end in mind. So when a child starts to hear their father, mother, uncle, anybody, you know, even for the people who don't have children around, but just imagining a

young developing brain starts to hear somebody talk about beginning with the end in mind, an idea of, well, what is your happiness story? You know, you think about all the pressure that's there for kids when it comes to school. Why is so much of that pressure there? Well, it's to do well academically so you can get into the right college or the right university. Okay, then why is that pressure there? Okay, because it's to get the right job. Okay, well, why is that pressure there? Okay, it's to be, you know, getting a level of financial success so you don't have to struggle or to get accolades and be a productive citizen, et cetera, et cetera. But in this first lesson that you start off with in the book, those things can still be there, but it's when,

individuals think that that seeking, that obtaining of that job, that obtaining of that accolade, that obtaining of that achievement, that award, that whatever, they're not always aware that they are consciously not writing their story, that in a way that they're unconsciously attributing the expectations of this thing that society told them would make them happy. So let's use it as an opportunity to tell us a little bit about this idea of writing your happy ending and how it's a powerful driver for people as they're setting up how to design their life intentionally and on purpose. Yeah, I think this comes down to one of the big problems that I see for health and for happiness, Drew, honestly, is this this idea that we

confuse success with happiness. We confuse success. with happiness. We think they're the same thing. We think, as I mentioned earlier, we think when we get that job and earn a certain level of income and go on that nice vacation and whatever it might be, we think we're going to be happy then. But people routinely will tell you, we'll see this in the media, we'll hear this on podcast, story after story of people who actually get there and achieve these things, right? But they still feel discontent. I think Jim Carrey probably put it best, you know, with his famous quotes, you know, I wish everyone could become rich and famous to realize it doesn't make you happy. But the natural tendency is to go, yeah,

okay, it's all right for you, Jim. You got it all so you can now say that. I'll figure that out when I get that, which is often what people think, and I totally understand that. But, Drew, I spoke about six weeks ago, I think, to at this chap on my podcast called Johnny Wilkinson. Johnny Wilkinson is one of the most famous rugby players in the world. And in 2003, he achieved all of his dreams true. So I'll just say a little background story here, but I think it's really fascinating. When he was a little boy, right, he used to enjoy playing rugby. And he wrote down on a piece of paper, when I'm older, I'm going to play for England,

and I'm going to win the World Cup. right? Those were his goals. Those are his dreams who put them down. The problem Johnny had is at the age of 24, he achieved his dreams. And it was a huge problem. When he was 24, he actually achieved his dreams. Now, why is that a problem? Well, here's the problem, right? Johnny Wilkinson ended up playing for England in 2003, in the World Cup final, in the final minute, he scores the winning goal. that actually gives England the World Cup, right? So this is fair retail stuff, Drew. You couldn't write this. You know, you take any kid in England now and say, that's going to be you. They'll say, yeah, I'll take that. But my life would be amazing if that happened to me. But Johnny describes,

as he took that kick, even before it had gone through the goal, he's starting to go down in his mind. The following morning, Drew, he can't get out of bed. He feels depressed. He feels anxious. He thinking, well, what next? What now? You know, I've got everything. What comes after this? And basically, he had maybe 10 years of real struggles with his mental well-being, anxiety, depression. It completely changed his relationship with the game, his relationship with himself. And it's a very, very powerful story because again, on the outside, it's like he's got what every kid or many kids would want when they're kids. And it speaks to your question really, which is, what are we actually chasing and why. Now, really interesting, Johnny said to me at the end of our conversation, what happened

was that I used to play rugby because I enjoyed it. At some point, my relationship with the game changed. It was no longer something I did for enjoyment. It was something I did because I thought it was say something about who I was. Right. So it changes from that internal, intrinsic motivation, because I just love it and I love playing it, to needing it for external validation and the pressure that that put on him was overbearing and it had a huge impact on his health. Now, Drew, this is playing out for many people who are listening to this podcast right now. Their version of that is happening, right? They are in a job. They may quite like their job, but they're pushing hard. They want that promotion. They're working a few extra weekends. They know they don't want to. They know they're

missing out on some time for themselves or time with their children, but it's just a few extra emails, just a few more, just to keep pushing. I know this feeling, Drew, because I have done that, right? And a big realization for me recently has been this idea that actually, I value time with my wife and my kids more than I value success. Like, that has been a big realization for me over the past few months, because I'm in a position where I get offered lots of amazing, incredible things to do. Things that 10 years ago I couldn't even dream about. But you know what? You do enough of these things. You realize it's all just noise. It's all just stories. Oh, it would be great to do this. What it? What did it really? What does it actually take to do that?

How much travel? How much time away? How much preparation? You know, this idea that everything we're saying yes to, we're saying no to something else. And we often don't see that when it's time, right? When it's time at the weekend with our loved ones. You know, we can't see that in the same sort of productivity list as emails. So why I started the book with this chapter, write your own happy ending, is literally to bring a bit of intentionality to people's life and say, okay, I understand. I'm not saying don't chase a better job or chase more money. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying, just be careful. And so there's this very powerful, but very simple exercise in the book, where you basically write your own happy ending. So the first part of that exercise,

And true, I don't know if you're up for giving it a go right now or not. Let's do it. Let's do it for sure. It's very simple. Don't overthink it. But the first part of it is this. Write down three things that you could do this week that would give you an intense feeling of well-being and would really make you happy. Yeah. So I might be cheating a little bit with this Rangan and the only reason I want to set this up. and I still encourage the entire audience to do this, is that I've literally thought about this version of this question since I was, you know, in high school and completely miserable

and not wanting to pursue the traditional path and ending up in college. But let's continue along. Let's continue along. Okay, so three things that bring me, that would make me happy this week. Number one, first and foremost, I am so driven by time with my family. Everything I do in my life is how does that allow for it? excuses to work with my friends and family. A lot of my friends and family work with me, my sisters, my close friends, and I create projects, businesses just as an excuse so we can do something

fun together. So spending time with everybody putting their phones away and sitting down at a meal, like my core family and friends, you know, could be together, could be separate. Like that brings me an immense amount of happiness. So that's number one. Number two, having deep and thoughtful conversations with individuals like yourself that I can luckily in this world hit record and that other people, maybe even if it's one person, could benefit from some sort of insight that comes from something that's shared because I know in my life I've been benefited so much from being able to eavesdrop, whether that's a form of somebody's book or listening to a conversation. My life dramatically changed as a result of that.

