Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | 8 Hidden Habits To Live Your Healthiest & Happiest Life | Robin Sharma #494

Episode Date: November 15, 2024

Is it time to redefine what it means to live a rich life? In a world where we’re constantly bombarded with images of material success, it’s easy to fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to others and believing that more money means more happiness. But what if there’s more to wealth than just money? Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. Today’s clip is from episode 471 of the podcast with best-selling author and one of the top leadership and personal mastery experts in the world, Robin Sharma. In this clip, we explore Robin’s concept of the ‘eight forms of wealth’, from his latest book ‘The Wealth Money Can’t Buy: The 8 Hidden Habits to Live Your Richest Life’. We also discuss what it truly means to live a rich life, and Robin gives some simple practical tools you can use to start to create yours. Thanks to our sponsor https://www.drinkag1.com/livemore 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. Show notes and the full podcast are available at https://drchatterjee.com/471 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

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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 471 of the podcast with best-selling author and one of the top leadership and personal mastery experts in the world, Robin Sharma. In this clip, we explore Robin's concept of the eight forms of wealth from his latest book, The Wealth Money Can't Buy, The Eight Hidden Habits to Live Your Richest Life. We also discuss what it truly habits to live your richest life. We also discuss what it truly means

to live a rich life. And Robin shares some simple practical tools that you can use to start creating your own. I love the way you have almost put a new spin on wealth in the new book because I think if you talk to a lot of people about wealth, money is the thing that comes to mind. I actually looked up wealth in the Oxford Dictionary this morning and there's two definitions but one of them is a plentiful supply of a particularly desirable thing. I thought that definition spoke beautifully to your book because kind of infused within that definition is what do you find desirable, right? And I think that speaks gaudily to these eight forms of wealth. Because if you're only valuing money in your life and not family and craft and community and adventure and service and all these

other forms of wealth that you write about, then you're going to go down a path and your actions and your behaviours each day are worshipping the god of money. But if you desire your health and you desire your family, you know, these things you value, then the meaning of wealth is going to be very different, isn't it? Could you just give us all eight and then I'll pick out some of my favorites? Of course. The first form of wealth is growth. Developing yourself is a currency money can't buy. developing yourself is a currency money can't buy. Second form of wealth, wellness, your health.

Someone once taught me, health is the crown on the well person's head that only the ill person can see. If you have good health, it's human nature. We take it for granted until we lose it. Third form of wealth, family and friends. Happy home, happy life. Fourth form of wealth, our craft. A job is only a job if we see it as a job. All work contains meaning, the ability to serve, the ability to do amazing things. Fifth form of wealth, money. Money is important. It's a form of wealth. It's something.

It's not everything. Sixth form of wealth, our community. These are our associations. We become like the people we are around. Seventh form of wealth, adventure. It's about not losing the sparkle in your eye you had as a kid when you were ready to take on the world. And the eighth form of wealth, service. Finding a way each day to make the lives of other people a little better. Yeah, great summary. Okay, so let's start with the first form of wealth, growth, the daily

self-improvement habits. This one I really like, stop saying these two bad words. I wrote that down. Stop saying, I'll try, basically. Why is that important? There's so many times when we get a great idea and we say, oh, that's a great idea. I'll try. Read this book, Watch this film.

Try this routine. Seize this opportunity. Huh, good. I'll try. I'll try are two dirty words, I believe. I'll try means I'm not really interested. I'll try means I'm scared. I'll try means I won't hold myself accountable. I'll try means I have an escape route. Yoda

said it well. He said, there is do or not to do. There is no try. So I would encourage anyone, strip out all try. If you're not interested, don't do it. But if you're interested, get the job done. Yeah. The human who reads the most wins. It's all about reading, isn't it? Absolutely. BABL. It's a great acronym. Book Buying Beyond Lifetime Expectancy. Book Buying Beyond expectancy. Expectancy, babble. Plato said it well. He said, a home with books is a home with soul. So let's put down our phones for a while and read.

