Modern Wisdom - #271 - Dr Rangan Chatterjee - Building A New Mindset On Success

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

Dr Rangan Chatterjee is a British physician, author, television presenter and podcaster. How can we create the life where we don't just look fulfilled but genuinely are fulfilled? What does it mean to truly be successful? What use is fame if you don't like the person you see in the mirror? Expect to learn Rangan's most important daily routines, his biggest insights about personal development over the last year, what he thinks about Cosmopolitan's new campaign, how Tiger Woods' story is a warning to us all and much more... Sponsors: Get 20% discount on Reebok’s entire range including the amazing Nano X at https://geni.us/modernwisdom (use code MW20) Extra Stuff: Buy Feel Great Lose Weight - https://amzn.to/39oaNxK Check out Rangan's Website - https://drchatterjee.com/ Follow Rangan on Twitter - https://twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk Follow Rangan on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/drchatterjee  Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Dr. Rongan Chatterjee, British physician, British physician. God, that's hard to say. Other television presenter and podcaster. How can we create the life where we don't just look fulfilled but genuinely are fulfilled? What does it mean to be truly successful? What use is fame if you don't like the person you see in the mirror? This conversation went so deep so fast. I absolutely adored it. I love having other podcasters on the show because you both end up pushing each other into new places and we definitely did that today.

So expect to learn Rungan's most important daily routines, his biggest insights about personal development over the last year, what he thinks about Cosmopolitan's new campaign, how Tiger Woods' story is a warning to us all, and much more. I genuinely think that this will be a conversation I come back to many, many times. Wrongen is an absolute pro, and it comes across in this episode. If you enjoy it, or if you are new here, or if you just want to be nice to me, go and hit the subscribe button on whatever podcast app you are listening on. It helps to support the show and it ensures that you don't miss any future episodes when they go live. But for now, it's time for the wise and very wonderful Dr. Rongan Chatelegy, welcome to the show.

Briss, thanks very much for having me. Pleasure to have you on, man. 2021, we'll find me out of the absolute nightmare that was 2020. Are you a New Year's resolutions guy? You got any resolutions for this year? I used to be a resolution guy. Back in the olden days. This year, no, haven't made any really.

I find resolutions have helped me in the short term in the past, but haven't really helped me in the long term. And I guess that's also what I've seen with many of my patients. I'm not against resolutions, right? I get that everyone has got a different approach, different things work for different people for sure. But for me, I think about values. What are the values I want to live my life by this year? What actions do I need to take regularly that is going to help me act in accordance

with those values? And I guess if I'm honest, 2020's probably shifted things for me in the sense that And I guess if a monos 2020 is probably shifted things for me in the sense that like for many people There was a lot of reflection in 2020 You know life came to a stop and certainly the way many of us used to live our lives and I remember in August I actually went off social media for 18 days and It was just incredible mate because in those 18 days and it was just incredible mate because in those 18 days once I'd got out of the habit of picking up my phone and looking for the Instagram app which I'd actually deleted from my phone, I really found a sense of calm and sereneness and I really started to tap

into what I thought, not with a world around me thought, like, what do I really think about these issues? And it was, it was like, you know, shutting out the noise from the world and allowing me to hear my inner voice. And I thought long and hard about my values and what are the values by which I aspire to live my life? And I thought about things like integrity, compassion,

creativity, fairness. I thought of, you know, family big value for me as my family. I thought I was thinking about, well, are your actions consistent with these values? Are they real values or are they aspirational values? And so I'd be doing a lot of that kind of inner thinking over the past few months and I think that's one of the reasons why I'm not setting any resolutions this year is because I feel pretty content these days, mate, if I'm honest. I've been working hard on myself, my health, my wellbeing, my thoughts, my mindset for a good five, 10 years now. And I feel that's, yeah, there's a few things I want to focus on this year for sure. I've got a chart in my kitchen at the moment as my kids do. And I've got three daily practices on that that I'm committing to.

And I've thought long and hard because in the past I would have put eight or nine down. And I've, I was going to do one, but I know I'm quite confident with these three. So I've realized that if I do these three things every day, I win the day. I'm doing well, because as a temptation, I think these days to go online and see, oh, I could do that, I could practice martial arts,

I could do breathwork, I could do meditation, I could do yoga, I could do strength training, I'd been that person before. So, you know, that's a long-winded answer to your question. Have a set new resolutions? No. Do I not agree with resolutions? No, I think they can work okay for some people, but for me, I'm at a place where actually this year at least, I've made zero resolutions. I think that the end of the year increasingly now, as we see more sophisticated goal planning and setting strategies coming about, is more just a break point for people.

It's just an opportunity for them to check in and think about, okay, I'm back at my parents, girlfriends, the in-laws house, whatever it might be. I was here this time last year. What's changed between last year and this year? It's an opportunity to slow down and do a little bit of reflection. So yeah, I totally get that, man, like our daily habits and actions are a manifestation of the values that we're supposed to be enacting, right? They're the embodiment of whatever those values are.

But if we never slow down and take that time away from social media, like you mentioned, to actually reflect on what are our values, you're never going to get that. What are the three daily practices you're doing? So the three ones that I've decided on at the moment, and again, this may iterate, this may evolve, I may reassess every month, I'm not going to lock myself into the prison that, oh, I decided these three for the year, these have to be the three for the entire year. So they are 15 minutes of meditation. Okay, 15 or what's your practice

or what's the support of choice with that? So there's a couple things to say about this. So I don't have a particular formal practice that I do. I have tried various methods over a number of years, whether it's via apps, whether it's learning TM when I was 14, my mum taught me when we were on holiday in India and actually I thought this is a load of rubbish

at the time, man, I wish I'd paid attention back then. But because now I would love to go on a course and actually learn some of these things properly, I just wasn't ready for it, unfortunately, at the age of 14. But what I have found over the past few months is when I just wasn't ready for it. Unfortunately, at the age of 14. But what I have found over the past few months is when I just sit there in silence, I'm able to access some of the have to go through three or four minutes of noise. But I can drop in now to quite a calm state without necessarily trying to do anything. But I must say that's come

from years of experimenting with different forms. And I must say that's come from years of experimenting with different forms. And I use to love using things like the car map. And I'm not against that. I think it'd be super helpful. But for me, it's okay, it's just sitting there with no tech, with nothing, and just trying to accept anything

that comes up in my mind. Now, why 15 minutes? Because I'm a big believer that you don't need to make these things that complicated. They don't need to take that long. And actually, sometimes we try and make them too hard. And I have done one minute meditation a day before. I've made deals with patients before to say, well, what can you agree to? What can you commit to? Two minutes? Okay, yeah. Do two minutes a day every day,

and I'll see you in three weeks. But this is the, I once call it the end stage, this is me along this journey for a number of years. I have done the five minutes every day. I've done the 10 minutes every day. And for me, I feel 15 minutes is just pushing me a little bit because after

about 10 minutes, I can get a bit twitchy. And I think, well, if I make 15 minutes of commitment, I think I can manage it, think I'm ready for it. And the within a few weeks 15 will be my new norm. And maybe in February, I might go to 20, but maybe I'll six or 15. So 15 minutes of meditation, five minutes of breath work is what I'm doing currently. Now I'm doing this new spiral breathing thing that I've learned from this running coach who's been helping me at the moment

because at this time last year, I went on the Chris Evans show to talk about my last book and he challenged me on air, on Virgin Radio, to do the London marathon in 12 weeks with him. And I accepted even though I'm, you know'm at the time, not really a runner, I do the odd 5K park run. And so I got introduced to this amazing running coach, a now-machined called Helen Hall, and she is just incredible.

Now, obviously, the marathon got postponed. We see what we think secretly thankful about that. It was tricky because I do like a challenge and I was actually looking forward to, can I go from nothing to a marathon in 12 weeks? I'd have enjoyed that challenge as well. Yeah, so I think part of me relishes those sorts of things, but at the same time, I wasn't really ready for it. And so when it was me to what to write, okay, this gives me more time to actually get ready for it.