Number three is this idea that I really find myself in silence. So even taking five, ten minutes in silence before a next meeting and just sitting in a chair as I'm sitting right now, closing my eyes and going inward, I know that that rejuvenates me. Because like yourself, I'm an extrovert and I love spending time with people. And I can easily, because I love spending time with people, I can let the priorities of what society thinks I should be pursuing. that can, every so often that comes in the forefront and I start chasing something that I actually don't really care about. And silence is a way for me to reset so I can give more love and attention to all the things that end up mattering in my life. So those are three things for me. Yeah. Before we get to the second, Audrey, I just want to mention something there that what you said then about

silence really speaks to what we were talking about at the start of this conversation, the importance of time, silence, intentional solitude, time where you get to experience what you're feeling, you know, what your thoughts are, not the thoughts of your friends, as well intention as they may be. They're still not your thoughts. And that's why I'm so passionate about whether it's a morning routine or something else in your life, but some intentional solitude each day to allow you to tune into what you're really feeling. I actually would say, I'd go.

as far as to say, do I think it's the most important thing we can do for our health. Certainly for me, I would say it's the number one habit for me because the days where I do that, I make better decisions in every aspect of my life. I'm no longer a passive recipient of life. I'm in many ways like an active driver. I'm sort of dictating where am I going to go? What am I going to do? So I just wanted to quickly bounce that back to you because I thought that was really powerful, especially given what we spoke about before. Thank you for that. And I'll add in one more thing. I feel like silence is so important this day and age, especially for people who are creating things, building things, want to make themselves better, which again, that's going to be everybody here that's listening. Silence for me

sets up what's no longer in alignment. And again, we're going to be getting to alignment, contentment, control in a second. But what's no longer in alignment in my life? What do I want less of and what do I want more of? And as a CEO of a few businesses, a big part of my job is ensuring that I get my team to quit, that I get my team to quit on projects early and often. So when a project is not the thing that actually makes the difference for the business or the project is not the thing that's actually going to bring us closer to helping people or doing what we want to do, I have to be the one that says, listen, I know we spend a lot of time on this, but it's not the right direction for us. And I've gotten new input.

And so we have to head in a different direction. So silence for me as a CEO, but also as a human being, is so helpful for stepping into the perspective as we started off this conversation with on what to quit. As Seth Godin says, what to quit and what to stick in my life. So I just wanted to add that in. Yeah, I love that. And it's that same principle that just allows you to have that perspective, whether it's with your work, your team or your personal life.

It's the same principle, I think. So you did the first part of the exercise, write down those three what I call happiness habits. And then the second part of the exercise is called write your happy ending. So imagine now, Drew, you're on your deathbed. You're looking back on your life. What are three things you will want to have done or achieved? You know, it doesn't really matter. But three things you will want at the end of your life looking back.

Yeah, I first and foremost want to say I feel like I won and I recognize that a lot of people don't feel this way. I truly feel that I won the lottery with my parents and my family. And it's not that they were perfect. It's actually that they were willing to lean into self-development. And we've all gone on this journey together. And we've made ourselves and each other, we've helped each other step into happiness by giving each other perspective, growth.

And I just enjoy truly spending time with them. So this idea that I got in. in the amount of quality time that I wanted with my family, which is a lot. I've been on a 10-year mission, as you know, Rungan, to move my entire family to Southern California so that we could all be in proximity. And again, I recognize not everybody wants that, but for me, that was a big driver. So that's number one, number two, that I have a body of work that is recorded, documented, that maybe, who knows, 100 years from now, Rangan, somebody is pulling up this conversation

in some archive in the few. version of YouTube or whatever, you know, in the metaverse. And there's one way that we said one thing that resonates with that individual, this idea that I have access to people like you, I feel so lucky. The fact that you and I have become friends over the years, I feel like a thousand percent lucky. So how can I be so selfish that I keep all of your wisdom that you've given to me just to myself so that I've built a body of work and that it's been documented that is available to people in the future. Because again, one thing I just share,

just to turn this into a small little teachable moment for anybody that wants to step into being a creator, imagine if the people that inspired your life never wrote that book in the first place. They never took that leap in the first place. They never put themselves out there in that first place. How much less richer would your life be? What aha moment that you had would have never happened

or maybe taking years of suffering to eventually get to? So that is another one. And the last one, actually, because I care about my relationship to call for lack of a better terms, like my own awareness, spirituality, the idea that I took enough time in silence and away from the noise of all to make sure that ultimately that I'm here doing what I want to do on this planet and not letting the priorities of other people, including people that I love, and it's often the people that you love, not letting their priorities completely hijacked the reason that I'm deciding to be here. So that would look like taking, you know, trips or days or even an

afternoon where I'm just text to everybody and say, hey, I'm going on a long walk. My phone is going to be off for a little while. And everybody being like, okay, great, I'm excited to see, you know, if you have any insights or ideas, so you want to share with us at the end of it. So those are three things, Rangan, just as an extrapolation on the first three things that I shared. Yeah, Drew, I mean, first of all, it doesn't surprise me that you are someone who is completely tuned in here and knows what's truly important in life, knows themselves really well. Just to finish off on this exercise for a moment, what is powerful about it? I mean, you've, you mentioned, you know, the first three, the second three, and then really

if people write them on two separate pieces of paper, they bring them close together and go, are these two things aligned? If I do these three weekly happiness habits, if I do this week and week out, will I get that happy ending that I've just written down that I want? Now, I look at yours Drew and if you each week with a high degree of consistency can spend quality time with your family, you know, can, you know, it's amazing. They are so aligned. It's untrue, Drew. Like they're literally- I said, Rungan, just in fairness to my audience, I'm cheating a little bit because I think about this stuff all the time, but, you know, I think you were going somewhere. Oh, it's going to go. Like, you, you have obviously thought about this. For someone who's listening

or watching who wants to just pause and do that, and I really would encourage you to do that. A lot of the time, Drew, we hear this stuff on podcast. We, we, you know, we're on a walk. We hear this inspirational stuff, but we don't go and actually do the exercise. You know, Drew, I realized this recently when I was on a national tour around the UK, I was on a national tour around the UK talking about my book. And at one event, I actually said, hey, guys, so you've heard me talk about values. You've heard values coming up in my podcast or other people's podcasts. How many of you have actually taken a moment to write down what your values are? And honestly, it was about 20, 25% of the put the hand up. The rest of them had heard the ideas, but they hadn't taken that next step

to write them down. And what I learned from that, and I think, again, this I hope is a teach a moment for people is if any part of that exercise made you think or made you think, wow, I wonder what my answers would be. Do the exercise. It doesn't take you long. It takes minutes to do. It's not about getting it right or wrong. You can do it again in a few days. You may have a different answer then, but just this process, excuse me, just this process of actually thinking about these things and writing them down brings such a high degree of intentionality to your life. It doesn't mean you can suddenly change everything. Doesn't mean you can walk out of a job that you no longer like. No, but it just helps shape your mindset a little bit go, oh wow, you know, like many people

will say at the end of my life, I want to have spent lots of time with my friends and family. great. And then they look at their week to week life and go, yeah, I say family is important to me, but I'm so busy working and traveling and doing my emails or whatever that I'm never actually spending quality time with my partner or my kids or my friends, whatever it might be. And again, Drew, why am I so passionate about this? Because I've fallen into this trap myself, right? I know what that feels like. And I don't actually think, Drew, it's as hard to get out of as many people think. So it's just a very simple exercise to bring intentionality to our lives. For what it's worth through, I've done this many times now as well.

And for me, I'm pretty clear. You know, at the end of my life, for me, it's about friends and family. Number one, second thing would be, you know, have I done something that has had a meaningful impacts on improving the lives of other people? And point three would be, you know, have I had time to engage in my own pursuits and passions? So on a weekly basis, that means for me and I have this written down on my fridge, right, five undistracted meals with my wife and kids each week, right? That's just my number.

I know if I can do that week and week out, then at the end of my life, I'm going to have ticked that box off about spending time with my friends and family. Number two, if I record, very much like you, if I record an episode of my podcast each week and publish it, which I do, I know at the end of my life, I can look back and go, yes, I've contributed to the well-being of other people. And three, you know, if I've had time each week to either go for a run or do some reading of a spiritual book or, you know, engage in a passion like playing snooker or something, I know at the end of my life, I say, yeah, I've had time to engage in my passions. And it's, I can't do it every week, Drew. It's not about, you know, speaking about self-compassion.

