Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - 13 Powerful Ideas To Make 2024 Your Best Year Yet #412

Episode Date: December 27, 2023

This podcast will change your mind! Today’s episode is another brilliant compilation, this time on the theme of mindset – how changing your thinking can change your life. The team and I have selected some of the most practical, inspiring and can-do clips. Each one is filled with hope and potential, guaranteed to get you into a positive frame of mind. It’s a fantastic episode to help you begin 2024 as you mean to go on.   The idea behind this theme was to collect all the best tips, tricks and evidence-based techniques to help you reframe some of the ways you might see the world. Reframing means that when challenges arise, or difficult conversations or decisions present themselves, you can choose to approach them in a different way. With time you will genuinely feel differently about them – and find yourself embracing life with a new sense of freedom and fulfilment.   The clips you’ll hear include some powerful, life-changing ideas and insights on controlling your reaction to stressors, managing anxiety and overwhelm, learning to sit with your thoughts, and growing your resilience and self-compassion. As we see in a new year, with all its talk of resolutions and ‘new yous’, I think you’ll appreciate our experts’ realistic take on making healthy habits stick and overcoming limiting beliefs or unhelpful thought patterns. If you ever feel a bit lost in life, as if you’ve strayed from your intended path, this podcast will help. Together, my guests will help you to reconnect with your true, authentic self. And that’s something we could all do with in modern life.   You’ll hear from former guests including Jay Shetty, Oliver Burkeman, Rich Roll, Peter Crone, James Clear, Jim Kwik, Mel Robbins, Dr Kristen Neff, Dr Edith Eger, Pippa Grange and Julia Samuel – to name but a few – on how to harness the power of your mind and cultivate emotional and spiritual growth.   Remember that each of the clips in this podcast comes from a full-length episode. So if you like what you hear, check the show notes for links to listen to those speakers’ episodes in full. My team and I loved compiling this episode for you, it’s been a wonderful reminder of our purpose in life. And I hope that some of the wisdom you hear today will inspire you to find yours.  Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Find out more about my NEW Journal here https://drchatterjee.com/journal Thanks to our sponsors: https://calm.com/livemore https://vivobarefoot.com/livemore https://drinkag1.com/livemore Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/412 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More. So it's that time of year, isn't it? Where many of us feel like reflecting on the past 12 months and we start to look forward to the year ahead. So with that in mind, I put together a very special compilation episode with my team that's full of hope and celebration, but also one that's going to help get you into the right frame of mind for the year ahead. Now, I think getting your mind right is one of the most important things that you can do for your health, happiness

and your relationships. And I am fortunate to have spoken to some incredible people over the years on my podcast who have some wonderful wisdom to share. Today's episode contains some of the very best clips from previous episodes to help you harness the incredible power of your mind. from previous episodes to help you harness the incredible power of your mind. You're going to be hearing from James Clear, Jay Shetty, Oliver Bergman, Peter Krohn, Jim Quick, Mel Robbins, and Edith Eger, to name just a few. But we begin with the inspirational author and podcast host, Rich Roll. This clip is from episode 93, where Rich talks about the importance of having time alone with our thoughts and why we all need discomfort in order to grow. When I think about life, when I think about health, when I think about what people are

struggling with these days, and if someone was to ask me what I think the number one problem in society is, I think it's solitude. I think it's the fact that we have no downtime, we have no space. I think one of the negatives that technology has done is, I don't think the negative that's been spoken about enough, which is the fact that any bit of downtime we previously had has been stolen from us. I want you to think about this for a moment. I'm older than you, but I think one thing that we share in our general age bracket is that to the extent that we are the same general generation, we are the last crop of people who know what it's like to live in a pre-internet world

and now live in a fully connected world. Our childhood was marked by periods of boredom where we had to go out of our way to figure out creative ways to entertain ourselves. Like the amount of energy that you would have to exude with your imagination to figure out how to spend time was extraordinary. Fast forward to the 12-year-old now or the 10-year-old or the eight-year-old, they have to exert even more energy to not be distracted, to find boredom, to find stillness. And I think

it cannot be overstated how profound a change that is. And I'm not sure that we really appreciate the extent to which that's going to change course of humanity because what is that person gonna look like in 20 or 30 years when they're an adult? It's gonna be a very different type of being. And I think now more than ever, we're in a crisis of presence in that we never have to be by ourselves ever again, ever, ever. You have to go out of your way to find a moment of stillness. And who was it who said, you know, all of man's suffering can be

boiled down to his inability to spend, you know, time alone with himself. I mean, we don't ever have to be alone with ourselves. And I know that I've found myself struggling with this because of how different my life is now from when I wrote my first book. Now there's so many more things vying for my attention. And a lot of those are driven by technology that you have to move heaven and earth to create boundaries around that

to carve out a few moments of quiet because you're expected to be accountable and in communication at every given moment of your waking day. I agree that I don't think we recognize the gravity of this. I don't think we recognize the gravity of this. I think when we, you know, we're missing a lot of the big picture when we talk about even things like food and sugar, for example, as important as they are, when you understand where a lot of our behaviors come from, this whole idea of these underlying stressors in our life and how we then use our certain behaviors to compensate for them, I think a lack of downtime is one of the biggest stressors because if you can't sit alone with your thoughts and you always need distraction, well, you're going to use

distraction, whether it's social media, whether it's Netflix, whether it's food, right? So how much of unhealthy food intake is driven by an inability to sit and be alone. I think a lot. Yeah, I mean, I think emotional eating is a condition that's underappreciated. It's easy to dismiss that, like, oh, I'm addicted to whatever kind of food. But I think most people's compulsive eating behaviors and patterns are a function of this unconscious drive to change their emotional

state, like this reflexive need to not feel whatever they're feeling, you know? And I think if you, if somebody was to do a food journal or to posit the question, like, how come I always like, you know, end up, you know, face planning in the Haagen-Dazs, you know, three times a week at midnight or whatever. Like if you were to journal, like what, what happened to you emotionally that day? Like there's triggers for these things, like something emotional, you're, you're feeling, you're experiencing some kind of emotion that maybe you're not even consciously aware of or completely in touch with that is compelling you in an unconscious way to behave

in a certain way to change that emotional state so that you can feel different. So whether it's drugs and alcohol or food or the phone or whatever else is, it's all the same thing. It's all the same thing. It is a, you know, addictive predisposition to alter your emotional state and avoid having to confront, you know, a feeling or an emotion and an inability because of the way we're hardwired to understand that feelings are just that, they're feelings. Like when we have an uncomfortable feeling

or a fear impulse or something like that, you know, we're hardwired through our amygdala, which we talked about earlier, to think that we're in peril, we're going to die, right? And we're going to act accordingly to redress that. But the truth is, it's just an emotion. You're not going to die. And if you can develop the wherewithal to sit with it, to be in that discomfort, to sit with it, to be in that discomfort, you will come to understand one fundamental aspect of emotions, which is that they are constantly in flux and they are not static and it will change and it will pass.

But it is only through the willingness to weather through that discomfort that you can become connected to that. And I think we're in a culture right now where nobody wants to be uncomfortable for a minute. And everything about society is oriented around luxury and comfort and convenience. And the idea of having to tolerate

even a moment of discomfort is considered, you know considered something that we're trying to transcend. And yet deep within us, we have a deep need to be in discomfort in order to grow. And I think that's why you're seeing like Spartan races and ultra endurance, like there's, you know, like if it's all about luxury and comfort and, you know, a padded bank account, then why are all these people showing up to climb in the mud on a, you know, cold Sunday morning? It's because as human beings, we're disconnected from that natural state. be in discomfort, the more resilient we become, the more alive we feel and the more connected to

the planet, to ourselves and to each other we learn to be. My next guest believes that the only thing separating you from living your perfect life is the dialogue that exists within your subconscious mind. Peter Krohn, also known as the mind architect, is a writer, speaker and thought leader in human potential. And in this next clip from episode 199, he explains why we all have the power to choose how we respond to any situation and the impact that this can have on how we live our lives. Why do so many of us these days seem to struggle with negative thoughts and anxiety? Human beings, our predominant fear is for our own existence. And so anything that is perceived as a potential threat to that is going to inspire fear. So if we look at anxiety on a spectrum, there's going to be these

bedfellows, apprehension, concern, worry, fear. There's different iterations of that concern for the future that ironically our own brain is creating. That's the madness, right? And they all speak to our perception of a future that really is undesirable. One of the quotes I use, I say, most people are trying to avoid a bad future that hasn't happened yet. So that perception, that projection, the brain, which is designed to predict and protect, is creating an illusion of a future that is undesirable to one's existence. Now, that could be truly an esoteric conversation, existential, or it could be like, I'm going to get in trouble with the boss or my wife is going to be mad at me.

But it's not really a threat to our literal existence. But to the ego, there's a perception that something, quote unquote, bad is going to happen. And so in present time, there's an apprehension about that. It's primal. At the deepest level, it's a primal way that we just try to survive. I have complete compassion for people who struggle with anxiety, and I want people to understand it's self-generated. Anxiety then at its core, or fear I should say at its core, is there to protect us. So if we are in real physical danger,

we want fear, right? We want that as a protective response so that we can change our behavior, take aversive actions so that what we think may happen doesn't happen. I guess it's when we start to utilize that same mechanism, that same way of thinking, when the threat actually just isn't real. It's this imagined threat in the future. And that's why I love that quote, you know, we're trying to prevent this future. And we're getting anxious in the present about a future that hasn't yet happened. Yet so many people do that. So how does understanding that help people who've actually got anxiety? So first of all, awareness of the pattern to recognize that that is the tendency of a human being, and especially when somebody's had, you know, some past traumas, right, which fill in the blank, it's every human being, right? in the blank. It's every human being, right? Everybody's going to have gone through their version of something. Again, one of my quotes, which I know you're familiar with, I say,

past hurts informs future fear. So wherever we've had any past hurts, then the brain is going to go, well, that sucks. I don't want to do that again. I'm going to make sure that I can personally manage and control my environment such that I mitigate the repetition of the thing that hurts right which seems very logical unfortunately it's really not because what happens is we tend to perpetuate the very thing we're trying to avoid because we're actually in the energy of it we haven't reconciled it so when I'm helping people I'm really cleaning up their history so that they're no longer using that as evidence to project into a future possible repetition of something that hurt them right so like i take one of my nba

players basketball he had the the worst league average in terms of free throw shooting at 37 the league average is 75 so it's not even 50% of that. And so what was happening in his brain, because it's for an athlete who's being paid millions of dollars to perform, it's embarrassing. He felt guilt and shame and all of these things that human beings do, everything we can to avoid. So when he's standing there, his brain is like, well, make sure you don't miss again, because that really hurts. But now he's standing there, his brain is like, well, make sure you don't miss again, because that really hurts. But now he's actually put himself into a position of a preemptive failure, which for an athlete is kryptonite, because now he's tense and he's worried, which doesn't allow him to perform

from the place that he does effortlessly when he's relaxed. So it becomes self-fulfilling. If we worry about a fear, then we tend to actually live from a place energetically with a frequency that is the precursor to it. We attract the very thing that we're trying to avoid, ironically, until such time that we get to a place where we can go, oh my gosh, I'm just living from history and my hurts and fears are the byproduct of things that I haven't fully accepted in my life. So to answer your question, first thing is the awareness of the pattern. Secondly, compassion. It's okay. You're human. You know, there's not a human being

on the planet who doesn't have some kind of fear. It's okay. You know, if you're a parent, you understand if your child is scared, you hold a space for them. You don't berate them or you don't judge them and go, that's stupid. You have compassion. You're like, it's okay, come here. You would hold them, you'd give them a hug, you'd reassure them. So that's what we want to do for ourselves is recognize, oh, okay, it's just a primal pattern in me where I'm trying to avoid something that could hurt me. That's survival, as you said. But it's unnecessary because I'm the one creating the illusion of the future that I'm now trying to avoid.