And then it's been postponed and it's due to happen in October. So one of my innerverse commas goals for this year is to do the London marathon in October. Now I'm very relaxed about it. It may happen. It may not happen. Whether it happens or not, I'm not going to suddenly have an up or down of emotion. It's simply, okay, cool. I would like to do that. And one thing I'm in dealing with this running coach is she's been helping me with my diaphragm and my breathing. So I've got a few exercises that I'm working on at the moment. And then why I think that's so useful around this idea of resolutions is that I don't have

a resolution, but I do have a goal to do that marathon if it comes about. So therefore, I want to take daily actions that I know are getting money in the bank for me that when it is marathon time, if it goes ahead, well, when I get to that start line, I know that I've done that five minutes of breath work every day that's getting my breathing better, that's getting my respiratory system working more efficiently. That is going to help me in whatever I do. Yes, the marathon, but it's also going to help me in my life. So meditation, breathing, and the third one at the moment, and it's not the usual one

for me, is affirmation. So one minute of affirmation. So just something positive to say each morning to get me in the right mindset for the day ahead. Now, if you'd asked me six months ago, it would be completely different, right? So this is just where I'm currently at, and what feels right to me.

Breathwork has been one of the favorite additions that I've brought into my routine. I know that we both, but he's with Brian McKenzie and then his state app that he was part of the team that developed as a sponsor on the show. Anyone that wants to check it out, bit.ly slash state wisdom and you can get it for free for two weeks.

And it's just awesome, man. Like I challenge anybody to do a good breath work session and tell me that they don't feel a change. And I think that marrying with meditation, the challenge that you have at getting people to do it is that it's inherently uncomfortable. And you don't actually have a state change, sorry, you don't have a trade change immediately afterward. It's a lagging state change over time.

Whereas if you do Wim Hof or if you do state app, Brian's application, there is no way that you can't say you don't feel different immediately afterward. It's like a cup of coffee or a cold shower. Yeah, absolutely. And that's a key part of any behavior changes, getting that sort of emotion, that positive emotion immediately wants it is done. And you don't always get that in meditation. Sometimes the benefits of meditation are at 2pm later on that day when you don't react. When someone cuts you up on the road or you know, you don't react when your partner says something to you that you think, ah, actually normally

I react to that. Could that be because I've been meditating for the last few days? Do you know what I mean? So, whereas breath work, yeah, you will feel, you do five minutes of him, half breathing, you know, you can feel energized and charged afterwards. And so, I'm very keen to sort of emphasize, as I've already said, I think, that me sharing that doesn't necessarily mean that I think everybody should be doing that. I've been kind of playing around and experimenting, and I think it's on all of us. Yeah, we can take inspiration from people we follow or people we read. But at some point, you've got to start taking ownership yourself and going, yeah, that works

of Brian McKenzie, that works for Chris, that works for Rongan. Does that work for me? Because it may be yeah, but it may be, hey, you know what, that one just doesn't vibe for me. And you mentioned Brian, and I love Brian and his work, I think it's awesome. And what I love about Brian and what I particularly resonate with is his approach to breath work in the body reminds me a lot about my own approach with my patients. And that is a very generalist perspective. Like Brian is familiar with the Vim Hof breeding. He's familiar with Holotropic breeding. He's familiar with Patrick McEwan's breeding. He's familiar with Butteaco breathing. And what I think brinders so beautifully well is he is able to combine what is the right breeding technique for this individual that wants this goal,

rather than saying, oh, I'm a proponent of them offbreeding, or I do the betaco method or I do this method, it's kind of like, well, they all have pros and cons, they all have benefits in the right situation. And I love that because, you know, I, I, I speak to you, Brian on, on my show, I speak to, um, James Nester, um, Patrick McEwan, and then people are asking, well, which one is the best one? And it's kind of like, yeah, maybe I haven't made it clear, but that's kind of not the point for me. It's kind of like these are all brilliant tools.

And actually, I have tried, so I can't remember which breathing technique it was now, but I've got an aura ring and you can do for about 10 minutes or so. You can measure a heart rate variability and you can see what happens. And I've tried different breathing techniques, and seen what happens, and some breeding techniques that are regarded as being good for you, actually, they tanked my heart rate variability, and I've realized, ah, so maybe that's just something for me to keep an eye, maybe that's not the best one for me in this current state. Yeah, so a few thoughts there from me. The thing that I think is interesting that I really like about what's happened with

health and fitness. Probably over the last, I would say, three years or so, maybe a little bit more, but definitely the last three years, is this movement toward a minimum effective dose, a much more realistic and simplistic view of how people need to do health and fitness. I think that your part of that, I would class James Smith as another one of them, perhaps on the more sweary side. And what we're doing is, there was a period 10 years ago, all the guys that are listening, who were sort of in the early 30s will know this,

bodybuilding.com forums, and you were desperately scouring through whatever you could find, like, how do I build biceps? And no one really knew. No one really actually had any idea, you're taking some dudes, push-pull-leg split off the other side of the internet on a random forum from some guy that lives in Dallas, Texas.

And you just go and do it and see if it worked. Whereas now, all of that explore situation where people have tried, oh, should I be doing five, three, one? Should I actually be doing higher reps? Should I be doing cardio three times a week? All of those opportunities that people have had to make new ground, to kind of look

at all of these different tactics, has been synthesized. And it's now, I think, the goal of the generalist, as opposed to the specialist, to actually compile all of this together, like Brian, to look at all of the different elements, all of the different breathing techniques, how can you synthesize it down? That's why I love the state app

because it's only four exercises. There's four different ones that you can do and they're built on four different pathways that Brian obviously backs. So I go, all right, okay, that's simple. There's not unlimited customizability and the same with the way that you put your stuff across and especially James Smith as well.

Like, you know, he's trying to break things down to the simplest possible terms, like just how easy can I make this? And I think what that's identified is that compliance is the number one indicator of how effective a habit, especially behavior change, diet, fitness, training, health is going to be. If your habit is so complex and so convoluted and so hard to understand that you either don't get started on it or don't stick to it, then it can be the best training plan in the world but it means for all.

What actually matters is can you create a plan that that person understands and sticks to and if that's what you can achieve, you will get results. Yeah, no question. I think it's a very astute observation. Simplisty is key. Keep it simple, stupid. There's that phrase, isn't it? K, R, double S.

Keep it simple, stupid. And you see this over and over again. This is, I think, one of the reasons why, let's say we talk about the dietary tribes, let's say like low carb, for example, low carb can be a fantastic approach for some people, but it's not the be all and end all for everyone. Certainly, that's from my clinical experience, is that the different approaches work for different people. But I think one of the good things about it and other dietary tribes is there's a real simplicity to it. It's like, okay, when I'm following this way of eating,

I don't eat many carbs, right? So it just helps decision making when you're faced with all these options. It's like, oh no, I can't have that because I don't eat carbs. I'm not pro or antsy low carb. I use it with some patients, but I don't identify as being in or out of any one

of these dietary counts. It's a attraction of time restricted eating as well, right? It's just so simple. Yeah, and again, you know, Professor Sachin Pandey from the Sork Institute, who's probably the leading researcher on time restricted eating, he, when I spoke to him, said that, look, you know,

they're trying to change what people have eaten has really been a bit of a failure for the last 20 years or so. We've been trying that. Maybe changing when people eat might be a simpler option. And again, for some of my patients, yeah, it just, they're not to worry so much about what they eat. They go, okay, I eat every day from 8am to 6pm. And it just simplifies their life down. And they know, after six, no, I don't eat now. And again, we need to find what are those,

what are the right rules that deeply resonate with us that we feel, yeah, I can follow that. You say minimum effective dose. And I think this is really interesting. Let's see if you look at behavioral science research, it's pretty clear that actually the best way to make a habit stick in the long term is to make it easy. Professor B.J. Fogg talks a lot about this, he talks about the motivation wave.

So motivation comes up, motivation goes down. Many of us, particularly in January, Chris, we forget about the motivation wave. We assume motivation is going to be limitless for the whole year. And we go, what I'm going to go spending four times a week now for the next year. And for the first two, three weeks of January, we may actually go. But when real life gets in the way, when our motivation starts to fall, if something is difficult to do, We won't do it. We only will do it. Like motivation and ability to do our

Our sort of teammates when if motivation is really high, yes, you'll do something that's really hard to do But in motivations low, it's got to be easy. So rule number one for me for behavior change is you got to make it easy. And you know, business understands this. So, you know, Amazon, when Amazon moved to one click ordering a few years ago now, we don't know this for sure, but estimates say that their profits went up by $300 million a year. Right, a year.

Can you imagine, you were the guy in the office that came up with one click ordering? Like you're a such a fat bonus. Yeah, you would hope so, wouldn't you? You would hope so, but you all do it because it's kind of like instead of four or five screens of what in card details and expiry dates and stuff, which every single step you take as a reason to pull out of that behavior, boom, before you blink something's coming the next day. And so, you know, rule number one is that you've got to make it. He's in Netflix, you should.

