Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #114 The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World with Dr Vivek Murthy

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

My guest on today’s conversation is Vivek Murthy. Vivek was the US Surgeon General under the Obama administration and is now author of the fantastic book, Together, about the healing power of human connection. And connect is exactly what Vivek and I did during this conversation in a really deep and profound way. During this conversation, we talk about what authenticity really means and how powerful it is to be truly vulnerable. We also talk about the consequences of this pandemic causing a social recession as well as an economic recession and how lockdown is making an already chronic problem of loneliness much worse. But this conversation is about hope and optimism - could the outcome of our separation in fact be a social revival? Are we realising more than ever before that we need to put people first? When he was in office, Vivek realised that the thread running through so many social and health problems, touching people of all ages, was loneliness. As doctors, we share the conviction that lack of connections is a major factor in many modern health conditions. We discuss how loneliness can manifest as irritability, anger, depression and disturbed sleep. It can also be behind ailments from anxiety to addiction and even obesity. And, of course, in the current pandemic, its effects are amplified. So, could it be time for us to take stock of how much we’ve missed our family, friends, even strangers – and decide how we want those relationships to be going forwards? Vivek believes we need to make an explicit commitment to other people – reaching out to others and giving our undistracted time when we do. Service, he says, is a powerful antidote to loneliness – it’s you adding value to the world. Vivek’s guiding principle is to ‘put people first’ in society, as well as in our individual lives and to let love and compassion be our path out of loneliness and suffering. It’s really hard to disagree with this when you hear this conversation, and I hope you find it as meaningful as I did. Show notes available at https://drchatterjee.com/114 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If we come out of this pandemic with a greater commitment to leading a people-centered life and to building a people-centered world, then we will have taken an extraordinarily difficult moment and put ourselves on the path of creating better lives and a stronger world. Hi, my name is Rangan Chatterjee. Welcome to Feel Better, Live More. Thank you for tuning in and joining me for episode 114 of my podcast. I'm actually recording this intro on a beautiful sunny morning. I woke up before the rest of the family, did my morning routine, and then headed out for a gorgeous walk in nature. And as I was walking, I've really been reflecting on the conversation that you're

going to hear in the podcast today. Now, I recorded it about two to three weeks ago over Skype, and the reason I invited my guest onto the show was actually because of his brand new book, which is called Together, Loneliness, Health and What Happens When We Find Connection. Now, I thought we were largely going to talk about the content of his book, but the conversation didn't really go in the direction that I had anticipated. And actually, I've got to say, I think that's one of the best things about having a long form podcast. There are no rules, no boundaries, no editorial stipulations that you often get on mainstream media. You have the opportunity to really connect, talk about things that are truly meaningful, and have authentic conversations. And I think today's conversation really is a perfect example of this. My guest is Dr. Vivek Murthy.

Vivek was the US Surgeon General under the Obama administration and is now author of a fantastic book about the healing power of human connection. And Connect is exactly what Vivek and I did on this conversation. Yes, it was done remotely over Skype, but through the airways, through the ether, we connected in such a profound and deep way. This conversation has really taught me about what authenticity really means, how powerful it is to be truly vulnerable. Vivek was vulnerable with me, and in return, I felt the deep desire to recipro truly vulnerable. Vivek was vulnerable with me and in return I felt the deep desire to reciprocate. In fact, the power of this conversation led me to share something that

I have never shared before in public. Something that I don't even think I knew was bothering me and I think what I can learn from that, what you can learn from listening, I think it's probably going to be quite profound. Now, of course, we do talk about loneliness, how we're living in a more and more disconnected world, how the social fabric of human tribes and communities has slowly been disbanded with the norms of 21st century living. We talk about the consequences of this pandemic in causing a social recession as well as an economic recession, and how lockdown is making an already chronic problem of loneliness much worse than it already was. But the theme that runs throughout our conversation today is one of hope, one of optimism. Could the outcome of our separation, in fact,

be a social revival? Are we realising that actually what we need more than anything else is to put people first? You see, when he was in office, Vivek realised that the thread running through so many social and health problems, touching of all ages was loneliness. We discuss how loneliness can manifest as irritability, anger, depression, disturbed sleep, and how it can even be behind ailments from anxiety to addiction and even obesity. So, could it be time for us to take stock of how much we've missed our family, our friends, and even strangers and decide how we want those relationships to be going forward? Vivek says we need to make an explicit commitment to other people, reaching out to others, giving them our

undistracted time. And he also talks about service. He says that service is a powerful antidote to loneliness. It's you adding value to the world. Vivek's guiding principle is to put people first in society as well as in our individual lives and to let love and compassion be our path out of loneliness and suffering. It's really hard to disagree with this when you hear the conversation and I hope you find it as meaningful as I did. Now, before we get started, I do need to give a quick shout out to some of the sponsors of today's show who are essential in order for me to put out weekly episodes like this one. Athletic Greens have always been a big supporter of my show and I really, really like this company

and what they stand for. They make one of the most nutrient-dense whole food supplements that I've ever come across and I myself take it regularly. Today's conversation is actually about connection and connecting to yourself is an essential part of connecting to others. For me, each morning when I take my Athletic Greens,

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you will be able to access a special offer where you get a free travel pack box containing 20 servings of Athletic Greens, which is worth around £70 with your first order. You can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more. Now, on to today's conversation. So Vivek, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Rangan. It's great to be here with you. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, your book, your new book, Together, is so, so good. I literally can't stop thinking about it.

And I guess there's many reasons for that. I guess one of them is because it fits so beautifully well with things that I've been sort of trying to write about, trying to think about myself in almost 20 years of seeing patients. And so I'm really interested to understand where that journey started with yourself. For people who are not familiar with the term surgeon general, I think it's probably worth starting there. Yes, there's a lot of US listeners to the show, but there's also a lot of UK listeners. And it strikes me that you are someone who went to medical school, and I don't know what

happened between you studying medicine and then getting arguably to one of the highest public office posts in the land within medicine when you were asked to be surgeon general by President Barack Obama. So what happened there? Well, it certainly wasn't a planned journey. Some people lay out five, 10 year plans for their lives. And I tried doing that. I just never was able to stick to them. But what happened is I actually early on in life had this, What happened is I actually, early on in life, had this, I just was given this message, I think, from my parents and others around me that government is not a place that you work if you want to really create change in the world, that it's inefficient. And the place that my parents came from, which was India, politics often had a high level of corruption in it. So working government was not really held up in high regard. And so I'd actually never had a desire early as

a child to work in government. And even as I got older, that never really changed. I was practicing medicine. And I loved that I was teaching medicine. I love that too. And I was actually building a technology company as well. And life seemed like it was good. But what happened to me is that in 2007, 2008, in that time frame, the presidential election was going on in the United States. And what was striking to me as a doctor who was early in his career was that health care was on the agenda for both parties as a area that they wanted to focus on for major reform. And I had worked enough in the healthcare system of the United States to know that there were a lot of things that were good about it, but there were a lot of things that were broken and that we weren't able to deliver the kind of care to patients that

they really needed. So I got involved in doing advocacy work around healthcare, even though I knew nothing about policy or politics or advocacy. I was just sitting in this room one day that a friend had brought me to. It was a room where a meeting was taking place with a bunch of people who were involved in some of these presidential campaigns. And they were talking about how these platforms should be molded and shaped. And I realized in looking around that room that there was almost nobody other than my friend and I who had direct frontline experience in healthcare. And I thought to myself, if this is how healthcare decisions are being made at the highest level in the country, it's really important to have the voices of people on the front lines at the table,

nurses, doctors, and patients for sure. And so in that moment, I just had this idea. I said, what would it be like if we organized a constituency that I knew, which was my fellow doctors? What if we organized doctors around the country to have an impact on healthcare policy, to actually work with policymakers and shape legislation. And I couldn't shake that idea. Even though I wasn't quote-unquote qualified to execute on it because of lack of experience, it just felt like something I had to do. And so I started building that effort. And that's what brought me to the world of policy in D.C.

