Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #126 How to Win at Life Without Losing Yourself with Dr Pippa Grange

Episode Date: October 6, 2020

Today’s episode is all about fear and how it holds us back in all aspects of our life. My guest is psychologist, Dr Pippa Grange, who has been hailed by the media ‘the doctor who helped transform the England football team’. Pippa is also author of the compelling book, Fear Less: How to Win at Life Without Losing Yourself. Fear is one of our body’s natural early warning systems. It alerts us when we’re under threat and need to take action. A bit like stress or inflammation, it’s something that’s useful to us in certain circumstances. But not when it becomes chronic and disrupts our entire sense of wellbeing. Pippa believes that behind every negative emotion, is the fear that we are not good enough. She sees fear as ‘the constant companion’ in our lives. Whether it manifests as loneliness, jealousy, dissatisfaction, perfectionism, judgement or shame, the root cause is actually the same. We discuss how we can all leave fear behind and gain what Pippa calls ‘mental freedom.’ We delve into how shame evolves in childhood, and how we need to shake out some of the narratives of how we ‘should’ behave. We also talk about how so many of us conform to societal ideals in order to avoid criticism but in so doing, we can strip ourselves of who we really are. In fact, by pretending to be someone else, Pippa believes we are only performing at life, not living it. We explore the concept of a ‘scarcity mindset’ – the false idea that there’s not enough to go around, whether that be love, success, respect or admiration. We also talk about how schools would be the best place to instil these ideas, and help our children understand that winning and losing are just outcomes and not their worth. Finally, Pippa explains how by noticing and sitting with our own fears, we can find our real passions and deeper fulfilment. This conversation is full of wisdom and insight and I am sure you are going to really enjoy it! Show notes available at drchatterjee.com/126 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.

There's a poverty in uniformity. So when we try and make everybody cookie cutter the same, when we have this sort of central idea of what good looks like or what enough looks like, and everybody's moving to that middle ground, I think it's just, it strips us of the richness of our humanness, of everything that we are, of the spirit in a way. And for me, when we just try and conform to one archetype, one way of being, what a loss because we have to trim off all these slightly untidy edges that are where all the gorgeousness is in people. Hi, my name is Rangan Chasji. Welcome to Feel Better Live More. Ganchasji. Welcome to Feel Better Live More. Hey guys, welcome to the podcast. This is episode 126.

I've been really excited about releasing this conversation today. I think it is relevant for every single one of us and it's all all about fear, and in particular, how fear can hold us back in all aspects of our life. And my guest is the wonderful Dr. Pippa Grange, who the British media have called the doctor who helped transform the England football team. You see, Pippa is a highly sought-after psychologist, but she's also the author of one of my very favourite books over the past few years, Fearless, How to Win at Life Without Losing Yourself. Now, Pippa believes that behind every negative emotion is the fear that we are not good enough. She sees fear as the constant companion in our lives. Whether it manifests as loneliness, jealousy, dissatisfaction, perfectionism, judgment, or shame, the root cause is actually the same. And we discuss

how we can all leave fear behind and gain what Pippa calls mental freedom. We discuss shame, where it comes from, and what we can do about it. But we also talk about how many of us try to conform to society's ideals in order to avoid criticism. But in doing so, we can strip ourselves of who we really are. In fact, by pretending to be someone else, Pippa believes we are only performing at life, not living it. We also explore the important but under-discussed concept of the scarcity mindset, the false idea that there's not enough to go around, whether that be love, success, respect, or admiration. And we also discuss something that I am really, really passionate about. How we can involve schools in instilling these ideas in kids

and help them understand that winning and losing are just outcomes. They're not their entire worth. This is an eye-opening conversation that is full of wisdom and insight, and I am sure that you are going to really, really enjoy it. And now for my conversation with the wonderful, the inspirational Dr. Pippa Gwenge. I've got to be honest, I can't think of a more perfect guest. And that's for two reasons. Reason one, it's a fellow Northerner, which is fantastic. it's a fellow northerner which is fantastic but also because since I got a copy of your book an early copy I'm gonna guess it was sort of April May time I just couldn't put it down I honestly think it's one of the best books I read in the past few years it's incredible and so thank you very much for making some time to come to the studio today. Thank you so much. I'm thrilled you liked it. I can't wait to get into what you thought.

Yeah, well, we'll do that for sure. Now the book is called Fear Less. And it's interesting for me that you're not asking people to become fearless. You just want them to fear less. and i think it's an important distinction because for me fear on one level is a natural human emotion so why did you call the book fearless really if we were fearless um if we were if we had the absence of fear we'd be in trouble If we had the absence of fear, we'd be in trouble. Fear is an early warning system, a very natural early warning system. And if we were to live without fear, we wouldn't get the indicators that we need. We wouldn't get the hazard lights that tell us that we need to respond to something that may be a threat or needs our action.

So we don't want to be fearless. We want to be able to keep fear at the right size. We want to be able to have enough control over it that we don't let it take up all the space at the table. And so I think an objective of being able to create enough space where you don't have fear where you have mental freedom is a brilliant objective but but not only do we not want to be fearless it's not possible yeah it's natural it is natural and i think we really need to unpack that today because

like i was thinking about this i went for a walk this morning and I was thinking, when I'm crossing a road, if there's a car coming towards me, I sort of want that fear. I want fear to alter my course of action, to teach me that actually standing in the middle of a road with a car coming is not actually that helpful for me. And it's very unhelpful. And I'm just sort of wondering, like, fear can be helpful, but and it's very unhelpful. And I'm just sort of wondering, like fear can be helpful, but it can also be unhelpful. So in some ways I think about it a

little bit like inflammation in the body. So a little bit of inflammation, like I sprained my ankle, it gets red. To help my ankle recover is good inflammation. But when we have the sort of silent, chronic, unresolved inflammation on a daily basis, when in some ways our body is reacting to the way we're living our lives, that's when it becomes long-term and problematic. Do you see fear in a similar way to that? That's a great metaphor. You know, I've thought about it in terms of pain, but inflammation's a fantastic way of looking at it. And I love that because let's think about what fear is. It is a response. So fear is a natural instinctive response to something that might be wrong. Something's up. And when we feel it

and observe it, we need to take action to deal with that. That's what I call in the book, in the moment fear. The problem, like chronic inflammation, is where we don't sufficiently turn down the volume and we allow it to become chronic and embedded culturally and personally into the way that we go about life. So it becomes this constant companion, particularly as I talk about the fear of not being good enough, this constant companion in life that we don't even see well enough to know how to turn off. So it's not just about being able to turn it

down. We don't even notice it. Excuse me. We don't even see it well enough to turn it down. We don't even notice it, excuse me, we don't even see it well enough to turn it down. And that's what I want to do with the book to try and get people to actually see the real stuff. So they're working on the real stuff. Yeah. I think that's the thing as I have been rereading the book, the sentiment that comes across to me more than anything is that you're helping people gain awareness. You're almost shining a light on something that is there that people don't realize is there. But early on in the book, you said that you mentioned shame, inadequacy, loneliness, jealousy, dissatisfaction, you know, five very powerful sentiments that I think many of us feel on a daily basis. I think you're saying that what unifies them all is an underlying fear.

Yes. It's like fear is the root. Shame's a little, I'll put shame to one side because that's kind of a much trickier, more complex one, but on the others, perfectionism, sort of superiority, judgment, jealousy, as you said, the root of all of that is fear and fear of not being good enough, fear of being rejected, being unlovable, being abandoned, which is sort of just an absolutely primal fear. We have two massive primal fears in life. One is death, of course, and the end of our own existence. And the other is abandonment. And in our contemporary lives, the way that that plays out for us now is I'm not going to be good enough. Not that I'm actually going to be abandoned, but I'm not going to be good enough. I might be outcast socially. I might be rejected in some way.

And that's a chronic background noise, a chronic background fear that I think is so pervasive in our lives that's dramatic. And for me, where we see the other emotional expressions like self-criticism, let's say, but can be equally towards others or jealousy, they're just manifestations and expressions of what is underneath the root cause is fear. Yeah. I mean, thanks for that. And I've got to say, since I read your book, I think I've really been thinking about this as an idea quite a lot. I've really been thinking, I mean, I've been moving in the last couple of years, especially, it's've been really on a journey over my career.

I think I'm sure you have as I'm interested how you practice has changed since you qualified to now. But I've certainly evolved how I treat my patients, how I talk to them as I understand more. And I really feel that their emotional health, the way they view their condition, the way they view their disease, the way they view their life, plays a massive role in not only how do they cope with what they've got, but sometimes it influences the development offered in the first place. I've found that really, really interesting. Now, you have worked, Pippa, with some of the most successful people in society, certainly by society's definition of success, which we can sort of unpack. But you also said, you know, a few minutes ago, a feeling of not being good enough is behind a lot of this.