This is not an exercise to use as a way of beating yourself up. I've done the exercise, oh man, you're such a loser. You didn't do it this week. You say your family and friends are important, but you didn't spend time with them. No, not at all. That's not the approach. It's simply about shining a light on a lot of things that are often hidden. They're inside us. We think we know what's important, but until we specify them and write them down, we don't. So I've been using this exercise with many of my patients. And, you know, they find it transformative, just a very simple shift in their thinking. Now, true, one thing I did want to say, I don't know if your audience know this about you or not, but for me, you're someone who has had such a profound impact on my life.

You know, I'm not even sure if I would have a podcast today if it wasn't for you. I remember, you know, once we went out for an early breakfast in L.A. and you almost put this thought in my heads that actually running podcasting is the perfect medium for you. This is years before I had a podcast. It just, you dropped in something. And beyond that, I just want to say something that I'm not sure, as I say, how much your audience know and I think it's of interest. I've never met anyone who knows as much as you do at some of the same. such a young age. I've always been so impressed by the wisdom and knowledge that you have. And I thought of it because what you said when you were talking about your family, how you were so lucky with the

parents you got and you all went on this self-development journey together. That's the thing I found profound about you, which is why even though you're younger than me, I turn to you for help, guidance and wisdom all the time because I think you have done years and years a personal self-growth, self-reflection. So I feel you've got such a grounded insight in terms of what is important in life, what makes people happy, what can send people off track, that I think it's such a joy to spend time with you and learn from you. And yeah, I just wanted to publicly acknowledge you. You've had a huge impact on my life and it's been pretty incredible. Well, thank you so much, brother. The feelings are super mutual and we're so lucky in this day and age of the

internet and all these things like would we have met you know a hundred years ago probably not we live on different continents other stuff whatever um thank you for that but i really take that in and uh that means a lot to me and you know i know also for from our discussions and the the mutual wisdom that we've shared there's also this understanding that while there might be these three things that you and i shared very similar things spending time with our family there there is a time especially when one wants to create and put really beautiful projects out in the world, that there's sacrifice or that we seek out friction. And I can think of you going to medical school, right? Like real talk, you've probably heard many people tell you that if you were not the medical doctor that you are and the degree

and behind your name, even though so much of what you share is simple, practical stuff, it's not medicine and yet it's the deepest medicine that people need. But people listen to you even more so because the world that we're in and that's a beautiful thing, they listen to you more so because you are a doctor. And that became and that came from sacrifice, right? Even though I know you were a good student and straight A's and school was pretty easy for you, you had to sacrifice. And like that, every year that you publish a book,

you go into kind of like hibernation mode. You're not doing a lot. You're not hanging out with people. When I was building my first company and I dropped out of school, I literally told my family, like, I'm just not going to see you as much for the next couple years because I need to do this because in my vision, this unlocks this temporary sacrifice that I have to do, which is going to feel intense because I'm not going to see you as much, but the time we have

will still be meaningful. It unlocks so many other foundational things that allow us as a family to achieve our goals and dreams together. So I'd love to hear that perspective from your life, this idea that while we're driven by this happy ending, we also have this contrast that there are. periods of time where to create, even maybe it could be financial abundance for our life, it could be creating opportunities, it could be pursuing something, it could be creating a gift or something in the world, we have to sacrifice. And that might mean letting a few things drop off

from our happy ending for a temporary period of time. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, I think the key word that comes up for me, true, is intentionality, right? That's the key here. There's nothing wrong we're doing that now and again, right? There's something wrong with doing that for your entire life if that's the life you've chosen and you think that's the life you're going to be happy with. But a lot of us are, we fall into traps. We just end up on this treadmill and we don't realize why we're doing it or how long we're going to be doing it for. So with respect to the exercise we've just been through, like let's take my own thing about these five undistracted meals I want with my wife and kids each week. It's just a number that works for me, helps guide me in my week.

Okay, so I've just come off a national book tool, right? I don't live in London. I've been in London doing lots of media. There's been all kinds of stuff I've been doing to help get the word of this book out. Now, I'm very proud of this book. I think it's going to be helping hundreds of thousands of people all around the world. I think it's the best book that I've written to date. So if I want to get that message out there, I've got to do some of these things. But I'm doing that now with an intentionality that I didn't have even two or three years ago. For me, I'm like, okay, cool. So for these two or three months, I'm going to be working a bit harder than maybe would be

optimal. I'm going to be doing interviews, be on the road, staying in hotels, being away from my wife and the kids for a period of time. but I'm aware of it. And when I'm back, I almost, you know, I go the other way. I'm careful to be really, really present with my children and my wife when I'm back at weekends. And, you know, for me, this coming summer, I'm completely resetting.

I'm going to stop the podcast for six weeks. We're just switching off, completely switching off present time with my family. So which also, if I could interrupt, does that also look like you guys talking about it openly as a family saying, hey, look, daddy's going to be super busy. coming up, he's not going to be around as much, but it's like everybody understands. Like, is there a conversation inside the family? Yeah, there is these days. Look, I say my kids help me write these books, right?

I discuss these concepts with the kids over breakfast. Like, all the time I'm saying to them, hey, guys, what do you think about this? And I cannot tell you, Drew. Like, when you look at the world through kids eyes, sometimes I go, yeah, Daddy, but I don't know, did you think about it like this? I thought, no. Actually, that's a really good idea, guys. thank you. I'm going to have that for the book. Thank you. We talk about these things all the time.

So that naturally leads to me saying stuff like, yeah, look, that is going to be in London all week now. I won't see it until Friday evening, but this is the reason why. And I think, I think, true, the old wronger, the older version of me would have actually felt quite guilty about leaving them. And I wouldn't want to bring it up because it would be too painful for me to actually bring this up and have that conversation, whereas now I've realized that's just noise in my own head. That's my own guilt. It's not their fault. Like, why can't I just be transparent with them? And these days, I actually say, yeah, I've got to do this because of A, B, and C. Oh, let's see the impacts on them in the future, but I think they understand. You know,

doesn't mean I won't miss them and they won't miss me, but at least they understand why I've gone and why I feel it's important. And I think, true, another point here is often when we do the these things, or let's say we want to explain them to our kids, we try and sugarcoat the truth a little bit, or, you know, we try and make excuses. But I've learned through the more transparent and honest I can be with my kids, the better, the better for me, the better for them. There's just much more authenticity. Kids pick up stuff. They know when the truth is being hidden from them a little bit. They can pick up on that energy. I really, really. strongly believe that and I've seen that. And I would say again, writing this book has helped me

be a better parent. I've realized actually the more transparent and authentic I could be with my kids, the better for them and the better for me. Rogen, I want to come back to this idea of seeking out friction and what that looks like when we apply that in an intentional way in our life. So set that conversation up and take us through why this is lesson number five in the book. Well, do this, yes, it's lesson number five in the book, but it's also my very favorite lesson. It's a thing really that I think I practice every day and it's had the biggest impacts on my happiness, but also my health. And I think that's really important. Also my health, probably more than anything else in this book. And I think it's something that every single person can

apply. Now, if we just take a step back for a minute, Drew, a lot of us think that we will be happy, we'll be good, we'll be content when the world around us is a certain way, when people behave in a certain way. Like so many people think that, yeah, no, I would be happy, I would be content once my partner or my colleague or whoever starts behaving in a certain way, when they treat me better. And what I've realized more and more is that actually, if we're waiting for the world around us and people around us to act in a certain way in order for us to be happy, we could be waiting a really long time. That is something I used to do, Drew. I used to think, oh, if they only did this, or they only did that. And I've realized, wait a minute, you can't control

how other people act. You can't control what other people say. If you need everyone around you to behave and act in a certain way, in order for you to feel happy and content, I thought, Rogan, you're going to be waiting a long, long time. So this chapter really is about what I call social friction, right? Everyone has social friction in their lives, Drew. You don't have to look far for social friction. What is social friction? This is when someone or something in your social world starts to bother you. It could be an email from your boss that you receive, that your initial response says, man, I can't believe I received an email like that. I can't believe my boss spoke to me like that. Do they not know? I worked last weekend. I've been in this company for four years.