effort. And that's what brought me to the world of policy in D.C. It's what led to joining hands with a few other doctors and building a very large physician organization that brought doctors from all 50 states together to help shape what at that point became the Affordable Care Act and transformed much of health care in the United States. We were one of many organizations working on it. But anyway, despite all of that work, I was content to remain on the outside. So I was surprised, and then when on July 10th, 2013, out of the blue, I received this call from an area code that was 202, and that's a Washington, D.C. area code. And I didn't pick it up initially because I was walking back from the dry cleaners and my hands were full of laundry. But finally, I kept ringing into that. Let me just pause and

pick this up. So I picked it up. And it turned out that was a phone call from the White House asking me if I would like to be considered for this position of Surgeon General. And so it was a surprise to me. It was not a position I had sought out, but it was a position I deeply admired because unlike most political positions in the administration, even though you're appointed by a president, your goal is to be independent, including independent of the president. supposed to be to science and the public interest. And I like that about the role. I like that it actually would bring together so many of the disparate things I had worked on in the past, including my work in technology and grassroots organizing and policy and medicine and public health. So sometimes the universe knows where you should go even if you don't. And that was certainly the case for me. Yeah. I mean, what a story just to get a call out of the blue whilst you're walking home with your dry cleaning um asking if you'd like to be considered

uh for the position of surgeon general was it was there excitement was there surprise i mean how did you react to that well i was surprised but the reason I'm pausing is it was a mix of reactions. One, yes, I was surprised. I was not expecting that call. But there was this voice inside, voice I think of as my intuition, that immediately knew when that question came that this was the right path for me to follow. And the reason that that was striking to me is because six months prior to this call, I had actually been approached by some people who were

with the Obama administration at that time asking if I would like to serve in government. And I was thinking, oh, you know, they'll probably want me to maybe serve somewhere in the Department of Health and Human Services, maybe on a team that's trying to implement the Affordable Care Act. I wasn't exactly sure, but I actually declined at that time because I thought, again, that I was better probably serving on the outside. And I just couldn't see a clear role for myself in developing policy or implementing policy. It just didn't feel like the right fit but this was a different role it was a role again where the fidelity was the science and the public interest and the practice was not in crafting legislation and in attempting to pass it

but in engaging directly with the public and trying to bring information to them so they could make good decisions for themselves and their families. The Surgeon General has an opportunity to raise issues to a higher level of importance and visibility for the nation and to build everything from Surgeon General reports to creative campaigns to advance those causes. And so this felt just like a very different role and one that was a much, much better fit with my personality and with my past experiences. So yeah, there was surprise, but also this intuitive feeling that this was the right path. I'll tell you one funny thing that happened is I called my now wife, Alice, after I received that call and I said to her,

I said, Alice, you know, I just received this strangest call. You'll never guess. And when she said it, she said, was it the White House asking you to be Surgeon General? I said, oh my God, how did you even know? We haven't, I mean, this is out of the blue. And she was like, you know, I have good intuition. It was really striking to me. Wow. That is incredible. Absolutely incredible to hear that. Yeah, thanks for sharing that because, you know, I wasn't really familiar that much with your work until this book came on my radar. And that's probably, you know, a consequence of living in the UK. If we get onto the topic of your new book, which is on connection, it's on loneliness,

we get onto the topic of your new book, which is on connection, it's on loneliness, it's on something that I'm sure you've spent a good two years at least thinking about, writing about. It seems rather striking that this book has come out now in the middle of a global pandemic where loneliness and isolation, which I passionately believe was a problem two months ago before this all started or three months ago. But for many of us, it's sort of been turned up a notch even further. And so, I really want to spend the bulk of our time today talking about loneliness and what it is and what we can do about it and why it's so problematic. But, you know, where did this come from? Where did the desire to write about loneliness come from was it from your previous clinical experience or was it from your role as surgeon general or a

bit of everything i'll tell you yeah because it did come up from a few places um rongan can i just share one other thought though on our previous our previous question? I'm looking at you, fellow South Asian, and I just felt compelled to share this piece of the story as well. It's about my parents, because you asked how I came to serve as Surgeon General. That story is incomplete without telling you that my parents, like many other immigrants, came to the United States looking for a better life for their children. And hoping that in the United States, that unlike in India, that we wouldn't be judged by our caste, but that we would instead be judged by our work ethic, by our willingness to serve others, by our ideas. And when they came over, they didn't have much in the way of resources. My father grew up in a very poor village in India, and my mother grew up in a modest family in Bangalore.

So they didn't have connections or wealth or much privilege when they arrived in the United States, but they just hoped that they would find a home here that would support their families and that would look out for them, where people would welcome them. To be sure, we ran into our share of challenges. We did experience racism over time. Things weren't always easy. But I was really blessed to find so many people in the form of a poor farmer from India, to be asked by the President of the United States to look out for the health of the nation, would have been unthinkable. And it only happened because my parents had the courage to come here, because we were blessed to find people who supported us.

And because we also had a president who was open to thinking about somebody who looked differently and who sounded different, who had a name that was different from his predecessors. And I'm very, very grateful for that. But it also reminds me of just the promise and the power of nations like America that, despite all their imperfections, try to see people as people and try to move toward that larger ideal that all of us matter, that all of us have the ability to contribute. And I feel very, very blessed that I had these opportunities, but they're because of these extraordinary sacrifices and courageous moves that my parents made to come here. And no matter what I do in my life, whether it's being Surgeon General or doing something afterward, I realize that the jump from where I started to where I've come will never be as great as the jump that they made from their humble beginnings to moving halfway across the world to raising a family in the United States and to settling their children. That's just an extraordinary story. And I feel very grateful to them and will always be indebted to them for that.

Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that um as you were saying that to me i really felt um i was welling up really i was feeling quite tearful hearing that because i guess it's something we touched on just before we started recording was the fact that we are both of south asian. And, you know, I'll be honest, when I was reading about you, I was reading the book, I said to my wife, I think a couple of nights ago, I said, hey, babe, look, isn't it incredible that Vivek's made it to Surgeon General in America? Do you think that could ever happen in the UK? Honestly, that's the exact conversation I had a couple of

nights ago, because I was struck as a fellow South Asian from an immigrant family who's come to the UK, like yours did to America, to find a better life. That really struck me. And I do actually wonder, as I go through your book, I actually had planned to ask you at some point, what part of, you know, how much of what you've written about is influenced in some way by your upbringing and your culture? Because I struggle to see how it wouldn't have quite a big impact on your worldview, basically.