And there is such insight in this book that I feel that it can't just be from the papers you've read and the education you've been given. There's a strong feeling I get that you have been on a personal journey with this yourself. And then just before you arrived today, I was looking at the acknowledgements in your book at the end. And it was sort of there right in front of me when you were saying, even after you helped the England football team, it's widely mentioned that you helped them get to the semifinals. But even with that, in inverted commas, success, you still felt a degree of imposter syndrome about writing a book. Hmm book i love that you've brought this up because um it gives us the opportunity to look at it on two levels firstly it's what happens in my own mind um you know in my sense of imposter or where i'm at and do i actually

have the authority or um you know am i am i credible enough or wise enough to share advice or wisdom or guidance or be an ally to somebody walking along a journey around their own emotions? Which I think, I hope that most people working in health or in psychology maintain a bit of that. I hope that they keep a bit of that because it's a nice mirror to hold up. a bit of that because it's a nice mirror to hold up. But it can also become more than a humility and it can hamstring you to think I'm not good enough. And there's a distinction we can dig into. But the other side also is that it's cultural. So even when you are, you know, maybe you've experienced this yourself as you moved into public life from sort of a GP life, there is a sense of, I think this is where shame comes in, there's a sense of like, do I have permission to speak out loud, to share what I have worked out, you know, or will there be a sort of a sense of you better keep your head down, you know, and that is also part of the fear of not being good enough. So, you know, culturally,

we're very heavily conditioned to react, to be jumpy towards shame. And shame comes in at us from being infants. That's not a natural, you know, it comes deep from our unconscious, but it's not natural in the way that a fear energy is a natural response. Shame is completely learned. So there's the cultural permission to feel, am I good enough to speak? Or am I going to get, you know, have I earned enough stripes to be in a public domain speaking? And then there's the personal kind of level of acceptance and, you know, the ability to step beyond that and say, well, if I've got something to share that might be useful, why would I not? Yeah it's really powerful this because hearing what you said you sort of

asked me the question have I felt it in some ways from going more from being a GP in a practice every day to sort of sharing my work week where now a lot of what I do is about I was going to say educating the public but I prefer inspiring and empowering the public rather than education, I think is what I do, or I certainly try to do. And I have felt a huge degree of imposter syndrome the whole way through. I mean, even over the last couple of days when I'm trying to finish off the edits for my fourth book, which is going to be on, well, which is a compassionate approach to weight loss, which will come out at the end of the year, I've been questioning myself thinking, you know, are you, you know, are you an expert in this area to write about it? You know, what gives you

the right to do this? Have you been on that journey yourself? And I'm thinking, you know, on a day where you've not slept so well and things aren't going well, you can easily fall into that. And then you can flip that on another day where you feel good. You think, well, hold on. I've been working, seeing people for nearly 20 years now. I've got such a wealth of experience to share with people. So yeah, I think all people suffer from this. Well, a lot of people suffer from this. And I really like what you said, you know, fear is natural, but shame is not. So what happens then, Pippa, right? So let's say this all starts off at a root with fear. So something happens, I'm guessing for a lot of us, it's in our childhoods,

we get scared. Then what happens in the body? When does it become shame? When does it become jealousy? When does it become inadequacy? Is it our interpretation of the initial primal fear? Is that what happens? Yes. Basically, as mammals, we're probably the most vulnerable for the longest in terms of when we're born, we're utterly helpless. Other mammals have their own resources and their own capabilities much quicker than we do. And it's kind of at least nine months or more before we can really communicate at a level that lets anybody know that we have got a need. So we're utterly dependent on caregivers for a very long time. So our fear faculties, our fear responses in what I describe simplistically as the old circuitry in our brain, including the amygdala, that's all fully developed before we're born.

So it's there before any of our other resources like the ability to speak or to make ourselves heard, our needs heard, that's all already there. So we're primed to feel fear and act quickly on the basis of it. And then right through our childhood, we get messages. Now, these are not just personal. These are absolutely culturally embedded messages. And not just about your primary caregiver, of course, that's central, but we get messages the whole time, you know, look right, stand straight, don't do it that way, do it this way. This is what a little girl should be, et cetera. There's messages everywhere about what good enough is, how you become a good person. And they are, if not unpacked and if not surrounded by compassion and loads of love and loads of kindness, they readily compound to become shame. And shame for me is the

deadliest of our emotions. I would say as deadly as deadly as hate um i i think that has the biggest impact on our life and and you know fear and shame come very close together the difference is fear in its essence is natural when we don't um when we don't know how to turn it down it becomes pervasive and shame comes in. Yeah. You mentioned we have these messages. So let's say a little girl gets told that they should behave like this. And I guess that's something I've seen firsthand within my family. So my mum who grew up in India has had a very, I wouldn't say fix. She's got some views on how a girl should behave. And my wife and I are very particular with not instilling those in our children, saying you can be whatever you want, you don't have to act a certain way, you act in a way that feels

right to you. And there's often a bit of friction sometimes when my daughter goes around to mums and mum says, oh, you know, you're speaking really loudly, you know, a little girl shouldn't do that. And she actually screams even more back to almost sort of stand her ground that who says, which I'm really pleased about because it's not as if my mum doesn't love her. She has a different narrative around what a girl should do. And I know from reading some of your biographies and some things about you that you are very passionate about empowering women. And I wonder if we can maybe just explore why that is and how that sort of plays into the fact that girls at a young age are often taught to behave and act a certain way?

The reason I'm passionate about women and girls is because I thoroughly believe in them. You know, I am under no illusion that there's anything less about a woman or a girl than a man or a boy, but we're socially conditioned still to have some of that kicking around in the background. And the idea that girls behave in a certain way or girls can do certain things, there's some really old narratives, some really old ideas that we just haven't shook out yet. We just haven't really given them another look for contemporary 2020 society and they don't work anymore. So we, you know, I'm not sure they ever did, but they certainly don't now. And, you know, we still sort of have them, even if it's just quietly or toned down in the background, they're still there. That's why there's a gender pay gap.

That's why there's a, you know, a glass ceiling, or that's why little girls are supposed to look a certain way or that's why women are far too concerned about their physical presentation in a way that diminishes confidence or stops them perhaps being as bold as they might naturally be. and I would love us to get to a place where women and girls can just really flourish because they don't have that kicking in the background kicking around in the background this idea that they if they behave a certain way they'll be less they won't be good enough yeah I guess girls have a specific set of societal pressures to overcome but I guess that feeling that you need to almost suppress who you are on the inside and present a different view to the world is endemic across society. And guys and boys also face that. I will be super mindful in a very different way. I understand that. But there's a mindful in a very different way i understand that um but but but there's a section in your book i think about uniformity and i think there was something in it

i think is it a poverty there's a poverty of i mean perhaps you could explain what you said rather than me trying to remember yeah um i'm talking about a pop there's a poverty in uniformity so when we try and make everybody cookie cutter the same, when we have this sort of central idea of what good looks like or what enough looks like and everybody's moving to that middle ground, I think it's just it strips us of the richness of our humanness, of everything that we are, of the spirit in a way. And for me, when we just try and conform to one archetype, one way of being, what a loss because we have to trim off all these

slightly untidy edges where all the gorgeousness is in people. And I think that's such a shame. I see that a lot in sport. Yeah. I mean, I think you're being very kind when you think that's such a shame. I see that a lot in sport. Yeah. I mean, I think you're being very kind when you say it's such a shame, actually, because I think it's problematic. I think it's deeply problematic. And, you know, as a parent of two young children who you've met on your way in today, you know, how I and my wife bring them up is probably the most important thing to me. And really, I want them to flourish into independent thinkers who feel they can express themselves in whatever way they choose to. It was so interesting that my son, right, I remember this as, I think it's a two, three-year-old, he used to love the color pink, right? Love it. He would always say, yeah, daddy, that's my favorite color. Then he rocks up to school. Within two or three months of being in

reception at his first school, suddenly, oh, you know, pink's a girl's color, you know? And it's a small thing, but it's prevalent everywhere. So now, you know, it's trying to, if pink is your favorite color, I'd love him to be able to express that. And I want to unpack that, but also want to unpack, what do you think about school uniforms? Because uniforms on one level allow equality, right, at school. But then the flip side to that might be, and I don't know the answer to this, then the flip side to that might be and i don't know the answer to this i i'd welcome your opinion on this can they in some ways be problematic in that they maybe condition us into thinking we have to look and be the same as everyone else yeah that's a great question um i think you know when we were growing up we didn't have any money. It was tough times. And I remember that I used

to look forward so much to my school uniform, because that would mean that there was, it was sort of a dropping of categorization. It made everybody the same in some ways. But then it comes in, you know, who's got the most expensive trainers kind of thing. So it all goes to the side anyway. But you can look at this even in terms of like, why do people wear suits and ties? Why do we still do that? What is it about moving to that sort of central model of how you're supposed to be, whether you're a child or an adult, working in a bank kind of thing, you're still doing that same thing that there is this way of being that shuts down so much of ourselves i think it's a shame but you know um the there are probably

that's a it's like a you know it's one of the trappings of how we show ourselves as good enough or the same or proper or professional or you know all these ways of showing ourselves as enough and fitting in and conforming. But I think maybe more importantly is how free we feel to share opinions, to put our views out there, to express what we care about and not have to trim it, tidy it up, hold back so much. That's really where the pain is and the loneliness, I think, for a lot of people. Because the more you hold back from what you really feel, the more you're performing your life, not living it. And that's a problem. I could feel shivers, as you said, that you're performing in your life, not living it. I think that is so powerful, Pippa, because, you know, I see that with society. I see it with

people around me. I see it with my friends. I've seen it with myself, you know, and I've shared this before. One of the most fun things I do in my entire life is this podcast. And I'll explain to you why that is. It's because I really thought, I spent a lot of time this summer thinking about values, personal values. I went off social media for about three weeks. And it was a purposeful intention, not to say that everyone should do. I would never feel arrogant enough to tell someone how they should live their life, but I just like to share what I'm doing and it worked for me. And I was trying to think about what are my personal values in life and are my actions consistent with what I think my values are. But in terms of this podcast, the values are, you know, authenticity, honesty, vulnerability. And I think in many ways,

maybe one of the reasons I started and moved to this more long form conversation is because I think it's what I needed. I think I was, I think for much of my life, I have performed at life. I've not really lived my life. And I really feel these days, I do live my life. I feel I share everything on this show. And it's freeing. You know, it gives you more energy. There's something, what was it I read this morning in your book, you said something about, it was something about energy and how it's draining living someone else's life, right? It's knackering. Yeah. And also just living half of your own. But, you know, I mean, two things in what you said there, Rangan. One is it's working. You're smashing it, doing it authentically, vulnerably. And I would add, you know, when you talk about values like that, also doing the things that bring you joy, you know, what if we did that, you know, but you're also, you've also grown up in a profession,

you know, grown up as an adult, I mean, in one of the professions like me with psychology and, you know, they are very conformist, you know, so if you were in a position now, or if I were in a position now to say, what if what you really wanted to do was just podcast and share wisdom and be an ally to people walking their journeys, you know, because that gave you the most joy. And that you felt was the most purposeful thing you know, that then is, I'm not suggesting that's where you're at, but that then is where there might be that sort of conformity pressure, because you have to have that little bit in your title or your name, as I do with psychology. So this is something I've been thinking about. Right. And you're right, you know, there is this conformist attitude. I won't say attitude. Well, okay, so let's say, for example, I've been in the media for a few years,

and I see with other doctors in the media that when you first go in, you're scared of not saying the wrong thing. So, the motivation often isn't, the desire isn't, I want to say what I really believe, you are in some ways trying to make sure you don't get criticized. It's very different. It's a very different, whereas actually now there's still a little bit of that there, but I'm very, I'm much happier to speak my mind. And that comes from the fact that I think I've done a lot of personal work. And I think all that came from a deep insecurity, which is probably, you know, I would like to think it's gone, but all I can say is it's certainly better, a lot better than it was.