Whatever narrative we start playing in our minds, right, in response to that email, is it a disempowering narrative or an empowering one? It could be, you know, you're driving and someone cutting you up on the roads and you then going down this pattern of stupid guy shouldn't be having a driving license, can't believe they did that, whatever it might be, right, we don't have to look far for a little bits of social friction. It could be someone, you know, you're trying to get a parking spot in a car park and someone hops into your space. And what goes on in your head when that happens? Now, what I've realized when these things happen, when you find yourself getting triggered, when something happens in your social world that you don't like, you are being given one of the

best opportunities you will ever be given. You are being given an opportunity to learn something and reframe that situation in a way that empowers you. Because what we don't realize is when we start going with those disempowering words and ideas, we are creating emotional stress in our body. Just think about that scenario, right? That person who receives a work email at 3pm from their boss that they don't like and they start going down this negative mindset, right? The emotional stress that's created, A, it doesn't make your work particularly good

or productive. But what you then need to do, either at the end of work or whilst you're at work, you need to go to the vending machine and get a bit of sugar. You might need a couple of extra beers or glasses of wine after work, something to deal with that stress. And truly, it's a wider point here. This is one of the key reasons I wrote this book is because I would see patients of mine who were doing all the right things. They were eating whole foods. They were moving their body regularly. They were going to sleep early and on time. And I was thinking, okay, lifestyle looks great. Yet they were allowing the actions of other people to overly affect them. They were getting really frustrated. They thought, no, no, my diet's great, my sleep's God. I was thinking, wait a minute, it doesn't matter.

Those things are all good. But we're creating all this internal emotional stress each day by the way we interact with the world. And I've realized that actually, in all these scenarios, I've got a few helpful, hopefully helpful ideas in this chat on how people can start to reframe that. So one idea I have in the book is this idea that what story can you write in your head to make that person a hero? Right. Now, how could, you know, what does that mean? How can you make that person a hero? Well, you can, you know, for that email from your boss, it could be, okay, well, maybe my boss is under pressure from his or her boss. Maybe my boss is having relationship problems at the moment and he or she is taken out on me. Maybe my boss has a young child who was up all night with earache and they're being a bit short

on their email with me. It doesn't really matter. Like the truth actually doesn't matter, Drew, I realize for your happiness. This for many people might be quite a controversial statement. I can explain what I mean by that. But for your happiness, for your internal well-being, for your contentedness, the truth usually doesn't really matter. It's the story you put onto it that determines the impact it's going to have on your life. And, you know, one way I try to describe it. In many situations, you don't even know what the truth is or you may not find out the truth. Exactly. Number one, you don't know the truth. And number two, you know, we create these mental narratives every day that put us in a kind of mental jail where we think things are going on that are not going on. We create

this internal stress for ourselves. And when I say truth and it not being important for happiness, that the best example, the best way I can describe it true is to ask people to think about a romantic relationship, right? And to think about, I don't know, a boyfriend with their partner or husband and wife or two same-sex partners, whatever. It doesn't really matter, right? For anyone who's listening, who's not been in this scenario before, imagine what it might be like when you have conflict with your partner. Now, I'm pretty sure most people will know what that feels like. If you don't try and imagine what it feels like, but when you have a disagreement with your partner, okay, what actually happens? Well, I think this is a great way to look at this,

right? Imagine a husband and a wife having a row, Drew. What really happened? Well, it depends who you ask, doesn't it? Because if you ask one party what happens, they will give you one report of what just happened. Walk around to the other side of the table, ask the other partner what happened, they may well give you a completely different report off the same situation. Right. So what does that teach us? It teaches us that every situation has multiple perspectives, right? This was shown out to be true in another way, Drew. In the UK, psychologists took these soccer fans, right? And, And two sets of soccer fans, they supported two different teams, and they were shown the same incident from a game. And they were asked what happened. They both reported seeing completely

different things. Same scenario, right, but two different perspectives. So what does this teach us? It teaches us that every single scenario has multiple perspectives. And what I'm trying to help people understand in this chapter is that you can actually train your to take the happiness perspective in every single situation. It doesn't mean it's always easy, but it is a skill that you can practice. I started doing this maybe four or five years ago, Drew. And literally, over the years of practicing, I'm now got to the situation where most of the time, not always, I'm not a saint, most of the time, I find in the moment I can reframe the situation, choose what I call that happiness perspective.

And it changes everything. Because if you think about you're at a fork in the roads, right? The story you put on something will determine what happens for the rest of that day. You can create this disempowering narrative where you then phone your friends and you gossip and you moan. You need more alcohol, more sugar, whatever. Then you realize why can't you get healthy? You start beating yourself up by another book. Or at that same fork in the road,

you can train yourself to take a different trajectory, which means you feel calm, you feel content, you make better decisions, you don't need as many junk happiness habits to soothe your emotional discomfort. It sounds quite simple. It really can be that simple. And it's something I'm so, so passionate about. I'm passionate about it, Drew, because I've lived in that mental turmoil for much of my life where I have created these disempowering narratives in my mind. I think my parents said that. I'm pretty sure I learned to do that from my parents, right? And now I've unlearned it and I've developed the skill where I don't have to do that.

You know, it's really powerful, Drew. I'll add in one more thing if I could. The other thing that that space gives you when you prime yourself to not be reactionary with that immediate sort of lizard brain story, the story from the amygdala of how people are after you and everybody's trying to fight you and get you in the world. is against you, which a lot of people have that narrative in a subtle way, that when that becomes your default way of reacting, you also don't grow as much because you can't see how maybe, even in a small way, you could have contributed to the situation.

When our focuses on other people and what they've done to us, we don't get to ask this very powerful question that I've referred to a few times on social media from. this executive coach in Silicon Valley, his name is Jerry Corona. And he said, how have I, one of the most powerful questions that somebody can ask himself is,

how have I been complicit? Doesn't mean that you're the cause. How have I been complicit in creating the things in my life that I say I don't want? And so many times, we are a part of that a little bit. Right?