You all do the same thing. They roll one video into the next video. That is not done by accident. That is done. So before you realize it's midnight, I need to be up at six o'clock for work. Before you've had time to process that, you're straight into the next episode. And you're like, oh, man, just one more, right? And I'm not criticizing those companies, right? They're doing what they need to do. They're applying the best behavior chain science for their businesses. And I'm saying, when it comes to our health,

why do we throw that stuff out the window? Why do we think it's got to be about deprivation, punishment, restriction? Let's follow some of those rules make it easy and the other rule that I love talking to people about is where are you gonna Put that habit or that you behavior in your day a lot of us don't think about that we go I want to meditate or I want to work out When and it's really important because every single behavior we do needs a trigger, right? So a trigger could be your memory. Oh, I remember I've got a call tonight with Chris at 630 to record this podcast. Okay, it works. It just happens to be

the most unreliable trigger there is. The next best trigger is a notification. So I think on my phone saying, Hey, 630, you've got a call with Chris, you need to be on your mic with the studio lights on and ready to go. Okay, that's better than your memory. But the very best trigger, as shown by the research is when you stick on that behavior, that new behavior onto an existing habit, because that habit is already wired in. And this is, this is what I do, Chris. So I, I've spoken about

this before, but I think it's, Chris. So I've spoken about this before, but I think it's, you know, I always love sharing this to people because it's been so impactful for me. I make coffee every morning. So when it comes to the kitchen, I weigh out my coffee because I'm pretty precise with how I like it. What you've got. What's your current blend, what you're having at the moment?

Current blend is a grumpy mule. I think it's a grumpy mule or it's it's an organic grumpy mule blend. I couldn't tell you the name. It's a free ground or a grinding it yourself. No, it is pre-grants. It is pre-grants. I did think about going down that path, but actually I thought, you know what, I'm obsessive enough about things, I'm not sure I need to add that in as well. But I do weigh it out, I weigh out 15 grams, and then I pour 250 grams of water. So using a CO2 bloom method, are you allowing the camdai oxide to bloom out first?

Mate, I don't go that far, I don't go that far. I just wish. My housemate's been on furlough all summer, and has been really, really bored. He started watching videos of this Japanese barista that won the World Coffee Championship or something. I came into the kitchen and he's like pouring the filter paper, he's warming the filter paper up,

the glass, the caffity egg gets warmed before as well. He went really, really deep. I think that's the same. I as well. He went really, really deep. I think it's that. Now, the thing is right, it's the right addiction, or the right behavior for the right person, I could have gone down that route. And I'm actually slowly trying to unwind from coffee, I'm reducing how much I'm consuming because I think it is my crutch that I turn to

when I'm under pressure. But the point is is that I come down and I make it and I time then for four minutes. I time, that's how long I like it to breathe and I've got this consistency, I know I like the taste, I know I like the flavor like that. In those four minutes, I have a workout every morning, I get my pajamas, I've got a dumbbell

and a kettlebell in the kitchen. Sometimes I do a body weight workout. Sometimes I'll do some kettlebell swings, but I make it easy, right? I don't have to get changed, I don't have to buy an equipment, I don't have to find anything from anywhere. I don't, I, I'm in my pajamas. I have that set routine where the coffee gets made. I don't need a reminder to make coffee. I don't need my PA to phone me in the morning and say, here, wrong, don't forget, you've got to make coffee. No, that's an automatic behavior. So if I stick on my workout there,

it means every single day, and this has been the case for maybe about three years now, I've hardly missed a day. Is that I have coffee every day? I work out every day, only for five minutes, right? But you can do a lot in five minutes. One of the things that I've been absolutely blown away by is how impactful habit stacking can be.

Like my morning routine habit stack now, this year I've made the biggest leap yet, which is to try and roll my morning routine straight into a morning session of deep work, which would be around about two hours, but including my morning routine, it's like three and a half to four hours. And today was like everyone's done this. It's the fourth of Monday, the fourth of January. Everyone's new years resolutions have like been delayed from Friday the first until Monday, the fourth, which is kind of hilarious. But I'm and I'm such a huge advocate of trying to give people that beautiful, unencumbered time on a morning. I find it the best part, the most productive part of my day.

And over time, you can build up and just continue to add on, move from that system to thinking to that system one thinking, and start to automate those habits. Now if you were told after three years of doing it that you weren't allowed to work out while your coffee was brewing, you get fidgety, and you'd'd feel weird and you'd be like, I'm sick of this, like I don't know what to do, like I'm supposed to pick the kettlebell up or throw the dumbbell around. And over time, this is how you see these people who have unbelievably well-disciplined lives from the outside, but to them it's just automated. They've just slowly built this up over time and they've managed to drill what to you looked incredibly

precise and well thought out but to them has just been a series of very small behavior changes over time. Yeah yeah I think it's a great point to make. We look at the end product or the end version of what we're seeing and we go wow how they done all that but we don't realize it was probably 10 years in the making if small 1% improvements Very much like that 50 minute meditation thing for example that I do each morning now I wasn't going to be able to stick to that even two years ago that was that was too much to me I had to start small and build up in five minutes each day and build in these habits and really understand myself a lot better.

I, yeah, I mean, someone asked me recently on my podcast about how do you get so much done. Right, which is really interesting for me because I guess from the outside, the person who asks that question has a perception that how you get in the situation, you're seeing patients, you release a podcast each week, you're releasing a book every year, you've got two young kids, you know, what's the secret? And it's really interesting because to me, I was kind of like, yeah, what is the secret? And I struggled a little bit to think about what it was because to me, I do have quite a discipline,

like that discipline is a bit of a cliche. It does give me freedom. It gives me what I need. And I think for me, it was when I had kids that things started to change to me. And I tell you why I was so transformant to me in terms of my routine is, my son has always got up early, even when he was like, really, really young. And I like getting up early. But I like more than anything time to myself each morning before the rest

of the household rises. I've always been a morning person. I love that quiet time. And I seem to realize, wow, if I'm going to get up before my son, I need to get a bed earlier and wake up earlier. Right, so I was getting up silly early at one point, but I love it. If I'm getting up at five o'clock, I love that one hour in the morning before anyone comes down where I can, you know,

do some meditation, have a coffee, have a little workout, do some stretching, do some reading. I've got a few books that are kicking around that I keep in my living room. Like three or four, I'm always changing them and I will always sit with my coffee and read, you know, for 10 or 15 minutes, just something positive, something that gets me thinking every morning. And I find when I do that, when I've nourished myself physically, mentally and

emotionally every morning, not only am I better human being, not only am I a better father, a better husband, a better doctor, I also get a lot done. Right. When I'm writing, I go straight for my morning routine into writing. And if I get a good three hours writing done then, writing wise I'm done for the day. That is so much more valuable to me than actually trying to start writing at 11 PM and still slogging away at 8 PM. Those eight hours are nothing compared

to a really good three hours first thing in the morning. So, and I'm really disciplined with my time in a sense that if it's dinner time and I'm with my family, my phone is nowhere inside. I'll leave it in another room and I'm trying my best to be really present with the kids. And so, you know, how do I get so much done? I don't really know how to answer that

apart from just share the things I do. I absolutely will prioritize sleep. Like that I know when I sleep well, everything is better the following day. Sleep is something I prioritize, solitude is something I prioritize. When I get these things, I feel I can get a lot of things done.

But also I think there's also a perception from the outside of what someone else's life is like. I'm a busy guy just like anyone else. I've got lots of work commitments, I've got family, I've got an elderly mother nearby who needs looking after what I post on social media and what people see of me in the media. It's just one small portion of my entire life, but an assumption is made on what I share that that is my entire life, but it really isn't. I'm very intentional. Yes, I share a

lot of myself, but there's plenty I do not share on social media. Plenty I keep reserved and it's just for me, my family and my friends. Well, do we not all of us see our own failings from a front row seat, right? From the outside looking in, it might look like you've completely got your life sorted, but you'll struggle not using your phone too much. You mentioned before, I had to go so far as to delete the app and to go cold turkey for 18 days.

These are challenges that we all have. The difference is if you've built up slowly over time, if you've constructed a routine that's robust and has a nice foundation to it, your worst day will be better than someone who hasn't done any of that stuff's best days. So this is something that I actually wanted to ask. Let's invert your day. You've talked about what you do to make sure that you have a good day.