And I think what you said about these professions do need a good shake up. I think, you know, I'll say it, you know, I think some of it's prehistoric, right? I just don't think it's moved along with how people access information. I think social media for all its potential negatives, you know, some of the amazing positives have been that, you know, medical information or good quality information is no longer to preserve of professionals and institutions like universities, right? Everyone can have access. Everyone can educate themselves and empower themselves. I think that is phenomenal. And I actually think, I think certainly within my profession, I feel confident enough these days to

say, I think one of the things that I don't enjoy about being a doctor and identifying myself as a doctor is I actually do feel there's a degree of arrogance. I'm not casting, I'm not looking down on people for that. I'm just trying to share what I observe. But I would imagine that the arrogance comes across, which is, well, you know, you get all these memes like, you know, don't misunderstand your Google search for my six years of training as a doctor. You know, I think, God, that's so arrogant. It's like, you know, people are autonomous individuals who can learn, who can read things and then go and make an educated sort of guess about what might be going on with them. And I, now thinking about the content in your book, I suspect that that sort of outward display of what I consider to be arrogance probably also comes from fear, right?

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if I hadn't had that pat on the back from those in power and the establishment, where would I be? You know, so I think that there's a lot in that that is fear-based. But people don't always, this is one of the things I'd really like to achieve over not just this book, but hopefully long conversations over life. People don't necessarily see where fear is in their thinking. It's disguised, it's sneaky, it transforms itself into other emotional experiences or expressions um and i think that that that sort of superiority is absolutely one of those things of like the model this model is right this way of seeing it is right there's no adjacent possible there's no sort of other um way of seeing health for example One of the things I'm loving at the moment that I'm

reading about is one health. So the idea of, you know, instead of health being a phenomena within your body, within the package of you as one human being, it is an intersection between you, animal species and the planet, you know, which we're kind of seeing right now with COVID, right? So, you know, when I think it's a much more humble, but much more rational actually position to step back and say, well, of course, my health can't be just within my own body. It's ours. It's an us thing, including the planet and other species. So, you know, but that's a very, that gets categorized as woo-woo, that gets into the alternate. And I think, well, that's just because we haven't evolved our thinking enough yet. This zeitgeist we're in was alternate at one point. Yeah. I mean, Pippa, I'm sure that this is why I feel,

it's funny, like I'll share this. I feel a real deep connection to you, even though I never met you until about an hour ago because as I read that book there was so much in it that made me feel something deeply and what you just said about One Health now I haven't thought about it in the term of One Health but something I've been sitting with for a few months is this idea that health has been a very individualistic pursuit like many things in society and can we truly be you know in inverted commas healthy if the planet around us is sick or the people in our community are struggling you know it's and I like that term of one health I've

never really thought about it like that yeah I mean that's a whole new field that's not my term that's it's a magnificent sort of um new venture relatively new venture that's now sort of um on the um is still on the periphery where's it come from where's that the ideology come from i learned it i'm um i'm studying at the moment something called eco psychology whichology, which is about my brilliant, the lecturer that is most formidable for me in that is a woman called Laurie Pye at a Viridis graduate institute in California. And she talks about psychologizing our ecology and ecologizing our psychology, which means basically, instead of us talking about nature, like it was a thing out there, we're nature.

When we talk about human DNA, we talk about who we are as human beings. The actual number of human DNA cells in this thing encapsulated into Rangan at the other end of the table from me here you know the number of human dna cells is less than 40 percent and everything else of you is you know it has some symbiotic into interaction with all sorts of other critters and viruses and bacteria but we don't think about it like there's be 10 things 10 other life forms on your eyelashes right now we're not separate no but culturally we see ourselves as separate health-wise we see ourselves as separate and that's part we have to move away from i to we we have to move away from single ideas to multiple possibilities and i think that's just where we're right at the cusp of now. And for me, some of the reasons we don't step into that curiosity or creativity are fear.

Yeah. There's so many different directions I want to go in. Let's talk about stories. Stories are powerful. It's how I think we learn learn the human brain really seems to connect with stories and you've done a brilliant job talking about various various stories within your book because it really helps to bring these kind of conceptual ideas to life now i would challenge anybody to read your book and not resonate with at least one of those stories, because they're so universal. There'll be one of those which makes you think, wait a minute, there's a bit of me in that, which I found one of the most enjoyable parts of reading it. Why did you put so many stories in? Why do you think stories are powerful?

why did you put so many stories in? Why do you think stories are powerful? And then stories has another meaning, you know, we tell ourselves stories, which you show very powerfully how we can actually start to retell. Yeah, yeah. For me, stories have been there much longer than other forms of communicating. You know, some of the earliest ways that we shared wisdom and they move us at a level that is emotional, spiritual, and intellectual, which is hard to do in other forms of communication. So I can read something like Caroline's story or write something like Caroline's story in the book and I can really feel moved on different levels

of what she experienced um of how poor her behavior was of what you know she created and which one was Caroline remind me Caroline was the LA producer yes but perhaps you could share some of that story because I think it would it's really powerful yeah so, the story of Caroline basically is that she was in a, let's just say an aggressive workplace with not many women in and she was doing very well, but it was kind of like a war mentality at work. She was regularly battle scarred and aggressive herself and had to, you know, in her own own language fight tooth and nail for everything she had so she was in this culture and was it was it a male dominant culture very male dominant culture yeah um but and a very hyper competitive hyper individual culture um

and she brought a new prodigy into um to that space as her girl. And this new person that she brought in was fantastic at what she did, very talented, very creative, but a very different fit. And at one point Caroline had said, you know, I think I need to knock the yoga out of this one. But actually everybody really loved the other girl. And this created what Caroline thought she was going to get was somebody on her side. And what actually happened was it highlighted her isolation even more and created loads more fear for her. And so she lost herself, basically, and she undermined and took the other girl down.

And she created a big drama by spreading rumors about a sexual scandal for her own prodigy who ended up leaving. And it cost Caroline her job and her career for quite some time until she'd found herself and put herself back on track. But fear drove her. It came out as jealousy for her. She was absolutely furiously jealous about her own prodigy. Did she feel that it's almost this this idea that there's only a certain amount of happiness or love out there and so you know at the moment I'm sort of top dog in this industry let's say and then she feels like that and then she feels oh yeah but my new project everyone loves her so therefore they must love me less yeah is that kind of what happens yeah it's a central idea right through the book if somebody is scarcity right this is scarcity mentality

there's only so much to go around you better get your slice and not share it with anybody because you know there's if they have if they have theirs you can't have yours so this sort of idea that if you win, somebody else has to lose, rather than sort of a more abundant mindset, which suggests that if she could have embraced that, it could have changed her own work life and what she was battling and holding onto and what was causing her so much stress anyway. But she went deeper into fear and jealousy and it, you know, it cost her everything at the end of the day. I mean, how do we get rid of that scarcity mindset? I think that's very prevalent. And I don't even know, although I would, I sort of think this starts at schools, right? As kids, you know, as kids, they're sort of, I think think if i if i certainly use the example of my own children

like before school they're quite happy to share and sort of see other people succeed it doesn't mean that they're not succeeding but i don't know what it is about i'm not saying it's all schools but i would you talk a lot about culture and i do think there is something about school culture and you know how do we talk to our children because if you ingrain that at a young age, it's pretty hard. It takes a lot of work later to unravel that, this idea that there's only one winner. I don't know because, of course, often there is only one winner. So, do you feel that culturally at schools, we need to educate our children slightly differently and sort of talk to them about winning and losing in a different way? I definitely think we have to talk about winning and losing and about failure in very different ways. There's a reality, like if there is one place to get and 10 people go for it, then nine people lose.