When you see that part, it becomes kind of comical. You've got one brain. If you really break it down, one brain projecting a future that you don't want, and then the same brain that created the illusory future is now trying to avoid it. Yeah. I mean, when you really see that, it becomes borderline comical. I tell people that you can't help but laugh when you realize the only thing upsetting you is your own imagination. What I love about your approach is you really help bring an awareness to people. And I think that awareness is such a crucial and critical step because until we get that awareness,

we're sort of walking around with blindfolds on. We sort of are at the mercy of other people and other things around us influencing the way we act. And we kind of feel that if the world around us changed, if the people around us changed and behaved in a different way, we'd be okay. When you get to that point, I'd like to think I did a few years back where you realize that that is not the case at all. That is a myth that you have created inside your brain. It is freedom. And I can see why you say that the main products you offer people is freedom. And I'd love you to sort of define what do you mean by freedom? Because I think if you ask 10 people on the street, would you like to be free? They say, yeah, but I guess those 10 people might have a different definition of what freedom really means. So what does it

mean to you? What I'm pointing to, and you articulated it beautifully, is that one of the biggest illusions of a human being is that our experience is generated from circumstance. So therefore, ipso facto, it's only sensical that if we think we feel the way we feel because of what's going on, well, then what are we going to do? We're going to try and control what's going on because that's the precursor to how we feel and we want to feel good. But that's exhausting. There's no freedom there at all. That's called victim of circumstance. What I mean about freedom, to quote Krishnamurti, who was one of my sort of teachers when I was very young and I found his books,

he'd already passed. He's sort of an old traditional Indian guru. He had a beautiful quote. He said, this is my secret. I don't mind what happens. And, you know, if you can really feel into the energy of that, it's incredibly liberating. Now, I've got an addendum to that. I say, yeah, I don't mind what happens. And I have a personal preference, right? So I can get to a place where, yeah, I'm okay with the fact that whatever's going on is going on. And if I don't have any direct control over that, then it's a futile endeavor for me to just grapple with something that's not in my immediate zone of some sort of responsibility. So that's where we want to reconcile and surrender

and go, okay, well, it is the way it is. It's not like I don't want my flight to be canceled, for example. And that's going to have the ramifications of now I'm going to be late for my meeting, or I'll miss my connection or whatever it is. I don't want that to happen. But if I'm sitting at the gate in an airport and just getting really bent out of shape, that's all self-inflicted. Now I'm a victim of circumstance versus to stay centered, to stay at peace, to have a much bigger understanding of the universe as a whole and the things that are unfolding are in accordance with how things are unfolding, and not to be in a state of resistance to that, is what elicits the internal experience of freedom. This way of thinking puts the individual in the driver's

seat of their life. There's nothing worse than feeling that you are a victim to circumstance, that if the train came on time, I'd be happier. if my wife behaved in a certain way i'd be happier if my mom didn't do that i'd be happier yeah if a b c d you know go to go to z and then start again it's it you're a prisoner aren't you it's in that story that i choose to tell myself that i get my power and that I get my freedom, right? It's just, it's comical to realize, wow. And again, there's compassion, right? It's not like you, oh, you idiot. You've always been responsible for your life. It's like, no, it's okay. Wake up and realize, oh, I'm no longer at the mercy of what's unfolding. In fact, we never were. That's the irony. We think we're, you know, I'm upset because the missus said something, or I'm upset because my family did something,

or I'm upset because I lost some money on the stock market. No, none of that ever affected anyone. It didn't. What affected us is our reaction to it. So it's still us. action to it. So it's still us. So I'm helping people transcend that world of self-inflected suffering under the guise of the illusion of that it was the external world that was the instigator of your suffering. No, it looked that way, but it never was. And once you see the truth, which is, wow, I am 100% responsible for the experience of my life. I'm the one generating how I feel. Then why would anybody with an ounce of intelligence want to generate suffering? They wouldn't. And that's freedom. Yeah. Next up is the author and former monk, Jay Shetty. In episode 122, we explored identity, the monk mindset, and what it means to live an

authentic life. And in this next clip, Jay explains why so many of us these days are not living lives that are truly ours. A few years back, I heard you on an interview. I remember being really impacted by what you said. I think, who is this guy? I mean, this is pretty incredible what I heard. You were talking a lot about, I think, identity. It really got me thinking about what is my identity? I guess I was on a journey then anyway, since I lost my father. I think that was one of the significant moments in my life that got me to start questioning everything, thinking about, well, who am I? You know, am I living my life or am I living somebody else's life? I think you expressed it so beautifully. But then when I read your book, I think you start off very early on with identity. So I wonder if you could expand on identity.

What is it and why do you think many of us need to spend a bit of time thinking about it? The monks start with identity and at the root of the issue because a lot of what we experience in the world today, as you know, and I know how holistic you are in the way you advise your patients when you were speaking on my podcast, I was so impressed by you

and how you're able to tie in so many psychological and natural practices and relational exercises that can improve people's health and wellbeing overall. I remember you talking about encouraging your clients to see more friends as a way of changing the way they feel. And I was thinking, wow, this person's got so many great ideas. And the reason is because Rangan, you also have that monk mindset of you go to the root of the issue. It's really easy to just say, oh, well, just take two of these a day or try this, or, you know, maybe you need to do this. But when you think about it from the root perspective, where do our challenges arise? And our challenges arise by how we see ourself. And what I believe Rangan's referring to is there's this quote that I begin my

book with and that I've shared in interviews for the last few years. And it's from a writer named Charles Horton Cooley. And he said, and bear with me, and you've got to really listen closely to this. So what he said that the challenge today is I'm not what I think I am. I'm not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am. Now, just let that blow your mind for a moment. I will explain it. I promise. I'm not what I think I am. I'm not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am, which means we live in a perception of a perception of ourselves. So I'll break it down. If I think Rangan thinks I'm smart, I'll say I feel smart. But if I think Rangan thinks I'm not smart, then I'll say I'm not smart.

And so the challenge is that we're basing how we feel about ourselves on what we think someone thinks of us. And the greatest challenge with that is, how do you have any idea if what you think someone thinks about you is even true and whether that's even the best place to start? So that's where our identity struggles. We start pursuing things in life because we think other people value them. It's almost like, let's think of the most playground version of this. If I remember wearing high-tech shoes from BHS to the playground, right? I remember my mom, because my parents didn't buy me Nike trainers or Adidas trainers, which I always wanted. You know, we didn't come from that background. I couldn't afford them. And my parents didn't want me to have them. So I'd walk in with my high-tech trainers from BHS that were about 10 quid or whatever they were. And to me, it didn't make a difference. I didn't really know at that time whether high-tech was good or bad. They were just trainers that my parents bought me.

Now, everyone, the cool kid at school had the latest Nike trainers. All of a sudden, I start thinking that he's now surrounded by everyone everyone's talking about his trainers everyone's giving him adoration everyone's giving him respect everyone's talking about his trainers so now I think that if I want to have that same experience and love from people that I need to get that not realizing that I may be able to get deeper love from people by being kind and compassionate that I may actually be able to get deeper love from people by being kind and compassionate, that I may actually be able to build a real relationship with people if I'm loving and considerate and empathetic. And it's so crazy how your life can become about pursuing something.

And that's why Jim Carrey puts it best. And I'm paraphrasing. He says, you know, everyone in the world should achieve everything they've ever wanted and accomplish everything they've ever pursued just to realize that it's not the point. Now, that doesn't mean the monk mindset is not about not pursuing your goals. It's actually about pursuing your truest goals, your truest self, and your most authentic aligned goals. So it's not about not having goals. It's about making sure that your goals are actually yours. My guest for episode 380 was globally renowned brain coach, Jim Quake. In this next clip, Jim explains how the three M's of mindset, motivation and methods can keep you stuck in

limiting beliefs, but also liberate you from them as well. So this is really about a proactive approach to life rather than a reactive one. Yeah, I very much think like one of the syntaxes or strategies of success is, you know, the be, do, have, share, that kind of model, you know, because it's a lot of people want to jump to the have. They want to have a perfect body. They want to have lots of money or whatever. Or even when people win the lottery and all the stats when people have and what happens over the next X amount of years, they lose all that and more.

Those jackpot winners because they jumped to the have point but they were never being a millionaire. So they weren't doing the things that, you know, wealthy people would do to have the things that they would have, right? So I think all behavior is belief driven. People at these events, they'll come to me and like, Jim, so glad you're here. I know you're a memory coach. I have a horrible memory or our senior moments are coming too early or I'm just not smart enough, right?

And then I'll say, stop. If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. If you fight for your limits, they're yours. Right. And, um, and so I really feel like, you know, everything starts at that being level that it's part of success is aligning three H's your head, your heart, and your hands. Meaning there's an integration and alignment of what you, what you think and believe, what you, and your hands. Meaning there's an integration and alignment of what you think and believe, what you feel, and what you're doing. Meaning some people could have goals in their head and they have a standard in their head, but they're not acting with their hands consistently. It's about taking nouns and turning them into verbs, getting in the habit of taking

the nouns in your life and turning them into verbs. So here's an example. I think the nature of what we do, you and I and others, it's about transcending. It's about ending the trance. This mass hypnosis, whether it's through marketing or media or from our parents or from wherever those thoughts kind of came from, you know, and those impressions, those expectations that somehow told us we were broken, that we're not enough. Some of that hypnosis is not just coming from marketing or media or fear-based thing. It's coming from ourselves. It's like internal, you know, belief and internal doubt. And even our internal self-talk, our brains are like this incredible supercomputer and our self-talk and our beliefs are the programs it will run.

If people truly understood how powerful their minds are, they probably wouldn't say or think something they didn't want to be true. And that's not to say you have one negative thought and it ruins your life any more than eating just one, some of that candy or that donut will ruin your life. But if you did it consistently every single day, multiple times a day, it will, it will show up in your life. And so for me, you know, when we're, multiple times a day, it will show up in your life. And so for me, you know, when we're thinking about planning our day, it's not so much about time management. I'm thinking about more mind management. I'm trying to think about priority management.

For me, it's about, you know, controlling the controllables, right? And it's about the most important thing is to keep the most important things, the most important things. And for me, the most important thing is the three things are the three things that we control. Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, if you're looking for something at this time of year to kickstart your health, I'd highly recommend that you consider AG1. AG1 has been in my own life for over five years now. It's a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It contains vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system,

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That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. And we could turn this into a masterclass. So Limitless, which is the title of my book, it's not about being perfect. Limitless is about advancing and progressing beyond what you currently believe is possible for yourself or what you're demonstrating for yourself. Think about an area of your life where you feel stuck.

Hey, I'm talking to the listeners right now. Take a moment. Is it your health? Are you not advancing in your health, your impact, your income, your wealth, you know, your level of happiness? Where do you feel like you're not growing and you feel, you kind of feel stagnant and stuck and contained? Where do you feel like you're trapped in a box? Now, by definition, that cube is three-dimensional, right? And so there's three forces that contain that box. And these are the same three forces that will liberate you out of that box.

So when I'm coaching a client, what I'm listening for as I'm going through this intake and this discovery is which dimension is keeping them stuck? Where's the bottleneck? So if you think about a Venn diagram, like three intersecting circles, like maybe Mickey Mouse, two ears that are intersecting and a face, these are the three forces, the dimensions, if you will, that keep you stuck and will make you limitless. They're three M's. Those are the methods. So you've mentioned that as a medical professional, you know, doing the work that you do, people know what to do, but they don't do what they know, right? Because common sense is not common practice.