Yeah, it absolutely did. And I'll, let me answer that and the question you asked earlier as well you know if you had told me rangan that we would be here talking about loneliness if you told me that five years ago i would have been skeptical because this issue was not on my radar as something to address when i was in office or even afterward but what happened to me is when I began my time in office, I began with a listening tour, just going to communities, talking to people in town halls, in their living rooms, in community centers. And even though I had an agenda for my time in office that I had shared with the United States Senate during my confirmation hearings, I just had this instinct that I wanted to just listen. There's such an emphasis on action and on doing, but sometimes

I've realized that I need to just be instead of do, because if I can spend some time being and listening and understanding, then often I can do better and do faster. And being precedes action. And that was an instinct that I just couldn't shake when I started my time in office. So I had these teams coming to me saying, hey, let's go on all the major media networks and let's announce your agenda to the world. And I just kept thinking, I don't want to do that. Like we can always do media. We'll do it later, but let's just go talk to people and see what they have to say. During this listening tour, there were certain things I heard that I was expecting to hear. I heard about people's struggles with the opioid epidemic in the

United States. I heard about their concerns about their children, especially with rising depression and anxiety rates among kids. I heard from teachers who were concerned that children were vaping in their classrooms because there were no rules guiding them as to how to even think about vaping. There were no rules guiding them as to how to even think about vaping. And I heard many, many people who were really concerned about chronic illnesses like heart disease and obesity, which were rising in their community, and they weren't sure what to do about it. But what did surprise me were that behind so many of these stories were these threads of loneliness, where people would often say, I feel I have to carry all of these burdens by myself. I feel that if I disappear tomorrow, nobody would even notice, or I feel invisible.

And what was so striking to me, Rangan, is I was hearing this from moms and dads. I was hearing this from people in small remote fishing villages in Alaska. I was hearing this from members of Congress in Washington, D.C. who would whisper this behind closed doors. But everyone, it seemed, no matter what their age or station in life, seemed to be touched by loneliness in some way. If it wasn't directly, it was through the people around them that they loved. And what this reminded me of were two things. One was my personal experiences with loneliness that began as a child, when I would get dropped off at school by my parents and feel this sickening pit in my stomach because I was scared. And I wasn't scared of exams or

teachers. I was scared about feeling left out, about being on the playground and not being chosen to be a part of a team, even though I was actually pretty good at sports. I was most scared about lunchtime, about walking into the cafeteria and not knowing if there would be a place for me to sit or somebody who'd want me to sit next to them. I wanted to interact with other kids and enjoy friendships, but I was painfully shy as a child, and that made it tough to build bridges to other people. So I was reminded of that loneliness, and that loneliness continued in various spots throughout my life, including during my time when I was a surgeon general. But I was also reminded of one

other thing, which were my experiences in medicine, where I saw so many patients come in alone without anyone to care for them or support them during really hard conversations that we had to have about tough diagnoses or difficult treatment decisions. And even at times when in a patient's final moments, when they were passing, and many times there was nobody to witness those final moments other than myself and my colleagues in medicine. And that made me incredibly sad. But I was reminded of my patients and of my personal experiences during my listening tour as Surgeon General because I realized in that moment that, gosh, what I saw was not unique to my experience.

But there's something much, much deeper happening here. Loneliness is far, far more common than I thought. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. more common than I thought. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I'm sure there's going to be many people listening or watching this right now who really can connect with that experience and go, oh God, that was me at school. That feel in some way that, of course, many people, even people who are not from immigrant families, feel like that when they go to school. But would you say for you, being an immigrant, being surrounded by a different sort of culture at home, and potentially, I'm guessing, a different culture at school, that there was that

clash and something that many immigrant kids like me have experienced, that real struggle with identity to go, well, I've got one sort of identity at home, I've got one identity I'm trying to morph into at school. And therefore, in some ways, there's a wider point there if we expand it out that your parents came to the US so people wouldn't be judged. So if you worked hard, you would get some reward for that. You could get your own house, you could get all the material success that maybe was not perceived to be available where your parents lived prior to come to the united states but in some way on one hand you you improve the quality of life in terms of by income standards by housing standards by the ability to let's say go on a holiday

but on the other hand you take yourselves away from your community and your family and the social fabric that really enhances our lives so, so much. It's a very insightful point because I think when my parents and so many other immigrants came to the United States from India, and this is true, I think of other countries as well. They were driven by the promise of better education, better opportunities. But I'm not entirely sure that at least my parents fully grasped what the cost was of the move that they were making. See, my father, I remember when I was in elementary school having this conversation with him. I must have been in second grade or second standard.

And I remember him asking me why I wasn't playing with other kids on the playground. And I felt this intense shame in that moment because I didn't quite know how to tell him that I wanted to play with other kids but I was just really shy. And I could tell that he was having

a hard time sort of understanding what this concept of a child being lonely was because he had not experienced that. For both of my parents, their upbringing in India was very much one where they were surrounded by people and community all the time. They always had family members around them.

They had family friends around them. They had neighbors who knew each other. There were layers upon layers of social networks that created what I think of as the ultimate social safety net. And so they may have had struggles in many dimensions, but being lonely was rarely, if ever, one of them. So the whole concept of being lonely, I think, was a bit foreign. But I wonder at times if that also may have led them to take those connections for granted somewhat. And when they came to the United States, in fact, when they left India originally and came more the price of immigrating, the price of leaving behind those extraordinary connections. And so I do think that, and I think for that

reason, they would often talk about moving back to India at some point. They would say, once everything gets settled here, once the kids have opportunities and go through college, and maybe we'll move back. And it was because of those relationships that they missed very much. They never did. And many Indian immigrants who came over always also talked about moving back, and most of them never did either. But I do still think to this day that they missed those social connections. And the price that they paid in coming here was perhaps heavier than they

imagined. Yeah. I think that the price that they paid, you mentioned they possibly weren't aware of the cost. And there's something really striking in that obesity has had, that smoking has had, right? So, that cost has often been hidden. We've not valued connection and really what the toxic impact it is on a human being physically when we don't have it. And that's why I love your book because you are, well, one of the many reasons I love it is because it's raising awareness of just how toxic a lack of connection is. But if we think about your parents coming here, there's not actually, on so many levels, there's a very similar, there's a similar theme when you think about the American dream or the culture here in the UK, you know, that sort of Western idea that actually you can work hard,

you can achieve anything you want. Your individual success is possible. It's on you. But here's the problem. As you so beautifully illustrate in your book, what is the cost of having that individual success of pursuing promotion, more money, more status? What is that cost? Because for many of us, that price is also too high a price to pay. It is. And I think what has happened is that we've been told a partial truth in modern society. And that partial truth is that our destiny is determined solely by us, by our willingness to work hard, to burn the candle on both ends, to learn as much as we can. Now, those are valuable things to do. We can and should work hard. We should learn about the things

that we're passionate about. We should seek out ways to serve. We should do all of those things as individuals. But the reason it's a partial truth is that as human beings, we weren't designed to do everything by ourself. And it turns out that if we want to maximize impact and reach, we also can't do everything by ourselves. We it turns out that if we want to maximize impact and reach,

we also can't do everything by ourselves. We need to work with other people. Our destinies are, in fact, not determined just by us, but by a collective us. And we're truly interdependent creatures. And because our culture tells us this partial truth that everything is driven by individual effort alone what happens is we come to link our self-esteem to outcomes in a way that can actually be healthy unhealthy so for example if we if we fail at let's say a company, or if we fail at getting into the top school, we beat ourselves up and we say, well, this is because I didn't try hard enough, or I wasn't smart enough, or whatever it might be. But life is so much more complicated than that. And to me, one of the questions I kept thinking about as I was writing this book