There's a reality. And I actually believe in competition per se. I think competition is natural. In all of our planet, competition is a natural phenomenon. I don't have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is that anybody who doesn't get the first place is seen as worthless. So, you know, that's just an outcome. If you get the top grade in the class, it's just an outcome. It's not about your worth, but we don't talk to kids like that, you know, or we, I should take that back. We do,

but I don't think we do it enough. I think there's much more room for talking about the fact that most times in life, when you try something, you fail. Most times that you go for the win, you lose. We have this overly heroic, overly glamorized idea of winning as if it's what happens all the time. And of course it's not. And then you feel like you're not doing it right. And that's the problem, right? So why are we so ashamed of not getting the win? There shouldn't be shame associated with the result. If you leave nothing out there, if you give your best, if you're resilient and disciplined, all the blood, sweat and tears is necessary to get to the very thing that you want most. But if you didn't get the results, but you left nothing out there as a child or an adult, then that is winning. And that's what the

distinction I make in the book is winning deep and winning shallow. And that's part of winning deep. So, you know, if we can only see success as being on top. I mean, it just, even the maths doesn't work. Yeah. Well, what it leads to is just a deep unhappiness, you know, and you think that it's just in that moment where, you know, you think once you achieve that, win, yeah, I'm going to feel good. But then you become a victim, don't you? Because you can only ever feel good about yourself if you win. As you say,

the maths don't add up. It's funny you told him about failure. I remember, I think it was my son, I can't remember which one of the kids it was. I think early on in school, they came back and said, oh, daddy, we learned what fail means. I said, what? First attempts in learning. And I thought, oh, cool. I like that. You know, I hope lots of schools are teaching that. And at dinner last night, I was chatting to my son about Michael Jordan and just explaining that, you know, I'm no Michael Jordan expert at all, but from what I understand, he has said, I think that what drove him, he talks about failure has been a good thing and how failure, failure is part of his progression to the top. And I think the drive for him was to beat his older brother. I think his older brother was better than him at

basketball. So all he wanted to do was beat his big brother. And that obviously led to him being potentially the greatest of all time. In fact, let's talk about sports because you've obviously got a lot of experience at the highest levels of sports. And so success for a lot of people in society is to achieve the top. And a lot of people look at sporting stars as heroes. It's like, oh man, if I could play for a Premier League football team, or I could get in the England football team, I would be happy. Yeah, you've got, you've shared some experiences. You've obviously, you've not divulged who various people are, but you've worked in the highest echelons of the sport. And what's really striking is that a lot of these people you've worked with

have all society's markers of success ticked off the job, the house, the car, the bank accounts, yet underneath, they're dissatisfied. And sport and business, you know, I'd say i've seen the same in boardrooms and c-suites as well for from people with all the markers of success but it's whether they can answer the question am i enough am i am i enough and am i good enough you know so michael jordan's a really interesting example i don't know if you saw the last dance. I'm two episodes in and I've not had a chance to keep going yet. Yeah. I mean, he's just a phenomenal rare talent and, you know, very admirable in lots of the ways he approached his craft and how he drove it. But the question

I'd love to ask him while he's sitting in his armchair in the documentary, tapping his whiskey glass, I'd love to say, do you feel fulfilled? Did you find joy or thrill? Because there's a difference. And I think that lots of people who make it to the top might find thrill, but maybe they don't find the fulfillment that they think they will. They still feel a sort of a racking emptiness because they haven't actually been able to be okay with who they are along the way. They haven't felt enough, right? And you don't have to be a superstar to learn those lessons. Any of us can do that, you know, to sort of come back to the idea of coaching yourself and taking a position where you're going to believe that you're enough to start with

and what you achieve in life, whatever mountains you climb, that's brilliant. That's amazing. But it's not your worth. It's not your human worth. Your human worth is inherent, right? So if you achieve amazing stuff, if you win on the scoreboard that's brilliant you know congratulations um we all have goals and drives and we aspire i don't think there's anything wrong with that what um keeps me awake at night is thinking about the sort of great whole of whether we feel worthy as human beings whether we feel like we're actually good enough despite whatever markers of success we've got i mean you say in the book don't you so beautifully that losing doesn't mean you are a loser yes yeah winning and losing in our traditional ways of

looking at it are outcomes, just outcomes. You know, they may get you further ahead, but then as we're on that big treadmill getting further ahead, are we keeping, you know, is our joy and our fulfillment keeping up with us? Or did we leave it a little bit behind in something simpler? Yeah. It's, you know, I would really encourage people to look at your book if nothing else for the stories because there are so many of them and we won't be able to go

through all of them today of course um but that I think it was a sports star a footballer who you know was there was some sort of cultural um I don't know if you'd go as far as saying bullying or not but certainly what felt like that in the background but it's interesting for me that this footballer as the story goes in the book achieved the trophy or the kind of the dream but felt nothing inside and and i i you know i want people to know that this matters for them because we're all looking for, well, we're all looking for high performance in our lives, whether it's as a dad, as a mom, as a employee, whatever it is, we're looking for that performance. But you almost don't want that performance either to define who you are. You can be separate from that you may not be you may not you may have a bad day at work but it doesn't mean you're bad

right yeah exactly it's that's the that's the um essence of the distinction right if you've had a failure if you've had a bad day at work if if you've lost out on something, you know, but you can still feel that the journey was worth it, if you can still feel a sense of sort of fulfillment in what you laid out of yourself, what you, you know, your own that's that's a marker of success in my book because there's you know um when we sell ourselves in some way or sell our soul a little bit to be all about the outcome you know it's almost inevitable that you can't care for your soul at the same time you lose yourself along the way yeah i've just been finishing off a section for the weight loss book and really been trying to tease out this idea that people are so used to looking at scales, right? So,

they're looking, of course, if that is the goal, then looking at scales on a daily basis will tell them in theory if they're meeting that goal. But we know from research that even within a single day, the number on the scale can vary by up to 10 pounds just on one day. So you can either have this kind of euphoric joy that everything's going great or hopeless despair based upon a number on scales. And what I found to be useful with people who would like help with losing excess weight is to, in some ways, throw away the scales or say, just do it once a month. Like focus on the process, the daily habits, the things that you can control on a daily basis, tick them off, are you doing them or not? And that outcome will take care of itself. But if you focus on the outcome, you can easily stop doing the things that you need, right? Yeah. And I've heard you talk also about other measures,

you know, not just the sort of empirical measure of, you know, the number on the scales, but if you can be present in your own body for a moment longer and say, how do I feel? You know, actually, I've got a scratchy throat and I'm a bit, you know, I don't feel as energetic as I could or I'm hungry or I'm thirsty, you know, and you can tune in to your need or I'm emotional. That's why I want to go to the fridge. You know, I'm upset about something, hence I'm heading for my fifth coffee, etc. You know, so if you can tune in to other measures that aren't empirical, but, you know, much more about being present in yourself. And also, importantly, in the quality of your exchanges and relationships with others. Like sometimes I think when we feel good.

with others. Like sometimes I think when we feel good, so it's important to say that goals and sort of, you know, goals as we know them as sort of benchmarks and numbers and targets, they're fine. It's just the message, I guess, is they're not all of it. They need to have a parallel piece about, you know, tuning in to more, to how you feel, to what's going on, to give enough space to your own sort of emotion and spirit to say, well, how is this feeling? You know, because you can be thrilled about losing five kilos and that's wonderful, but what has it done for you, you know, in terms of who you are? Because there's a whole piece there that could miss as well yeah exactly i think tuning into how you feel is i think it sort of it it sort of permeates the whole i think the approach you take the approach i take it's kind of like you have to you have to

be able to switch off a bit of the noise around you to actually go inward and actually, I honestly think that so many people don't do that ever. They're too busy. They're rushing around so much there. Any potential time they might have to that, then maybe it's some sort of underlying discomfort. Instead of sitting with it, we then go and distract from it, whether it's Instagram or binge watching Netflix or caffeine or alcohol or sugar or eating the biscuits in front of the sofa in the evening, right? It's just being told not to do that. I don't think it's a problem. It's trying to understand what's going on there.

And, you know, in one of your stories uh you really you you told it so beautifully i think it was i can't remember her name now she was a young was it misha misha yeah such a powerful story um about how she shared a naked photo of herself with a boyfriend when she's about 17 and then perhaps you could explain what happened. But apart from the story, what really interested me is that towards the end of it, you mentioned the sort of vision she had about the way she felt. And it was almost artistic.

And is that how you work with clients? Is that what you try and get them to do? Yeah, I think imagination is an absolutely underrated, unsung tool because you said it earlier when you were talking about you as the sort of authority figure or not being arrogant enough to assume that you knew what was wrong with somebody. It's the same in a psychological sense. You know, you know what your experience is better than I know what your experience is. than I know what your experience is. So if I can help you use your imagination to tell your story in a way that is useful for you, or that gives you strength and hope to make a different choice

or to move beyond it, then that's a win. So with Misha, she had this situation where she'd, as you said, shared a photo. It got re-shared by her boyfriend. And even though it didn't end up being widespread, the dreadful fear that she felt that it would be, and then the shame about her own body. It wasn't even that she was worried that everybody was going to see her naked it was the fact that she was so terrified that people would judge her about her body and then she didn't like the way she looked right the way she looked so she was she just went into this awful meltdown but the um the bit that you're describing was that um she felt that she um for her she would blush, she would flush red and in shame. And eventually through sort of, you know, lots of conversations and her being able to

access her imagination, she started to feel like that when she did blush, you know, that that was her shame escaping. That was a way of her negative feeling and her fear and shame escaping out of her skin so every time she she had a um she did blush she was what came with it was actually a feeling of gratitude or or like oh great a bit more is gone you know so she could use it in a way that was helpful for her rather than just being captive to it yeah so it sounds like it it sounds like you helped her to become aware. So awareness is step one. And then one of the next steps was to create a different narrative around it. Yes, exactly.