Read something that will enrich you, inspire you, show you new possibilities. Because reading is having a conversation with the author. Yeah. Do you read every day? Every day. And I love audio books. One of the tools that I teach is walking university.

So I'll go for part of my afternoon routine after I finished my creative work, I'll go for a one hour nature walk. And I almost always listen to a podcast or an audio book. And walking university audio books are so powerful. Yeah. A lot of people love audio books, don't they? I mean, I like listening to podcasts. For me personally, I prefer reading the real hard copy of a book, but I love listening to podcasts. But I know many people won't read books anymore. They'll just listen to audio books. Absolutely. And I would say if there is a book that really resonates with you, get both versions. Yeah. The next area of wealth is wellness. We've touched on a few

things. What is one of your favorite chapters in the section on wellness? Practice the naked sunbathing rule, which I'm not gonna get into. No, I'm just joking. But you know, it's all about sunshine, vitamin D, reducing inflammation. Another chapter in the wellness section, the second form of wealth is take a bath in a forest. Yeah.

And that's Shinrin-yoku, which is the Japanese habit of forest bathing. And again, we're in London. I love going to Green Park or any park, but things are okay when you commune with nature. And if you just smell the flowers and look at the trees, it just calms you down. So I think that's one of my favorite chapters in this section. There's a chapter that's called Health of Your Minds,

and you talk about these four positivity practices, which I thought was really useful. First one being, how could this be worse? Yes. If there's a problem, ask yourself, has anyone died here? If no one has died, it gives you perspective. Yeah. Second one there was get good at savoring. What's that

about? Positive psychologists will tell you that the world's happiest people based on scientific research savor. So you're having your morning coffee. It's so easy for us to be looking at our phone and drinking slurps of coffee. Maybe put down the phone, put on some nice music and take even five minutes and savor the coffee. Be fully present. Taste how it feels. Appreciate the texture. Say, if you're with the conversations I've had with my parents, rather than being, my mind being on other things, savor the fact I'm with my parents in their 80s and we are having a meal together. Look around, listen to their stories. Savoring is so powerful. Even if we're walking to work, often we're caught up in our own thinking. Savor walk savor the fresh air look around the city yeah let's say someone

gets the book the wealth money can't buy and starts to apply these principles in their own life, every period of weeks, months, and years, how does one know when they are wealthy? You'll know when you know. Sometimes people say, ask me, you know, how do I know if it's true love? You'll know when you know. Yeah. How do I know if this is the right career path for me? You'll know when you know. Yeah. How do I know if this is the right career path for me? You'll know when you know. Yeah. So I would say, firstly, how do we know we're living the eight forms of wealth?

You have serenity. I think serenity is the new luxury. You'll have serenity. You'll have a sense. Does it mean your life will be perfect? My life isn't perfect. Yet I've come a long way over 40 years of doing this personal development work I'm I've come a lot farther than where I used to be yeah so that's the payoff things that used to activate you or bother you you can't believe it wow I just noticed that doesn't bother me anymore

it's the most incredible feeling isn't it when? When you think, wow, 10 years ago, that would have really bothered me for days, weeks, maybe longer. And now, like, you can just see it for being nothing. It's just neutral. In the final section, which is on service, the two that have come to mind there are number one, do three acts of service. I think that's per day. And one of your finishing chats is live fully so you can die empty. Could you speak to those two, please? Sure. Well, I think about Pau Gasol. He was the center of the LA Lakers. He came to one of my live events.