I mean, how many times do we need to hear about the benefits of cold therapy, you know, saunas, you know, breathing, you know, meditation, you know, reading and exercising and, you know, zone two. Like we hear the same things. So those are the methods. And the methods could be upgraded over time as we learn more and more and research is done and we get that feedback. But a lot of people want to know what to do, but they don't do what they know because you're right. Knowledge is not power. It's potential power. It becomes

power when we apply it. What's keeping people from doing what they should do consistently? Because that's the only evidence that people are committed is that they consistently act. So the first circle, the first M is your mindset. Mindset for me, functionally, how I'm looking at it, I've defined mindset as a set of assumptions and attitudes you have about something. What's your assumptions and attitudes about money? What are your assumptions and attitudes about health? What's your attitudes, assumptions about love or relationships? So I'm just always thinking about mindset. And the three things I would think about mindset for everybody

is not just your attitudes, assumptions about money. Because if your attitudes, assumptions about money is money is root of all evil, or you don't get rich if you're hurting people, whatever, that you won't use the methods, right? That keeps people inconsistent. Because that's why people self-sabotage is because of mindset. They take one step forward and two steps back, right? They buy one of your five best-selling books, right? And it just sits on their shelf, unread and become shelf help, not self-help, right? Because their mindset is, it's just like, oh, the mindset is, oh, if I have the book, then my life is better. And that's absolutely not true, right? And even if you read the book and then apply it, your life is no better than somebody who's illiterate, right. So the mindset's a little bit different. I would also say that in this mindset,

it's not just your set of assumptions about health and relationships and love that will keep you from doing the methods. They're your attitude assumptions about yourself. So there are three things that I would focus on in mindset. Number one, what I believe is possible. Because if you don't believe it's possible, you're not going to do it, right? And that's the other second thing is what I believe I'm capable of. Because you could believe it's possible for someone else to heal or someone else to have a great relationship or someone else to be happy, but you might not believe it's possible for yourself, right? So what I believe is possible, what I believe I'm capable of. And then the third one, what I believe I deserve, right? Because

that's kind of a thermoset setting that, you know, if you feel like we don't deserve that income or deserve that relationship or deserve, you know, that level of intelligence, that impact, whatever, then we're always going to be mitigated in that box because that dimension is holding strong. So that's mindset. And the last part of it, the third dimension that starts with M is motivation. So you're only going to be stuck in that box if you have the right methods to get out of that box, if you have the right mindset that allows that box to expand, and if you have the motivation to even get out of that box, right?

To be able to practice and play at the edge of what you perceive are your limits. Once we learn how to unlock the power of our mind, we can create huge change in our lives for both our health and happiness. My next guest is Dr. Joe Dispenza. Dr. Joe has spent decades studying neuroscience, meditation, and the effects our thoughts have on our health and well-being. In this clip from episode 266, he explains why it's so easy for us to get trapped in negative thought patterns and shares how we can learn to break free.

The way we think has a huge impact on our health and our happiness. And you give a very empowering message to people that if we take control of our internal state, in many ways we can take control of our wider lives. Yeah, you know, if you believe at all that your thoughts have something to do with your life or something to do with your health, and the research points the finger that 90% of the thoughts that you think are the same thoughts as the day before, as long as you're thinking the same, more than likely your life or your health is going to stay the same because the same thoughts lead to the same choices.

The same choices lead to the same choices. The same choices lead to the same behaviors. The same behaviors create the same experiences. And the same experiences produce the exact same emotions. And those same emotions influence our very same thoughts. And our biology, our neurocircuitry, our neurochemistry, our hormones, our gene expression stays the same because we're the same. And the principle is nothing changes in our life until we change. So then the principle in neuroscience is that nerve cells that fire together wire together. If you keep thinking the same thoughts, making the same choices, doing the same things, reproducing the same experiences that stamp the same networks of neurons into the same patterns,

all for the familiar feeling called you, networks of neurons into the same patterns, all for the familiar feeling called you. In time, we begin to hardwire our brain and condition our body emotionally to become more of a subconscious program. So 95% of who we are by the time we're in our mid-30s or middle life is a set of memorized behaviors, unconscious habits, automatic emotional responses, hardwired thoughts, beliefs, perceptions that function automatically. So if you believe in that idea, then if you wake up in the morning and you think about your problems and your brain is the record of the past, those problems are connected to certain people and certain objects and things at certain times and places,

the moment you start thinking about your problems, really much you're remembering your past. And every one of those problems has an emotion associated with it. So the moment we feel unhappy, the moment we feel anxiety, the moment we feel unworthy, now our body's in the past. So thoughts become the language of the brain and feelings become the language of our body and how we think and how we feel is our state of being. So then this first step and change then, 95% of who we are is a set of unconscious thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. Then the first step is to become conscious of your unconscious thoughts, become so aware of how you behave.

Do you complain? Do you blame? Do you make excuses? Do you judge? And then look at the emotions. What is this emotion I'm feeling? Wow, this is guilt. This is sadness. This is victimization. This is unhappiness. Name it so now you're so conscious of it that you don't go unconscious and return back to the same self. And how many times do we have to forget until we stop forgetting and start remembering? That's the moment of change. Firstly, you need awareness.

Hopefully this conversation is giving people that awareness. But if people are not aware, how can they become aware? And once they become aware, what sort of things should they start to do to start making those changes? So simple thing to do, wake up in the morning before you reach for your cell phone, ask yourself, who do I no longer want to be? Let me write down the thoughts today. Let me become so conscious of I can't, this is horrible, I hate my life. Let's just stop that thought because that thought is

going to produce a chemical that's going to signal your body to feel a certain way. Let's become aware of how I behave. Write down two behaviors. Do I complain? Do I blame? Do I rush? Write them down and just commit them. Review them in your mind. What emotions do I want to no longer feel today or at least stay conscious of?

Do I feel sadness? Do I feel suffering? Do I feel fear? Do I feel anxiety? Let me just become conscious of those. And if I start feeling that, I just want to become aware and see if I can change it. Okay, what do I want to change to? When I feel that, let me think this way. Let me review that. Let me review how I'm going to behave. Let me rehearse it in my mind. Let me remind myself who I do want

to be, how I do want to think, how I do want to act, how I do want to feel. And let me see if I can get so good at doing this with my eyes closed when I start my day that I can do it with my eyes open. Let me teach my body emotionally. I want to be able to feel this feeling over and over again so well. I'll keep practice feeling it till I can feel it on command. Wow. Now that's greatness.

You know, that's getting out of the bleachers and getting on the playing field. And it's not going to be a linear process. But catching yourself and when it matters the most is when it's the hardest. Happiness is a choice. It's a bold statement, but it's one I wholeheartedly support. My next guest is former chief business officer of Google X,

happiness expert and bestselling author Mo Gowdart. The sudden and tragic death of his son Ali at 21 years of age set him on a path to make a billion people happier. In this clip from episode 275, he shares why he believes that happiness is a set of skills and beliefs that we can choose to practice no matter what obstacles may come our way. So the idea that happiness is a choice is very provocative for many people. It upsets so many people with me. Now, I actually do agree with you firmly, as you well know. Now, I actually do agree with you firmly, as you well know. Perhaps you could explain to us,

when did you first start realizing what happiness was, practicing the skill of happiness? Then maybe share with us what happened with Ali and how it all fits together. Yeah, I'm grateful that you asked the second part of it before we go back to the story of Ali, because some people may think that, you know, Ali left our world and then I jumped and said, hey, let's celebrate. We're very happy. No, that's not the definition of happy, right? The definition of happy to me is described by a very simple mathematical equation, really. I say happiness is your events minus your expectations, right?

really, I say happiness is your events minus your expectations, right? You look at life and events happen in your life and you compare those to how you want life to be. If the event meets or beats expectations, you're happy. If the event misses the expectations, you're unhappy. And that's really very straightforward. So you could literally, we were, you know, talking about Aston Martins, you can, you could actually buy an Aston Martin, sit in it. And then suddenly go like, ah, there is a problem on the stitching on the, you know, and then feel unhappy. Right? Everyone else will look at you and say, oh my God, that's amazing. But the events is there is a problem with the stitching. And then you feel unhappy. Because what your expectation is that when I pay that much, I should be perfect. Yeah. Which by the way, with all love for Aston Martins,

it's never true. The thing is, happiness in that case is being okay with life. I can bombard you with things and if you're not okay with them, you're not gonna be happy, okay? So I have a very large number of friends. I speak to lots of them

that will have a wonderful human being in their life, right? And that human being in their life, right? And that human being will be kind and loving and, you know, so many upsides, but because of the world we live in, you know, there may be a little shorter than what the dreams of that person are, or people will go and say, but I want this and I don't want that. And as long as that's your way of looking at life, you're never going to be happy. Regardless, if I get you together with the most attractive person on the planet, regardless, you're still going to be unhappy because we're human. There always is going to be something missing.

Now, if the expectation is the person I'm going to be with is going to be human, he's going to be kind, he's going human. Okay. He's going to be kind. He's going to be this. He's going to be that, but he's going to be human, which means you'll finally find happiness. It's that calm and peaceful contentment of saying my partner is not perfect, but I love them as they are. This is why love is a question of acceptance. Now, take that and apply it to everything, including the loss of a child. And I think that's where people really get shocked. So as I said, you know, you lose a child, it's the most difficult. I swear to you, I swear to you, I wouldn't wish it on my enemies. It is so painful. Even now, I mean, as I remember, I swear,

Rangan, I have a pain right here. It is physical. I feel that a part of my heart is missing. here. It is physical. I feel that a part of my heart is missing. Okay. And it just surfaces every time I think about it. And it's, and I'm proud of it and I love it. But the thing is, it's pain. And I think this is where people miss the point. There is pain and there is suffering. Okay. There is a difference between them. Pain comes from outside you. It comes because of the events of your life. And that's not a choice. That's unavoidable. The design of the video game of life is that it will have challenges.

It will have harshness. These are the moments like my son used to teach me. These are the moments where you become a better gamer. These are the moments when you actually strive and learn and stretch yourself and become better. And these are the moments that most often you look back at and you say, oh my God, look at how far I've come because of that bully in school. Or look at how happy I am with my partner now because of that bad person I was with that taught me something. That harshness makes us better. So this does happen, the pain

will happen, and we will all have our fair share of pain in life. Suffering is a choice. Suffering is to feel the pain and then replay it over and over and over in your head. We were chatting over coffee about my dear friend, Dr. Jill Balty-Taylor. And Jill is an incredible neuroscientist, an amazing, amazing contributor to our world. And she did this research that will tell you that between the moment an event triggers a negative emotion in you, say anger, between the moment anger is triggered in you, you get flooded with stress hormones, you react, and the hormones get flushed, or you don't, by the way, and the hormones get flushed out of your physiology is 90 seconds. 90 seconds, that's it. You can only be angry for external stimuli for 90 seconds. What happens then is

that stress cycle is repeated. And then the next cycle is that your rational brain starts to look at the situation and assess if there is an actual threat, if there is an actual reason to be angry and so on and so forth. And for most of us, what do we do? We reinforce the reason. So your partner says something hurtful on Friday at 4 p.m. Saturday morning, you can wake up and say, oh, you remember that clip from 4 p.m. yesterday? Let's play it again. Okay? I openly call it the Netflix of unhappiness. It's unhappiness on demand, right? So you simply tell yourself, okay, I can make myself miserable again over and over by playing those thoughts in my head.

myself miserable again over and over by playing those thoughts in my head. Now, that is a choice. You know why? Because, you know, you go to work and you're obsessing about what your partner told you on Friday. And then your boss says, hey, by the way, we have a very important meeting. We need to discuss A, B, and C. You'll tell your brain, okay, I'm going to come back to obsessing and being unhappy at 11 o'clock. But between now and 11, let's focus on the meeting. Okay. We all have that capability and yet we choose not to exercise it. Consciously or unconsciously? Definitely unconsciously. And even when we become conscious about it, I promise you there will be people that will resist, right? Why? Because just like I said, there is a utility to ego. There is also a utility to becoming a victim, okay? There is a reason why we like to become victims, which

stems from the days you were two years old, right? You were two years old, your brother took something and you cried and became unhappy. So mommy came and hugged you and said, okay, baby, don't worry, I'll get you ice cream, right? So we get programmed that showing unhappiness or feeling unhappiness or feeling victimized gets you a tap on the back. So we want the tap on the back. But hey, you're not six anymore, okay? And the reality, and I tell a lot of people that,

I say, honestly, one of the easiest shortcuts to happiness is to realize you're not six anymore. What you've just beautifully articulated there is actually, for many people, I would say, a harsh, uncomfortable truth. Truth. It is a truth. We do have a choice in how we react. And once you become aware of that fact, you know, I say you can practice it. You can practice choosing differently. You can practice to choose the happiness story in any situation. in any situation. Most events actually, they're really neutral. It's the story we attach to it that determines the outcome. And so many of us, and the truth is until about five or six years ago, I was conditioned to taking a disempowering narrative and, oh, I can't believe they acted like that. If they acted differently, life would be better. But I've woken up from that.