But without the awareness, you can't even do that, right? You've got to stay. The method in the book is see it, face it, replace it, right? So, you know, first you have to stay probably just that little bit longer than you want to. As you say, we quickly distract and fear is awful to sit with as is shame. We don't like it. We want to move away from it quickly. And so quite often we deal with something at the top level and we don't get into the substance because we want to get away. So to be able to stay that bit longer, the bravery to stay that bit longer with what you're afraid of and really see it and then say,

what's this costing me? How's this showing up in my life, in my relationships and what it stops me from doing, what it makes me do that's unhelpful, how it forces my behavior. unhelpful you know and how it forces my uh behavior and and then think about replacing it and obviously the narrative you know changing the narrative that's running you is a one of the um central ways of doing that you talk about relationships um and how relationships are really fundamental to i guess guess, our overall wellbeing. And you've got a lovely conclusion to the book, which I won't sort of spoil for people. But, you know, why do you think relationships are so important? Why have relationships sort of become fragmented in the way we live these days

and what can we do about it before we get back to this week's episode i just wanted to let you know that I am doing my very first national UK theatre tour. I am planning a really special evening where I share how you can break free from the habits that are holding you back and make meaningful changes in your life that truly last. It is called the Thrive Tour. Be the architect of your health and happiness. called the Thrive Tour. Be the architect of your health and happiness. So many people tell me that health feels really complicated, but it really doesn't need to be. In my live event, I'm going to simplify health and together we're going to learn the skill of happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you back in your life, and I'm

going to teach you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good? All you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour. I can't wait to see you there. This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change. Now journaling is something that I've been recommending to my patients for years. It can help improve sleep, lead to better decision making and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress, make it easier to turn new behaviours into long-term habits and improve our relationships. There are, of course, many different ways to journal.

And as with most things, it's important that you find the method that works best for you. One method that you may want to consider is the one that I outline in the three-question journal. In it, you will find a really simple and structured way of answering the three most impactful questions I believe that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every evening. Answering these questions will take you less than five minutes, but the practice of answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was published in January, I have received hundreds of messages from people telling me how much it has helped them and how much more in control of their lives they now feel. Now, if you already have a journal or you don't actually want to buy a journal,

that is completely fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three-question journal completely free on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen to check it out, all you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash journal, or click on the link in your podcast app. I think relationships are the point. You know, they're not just important, they're the point. You know, we've talked ourselves into this idea that we're all separately, as if we're walking next to each other, but we're all separately on this, you know, big journey

to achievement and outcomes collectively, you know, if it's convenient. And sometimes we might even link arms, but we've forgotten that the point, the joy, the very raison d'etre, the thing that we're here for is each other, is to connect. That's where all the joy is. You know, if you win the World Cup and there's nobody in the stadium, how does that feel? Or nobody's tuned in? You know, it's the shared joy of our journeys that is the point. Yeah. I mean, you talking about relationships reminds me of this chat I had with Esther Perel recently. And she said something that, again, I'll be thinking about a lot. And because I think I also had a slightly individualistic idea, thinking that actually, if I can sort my own baggage out

and kind of, you know, sort of lighten the load a little bit and actually get my own house in order, I'm going to show up in a much more present and less triggerable way in my relationship, which I think has happened for sure. But she was sort of saying that the idea that we can do this stuff in isolation, she's like, I don't get it because we are relational beings. We only exist within relationships. And that is something that I sort of think, wow, you know, it's kind of true. I'm not saying it's

necessarily either or, you can do a bit of both, I'm sure. But I mean, what would you say to that? Exactly. I agree fully. I mean, imagine if your fear was dialed down enough and shame was dialed down enough that you could just show up and work it out in relationship, rather than having to do your work and get to some level of perfect before you can go back in to the relationship or the exchange. I mean, don't get me wrong, there's lots of brilliant work that happens from a self-help perspective that's about managing your own emotions. But I feel like if we were less concerned with perfectionism and being right, if we were less concerned with perfectionism and being right, and we were more free,

we'd be able, and less shameful and fearful, we'd be able to actually exchange more openly and have those conversations. I ask, what is the worst thing that somebody who loves you could know about you? And we never share all of ourselves ourselves i don't think we're actually even capable of sharing every aspect of ourselves and our psychology but we actually hide so much of who we are in our deepest closest relationships and some of that is about fear and shame yeah what would our partner think of us if they found that out you know and therefore we hide i just turned the page because i've got this thing written down i think i was reading about some research this chap called dr bella di paulo um who did some research saying that people are dishonest in one-fifth of their interactions and again i i don't know the the study intimately to know you know how that was being measured but i thought that was just very powerful statistic, you know, 20% of the time we're dishonest. And I think

what's crazy about that or what's most telling is I suspect that a lot of the time we don't even realize we're being dishonest. Right, because we're performing. So, you know, this, I think it's a really, I don't know the study either, but it's a really interesting idea because when we say a word like dishonest, you know, we might jump to the idea of intention. Like we're intentionally doing something manipulative to get an outcome we want. And that's kind of like a prevalent view of human nature that we're self-serving, consequentialist, and we'll just get our own needs met. Whereas I personally think that we're performing a lot of the time and we're performing because we need to feel that we're seen in a particular way so that we're good enough.

So if we could unpack some more of that, I think that mental freedom is on the other side of it, or more mental freedom is on the other side of it. It's the performative nature of us showing up and we all are, what's that beautiful quote? And I don't remember who said it, but you know, I'm personally, I'm just a bunch of flaws stitched together with good intentions. And it's, you know, it's perfect because it's not about accept, it's not about sort of a resignation or presuming you won't try and find your very best potential or express your talent as best you can. But it's the idea that if you don't do it a particular way, you're not worthy and good enough as a human being. And therefore everything else is sort of anchored into that.

else is is sort of anchored into that yeah i i'll be honest with i can't shake this this idea that you mentioned are you performing at life or are you living life i think i think it's so powerful i i think i again i can't imagine that won't have an impact on every single person listening or watching this right now i'd ask everyone to just ask themselves, are you performing at life or are you living your life? It's so simple yet so profound. And I would want to just add to that, that it's not another area to lay blame on yourself, you know, because we all do it. It's the whole conversation conversation the whole compassionate conversation i'm hoping to have is like okay where's the dial down button how do i turn this down we all do it it springs up how do i turn it down again you know and how do i let go sometimes we feel like we've got to add something most of the time this stuff is just letting go it's like uncurling your hands um and letting go of some stuff

trusting yourself a bit more um being brave in that way rather than um another level of perfectionism that you have to achieve like now i must not perform at life yeah no for sure i think it's a really important point um one of the the values that i have been thinking about and trying to bring into my life in a very intentional way is integrity and honesty. And I've realized that a lot of the time, you know, when you don't want to do something, you want to get out of something, you'd create a story to do it. You'd create a lie. You'd say, oh, I can't do this because of this. Right. And the intention behind it is good. You're like, okay, I can't do that, but how do I let them down in, you know, in a nice way? Right. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that,

but I've been trying to change that and go, you know, how can, if I really want to live with integrity, how can I sort of be truthful without upsetting someone? And it's something I guess I'm really working on myself. And there's so many examples. The one that comes to mind is someone who I've met through Instagram, who's someone I respect a lot, was holding an online conference in August. And she wanted me to give a keynote and do an interview. And she approached me about this towards the end of July. And at the end of July, I was feeling, one of the reasons I stopped the podcast over the summer is because I was feeling really overwhelmed. I wanted to reset, spend time with my family, spend time with myself. And I thought, you know what? It's only because it's her that

I'm even considering it because for most people it would be a straight no. And then I decided I'm just going to be honest with her and phoned her up and said, Hey, look, um, I would love to, I think what you're doing is amazing, but I've made a decision that for the next few weeks, I'm not going to be doing any new, I'm not going to take on any new commitments at all. I'm going to spend time with my family. I've got my book to finish off over the summer. That's going to be enough on my plate. I'll support it, you know, but I can't take part in it. And you know, she accepted it. She said, thank you for sharing that. I totally respect that. And not only that, Pippa, it felt good. It felt good that I hadn't fabricated a story

that would have had the same, maybe would have had the same result. You're still not taking part. I don't know if she would have felt it that I was creating a story, but being honesty and acting with full integrity, which I've got to be honest, is potentially something I may not have done

even a year or two ago, because I would have been too scared. I would have, again, it comes down to fear, fear doesn't it I didn't realize it's fear again you would be like oh I'm scared what will she think unless I make a powerful enough excuse so there's I love that story but there's two elements that jump out at me one is um you know how we protect our reputation right which is part of that conformity conversation we had before yeah you know that there's there's actually a sort of an egoic reputation part of that but there's also an such an interesting question and it's like why do we feel the need

to apologize yeah you know that what's up with that like if you just say i'm too tired what would happen right you know like i'm just i've had, I'm too tired, what would happen? Right? You know, I'm just, I've had enough. I'm too tired. I don't want to do any more at the minute. Full stop. You know, that's, it's actually a loving thing to say to yourself and others, because when you do that, you give other people permission to do that too. And it's not as a non-performative, non-heroic, non-muscular position to take. And I think that's fantastic. When I hear people be free like that, I think they're probably getting well.

Yeah, they're probably getting well. Exactly. For something so simple, which is telling the truth, it's pretty damn hard to get to that, isn't it? I mean, it's kind of crazy how much we fabricate. We don't realise how much it takes away from us, how exhausting it is. And you could feel your shoulders drop when you just say, hey, I'm too tired.

Yeah. You know, good luck with it. Yeah, exactly. It's a really interesting one I've been thinking about lately. I turned 50 earlier this year and, you know, I've been- Congratulations. Thank you. Big birthday. But I've been thinking about integrity in relation to that. So,

I was kind of shocked by how many people said at the time, you know, one of two things, either, oh, how do you feel? Like, you know, As if something was over. And the second bit of like, oh, you look good for 50. I'm like, wow, where have we lost our integrity so much that we feel that we can actually show up even physically as we are right now? We feel that we have to do something performative in how we present ourselves. We have to change something in our physical self or cling on to something that's not actually true of where we are. That's for me kind of, okay, I'm going gray. This is how I look.