One of the questions I kept thinking about as I was writing this book is, what determines our self-worth? Where does our sense of value come from when it comes to ourself? The reason this is so important, Rangan, is even though we're talking about social connection, which is by definition our connection with other people our connection with others is really predicated and and determined by our connection with ourself so if we are not feeling comfortable with who we are if we don't believe that we have self-worth if we're not centered and at peace then it actually makes this harder for us to interact with other people in a meaningful way. Our conversations tend not to be as good. We find ourselves striving to be somebody else that we think they want us to be instead of really being who we are. It's harder to be authentic. And so my concern about the way in which modern culture has guided

us is there are threads in modern culture that have told us that our self-worth is determined by our ability to be successful and our ability to be successful is in turn determined by our ability to acquire one of three things that's wealth power and fame so if i've achieved you know a massive amount of wealth because I've sold a company that I started, then I'm deemed successful. If I've acquired a major position in a company or in government, or if I have millions of followers on social media and people know my name, then people say, oh, look at him. He's made it. He's successful. But the reality is that if you meet people who have acquired wealth, power, and fame, they will often be the first ones to tell you that

that didn't make them happy for very long. And there are plenty of stories of famous, wealthy, powerful people who are all alone and who are miserable. Some of them have been my patients. Some of them have been people I met along the road as Surgeon General, but they're all around us. And the reality is that our worth and our value as human beings is actually not extrinsic, determined by outside factors. It is intrinsic. I believe that our fundamental worth is grounded in our ability to give and receive love. That, I think, is what makes us worthy as human beings, our ability to give and receive love. And that's something we're born with. I look at my three-year-old and my two-year-old, and I see just

how effortlessly they express their love for us and for each other and how easily they accept love as well. We are born knowing how to do this. We were designed and programmed to be givers and receivers of love and to be connected to each other. And it's through our relationships that we experience that love. That is why relationships are so powerful and central to our life. That is why relationships are so powerful and central to our life. But as we get older, we buy into other messages and directions that are given to us by the dominant culture around us that tell us that, well, maybe our value isn't as rooted in love as we thought. Maybe love is something to be squeamish about. Maybe emotions are a sign of weakness. Maybe it's these extrinsic factors like wealth and power and fame that really do constitute success. And as we buy into them, we start chasing those false gods. And the more we do that, I think the unhappier we often become. There's nothing wrong with acquiring wealth, fame, or power, but there is something problematic about believing that that is your source of value

yeah beautifully put um i think there's a certain irony about the pandemic at the moment and the physically distance you know the measures for physical distancing, what is also called social distancing. It's really interesting. I know we're all experiencing this in very different ways. Although we're all experiencing this lockdown and this pandemic, each of us want to minimize the fact that a lot of people are having a lot of stress a lot of economic hardship at the moment lives are being lost there's all kinds of downsides of this pandemic for sure but I just want to flip to the possible upsides and I think we can have that conversation. I don't think saying

that there is an upside to a situation in any way negates the downside. You know, for example, I lost my father just over seven years ago after caring for him for almost 15 years. And I can now say without any guilt that actually, you know what, losing dad, actually, A, it was the right time for him to go, I'm sure of it. But I have learned so much from that experience. I wouldn't probably be doing the job I'm doing now. I wouldn't be experiencing life in the same way that I experience if my dad was still here. That doesn't mean I don't love him. Doesn't mean that I didn't treasure every moment I had with him. But the point I'm trying to make is with every negative, there are also potential positives.

And one of the positives I see through the way this pandemic has played out, some of us are really now understanding what you've just said, what you've put in your book. Some of us are really firsthand starting to understand, wait a minute, what is going on here? What am I spending my life doing? Yes, I'm busy. Busy doing what? Busy chasing what exactly? And the thought that has been, I'm writing every morning at the moment, I've got all kinds of thoughts in my mind. And the thing I was writing a few days ago, Vivek, was success, right? What is success? What does success all mean? Because society does define success

typically by money, fame, power, you know, how many holidays does that person go on? What's the size of their house? What car are they driving? But what does society look like if we define success by how many times did that person drop their kids off at school and pick them up in a week? How many meals a day did that person have with a family member or a friend or someone they felt valued by? You know, what happens if society suddenly values that? Then suddenly things look very, very different. I think you're absolutely right. And first of all, I'm so sorry about your father and about your loss.

And I think it's extraordinary that you've been able to find a source of meaning and strength. And it sounds like even direction in that experience of his passing. I think that says a great deal about you and the kind of person you are. And I wonder if you wouldn't be so proud of what you're doing now in trying to spread this larger message around meaning and happiness in the lives of so many. I think what you said is absolutely right. is absolutely right that what happens when we look at difficult moments is we sometimes see the pain in the moment. But what's extraordinary about human beings is that we have this amazing resilience about us and this ability to find

silver linings, to find meaning in very difficult circumstances. Right now, there's extraordinary pain that people are experiencing all around the world. I think it's amazing that we have had literally billions of people completely change their lives, stay at home, and do so under extraordinary circumstances and at an extraordinary cost. You know, many people have lost their jobs in the United States and around the world. And this is a hard time for people, but they've done it because they know that this is what we need to do to keep each other safe in this moment. And that we need to figure out how to put our lives back together afterward.

But this is what we have to do right now. And when I think about this moment, I think that we're talking a lot about the direct health impact of COVID-19. We're talking a acknowledging enough the social impact and the consequences this moment can have for our social health. You know, as a doctor, I didn't learn much about social health and how important relationships were to the health outcomes that I was striving toward with my patients. But I've come to realize that it is exceedingly important. And I think that we can go in one of two directions right now when it comes to our social health in the context of this pandemic. One is that we could go down the path of experiencing deepening loneliness as we're physically distanced from each other for longer and longer periods of time. And I think that could cause a social recession that would be just as consequential to our lives as the economic recession that may be upon us. But I think there's also an opportunity to go in a very different direction. And that's the direction of social revival. If we use this moment as an opportunity to step back and take stock of our lives,

and to ask ourselves, what role do we want people to play in our lives going forward? This experience is highlighted for so many of us, just how incredibly important our relationships are. We miss not only our family and our friends who we can't see now, but many of us miss just sitting in a coffee shop with strangers, walking through a mall and seeing other people, sitting in a restaurant and hearing the chatter of people we don't even know. We're realizing how important our human interactions are. And we have a chance to recommit to relationships in our life. And we can start doing that right now. We don't have to wait for the pandemic to be over. And I think there are a few simple ways that we can do

that. So number one, I think we can all make a commitment to spending at least 15 minutes a day with someone we love. That could be video conferencing with them. It could be calling them. It could be simply writing to a friend to say, I'm thinking of you. I want to know how you are. The second thing we can do is we can focus on the quality of time that we spend with others. Even if we don't change the amount of time we have with our friends and family by one minute, if we improve the quality by reducing distraction around us, then that can have a powerful effect. Now, I say this with some guilt and admitting that I have been, certainly on many occasions,

the one who has been talking to a friend on a phone while also scrolling through my email or refreshing my social media feed or Googling a question that popped into my head or looking at a basketball game or the news in the background and you know like many others i had convinced myself over the years that i could multitask the reality is that we can't science is very clear that we don't multitask we task switch from one thing to another so when i'm looking at my inbox i'm not actually fully paying attention to my friend but if you had the experience of deeply listening to someone and being deeply listened to, if you've experienced what it's like for someone else to be fully present around you and to share openly, then you know just how