It doesn't mean that that we were cause, but we are a little bit of a part of the story. And when we react so quickly to other people and the negative story that we attach to them, we miss our own opportunity for growth. I mean, it's so powerful that idea. You know, what have we done to contribute to that? Really, really powerful. And I think the key thing there for me is, if you are always reacting rather than actively choosing your response, then you can't actually. think clearly, you're not making good decisions, right? So another way for people to maybe think about this is think of your brain in two parts. And this is an oversimplification, but I think it

serves to help illustrate this point. You have your kind of, you know, limbic, emotional brain at the back, which is all led by fear and your feelings and your emotions. And then you have at the fronts, the prefrontal cortex where we make logical, rational decisions. Now, both parts of the brain there are vying for top spot. And what you really want most of the time is that prefrontal cortex dampening down those impulses from your emotional brain. So you can make sound decisions. You can take all the information, absorb it all, you know, and go, yeah, okay, now I want to do this. This is the decision I want to make here. When you get triggered, when you take that disempowering narrative, I can't believe they did that. They should know better. Whatever version of that plays out

on your head, you very quickly start to switch off the prefrontal cortex. You are no longer making good logical rational decisions. You are being led by fear and your emotional brain. That's what leads to that email being sent that you regret an hour later. You think, man, I shouldn't have sent that email. I should have calmed down first or whatever version of that might be. And so this is not just about your health. This is about better decision making in every components of your life. As you just mentioned, Drew, it helps you understand, oh, actually, you know what? I may be sent an email on Monday, which might have got my boss's backup. Maybe actually I contributed a little bit here. And what we're talking about here is real accountability, right? Real responsibility saying, actually, I'm in

charge of my emotions and my actions. Once I become conscious of them, most of the time, though, we're not conscious of them. We are unconsciously acting and responding, sorry, and reacting in life. And I think that's really powerful because often when you talk to people about reframing every situation, they go, yeah, but does that mean I have to put it with bad behavior? No, not at all. Maybe your boss sent you an email actually that was out of line. But I'm saying that if you train yourself to make them a hero in that moment, think about, you know, with compassion, how might you approach this scenario? What might be going on in their life to lead to that? You're going to keep your prefrontal cortex online, you're much better able than to deal with that.

So the following morning, you may be able to send a calm email or a phone call to say, hey, look, I wonder if we could have a meeting. There's a few things on my mind. And actually very calmly articulates some of your concerns about your working relationship instead of reacting and shooting from the hip. So another idea that might be helpful here, Drew, is one that you know very well because I think you spoke to Peter Cron about this many years ago on your podcast. It's an idea that I'd been thinking about for many years. I heard it when you and Peter spoke on your show. I spoke to Peter about it when he came on my show. This whole idea that if you were that other person, you'd be acting in exactly the same way. It is such a

transformative way to look at the world because it literally means in every single situation, you start to lead with compassion. If I was that person, I'd be acting exactly the same way. What that really means, Drew, at its heart, or certainly the way I interpret that and think about it, is if I was that person with their childhood, with their upbringing, with the bullying they had as a child, with the bullying they had at school,

with the toxic first boss they had at 17, if I had had their life, I would almost certainly, I would absolutely 100% be acting in exactly the same way as them. And I found that whenever someone's really bothering you or you're getting triggered by something, if you go straight to that, it just takes the sting out of it straight away.

It doesn't make it right, but it just means, man, I get it. If I were there, I'd be thinking exactly the same. And truly, you know, another conversation I had on my podcast, which I think really brought that home to me was when I spoke to this chap called John McAvoy, Now, John McAvoy 10 years ago was one of the most wanted men in the UK. He grew up in a family of armed robbers.

And 10 years ago, he was locked up in the highest security prison in Europe in Belmarsh with the 7-7 bombers. Right. He was the sort of person who you would say, lock him up, throw away the key. Now, I've had him on my show three times. He's one of the nicest people I've ever met. I would happily leave him in my house looking after my kids while I go out happily, right? Because what I learned from my first conversation with him where he went through his entire life story, at the end of that conversation, I remember saying to my wife, I said, hey, Vid, listen,

if I had John's upbringing, I'm pretty sure I'd be in jail right now serving two life sentences. Like I was sure, Drew, if I was him, I would have the same life as him. And literally for him, he in one moment in prison when he saw his best friend get shots in an armed, in a police chase in Holland, he saw it from his prison cell. He realized his whole life had been based on this fictional story that he and his family had created, that it's a system against us. We've got to fight the system. He literally woke up the next day with a new story.

He chose a new story on his life. You know, within a few years, he's free. He's now inspiring kids. underprivileged kids, underprivileged people all over the world to get active through the power of sports to change their lives. It really is an incredible transformation. There's two big lessons there. Number one, if I was that person, I'd be behaving in exactly the same way. Number two, another big story there is that he chose a different story one night. He literally in that moment. Now, Drew, I want every single person who's listening or watching right now just to think about that for a minute.

what story are you telling yourself about your life? What mental traps have you put in place in your mind that keep you locked in where you are? What story have you told yourself about your health? That this is the way it is, that your mom and dad were this way. That's the reason you are this way. What I want to just hopefully drop in a seed of inspiration for you is just this idea that could I tell myself a different story? What if I woke up tomorrow and decided I was going to follow a different trajectory on my life like John McAvoy did, right? Because sometimes, Drew, as you well know, people come to our shows because they're stuck, they're struggling in life. They can't get out of a rut. They feel as though, you know, they haven't got motivation. They can't get going.

And even just that thought where I can choose a different story here, I can start to seek out friction and use every bit of friction as an opportunity to learn about myself to reframe situations. You will start to go through life. You'll be walking down the same streets, but you'll be seeing them completely differently. Your experience of life will be completely different when you start adopting this lens of compassion and trying to make the other person a hero. And to you, another idea I've been thinking about over the last few weeks, which I think I'm going to write about in my next book, is this idea that actually we see the world through,

the state of our nervous system. So if our nervous system is wired and reactionary and we think the world's against us and we get triggered by lots of different things, right? We start to change the way we see the world. Our focus comes in. We've become, you know, we can't take that big perspective. We think everyone is against us. We have no path out. And this very simple exercise, right, which is completely free to do, Drew, right? I want to emphasize that. for people. You know, in a world of wellness, where a lot of people say it's too expensive, it's only for the middle classes or whatever. I'm like, wait a minute, this exercise, and frankly, every exercise in my new book and that we've spoken about so far, Drew, are all completely

free, right? They don't cost any money at all. We've spoken about a morning routine, right? We've spoken about self-compassion. We've just spoken about seeking out friction and rewriting a different story, choosing a happiness perspective in every situation. It's free. You just need a few minutes each day, maybe in the evening. Maybe you can't do it in the moment. Maybe you've reacted to something. And then in the evening after dinner, you're at home, you think, oh man, you know, I reacted today. I sent an email. I shouldn't have sent. Don't beat yourself up. Let's not go down the self-hatred roots. Let's be kind to ourselves and go, I was doing the best I could in that situation. But then maybe in a journal or maybe in your mind go, okay, how might I have

reframe that situation. How might I've taken a different approach? And by doing this regularly, it's just like running a marathon, right? You're not going to suddenly hear a marathon run it on a podcast, talk about how life-changing it was for them, and then go, oh, right, brilliant, tomorrow I'm going to run a marathon. No, you understand that if you want to do that, you're going to have to take it slow, you're going to have to get a training plan and start small. I'm saying this is exactly the same thing. if that did something to you, if you heard that and go, yeah, you know what, I take a disempowering narrative in my life. I think the world's against me. My challenge you is say, okay, fine, now that you're aware of that, can you do this? Every evening, if you can or once a week,

take one scenario from your life and find a way to reframe it. I guarantee if you start doing this, you will transform the way you feel about the world. transform your happiness and you'll transform your physical health. I love the analogy about the nervous system because for a lot of people, unknowingly, their life is so stimulating because, again, they're doing the best of they can, but they haven't designed it in an intentional way. And because it's so stimulating, their nervous system always feels like it's under assault from the modern world. You know, if you contrast that to anybody who's taking a long walk in nature, you see how incredibly peaceful nature is.

