Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | How to Live Your Best Life | Jake Humphrey #339

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

CAUTION: This podcast contains swearing  Our mindset is so important for living a happier, healthier life. We can all learn from unwelcome challenges and, more often than not, become better as a result of them.  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 224 of the podcast with TV presenter and fellow podcast host Jake Humphrey. Jake went from failing his A level exams to becoming one of the UK’s best known TV presenters. In this clip, he explains why happiness comes from the stories we tell ourselves and why failure is an important part of the journey to success. Thanks to our sponsor http://www.athleticgreens.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/224 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk   DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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They are giving my listeners. 10 free travel packs. And one year supply of vitamin D. With your first order. See more details. At athleticgreens.com Live more. Today's clip is from episode 224.

Of the podcast with TV presenter. And and fellow podcast host Jake Humphrey. Jake went from failing his A-level exams to becoming one of the UK's best-known TV presenters. And in this clip, Jake explains why happiness comes from the stories we tell ourselves and why failure is an important part of the journey to success. For your happiness, actually the truth doesn't matter. It's the story you put on it that determines how happy you are. I think some people might think that's controversial but i genuinely believe that to be true choose the story that makes you feel happier calmer and more content it's hard when you say happiness is a choice of course it is and even when i hear people say that i suddenly think yeah but there's loads of things out there to make me unhappy you

don't understand the challenges that i've got but life is about how you react to those things. I don't believe there's a single person listening to this that hasn't at one time in their life suffered with anxiety. I mean, I had a real issue at one point in my life. And the thing that really helped me was the lady I spoke to said, you do realize that your issue at the moment is like you're writing a story in your brain and then choosing

to believe the story how about you rewrite that story to be a positive one and then believe that one why shouldn't we write positive stories for ourselves and believe those stories why shouldn't we think something great is around the corner why does our brain trick us all the time like life's hard enough don't punch yourself in the gut all the time don't kick yourself in the balls every opportunity there's enough of that going to go on anyway if we can just try and get ourselves into a space of really believing that there's good stuff around the corner if you're wrong it doesn't matter because the power is in believing the good stuff's there. Because

even when you have that bad day, you're still thinking, well, the next day is the good day. 95, 96% of what happens in your life is down to how you react to the things that happen to you. And the other four or 5% are those things that happen. So if we can control the way that we react to the things that are going to come our way, because illness is going to come our way, either to ourselves or to our family, you are going to have difficult relationships. You are going to have hard years. There will be people right now listening to this in the car or on their commute or sitting at home thinking life is hard at the moment. That is going to happen for all of us. And it's a difficult

concept to understand. But if we can get our heads into a place where we know that it might not be our fault, but it is still our responsibility, I think that's where the growth is. So the control is, I need to take control of my mindset. The growth comes from taking that control. Loads of things will happen to us if you can distinguish fault from responsibility then you take control then you can grow then you can find happiness yeah that word control i think it's fascinating and it's a it's a word that i've wrestled with myself over the past six or nine months i've been writing for my netbook about happiness and i've come up with this new concept called core happiness there's three components of it. One of them is control. I've been chatting with mates about it

who says, mate, you know, control inherently is, you know, we can't control the world. I said, yeah, but it's not about us being able to control the world. It's about recognizing that the world is inherently uncontrollable. But as you say, it's about giving us that feeling, that sense of control over our lives, even though actually we can't. For me, it's about that sense of control. And it's such a hard thing to say to someone who's unhappy that happiness is a choice. It's so hard to say to someone who feels unsuccessful, success is a choice. But even if I'm wrong, right? Even if me believing that doing all the right things will take me to a place of happiness, right?

I might be wrong. I might still be unhappy in a few years time, for example, right? But what is the point at this stage thinking, well, happiness is out of my reach. I can't possibly go. So 100% responsibility. Open up the curtains tomorrow morning and say, I'm going to take 100% responsibility for every facet of my life, whether it's my fault or not, whether I think it's within

my control or not. Because if you don't say, I can be happy, I can be successful, I can grow, I can learn, I can explore, you've given up control. And if you give up control, then I don't think you're going to get yourself to a happier place. It's a challenging concept, but through all the conversations we've had for the past two years on high performance, I am the happiest I've ever been. Well, why am I the happiest I've ever been?

Because I honestly feel like the door has been opened to me. I've seen the light that bad stuff has happened. Plenty of bad stuff has happened over the last couple of years. Me and my wife have had some real, like a really good example. I won't go into too much detail because it's personal, but my wife had a sort of health scare

that led to loads of scans, loads of nasty questions from the doctor about what this potentially could be, right? Now I used to catastrophize. When I was a young kid, my mum would take the dog for a walk and I'd be, if she was more than half an hour,

I wouldn't think, oh, mum's a bit late. I would think, what if my mum's had a heart attack? What if she's been attacked? What if she's lying there? I need to go out and find her. And I used to have to try and control my brain and say, listen, that's probably not happened, right? And I've taken that through my life. So one of my kids has got a stomachache in my head. Oh, it's not a stomachache. It's the beginnings of some horrendous childhood illness and I see 20 steps ahead and I'm catastrophizing so then through doing this podcast Harriet gets this news from the doctor we're gonna have to do a few little tests and things I was able for the first time to control that catastrophizing and say to myself right I'm gonna give this a score if we give all the elements of our life a score of likelihood we'll

soon realize that actually the likelihood score I gave that this was going to be really bad, devastating news for her and our family was a one out of 10 because she's young and she's fit and she's healthy. And thankfully it was okay. If I go, what are the chances that, you know, I'm going to have a great week or I'm going to have a lovely meal with my kids, or that I'm going to cuddle my wife at the end of the day, or that me and you are going to get together here and have a really fun conversation and I'm going to make a new friend. Well, I can give most of those a 10. So if we can go through our lives, giving these things a score, I think it ends that catastrophizing and it ends that negative spiral of bad things are going to come my way. Why think bad things are going to come your way? Let's be positive and just see

where that takes us. Let's be positive and just see where that takes us. Let's explore a positive mindset. And I think it becomes a habit. Thinking positively will eventually become a habit. If you was to ask me, what is the single biggest high performance change I've made in my life over the past five years? It's reframing. It's life over the past five years, it's reframing. It's turning a perceived difficulty or a perceived inadequacy or a perceived failure into a learning. Even these people we look up to and potentially put on pedestals, they've all failed at some point like even these olympic gold medalists there's a 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 look up, 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 a 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 uh 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 gonna beat myself up i'm gonna tell myself i'm crap i'm gonna go home and drink a bottle of wine because i failed no you you understand it you you think of failure as a positive thing because what happens next time 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 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, 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 do 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 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 yeah 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 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.

And I think the final thing that I would like to say to people is just go easy on yourself. Be good to yourself because being good to yourself is the beginning of opening everything up yeah and the beginning of that period of exploration and if you can live a life of exploring then i think you live a life of growth and if you live a life of growth then you will you will grow to a place of positivity um and it is i promise you it is there for you, whoever you are, whatever's going on, you can find it. Focus on trying to find the good stuff in every single day. Focus on waking up in the morning and making sure that you make your bed, making sure the first thing that you say to your kids is something positive, that that boss that you've had a long-term issue with for ages,

and you haven't dared to broach the subject, go and have that conversation with them. Go and communicate with people, say good stuff and see if good stuff comes back to you. Chuck a smile the way of everybody you meet. Ask a question of everybody you meet because everyone knows something that you don't know. Have these really simple ways of trying to bring happiness and positivity into your life. And I do believe that you will live a happier life. 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 really enjoy my 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 free of charge at drchatterjee.com forward slash Friday Five. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.