extraordinary that feels. And even five minutes of deep listening can be more powerful than a half hour of distracted conversation. So we can focus on improving the quality of our interactions right now. And the third thing we can do is to think about a lesson that I learned during the writing of this book which surprised me. Which is that service is a powerful antidote to loneliness. which is that service is a powerful antidote to loneliness. That when we reach out to others with the mind and heart toward supporting them, that we actually do two things which are very interesting. We, one, shift the focus from ourselves to somebody else

in the context of a positive interaction. This is so important because chronic loneliness can actually shift our focus increasingly inward because we feel threatened, and it can also put us in an elevated threat state and start to chip away at our self-esteem over time as we start to believe that the reason we're lonely is that we're not likable because we're broken. But service also reminds us that we have some value to add to the world that we have meaning and worth and that also assists with our self-esteem and this is a time where all of us are struggling in some way right we may be in different boats of different sizes but we are in the same storm and we are trying to figure out how to make sense of this new normal. So this is one of those moments where simply reaching out to a neighbor to see how they're doing, having food delivered to a friend

who may be struggling to telework and to homeschool their kids at the same time, simply writing to a family member or calling them to say, hey, I'm thinking of you. I want to know how you're doing. These are small but powerful acts of service. And together, these simple steps can help us build a lifeline to people on the outside. They can help us recenter our lives around people. And if we come out of this pandemic with a greater commitment to leading a people-centered life and to building a people-centered world, then we will have taken an extraordinarily difficult moment and put ourselves on the path of creating better lives and a stronger world. Yeah.

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For listeners of my show they offer a fantastic discount. If you go to vivobarefoot.com forward slash live more, they are giving 20% off as a one-time code for all of my podcast listeners in the UK, USA, and Australia. You can get your 20% off code by going to vivobarefoot.com forward slash live more. off code by going to vivobarefoot.com forward slash live more. I really completely agree with that. It's so profound what you just said. All of those tips, I think, huge, huge value. You know, that idea that being of service to others, yes, great for them. It's probably even better for ourselves. You know,

do it for yourself if you have to. Don't do it for that other person. But actually, it is something that, and it's contagious. We know that kindness, we know that that feeling is contagious and spreads through society very, very quickly. You mentioned distraction and quality time. That is something I'm really passionate about. And I think I was interviewed on a podcast yesterday and they said, any tips for parents in this time? And one of the tips I always give is I say, look, give your children even 15 minutes of time where you're fully present and focused with them. Put the phone away, but you know, leave the phone upstairs, leave the laptop in another room and be present with them rather than two hours where you're fully present and focused with them. Put the phone away, you know, leave the phone upstairs, leave the laptop in another room and be present with them rather than two hours where you're

actually constantly distracted because, you know, kids, they know. And I think I shared this in my book on stress a couple of years ago that my daughter called me out when she was four. You know, she said, you know, I was sort of, I kept nipping in from playing with her just to quickly check something on my phone. I thought I was doing it covertly on the sly without her knowing. And she just said to me, daddy, you're not really here, are you? And it was like, it was like a dagger through my heart. And I thought, you know what, she's right. And literally that moment has really changed my behavior because I'm a little bit militant about it. Like at the dinner table, I really don't like anyone having a phone or technology or a laptop. For me, that is sacrosanct. It's like, no, we don't have any devices at the

table when we're eating. Because I really feel that that's what we need more than ever. You know, everyone's busy, right? Everyone's time pressured. Well, let's focus on quality. And so straight after this call, whenever we finish it, I told my kids who are, you know, frustrated that daddy's not playing with them at the moment. And I said, hey guys, look, I'm on this interview. I'm really excited to talk to Vivek. You do something. As soon as it's done, we're going out. I'll be in the garden with you for an hour. And so, they're cool now because they know that, hey, daddy's going to do his thing. And then he's told me he's coming. And so, I really think kids respond to that sort of clear direction as well. Sorry, I went off on a bit of a personal tale there.

No, that's, God, that really resonates deeply with me as well because i think i'm not as good as you about being as disciplined as i need to creating the boundaries but i'm working on it because my children have started saying similar things my three-year-old said to me the other day after i was i thought i had snuck away to just make a quick phone call and i came back and he just looked at me and he said, Papa, I don't want you to be on the phone anymore. And it just broke my heart. I was like, oh my God, like all this little boy wants for me is to be present. He just wants me to show up.

And I'm struck that it's not just our children, but often the people in our life don't ask us for a lot of time. They're not asking us to give up our jobs and to sit at home with them all the time. They're asking for some quality time. They're asking for the gift of our full attention. And that's something that we, that we can give them, you know, in moments like this, I'm, that we can give them. You know, in moments like this, I'm also struck by the fact that even though we all rely on each other, and even though we all feel better when we're with people

we love and with good friends, even though we know relationships are so important to our lives, it has become easy to allow them to just drift down our priority list. If I told people in my workplace that I was moving to a small town where I had no family and no friends, but I had an amazing job opportunity, people would say, wow, that's great. That's wonderful. You're really moving ahead. You're making sacrifices to your great. That's wonderful. You're really moving ahead. You're making sacrifices to your career. That's fantastic.

But if I told them I'm moving to a small town in the middle of nowhere with no real job prospects, but my family is there and I want to be close to my family, then people would sort of give me a nervous smile and say, oh, I guess you had to sacrifice. I guess that's okay. But they'd probably feel a bit sorry for me. And I think there's a deeper message there that we take, which is that our relationships are expendable, or it's okay if they come second, or they'll always be there. And we can not pay attention to them. We can disregard them for a little while and always come back to them. And I just don't think that that's the case. The reality is that while we have allowed relationships to drift to the periphery of

our lives and our priorities, this is our opportunity to bring them back to the center. And I do think that part of this is intertwined with how we think about emotions. You know, over time, we've come to somehow see emotions as a sign of weakness, as expressions of love toward friends, as being cheesy. We've even seen them,

and you know, this is particularly true for men and for boys you know you know in the in the book i talk about a researcher at new york university named niobe way and what was really striking about niobe and her research is that she looked at relationships in young boys and girls and realized that when they're young really really young, like early in elementary school, they actually talk about relationships the same way. They talk about loving their friends, talk about missing them dearly. They talk about not being able to live without their closest friends. But as they get older, boys diverge and they stop talking about their friends like that. They start buying into the model of masculinity

that we've told young boys they have to adhere to to be a real man. And that model tells them that the real men aren't dependent on other people. The real men don't show emotions. And real men don't really feel other emotions. The only permissible emotion to feel if you're a real man is anger. And this is very destructive for young boys. The reason it's so destructive is because human beings weren't meant to shut out feelings like that. We are complex beings. We are both emotional beings, we're intellectual beings, but our head and heart are both part of how we operate. And when we squash that part of a young boy's existence and tell them it's not okay to feel, that it's not okay to express love, that's very damaging. And I don't think it's a coincidence that we see such higher rates of suicide among men compared to women. I don't think it's surprising that we see such high rates of loneliness

in men as well. But to me, this comes back to this idea of where do we put emotions and our emotional well-being in the larger picture of what's important to us and to our health. And if we value emotions, if we value love and see it as a source of strength and not a source of weakness, I think that changes how we approach our lives. I think it changes how we communicate and what we express. And this book is, and it began about loneliness, but it became a book about social connection and the extraordinary power of social connection to heal and to bring us together.