You know, I aim to be healthy and that's integrity. That's a piece of my integrity. If I were to perform on that side, I feel like that would take me in the wrong direction away from, you know, it'd be more status than soul. And I don't think that's helpful for me at least. Well, I don't think it's helpful for anyone. And I imagine that person who might've said that

you look good for 50. Well, let's just unpack that. Cause I imagine that's a societal have said that you look good for 50 well let's just unpack that because I imagine that's a societal narrative that many of us have learned we learn that oh someone may not like it hey they look great so I'm going to say that because I'm going to say something nice to them so I think the intention behind it or at least the superficial intention is I want to say something nice yeah of, of course. Yeah. But what is actually really underlying that? I think, I'm sure it's different for different people, but I don't know, are there some common sentiments that you think might even be underlying that desire to say

something nice? Yeah. Same thing. It's like this idea that good enough is quite uniform. There's a, you know, there's a set of things things that whether it's the right weight, the right shape, whether your butt looks the right way or you're dressed the right way or any of that stuff, there's this uniform idea of good enough, even in a physical sense. And for me, that's not a health-based conversation. That's a quantitative, performative conversation. And I think that it's missing that sort of soulful wellbeing when we do that. So I agree it comes from a good place, but it's all part of that same narrative of like, we've got to be enough. Yeah. And it just, you know, I sort of, I've been thinking a lot about the content in your book and I've

been trying to think of what is, I don't think this was in the book unless I read it, but I was thinking, and you can correct me if maybe this was in your book, I was thinking, what's the opposite of fear? And to me, I was thinking, well, the opposite of fear is authenticity. Because if you're truly authentic, you're not really afraid. Did you write that? Or did I think that? Or is it a bit of both? I can't remember. I love it. But I write it as the opposite of fear is mental freedom. But if you're mentally free, you're authentic. You're showing up as you, right? With your flaws stitched together with good intentions.

So it's like, you know, it's almost the same stuff. But it's, for me, the psychological space that we can create, the mental freedom where we're not hijacked by constant need to be something or do something or move in a particular direction you know is that's the absence of fear yeah and and you know we mentioned authenticity let me just tie it back to the podcast for a second because something really interesting I've been sort of playing around with over the last few weeks and months is and again it comes from a fear and a deep insecurity is like we put the the podcast on youtube now as well youtube you know social media can be a funny place anyway for comments but i'll tell you youtube is on a it's on another level you know

and it is amazing how many times well well, it's not that much, but you're obviously drawn to their, you often can be drawn to the negative comments, but a few people will say, man, great conversation, but the interviewer talks too much. Or I had this great conversation with Gabor Mate, someone who I really, really, really admire, someone I've got a lot of respect for.

And, you know, I know some people, and when I first got into Gabor, I sort of scoured YouTube for more and more Gabor videos. And you can see some people are doing that. And then they're like, who's this guy chatting in the way? All I want to hear is Gabor Mate. And who's this chatty chap who's sort of just, he's talking about stuff I don't want to hear. I just want to hear the wisdom from Gabor. And if you're feeling insecure in yourself, you could be thinking, as I did, oh, you know, do I talk too much? Oh, you know, maybe I need to talk less. And then you start to doubt yourself as a podcast host. You think, well, you know, you're not looking at all the, maybe it's a 20 to one ratio where the 20 people go, I love your style. I love the way you tell your own stories.

And it just makes it super relevant to me. But then I realized, I unpacked, I thought this comes from insecurity. It comes from a deep insecurity of wanting to be liked. And as I sort of understood that, I go, okay, is it true to me that I talk too much? I thought, well, you know, if you ask my wife, I probably do talk quite a lot. That's probably part of my personality. And then I thought, well, I'm sort of happy with that. Like I'm, if people want an interview where the host has 10 questions that they ask their guest, you've come to the wrong show, right? Because I'm not an interviewer. I'm having a conversation with Pippa at the moment, right? That's what I do. I have conversations.

And I've realised why I'm so passionate about this is I've had to unpack my own psyche a little bit and then get really comfortable with the thought, no, this is the way I do things, right? This is me being my authentic self. I'm proud of you for doing that because it's not easy to do. You know, I think we have sort of 60,000 or more thoughts a day and the majority are negative and repetitive.

So that one rubbish comment or comment that felt rubbish to you, I should say, is going to be bright, illuminated in your mind compared to the other 10 or 20 or 50 that were positive. So, we're drawn to the negative naturally. So, you do have to, that's the, you know, I talk in the book about the techniques to deal with in the moment fear or, you know, you could extend that, say, in the moment sort of negative feeling. What are some of those techniques that people might be able to use?

Well, for example, the sort of three umbrella techniques that I talk about, one is processing it. So, processing it might just look like, you know, what is it when you can see yourself doing that, when you can notice yourself doing that, what is it that you do to rebalance or calm? So, you know, that might be a mantra. That might be a cool deep breath. That might be just something that grounds you. That might be an action like delete. You know, actually process it, but come back to you.

Do something that's centering for you. Another is distract, you know, which may not work in that particular scenario, but when you're worried about something or when you're sort of caught up in the moment fear to distract yourself, you know, and that you can do that in millions of different ways. Music's my go-to in that respect. And then the third thing is to rationalize. So, you know, even next time you see that just to say okay there was the one where are the 20 yeah you know because you know rationally that you're going to be attracted to the negative as as we all are as humans so what's the rational rebalance of that so you can do it that way too but don't i think in the you know to go back to your your the point

you were making in the example, it's really important to just come back as well to ask yourself, what am I serving here? What purpose am I serving? Well, as I hear you, you want to help. You want to help people feel better and live more, right? So that's the purpose you're serving. Is that relevant to your purpose? Not really. You know, the negative criticism, whether you talk too much or it's not really relevant to your purpose.

You're always going to have to hone your craft as we all do. And feedback's valuable like that. But, you know, come back to what you're serving, what purpose you're serving and i think that's that's really helped how many how many times when i've been the only woman standing on the sideline in very male dominated environments and feeling all sorts of things and getting feedback what you know yeah that's what she doing there i can easily go to the negative but i have to come back what am i serving well the

reason i'm here is because my difference makes a difference yeah really really powerful um i think those techniques are really helpful um for people and and and it's sort of i don't know what you think about this i sort of feel that these techniques they can be used all the time but i i i personally have found this is, and I'm interested in your perspective on this, that I actually look at any friction in my life now. I love the phrase, it's an opportunity to learn. So I'm like, okay, I actually am very grateful for that comment because without it, I wouldn't have really explored what is the purpose of the podcast? What do these conversations mean? How do I want to do them? So actually, I genuinely, I'm very thankful for it

because it forced me to stop and go, okay, can you improve something in the way you have conversations? And yeah, I probably can. I can always improve. I've always been driven in life to improve anything I do. My wife often laughs about this at me, but if I've always been driven in life to improve anything I do. You know, my wife often laughs about this at me, but if I'm, if I've just started playing tennis again after like 25 years, like I'm in the garden now practicing my stroke, you know, in sort of ghosting, you know, trying to, I like trying to improve. It's what makes me tick. So I see it really as great. Thank you for that. So I see it really as great, thank you for that. And also, I've also been really sitting with this idea that it can only bother us if we've got an insecurity, because if we process and actually start to show up authentically, and we actually start to really feel secure in who we are,

which I know is probably a lifelong mission for most of us, actually then comments don't really harm you. They don't really affect you in the same way because it's like, it's funny that the positive comments don't artificially inflate your ego and the negative comments don't start to bring you down. You just feel, certainly I know I'm talking a lot from personal experience here, but I genuinely feel five years ago, I could really be like a yoga of emotions, be really, really happy because of something great has happened or totally down in the dumps

because I had a negative comment. Whereas now neither one of them really pulls me away from equilibrium as much. And it's quite empowering. It's a nice feeling. It makes me think of Rudyard Kipling's poem, if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same it's like it's a gorgeous poem and i think

that's sort of you know he's talking about not losing yourself um according to whatever's going on around you that's the subtitle of your book how to win at life without losing yourself which is so powerful um you know paper as we talk i'm really struck by something with you which is there's a real genuineness and a real sort of there's a real respect so i'll tell you a few things that i've noticed you are one of the few you one of the very rare guests who's come to have a conversation who knows how to say my name. Right. Right.

And the fact that I'm tearful as I say that, obviously it means there's something deep there for me, but I was really touched by that because I've not introduced myself to you. I think my kids let you in and you just said wrong and straight away. So that tells me Pippa has either done some research or she's listened to something I've done and her number doesn't mean anyone who doesn't know that

is disrespecting me. I, cause why would they know? Cause you know, the way my name is spelt, it is Rangan, you know, in phonetically in English, but you've come and said Rangan straight away. And that means a lot to me because I've had insecurities over my name my entire life, because it was a name that works beautifully well in Bengali, which is my parents' language, but phonetically it doesn't work in English. But I never would talk about it. I would let people call me whatever they wanted until about six months ago where I made a point now saying, oh, by the way, I'm called Rangan, not Rangan. And I don't know the point of me sort of saying this, but I just really wanted to

acknowledge you for that. I don't know if you realise how powerful that is and what a nice feeling it is for me that someone's gone and done that well thank you i i heard you introduce yourself like that on a podcast and so that's that's how i heard it so but it's interesting my husband's called abdullahi he's from senegal and um people call him abs abe nobody and his surname's joe and nobody can ever say it and you, you know, it's, I mean, we laugh it off, but it's the same thing. It's like your identity. You know, you, you laugh it off, but it comes at a cost. Yes. It's your identity. I have really struggled with this my entire life. And, and I, I, um, yeah, it's not a nice feeling. It's who you are. And purposefully, I've called, you know,

my wife is like myself of Indian origin, born and brought up in the UK. And we purposefully chose names for our kids that had a sort of Indian origin, but phonetically worked well in English for that reason. And even though actually we haven't done a good enough job at that because there's still an issue with how my son's name is pronounced. But the point is, it's, what's interesting for me is why could I never speak up before about it? Why would I allow people to call me whatever or say, oh, you know, can I call you Ron? And I'd say in the past, I'd be like, yeah, yeah, no props. You know, you want to fit in. So yeah, people, you need to call me Ron for a while. Right right and now my wife laughs about it because she actually and it's really interesting because she had a very secure upbringing right and

she tells me that she used to have her mates in her room when they were five and she wouldn't let them out of her room till they could say her name properly right so she has that real kind of spark and she's a very strong woman who won't let anyone call her the wrong name. You know, she's going to make sure her friends know what to say. I didn't have that. But then I look at my dad who, you know, is an Indian immigrant into the UK, faced a lot of racism within the NHS, couldn't do the specialism he wanted. He had to move specialism just so he could provide for his family, frankly, into one he didn't like. And my dad's attitude was very much one of you conform, you keep quiet. You know, he very much, he was like, this is not my country.