What could you do that would ensure that you have the worst day? What are the habits or the actions that you take that if you do them you end up wrecking everything? Yeah, that's a great question. Okay, I like that. How can I make sure I have a really bad day tomorrow? Okay, I could do Skype calls in the evening. Is that a day? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no the evening, so if I'm still wired in my brain, even at 8 p.m. which is the late for me, because I do get up early, that can affect how long it takes me to switch off and then fall into a nice deep relaxing sleep. How can I make sure tomorrow days, tomorrow's bad? I, after this call, I could get some Christmas

and biscuits and go and put Netflix on and still be watching it at 1am. I could still be doing that. And I would enjoy myself. I'd love watching it. I'd love in the moment that feeling, but I wouldn't sleep well. I'd still wake up early because my body clock is totally

locked in so I don't use an alarm, but I will still wake up early because my body clock is totally locked in, so I don't use an alarm, but I will still wake up at 5 tomorrow morning. I'll feel a bit cranky. My meditation won't be very good. I'll be a bit ratty with the kids. I won't be as calm and as present over breakfast tomorrow. Those are the kinds of things that I could do this evening that would ensure I had a bad day tomorrow. And to break it down, eating late for me is a big one. I've seen this and I've tracked it as well that if I eat within two hours of going to sleep,

for me, it's not the same for everyone, but for me, I just don't sleep as deeply. So I may fall asleep, I may sleep for the same amount of time, but I don't feel as well rested the following day. For me, I know I'm pretty sensitive to screens before beds, and again I've tracked that, so it's very hard to resist sometimes. I have a rule that I don't, I try, it's not a rule because I don't always manage to. It's an aspiration to not take my phone into my bedroom. If it comes into the bedroom, I really struggle to not look at it. So I tend to charge it in a kitchen or charge it in another room.

But I want to say that one hour before bed, what I do know, do I am put my brain with thinking about things and consuming things either on social media or on Twitter or online or the, you know, on television that gets me wide or is it kind of like a switch off? That one hour before bed for me is golden. If I really can switch off, no screens, dim lighting, maybe reading, it makes... It's probably the most important error in my day in many ways, because if I get that hour right, the next day will fly, and if I get that hour wrong, I can really pay for it the next day. Yeah, I would say the hour before bed and the hour upon waking are the two most important for me as well. I don't know man, like, the one thing that I fear with creating a routine that I love so much and that I rely on as much as I do now and every year, right, I'm adding stuff onto it.

It gets longer, it gets bigger, I'm now trying to actually make the first base until midday, part of a morning routine. And I guess that there's no chance for variety at the moment, or lock down in our houses, right? But one of the fears that I have, one of the challenges that I come up against, is when part of that falls away, avoiding a catastrophic tumble down, right, that's it. I've missed my meditation, everything's out of the window now, or if I do end up sleeping in, not getting to sleep until late, the window now, or if I do end up sleeping in, not getting to sleep until late, for whatever reason,

maybe because I'm recording, maybe because I just have a bad night's sleep, not waking up in the morning and thinking, well, I've only slept for six hours, because my whoop strap tells me I've only slept for six hours, or I looked at my phone before 9am, which is one of the rules that I'm not supposed to do. You actually can end up almost becoming superstitious, like the old football player that used to have to put his left sock on, then his right suck on and double not his laces in this particular way.

You can almost have a domino effect in terms of being so overly reliant on your routine that as soon as one thing falls off that you get very catastrophic thoughts down the line. I've definitely been guilty of that in the past. Like it was all on nothing. But let's not forget as well that the point of the routine is to be more robust, more anti-fragile, not less. Yeah, you're right. And I think it's something you're sharing, it's something I've certainly struggled with in the past. I've got to say that's changed in the past year for me, but I'm trying to sort of unpick why that might be is I've

done a lot of work with a therapist about my upbringing, my childhood, you know, these certain patterns of behavior that I have and where they may have come from. And I think for a lot of my life, I've felt good about myself only when I had external validation of what I had done. If other people say, you're doing well, hey, you're doing great, even if inside of you, if you're dying, it doesn't matter. People are saying, it's good. Oh, it's good.

And I really am picked where a lot of that has come from. I believe that actually as a kid, I was under the impression that in some ways, you're only really worth something when you've achieved something that's good. And I think therefore your identity becomes pretty fragile actually. You're very much a prisoner to the world around you. You're a prisoner to what other people think and what other people say. And I've had to really go in and understand that because, no, in 2015, I had my own BBC one prime time show called Doctrine the House, which runs for two seasons, which has been watched by 5 million people a week. You suddenly are putting yourself out there, and with social media the way it is,

hey, people can say whatever they want, about whatever they want, whether true or not. And I really found that difficult, because initially it was like, I don't really understand, I mean, where some of this crystals have come from, I've just helped all these families with complex health problems who've not got better seeing GPs and spashes in the past. And without fail, I've got almost all of them either fully better or significantly better in six weeks just by making or helping them make changes to their lifestyle. I was like, why, why, why is this 1% of people attacking me and saying that you didn't do it the right way? You didn't do this. Now, you can either let that bury you,

or you can go, okay, this is an opportunity to learn here. This is obviously to understand, why am I so bothered by what other people are saying? And being in the media and having a public profile of sorts of five years, in some ways is the best crucible to learn because you either sink or you swim. You either...

That's a modifier. Yeah, you either sort this stuff out or you become a very unhappy individual who doesn't feel good about themselves. And I've had moments like that. I remember the second season of Dr. Nathas started first episode. I think I didn't sleep for a week properly after that. I was so affected by what people were saying, even though it's one of the proudest things I've ever done in my entire career, professional, but also personal life. And I understood once you want to pick where that comes from and you come to terms with it, you start to really become more at peace with who you are. So I don't really have that all on nothing mentality anymore that I used to. Whereas in the past,'s like, oh you failed. You said you were going to better say, move,

do a bit of mindset, do this. You didn't do it today. Forget it. Forget it. Let's just go and get some chocolate and crisps. The old me might have done that. But I would like to say it's been about 12 months now. Certainly the last six months, whether it has really been a noticeable shift Chris with me. I think if we had done this since a few two years ago, and you said if you made any resolutions, I said, yeah, absolutely, here are my five resolutions. Right?

It's really interesting. Nobody's really asked me that for a long time. So I guess during this conversation with you, I'm kind of processing that, I'm thinking, oh, that's interesting, that I haven't made any resolutions this year. And I think it comes down to the fact that I'm just more comfortable in my own skin.

I understand that my worth as a human being is not dependent on whether I meditate every morning or not, right? I still, you know, I've come to terms with the facts now. Not comes to terms with, I like the person I see when I look in the mirror each morning. Right? I actually really like myself now for who I am,

what's an all, and I've got a same mate, and I don't know if you feel the same way with your podcast, but having my own podcast, I think has been one of the best things I have done for my own personal well-being, because I'm very raw and open and honest on it and I feel just by sharing myself not trying to create an image of who I am, really sharing every aspect of me, you think, well, what can people criticize? It's kind of like I share the things

I struggle with, I share what I'm not so good at, I share it also, it's kind of like you've almost taken that away from other people, but also from yourself, you're like, oh no, I am an imperfect human, that's okay, right? Do you know what I mean? So I kind of feel, I feel in a really good place these days, but it has not been easy getting here. And so coming back to what you were talking about is, I don't feel that sense of failure anymore. If I stop for a few days, I don't play the old record which is, and you're a failure, you can't stick to this stuff.

It's like, oh, oh, you know what? It was really busy. I needed to help my mom. Kids were busy at school. I didn't really go to bed on time. Okay, that was cool. I can change out tomorrow. So that is a very noticeable shift in me

and it's very, very recent. Man, I'm really happy to hear that. It's like so beautiful to find that you've taken something that perhaps one sort of been a difficulty or a vice of that sort of personal ambasting, that very negative inner monologue, and that you've managed to align that with the lifestyle that you've got now. I think that's like a really, really great change that you could have made. I wonder how many people I've

been thinking about this so much recently. I wonder how many people that are typos, that are go getters, that are on the personal development and the self creation growth journey, I wonder how many of those people are motivated by the fact that inherently they don't like the person that they see in the mirror. Like you can either run away from something you don't like or run towards something that you do, and I would guess that a significant minority and maybe even the majority is actually running away from a situation that they don't want. I think you spot on. I think it's the majority actually. If I to guess, I would say it's the majority because I think in some ways that dissatisfaction, that internal dissatisfaction with who they are, in many ways provides the drive to overcome that go, no, I am someone.