I have been jolted out of that where I take radical responsibility now to go, I own my emotions. I am choosing this story, right? So now that I know I have choice there, I'm going to practice choosing the empowering story. And I think this is, for me, Mo, this is arguably one of the most important skills to develop for anyone in life, is that understanding that we can choose. This is pure wisdom. I promise you, events are neutral. They're neutral. You can charge them negatively or positively. Oh, and more importantly, you can react to them. Even if they're negative, you can react to them negatively or positively. A guest that I really recommend is Edith Agger, one of my favorite conversations in a lifetime. Me too.

Yeah, you hosted her. Yeah. I mean, look at that. Someone that is in the ultimate harshness of the world. 16-year-old, beautiful ballet dancer, you know, drafted to Auschwitz. And Edith, I asked her, I said, so what did you think of the soldiers that did that to you? And she said, I love them. Poor, poor them.

I was like, what? I cried. I swear I cried in life. I said, what are you talking about? And she said, well, Mo, if I was born in Germany and told that it's now Germany and then the world, I would have shouted the same slogans too. Look at that. Look at the choice, I would have shouted the same slogans too. Yeah. Look at that. Look at the choice of how she looks at the story.

And now she's changing our world. Yeah. I was not the same person after that conversation as I was before. I can't unknow what I know. I can't unlearn what I've learned from her. Yeah. And like the things you're sharing,

one of the things that I think about every day is this idea that she said that, Prongen, I've lived in Auschwitz, and I can tell you the greatest prison you will ever live inside is the prison you create inside your mind. And that's what we're talking about, isn't it? Really at its core, it's like, what prison are we constructing in our own mind? What disempowering story are we holding onto so tightly that's sending us down a certain pathway in life such that we then say, you know, you don't understand.

You say happiness is a choice. You don't understand my life. So many of us, we live in stories that we stay stuck in. And those stories can be changed. So many of us, we live in stories that we stay stuck in. And those stories can be changed. They can be restated. You're not saying suddenly that the situation is not harrowing or there's no pain generated by it. There's always a way to subtly reframe something

so it's better than it was. As I shared in the last clip, one of the most impactful conversations I've ever had on my podcast was with Edith Eger, who endured unimaginable hardship in Auschwitz concentration camp. In this next clip, she describes how she was still able to find positives in the darker depths of Auschwitz. Auschwitz was an opportunity. And today we have an opportunity to really decide whether we are holding on to hatred or recognising that that hatred is eating us up and how to be a survivor and not a victim of anything or anyone or any circumstance.

But I think Auschwitz was an opportunity for an opportunity to discover my power within me that no Nazi could take away. Change is synonymous with growth. So I'm hoping that people can find some positive way to make a decision that life is not from outside in, but I have discovered my inner resources in Auschwitz that I was able to decide that they were the prisoners, not me. And they could never murder my spirit. So it's not what happens, It's what you do with it. One of the things I always say in schools is what my mother told me in the cattle car.

We don't know where we're going. We don't know what's going to happen. Just remember, no one can take away from you what you put here in your own mind. When I arrived, it was chaotic. I didn't know where I was. I never heard of Auschwitz. But then we were separated. My father said, actually, you know, we're just going to work and then we're going to

go home. But that's not what happened. Because an hour later, he was in a gas chamber. So was my mother. They could put me in a gas chamber any minute I had no power over it. And I was able to turn the hatred into pity and decided that they were the prisoners. So I became a very talented schizophrenic. I did what I was told every day, but deep inside, I had my spirit.

I had my spirit. We had to learn very quickly the rules, not to fight or flee, but to stay in a situation. And just kind of when they say one day at a time, I would say to myself, if I survive today, then tomorrow I'm going to see my boyfriend. Because he told me I have beautiful eyes and beautiful hands. So it's the way you think, you create what you think. That's important. Every morning when you get up in the morning and you look in the mirror and you say, I love me, because self-love is self-care. It's not narcissistic. It's okay to love you and look forward to the day that you create your thinking, you create your feeling, and you create the behavior.

So before you say anything, ask yourself, is it kind? Is it really very important and necessary? And if it's not, don't say it. Don't say it. I like to be a compassionate listener, even to the white supremacy member who came to see me and told me how he's going to kill all the Jewish people, all the black people, all the Mexicans, all the Chinese, and not to react. If I would have reacted, I would have taken that boy and dragged him to the corner. I would step on him and tell him, who do you think you're talking to? I saw my mother going to the gas chamber. But I think that the most obnoxious person is my best teacher.

Yeah. So I think it's very good to look at the bigot in you. Yeah. It's there. There is a Hitler there. There is a Mother Teresa there. There is kindness. There is goodness. And I think there is kindness, there is goodness.

And I think it's very, very important to really change our thinking that can change our lives. Yeah. By letting go of the concentration camp that you created in your own mind. That's what forgiveness is. You give yourself a gift that you do not carry the people that you hate, that you release them, you let them go. That's why forgiveness isn't about me forgiving you for what you did to me. It's for me to liberate myself not to be a prisoner or the hostage of the past. I don't live in Auschwitz. I go through the valley of the shadow of death I don't come there or set

up house or that but I don't forget it or overcome it I came to term shredder I call it my cherished wound yeah just so powerful really there's there's such wisdom in what you say edith but there's also there's love some people may listen to this and listen to your story and go wow she's an incredible lady which i completely agree with but they may go one step further and they may say, well, she's special. She's got a superpower. I'm not like her. She was able to overcome what she went through and come out the other side. She's stronger than me. What would you say to someone who's feeling like that? What would you say to someone who's feeling like that?

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. 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, and 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. Get rid of the word overcome. I don't forget. I do not overcome. I come to terms with it. Part of me was left in Auschwitz I want to be a realist not an idealist life is difficult

the more I suffer the stronger I become yeah I mean one of the things I've heard you say before is I don't want you to hear my story and say One of the things I've heard you say before is, I don't want you to hear my story and say,

my own suffering is insignificant. I want you to hear it and say, if she can do it, so can I. It was such a wonderful thing to read. And the way you put it in the book, there's no hierarchy in trauma, was just so beautiful. Don't minimize or trivialize anything. Suffering is a feeling. It's part of life.

It's good to invite it in when you get triggered. Feel that feeling. But then you decide how long you're going to hold on to that feeling. The prison is in our own minds and the key is in our pocket. Being kind to ourselves is so important for our health and our happiness. But often the negative voice in our head can start to overwhelm our thoughts. My next guest is Dr. Kristen Neff, one of the world's leading experts on self-compassion. In this clip, she explains why self-compassion is so important for our well-being and our physical

and mental health, and how we can start to silence our inner critic. Something I've observed over the years, particularly as I've got more and more experienced, is when you look at the patients who really transform and change their lives, not just in the short term, but also in the medium term and long term, I'm seeing that it actually is because of self-compassion. It's those ones who start to quieten down and then ultimately eliminate that inner voice, that nasty inner voice in their heads that actually starts to change things. So I feel that self-compassion is really important for health outcomes as well as our day-to-day well-being. Well, self-compassion is really the

antidote to our more habitual way of being, which is harshly self-critical, right? Or really cold to ourselves. And talk about health, right? There's just a new meta-analysis that came out showing that self-compassion is linked to physical as well as emotional health. Because of course, I'm sure as you know, our state of mind impacts our body, right? And how healthy and how well it's functioning. So when you're harshly self-critical or cold to yourself, and by the way, believe it or not, we don't want to judge ourselves for judging ourselves. We don't want to beat ourselves up for beating ourselves up. Because really what's happening when we're really hard on ourselves is we're just trying to stay safe, right? We feel

threatened in some way when we feel we're inadequate or we've made a mistake. We feel like, oh gosh, I better need to change this because it's going to cause problems in my life. oh gosh, I better need to change this because it's going to cause problems in my life. And so we go into the threat defense mode. You know, we attack ourselves thinking that somehow if we attack ourselves, that's going to, we're going to whip ourselves into shape and we'll be better and therefore we'll be safe. So it kind of comes underlying motive of self-criticism is a good one. The problem is, is it's really counterproductive, right? So first of all, when we're really hard on ourselves or harsh with ourselves, it activates the sympathetic nervous system response, which is associated with things like high cortisol levels, inflammation,

high heart rate, eventually high blood pressure and heart attacks, things like that. So when we're constantly in, you might call it the freak out mode, the threat defense, where we feel really threatened, you know, our body's on very high alert to deal with the danger. But if the danger is really like, does the stress make me look fat? You know, I'm sorry, but you know, things like that. We just, the things we criticize ourself for constantly means we feel like a lion is chasing us. And that constant activation actually is bad for our physical health. How would you describe self-compassion? The agreed upon scientific definition is concerned with the alleviation of suffering and the

motivation to do something about it, right? And so at the simplest level, you might think that self-compassion is just compassion turned inward. We're concerned with our own suffering. We care about ourselves and we try to help ourselves so that we are healthier and don't suffer so much. In my model, there are actually three main ingredients of self-compassion. The first one is something that people have heard a lot about these days, and that is mindfulness. Mindfulness and self-compassion, they're actually very closely related. So mindfulness is the ability to turn toward what is, to be aware of what is, to not run from it or dive into it too much, especially when things are painful. And if you think about

it, most of us, when things are painful. And if you think about it, most of us, when things are painful, or especially if that pain is caused by feelings of inadequacy or making a mistake, either we avoid it, we don't want to think about it, you know, we just go into problem-solving mode, or we blame other people, or we do the opposite, and we kind of get consumed by it. We get so lost in our pain and our suffering that there's no perspective. And so in order to give compassion to ourselves, it takes a little bit of perspective taking. We kind of have to step outside of ourselves and say, hey, you're really having a hard time. Is there anything I can do to help? And that perspective is actually mindfulness. We're aware of what's happening,

and we also have some perspective about what's happening. So you might say that's the first step. And then of course, when we're aware of what's happening, we also have to respond with kindness. I mean, we may be aware of our pain and just say, you know, suck it up, or it's all your fault. That's actually not compassionate. Compassionate means there's some sort of sense of warmth, some sense of care, some sense of understanding. It's a kind response as opposed to a harsh response. And then finally, what's really important, what differentiates self-compassion from self-pity? And a lot of people get these two confused, and they're very, very different.

Self-pity is woe is me. Compassion and pity are different. If I had compassion for you, you'd probably like it. I'd say, maybe you're telling me about a problem you had. And I said, oh yeah, I've been there. You know, I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help? Whereas if I pitied you, you wouldn't like it

because I'd be looking down on you. I'm like, well, you really got a bad, poor thing, you know? So the difference between pity and compassion is the sense of interconnectedness, right? If you look at the word compassion in the Latin, come means with, passion means to suffer. There's a sense of suffering with, suffering together. And so with self-compassion, instead of poor me, it's just recognizing that, you know, hey, life is difficult for everyone. Everyone's imperfect. There's nothing

to do with me personally, right? We all make mistakes. We're all imperfect. We're all flawed. We all go through difficult times. And the reason that's so important is because more often, our irrational reaction is something has gone wrong. This isn't supposed to be happening. And again, it's not a logical reaction, but emotionally we feel like what's supposed to be happening is perfection. And maybe everyone else in the world is living a problem-free life. And it's just me who's made this big mistake, or it's just me who's struggling with this personal issue. And it's kind of just a fallacy of the mind. And so with self-compassion we remember oh wait a second

this is the human condition you know being human isn't about being perfect being human is about being flawed and struggling and doing the best we can you know falling down and getting ourselves up again and so these elements together the sense of mindfulness of our of our difficulty and pain a kind reaction to it, and then feeling connected in that experience. All these three things have to be there, according to my model, in order to be self-compassionate. As I become more compassionate to myself, I feel happier. I feel calmer. I feel I'm less likely to engage in behaviors I'm trying not to engage in because I just don't feel the need to plug that gap anymore.

Yeah, no, absolutely. The research shows not only are you happier and you're more satisfied with your life, you're also able to give more to others in relationships, right? Some people think that self-compassion is selfish, but in fact, people who have self-compassionate romantic partners, they say that, you know, their partners are, they're kinder, they're more intimate, they're more loving, they're less controlling, they get less angry. You know, people are more satisfied with partners who are self-compassionate. And that's because when you aren't beating yourself up and you're kind of filling your own reserves with these feelings of kindness and support and connectedness, you actually have more available to give others. Next up, it's the motivational speaker and author Mel Robbins.

