Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #203 BITESIZE | The Simple Habit That Can Transform Your Life | Danny Penman

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Starting point is 00:00:51 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better, Live More. Bite size your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 30 of the podcast with award-winning author and expert in mindfulness and meditation, Danny Penman. It's easy to live our day-to-day lives on autopilot. And in this clip, Danny gives some great tips on how we can use mindfulness to become more present and to fully connect with life.

Starting point is 00:01:50 Everybody thinks of mindfulness as a form of meditation. Well, meditation is just one form of practicing mindfulness, you know. What it really is, is being connected to whatever is going on around you. That's where its benefits come from. It's not sitting in the lotus position and you know focusing on your breath the benefits of mindfulness come from just being connected with life so in many ways that the daily practice that you're recommending yeah it's not really about that that's that's almost tuning you into it so that for the other 23 and a half hours of the day you are hopefully more mindful,

Starting point is 00:02:29 more attentive, more present because of the practice. Yeah, absolutely. And you think if you extrapolate that, you know, if you, you know, if you're spending like most people do 60 or 80% of your time going through an unconscious habit, you're actually only alive for a few hours each day you know maybe four or five hours each day now if you practice meditation for say 20 minutes a day and you then become conscious of your life for another hour or two each day you're actually effectively adding a few decades to your life you know because you are living life on a daily basis rather than being unconscious. Danny, in one of your books, you also mention habit releases. What are those? Human beings are fantastic habit machines. What it means in practice is you can also automate

Starting point is 00:03:17 the way you think. It's about 50 to 80% of all of our thoughts and behaviors are just habits that are being triggered over and over and over again. Crucially, it means that we often automate negative states of mind and negative thoughts. And we can end up in these tremendous downward spirals that really is the root cause of depression and anxiety and stress. Now, you interrupt it, the process, obviously with mindfulness meditation, but the thing with habit releases is it begins to do these daily practices, whether it's something often very, very simple,

Starting point is 00:03:59 like changing the place that you sit in meetings, for example. If you sit in a different chair at a meeting, you will have completely different thoughts than if you sit in your normal place. Sounds very simple, but you can have actually changed the direction of your life for that day. You know, just instead of getting your usual bus at the usual time, if you maybe get on a different bus stop or get a different bus or just walk. This can change the direction of your life for that day and progressively, you know, as the days turn into weeks and months and years. Yeah, Danny, I mean, it does sound remarkable, but absolutely believable to me. Yes, yes. Just that, you know, so much of what we do day in, day out are just habits.

Starting point is 00:04:45 You know, I think your action often determines your thoughts. So just us sitting in a different seat can change things. I think if you start your day really focused on yourself and being present, that can have an impact throughout the day. Is that what you've seen? It definitely is, except I'm the opposite. Really? Yeah, I cannot meditate in the morning. Oh, this is interesting. Tell me more. the day is that what you've seen it definitely is except i'm the opposite really yeah yeah i i cannot meditate in the morning oh this is intro tell me more so i uh what i tend to do is immediately before i start writing i will just spend a few minutes focusing on the breath just it's not

Starting point is 00:05:18 really full-on meditation at all you know and then when i finished my day's work before I collect our daughter from school, that's when I do my meditation. So it's a way of kind of switching off almost. When you do some form of mindfulness meditation before picking your daughter up, do you have a different relationship, a different sort of experience with it than when you don't? Yeah, absolutely. sort of experience with it than when you don't yeah absolutely and what i really notice is uh not so much before i begin to meditate but when i open my eyes i suddenly realize i am so much calmer and i feel as if my uh consciousness is an awful lot broader so when i walk out the house i walk across the park i notice all the leaves on the trees the color of the bark the smell of the park yet the grass or the the moisture in the air so i'm really connected and

Starting point is 00:06:12 really alive and then i go and collect her and you know it's it's a profoundly different interaction relationship i have with my daughter on those days, which is most days that I can, I do the meditation, but some days I don't manage to for various reasons. And what happens then? What tends to happen with me is when I begin to get stressed, I feel as if I can't keep up with things. I feel like there's this treadmill that I'm just kind of being dragged along and I'm not really in control of things. And that comes out as maybe like a bit of snappiness, a bit of short-temperedness,

Starting point is 00:06:48 just that feeling of, you know, my amygdala starts to fire up, you know, it's fight or flight kind of situation. And that's, everybody experiences stress in different ways, but that's what it is with me. It's great that you've got this daily practice that you can do it before you pick up your daughter. For people who say, you know, I'm working, I can't do that.

