Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | Creativity, Authenticity & How to Live A Meaningful Life | Rick Rubin #465

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

Today’s guest has worked with a huge variety of different artists and is named on Time magazine’s list of the ‘100 most influential people in the world’. But I think one of the reasons he’s reached an almost mythical status across the world is because of his Zen-like manner and his artistic approach to life. 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 327 of the podcast with none other than the legendary record producer and author of the book The Creative Act, Mr Rick Rubin. In this clip, Rick shares why it’s easy to get stuck in our small story of who we are and what our lives are. But he believes that we all have the power to change the stories we tell ourselves, which is ultimately essential for our happiness. 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 drchatterjee.com/327 Rick’s Book: The Creative Act: A Way of Being 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.

Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to

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 327 of the podcast with none other than the legendary record producer Mr Rick Rubin. Now Rick has worked with a huge variety of different artists and is named on Time Magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. But I think that one of the reasons he's reached an almost mythical status across the world is because of his zen-like manner and his artistic approach to life.

In this clip, Rick shares why it's easy to get stuck in our own small story of who we are and what our lives are. But he believes that we all have the power to change the stories we tell ourselves, which is ultimately essential for our happiness. We are in control of our own lives. We often don't realize we're in control. But we're in control of our own lives, and we can make different choices. And if the things in our life are not bringing us joy and happiness, if our career that we've devoted all of our lives to isn't bringing us joy, and we can change them.

If we decide our relationship is not the right relationship, we don't have to suffer in that relationship. We have our own power and we can make a change and it takes courage. But it's in everyone's best interest for us to take care of ourselves, to be in a relationship or in a job where you're phoning it in because you think it's your responsibility to do the job. There's probably someone who would do that job with passion and bring more to it than you are. In your relationship, if you've fallen out of love and you're going through the motions, you're not doing anyone any favors. It's not real. And if you feel depressed and you can't manage the life you're in, you can go move to another part of the world. You can live on a beach.

There are so many options available to us that we don't, you know, we're stuck in our small story of who we are and what our lives are. And it's all a choice. And we have the power to change it. Anything, anything in our lives that doesn't give us joy, we can change and we can find the version that suits us. And it's not only in service to us, it's ultimately what's best for everyone. You know, when you're on an airplane and they say, if the plane's going to go down, these masks are going to fall down, put your mask on first before you put on your child's or anyone else's, which is counterintuitive. We always think we take care of our children first.

But if you're not taking care of yourself, you can't take care of anyone else. So I would say primarily take care of yourself first. If you want to save the world, save yourself and then save your immediate family and then save your immediate family and then save your immediate neighborhood and then save your town. Start with small circles and build out. Do you know meta meditation? The meta meditation is, may I be filled with loving kindness, may I be well, may I be peaceful in may I be happy. We repeat these four phrases over and over again. And for the first year or so of doing it, it's may I. And then after a year of may I, we've built up a strong enough charge to say may we. And the we might be your immediate family

first. And you do that for another year and build up the power in that unit. And then you can extend it. And by the fifth year, you can do it for the planet, but you can't do it for the planet first because there's no built up charge. So do what's necessary to take care of yourself, build yourself up, have the strongest charge possible that you could then share and make the world a better place. We can live in a way where we're living in an artful way, where we're engaged and paying attention and making each choice count, or we can live in a almost like sleepwalking through the day which many many of us do many of us do just go along yeah just you know repeat yesterday again um and i remember when i um i was sedentary most of my life and I weighed 100 pounds more than I do now.

And when I first met this group of athletes who invited me to train with them, which was radical, I'd lost a bunch of weight and they invited me to train with them. I remember they showed me an exercise and I said, I can't do that. And they say, no, never say you can't do it. Say, I haven't done it yet. I haven't done it yet. And that's true with everything. It's like, there's nothing that you can't do. You may not have done it yet. We don't know if you can do it or not until you really practice. And then you find out if you can do it or not, or how well you can do it. Yeah. the way we talk to ourselves which you've just hinted out there there was a bit in the book where you were talking about

feeling insecure um maybe doubting yourself versus doubting the material work yeah which i thought was a a beautiful distinction and then then you wrote this gorgeous bit, which is basically insecurity is only a hindrance when it stops you sharing what's in your heart. Wow. That's beautiful. Yeah, it is beautiful. And if life is art and creativity is an expression or something we have to tap into to express our arts then maybe the way we are with our children the way we are with our partners that's creativity as well that's absolutely yeah absolutely all of it and how we are with ourselves again it's all it's all of those things um anything we do to, if we're dealing with some issue,

and if we decide to take a pill for that issue, or decide to make a creative change in our life that allows the issue to resolve itself, that's a creative change in our life that allows the issue to resolve itself that's a creative choice and um it seems like in terms of the sustainability of being able to do these things for a long time maybe the taking the pill version isn't the best way to solve our issues. As a physician, how often do you recommend a lifestyle change versus a pharmaceutical? I mean, pretty much 99% of the time, if not 100% these days, the majority of what we're struggling with today is a result of our collective modern lifestyles. And I say that very

carefully. I'm not blaming people. It's our collective modern lifestyles. If art is an authentic expression of who we are, and we're going to do that irrespective of the outcome, irrespective of what people are going to think, if it's truly about authenticity, then I can categorically say with certainty that people living inauthentic lives results in so many of the problems that I see. Simple one, like if you are not living in alignment with your values, with that disconnect in who you are, with that fracture that's opened up in the core of who you are, you will put things in that void. Sugar, alcohol, whatever it might be, it's often trying to fill the void of inauthenticity.