And in this clip from episode 220, she explains how to take control of your life with her High Five Habit. I'm on a mission to get every human being in the world to add one simple thing to their morning routine. I know that this takes five days to work. Five days before you have an enormous breakthrough in how you see and relate to yourself. Five days before the chemical, physiological, neurological, physical, and psychological change starts to go, holy cow, this is crazy this works like this. to go, holy cow, this is crazy this works like this. And it is called the high five habit. And here's what it is. Every morning after you brush your teeth, I want you to take a moment, put your toothbrush down and look at the human being in the mirror. That's not your reflection.

That is a human being who needs you. A human being who's beaten down, who feels forgotten, who is so sick and tired of your criticism. And I want you to just stand there and look at them and take a moment because the rest of your day is going to be about everybody else. And then I don't want you to say a thing. From my research, 50% of men and women do not or cannot look at themselves in the mirror because they are either disgusted by the person they see or they are disappointed by them. And for those of us that can look in the mirror, we're still rejecting ourselves because we focus on what we don't like or we start to mindlessly think about all the things that we haven't done right, or that we didn't do yet. You know, on this particular morning, April 2020, I'm overwhelmed by my life. I drag myself into the bathroom. I immediately see my reflection,

and I'm like, oh, God, you look like hell. I start ticking off all the things, the saggy neck, one boob lower than the other, like how exhausted I look, the gray hair coming in, how old I'm starting to seem. And then the mind, once it goes negative, keeps going in that direction. So my mind's like going down the drain. I'm like, why'd I get up so late? I got a Zoom call in eight minutes. God, he didn't even text him back yet. And the dog still needs to be... And I'm like, the beat down, boom, boom, boom. Because I hadn't had the biggest breakthrough of my entire life yet. And I had it that morning standing there. And I don't know what came over me. For whatever reason, I literally just raised my hand and I high-fived the woman that I saw in the mirror

because she looked like she needed a high-five. She looked like she needed somebody to say, it's going to be okay. You can do this. Get out there. And from that very first one, it wasn't like lightning came crashing through the ceiling and stuck me in the head. That's not what happened. But there's definitely a switch inside each and every one of us. Yeah. So think about the walls here. Yeah.

Even when the lights are off, there's electricity in these walls. Even during your worst moments, there is vitality ripping through your veins. There is an electrical life force within you. And life can turn that switch off, but it's still there. There was something about this high five action that felt like a flip, like the switch flipped on and all of a sudden the energy could connect back and something inside me turned on. Now, that first morning I didn't go, yeah, like that's not what happened. I just felt this sort of shift from to, all right, you got a roof over your head, your family's healthy, you've saved money, it's not that bad, get out there.

I didn't even think those things, it was more like the electricity, the energy in me, this vitality kind of kicked in. But it was the second morning where the profound nature of what I was stepping into really kicked in. So I wake up, anxiety, ankles right up the legs, feel like the rush of, oh God, something's wrong. I start walking to the bathroom and it's as I'm walking to the bathroom, I'm not even in there yet, that I feel something I have never felt in my entire adult life. And it's this, you know, when you're about to go to a cafe and you're going to meet somebody you're really excited to meet, right? Or somebody you really love, you know, you're going to see them. What do you feel, right, as you're about to walk in the cafe? You're excited. You're upbeat. You're anticipating something good happening.

Yeah. I actually realized I was feeling that way about seeing myself. Yeah. about seeing myself. Now, I'm 53 this year. I don't think until that morning in April 2020, I had ever had an experience as an adult of being excited to see the human being Mel Robbins. I've been excited to see an outfit or a haircut or the way a new eyeshadow might look. But the human being, the way our kids, when they're really, really little, just love the sight of themselves, this unconditional support and celebration that's hardwired in your DNA when you're born. Yeah. And so as I rounded the corner that second morning, that's when the profound nature of this started to really hit me. And I stood there and I stared at the woman in the

mirror and I realized, I don't think I've ever asked myself the question, what does she need for me today? I've never joined in partnership with myself. I have been so busy trying to get shit done, trying to make sure people like me, trying to make sure the bills are paid, trying to make sure everybody else is okay, trying to do all this stuff that is the stuff of our lives that I have forgotten about the most important person,

and that is myself. We all know that we're supposed to love ourselves. We all know that we're supposed to be kind to ourselves. You can read a quote on Instagram, you should talk to yourself like your best friend. The problem is how? Right? How do you do that? I don't know. I've been beating the shit out of myself for years. How do I stop doing it? I don't know. Here's the thing. Logically, we know it's stupid because if beating yourself up, being hard on yourself, rejecting yourself, trashing yourself, if it actually worked, we'd all be millionaires. We'd have rockstar bodies. We'd have the best

marriages on the planet. We'd never have to work a day in our life. We'd be on a beach, like it would work. Yeah. But instead, we have these patterns of thinking and small patterns of behavior, like not looking in the mirror at yourself is a form of rejecting yourself. Picking yourself apart is a habit of rejecting yourself. And so when you start your day like that, which you do, and then you go out into the world having rejected your very being, this is the reason why you are so thirsty for everybody else's validation. This is the reason why you are seeking your worth in the money that you make, in the car that you drive, in the downloads that you get, in the likes that you drive, in the downloads that you get, in the likes that you have, in the neighborhood that you live in. You think your worth is outside of you.

And I'm here to tell you the secret is grab that worth and bring it back home. Start practicing a physical habit, an action that demonstrates to your brain that you respect yourself, that you believe that you're worthy, that you deserve forgiveness, that you deserve encouragement, that you believe in you. And as you start to practice the physical action, the universal symbol for I got you, I love you, I celebrate you, I see you, I believe in you. When you practice this physical action, the neuroassociation that is already in your brain with the high five to yourself in the mirror takes over. It's insane how this works. The science is mind blowing. The high five habit goes all the way down to the core of who you are and how you

treat yourself. And when you become a human being who has compassion for yourself, who likes you, it won't matter what happens out there because everything in here is healed and taken care of. And so like, you know, somebody can say to me, I don't love you anymore. I don't like you. It'll sting, but it doesn't change the fact that I still like myself because I practice and demonstrate it. That's the difference. Yeah. And that's, I think, the hidden magic in the high five habits. And I think it's what you say. It's the action. You don't have to say anything if you're not in the mood to say anything. Well, I don't want you to say anything, actually.

And the reason why is the neuro-association. What do you mean by that? Well, here's what I mean by that. So when you high-five someone else, what does the action of a high-five communicate? It's just a universal symbol of you got this. I see you. You're great. We can do this.

It is a universal symbol of encouragement, of love, of celebration. And the neuro association, whether you live in a culture where you've been high-fived or not, the neuro-association is still there because you have seen them in sport. Yeah. You've seen them in marathons. You've seen teachers give them to kids. So your brain has a lifetime of programming in your subconscious that is triggered by

this action. It is neurologically impossible to high-five yourself and think you're a loser. You failed. I don't like your face. Your brain will not allow you to do it because the neuro association is so entrenched. It has only ever meant I celebrate you. I see you. I got you. Keep going. You got this. I'm behind you. You know, as you say that, Mel, it makes me think of gratitude because when we are feeling grateful, we can't feel down. We can't feel anxious. We can't feel annoyed with ourselves. And in some ways, this is kind of gratitude for ourselves. Correct. Because the thing about gratitude, which obviously has tremendous demonstrated, proven benefits in your life, most of us are grateful for things outside of us. Yeah. What I'm teaching the world to do is to unlock neuroassociation in your mind and in your nervous system

and aim it back at yourself. So Dr. Amen told me, who's, you know, one of the leading experts in the brain, that one of the reasons why you feel better when you do it, no matter how terrible of a morning it is, is because your brain has always given you dopamine when somebody else high fives you. Yeah. So these sorts of gestures are rewarded in the brain. So when you simply high five yourself, your brain doesn't distinguish between me high fiving me and me high fiving you. It just sees, oh, I know what that is. Drip, dopamine. Oh, I believe in that person. And so you send yourself into the game of life with that sort of optimism, the game of life with that sort of optimism, with that resilience, with that compassion.

And look, some days you're going to laugh. Some days you might cry. People report. Some days you're going to just feel a little bit better. And some days you're going to high five yourself and laugh out loud from the dopamine and walk into your boss's office and ask for that raise or quit. Because you're going to remember that no matter what, you're going to be okay. You're going to remember that no matter what, you got your own back. You're going to remember that it doesn't matter if nobody says great job at that presentation that you worked on because you can walk into the bathroom. As people have written to us, having practiced this, hey, I did a presentation at work. Nobody said a damn word. The old me would have walked into my cube and cried and thought I was getting fired. I knew I did a good job. I walked

into the bathroom and high-fived myself. Your kids can stick this in their back pocket. And it's a way to reset yourself when you start going down that negative road. And why is this important? It's important because the high five is not going to remove poverty. It's not going to remove discrimination. It's not going to remove diabetes. It's not going to remove the fact that somebody just said they want to divorce you. It's not going to remove all of the trauma. It doesn't change those things. It changes you. And it changes your relationship with yourself and your ability to believe that through your actions and your attitude, you can move the needle on those things.

My next guest is the wonderful psychologist, Pippa Grange. Pippa believes that many of us are performing at life rather than living our lives. And in this clip from episode 126, living our lives. And in this clip from episode 126, she explains why we should stop holding back, put fear aside, and allow ourselves to live the life that we want to live. 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. You know, 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 and and i think that's such a shame why do people wear suits and ties you know 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, you know, 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. 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. you're performing your life, not living it. And that's a problem. That I could feel shivers, as you said, that you're performing in your life, not living it. That is so powerful, Pepper, 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.

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 more mental freedom is on the other side of it. It's the performative nature of us showing up and with all our, what's that beautiful quote? And I don't remember who said it, but, you know, 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 best you can. But it's the idea that if you don't do it in a particular way,

you're not worthy and good enough as a human being. And therefore everything else is sort of anchored into that. Yeah. I'll be honest with you, I can't shake this idea that you mentioned. Are you performing at life or are you living life? I think it's so powerful. 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 that it's not another area to lay blame on yourself you know because we all do it the whole 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 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 and letting go of some stuff, trusting yourself a bit more, being brave in that way, rather than another level of perfectionism that you have to achieve. The start of a new year is the time that many of us look to make changes in our lives. But we can often find it hard to do small things on a regular basis that will slowly move the needle for our health and our happiness. Coming up, we'll hear again from Rich Roll as he shares why the journey is often more important than the destination and why consistency

is key. But first, we're going to hear from James Clear, the author of the best-selling book, Atomic Habits. In this clip from episode 145, James explains why our daily habits are so important and how we can start to create lasting behavior change that will truly change our lives. There are a variety of things that influence your outcomes in life. There's luck and randomness. There's your choices, individual decisions you make, where to go to school, who to marry, what job to take, what career to pursue. And then there are your habits and your actions. And by definition, the to marry, what job to take, what career to pursue. And then there are your habits and your actions. And by definition, the first one, luck and randomness is not under your control.

Now your choices, we, you know, we could talk more about that possibly, but the one that I've explored the most is your habits. And the reason is because they are decisions. They're, they're also choices, but they're ones that get repeated day in and day out. And I think for that reason, they exert an enormous force on your outcomes in life. And we could potentially boil it down and simplify it and say that your current life today is largely the sum of your habits. In many ways, it's the habits that you've been following for say, the last six months or the last year, the last two years that have carried you to whatever results you have right now. I had a friend who told me a couple months ago, I thought I liked the way he phrased it. He said, if you're enjoying good results right now, you were killing it six months ago.