Like, incredibly peaceful, incredibly peaceful, how calm it is. You cannot help but to feel calm when you are just taking a walk in nature and hearing the sounds and other stuff. That's not to romanticize, you know, all aspects of nature. You know, there's struggle and we had to hunt and kill our food and we had to, you know, deal with weather, all those things. generally speaking, the large body of nature is very calm. But for most people in their life, their life doesn't always feel calm and they don't even know necessarily what's contributing to it. So that's why I want to bring up your next lesson here, kind of jumping around a little bit. And that's this idea of eliminating choice. Talk to us a little bit about that and how

eliminating choice can be one of the things that we can unlock in our life to help actually put a buffer between us and the constant noise of the world. Yeah, eliminating choice is again, something that can get people's backs up initially until you explain this further, right? I think we live in this world where everything can get people's, can get people upset for some reason. Yeah, exactly. And that kind of speaks to what we've just been saying. If anything in life, whether what I just said or something you hear on social media or anywhere makes you upset like that, again, that's friction, right? That's exactly what we're talking about or what we've just been talking about. That's a moment where you can learn something. Why is that thing

bothering me? Why is what he just said or that person just posted? Why is that triggering me to feel this way? Because you're literally getting the most powerful lessons, powerful opportunities to learn that you're going to get. And actually, if you weren't presented with that opportunity, you wouldn't have had an opportunity to learn. So I genuinely, just to finish off, the last point, find that these social triggers, actually, they're almost like,

they allow you to almost take a masterclass in your own inner world. Like you are literally being presented, the opportunity to become a black belt. You're like, ah, I got triggered there. Brilliant. Why did I get triggered? Oh, man, that's an insecurity I've got about my, It's nothing to do with that post. Okay, great. I can work on that. You literally become a black belt

in your own life. If you look at those things as opportunities for growth rather than things to get annoyed at or to suppress with alcohol or abuse or whatever. So yeah, just wanted to finish off that point because I, just because you brought it up, just a couple more things on that note. And just like a black belt sometimes would have or just like you need to learn sometimes in martial arts and I'm not a practitioner of martial arts, but just looking from a distance, you know, it's primarily about defense and not putting yourself in that situation first, especially if you look at jujitsu, right? That's some of the first principles of jujitsu is that how do you avoid the conflict in the first place by de-escalating? But every so often, when you get attacked, just like in martial

arts, sometimes you have to strike back, which is really about putting boundaries, right? There was this great quote from a fellow individual from the UK that I think I mentioned to you recently. I connected with her name is Africa Brooke. And I'm just pulling up the quote that she posted the other day. She said, you know, the joyless are always looking for more people to recruit. And then in caps, do not sign up. And why I loved this quote, again, the joyless are always looking for people to recruit. Do not sign up in all caps is that.

You can keep the duality of the perspective. Number one, first and foremost, if you prime your nervous system as you've been sharing with all these tips that are inside of the book, you know, please everybody pick up a copy. It's available in the U.S. now. When you deploy and you prime your nervous system, you can immediately start to give the story and sort of place the story of the best case situation. And if it's something that you've known, if it's something that you've known for a while where you do know a little bit more of their story,

you can assume that if you were in that same circumstance that they were in, you may be acting very similar. Same parenting, same upbringing, same other aspects. And then every so often, there are people in this world that are dealing with so much pain that they don't know how they can't in this moment be step into maybe kindness. Right. They can't step into these things. Again, I think that's a small percentage of the population, but there are individuals like that. and it's okay to both have compassion and also to have fierce boundaries and say like, this is not okay.

I'm going to love you from a distance, right? Hey, listen, I understand you may be hurting right now and I think you're trying to make me the problem. I feel for you, but also, you know, back off, right? Like give me some distance or whatever it might be. Rangan, there has been a situation that's been going on in my life. It's an unfortunate situation, but that there is an individual that actually, was a close friend at one point in time who struggled with a really tough mental health episode

at the middle of COVID. And that might have been further exasperated into what would go from light level mental health to almost full-blown schizophrenia that could have some elements relating to substance abuse that are there. And in that situation, and some very, you know, scary times where we had to get the police, involved and other stuff and my wife being afraid and my sisters being, you know, afraid of the situation. There was this internal duality that I had where I had compassion for who this individual was. And because I had so much compassion for them, I also felt that for their own safety

and my family's safety, I need to be very strong in this moment, but not strong out of spite to destroy them, to take them down, but strong out of the sense of how do we make sure this individual does not only hurt us, but not hurt themselves in this situation. And so I think sometimes when people hear these stories, they think, okay, so what? The whole situation is just be compassionate to everybody that's out there. And then, you know, you're just giving them the benefit of the doubt and then you move on. No, every so often, you do need to put up really strong brown trees. but I would argue that it's easier to do when you're not triggered because you can act in a clear-headed

and mindful way. Yeah, you've just nailed it true. First of all, I'm sorry for this situation that you and your family are having to go through that does sound incredibly challenging and difficult. But I think the point you made that really, I just want to reiterate, it's a two-part process. It's like what I said before about making better decisions. if you lead with compassion, if you see them in their best light, or at least have a deep understanding of why that person is behaving in the way that they are,

you take the emotional sting out of it. You are less triggered. Your nervous system is less tuned up where everything becomes sharp focused. You're looking for problems. No, you can take that bigger picture perspective. Go, yeah, I have compassion, as you say, but there's a second part here, which is I'm going to put good boundaries in. now. I'm going to appropriately deal with this scenario or I mentioned before the email from the

boss, right? Same scenario. Have compassion for the way they sent that email. What might be going on in their life and the inner turmoil in their world. But then if you're not getting triggered, and again, the keep on here is you can train yourself to not get triggered, right? You may sound It takes practice. It's like going to the gym. You can get better at this, right? You really can. then the second part is you can then deal with that toxic situation with your boss much better instead of going in totally triggered being all emotional nothing good ever comes out of that being calmer so i think there's a lot of analogy there which which works and just shows why this is so so important so yeah great great point um to make yeah 100% well we were chatting about

eliminating choice eliminate choice give us give us a setup and then talk about your own life like Like, how are practical ways that you've eliminated choice that people can use as inspiration? But first, help us understand why it's important in the first place. Yeah, I started this chat to telling a story that I think many people may relate to. Like, on a Saturday night, once my kids are in bed, usually, not usually, but often, my wife and I will try and put on Netflix and watch something to chill out and unwind. and more often than not, I can't remember the last time we actually agreed on something.