Starting point is 00:07:12 What advice would you give to them? You have to just build moments into the day. First of all, you have to understand it's very, very effective. You know, if you meditate or practice mindfulness it liberates more time than it consumes so you might spend five minutes or 10 minutes meditating a day but actually you're spending far less time being worried or stressed or unhappy or just going through the whole habit routines all of the time so you will end up liberating maybe half an hour or an hour extra so you're creating more time by doing it.

Starting point is 00:07:45 You are creating more time. That's a key, key point because people say, I don't have time to do it. Yeah, yeah. But it really is true. You know, all you have to do is spend a few days meditating and you suddenly realize there are actually quite a few gaps in the day where you can squeeze in just moments here and there. The simplest of all meditations is where you close your eyes, you focus on the sensations of breathing. So as the air flows into your lungs and then out, and you are feeling the way your shoulders rise and fall,

Starting point is 00:08:22 the way your chest rises and falls, the way your stomach moves in and out. So you're really getting in touch with your body and the sensations of breathing. And that is incredibly powerful, especially for stress relief and anxiety relief, because it has a direct influence on the body's parasympathetic nervous system. That's the calming aspect of the nervous system. So just breathing deep in and out, gradually slowing down, has this tremendously soothing effect on the body. Yeah, it really does. Yeah. So many people uh are suffering stress and anxiety are perfectionists and actually bring that perfectionism to mindfulness and actually

Starting point is 00:09:12 you don't need to you know you find what you find and it's as simple and as beautiful as that yeah that's a key message isn't it i can really echo with that um it's, I guess, in some ways it's don't let perfection be an obstacle to the actual action of doing it. Just do it. Basically, just do it and you'll get the benefits. Yeah, exactly. It's like when people are meditating, they get really annoyed with themselves when their mind suddenly chases off. They suddenly start thinking. And actually, that's a moment of mindfulness. When you realize your mind has wandered, that is a moment of mindfulness.

Starting point is 00:09:50 So in the midst of that apparent failure is actually your success. What can someone do? Let's say someone's listening to this and they are actually, you know, I get that. That sounds great. But what can I really do in my life? Have you got like a tip that people can think about? Yeah, I mean, really very simple things. Like if you're going to, say, a restaurant or a pub or a meeting at work, sit in a different place. If you walk into a bar, for example, and sit at a different table and look around, you will see a completely different environment than if you sat in your usual place. And if you sit in your normal place, you will actually zone out and you won't notice anything at all. You sit somewhere different and you will see everything from a different angle.

Starting point is 00:10:34 You will suddenly, you know, there'll be different sights and sounds and smells. You will be alive. If you are feeling stressed, maybe you're sitting in your office or, you know, you're just, life is getting, beginning to overwhelm you and you need a break right now, just literally go outside, look at the sky, look at the horizon, look down the street, just broaden your awareness. That is incredibly simple thing to do and it's very, very effective. Your next tea or coffee break, you know, just close your eyes, pay attention to all of the flavours and the smells of the tea or coffee break you know just close your eyes pay attention to all of the flavors and the smells of of the tea or coffee really savor it yeah just really because you know life is for living and we miss so so much because we're just driven by these habits you know we we think we know what a cup of coffee or tea is going to taste like so we never actually taste it hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip please do spread the love by sharing this episode with your

Starting point is 00:11:34 friends and family and if you want more why not go back and listen to the full conversation with my guest and if you enjoyed this episode i think you will really enjoy my new bite-sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five. And each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity, articles or books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've come across, and so much more. I really think you're going to love it. The goal is for it to be a small yet powerful dose of feel good to get you ready for the weekend. You can sign up for it at drchastity.com forward slash Friday five. I hope

Starting point is 00:12:19 you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday

Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #203 BITESIZE | The Simple Habit That Can Transform Your Life | Danny Penman

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