I'm going to show you with this level of success, with this level of income, with this level of whatever it is. I'm going to show everyone around me that I am worth something that I'm not worth less. But the problem is, I think that can work up to a certain point and then it can start to come really, really, toxic and I have the question that, haven't cracked it in my head, that is it possible to gain those really high levels

of success or what society defines as being successful, I should say, because that can be very, very different than what actually what success can really mean to us on an individual level. It's like, can we really achieve that without some real inner demons that we're trying to overcome? I think about this with athletes a lot. I think about tiger woods or all kinds of pro athletes

who've gone and done inhumane or seemingly superhuman feats and actually you know Michael Jordan interesting you know when you when you watch the new well it's not new in the series the last dance on Netflix and you know and and that story when he was was at the Hall of Fame a couple of years ago where he goes up and then he almost just shows how much he's this anger and hatred and sort of he's had to hold on to all these years to be that good or certainly that's my perception of what I've been reading about it. It's so interesting that would he have been that great in a verse of commerce without that?

Not at all. Not at all. I think there's absolutely no way that he could have done. And I think when, especially in sport and sports, a good example of it, the conditions for success in sport are very tightly defined. It doesn't matter if Tiger Woods is the most miserable, poor, self-hating, anything man on the planet. If he gets the ball in the hole with less hits than the other guy, he's the best golfer in the world. So the particular judgments, the parameters that we use,

are so tightly defined that it doesn't matter. And anything that you do outside of the sport, which actually assists you in the sport, means that you're gonna out-compete the people that around you. I'm not sure if you know much about Tiger Woods' childhood, and the way they've died. I do. I've been fascinated with Tiger for the last 15 years,

and I read everything about him. I'm, he's probably my dream podcast guest, I mean, he wouldn't love to interview Tiger. I would love to talk about. If you're listening, get on wrong and on Twitter. But I mean, man, I heard a story. I think it was in one of our own holidays books, talking about the things that his dad used to say to him.

So his dad used to call him the N word, used to say that he was like, be outwardly racist to him. Did you hear that he used to have a safe word like people have during rough sex? He used to have a safe word that was called enough. And they referred to it as the E word. And his dad would say to him, look, you know, if you can't take this, if you don't think you're good enough, then just say the word and I'll stop. And he never once said it. And you think that is, I mean, is it child abuse? It probably would be certainly in today's in the way that it looks at it today. If you had a patient, a young 11 year old fledgling golfer come to you and say, Dr. Chatejee, my dad's being overtly racist to me and forcing me to play golf

and doing all this stuff, it's only in the light of what he's achieved that we're able to even see any tiny little bit of perspective or sort of justification for that. And really, I don't know, I'd love, I'll tell you what the first question that I'd have, not maybe not the first one, it'd be a bit heavy to open with. But to ask Tiger, would you rather have not worn everything that you won and not have the programming that inevitably will have carried over from Europe bringing, or is the juice worth the squeeze? Yeah, absolutely, mate. The same, same question that I have in my head for him, you know, was it worth it? Is it worth it?

And I think there's a wider point there about this definition of success, right? Because we look up to people like Tiger. Now I'm a Tiger fan, right? Now it's saying what I mean by that is, I don't think that, you know, as a sports fan growing up, I found Tiger intensely fascinating. Who, I mean, lots of, you know, I'm not unique in that regard. But as someone who grew up to an immigrant family

in the UK, you know, my parents were Indian immigrants, came over, my dad came over in the 1960s. Golf wasn't something that featured for me. It's not something my parents played, it's not something in their network. Golf was not played. I, as a, you know, from an immigrant family in the UK, I don't think I would have played or be interested in golf if Tiger Woodson exists. It was something about Tiger that suddenly made everyone from all walks of life from all different colors and races suddenly interested in the sports of golf. And then when Tiger sort of goes off the rails and it all comes out, right, you know, there was this huge disappointment in Tiger from the media, from his fans. But then when you look at his story and his child, did you go, hold on a minute, was any

of this really a surprise? Of course this was going to happen when you look at his childhood. No girlfriends, no social life, schooled from the age of, well, from out of the womb to be the number one golfer in the world. Apparently, his dad didn't really want to kid at that age anymore. And so, Tiger's in a high chair and just watching his dad hit golf balls all day. And then suddenly, he pops out at some point and actually can hit a golf club himself. It's golf must have held such a powerful emotional pull for him in terms of, well, I can't get attention from my dad. All he does is hit this golf club.

Man, I want to do that as well. So I can connect with dad. Then as you say, racist abuse because he's trying to train Tiger. It says, when you get up there and those tournaments, you're going into a white sports. People are not going to like you, they're going to throw abuse at you. I am training you to be able to deal with that. And then you think about all the criticism where Tiger is, you know, in the final round of the major, people say he's ignoring them and he's not signing autographs and not doing things. But actually,

the guys are trained assassin, you know, he would say an insfuser, I don't hear the noise. I don't hear what people are saying, like in that final 18 holes of a major in his prime, he's just in the zone. He's got one goal. And that is next shot, get the goal for where I want it to go, get in the hole. As he says, get the world, get the W. That was what it was always about for him. And so I'm fascinated that when he wins the Master's a couple of years ago, after that huge time where he won nothing, there was something different about him in his interviews. He was, you know, his shoulders were lower. He was smiling. He was cracking jokes.

It was like a different target. It was like, it was like a tiger to me who would face his demons, who, you know, he said an interview. I said to my kids, I said the reason um Daddy doesn't live in mummy anymore is because Daddy made some big, big mistakes and that's why we're not together. And to hear someone like Tiger who I think has been trying to never show any weakness, to start opening up, I wonder how that master's victory felt to him compared to all his other majors in the past because he feels like he's someone who went to that extreme, he had to stare his demons in the face. The world's media are literally printing things about the most intimate details of entire life.

I challenge anyone of us to like that process and to actually not be harmed by that process. We're very good at judging other people and get a man, he's really let us down. Really, well, why did we put him on such a big pedestal in the first place? Maybe in society, that's one of the major problems we have is that we're idolizing people who actually achieve, as you said, that type metric of sporting success, but maybe aren't the best husband or the best father or the best whatever, right? We're idolizing these people, but what if,

and this is something I reflect on in 2020, well, what if we started to define success a little bit differently? What if success was, how much time this year did I spend with the people who I really value? How many meals this year did I spend, oh, did I have with my children and my wife? And I wasn't away.

What if we started to look up to people who actually achieved those things? Because if that was what we are aspiring to as a society, or maybe suddenly the whole of society suddenly starts to look differently straight away. But if all we're looking up to is your tiger woods, is your micro Jordan? Are those the posters we have on our walls

or young boys have on our walls or young boys have on their walls? Well, actually, is that not the inherent problem or is that not one of the inherent problems in the way society is set up? Maybe we're idolizing the wrong people. Man, it's a really deep point and it's something, I don't know, I've read far too much evolutionary psychology over the last year to hope that that would ever happen. I think that we're inevitably going to stratify out into hierarchies and those hierarchies are almost always going to be on socialized measures

of success, externalized measures of success. I can't look at you and see just how mindful you are, see how satisfied you are, see how just how loved you are and how loving you are and how awakened and aligned and present and all the rest of the stuff. But I can probably see how many followers you've got on Twitter and I can guess at your net worth and I can do other things like those are the games

that people play. They play status games and the goal for almost everybody is to completely step out of that game. But the problem is that most of the things that we do in life that are deemed as successful and we are mimetic creatures, right? We do what the people around us do. We live in tribes. Most of the things that we do are reliant on other people affirming our sense of worth. And that's what we get. But I don't know, man, I certainly think that But I don't know man, I certainly think that increasingly now this more Western version of mindfulness, this sort of awakened, aligned, mindful content and the ability to be present

and people like Naval Ravakant is a perfect example of this, someone who is winning at the game and also not caring about playing like he's somebody who has gone through that process. And it reminds me, I keep talking about this. His dark materials, the trilogy by Philip Pullman, it was my favorite set of books when I was a kid. And in this set of books, the big story arc for one of the two main protagonists is the journey from unconscious competence to conscious uncompetence and then to finally to conscious competence. So that's what we talk about with Tiger

that you have this person who is an absolute assassin, a total trained killer as soon as he's out on the tee. But is doing it all totally unaligned without having managed to absorb or work out any of the other stuff that's going on in his life. And then the journey that he really needs to go on is not to become the best in the world, it's to become happy with himself.