And I think that speaks to the quality of habits and how they build up and compound. And it's really the process that you've been running. We also badly want better results in life. You know, we also badly want to make more money or to reduce stress or to find love or to be more productive. But the results are actually not the thing that needs to change. It's the system that precedes the results. It's the habits that precede the outcome. So it's kind of like, fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves. the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves. Why is it that we don't sort of intuitively get that? Why is it, you know, classic case, January the 1st every year where it's, okay, complete lifestyle overhaul, get to the gym three times a week, eat completely perfect whole foods, you know,

don't bring any sugar in the house. And it lasts for about two weeks or three weeks at the most for many people. And then if they're not seeing results, you know, there's something isn't there in the human psyche that actually we judge the success of our habits, maybe a little bit too early, I guess. I really like what your friend said about how you are now is what you were doing six months ago. It's such a beautiful way to think about it. But what's going on there with human psychology that we don't quite see it? Whether it's the daily news cycle or social media, it tends to be very results-focused. It tends to be very results-oriented So, you know,

you're never going to see a news story that says something like man eats chicken and salad for lunch today, right? It's only going to be a story when it's like man loses, you know, all this weight or, uh, it's only, we only hear about the Broadway play once it's a hit, not when it's being written, right? We only hear about the, um, successful team after they've won the championship, not while they're training in the offseason. And so the results of success are often highly visible and discussed. And the process of success is often hidden from view. And for that reason, I think we tend to overvalue results and undervalue the process that, you know, precedes it, all the work that comes before. I'm not saying that results don't matter. They do. But people who focus only on

results win one time. People who focus on systems win again and again. And so the place that you want to focus is on building better habits and developing better systems, not necessarily achieving a particular outcome. Yeah. Yeah. So much for people to reflect on there, I think. It's not just about habits. Of course it is. But it's what doing those habits regularly does for you and how you think about yourself. True behavior changes really identity change. And what I mean by that is, if you start to look at yourself in a new way, if you assign a new story to yourself, you're not even really pursuing behavior change anymore. You're just acting in alignment with the type of person that you see yourself to be. So if you identify as I'm a meditator, you're not really convincing yourself

to be to meditate each day, you're just like, No, this is what I do because that's part of who I am. And so the real goal is not to run a marathon. The goal is to become a runner. The goal is not to read 50 books a year. It's to become a reader. The goal is not to do a silent meditation retreat. It's to become a meditator. And once you start assigning those identities to yourself,

you start seeing the behavior in a new way. It's not an obligation or, you know, something you're trying to achieve. It's not a challenge. It's just part of your natural action. Now, ultimately, and kind of to connect this idea to the rest of our conversation, I think this is where habits come back into play. And it's the real reason I think why habits matter. Like we often talk about habits as being the pathway to external results. Oh, habits will help you lose weight or make more money or be more productive or reduce stress. And you know, it's true. Habits can help you do all those things. And that's great. But I think the real reason that habits matter is they reinforce a new identity. They reshape the

way you think about yourself. Every action you take is like a vote for the type of person that you wish to become. And so no, doing one pushup does not transform your body, but it does cast a vote for I'm the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. And no, writing one sentence does not finish the novel, but it does cast a vote for I'm a writer. And the more that you do these things, the more you perform these little habits, the more you cast votes and build up kind of a body of evidence for being that kind of person. And eventually, the weight of the evidence sort of shifts things and the story shifts in that that direction to start by doing one push up or meditating for one minute or writing one sentence or sending one email and letting that

be undeniable evidence that in that moment, you were that kind of person, you were an athlete, you were a meditator, you were a salesperson, whatever it is that you're trying to achieve. And so for all of those reasons, I kind of think the first question to ask yourself is what kind of identity do I want to ask yourself is what kind of identity do I want to build? Who do I wish to become? And if you have a good idea of that, then you can start to back into habits that reinforce that identity. The things that you identify as are part of how you live. They're part of your daily routine. And so you're not just looking to like do them for a sprint. You're looking to make them part of the long run.

The quick fix kind of hack your life mentality is a close cousin to the clickbait, soundbite media culture. We all want it now. We want it immediately. We want to be the best version of ourselves tomorrow. We want to read this book or do be the best version of ourselves tomorrow. We want to read this book or do this one thing and fix everything overnight. And it just doesn't work that way.

I don't believe in any of that. And I think even if you were given the opportunity to snap your fingers and, you know, become the person you always wanted to become, you're still robbing yourself of what's most valuable about that transformation, which is the journey to get there. Every success that I've had in my life has been very hard fought and has been a process of a lot of behind the scenes work

undertaken consistently, aggressively, and anonymously. You move these mountains over a very slow period of time. You know, my podcast began, it took eight years to get it from where it was to where it is today. My swimming career, my writing career, my athletic journey as an ultra-endurance athlete, All of these things didn't happen overnight. They were the result of a dedication to a process that involves strategies and tactics that are not sexy, that are difficult, and that are mostly about tiny little things

that you do every single day to move that ball forward imperceptibly and incrementally. And that's not sexy. That's difficult. And that doesn't lend itself to a clickbait narrative. It's just hard. That's the truth. And deadlines play a big part in that. So when I started the podcast, I made a commitment to myself that I was going to publish a new episode every single week, no matter what. And I'm very proud of the fact that I've adhered to that. Like I haven't missed a single week, but simply by making that rule that I'm going to put one up every week, no matter what, forced me to basically get my shit together and find a guest and produce it and post-produce it

and get it up. I mean, in the early days, I was editing the show myself on GarageBand. I was the only person doing it. So I had to learn every component of what's entailed in creating a podcast from how you get it on iTunes to what mic should I be using and how am I recording this? Now I have a team, but that didn't happen overnight. It took many, many years. So I think what happens is people want the success. They want the result. They don't appreciate the hard work that goes into it. And they're not patient enough to undertake the long journey required and the learning that gets packed into all of that to mature and grow over time. Most people overestimate what they can do in a short period of time, whether it's a month or six months or a year, and wildly underestimate what they're capable of accomplishing over a decade or a number of years. And I think that's a part of why people peter out on New Year's resolutions, like they're not seeing

the results that they want right away. They haven't created a structure with interim goals and deadlines built into that where they can measure their progress incrementally, into that where they can measure their progress incrementally and they lose enthusiasm for it. So if I do have any kind of special skill, it isn't that I'm an innately talented athlete or a naturally gifted podcaster. It's that I appreciate the journey itself and I'm willing to put in the work when no one's looking. And I've learned over time in every facet of my life that that work pays off over time. But you have to be unbelievably patient and resist that sense of entitlement that you get, that when you undertake something difficult, that you need to be reaping the rewards. Like, I'm just about the work and the process itself.

the rewards. Like I'm just about the work and the process itself. And I've been lucky enough to engage in processes that I love so that I enjoy the journey itself. But by simply being about that journey and that process, that's why I've been able to, you know, move my life into the place that it is today. Really, you know, the rules or the guideposts, whether it's I'm putting up a podcast a week or I'm gonna wake up at this time of day or I'm going to exercise three times a week or I'm gonna eat these foods and not these foods or I'm gonna go to bed at this particular time or no screens, you know, within an hour of sleep

or whatever it is, I think being proactive about those things, making a commitment to yourself is an act of self-love. And then recruiting community for purposes of accountability to keep you on track. These are tools that I've deployed and employed in various aspects of my life, both in the podcast and outside of the podcast, to simply be a better human and to live more consciously, mindfully, and intentionally. And I think that's applicable to everybody, no matter who you are or where you find yourself on this carousel of life. Sometimes we can feel overwhelmed by all the things we have to do or want to do.

Coming up, the author Greg McKeown shares how we can focus on the things that are truly important by asking ourselves one simple question each day. But before that, my next guest is Oliver Berkman, journalist and author of the book, 4,000 Weeks, Time Management for Mortals. And in this clip from episode 260, Oliver reveals some of his top tips to help us overcome overwhelm and make better choices. I think there's always going to be more things that feel like they matter because the world is full of countless opportunities and countless people suffering who need our help and countless good causes and, you know, countless interesting places to visit. But all of these, there's just an endless amount. So why on earth would you ever expect that you could fit all of the ones that you cared about into your life?

But we do. I mean, we do expect that sort of chronically. I think that is actually another of these examples of something that is really liberating because you can see that you don't have to fight to somehow make time for everything that matters, that that's kind of a futile quest. You just have to make time for some things that matter and let it go, that it's not going to be everything. Once we put the limits on our time, and now actually time is limited,

within that constraint, I think we can flourish and I guess be more creative. I totally, totally agree. And I think in creativity, it's often a matter of bringing in those constraints. And then sometimes in our daily time time it's just a matter of seeing that the constraints are there in a sort of non-negotiable way whether we like it or not and I think yes I think when we do the opposite to that which is either try to sort of get over all constraints or to behave as if there aren't any constraints it it can feel it's the more comfortable path at first sometimes but it it leads nowhere good because it is so out of touch with reality that that's when you're going to apportion your time wrongly

because you're going to think, well, first of all, I'll answer a hundred emails before I get around to what really matters to me today. Well, if that's because you think you've got more time than you have, if you understood that you didn't, you might switch those two things around, spend the first part of the day on the thing that you cared about the most. That's just one example, but it's just a way of acting that respects the constraints that you're already in. I guess what you're talking about, certainly to me, is intentionality, about living an intentional life, like understanding that we're making choices all the time. And actually, many of us are making choices that we don't even realise we're making. Yeah, I think this goes to the heart of it for me because it's tempting to think that in a book like this, that I'm saying, why don't you live a limited life? Why don't you decide to live in a

way that is finite instead of limitless? And it's like, no, the point is you already are doing every day, whether you like it or not. You already are making something like a choice to sacrifice all sorts of things in favor of other things. That's already happening. The choice we have is whether to do that consciously or not. You are always choosing. It wouldn't be the case if you had eternal life, if you were limitless, if you were infinite, because then there'd always be more time to try everything and to do everything. But because we're not, because we're finite, every choice you make

is a choice not to do something else with that little portion of your finite time. We can't be free of that situation, but the freedom we can aspire to is the freedom of making those decisions consciously and seeing like, okay, I've decided that this matters more than this for today. And it's not because that other thing doesn't matter. It's because I've got to make a choice. But just do it from this position of like being in touch with reality and not endlessly berating yourself and beating yourself up for not being able to sort of evade the terms and conditions of being human. One way to think about this is just to ask yourself how you might do today differently

if you really knew and believed that you definitely weren't going to get all the things done that you were hoping to get done in the day. Might you in that situation make at least a little bit of time now today for something that you know you really care about rather than telling yourself that that's coming down the pike that you're going to get all this other stuff out of the way first and then you're going to have time for that i've said in the past as a bit of a joke but i think i mean it that the only sort of time management technique worth its salt is like step one choose something that you know matters to you step two figure out when today or this week you're going to give it at least like

20 minutes of your time and then there is no step three because like yes some other things are not going to get done and that was always the case And only this time you will have spent some time nurturing that relationship that matters to you or starting to write that screenplay you've been thinking about for a decade or a million other things. But I think people know more than they always necessarily realize they know what matters to them. And it really ultimately is just a matter of making a little bit of time for those things here and now. The challenge, I think, is to treat competing priorities as somehow equally valuable. It's where you start to say it's all essential, it's all important, it's all a priority. I mean, this is one of my favorite little tidbits of research, but the word priority came into the

English language in the 1400s. And according to Peter Drucker, it stayed singular for the next 500 years. So it wasn't until the industrial revolution where people started speaking with no sense of irony at all, saying, here are my 34 priorities, and they all have to be done now or even yesterday. And so that shift in our language, I think, illustrates a weakness in our thinking, in our logic, that says, look, if I can just fit it all in, somehow I can have it all. If I treat everything as important, then it will all work out. And in fact, life isn't even close to, that doesn't approximate reality at all. What is far closer to reality is that a few things are essential,

and almost everything is trivial noise. And so, it's more like waking up, you know, you've spent your whole life thinking you were in a, and I don't say this in any way disparaging, but you think you're in a coal mine, and you've lived your life in that way. It's just productivity, get more stuff done. And then you wake up and you say, I've never been in a coal mine. It's all the time it's been a diamond mine. And so actually my whole job is different than I thought it was. The whole job of life is different. It is to actually explore what is essential, find those diamonds. That's the most important thing. All the rest doesn't matter. Find those things, invest in them, protect those things. As I think about your work,

and you know, I see, where do I see people commenting on this on social media? A lot of it has been people in the business world or the productivity world. But I actually think your work goes far beyond that because what you're asking, what you're writing about are fundamentally existential human questions. And actually, I think there's almost a spiritual undertone. I think that on one level, you need self-awareness to be able to apply the principles in your books. But at the same time, I think simply by applying those principles in your life is going to give you a lot of self-awareness. So I think it works both ways. a lot of self-awareness. So I think it works both ways.