I've come here to make a better life for myself. Don't speak up, keep your head down, just do well at school. And I've absorbed that until recently. I'm changing that now. But again, it comes from fear, right? And you describe your wife as sort of being strong in her method of dealing with it. But I think you're probably, I wouldn't say you're necessarily any less strong, but you've had this wave of needing to make the other person feel okay. So you've owned that error for them

and therefore allowed it to continue at your cost. Whereas with a bit more mental freedom, it's no problem to say, you pronounce it wrong. And that's it, it's done once, it's over. And most people like it when you tell them. Most people are like, oh, cool. I would rather get your name right. Right, of course, yeah.

But something holds you back because you don't want them to either feel ashamed that they got it wrong or that, you know, your level of sort of sensitivity around making them feel awkward, you know, it's held you back or you have that strong level of conformity all of which are you know steal your mental freedom so you know the the the um i was going to use the word courage then but it's less than courage it's just the habit of just being who you are and saying what you know what's true for you it's like a phenomenally um underdeveloped habit in all of us right and this is where we come into that performative space so you'll take a little cost you'll take a little knock to you you know to um rather than be a bit freer and say it how it is for you yeah you know, but we do that on the regular to just wear the cost ourself,

to make the other, to, you know, allow for less shame in the other or to stay conformist as your dad talked about. I don't know if you, you might not have seen this in the last couple of days, but I wonder if it might be rich for you. There's a guy, David Olisoga, who actually came and did some work on racism with us with the England team.

He's a British historian. He does the House Across Time. I know the name for sure. He's fab. And he just did the McTaggart lecture about racism and he did it about racism in media and how he's felt as a black British man growing up in the Northeast and how he felt in his profession. And it's amazing on identity. He's amazing on identity. Yeah. Well, it sounds like I'll watch that and maybe try and get him on the podcast if I can. He's great. Thank you. Yeah, I'll definitely watch that. And you mentioned racism. Look, I mean,

there's so many places we could go and I very much hope this is not the only podcast we ever do, many places we could go and I very much hope this is not the only podcast we ever do because I think there's so much to unpack um but but on the subject of racism because I've touched a few times on football and what has led to me falling out of love with it yeah and it's really interesting that as an Indian immigrant growing up you know where I think at primary school I was my brother and I I think were the only non- was, my brother and I, I think were the only non-white people in the school. Maybe there was one more boy, but it was, you know, so you really are trying to fit in. Now, look, I appreciate everyone's trying to fit in, right? So that was just my story. Like I had this kind of Indian upbringing at home and I have a Western

environment around me at school. And I think, as many immigrants will say, there's this conflict, which often you can't verbalise, you don't know what it is and you're always trying to fit in. I think one of the ways I tried to fit in was to be the most devoted Liverpool fan you could ever imagine.

You know, I'd watch every game, I knew every score. As soon as I was old enough and I could afford to, I'd go to every game, I'd follow Liverpool around Europe, you know. And it was a part of my identity. I would never miss a game because if I missed a game, what would people think? Oh, he's not a real fan, right? It was, I didn't know that at the time. I've sort of unpacked that recently when I look back. And I think it's funny because I'm actually really not that bothered about football anymore. I still recognise it's a beautiful game, but I remember, I think for me, the start

of the end of my love affair with football was, I went to the 2005 Champions League final where, you know, Liverpool came down back from three nil down at halftime to win on penalties and, you know, being in the stadium at that point, I think I was the happiest I'd ever been in my entire life to think, oh, I am here in the stadium witnessing this. Two years later, Liverpool are in the Champions League final. I go to Athens with the same friend and Liverpool aren't doing very well. We're one nil down. And in the Liverpool section, these three sort of chaps turn around to me. And if any kids are listening, since if you're listening with your kids at the moment, maybe just sort of, you know, put it on mute for a second. But so what the hell are you doing in here, Paki? Get out of here. And the last bit, I was being a bit, I'm being a bit

kinder in actually what they actually said. And I felt really scared. And my friend who's, you know, white-skinned, was really shocked. He'd never really heard anything like that before. And he said, mate, look, if you want, we can just go. And I said, actually, let's just go. We went to a different part of the stadium, you know, the security and everything, that's another story that was there, but we actually managed to walk into a different part of the stadium and sit there. But I really think, you know, because there's this whole tribal that you feel you belong, right?

You're there with your Liverpool shirts on, you belong, yet someone is in your tribe who's also identifying with Liverpool shirts on, turns around and says something that just felt awful and quite shameful, actually, on a level. And I think that was the start of the end of my love affair with football. I think other things have happened, you know, at stadiums, I've seen the sort of language and toxicity being

used. I sort of, I think when I became a parent, I thought, it's really interesting that the only place you're allowed to behave like this, and's okay in society is at a football ground. You can't say those things literally outside the football stadium. You'd probably be arrested. You'd be like, but you are in some ways, in inverted commas, allowed to do it in a stadium. I just want to be clear. Of course, that's not everyone in a football stadium. Football is a beautiful game. Of course, football fans are just a a reflection of society right but you know you write about racism in your book you you know one thing i love about you really have a you really have this deep this feeling comes across that you really value equality and fairness um and

yeah i mean i don't know if you've seen things like this before or you know well i don't know what what have you got any comments on that at all yeah um first of all i'm really sorry that happened to you because that's an injury and it is a injury that just sparks up shame um but that's not your shame to hold that's their shame you know but's an awful, awful thing to go through. And many people do that on the daily at bus stops around the country for kids getting on school buses and football grounds and many other places, unfortunately. I really worry about the places where we allow that to continue. And of course, people are working hard to make sure that's not allowed. But the ways that we're making sure it is not allowed are through rules and monitoring

and trying to sort of explain that it's not okay rather than, you know, I don't think really that will change until we have, you know, much more diverse representation running things like football or FIFA or clubs or, you know, where the players' voices are genuinely heard and where there's coaches from all sorts of different backgrounds that represent the players on the field and the fans in the stadiums. So you're as English as the next person and there's nothing about the colour of your skin that detracts from that in any way. There's a racial heritage and then there's a culture right and culture is a choice that we all make every day is live you know so i think we've got some again we need to shake out some of these ideas in a massive way around equality you know i think about this all the time with black coaches in the game and this idea that you've got to like make a little bit of room, give a leg up.

It's like they're just talented. You know, it's not excellence that's missing. It's opportunity. Right. And when we think about the racial chants across the stands, you know, it's completely unacceptable. It's coming from a disinterested place of somebody else's humanity. And, you know, there's no tolerance for it, no room for it. But even the people who are administering that abuse, because I'd like to look at this with compassion, I would imagine

those are fearful people. They're just scared. Like, I don't think on one level it makes them feel good. In that moment, they may feel good that they've sort of said something to somebody else, but I don't think it really fundamentally makes them feel good. There's probably fear of other fear of something in them saying that. And what's interesting about what you said, we're trying to address this with rules. And again, draw an analogy to medicine. It's like symptom suppression. It's kind of like, sure, you may stop it. It like, you may just drive it a bit underneath the surface. People may not feel it's successful. A bit like racism and culture today, where a lot of the time it's just gone covert. people it's not acceptable to say anymore but it's still going on um you know it's still there

yeah and there's loads of fear in it do you remember the story of mo in there i do i've got it written down i just wanted to say that in that story you know he was he was outraged and furious about the way that the coach had spoken to him in racially loaded terms. And he was struggling with how to deal with that. But that wasn't actually the pain for him. He was angry about that. The pain was that none of his teammates did anything or said anything. And the reason they didn't is fear, right? They didn't want to be in the camp of the outsider. They didn't want to also be targeted. But that was his real hurt that nobody said, you're right, mate. Or nobody said, you know, nobody stood up for him. He was just left on the outer. And that was his real loneliness and pain. He was furious with coach and he spoke to the coach, but the legacy of the pain was that nobody said anything. And what was the underlying feeling? Was that a shameful was that a shame would you say yeah because he was made to feel like he he didn't fit you know

he was like well nobody said anything maybe i'm maybe there is something wrong with me maybe i shouldn't be here you know so that the the kindness of somebody saying that's not okay or putting their arm around you if somebody at the other side of you on that, you know, from the bloke who spoke to you at the ground, if somebody on the other side had just said, that's nonsense, you're welcome here, or something else, that whole experience would have been entirely different, right? But it's, you know, there's loads of shame in it,

layers of shame in it. Yeah. To sort of close off the conversation i wonder if we can touch on two things i'd love to touch you about which is intimacy and soul so just a couple of light ones just a couple of light ones exactly and maybe you know if i can persuade you for a part two at some point maybe we can go deeper into some of these another time. Intimacy, I think is fascinating. You've already spoken about relationships and intimacy, I think it's very powerful, but a lot of people, I'd love to understand what you mean by intimacy, because to a lot of people, intimacy is sexual,

but there is non-sexual intimacy as well, isn't there? Yeah. I think it's really interesting that we have almost like confined our ideas about intimacy to our one relationship, you know, or to the sexual realm rather than it be like, for me, intimacy is about, can I just show up as me and be real and be close to you? Can I connect, right? That's intimacy. This is an intimate conversation because we're talking in real terms about who we are and what we care about and we're exposed, right? Yeah. And every time you do that and you see your comments in YouTube, you're exposed, right?