And to actually fully internalize all of these things and to work through. And similar to you, you know, you've managed to get yourself to a prime time BBC two season show. And yet, if you two years ago hadn't meditated, there would have been a voice in the back of your head saying, oh, like, wrong, and that's another reason why today's going to suck or why you're worthless today or why you haven't done this that any other like that is the journey. It's not about that externalized socialized metrics of success. It is about how happy you can be just being you

It is but it's that it's it's often the hardest journey to make. It's the hardest thing to see I'm so conscious, you know my kids are a ten-year-old boy and an eight-year-old girl And I talk about this stuff with them you know every breakfast time It's like you know this is daddy's philosophy lesson for the morning and we talk about this stuff because you know that the truth is I never spoke about this stuff when I was a like, you know, this is Daddy's philosophy lesson for the morning. And we talk about this stuff because, you know, the truth is, I never spoke about this stuff when I was a kid. I, you know, as I mentioned, you know, my parents were, were immigrants to the UK and their metric of successes, we're going to work really, really hard and give our kids a better life than we had.

And that way of doing that was we're sending us to good schools, making sure that we got A's and everything. So that actually we would then succeed in a vertical mess. And, you know, not have to face the hardships that they faced, right? And I love and respect my parents for that. The problem is, or one of the downsides of that is, you think your only worth is when you're getting straight A's and when you're top of the class and when

You're achieving those things and if you don't You kind of feel like, oh, well, what does that mean about me? What is my identity then if I'm not that guy who's top dog and It kind of It's I think as I said before for me. I feel I've had the luxury in many ways, the luxury of the public profile because the scrutiny you then put yourself under, it is sink or swim. You either sort this stuff out. And I know lots of people in media now, and I think there's a huge amount of fragile egos in media who actually get their sense of self worth

from the perception, from the public. But on the inside, there's some very unhappy people. And I say that with compassion, I'm not judging. I'm genuinely not judging when I say that. I'm saying this is just what I've observed. And I feel that actually as you say, it's that alignment, isn't it? It's that alignment between who you are internally and what you're doing externally.

When we can bring that into alignment, that's calm, that's peace, that's contentment. Well, man, can you imagine if there was a social network, some sort of social media, where the follow account was actually based on how virtuous and how much of a life filled with integrity and presence and alignment with your actual values and what's good for the world. If that was the metric, like I would go as far as to say that I think it would probably almost be inverted that the people who end up winning at the absolute extremes are also the people who probably would have the lowest score in terms of that. absolute extremes are also the people who probably would have the lowest score in terms of that. I'm saying this is someone who's been on,

take me out and love Ireland and boutique on Twitter and free charcoal toothpaste, you know, all the big things. And I know, I know it for a fact, I know it from first-hand experience, that the people who were applauded by easy wins and for being someone not doing something, most of them are miserable. Yeah, I don't disagree. I see that a lot and it would be interesting to see if we did invert that. What would actually happen, but as you say, when you study evolutionary psychology, you think, well, could it be that way? You know, oh, we wired that way as humans. Is this just not the way we have been built for so many years? But as I say that we have been built because I'm an optimist. I do believe that there is the

possibility of change. I do believe like, I know I mentioned a lot about children, but for me, and I know it's quite an obvious thing to say, but as a parents, you know, having kids has really changed who I am, what I value in life, you know, suddenly you just can't be as self-absorbed or into yourself as you might have been pre-kids because as you know, people who are relying on you, who are looking up to you and that the probably the biggest lesson I've learned in 10 years of being a dad is that kids don't do what you tell them to do. They do what they see you doing. And that's been a huge motivation for me to, you know, kind of sort this stuff out is kind of like, I don't want to pass on this baggage onto my children and wait till they're foresee to start unpicking

this, you know. And I talk about these concepts that I talk about on my podcast from talking about with you today with the kids and you know what, they kind of get it mate. I kind of genuinely feel a lot of this. Kids actually can get a lot of this, but it's interesting to see what happens with society and schooling and how it starts to condition a lot of this. Out of them and it's something that I really struggle with as a parent is like well, I'm trying to instill certain values and ideas and philosophies. Or I shouldn't say instill, I'm trying to have a conversation. I don't wanna instill them in my kids. I want them to be free to choose how they want to behave,

how they wanna engage with the world. But I love the thought of having these conversations with a 10 year old boy and an eight year old girl and hearing what they have to say. And often I'm like, oh man, I just learned that at 43, you guys are kind of getting this already, this is pretty cool. I hope that stays with you and you don't have to relearn or learn for the first time as I am in my early 40s.

Man, I think that's a really interesting point. Firstly, having more frictionless information access means that now we're not partitioned off based on where you are in the world or the religion you have or the upbringing you have, everybody has free access to the entire history of humanity's knowledge. So what that should mean or what that could mean from an optimistic standpoint is an evolution of ideas should end up with what people value rising to the top. I think if I'm being an optimist, which I'm not usually, I'm not usually am, but I will be this time. I don't want to go back to the status playing games that I used to play.

Sometimes I fall into them, but I know that the values that I want to pass on to my children when I have them and the way that I want to lead the rest of my life is to do with the internalized scorecard, not the externalized one. And that will make me happier. So I'm not going back to the old game, even though I might fall into it sometimes. So if I then pass that on to my kids and that game in the evolution of ideas,

beats the internal scorecard, beats the external scorecard every single time. So over time, this should in fact society. I also think that because the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs has now been fixed, we're actually given the opportunity because we're not fighting for air and water and food and shelter and warmth. We're actually given the chance to think about these more abstract high level goals. You can think about what do I want to be, who do I want to become, how should,

what does it mean to live a good life? What does it mean to live a good life? Is the source of an existential crisis but also a really luxurious position to be in? Like, to be able to ask that question means that you have so much freedom because all of this stuff that your ancestors for the last two million years have been fighting over

has been sorted. So perhaps we are at the inflection point. Maybe the free movement of ideas will allow people to infect in a good way their children and from that not have to worry and scrabble and fight as poverty, world poverty goes down like insane status or about that recently about how the World Health Organization's made like 50 years of progress in the last 15 years or something like that. They've eradicated so much of it. You know, over time, if you roll that forward, where does the trajectory take us? It takes us to a much more aligned population. such a hopeful ideology really isn't it, this idea that for many of us, clearly not everyone in the world, but for many of us, we're in a position now that we've never been in before, that are ancestors, that even our parents weren't in. So we can now think about, why am I here?

How do I wish to spend my time? What do I want out of each day? Maybe I'll grandparents, that'll be a laughable. What you think it about? You just got to find a way to make some money, get food on the table and have some shelter at night. It is a lovely thought because actually, evolution is always happening right. We're constantly evolving.

It's hard to see it when we're in it, but evolution is happening. So maybe we are evolving into that time period now where actually, we can fundamentally change the values in society. And I kind of feel that many things that have happened in the world over the past years, including the big lockdowns and the sort of restrictions that were put in place in 2020. They are forcing a lot of these existential questions to so many of us, you know, how are we living our life? What was I really doing? Did I enjoy just constantly chasing all the time?

You mentioned that E word that Tiger and his dad used to use, but that word enough, I think is something, the rifle when I, I've been journal in the morning and I will often think about enough. What does it mean? What is enough? At what point can you stop? Or at what point you go, yeah, I kind of like

the pace of my life. I'm kind of pretty cool with this. I'm good. You know, I don't think many of us ask ourselves that question, we're constantly chasing more, more money, more status, more fame, more followers, more holidays, better holidays. But I think certainly for me,

and I know many people share this in 2020, but certainly in the first lockdown, I kind of, you know, in the UK, we had great weather during our first lockdown in March. And of course, I will acknowledge that everyone experiences this in a different way. You know, I was, I'm in a lucky position where I could do a lot of my work from home.

I was, you know, I have a garden, so my kids were able to play in a garden and not be, you know, stuck in a studio apartments. Right? So, I understand that that gives me a certain lens to which to look at this through. But I thought, wow, are you going for walks or bike rides every day with my wife and kids?

There's some quite nice country paths near where I live. Like maybe I don't need to go off on a beach holiday every three months to go and find happiness. Actually, I realized actually just spending time with the people close to me and actually engaging and spending time with them in nature each day. I thought, man, I'm not sure I've ever felt this happy or this content. This is what it is all about. So I don't know, I kind of feel there's a lot going on in the world at the moment. And the hope is, and I think you possibly share this from what you're saying, the hope is that actually,

maybe something beautiful that's gonna come out on the other side of this, where we think, actually what is really important in life isn't money, fame, and success, or is it love, relationships, compassion? Do you know what I mean? It's kind of what I spend most of my time thinking about these days. What does that all mean and can we get there? Because I think we can. If you can't be happy with a coffee, you won't be happy with a yacht.

Love it. That's something that I picked up last year from Neville. Final thing, man, I have to bring this up. Have you seen the new covers of Cosmopolitan? This is healthy wellness does not come in one size cover. Have you seen this? Haven't, has it just come out? Okay. So it's a variety of different body shapes of women.