And social connection at its heart is really about love. We don't talk about love often enough. We feel squeamish when we when we discuss the subject we feel it's just this should be relegated to rom-coms and to novels but the reality is that you know as a doctor who's prescribed many medicines over the years i can't think of something more powerful as a force for healing than love. And the greatest part about it is that we all have the ability to dispense that healing, to receive that healing from others because it is our birthright to give and receive love. It may have been buried under layers of cynicism and fear and self-doubt,

love. It may have been buried under layers of cynicism and fear and self-doubt, but it's always there. The same instincts and power that we had when we came into this world as children, that ability to be open to others, to love, to recognize the power of our emotions. And I think this is what this moment calls us to do, is to return to who we really are, to recenter our lives and relationship. Yeah. It's just so incredible to hear the way you speak, Vivek. There's such softness, there's such wisdom. You know, I can't help but think how lucky America, the United States, has been to have someone like yourself, someone with that viewpoint on the world as their Surgeon General. I think it really is incredible. It's a very holistic worldview. It's a very humble worldview. And, you know, it's funny, you know, I wanted to talk about technology. Maybe we will do

at some point during this conversation, but I'm feeling an intense connection to you, even though I'm seeing you through a screen and hearing you via this earpiece. Of course, I would have loved to be doing this conversation face-to-face in a room with you, where I could see your eyes and I can, you know, feel it in a different way. But you know what? We wouldn't be having this conversation right now if that was the case, right? So, it's incredible. It teaches me what is connection about because you mentioned emotion. What was really striking, I had an idea of where this call might go. It's gone in a completely different direction, which is completely fine with me. But when you shared

your story about your parents and about your struggles at school, I could feel like this deep connection in a heightened way to previously in the call. And I think there's something really magical about that, that when we show vulnerability, when we show our true authentic selves, it is magnetic. People want to lean in. They want to listen. They want to share. You know, I wanted to share with you, you know, you mentioned the things that your family had experienced and then really how incredible it is from an immigrant family, from a village in India, to end up a Surgeon General. I mean, that is incredible. I wanted to share something with you that I don't think I've ever shared publicly before. You know, this idea that, yes, we've experienced racism as a family. My wife's family certainly have in a

massive way when they were younger. And just a few years ago, I was in, this sounds trivial compared to that, but it's something I've never spoken about. And it's this, I was in a meeting at my publishers and it was sometime after the first book, it was the second or the third one, I can't remember which one, but they said, hey, we've got really good distribution for this book i was like oh okay great brilliant um and they said um yeah one of the retailers wouldn't take your last book because they already had an asian doctor who's got a book out so they're not going to take it and again one of the reasons i probably never shared that is because you know there's an insecurity about it. There's a kind of, oh, I am deemed quite successful now by

society's standards. So, why should I complain about something like that? And I'm not complaining, right? I genuinely am not. I'm just sharing with you that, hey, you know what? Your ascent to where you got to is frankly incredible. And my response to that was like, okay, ignore it. Just keep doing your thing. Just keep trying to produce quality, helpful content for people. And things are changing on the back of that. But I wanted to share that. And I think the only reason I felt like sharing that is because you were vulnerable and authentic right at the start. Wow. First, thank you for sharing that. As you were describing that, I was feeling like that visceral pain as well, even though it wasn't me that it happened to. If I can ask you,

why do you think you haven't shared that before publicly? You know, there's probably a deep insecurity somewhere. There's probably a fear of being judged. There's probably an element where I learned from my dad, you know, dad came over, faced all kinds of racism in his career, but he never told me about it until a few months before he died on his deathbed when I really would, he would open up to me is only when he mentioned it. So, his entire life, he never complained once. But when you hear what had happened to him, you'd be like, why didn't he share that? Why did he not? And I guess there's a lot of that programming in me still that bit by bit I'm trying to undo because I'm not asking for sympathy, right? I enjoy my life. I've got a great life you know i have um but i guess on some level i felt that sharing that people would judge me and um yeah those are the thoughts that come into mind at the moment gosh i mean this resonates so deeply because I think you and I think I'm the same way, and I think so many of us are, in that we feel a sense of shame at these moments where we feel othered. And even though it's not our fault, even though in some ways we may be the recipient of somebody else's destructive thinking or destructive actions,

somehow it feels like maybe it's a reflection of us. And I think about why I didn't share so many of the difficult experiences that I went through of being bullied and experiencing racism earlier in life. And I think part of it is that I felt like it says something about me that is not favorable or like it says something about me that is that is not favorable or somehow it's my fault and that shame and embarrassment that accompanies difficult experiences like this is I think it can be really destructive um you know my parents also encountered a great deal of racism when they left India.

And I would often be surprised as I grew up about how a story would leak out here or there. And I would realize how poorly they were treated. But it would happen by accident because I heard them maybe mentioning it to a friend who was there at the time when they were catching up on the phone. And I would think, why didn't they ever say that to me before? How come they never talked to my sister and me about those experiences they had? But I think they're really hard to talk about. But I think when we, I think I realized when we bottle up shame, it eats us up on the inside. And when other people approach us in authentic, vulnerable moments, as people have done with me, what they do in those moments is they give me permission

to step up and to be myself in all of my glory and flaws. They give me permission to expose my jagged edges and my imperfections and my doubts. And that, I think, is, as you so powerfully said, that is the power of vulnerability. Being vulnerable is about being real. That's how I think about it. And because we've created an expectation, particularly for young people, that they have to build and preserve a brand, and they have to cultivate that brand.

What we're essentially telling them is to be somebody that's not always them. And that can be just really harmful over time. So I think one of the greatest gifts we can give other people is the gift of vulnerability. We can demonstrate that vulnerability, and by doing so, we invite them. We invite them in to be themselves in a space without judgment. And that can be extraordinarily healing. That's why I often, in medicine,

and I wonder if this may have been your experience too, but when I was training in medicine, our emphasis was on diagnostics and therapeutics, right? Figure out what the illness is, figure out the right medication or treatment strategy. But there were times where we couldn't figure it out. Or when we did figure out the diagnosis, but there was no treatment.

And in those moments, all we had was the ability to sit down next to a patient, to hold their hand, and to have a conversation. And ironically, it was in those moments that I would often be reminded of just how healing, true, authentic, real conversation can be. Yeah. And I would think, gosh, i should have been doing this much earlier not just when there is no other option because it turns out yeah it's it's incredible and um very much echoes my own experience and and it's something also that on a slight tangent is one of

the one of the problems i think of the health discussions that take place today is, you know, there's a real distinction between a lot of researchers and a lot of clinicians. Not everything can be explained in the literature on the blood test. There's something about that human interaction. There's something about what is the connection like between healthcare professional and patient that makes such a difference i'm looking at a lot of evidence now showing that that really can actually influence outcomes as well and i think um i think sometimes we're a bit too black and white when we talk about health that we talk about well-being um and you know i fully appreciate i'm talking to an ex-surgeon general about this but i

wonder what your thoughts might be on that i think we discount the impact of human relationships on health and we focus increasingly on the impact of technology and medications and other innovations those innovations are extremely important, but I do think that we have allowed the power of human interactions to fall behind. And you know where you see that reflected is in the reimbursement system in U.S. healthcare. In the United States, the healthcare system, at least traditionally speaking,