Usually it's around 8pm, we'll put on Netflix, we'll both debate what we're going to watch, we go through this long list. Honestly, usually 45 minutes later we still haven't chosen. And, you know, our moods are slightly off. We're a bit upset with each other, and we decide to forget watching something together and we watch something separately on our laptops

or do something separate. that used to happen. It doesn't happen anymore. That used to happen a lot. Why would that happen? That's because Netflix has so much choice. And I don't think the algorithm is particularly good or has been particularly good in the past that you are literally drowning in choice, right? And we don't realize that many of us are drowning in choice in every single aspects of our life. Studies say that actually most humans in the West are making over 35,000 choices a day. Maybe we're making, make a about 226 choices a day on food, just on food, right, what we're going to eat, what are we not going to eat? And actually, why this is so important to me as a medical doctor, and I've

spoken to you before, Drew, when my book The Stress Solution came out about this concept I have called micro-stress doses, how we've all got a personal stress threshold. And actually, let's say we wake up feeling completely calm and chilled, which I know isn't always the way for everyone, but let's assume we do. Then what often happens in the day is we accumulate lots of what I call micro-stress doses. These are little hits of stress that in isolation we can deal with, but bit by bit they accumulate and get us closer and closer to our personal stress threshold. When we get there, that's when things start to go wrong. We can't concentrate. Our neck goes into spasm. Our back pain starts. We blow up with our partner or our work colleague. It's because we've hit our

stress threshold. Now, we often think it was the thing that happened just before we hit the threshold that was the problem. We think it was that email we got at 3pm. That wasn't the problem. The problem was the accumulation of micro-stress doses throughout the day. It was the last one that just tipped you over where you could no longer cope. Now, bringing this back to choice, many of us are making so many decisions all the time that we don't realize every time we're making a decision we're using up cognitive load in our body we're using up some of our brain reserve we're effectively accumulating a micro stress dose and getting closer and closer to that stress threshold so I'm saying choose when it matters not when it doesn't right so I'll give an example

of when this played out some of your audience may have heard of something called Project 33. This is something someone called Courtney Carver. She did this a few years ago. She was a fashion executive, right? And she found that she was getting stressed out by trying to decide what to wear every day. So she started this project with herself where for three months she was only allowed to use 33 items from her wardrobe. That was clothes, accessories, jewelry, shoes. It wasn't counting things like underwear or sleepwear or those sort of things. And to me, as a guy who doesn't have that many clothes to choose from, this sounds like 33. That sounds like a lot.

Anyway, the point is, she found her anxiety went down, her stress went down, she felt a lot calmer, her sleep was improved. All kinds of things happened on the back of that. Now, what's really interesting, Drew, is that she started this off then online as a movement. She started a global movement where people actually do this. They eliminate choice in their wardrobe. and by doing so, people are reporting the same things, less stress, less anxiety, more calm, happier, more content, better productivity, right?

Now, that 33, that project doesn't resonate with me, right, because I don't have 33 items which I'm choosing. But the principle can apply to all of us, right, no matter what we're doing. You know, we hear about things like Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg. apparently they wore the same thing every single day. Yes, they may be washed in different versions, but, you know, Zuckerberg apparently same t-shirt, same jeans, same color, Barack Obama, the same suit, same color every day, because then they don't want to use up cognitive energy on things where they don't need to.

And this can play out in people for their health. And I think America in particular, Drew, I think, I found this to be more of an issue in America than even in the UK. I remember a few years ago coming to, you know, these lifestyle medicine conferences in America when I used to travel a lot and come and attend them. And I remember going out for lunch once with some buddies. And I don't know, I think I was ordering a salmon salad or something like that. And the amount of questions you get asked in America when trying to order something,

it's like, you know, what size? Would you like berries with that? What color berries? What sort? Like, I can't remember exactly what I. I was asked, but it was, I felt like at the end of it, I've just been in an exam of all these kind of different things that I get asked. In the UK, you don't get that many choices, right? And again, if that matters to you, if you're a food connoisseur, if curating the perfect lunch

for you exactly how you want it is important. Great. Use up your choices there, right? But if you're someone like me who really isn't, I just wanted a salmon salad, pretty simple, you know, nice and clean, no issues. I don't want to have. those sort of conversations there. Apparently in Starbucks, there are over 80,000 drink combinations. Now, I find that hard to believe, but that is what the statistics say, 80,000, right? If you know what you like, right? Order the same thing. You don't have to peruse the menu every single time. Give yourself a bombardment of stress while trying to decide. This could play out if you go to a cafe or a restaurant like me, Drew. If I go to a few my few favorite places with

my family, I don't look at the menu most of the time. I know what I like and I order it and I find myself just calmer. I'm not spending minutes trying to decide that all these choices add up. Now, I'm not saying people should not choose true. I'm saying if it matters to you, choose if it doesn't, don't. And I found... Yeah, you're arguing for in the areas of life that don't matter as much, why spend all this extra energy?

And the opposite, in areas of life that matter a lot to you, as you know, Rangan, there's a men's group that I'm part of here in Los Angeles. And at a 52 weeks in the year, we generally get together on Thursday morning, almost every week, like probably 30 weeks in a year. And the way in the process that we've set up, because we know how powerful social connection is, is we have a reoccurring event on the calendar. And yeah, there's times, especially during the summer where people are not around and there's not at least three people there. So we don't get together. But by default, the assumption is on the calendar that we're getting together. So we don't have to think every single week,

Or it doesn't have to be months go by and we're like, oh my gosh, we haven't seen each other. Like, when are we going to get together next time? So that's a way that we positively encourage behavior. Yeah, and you don't have to schedule it every week. And it's just routinely in there. And I don't know, a lot of people I'm sure, Drew, who listen to your show are very conscious about their food choices. Now, one of the biggest stresses around foods for people is what to cook or what to have, right? It's like, yeah, you know what this is great information?

My wife will say this is one of the biggest, what do we have in the evening? You know, like anything, she's like, yeah, but even deciding, like that's the problem. And even something like having a meal planner where you write down, literally Monday to Sunday, what every meal is. And you don't even have to rotate it. You can just replicate it week after week. Now, again, for someone, they may like to choose. They may enjoy every evening deciding, oh, what do I feel like today?

I fancy something exotic, maybe a bit of Thai, a bit of, you know, whatever. Great. if that is not you, do not waste your mental energy and reserve, which is limited on stuff like this. So, again, it seems like something that might be unrelated to health and happiness. I would say it's absolutely relevant. Most of us are making too many choices over things that simply don't matter. So writing a meal plan could be one of them. Health habits, right?

I've seen this with my patient's tree where people now are paralyzed with information, right? They want to start moving their bodies. Let's say they talk to their doctor about more physical activity. And then they go on Instagram and they see Pilates, yoga, martial arts, running, swimming. Like, and they're going, oh, no, I really like, oh, I like what that person's posted. I like what that person. Oh, I like, I want to do it all. And by wanting to do everything, they end up doing nothing. They're paralyzed by too much choice. And so, again, with some of my patients, I had to really simplify, say, choose one thing. thing, what could you do now with no looking up, with no having to read blogs, what could you do

right now? There's a case telling the book as someone who, this middle-aged chap, who was having chest pains that I think were coming from his heart. And he procrastinated for a long time about what he was going to do. He said, I can't decide whether to do running or to do this or to do that. And I remember saying to him, okay, what is one thing you can do that requires you to not have to buy anything or have to look anything up. He said, uh, walking. I said, great, let's start there. Let's just go with walking. Forget everything else. And let's figure out how much you're going to walk every day and how we're going to fit that into your life. Transformed his life. Literally that by eliminating choice. This could play out, I love podcastry. Like I'm a huge,

yes, I make my own podcast, but I love listening as well. I'll probably listen to four or five a week. Now, I realized about a year ago when I went on the, podcast app, I was bombarded with too many awesome podcasts to listen to. You must know that feeling. Oh, that looks, oh, man, that looks, oh, that looks great. That looks great. And then you start to stress that you don't have enough time to listen to all this wonderful content. So what I've done now, I've chosen three podcasts that I like, that I feel has a really good variety, and I only subscribe to those three. So when I go on the podcast app, I only see those three podcasts. And for me, personally, that's been transformers.