There's 11 different covers on it. There's a rugby player on there who's obviously like much more muscular than usual and there's a sprinter on there and there's some plus sized girls, one of whom is in a wheelchair. So it's the full gamut. Now, people are overweight as far as I'm concerned,

can be perfectly happy and live full-filled lives. I absolutely do not think that fat-shaming people achieve anything, but categorizing someone who is obese as healthy is dangerous. Being morbidly obese is not healthy and it has never been healthy and the condition of good physical and mental health, especially when actively maintained by a proper diet, exercise and the avoidance of risky risky behavior is the definition of wellness. It's the complete opposite. So I pulled up this meta-analysis on the association of all cause mortality with overweight and obesity using standard body mass index categories. So

relative to normal weight, both obesity of all grades and grades two and three obesity were associated with significantly higher all cause mortality. So that's a 95% correlation between being obese and dying sooner from everything. That makes being fat the most wellness-reducing thing that you can do. Cosmopolitan telling people that this is healthy isn't just wrong, as far as I'm concerned, it's dangerous and stupid. Cosmopolitan are purposefully misleading their audience so that they can jump on the newest trend of signaling their body positive. Imagine if one of your patients came in to see you and said, Dr. Chategie, I've been

gaining a lot of weight recently, but this role model on the front of the cover of cosmopolitan said that it's healthy and well, they're in wellness and health to be morbidly obese. Like, I don't understand how we've managed to get ourselves so confused to a world where we can't criticize someone for their body weight, which again, I don't agree with, but we can't criticize someone with their body weight because it's going to hurt their feelings, but we can call over being morbidly obese, well, or healthy so that that is going to set a trend for

people down the line. Surely that's the more dangerous route. Yeah, look, I haven't seen that and I'm definitely going to make an effort over tomorrow or the next couple of days to actually have a look and see what's going on there. But this is something that I sort of tackled in the introduction of my new book, which I decided to write on weight loss or healthy sustainable weight loss. For a number of reasons, and one of the reasons

is that I think it has got to this point in society, as you say, for some people, not everyone, where you can't have an honest conversation, I am against fat shaming. We can absolutely have an honest conversation. I am against fat shaming. We can absolutely have compassion, full compassion and no prejudice against people who are carrying excess body weights. No, absolutely. But some people go one step further. These are some proponents in the body positivity movement. We'll go one step further and say, actually, it is, I shouldn't say completely okay because

okay can mean many things to different people, but it is completely healthy to carry lots of excess weight and you don't need to do anything about it. And that's where something is a medical doctor. I actually have a sort of split from what some of them are saying. I agree with a lot of it, which is let's embrace people with who they are. Let's love people for who they are. Let's not call them lazy or lacking willpower or blame them. There are many complex reasons behind why people end up being the way that they are. That is, there's really good science on that. It is not as simplistic

as it's made out to be. But we still have a response with, I think, to say, listen, if you carry this much excess body fat, you aren't increasing the likelihood of, you know, poor health outcomes from a variety of different conditions. So it's like everything in society now, Chris, it's got a polarizing extreme. It's like we go, we take a point of compassion and not fat shaming, which is great, and take it to an extreme which is it's completely okay. We should never tell anyone who care and access weight that actually it would be in their health interests to reduce it.

And I sort of, there's a couple of paragraphs in the book where I actually mention this and say, listen, I get, I get that we don't want to fat shame. And I'm very supportive off that. But we also need to be able to look at the science and actually be honest with people and say, listen, I get it. That it's been tough for you. And you've ended up in this position, right? You're a great person. Your identity is not that you are fat, right? You have an identity that you're a kind, compassionate individual. Yes, you also are carrying excess body fat at the moment. That's why I think the language we use, particularly the language we talk about to ourselves,

which can as a big part of one section of the book, which is to try and help people go, the way you talk about yourself is really, really important. Some people who say, I am fat, they're wrapping up their whole sense of identity in this idea of being fat. They're wrapping up their whole sense of identity in this idea of being fat. So actually to lose their fat in some ways would be to lose part of their self and who they are. Now for some people, there's not a problem, right? But for some people it is. There is really good research, Chris now. I don't know if you know the ACE is trial that Dr. Vincent Folletti did about a decade or so ago, where he showed a very strong correlation between people

who've had adverse childhood experiences, like physical or emotional abuse, as kids, and obesity, a very, very strong correlation. And I share in the book a case study that I remember really well this, I think she was 16 or 17 when I first saw her in clinic and I got to know her as a patient. And no, actually it was the late of that.

It was maybe she was 18 or 19 and she was really struggling to lose weight. She tried everything. And I was spending time with her trying to understand what was going. She never was overweight before till about the age of 16. And then it turned out that actually she was in an abusive relationship just after she turned 16. And I really felt there was something to unpick there and we, you know, I sent her to a therapist to get some help. And it turned out that actually for her what happened was that it was a defense

mechanism for her. So she was basically, I don't want to be in this position of being in an abusive relationship again. If I put on body fat, she thought I am no longer going to be attractive to less desirable, less desirable. I'm going to be unseen. And actually, when we started to address that, unpick it, and it was challenging to unpick that. Actually, then the weight loss started to come sustainably, healthily, in a way that made her feel good. And the reason I bring that up is we should have full compassion for her. We don't need to blame her until she's being lazy. And she's not following, you know, as Boris is saying, you know, do this for the NHS. It was holding a minute. She was trying her

best to do it, but she was, she hadn't identified the right problem. She was trying to solve the wrong problem. Once we helped her identify the right issue for her and then she started getting help, she was able to lose that excess body fat. And going back to your first point around the causal ponsa covers, which I will say to be clear, I have not seen them yet. So it's very helpful for me to comment on something I've not seen.

But I don't think we should be promoting it and saying, this is healthy. I think we should be, there is nuance to all of these things, right? That's the word that I was thinking about man like there are gradations between fat shaming and calling being morbidly obese healthy. Like it's not just and the fact of the matter is that it's such an absolutist media. Circus out there that it can't be it's got to be either you want to kill all fat people and their worthless yeah. be, it's got to be either you want to kill all fat people and they're worthless or you have to be completely behind it, deny any of the incredibly robust claims from all walks

of medicine that show that being obese is not good for your health or your longevity. Like there is a middle point in there where we can accept people, we can say this doesn't make you any less of a person, any different of a person, but it would be much better for your health outcomes if you were able to lose some weight. And I don't know if anybody, I'd be interested to hear in the comments, does anybody actually think that cosmopolitan genuinely believe that this is healthy, or does everybody see through the glass front door, which is just this is the new sort of newsworthy body positivity movement that we're all on the back of. Like I'm all for gym shark varying the range of models that they use, but they're not claiming

that this is the optimal health or wellness outcome that you should have. The difference and the the line I think that's been crossed here by Cosmopolitan, which you'll see when you finally get to see it, is it says, this is wellness, this is healthy. Like those words are directly under people who are not well or healthy. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, it's, you know, it's so interesting, Chris, because as we were mentioning just before we started recording, this new book on weight loss that I've written, I didn't go into lightly, I didn't need to do it, frankly. The truth is, I didn't need to go into this area. Like I, I, you know, my first few books are making really good impacts. I'm talking about promoting health,

well-being, physical health, mental health, emotional health, the easy thing to do would be not to touch weight loss, right? Because it's so controversial, right? And I don't need to, I need to, yeah, it is. But you know why I did? Is actually part of the thing that you're bringing up with these magazine covers is that,

I've been seeing patients for 20 years, well, I have seen, as a GP, you see everything, right? You have, you, well, I'm not saying you see absolutely everything, but you see it a lot more than potentially other specialties. What I mean by that is, let's say, if you're a PT, if you're a, if you're a, yeah, your personal trainer, you are likely to see people who believe that actually working out hard is going to help them lose weight. They're coming in with that belief system in place and therefore you're gonna see the subset of people who really believe that's the way that's gonna help them

and you're gonna have your own experience of what works and what doesn't work. That's completely fine. If you're a psychologist, you're probably gonna see people who've got complex emotional issues around Wait and food and there you're going to be you're going to have potentially a bias Around that this is the kind of the main issue that I'm seeing when I see people who are trying to lose weight I Will have my own bias because I'm a human being and I've got my own experience