Absolutely. I'll tell you a story. I used to live with musical artist hours. So I would sleep until typically noon, although it could be as late as three. And then I would not leave the house until the sun set. And then I would work in the studio all night long and usually drive home as the sun was rising. That was my normal schedule for years and years and years, which just felt natural to me. And it seemed the way other people who were interested in the things that I were interested did the same. And I worked with a performance coach named Phil Maffetone 20 years ago. Yeah. And he said, the first thing I want you to do is as soon as you wake up, open the blinds and go outside, preferably naked,

but at least as much of your body in the sun as possible the minute you wake up. Yeah. And he had me start doing that. And at this time I was waking up at noon and I start doing that. And at this time, I was waking up at noon, and I started doing that. And very quickly, I started waking up earlier and earlier and earlier and earlier. It happened completely naturally. When he suggested it to me, so he said, I want you to go outside in the sun the minute you wake up. What I heard was, I want you to jump off a cliff. I heard was, I want you to jump off a cliff. That's how radical and terrifying it sounded compared to how my experience of what safe and comfort in life was, was not that.

And that was the first, like getting in tune with the planet. It was something I didn't know about. I didn't know about that. So in terms of being your authentic self, also being your authentic animal on this planet, historically, on a DNA level, there are things that our bodies like. And in our modern world, we don't take those into consideration evolutionary truths i guess absolutely and now i do as much as i can to live by the um you know the way people lived a thousand years ago as possible or ten thousand or a hundred thousand yeah rick you've been public about your struggles with depression in the past being public about your struggles with depression in the past what if you could sort of talk us through what happens one of the key elements of that for me is that you have said that

you feel more grounded now than you did before you suffered from depression. Yes. I didn't really know what depression was. I didn't know what a panic attack was. I just knew that I couldn't sleep. I couldn't breathe. And I thought I was dying. Before I suffered depression, I felt more like a sense of, this will sound funny, but I guess the best way to say it is like a superhuman feeling of like nothing could affect me. I wasn't able to empathize as much with other people's problems before because it didn't seem to me like it was possible.

Like I didn't have an understanding of what difficulties felt like because I was apart from it. Yeah. And when I say that, I still had difficulties, but they were manageable. Depression is different than regular difficulties. Yeah. You know, there's a difference between not being able

to accomplish something you want and feeling hopeless. They're two different things. Or feeling so bad and not understanding why. The thing about depression that's so crippling is that it doesn't make sense. My experience of it, it wasn't rooted in what was going on in my world. It was just something triggered this emotional response that I'd never had before. And I felt like I was dying. It was a wild experience and it lasted a long time. I didn't understand what was happening. None of it made sense. The way my body was reacting didn't make sense. I felt like I had no control of myself. Do you still consider yourself someone who suffers with depression?

I don't, I have not really felt true depression in some time, although I've had two big bouts of it in my life, that first one, and then it happened again years later. of it in my life that that first one and then it happened again years later not as bad the second time as the first time and not since and none since changing my schedule being in the sun changing my diet all of those things really have helped oh wow so since obviously we talked about it early on in this conversation since you were with Phil, since you lost your weight, you had the vitality, changed your diet, seen natural light, then you haven't had any since then.

No, I will say I still can be moody for sure. Yeah. But never like, I don't think that I crash the way I did. I've struggled with perfectionism a lot of my life. And again, I keep bringing up how this podcast has changed my life. It's helped me to embrace imperfection. Yes. Because on these long form conversations, it's not about perfection. Actually, if there's a stumble, if you don't quite get your words out the right way, if there's a stumble, if you don't quite get your words out the right way,

I think that's the vibe. I think podcasts are the modern day campfire. I remember when I was at university at Edinburgh, I played in a band. That's kind of a huge focus for me in Edinburgh. And we were in the studio near Edinburgh airport called Split Level. And we went in there all weekend. I must have recorded the vocal track 30 or 40 times. Oh no, it's not quite right, not quite right. And then with the engineer, we went through line by line, picking the perfect line. And that iteration probably had 20 different takes in it, each line perfect in its own right. You play it afterwards, sounded awful. And I was like, I don't get it. I don't know if there's 20 perfect lines in there, but the soul was missing. Is that something you've seen happen in the studio before? Is that something you still experience? Absolutely. And we'll often do multiple vocal takes and put them together.

And sometimes it's not about looking for perfection. It's looking for the thing that interests you. You're listening for which lines sound interesting and which ones work best together more than is each one perfect. and which ones work best together more than is each one perfect. What makes a band great usually is the way each of the members feel the music, the differences between each of the way the members feel the music. In Metallica, the drums push ahead of the guitars.

In ACDC, the drums lag behind the guitars. And that's part of the sound of those bands. It's the imperfection. That's what makes it sound. The tension created by the way each musician interprets the music and the different timings combined together to make this sound that's bigger than everybody playing it exactly, precisely, correctly. Yeah. I think there's a lesson in that for all of us,

in our relationships, in our lives, in so many ways. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.