has been happy to reimburse you for what you do to patients in terms of procedures and prescriptions. But I still remember as a child opening up letters that my father, a primary care doctor, would receive from insurance companies, chastising him for spending too much time with his patients. What he was doing is he was spending time listening to them and talking to them. He was building relationship, recognizing how important that was to the therapeutic process, but that wasn't valued in the larger healthcare apparatus. And I think because we've neglected that, it's not just impacted what patients and clinicians do with each other but it's also affected the questions we ask patients and what we probe into in their lives and I realize now that it was perhaps important much more important for me to put more time

into asking a patient about their relationships to understand what was going on with their overall health than to ask them perhaps some of the other questions that I frequently ask during interviews. partial snapshot of patients' lives for much of my career as a doctor, because I hadn't fully appreciated just how important social relationships were to their overall health. But this is an opportunity to change that. And I think when I think about, I think often about why did I write this book? And initially I wrote it because I had come across a topic that I felt was extraordinarily consequential to our health, but also to our way of life. Recognizing that loneliness has profound implications for not only our health, but also our performance in school and in the workplace. And even profound implications for our ability to dialogue as a community and for our politics. But now I think more and more about the people that I wrote it for. And I wrote this book for the doctors and nurses who suspected that there was something

more in the therapeutic process than they were being taught in school. I wrote this for the parents who were looking at their kids and were wondering if their use of technology was in fact contributing to more loneliness or not. And I realized more and more that I also wrote it just for the everyday person who leads an extraordinarily busy life and who suspects in the back of their head that they need to be doing more with their friends. They need more community, but they're not quite sure how to buck the status quo, how to change their lives in a way that will actually open up space for those relationships. All of us on some level are trying to figure out how to put people back into our lives,

how to recenter ourselves in a relationship. And our circumstances may be very different. Our means may be different. But the struggle is real for so many of us. And I think because we don't talk about it, because we so often feel that the image we have to portray to others is one of an individual who is content, whose life is good, who's got plenty of friends and social opportunities, we lose those moments of vulnerability, those opportunities to be real with each other. And so loneliness persists at high levels in the population, but it does so in an invisible manner. It also is invisible because as I think of it, it's the great masquerader. Loneliness doesn't always look like a person sitting in the corner of a room by themselves. It can look like irritability and anger.

It can look like depression. It can look like withdrawal. It can look like somebody whose sleep is suddenly disturbed, like somebody whose focus is suddenly off. Loneliness can look like different things because what it is in our lives is a stressor. And that stress manifests differently in different people. Anyway, all this just to say that if we come out of this pandemic, if we come out of this moment as a world being more aware of the importance of our social health, I think we will have taken a step forward to be able to create healthier lives and also a more resilient society. Yeah, absolutely, for sure. And just to add to what you

were saying there, loneliness does show up in many different ways. In fact, the more I've been reflecting on this, the more I think you can make a case that loneliness is behind many different ailments that end up in my or your consultation room. Yes, of course, the obvious ones, depression, anxiety, maybe insomnia, addictions to alcohol, drugs, but even things that we don't think about. Obesity, right? I've been thinking a lot about obesity recently, and the conversation around obesity is always about what people should be eating, right? But most people know by now, there's a bit of debate on a couple of things, but by and large, most people know the general principles. It's why are they eating it in the first place? And I've seen more and more, the more I tap into this, the more I realise that people are feeling lonely. So, when you feel lonely in the evening, what do you go to? Well, you might go to alcohol, you might go to a packet of chocolate biscuits in your cupboard,

you might go to chips or crisps. Simply telling those people, you shouldn't be eating that, eat something else, I don't think is the solution. It's clearly not the solution because we've tried that. And I really think loneliness permeates into everything that I see, which is why I think you might be at the root of the root of the root here in terms of one of those most fundamental pieces of the puzzle that we need to fix in health. I also want to add that you mentioned in your book, I know, a bit of Dan Boettner's work. And I've, you know, very lucky I've got to know Dan over the last couple of years. And I also write about that concept of Moai mates. He calls them Moai friends, I call them Moai mates in one of my books. And this idea that in Okinawa,

they have these five friends, friends for life that look after you physically, emotionally, mentally, financially. And I think it's a really useful thing for people to reflect on, you know, do they have any in their own life? I mean, I think I've got about five, I think, those people who, those people who, those people who, yeah, when the good times, you want to call them up and share them, but also when you're feeling really low or something bad has happened, who can you phone up and not put a mask on? Who can you phone up and actually literally let it out to? And because that authenticity, I think, is what is so sorely missing at the moment. Gosh, well, I'm glad you have those five people in your life.

And kudos to you for recognizing just how valuable they are and how real you can be around them. I think many people struggle with finding those intimate connections and with maintaining them in their lives. I think Moai's are an extraordinary concept. And I learned about Moai's from Dan and went to visit one of his blue zones that he had created in California and saw Moai in action. But inspired by that, but also driven by my own struggles with loneliness, I built my own Moai. I was at a conference in 2018, and I was with these two other friends who I'd loved dearly but rarely see. And we would always have the same conversation whenever we met, which was, gosh, I wish we saw each other more. Wouldn't it be great if we all lived in the same place?

All the meanwhile, we knew that our jobs weren't changing and our families were staying where they were. At the end of that walk, though, around the lake, we realized that all of us had also been struggling with the sense of being isolated, of not having enough community. We were lonely. And I just said to them, I was like, what if we do this? What if we just form a pact? That the three of us are going to a video conference once a month together. That in between, if something arises that we want to talk about, that we're going to text or just call. And if the other person can't pick up, that's okay.

But we leave a message so they can hear our voice. We're going to make a commitment to be there for each other. And we're also going to make one other commitment, which is to be real with each other, to talk about the things that we don't normally talk about with friends, but which are actually on all of our minds, our health, our relationships, our finances. And I'll tell you that that Moai,

with my two brothers, Sunny and Dave, that became a lifeline for me. Those conversations helped me make sense of daily difficult moments. The three of us all helped each other in the year that followed to make critical decisions about career, making sure that we were doing so in a way that was consistent with our deeper values. We held each other to account in the most kind and loving of ways, but in ways that made a profound impact on the direction we took. And I just feel so grateful for them. But I realized that we had to create a bit of structure to that commitment, to our relationship with each other, in order to make sure that we held on to it. We had to make an explicit commitment to each other. competing priorities, when our time is continually being siphoned off by work commitments, by technology often, that we sometimes need a little bit more structure in our lives and explicit

commitment than we may have 20 or 30 years ago, when we could reliably know that we were going to run into our neighbors or see our friends at the same gatherings or interact with them with the frequency that we perhaps became used to. Our lives are speeding up. Our time is filling up. And people are being edged out. That's why we've got to make explicit commitments to people in our relationships. And when we do, gosh, a little bit of time goes a long way. Yeah.