It is about your spiritual life and about what is guiding you. As a friend of mine put it, are you being led by your scared self or your sacred self? The scared self will tend to operate in a certain way, endlessly the fear of missing out and what other people are doing and competing and comparing and living in that state. But the sacred self will guide you differently. And so asking better questions will help reveal better answers. I'm thinking now of somebody of a working mum in England who reached out to tell me her story so she after reading some of the stuff I'd

written started asking this question every day what is the most important thing I need to do today that's a simple question but she asked it every day she wrote it up and she asked it every day at first the answer she got was to do with the business that she was trying to run question. But she asked it every day. She wrote it up and she asked it every day. At first, the answers she got were to do with the business that she was trying to run,

which key client to work with, what project was due, and so on. But over time, the answers evolved, she evolved, and it became, well, self-care. Actually, you need to sleep better because you're not sleeping enough. You're not protecting yourself. You are burning yourself out. But then one day, she gets a call from her dad. He said, look, nothing to alarm you here. Mom's in the hospital again. It's nothing serious.

Just wanted to keep you in the loop. She said in that moment, she asked the question that day, she knew exactly what the answer was. It was so clear to her. It was almost like time stood still. And she remembers the weather and the room she was in. And she just knew she had to go to the hospital that day. That was the priority. And so she did. Now that's like a two-hour drive. So she's really committing the rest of the day to this. It's not completely trivial. I would just go across the street, the 10 minutes thing. She goes and she sees her mom. She says, Mom, I love you. I'm glad to be here. Mother says,

I love you too. An hour after that conversation, her mother falls into a coma and very unfortunately, never recovers from that. Jo has the unfortunate job of turning off the life support machine. And she reached out to me, just wrote to me to tell the story because she said, if I had not been an essentialist that day, how differently things would have worked out. I wouldn't have had that moment. I would have missed that and for something inane. And so that was, to me, a very encouraging moment because I felt like, well, I can't change the hospital moment, but for her, she was able to make a better trade-off. And so as people ask better questions, as they change and evolve, the answers will change and evolve.

When people look from anything like a long-term perspective, they recognize that only a few things matter. At the very end of people's lives, when they're looking at the totality of their life, they don't say, oh, my goodness, I wish I'd spent more time on email. Oh, I wish I'd spent more time on social media and so I wish I'd spent more time, you know, on social media and so on. No one thinks that. No one says that. They can see with a bit more perspective a few things mattered. My guest for episode 332 of this podcast was clinical psychologist Dr. Romani. In this next clip, she explains why perfectionism is a common form of self-sabotage

and how we can start to overcome it. Perfectionism is a particularly nasty part of the self-sabotage cycle because it's setting a bar you will never reach. Nobody, nothing is perfect, right? So just by setting a perfectionistic standard, you've already lost. You'll never get the thesis written. You'll never get the dinner made properly. Nothing's ever going to be enough. And because it's impossible to be perfect,

people who are high in perfectionism really do exhaust themselves. And I think, unfortunately, we're talking about social comparison. The way the world is set up these days, you could be a perfect parent and a perfect worker and have a perfect house and your refrigerator can be perfectly organized and you can have a perfect wardrobe and a perfect body. Those are always being touted as possible standards. And so because it's like, well, I could have a better body. I could have a more organized refrigerator.

I could have a, whatever, cleaner house or a more successful career. People are always pushing themselves. Perfectionism, what it does is it pushes people out of the moment. You're never staying present in the moment because there's always something else you could be doing because there's no way to achieve that state. You're running after a constantly moving goal post. You're never going to reach it. Yeah. You know, the way I've seen it with patients is, I don't know, something as simple as, yeah, doc, I want to, I'm going to start running. Yeah. I think that's going to be really good for me. And two months later,

they still haven't done anything because they're still researching the best shoe or the right running gear or the correct type of workout to do. When just going for a 10-minute run around the block is probably the best thing they could do to get started. So I see this very much through the lens of health when people are trying to engage in health promotion behaviors. I think they do self-sabotage with this perfectionist ideal,

this unattainable ideal. What's the solution for that person? It's not easy to just click your fingers and go, oh, I'm not going to be a perfectionist anymore. I think it's often, it signifies something deeper underneath. But for someone who that resonates with, how can they start to think about it? How can they start to try and change it? Well, part of it is the tolerance of the discomfort of not being perfect. Does that make sense? Is that the idea of things not being perfect can literally bring up anxiety in a person. So in a way, you'd almost use some of the principles we'd see in the treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder, that idea of exposure with response prevention, which is be in imperfection for a minute. Like, we're just

going to hand that in like that. We're going to have people over and yeah, there's still going to be some laundry in the corner. Let's see how that feels. And the person will say, I feel like I'm actually about to have a panic attack, but say, okay, we're still going to do it. You're not going to, you're going to be fine. Even if you have a panic attack, it'll be fine. And then afterwards say, what was that like? And because again, what is it with OCD that people engage in the exposure, they recognize they're exposed to whatever the thing that they're afraid of without being able to do their compulsive behavior. And they're still standing when it's over. They're very uncomfortable, but they're still standing. They're like, okay,

you're right. Nothing terrible happened. And it's that idea of nothing terrible happens when the perfect thing doesn't happen. This goes back to your earlier point of why in the case of things like illness or other sort of really bad things that befall a person, why we sometimes see a correction that actually pushes back on perfection. When the whole world kind of comes crashing down on you, right? People are getting sick and jobs are getting lost and people might even be losing their homes. Perfection kind of, you're just trying to stay alive. And those moments of survival can just be where some of that stuff almost kind of gets broken off and it just kind of goes away.

But it is just the tolerating that discomfort. It's not easy to do because people are never going to run into discomfort is definitely one piece of it. I think another is also for people to get perspective and hearing the truth from other people. I hate to say it. We live in a world where a lot of people aren't telling the truth of their lives. And they're like, I've got it all figured out. I'm happily married and I have a beautiful home and I run every day and I do this and I do that. And I'll tell you that one thing I'm very transparent about is what an absolute mess I am with people. I don't mean that in a disparaging way to myself, but I am highly disorganized. I struggle with certain kinds of relationships. I think that when we can

hear people really be open and honest, I think this idea of the therapist, of having it all together, it's a very, very, very dangerous trope. I'm somebody who has had a lot of issues with toxic relationships in my life, and I've experienced trauma. And I see how little things about myself. I was telling someone the other day, I can never sit in the middle of an auditorium. I always have to sit on the end or I will sit on the floor because I have panicky thoughts when I can't get out of a space quickly because of my own trauma history. And so I'm the kind of bizarre looking woman who's like, I don't care if I can't hear or see, but I'm on the aisle now, so I'm okay. And so I think that when we start hearing other people's stuff, especially

people that we might value or admire, all of a sudden it humanizes this idea that nobody's really perfect. And I think that we live in a world where we've almost fetishized people who seem to have it all together, right? And people don't feel good when they see that. It's not that they want other people to be suffering, but nobody's got it all together. And I think sadly, social media does fetishize these people who seemingly have it all together. And I can guarantee you they don't. So that's another piece of this too, is recognizing that nobody does. That's that common humanity. That's such an essential part of self-compassion. My next guest went from failing

his A-level exams to becoming one of the UK's best known TV presenters. In this clip, fellow podcast host Jake Humphrey explains why failure is an important part of the journey to success. explains why failure is an important part of the journey to success. Even these people we look up to and potentially put on pedestals, they've all failed at some point. Even these Olympic gold medalists, there's a bit in the book where you talk about Kelly Holmes crying in a hotel room in France about her abilities when she's one of the fastest women on the planet. You know, really powerful stuff that everybody fails. Even the people you're looking up to, they have also failed. More than anybody else. Successful people fail more than anybody else because they are the ones that are pushing the envelope all the time. They're the ones that have to get really comfortable with failure. And I think the

people that we speak to have managed to reframe their opinion of failure. That's what it is. It's about reframing. So if we talk about it in a sporting context, right? Instead of saying that, oh, my football club are training at the moment. They're not training at the moment. They're failing at the moment. Why are they failing at the moment? Well, because they're on the training pitch and they're taking loads of free kicks and loads of penalties and they're working on different shapes and they're trying to perfect their passing and they're getting it wrong. So they're failing. And then when the match happens in front of 50,000 people on a Saturday in a football stadium, guess what? The pass, the free kick, the penalty,

the corner, the shape, the plan, it all works. Why? Because of the days of failure on the training ground. But we don't see it as failure. We see it as training. You know, you go in the gym. What does a personal trainer often say to people? All right, pick up those dumbbells

and I just want you to lift them to failure. But you don't go, oh, that was a bad day in the gym. I bloody well lifted to failure. I can't believe it. I'm going to beat myself up. I'm going to tell myself I'm crap. I'm going to go home and drink a bottle of wine because I failed.

No, you understand it. You think of failure as a positive thing in the concept of growing your muscles. You can lift longer. You can lift harder because you failed. The growth is where the failure is. And I think it's a really you know if i was to leave you with one lesson from today it is the reframing of failure that it isn't failure it absolutely

isn't failure and these successful people have failed time and time and time again and they keep on failing and i think one of the really important things you can do right when you get your head around failure and you realize that it's going to be there, whatever, that's when you feel the freedom to do things that you wouldn't normally do because the failure is telling you it's not going to happen. That brain is saying it's not going to happen. So why are these successful people successful, right? But once you've discovered the situation regarding failure and you realize that it's not actually a negative thing, it's a positive thing, you seek it out. You go and see someone and you say that it's not actually a negative thing, it's a positive thing, you seek it out. You go and see someone and you say, we've always spoken for years about doing this. Sod it. I've got 500 quid in the bank and so have you. It's enough to get us started. Let's

see where it takes us. You go to your boss and you say, look, for years I've worried I might fail at this, but you know what? I'm going to take a crack at that job that you've been advertising. I'd love to do it. I know it's a promotion. and what happens is people that we now consider to be successful basically what they're doing they're they're kind of i heard it described as like buying lottery tickets they're buying lottery tickets all the time and one of them's coming off and then we go whoa they were successful well listen for a start they bought a lot of lottery tickets that led to nothing, but they kept on gambling. They kept on betting they were going to be successful.

Why did they feel the freedom to keep on betting and keep on gambling and keep on pushing and keep on trying and keep on getting these lottery tickets? Because they got it through their heads that the failure that's around the corner is not a full stop, it's a comma. And you have to expect to fail. Start anything expecting to fail because then when the failure comes,

you're not derailed and you think, shit, man, this isn't for me. You go, yeah, yeah, I was expecting this moment. Because quite often on the other side of that really difficult day or period of failure, that's where the really good stuff is. The next clip comes from episode 110 and is with the US entrepreneur, Tom Bilyeu. We discuss identity, how to become resilient, and how to view criticism as a gift. People have, they have created an identity without realizing that they've created an identity. So if you're going to recognize that your identity in and of itself is a construction and then ask

yourself, okay, well, what would be the ideal identity to construct? The answer is to be that of the learner. If you have a fixed mindset and your identity is something that is anything other than being a learner, it is very fragile. So to use Nassim Taleb's language, you need to build an identity that is anti-fragile because if you don't, when someone attacks you, what happens? You feel badly about yourself, right? It's very easy to get under somebody's skin because you've triggered their insecurities. When you trigger their insecurities, the psychological immune system kicks in and it says, no, no, no, Ron again, you're not bad. They're bad. They're dumb. They don't know what they're talking about. They're an idiot. Only a fool would not be keto or not be a vegan or

whatever their identity is wrapped around. And so they go on the offensive and they never stop to think, hey, I'll give everyone listening, lean in. I want you to hear this part. When somebody tries to hurt you, they will almost always start with something real. So they're going to come at you with the thing that they know you're most insecure about.