Because you're being intimate and there's a cost to that sometimes or it feels like there's a cost to that but that is the juice of life that is where the richness and zest is when we can actually connect like that because you can't be intimate and not you know in in this sense and be non-performative sorry you can't be intimate and performative you can't let me just sit with that you can't be intimate and perform so yeah you can't you can't perform who you are and be real enough to be intimate they're almost kind of opposites right yeah so you know for me the more we can actually say about who we are and what we care about the more we can sort of just expose okay this this is it you know i am the emma campbell in the book is just um on her social media she's just she's just one of the most vulnerable open intimate people

that i've um had the pleasure of sort of you know observing and i think she's fantastic like that she just says it how it is and that you know the sort of you know ups and downs of life you know rather than just neatening everything off you can't do that when you're intimate no you know you don't need to do that when you're intimate because you're allowed to be human so so intimacy is important um how do people listen to this who go okay i want a bit more intimacy in my life how do they start going about getting it well i think that there's you know it's a journey it's not um something in the book that i'm really um uh feel strongly about is that when we talk about in the moment fear we're talking about techniques when we're talking about not good

enough fear we're talking about perspectives deep dives right so when you want to move to be more intimate this isn't something that you just start you just you know there's no technique involved it's a journey so i don't want people to feel like i'm not getting it i'm not doing it properly you know it's a journey it might take you years and that's okay it's a brilliant journey but you know start by eye contact yeah so you know when you speak to somebody, can you hold your eyes? Can you hold their gaze? Do you revert to your phone pretty quickly when you get into an elevator or you get in the back of an Uber or something, you know, can you connect? And it's different to introversion,

right? I make this point in the book, introversions, people who are introverted tend to have stronger personal boundaries and prefer privacy and a richer inner world. And there's no judgment on that whatsoever because they can still have really deep intimate relationships. It's more about how are you connecting and showing up as you without guarding all of you. I mean, I love it so much. There was, there was this phrase that you mentioned page 245 impression management. And I, I wrote it down. I remember it was something about, I think you said it in the context as you just said now, like if someone, let's say, gives you a compliment, can you sit there with eye contact and take it? Or do you look away?

Yeah. And, you know, we could take a deep dive into that maybe we'll save that for a party on this conversation um but I really thought that was a very it was a powerful phrase I'd never heard before impression management and uh I think what you say is great I mean I've realized in this podcast when my guest is authentic with me and intimate with me the natural response is to be authentic and intimate back it's working with these social beings we you know and so i would say to someone you could who is that close is it your partner is a close friend you know if they say hey how you doing instead of just saying yeah i'm fine maybe tell them how you really are doing and just see how that conversation goes down when you don't

perform when you actually tell the truth yeah and i'm a big believer in human beings and what we've got i don't i don't think we're self-serving i don't think we're you know i don't think we're only self-serving or i don't think we're as, you know, the circumstances are as dire as some people might paint. So, I think when you open the door to kindness, it comes quickly. I think when you open the door to honesty, it gets reciprocated quickly. Not every time, of course, but first you have to just feel like you're so sure that, you know, not that you're perfect, but that you're worth something, that your worth isn't questioned, you know, and, you know, that when you can do that and just show up, the opportunity for that energy exchange between you is so strong. strong. And I think as well, when it comes to intimacy, one thing I noticed, I didn't talk about this in the book, but it's occurring to me as we're talking. When we apologize for who we are all the time or for what we do, it gets in the way of intimacy. Just be, just be as you are.

So don't apologize for the state of your house or for your kids being too loud in a shopping center or whatever else. Just it's okay. And I'm always looking for opportunities to learn in life. And then I think back as you say that to when you came this morning, which is probably five minutes earlier than the Hoover would have gone out the kitchen. It would have been nice and clean. And I probably said, I think, oh, I'm sorry, the kitchen's in a state.

Did I say that? I think I did. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Which, again, I can learn from this and go, okay, yeah, that in some ways is getting in the way of being intimate, because why do I need to say that? I mean, you've've got a kitchen I'm sure sometimes it's sparkling clean sometimes it's probably a bit messy sparkling clean is rare yeah exactly do you know what I mean so it's it's even these kind of little throwaway comments we make that we don't even realize all start to get in the way of intimacy and they take you towards perfection and performance and away from intimacy. So, you know, that's a second spent connecting or just being mentally free. Forget connecting even, just being mentally free. You just gave one of those away. Yeah. Love it. So, let's finish off with soul. And I love the

fact that I hear you talking about soul. You're someone with such a rigorous scientific background, such a rigorous scientific background, yet you also talk about things which, you know, it's not quite as easy to measure. And I love that because, you know, on so many levels, I often say that the medicine, you know, really getting people better, there's an art to medicine. It's not just science, it's art as well you've got to yeah read the papers but then you've got to shut that out and go well what's relevant to this person how can you create a story and a narrative that makes sense for this person and I love the fact that you talk about this and you sort of end the book with it so in the final sort of few minutes I wonder if you could give some of your words of wisdom on why soul is so important yeah soul for me is um you

know i think i use the term wildly unscientific um you know the talk about the wildly unscientific place of soul you know and um we've got so used to um uh cause and effect thinking. So used to, you know, if it's not, if can't measure it, it's not real kind of thinking that we've almost shrunk our imagination and shrunk our sort of ideas about who we are to this like neat little package. And for me, that squeezed out the soul. And I think, you know, when I think about something like football, for example, like football soul is an important, none of us would love it without that, right? If it were all just pumps and levers, measures and goals and scores, we wouldn't feel the connection to it. We wouldn't feel the energy and love in it, right? And that for me is where the soul is. And it's something that we share.

It's not, you know, when we talk about personality, we talk about it, you know, in this package of Rangan, but it's solely something that we share collectively. It's not just yours. And, you know, for me, I think that the energy we put out, we get returned very quickly from a soul perspective. So it's critical if we, you know, I make the distinction between soul making and status chasing when I talk about winning deep or winning shallow.

And, you know, if something is enriching you at a soul level, you might be deepening or broadening, not progressing upwards. You know, it's such a different tone and for me, a better measure of, or an equal measure of life, you know, that when I get to the end of the day, I would like to think that there's been plenty of soul in it as well as plenty of achievement in it wonderful pepper I could talk to you for hours for days um honestly I've said it already I'll say it again it's a phenomenal book fearless I really feel every single person I don't know anyone who wouldn't benefit from reading it I really don't so I really would encourage people to get it, read it, absorb it. You will understand yourself better after reading it. But this podcast is called Feel Better,

Live More. When we feel better in ourselves, we get more out of life. I would sort of probably add to that today, when we fear less, we're going to get more out of our lives. And I know a lot of your approach is about giving people awareness, but I wonder if you could share, and it may be things you've already mentioned, you know, it doesn't have to be, just a few actionable things that people can think about applying into their lives straight away to start improving, to start fearing less. You know, I was thinking about this on the way over because I was re-listening to one of my favorite episodes that you had done. But I was thinking about that question that you ask about what are the few things, don't do. Instead of sort of taking an approach now that here are some things

to do, what if you actually just stayed still a little bit and put the four corners of your feet on the floor and just observed? What if you didn't add to your to-do list around fear, but just notice where it is? Just stay a little longer, just hang out and see where it pops up for you rather than try and fix it because we move on too quickly from it to work on the real stuff. So I knew you would ask that question and I wanted to sort of say you know to be a bit more provocative i guess to say rather than go do something that would you know pushes into the realm of techniques or um let's actually just say let's just give people permission and encourage and invite people just to stay a bit longer and look where your own fear of not being good enough is and see what comes up love it do less and then fear less yeah Pippa thank you so much for joining

me on feel better live more today and I look forward to the next time we get to do this yeah thank you so much thanks for having me it's been great that concludes today's conversation i really hope you enjoyed it i absolutely loved pippa's closing thoughts and i really think that there is something in this conversation for all of us to reflect on as always my advice would be to keep things really simple and think about one thing you can take away from today's show and implement into your own life. Please do let Pippa and I know what you thought of the show today on social media, and please visit drchatterjee.com forward slash 126 to see all the show notes for this episode, as well as links to Pippa's quite brilliant book, Fear Less, and other media articles about her and her work.

If you get value from my weekly podcasts, my request to you is to stop right now for a few moments and share this episode with your friends, family, and work colleagues. A really impactful thing to do is to choose a few people who you think would really benefit from hearing this episode and send them a link with a personal note. It's a great gift for somebody else, but it's also a lovely act of kindness, which has benefits not just for the other person, but for you as well. So have a think about which people in your life would benefit and send them a link to this episode as well as a personal message.

And don't forget, each episode is also available on YouTube if they prefer videos as opposed to audio podcasts. A quick reminder that Feel Better in 5, my third book, is now out all over the world. UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, and it's coming very, very soon to Holland and Sweden. Do pick up your own copy if you have not had a chance to yet. It is available in paperback, ebook, and as an audio book, which I am narrating. A big thank you to my amazing wife, Vedanta Chatterjee, for producing this this week's podcast and to Richard Hughes for audio engineering. Have a wonderful 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 changes always worth it because when you feel better, you live more. I'll see you next time.