And that's what I experienced. Well, Vivek, thank you for sharing that thank you for making time um to talk to me today um i really really hope at some point when these restrictions get lifted and things start to return a bit more to some aspects of normality compared to what we what we used to know i very much hope we get to meet face to face in person at some point. If you're ever over in the UK, I'll be sure to make an effort to come out and see you wherever you are. And maybe next time I'm in the States, we could see if we can make that happen. This podcast is called Feel Better, Live More, because I passionately believe when people feel

better in themselves, they get more out of their lives.'ve given some great tips today uh vivek um i wonder right at the end just as a even if it's just one i know you have a call after this i don't want to i don't want to keep you um but i always like to leave my listeners with some practical actionable tips that they can think about applying into their own lives immediately so I wonder if you could share a bit more of your wisdom right at the end of our conversation. Sure. Well, thanks, Rangan. Well, you know, I think the good news is that there are small things that we can do that make a big difference in how connected we feel in life. And some of these, you know, summarize what we've talked on before, don't have to take a lot of time. We can spend a few minutes each day reaching out to people we love. We can make a commitment to focusing on people when we're talking to them and eliminating

distraction like technology, even if that means we talk to them for a shorter period of time. Make that time count. We can look for ways to serve others, recognizing that service is a powerful antidote to loneliness, and simply calling people to check on them to see how they're doing is an act of service. But I also want to say that it's important for us to find a few minutes for solitude each day. Solitude is when we reconnect with ourselves. It's when we let the noise around us settle. when we reconnect with ourselves. It's when we let the noise around us settle. It's when we make sense of the world, when we reground ourselves. And when we approach other people from a place

of groundedness and peace, we're better able to connect with them, to listen to them, to focus on them. That time of solitude doesn't have to be complicated. It can be a few minutes that we spend in nature. It can be a few minutes spent remembering a few things that we're grateful for, or meditating, or praying, or reading. But that time is deeply renewing, and it's also time that's increasingly scarce in the modern day when technology can often eat up all the white space in our lives. modern day when technology can often eat up all the white space in our lives. The truth is when you look at all of this, you realize that the effort to create a more deeply connected life is not an effort to transform us into something we're not. It's an effort to return us to who we intrinsically are, beings that need each other, beings that in moments of crisis look out for each

other. I don't believe that our intrinsic nature is to be adversarial or selfish. I think you see our true nature in moments of great crisis. And what I see are people reaching out to each other, taking care of each other, and sometimes doing so even at great personal risk. I will always remember the story of 9-11, which is one of the lesser known stories about the 9-11 boatlift. When the planes hit the Twin Towers in New York City in 2001. The people who fled from that building didn't know what direction to run in. They wanted to flee north, which is where safety lay.

But many fled south because they couldn't see where they were going. And thousands and thousands of people ended up on the southern tip of Manhattan with the waters of the Hudson in front of them and with no clear path to safety. In that moment, the United States Coast Guard recognized that they had a serious problem on their hands, and that they didn't have the capacity to bring in enough boats quickly enough to rescue everyone.

So what they did is something they had never done before, which is they issued this unprecedented call for a civilian boat rescue. They asked civilian boats to come toward Manhattan and rescue people. Now in that moment, when you're seeing an inferno growing, when you're seeing massive towers collapse and people screaming in fear, Do you run toward the fire or do you run away from the fire? Well, I'll tell you that within minutes of that call, there were scores of boats streaking toward Manhattan. These are people who brought, soot-covered, scared residents on board, gave them water, ferried them to safety. But what they did is they put themselves in harm's way. They ran toward the fire.

And to me, that is what we do as human beings. We reach for love, for compassion, for generosity intrinsically. And that's what we're called to do right now. If I had a single credo for this book, it would be three simple words. It would be put people first. When we put people first in our own lives, it affects our choices about where we put our time and attention. When we put people first as a society, it affects how we design workplaces and schools, how we have public dialogue, how we shape public policy. And that's why the quest to build a more socially connected world, the quest to strengthen human connection

is not just about health. It's about all parts of our lives. It's about building a stronger society. And that's what I want, not just for us, but it's what I want for my kids. I look at my children so innocent and so beautiful and so just naturally loving, and I want to protect them for the rest of their lives, but I know that I can't. I know that they are going to rely on the people that they meet around the country and around the world. They're going to rely on the institutions that we have in society to support them when they stumble, to be understanding when they make a mistake. when they stumble, to be understanding when they make a mistake. That only happens if we're centered on people, if we recognize the power of love and compassion, and if we make those

priorities in our culture as well as our individual lives. Yeah, so beautiful, so powerful, and a wonderful place to finish our conversation. Vivek, you're an incredible human being. The book is insightful. It's compassionate. It's an absolute must read. I really hope everyone listens. This goes out and gets a copy and reads it and really absorbs it.

Vivek, thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your day. And I look forward to next time we get the opportunity to speak together. I will look forward to it as well. And as I'm looking at you, Rangan, I keep having this feeling that you're a brother and you're a friend. And so I hope we will stay in touch. I hope we'll see each other often.

And if I can ever support you in any of the extraordinary work that you're doing to bring more happiness and joy to the world, please don't hesitate to reach out. Thanks so much. What a powerful conversation. I genuinely found Vivette to be one of the most humble, authentic and intuitive people I've ever spoken to on my show. What did you take from the conversation? You see, for me, it was about the power of vulnerability. What happens when we're truly vulnerable and authentic with those around us? What I shared with Vivek about my own experience

at my publishers, about the fact that some retailers wouldn't stock my book because they already had a book out there by an Indian doctor. Honestly, I think it's something that I had suppressed. I probably wasn't aware of how much that affected me and how buried deep inside me it was. And I think since opening up to Vivek about that, over the past few weeks, a lot of feelings have come up for me in terms of self-worth, wanting to be accepted, and even shame. And I really feel that the power of that conversation was Vivek opening up to me, which created the space for me to want to open up with him. And I think the journey I've been going on since I had that conversation

is leading to a much deeper understanding of myself. And I'm starting to figure out where some of my personality traits come from. And yeah, I'll always be grateful to Vivek for allowing me to share that. And yeah, I hope you found value in hearing a vulnerable, authentic conversation. As always, I would ask you to think about what you can take from today's conversation. I always ask people to pick one thing because if you try and pick more than that, it can sometimes become a bit overwhelming. But I really feel there were so many things to consider, whether it's about being undistracted when we're with the people that

mean the world to us, how we can spend just a few minutes each day connecting with others, how service is an antidote to loneliness. And really, I would ask you to have a little think about your own life. Who are those friends? Who are those contacts you have who you can truly be authentic with, that you can have maskless conversations with? And then if you are lucky enough to have people like that in your life, are you truly maskless when you speak to them? Or do you hold back for fear of being judged? Because I really think there is such power in having those conversations. As always, do let us know on social media what you thought of today's episode and to find out more information on Vivek, his social media channels, some brilliant articles that he's

written in the press and in the media, do check out the show notes page, which is drchastity.com forward slash 114. His new book really is wonderful. And if you're struggling to access books at the moment, don't forget about the audio book. It's a great option for people at the moment. And actually, I listened to most of his book in that particular format. If you like what we discussed about friendship, and if you're interested in how I define a true authentic friendship you can read a whole chapter on this in my second book The Stress Solution. Again you can get this in paperback, ebook or as an audiobook which I am narrating. Don't forget this episode like all of my episodes is available to watch on YouTube. Please do let people close to you

know about this. If you feel they'd like the conversations, but don't listen to audio podcasts, this is how my own mum listens and watches the conversations. She's really not well-acquired with audio podcasts, but she watches a lot of them on YouTube. And my team and I have also put together a Feel Better Live More short clip playlist on YouTube. So you get these little short clips from previous episodes, but if a greatest hits, if you will. And I think if you're a fan of the show,

if you jump onto that playlist, I think you'll enjoy some of those highlights. A big thank you as always to Vedanta Chastity for producing this week's podcast and to Richard Hughes for audio engineering. That is it for today. I hope you have a fabulous week. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back in one week's time with my latest conversation. Remember, you are the architect of your own health making lifestyle change is always worth it because when you feel better you live more i'll see you next time Thank you.