But I think as a GP what happens is that we tend to see people from all different walks who are struggling with all kinds of different things. So we see the full gamut. And I thought, you know what, I really feel I've got something unique to share here and it's not the different tone and a different way that I think will help a lot of people out there who are being shamed, who are being made to feel bad

about themselves, who do think that they are failures and that they can't stick to any plan. But at the same time, are being told and are thinking, well, actually, maybe it's okay to have a BMI of 40. And I thought, well, hold on a minute, it's not either raw. We can be medically accurate, scientifically accurate and have full compassion at the same time. And you know, the true thing is that this book was probably the hardest book that I wrote because trying to keep the ideas simple, trying to make them actionable, trying to get the tone right was something that took a lot of time to do. But it's partly part of the

ways of doing this because I actually think there's a lot of people out there who are being mis-served and are being made to feel like failures and worthless. So yes, I mean, I don't know if that made sense or not. I was kind of... No, I was thinking through that. No, it really does, man. And I think, sadly, at the moment, we have two competing factions, neither of whom are doing a massive amount of good for people who should or want to lose weight. You have one side which is making a judgment on them and they're worth as an individual about their weight. And you have another side which is giving them advice and a level of encouragement,

which is literally going to kill them sooner. Neither of those situations are fantastic. Like, I've just given you the most robust meta-analysis that I could find that says it's an, oh, basically it's an all-cause mortality risk and any doctor knows this as well, which I'm sure that you will. And on the flip side,

it's not, we're not 11 years old, and it's 1972. Like you don't just call the fat kid in the playground fat, and he's the fat one. Like we're a lot more sophisticated than that, or at least I like to think that we're a lot more sophisticated than that now. But yeah, man, again, these tighter and tighter circles that we go through, I hope that we end up arriving at a place that is much more capable of sort of accepting nuance and doesn't just see everything as this bipolar situation, but I wonder whether it's a function of social media, it was seeing more and more echo chambers and bifurcating in terms of the way that people see their politics, and it's not surprising that we're seeing it in terms of health as well. We see it everywhere and have you seen the social dilemma?

Yes. Yeah, and it's, you know, of course, you know, a lot, there's critics of that, but I, you know, I enjoyed watching it. I certainly, the fundamental concepts of that in terms of the way these algorithms work, the way they feed you to more and more extreme views on the things that they think you are going to want to engage. And I found super interesting and it explains so much about the lack of nuance we now have in society, the lack of context. It's like, you know, I've done a Dave interviews as part of book promo and most of them have been really enjoyable, but a few of them are very much like, you know,

so are you pro, you know, I don't know, let's say are you pro intermittent fasting? Are you pro low carb? And it's like, hold on a minute. I said, well, look, I'm gonna give you the same answer I gave when the last one, but it depends. For some people, restricts in their eating window is game-changing for them and works in the concepts of their lifestyle. For them, it's brilliant. But for someone else,

it may not work so well. They may not feel great on it. It may not work in the concepts of the rest of their lifestyle. And I would keep saying the same thing, which is and what I try and do in my book as I try and help people determine what is the right approach for them. And I feel as a dog said that my job isn't to identify with one particular camp, it's to go, wait a minute, I'm a generalist, I'm an expert, generalist, my job is to see all of that, okay, which bits are relevant here for this patient in front of me, which bits are relevant for this particular reader. Like we were talking about Brian McKenzie before, which breathing technique does this

client who's come to work with me need? Is it the Vimhoff or is it Bioteko type breathing or is it neither? Is it something else entirely? And it's that nuance and context that gets lost everywhere, certainly on social media, but I think in media, at large these days, we're losing that context. You have seen the paradox of choice, Barry Schwartz's Ted Talk, I'm sure, which is basically it explains why we don't like having an overload of choices. We think that it allows us to maxim maximize our utility as a perfect rational human being by having 75 different pairs of genes,

but actually the research suggests that it would be easier if we just had three different types of genes that we could buy because we always feel like we could have made a better decision. And I wonder whether this is a function of information overload, whether the fact that we have access to so many different strategies

available on the internet, previously I don't know, but 50 years ago, I can't imagine that there was this many diets available in the knowledge bank of the layperson. And it certainly wasn't available at the push of a button on Google. What diet is best for losing weight? Millions, millions and millions of hit results and videos on YouTube. So that paradox of choice inevitably means that people think, right, you're the expert. You must know out of all of these ones, out of all of the two million different diets that there are, you must know what the best one is. So you tell us what the best one is.

Yeah. But it goes beyond that, actually. The wider point for me is also, it's my autonomy and agency. And in the penultimate page, if you want to remember, it was going off to print in September. And I remember emailing Penguin urgently saying, look, stop it. I've got to add, there's a couple of lines I need to add. They go wrong. Yeah, it's a page just before that. And I can't get it verbatim, but I put here, and when people ask you what plan you're following, you can tell them that you no longer follow other people's plans because you've

been empowered to create your own. You got that word perfect, hold on mate. Was it? Was it? So yeah, it was kind of, and I think to some people say, yeah, okay, what's a big deal about that? But for some people, that will be game-changing because it is, this is, and this comes from these 20 years of clinical experience, Chris, which is a different things work for different people, but but anybody can make short-term change. The truth is, if someone is looking to lose weight now, you could probably pick up any diet book off the shelf.

And if you follow it meticulously for the next three weeks, you will probably lose some weight, probably. But I don't think that's what people are really after. Certainly, that's what my patients are telling me. What people are really after is transformation is real consistent long-term change. They want to feel different in themselves. They want to feel better about themselves

and want better self-esteem. They want change that's still going on in March in April and May in June. Next January, they don't just want the drop address size in two weeks. And so I don't feel my role as a doctor is to tell my patient what to do. I've never told a patient to give up smoking before. Right. And what I mean by that is I don't feel as a fellow human being. I've got a right to tell them to give up smoking. What I have a right to do is if they ask me for my help,

my job is to say, listen, smoking in my view is doing ABC and D to you at the moment. So if you want these health outcomes, I think not smoking would be beneficial for you. But if that individual says, yeah, doc, I understand what you're telling me, but I get so much enjoyment out smoking my cigarettes that I'm prepared to put up with those risks that you just

told me about. Yeah, I'm going to keep going, thanks. As a doctor, but as a fellow human being, I think, okay, as long as I feel that you have understood what I've said, and I've done a good job at communicating with you, well, you're perfectly entitled to do that, right? And the point I'm trying to make is, you can have someone tell you what the best diet is, right? And you can start going down that train for two or three weeks and try and follow it.

But at some point, you've got to take ownership and go, you know what, I like certain components of this. Not sure I like that one, and you have to start turning it from someone else's plan into being your plan. You've got to have that agency and that self awareness and that knowledge to know each day. Hey, you know what, when I eat like this, I feel better, I can drop away, I can have more energy.

When I don't, I don't feel so good in. And it's something I'm really passionate about is empowering an individual to know themselves. So actually, you're not following the Doctor Strategy plan in his latest book. You know what, you're hopefully having me hold your hand and guide you through this journey and go, you might want to consider this, you might want to consider this, this is work for this patient, this is work for that patient. And then say, but this

is what I think you should do now, start off with this and then figure out how to adapt it yourself. And I really feel we've given up that agency to other people, to experts. And that may surprise people because I am one of these so-called experts. But I actually think there is something about being an expert, but at the same time, I think we've overwershipped the expert. I kind of feel we're all kind of sovereign individuals who actually, if we really tune into who we are, we get a really good sense of what's working for us and what's not working for us and what's not working for us. So my goal with every patient that I see, or for every reader of my books or every listener of my podcast, my goal is always the same, which is, can I help you understand yourself better,

so you're going to make better choices, not because I told you to, but because you want to. voices, not because I told you to, but because you want to. That's the most robust way to enact behavior change, to understand the fundamentals, to actually have knowledge. And finally, with the internet, we've removed the gateways previously that would have restricted people from having access to this. So yeah, man, I totally get it, and I agree as well. Feel great. Lose White will be linked in the show notes below,

go and pick it up on Amazon if you want. There will be a link there, you'll be supporting the podcast at Nox Cost to yourself. If you go and get yourself a copy from there, where else should people go to check out your work? Listen, whatever people they're into, I guess, this is the, there's four books out there of people who are interested, one on stress,

one on general health, one on behavior change, I'm on social media channels. Probably Instagram is the most prominent for me, I guess, at Dr. Chastity, that's DRCHAT, TTERJW, and if people like podcasts like yours, mine's called Feel Better Live More, new episode at every Wednesday, and use your places and on YouTube. Boom, I love it, man, everything will be linked in the show notes below. We're gonna have to do this again. I really enjoyed it, mate. Me too, Chris. Thanks very much for having me on, mate. And I can't wait till next time.

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