And so why do people, when somebody, people always like, oh, if they come at you with the thing that they know you're most insecure about. And so why do people, when somebody, people always like, oh, if they come after you for your looks, it's because they've lost. No, they're coming after you for something they know will hurt you. So people are coming after you at a place where they are most likely to trigger you. The triggering is the psychological immune system, which is beneficial because people with the highest levels of self-delusion also report the highest levels of happiness. So that's incredible, right? That's super powerful. I'm so grateful for the psychological immune system.

I can only imagine the number of times it saved me from spiraling into despair because I see myself a little too accurately. So I get its use. But if you flip your mentality and say my identity is not as a entrepreneur it's not as a vegan it's not as a doctor or a podcaster my identity is that of the learner that's it the only thing that i value myself for is my willingness to admit when i'm wrong and to learn now the the secret power there is one it's anti-fragile. So the more you attack somebody for being stupid, if they're a learner, I am literally asking one question when somebody

says I'm doing something wrong or I'm dumb. What am I doing wrong? In what way am I dumb? Because if you give me that piece of information, I grow more powerful. So I'm always looking at the hilarious secret about wanting people to criticize you is like, the more you try to hurt me with something real, I have the chills. The more you try to hurt me with something real, the more powerful I'm going to grow because I'm actually going to open myself up. Even though you're saying it to hurt me, you are actively trying to tear me down. You're probably going to hit me with something that I can learn from. you're probably going to hit me with something that I can learn from. And so what I always tell people is when people are chucking rocks at your head, think of them as actually being gold nuggets or bricks or whatever. And you can take that gold to the bank. You can take that brick and build a house, like however you want to think of it, but you have to let it hit you. You can't deflect it and send it flying off in another direction. You've got to take it. It's going to sting a little, but then you're going to have that material with which you can do something. And so if you build your identity around being the learner and you're constantly growing over

time, you grow more powerful, but you have to lower the psychological immune system, or you can tweak it much like you can go in and edit a virus to deploy something in the human body. You can edit the psychological immune system to say, the only thing you can protect me with is that I'm the learner. Love it. I mean, I love that. I love this idea of being anti-fragile. That's the theme to live for you. Yeah. What a beautiful concept. What a powerful idea, particularly these days, right? Where we're all getting offended at every little thing. We can't put anything out without getting offended by someone. But what does that tell you? You know, as we discussed, Tom, I mean, I love, these days, I'm in a really good place where I feel I can, any friction in my life, anything that starts to

bother me, for me, that's an opportunity to learn. That's an opportunity. Why is that bothering me? Why is that triggering me? Is there an element of truth behind this? Or do I disagree? I don't think I'm as anti-fragile as I would like to be. In fact, I know I'm not because I'm, you know, I'm constantly trying to grow this stuff. But it is even just that flipping mindset whereby instead of looking at who's posted the comments and looking them up and thinking, what do they know, right? That sort of thing. It's like, hold on a minute. Is there an element of truth to this? One of the only things we know for sure in life is that things will never stay the same.

Change is a constant, yet many of us resist it. My guest on episode 123 was the wonderful psychotherapist, Julia Samuel. In this episode, she spoke about the many living losses we experience and that how we respond to change in many ways determines how our lives will unfold. Life is change and we think we have control and then we don't. And so those that find ways to

support themselves to adapt and change thrive and those that block it and try and anesthetize their way out of it have less joy and less success in life. You know, all of us have default modes of coping with difficulty. And most of the ways that we cope with difficulty is to avoid it. So don't think about it. Don't process it. Just in my case, it's always to get busy and feel like I've got agency. Busyness is an anesthetic. So it stops us feeling. When you're busy, you go to your kind of thinking part of the brain and your capacity to really feel and emote kind of lowers so that when you're busy, you're kind of on all the time. And to process change, we need space so that you can feel because oxytocin is the kind of feeling safe hormone in our bodies that tells us that we're safe.

And through that oxytocin, that allows us to feel safe, to think, to reflect, adapt, change and thrive. When we're very busy, we can go at different gears. So I mean, if you're really in trauma and terrified, you're in sort of fourth gear and you don't change at all. You're just on alert as you know very well, fight or flight or freeze, and you're in sort of fourth gear and you don't change at all you're just on alert as you know very well fight or flight or freeze and you're not able to think but you can have lots of there's a spectrum of it but as a sort of say second gear you feel enough to kind of be able to function but you don't adapt or process or make sense and you don't feel very much because you're distracted the whole time distraction i think is i think it's something that we all do i think it's uh

you know in some ways i i sort of feel julia that it's never been easier than now to distract ourselves we've got this real conflict haven't we where actually what we want to do on one level is kind of sit with those feelings, see what's coming up and processing them. Yet the flip side to that is we've got endless ways now to distract ourselves, whether it's Instagram, YouTube, Netflix, books, podcasts, whatever it is. Is this something that you think is problematic for society as a whole at the moment? I think it's whether you do it in awareness or out of awareness. So I think scrolling, listening to podcasts, scrolling through Instagram, when you're choosing to do that is a perfectly fine pastime. I think what I'm talking about is that, yes, you're right.

We all do want agency. Some people have more sense of their own agency than others. But I think we all want to feel that we can affect change in our own life and affect the life that we want. affect change in our own life and affect the life that we want to kind of have a goal that we're heading for and that we can make the choices and from informed information to get there but also we don't like discomfort so my kind of big message is that pain is the agent of change and that's through grief when you're grieving someone that has died or a living loss loss of structure loss of jobs loss of trust in tomorrow's going to be the same as today loss in health and my kind of message is that we can't fight those feelings you know because if you squash them they

come out sideways they come out sideways, they come out in a different way. And they tend to come out in our relationships or in our bodies, you know, our mind and our body are completely connected. So that if we give ourselves time and opportunities to find out what we feel and find ways to reflect and feel it, sort of loss orientation, if you like, then we can have restoration orientation where we watch Netflix, we have fun, we drink, we do the other stuff that's engaging and not such emotional intensity, or it might be emotional intensity if that's what we want. But you allow space for both.

And one doesn't knock the other out, that you hold both side by side and oscillate between them. We now turn our attention to our breath, which is so, so important for our physical and mental well-being. Next up, it's the human performance specialist, Brian McKenzie. And back in episode 113, he explains how we can use the power of our breath. Breathing could well be one of the simplest and one of the most accessible things to all of us, yet it's something that very few of us are actively looking at and actively practicing. Why do you think that is?

I think we've moved ourselves far enough away from inside out understanding that outside in has become our go-to default. I look at my phone for an answer to something, right? I'm on social media for things, for answers to things. I look at heart rate monitors for things. I look, you know, it continues to add up on the outside in trying. So we're missing the, there's a big variant in that. Like there's a big variation in that because to understand how you feel, you have to go in, you have to go to the base layer of what's going on. And at the fundamental layer of all of this is breathing. And so actually taking the time to actually reorganize and feel things, you know, people are so stressed out and it's like, that's all just a conceptualization.

That's just story. That's just a narrative. We are designed to handle stress at very high output. And maybe, and I'm stealing this from a friend of ours, David Bidler, but maybe it's not that we have a disorder. Maybe it's not that, you know, anxiety and all this stress is actually disorder. Maybe this is just a natural reaction to the amount of stimulus, to the stimulus that we're taking in from the outside and not paying attention to things from the inside. Because when I've met and worked with a lot of high level people, whether athletes, executives, whoever, right? The people that are functioning the highest are shutting out everything else. They're in their environment and what they're in, like the conversation you and I are having right

now. I'm not thinking about the drive that I've got to go do, except right now when I say that, right now I'm distracting myself. And so this is where the context of things starts to happen. And then I start to overload more because I'm in an environment I should be paying attention to. And I'm not feeling what's going on with that and present in that situation. And so breathing is that thing that I can go and bring myself right back and stop a lot of the physiological ramifications of that stuff. If we were still out there, meaning still out in nature, still trying to survive, right? Like cave people, right? Like we wouldn't even need to be worrying about breathing because we'd be existing in a natural

environment, responding to that natural environment in the way that we should have, that natural environment in the way that we should have, right? Versus putting ourselves into places where comfort and convenience and the illusion of safety becomes this very, it encompasses our entire life. A lot of people listening to this will probably be thinking, well, you know, it's all very well moving out to nature, but I don't have access to that. And so why the breath really fascinates me because I've worked in many different areas. I've looked after affluent patients. I've also looked after very deprived patients. And I guess breathing is free. Breathing is accessible to everybody. And then what that naturally lends itself to is if you have control over your breath, even if you are living in an inner city where there is a lot of noise around you and there's

a lot of inputs that you are constantly having to fight off, well, at least you have a tool, like a shield where you can use for your body to help you survive in that environment. This is where that hack world has to come in if we're existing in these places, right? Is we have to actually start to hack things and breathing is one of those hacks. Finally, we'll hear some powerful closing thoughts from Peter Crone as he explains why one of the most important things we can do to improve our health and our well-being is take a moment to reflect. Slow down. Everyone's in a hurry to get to a future where one day they don't have to be in a hurry. You know, if you just look at that, right? People are working in jobs they don't enjoy,

you know, to hopefully have sufficient money one day so that they can relax and have fun but you know to what degree could we incorporate some of that now and actually take a breath like quite literally yeah just stop and breathe for a minute because it is so conditioned within us to survive so your point about the hurry the, this competitive nature of society. It's a survival paradigm. And to me, real success is where I can be at peace in the midst of chaos. And that's got nothing to do with my bank account. It's got nothing to do with whoever's on my arm as a beautiful man or a beautiful woman or the title on my business card. It's, can I be comfortable in my own skin, regardless of what's going on around me. And that to me is a human being who's found the true definition of success. Because I'm blessed to work with people who have more money

than time. And they would traditionally be seen as the most successful because of their net worth. Yet, if you were to understand the inner mechanics of their feelings and their thoughts and their relationships, you would see somebody who's quite broken and who's very upset and is on all sorts of medication and doesn't know how to feel compassion for their partner and certainly doesn't feel loved by anybody. So is that really success or is that just somebody who's got a lot of cash? So I think it's the opportunity to redefine what does it mean to be a successful human being? And this is why I talk about this work

because it's not this linear track of one day future scenarios of when I have, right? Fill in the blank, enough money, the best body, the right partner, the bigger home, the best job, the blah, blah, blah. That is this perpetual waiting game, which is saying that my happiness, my freedom, and my peace are perennially ahead of me. But if you just understand that, then you have

to be. You have to be at some state in a mild state of dis-ease or frustration or lack of contentment. Because the way your brain is conditioning your relationship to life is that what I want is in the future. So that speaks to my lack of contentment today. And what I'm inviting people to consider is that you're always where you are, you're never in your future. I'm not saying don't have goals and aspirations, I have many. But I have an intimate relationship with life and the way it is right now. And I'm fully content with the way things are while still being committed to things that I'm excited to create. True happiness is the absence of the search for happiness. And that gives an entirely different relationship to time. That I'm here right now with you in this conversation, and there's nothing quote unquote wrong in my life. I'm not worried about where do I have to be next? Or what am I going to? or what are people going to think about what I'm saying, then I wouldn't be in the moment

with you. I would be in my own mind. And I feel that is something that people lack. If they could just slow down enough to go, wait a minute, is my life truly in danger or is that just my perception? Is it really a life-threatening situation or is it just the way it feels? And could I just for a minute sit quietly, take a few deep breaths, listen to the person I'm with, who invariably is going to be loved one of some form, and actually not feel the need to react or control or manipulate or get somewhere? That's real relief for people. That's real relief for people. Really hope you enjoyed today's special compilation episode.

Of course, all the clips you heard were from previous conversations on my podcast. So do consider going back to the original episodes if you want to hear more from some of your favorite guests. And as always, what is the one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life? Not only that, what is one thing from this compilation episode that you can teach to somebody else?

Remember, when you teach someone else, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. I also just want to take a moment at the end of the year to say a big thank you to all of you who listen to my podcast each week. Apple Podcasts have just announced that this show is the seventh

most listened to podcast in the UK out of all podcasts, which is simply incredible. It's good to know that there is still a place for meaningful, nuanced conversation that aims to make the world a better place. A lot of that is down to all of you. You share with your friends, your community. You take a moment to review the show on your favorite podcast platform. All of these things really do make a difference. So a big thank you from the bottom of my heart. And always remember,

you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle change is always worth it. Because when you feel better, you live more.