And we spent a weekend at the event. And then I drove him to the airport to catch his flight back to Los Angeles. And Rangan, when he was walking through the airport, people were coming to him. Little kids wanted pictures. Adults wanted signatures. People wanted to greet him and say,

oh, you're our hero. And as he walked through the airport, he stopped for every single person who came to him. And when we got to his gate, I said, pal, you stopped for everyone and you were fully present? What's your approach? And he said, Robin, said something I've never forgotten. He said, Robin, it takes so little to make someone happy. And that has been a core rule. Like if I'm staying at a hotel on this book tour and I go to a coffee

shop, how little does it take to buy two extra pan of chocolats and drop them off to the people working at the front door? It takes so little to make someone happy. This might sound weird, but I take the, and I'm not saying I'm perfect, I'm no guru, but it's a practice. I take the towels from the shower and I put them in the bathtub. I make my bed and I make sure the room is clean for the housekeeper coming in

because this is another human being and a nice tip on the bed. This is an act of respect for another human being. And so it takes so little to even, like I mentioned the gentleman on the street, to say, hey, I love your song, but we can give gifts each day. And the great thing is when you give these gifts,

you give a gift to the person, but you give a gift to yourself. I've heard you describe what you do in hotel rooms before, and I absolutely love it. I remember hearing it and sharing it with my wife, this idea that I think of the conversation I heard you talk about it last. You said, when you leave a hotel room for the day or you're checking out or whatever, you make sure you leave it relatively tidy because the person coming in to clean it is someone else's father or someone else's mother. And that really, really spoke to me. And it made me think of all kinds of things. In particular, the way you do the small things is

how you kind of do everything. You know, it's so easy. Some people will say, Robin, well, yeah, but I pay for this hotel room and there's housekeeping coming in. You know, why does it matter how I leave that room? But I think it's really lovely the way you articulated that. Well, I would say it's easy to say no one will see it, but your greatest self sees everything that you do. And by respecting the person who's going to clean the room, you're not only respecting them, you're actually doing training. I think this is a key point, I hope. You're training yourself for self-respect. The more you respect others, the more you'll respect yourself. The more self-respect you build, the more you'll respect your family, your health, what you eat, the quality of your work,

your words, the way you live your life. Yeah. I love it. Honestly, one of the most powerful things I've heard in a while. Great. What about that chat to live fully so you can die empty? What's that about? So even the longest life is a very short ride and people don't like talking about death, but I think death is not negative. I think death is a great tool of inspiration. And human beings as species, we're just great postponers. We are massive postponers. Spend more time with family when I finish this work project. Get fit when things are easier.

Read the classics when I retire. Visit Positano or Bogota or Vietnam when things are ideal. The Chinese say the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. And so by connecting to the shortness of life and realizing I could die walking out of the studio. Just accident, pandemic, war, loss, illness, tragedy. It's just, it happens every day. But we have a cognitive bias, do we not? It's not going to happen to us. So realizing that is part of life and we could go tomorrow, but also realizing even a long human life, a long, rich, beautiful, creative, productive, soulful life, but even that is a very short ride,

and before we know it, we're all going to be dust, probably in an urn on a mantle above a fireplace next to football trophies. And no one's going to really think about us except for our family and our friends. And once you connect with the shortness of life, then I think you start to live to the point and you start to strip away accessories and you put down, I'm not against phone, I love technology, I think it's a great servant, a terrible God. But you stop being busy, being busy, and you start saying, okay, what are my personal Mount Everest's? What are my key priorities? Oh, it's my family. It's the

eight forms of wealth in the book. It's my personal growth. It's my wellness. It's my family. It's my craft. It's financial freedom. It's my social network. It's injecting my days with adventure and using my life for service. Yeah. For someone who perhaps is new to your work, who has just come across it today and thinks, hey, you know what? I need to make some changes in my life. My life is a bit unbalanced. I've been overly prioritizing one of these forms of wealth at the expense of some of the others, but I don't know where to start. What would you say to them?

I would say the best place to start is just to start. Don't complicate it. How do you start the next bestselling book? You write a page. How do you start a marathon? The first walk. How do you start a life transformation process? You ask yourself, what's the best thing I heard Ryan and Robin say?

Oh, that resonated with me. I'm going to start applying it today. And continue with that one commitment in the sun, in the rain, when you're scared, when you're strong. And what starts to happen is the more you stay with that commitment, the stronger you grow. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. And if you want more, why not go back and listen to the original full conversation with my guest. If you enjoyed this episode, I think you will

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