So because I'm not getting bombarded with choice. I will never, ever be able to listen to every single wonderful podcast that exists. It's just simply not possible. I would never see my wife or my kids or see any of my patients, right? It's not going to happen. So I have eliminated choice in a way that actually helps me. And there's a whole chapter in the book on this on how people can do that. But I think it's very simple thing.

But once you get your head around it, it's really, really effective. Yeah, I can think about all these simple tips that are inside of there when we intentionally set them up. You know, sometimes they sound so simple to be effective, but actually these simple principles actually have very profound results. And even for something like eliminating choice, I think about that in the sense of in my business. You know, my business partner, Dr. Mark Hyman, he's been on your podcast a bunch of times.

You've been on his podcast a bunch of times. We do a lot of different things. My business partner has a big vision. He wants to do a lot. Every week there's some sort of new idea or thing or nonprofit or something that he wants to get a chance to start. Any given time is usually working on like two books. And we have a big team.

We have a big team that works on a lot of different things. One of the things that I found to help me be a better leader over a period of time was I know if I'm involved as one of the key project managers to get a project started versus maybe making a little bit less profit that year and hiring a new project manager to be the project manager for that thing that my business partner wants to do. If I get involved from the start,

I know because I'm a very, I like to get organized. I like to jump in. I like to, you know, some people would say maybe it's not necessarily micromanaged, but I have a vision around how things should be organized for an execution of a project. I know that if I'm involved with one of those projects

from the beginning, instead of just bringing on the right team, members and then giving them the right direction, I will get pulled in and I'll stay pulled in that project for the rest of its existence. So even something as simple as a leader of not always having to be involved in a project, except for maybe like a couple that I'm uniquely leading the charge on has been a huge way of, I just don't even have the choice to be the person to be overwhelmed by that project or not being overwhelmed by that project. Yeah, it's really powerful. and just circling back, Drew, to the very start of this conversation, right, about a morning routine, right?

And how that can give us an enhanced perspective on our life when we take a period of time to step outside our life each day. Even here, you can apply eliminating choice. How many people who listen to health podcasts or buy health books or really passionate about health and well-being get paralyzed by all these amazing things, that they hear people doing. And one of the things I have with my own morning routine, for example, is I know what I'm doing. I don't have to decide every day, am I doing this or that or this. I'm doing yoga or Pilates or meditation or breathwork or journaling. No, I have a system. And it's the same every single day. Now, occasionally I'll change it, but actually that's an intentional choice now and again. The main stay off it is automated. I get up. I go to my living room. I do my meditation

of my breath work there. I come into my kitchen. I make my coffee. Whilst the coffee brews, I have my five-minute workout. Then with the coffee, I sit down with an uplifting book to work on my mindset. I must have spoken to you about that two years ago, three years ago, one year ago, right? I'm still doing it. It's automated. I don't have to decide each day what am I going to do. And therefore, it happens. So eliminating choice is important for reducing stress. It's also. so important for a lot of these health behaviors. One of the problems people have, Drew, they listen to shows like yours or mine. And each week, they hear new and amazing things. They hear, oh, man, I want to do that. And the next week, you have another guest. Oh, I want to do that. And actually,

a lot of the time, I feel that I have to say, guys, even if you just pick one thing and you do that thing consistently day and day out, that's where the growth happens. So eliminating choice can work in a variety of different scenarios, but they're all going to have the same goal, which is to improve how you feel, reduce your stress, improve your health, and it's going to make you a lot happier as well. It's so true. Rangan, as we wind down here, is there any other lesson that you want to just chat about briefly? You know, again, there's 10 of them inside here with a fantastic framework that sets them up. Is there any other lesson, tip that you just want to give a little bit of love to before we wrap up for today and get some concluding thoughts.

Yeah, Drew, I think the main thing for me, rather than going into a specific lesson, it's really just to highlight the key reason why I spent so long writing this book. As a medical doctor, my goal is to help people improve their health. They come to see me when they're struggling, when they're sick, when they've got symptoms they don't want. and a lot of what I've tried to do for many years has helped them make positive changes to their lifestyle. I've said on many occasions, 80 to 90% of what we see as medical doctors is in some way related to our collective modern lifestyles. I'm not putting blame on people. I understand life is

tough, but the way we are living our lives is making us sick. And I've for many years said that lifestyle is the root cause. But for the last few years, Drew, I've been wondering, is lifestyle really the root cause? there be something that's even further upstream than our lifestyle? And the reason I thought about this true is because I would see some patients who would make changes for a short period of time. They'd feel fantastic. And then two or three months later, they were back to where they started. I thought, what's going on here? This is not knowledge, right? They've got the knowledge. They've tried it. They've experienced it and they feel different. Yet they're still struggling. Okay, what's going on here? And then with other patients, I thought, wow, they've changed their lifestyle.

They've got really good diet, really good movement, really good stress and sleep and whatever. But they're still got symptoms that I thought would go away. What am I missing? And then with these people, I'd often see that external events, the world around them, would overly affect how they felt. And I thought, what's going on here? There must be a missing piece. That led me to reviewing all my patients over the last 20 years, really reflecting on

on what moves the needle, what doesn't, but also going into the research. And when I did that, I saw this very powerful link between happiness and health. Happier people are healthier. People who are happier in their lives and with their lives are physically healthy. And I thought, well, why a doctor's not talking about this? Why am I not talking about this when there's such a strong link? And we say happiness. And in the book, I've defined what I consider happiness to be. It's a very simple definition that I think is very practical. But what I've realized is that happiness is a skill that anybody can develop and get better at. It's not something that just happens to us.

So all the lessons in this book are all practical and they all directly work on your happiness. But I'm also sure that actually as I help you become happier, you're also going to become physically healthier. happier people are healthier and happiness is something that we can all learn. Every single one of these lessons is practical. Every single one of these lessons works really, really well. And every single one of them is completely free of charge. And as you know, Drew, that's something I'm incredibly passionate about. And you do it so well.

And the last thing I'll add on top of that beautiful concluding thought that I heard you share in a previous interview with another podcast that you did, said in this day and age, where it almost feels taboo to go after happiness, you want to remind people that it's okay to want to be happier in your life. And that feeling internally that if you feel like you're not happier and you are seeking out happiness, that's okay. We don't need to demonize that drive, just like we don't need to demonize the drive if people want to get fit

or if they want to lose weight or if they want to be smarter, if they want to make more money. Great. go for anything that you want to go for in life. Understand that when you get there, if you're not approaching it the right way, you know, that thing may not necessarily actually bring you happiness.

But once you understand that, it's okay to go for anything, even the pursuit of happiness. It's okay to seek that out in your own life too. As long as you have some good guidance internally of what actually does happiness look like in your life and your book does that so well for people. So I want to thank you, Rangan,

and for coming on the podcast to bring that message out and for having the courage to write this book, which also meant putting a lot of your own stories and your journey inside of it. And I know knowing you as a friend over the years and your family too, that's not an easy thing to do and have the entire public stage be watching you

and criticizing you. And it takes courage. So I thank you for having that courage. Thanks, I appreciate it. Always love chatting to you. Thanks for having me on your show. And yeah, looking forward to getting the word out about this book in America, so thanks for helping me do that.

The book is out there. Happy mind, happy life. Link is in the show notes. Rungen, until next time, brother. See you soon, buddy.